 The coincidentally timely aspects of these musings on the 2014 DVD of the live-stage performance "Del Shores: Naked. Sordid. Reality." make it an especially good place to start a "del"athon of posts on Shores films and performances. This begins with watching "Naked" overlapping with belatedly beginning to read the May 2018 David Sedaris collection of memoirs Calypso.
The film and the auto-biography make it clear that these brilliant minor gay celebrities storytellers do not hesitate to rip the band-aids from scabbed over and fresh emotional wounds for the enjoyment of their fellow friends of Dorothy as well as the general populace. The overlap extends to Shores discussing his painful divorce and Sedaris writing about his highly significant other telling Sedaris out of the blue that he has not loved him since 2002, The other coincidence is that particularly personal kindness and compassion by Shores comes at a time of announcing plans to shut down this site in late 2020 after more than 10 years trying to promote independent film and to prevent Millennials and Gen Zers from not knowing about Lucy Ricardo and Raph Kramden. This scheme to cease this genuine labor of love would not occur if not but for a Hall of Shame that includes arrogant young punks who should be grateful that they do not have to stand half-naked outside an Abercrombie and Fitch and a major studio that ironically knows Jack about not biting the hand that feeds its rapidly dying home-video businesses that should follow the Gospel According to Del. The rest of this story is that much can change in a year and that the credible rumors as the upcoming death of Matt Nelson may be premature. As indicated above, Shores gets much more personal in "Naked" than he does in his similar even more hilarious (reviewed) performance DVD "My Sordid Life." That one focuses more on tales from the set as to "Queer as Folk" and the Debra Messing Foxcom "Ned and Stacey." Further, a hazy memory is that Shores does not engage the "Life" audience nearly to the degree to which he makes the more intimate "Naked" fans part of the conversation, His very recent (reviewed) performance film "Six Characters in Search of a Play" falls in the middle of this Kinsey Scale, An early stop in this journey into the mind of Shores is the typical reminiscing about his "sordid" chldhood as the son of a Southern Baptist preacherman. In this case, we hear about eccentric elderly members of the congregation that include an otherwise loyal widow woman who is dragged kicking and screaming to her final service. The lesson in Southern justice is the perfect climax to this segment. We also get a story about the real aunt who inspires the HILARIOUS chain-smoking Sissy of the "Sordid" franchise. This one, which involves our favorite friend of Dorothy and his little dog too, is highly relatable to anyone with an elderly relative. Dishing about a Hollywood lunch with a successful producer/friend of Shores and two Silver Age (female) movie queens fills the quota for the gossip portion of this performance. In true Shores style, the climax is a sordid detail that is close to a page out of "Lives." Shores follows up with tales of two cities that perfectly illustrate the sordid scope of reality TV. Our host literally takes center stage to perform a one righteous dude show of an intervention of a hoarder who is a Mama June type; Shores particularly shines in his portrayals of the adult sons (and most likely nephews) of this woman whose riches are embarrassment. Shores wraps all of this with the aforementioned baring of his soul; this logically leads to a noteworthy (pun intended) musical performance that reasonably can be considered a song by A"del"e. The bittersweet conclusion to this that Shores leaves us wanting more; prior posts on his work and the remainder of this "Del"athon shows that he partially meets the bottomless demand for his wit and wisdom. Baby, you'r e the best.
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