1) Hey, did you know Oscar Wilde was gay?

Are you being serious? Even if you're not, might as well get into it a bit because it's one of my favorite topics. He's like the stereotype of a British "queen" with quotes, and known as such when he was alive, too. This 1882 Royal Worcester teapot (photo source AIC) was widely known to refer to him and his Aesthetic Movement "queers," it is of a character from Gilbert & Sullivan that parodied them:

Being gay is actually what killed him, he went downhill fast & died after being convicted of gross indecency and serving a term for that hard labor

Very tragic, as many victims of England's homosexuality laws were. Father of the computer, Alan Turing, had a very similar tragic story.

It's the classic Greek & Brit kind of homosexuality, he treasured his wife and children and was exceedingly tender with them but passionately loved only men. This interchange (from the above link) from his first trial is probably the most famous description of that style of homosexuality:

Charles Gill (prosecuting): What is "the love that dare not speak its name"?

Wilde: "The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.[137]

One of the things I have always found interesting about his homosexuality and "queerness" is his American lecture tours which went across the country including in some rough pioneer areas. Everywhere he went he was welcomed and Americans of all types were enthralled to meet him. Americans of the time were clueless about what the Brits knew and understood about him and other "queers", they just thought that kind of behavior meant: high class intellectual, and they were hungry for it. Quite different from like the eternal Harriet Beeche Stowe knockoff. To go to an Oscar Wilde lecture was like the bee's knees, you were no longer like born in a barn, had sophisticated tastes.

2) Hey, did you know Manilow's Jewish?

I was trying to be politically correct by talking about a pixie type of straight NYC guy, leaving out that word. It's a known stereotype. Think Woody Allen as a variant, though not exactly the same. Actually more common in the burbs, like Westchester and NJ. One would describe such a person as "like, you know, Barry Manilow, like a good bar mitzvah boy." (There was sometimes a guest character on SNL on the In The News segment, Jacob the bar mitzvah boy.) Manilow screams classic "good Jewish boy" more than he does "gay."