Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

The eagle-eyed among our readers -- if there are any -- might have noticed a line at the bottom of the admittedly rare recent posts here, "Post mirrored from seaQwa.com".

"Huh?" you might reasonably have said.

Well, here's what's been happening: This blog -- and only the blog -- is moving to a new home at a new website called seaQwa.com. There's more to the overall site and I encourage you to check it out, but the blog part of it is at seaqwa.com/blogs/Qblog, which is the new home for what you've read here for the past couple of years.

[If you read this post in a feed-reader (and if you don't know what that is, then don't worry about this) please subscribe to this feed of the blog's new home. If you'd also like to get regular updates on news items of LGBTQ insterest, subscribe to this news feed. If you prefer to get updates by email, you'll find a subscription form on all seaQwa pages that have a feed.]

The seaQwa site is still in what I'm calling "preview" mode -- meaning that there's still a bunch of work that has to be completed on the thing. The pages are occasionally inexcusably slow. For that, I apologize. I'm working on a solution.

But you can, nonetheless, see much of what it will become from its current state. In addition to the continuation of this blog in a new setting, the site includes many of the things that I (or, to maintain this blog's persona) that we, your webwrangler, have been doing for the past couple of years on those Squidoo.com pages listed just under the promo box to the right of this column. A big part of what I've been doing there is the news digest. That frequently-updated digest will continue on Squidoo, but it now has its new homebase on the home page of seaQwa.com and, in blog format, on Qnews.

On the home page, you'll also find a "Qticker" of recent blog post headlines from a myriad of bloggers.

I thank everyone who has stopped by here at blog.ttca.org over the years we've been on these green pages and I hope you'll come visit us at our new, blue, and Q-filled home. Oh, and please don't be as shy as you've been on these pages. Add a comment to anything that strikes your fancy (anonymous is OK). You could even add your own posts to the Qyou blog.

What does that mean for this site?

Everything else about this site is staying right here at ttca.org, where it's been for over twelve years now. (And that, is a long, long time in web years.)

Your webwrangler will continue to update this site at his accustomed leisurely pace. Sunny Bruce will continue to greet you on these pages (have you ever noticed that he says something a bit different up in the rose-colored bar on almost every page?) and he will still bring you the latest Cruise alerts in the summer on the mailing list. We might even browse through our extensive galleries and throw up a picture every now and then to this blog.

Please drop by for a visit. Oh, and tell your friends. Thanks.

Labels: blog-on-blog, gay news, Gay Seattle, link bites, Seattle, state:WA

Slate offers a remarkable photo essay under the headline "Violent Femmes" of Taliban members in Afghanistan compiled by Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak. He didn't take the photos, but discovered them in passport photo shops in Kandahar that reopened after the downfall of the Taliban there.

Dworzak explains in the video that some misunderstood the remarkably foppish poses when they were first published by Magnum. "I got a lot of criticism in Europe from the liberal PC left who found it 'demeaning' for me to make them look like that. Hey. They chose to look like that."

The photos had to be taken surreptitiously during Taliban rule because images of people were forbidden.

Interviews included with the slide show offer several explanations for the poses, including this:

There is a very strong homosexual tradition in which an older man will adopt a young man and become lover cum student and teach him whatever skills he may have... Given the long-standing tradition of this in southern Afghanistan, it continued, but it was then done surreptitiously because the Taliban had very strong rules about it.

This essay offers an interesting counterpoint to a CNN report by Christiane Amanpour called God's Warriors. Last night's installment of the three-part series looked at "God's Muslim Warriors". There was no suggestion in the report that images like those found by Dworzak might be chosen by some of the warriors.

AfterElton reviews tonight's installment of the series [6 pm PT], "God's Christian Warriors", that focuses on US evangelical groups:

If looked at through the prism of understanding what the religious right wants for America, however, then the documentary can be considered a success if even only a few Americans -- especially gay ones -- wake up to what these Christian fundamentalists aspire to. And for anyone paying attention for the last twenty years, no explanation is needed as to what it is the religious fundamentalists want for America.

As God?s Christian Warriors makes amply clear, their goal is an America that is governed by biblical principles; principles that leave no room for gay people to co-exist in any meaningful way except by going deeply back in to the closet.

This video from GodTube, a fundamentalist copy of YouTube, makes frighteningly clear how how seriously some take the war part of all that and how some of them would like to get to where they want to be:


It's not known if some of these warriors might sport black eye-shadow in private moments.

