Books

Duke University Press keeps AIDS in print with Paula Treichler’s How to Have Theory in an Epidemic. Pop culture, global prevention, AIDS journalism--little in the HIV cosmo is spared the light of this women’s studies prof’s magnifying glass.

John Updike recently picked Alice Elliot Dark’s subtle, haunting “In the Gloaming” (the basis of the 1997 HBO film) for his Best American Short Stories of the Century (Houghton Mifflin). Read it there or in Dark’s upcoming Simon & Schuster collection that takes its title from this landmark AIDS-themed work.

The Trouble with Normal (Free Press), queer theorist and Sex Panic!-er Michael Warner’s critique of gay culture takes a long, hard look at moralism in HIV prevention and the use of shame in the alleged interest of public health. It’s just the right book to curl up with on those chilly winter nights.

This month Mark Doty, a virtual poet-in-residence for the AIDS community, lets fly with Firebird (Harper-Collins), a present--and decidedly--tense memoir of childhood and portrait of the artist as a young man.

Life on Wheels (O’Reilly & Associates) is a must-have for the active wheelchair user and for those who try to keep up. Gary Karp’s resource book is excellent on social, legal and medical issues, and serves as a primer for any HIVer boning up on the disability-rights movement.

Geri Halwell has been Prevention Spice ever since the UN named her its goodwill ambassador for women’s reproductive health. Now, with her autobiography, If Only (Delacorte), she’s calling herself an author. Is she the next La Liz? If only.

Film

All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre), a Warner Bros. melodrama about loss and renewal, won raves at Cannes for its filmmaker and AIDS advocate Pedro Almodovar. But the predictable plot line for Rosa (Penelope Cruz), the HIV positive character, has disappointed PWAs expecting Spain’s most noted director to create yet another memorable female role.

Director Tanya Wexler told POZ in 1997 that she had a movie, Finding North, and was hoping to find a distributor. Problem was it involved a road trip with Rhonda, a straight gal who falls for Travis, a gay man mourning his lover, who just died of AIDS. Finally, you can rent the fruit of Wexler’s labor of love.

Music

Does hemo stud-with-HIV Shawn Decker thrill you with his POZ columns? Check out Tainted Goods, the EP from his one-man goth band, Synthetic Division. To order click on www.bonusround.com/shawn

Chronicling the music of one of the first East Village art scenesters lost to AIDS, Eclipsed: The Best of Klaus Nomi (Razor & Tie) features such fave covers as “You Don’t Feel Me” and “I Feel Love.” Get on the Nomi bandwagon now before the documentary on his life comes out and everyone is sporting that alien look.

Now that the heartbreaker has dropped all that ex-hubby baggage, Mariah Carey--whose new Sony album, Rainbow, appears this month--can patch things up with her HIV positive sister. You know, the one she cried about on Barbara Walters’ shoulder?

Theater

Meet me in St. Louis for a 10th-anniversary performance of Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens, a play that Bill Russell (of Side Show fame) wrote after viewing the AIDS Memorial Quilt.