The perfect gift

is “the L-word” anyway? Is it love? Or Lesbians? Maybe… Lasagna?For today, at least, the L-word of the day is Leo Sheng.Best known as the lovable Micah Lee on The L Word: Generation Q, Sheng is a self-proclaimed “community builder-turned-actor” who approaches all of his work with an activist’s spirit and always keeps us inspired.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.Born in Hunan, China, Sheng was adopted and raised in southeastern Michigan by two social worker moms, and even went to college to follow in their footsteps before destiny called: he was cast in his first professional acting role, the indie drama Adam.Since then, he has continued his career in the arts—which has included a role in The Matrix Resurrections and a part in the excellent trans media representation doc Disclosure—while sticking close to his roots as a community builder, especially as an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community.Sheng is also proof positive for why representation is so important: As he’s previously shared, it was the transmaculine character Max on the original L Word that empowered him to come out as trans—a moment that would came full circle when he was cast on Showtime’s Generation Q sequel series over a decade later.A year removed from Generation Q‘s emotional series finale, we reached out to Sheng and invited him to be the latest guest of our rapid-fire Q&A series, Dishin’ It.

Han Seth Lu, Black Tie Dinner’s 2024 Richard Weaver Volunteer Award recipient

Trump Kushner. And apparently that’s all by design.As her father’s first criminal trial kicked off in New York last week, the former first daughter, who was once his most-trusted aide and ally, was nowhere near to be seen.The one-term, twice-impeached, quadruply-indicted ex-president is currently on trial over his alleged affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels and a $130,000 payment he reportedly made for her silence ahead of the 2016 election.

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Black Sails.The adventure first aired on Starz back in 2014 and ran for four seasons. Part prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s lit classic Treasure Island, part historical fiction, the series drew from real people and places of the past to tell an epic story set during the “Golden Age Of Piracy” filled with sea-faring scallawags, scandal, and sex (it was a Starz show, after all!).Black Sails ended its run in 2017, but nearly a decade after its premiere, its found a second life on Netflix, debuting on the platform this month—and quickly sailing into the streamer’s TV Top 10.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.And as new fans of the show are coming to learn: The pirate life? Yup, it was pretty queer!Not unlike Max’s more recent pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death, Black Sails uses the well-argued belief that homosexuality was common on the high seas as a jumping off point to explore a sort of fluid queerness in a number of its characters.Of course, painting a portrait of LGBTQ+ characters during a unique period of world history wasn’t entirely the point of the show, but it’s notable how seamlessly same-sex attractions—and even a little gender f*ckery—were threaded into its many intersecting plot lines.‘Our Flag Means Death’ is back for Season 2 on Max.In simplest terms, Black Sails is set during a time when a sense of lawlessness ruled the oceans and the British colonial empire was hard at work trying to put an end to to it.