Labels: link bites, religion

Each day, we peruse various sources of news bits about queer folk to find interesting stories. We post headlines and summaries (for now) over on a service that depends on the flaky interaction between two flaky services, Squidoo (which allows users to build a pre-formatted page on any topic that strikes the fancy) and Blinklist. (That's one of many "social bookmark" sites. Most do what they do better than that one, but we use it -- despite its frequent bugs -- because it provides the best tools we've found for the unique way we use it).

[This blog will move along with those news digests to a new news site in about, oh... late September. There's nothing there just yet.]

As we scan the headlines, we occasionally come across a "Well, Duh!" story that's presented as something else entirely. One of those cropped up today from the LA Daily News sports section. News staff writer Greg Hernandez ledes [but we'll add the links]:

When David Beckham finally started in a game for the Galaxy on Wednesday night, the event didn't just make the front pages of mainstream newspapers and sports Web sites. It also warranted the posting of a shirtless photo of the soccer star on Kenneth Walsh's gay-themed blog.

Mr. Hernandez then recounts a good-natured investigation why this might happen. Money quote from Outsports.com CEO Jim Buzinski:

"When it comes to visuals in sports, gay men and straight men are very similar except for the genders that we look at," Buzinski said. "Men are more visual. So we are just doing what mainstream sites do but we are catering to our audiences."

And, of course -- since sports writers must often write "Well, duh!" stories and become masters of the art, Hernandez recognizes the "well, duh!" moment for what it is by summarizing: "Men are men".

Another of those stories cropped up over the weekend when we came across a Reuter's headline, "Merv Griffin died a closeted homosexual". The news service had picked up the story from Hollywood Reporter writer Ray Richmond, who once worked for Griffin. When we first ran across it, we muttered, "Well, duh!", but decided not to post it in our digest.

The story would probably have made a few ripples in the blogosphere as it did when -- along a few others -- local blogger "Rad Ass Homo" scolded the industry mag, "I say shame shame to the Hollywood Reporter -- they should know better or at least have some respect...This could of ran a week later or something..."

Richmond's story had been scooped by a meatier posting about Griffin's closet on the blog of outing-meister Michelangelo Signorile, who offers reasons why Griffin's choice to remain in the closet was not just a personal matter. Among the examples:

Griffin's closet had him firing gay men who'd actually made it up through the ranks of his own company, simply because they were openly gay. There is a story in Queer in America about a man identified as "The Mogul" who did just that. I can now reveal that The Mogul is Merv Griffin. Open homosexuality is a threat to the closeted, and powerful people in the closet like Merv Griffin will often do whatever it takes to squash those who are open and who might advocate that all among the powerful should come out.

But Richmond's story turned from "Well, duh!" to "Taa Daa!" later in the day when Reuters dropped it from its entertainment feed. Even the original source, Hollywood Reporter, briefly dropped the story from its site on Saturday. And all of that saying-and-not-saying in the age of the web, along with reactions to it, was enough for Signorile blogger Kevin Allman (who's been all over the background story) to give the affair a name: "MervGate." *

We had another "Well, duh?" moment this morning when we saw something in BoingBoing about the gay papa of departing "Bush brain" Karl Rove. Since the 2006 book, The Architect had identified Rove's step-father as gay, this is a "more to the story" take on the "Well, duh?" theme. According to a BMEzine [NSFW] editor quoted by BoingBoing essayist Xeni Jardin, "Karl Rove's father was not only gay, but a part of the early body piercing scene and a regular at 70s piercing parties... There are pictures of him on BME."

Adding new details is always a good reason to resurrect an old story. [Just like quoting a story about gay blogs posting beefcake of straight athletes is an adequate reason to, well... post beefcake of straight athletes.]

* [Update:] Allman link to "MervGate" added after he added a helpful comment. Thanks.

Labels: blog-on-blog, celebrities, link bites, shirtless hunk

The New York Fire Department (which, of course, is known as "FDNY" rather than the other initials which could be pronounced as a not-encouraging word) has cancelled a fundraising effort that last year raised over $150,000 for the department.

It's all the fault of "a series of gay blogs" according to news reports. Those blogs were atwitter last week when a non-profit foundation released its annual calendar featuring FDNY firefighters posing shirtless, but innocently for the cameras.

The calendar itself wasn't the problem. Instead, what "embarrassed" department officials was an unrelated video that made the rounds on the blogs showing the chosen cover boy for this year's calendar in a more far more revealing, but still quite innocent interaction with the all-female crew making the first "Guys Gone Wild" DVD.

The New York Post has fun with its description of the clip:

The embarrassing video of 22-year-old firefighter Michael Biserta of Brooklyn's Ladder Co. 131 and his enormous member is featured in the 2004 Joe Francis-produced DVD "Guys Gone Wild."

The video clip began to circulate when Biserta appeared on the 2008 calendar that went on sale Tuesday.

In the clip, the female camera operators goad Biserta to show them his fire pole.

When they ask him to dance for them or get up on the bed, he refuses, but does agree to get in the hotel room's shower in the nude.

Biserta also, we should point out, reluctantly agrees to show that his "fire pole" will fit all the way around his wrist as a kind of bracelet after a good-natured, feeble protest that "you girls are a bad influence on me."

"This -- this," says an only slightly embarrassed Biserta in the clip, "is the craziest thing I've ever done."

We think it's even a stretch to call the video "salacious" as the New York Daily News does in its story.

The FDNY was caught off-guard by the DVD, which came to light after the latest firefighter calendar was printed and the shirtless firemen appeared on NBC's "Today" show.

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta responded to the salacious developments by prohibiting city firefighters from ever posing for the charity calendar, which is published by the FDNY Fire Foundation.

But please, judge for yourself. The site and the page aren't anywhere close to safe-for-work, but it's only fair to direct you to PornForPatric's post about the calendar that includes (if you wait long enough for the inevitable server delay) the video clip in question. Fleshbot also linked, but apparently lost access their version of the video clip. They do, however, offer several stills. Andy Towle linked to those posts an others on his widely read news blog, Towleroad.

That was all, apparently, a bit too much for FDNY officials, but we don't understand how exactly any of this should be embarrassing to the department.

In fact, at least one of his fellow firefighters seems to be similarly non-offended, according to the Daily News

One of Biserta's fellow Bravest at the Lorraine Ave. firehouse was amused by his colleague's lewd past.

"Nice," the firefighter said, flashing a thumbs-up.

Labels: blog-on-blog, link bites, shirtless hunk

Matt Barber's job at the right-wing activist group Concerned Women for America seems to be to get mad about something and write a bleating press release or blog post about said maddening matter. His official title is Policy Director for Cultural Issues. His oddly reasoned missives turn up frequently on blogs that keep track of these kinds of things like Pam's House Blend and -- with a very different style, but similarly unrelenting focus -- G.A.Y.

We'd usually leave the tracking of the right-wing rantings to them, but one of Barber's posts popped up on our screeners because it mentioned that local coffee outfit, Starbucks. Apparently, it was a slow week for Barber after the hate crimes bill passed. So slow, that he was reduced to reading the stuff printed on his Starbucks cups. And he still doesn't like what he sees there.

Java giant Starbucks finds itself entangled in yet another brewing controversy over its "The Way I See It" campaign. Starbucks has a history of placing liberal, pro-homosexual and anti-God statements submitted by customers, celebrities and other public figures on the side of its coffee cups for customers to contemplate while they wash down a muffin with a Frappe-Mocha-whatever.

Although the company has every right to do what it wants with its cups, one questions whether it makes good business sense to intentionally alienate a large percentage of the coffee drinking public with these inflammatory political musings. Many customers with traditional values find it quite offensive. Although the company has used some religion oriented statements in the past -- such as one by Purpose Driven Life author Rick Warren -- the preponderance of politically and spiritually themed quotes that make the "cup cut" seem to represent a hard-left ideology.

I know... it's difficult to believe that a company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, would labor under such a leftist bent, but sadly, such is the case.

Yikes! Seattle! Here offers the name of our town as though the good chief's name alone is enough to get his readers riled.

Barber offers several examples of the "hard-left ideology" he found on the cups. Among them:

The Way I See It # 43 ? "My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too d*mn short." -- Armistead Maupin, Homosexual Novelist

Barber suggests that his readers should submit their own (presumably hard-right) alternative quotations to a Starbucks website. His offering:

The Way I See It # ?? ? "Why do so many in our fallen world revile God's natural order when it comes to marriage, family and human sexuality? Why do we encourage wicked pride in a morally bankrupt, high-risk lifestyle that's anything but 'gay'? Why do we shake our fist with hate at perfect Love? Life is short -- but it's never too late for change."

Hmm. Maupin just seems nicer, somehow.

Given the genesis of the company's name, we'd like to see this admittedly complex sentence from Moby Dick:

"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own." -- Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Ch. 49

We suspect that Barber would feel better about Starbucks if he'd run across this Chicago "partner" described in a letter to Windy City Times. (Although the situation described appalls us.):

When I approached the counter to order my drink, an employee was sitting at a table, apparently on his break, talking to another employee who was making a drink for him. I walked up just as he was telling her that, because she is gay, she is no different from a serial killer or a child molester. The woman responded by saying that she was the way God made her and that certainly wasn't wrong in her opinion. At that point, he walked up to the counter to get his drink, looked at me, and said: "I'm just sayin' it's evil."

Labels: activism, business, link bites, Seattle

So, then... we offer the embarrassed video of a lip sync attempt below. Not because it's a particularly good attempt. Not because it's a better dance attempt than what Sanjaya might come up with. Not because we're all that fond of Dolly Parton's 9 to 5.

We offer partly because it's kinda cute to see how embarrased the guy is about doing it at all. But then... he posts it despite his embarrassment.

But, mostly -- let's be honest here -- we post it because the lip sync is done by our all-time favorite in the collection of hunks over in the Rumor Machine, Jonathan Jesensky who we've mentioned (and pictured) before. He is, by all reports, a nice guy, a carpenter, a bar-tender, a model. He was a Marine. He is, above all, an uber-hunk. Find more pictures here and here and here [work warning: The latter two links play audio].

If the name isn't familiar, you might not recognize him in the video with his shirt on and with the glasses. So we offer this reminder:

And so here's the other, innocent view from a post on Jonathan's MySpace blog (at http://www.myspace.com/jesensky since it's virtually impossible to link directly into that place) :

Labels: eye candy, link bites, shirtless hunk, video, youtube

AfterElton.com has an advance review of a "rough partial screening" of the new movie version of the Broadway musical version of John Water's cult classic movie Hairspray. (Whoa. That's some genealogy.) The musical, of course, had its pre-Broadway run here at the 5th Avenue Theater and has been back in various various versions since then. The new movie is scheduled for release this summer.



Blogger ChristieKeith has good news for fans of what has become a highly unlikely show-business franchise:

And yeah, John Travolta plays the Divine role of Edna Turnblad and yeah, that didn't work so much for me, but the rest of it? Divine is smiling down from heaven. ...
So, other than Travolta's semi-suckage, how was the movie? Oh, just basically completely brilliant. ...

Hairspray succeeds, in all three of its incarnations, because at heart it's a feel-good movie about fighting the good fight. Tracy Turnblad, a plump high school girl who knows she's destined for greatness as either the first woman president or maybe a Rockette, gets picked as one of the dancers on an afternoon music show on a local TV station. She uses her new-found fame to take a public stand for racial equality in segregated 1962 Baltimore, saying that if she were the first woman president she'd "make every day Negro day!"

Hairspray is all about the triumph of good over evil, and a huge hunk of that goodness comes from Tracy, who is the best heroine ever, and the one with the most bouffant hair. ... She's played in Shankman's film by newcomer Nicole Blonsky, who was discovered by the producers at the social networking version of the soda fountain, MySpace. ...

[S]he's a radiant ball of pure sunshine in the role. Her voice is gorgeous, and she's just the prettiest thing, with the most beautiful eyes and the aforementioned extremely high bouffant hair.

[Hat tip: Queerty.]

Labels: celebrities, link bites, movie

Ya gotta give it to the folks at Ginch Gonch underwear: They know how to promote their product to gay guys. And, hey, with pics and vids like these from the Boy Culture premier party, we'll gladly fall for it.


Ethan Reynolds, Benjamin Bradley and more Gonch Boys were out in force at the premier of Boy Culture [prior post]. The underwear company was a co-sponsor of the party along with The Advocate and TLA Releasing. A "Mr. Nightlife Hollywood" says of the party that was packed not only with packed underwear, but many of the gay-, playing-gay, or just gay-friendly faces in Hollywood:

Hollywood film premieres can be lots of fun to attend, but every-so-often you go to one that leaves you saying "boy, oh boy that was lots of fun" days later. Such was the case with the premiere of the critically acclaimed indie film Boy Culture.

You might ask, "What happens when Ginch Boys come out (out of their brief briefs, that is)?" Fortunately, for those willing to follow a not-safe-for-work link, PartyWithBrandon.com has the explicit but unnamed details.

Wearing limited edition Boy Culture-logo briefs, Ethan and Benjamin also headed out elsewhere on the town, also visiting the birthday party for celebrity gossipist Perez Hilton.


YouTube link

And, of course, there was a photo shoot with the not-available-to-you logo briefs:


YouTube link

But, really. Given our obvious fondness for sailor pictures, we couldn't resist this one from the current front page of the Ginch Gonch site:

Labels: eye candy, gay party, link bites, shirtless hunk

Seattlest reports that John McCain's official page on MySpace (of all places) briefly offered a surprising message to browsers Tuesday morning: "Today, I announced that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage ... particularly marriage between passionate females."

But, no... It wasn't a real change of heart from the straight folk on the "Straight Talk Express."

Seattlest explains:

A McCain staffer swiped a template page from Seattle-based news-sharing site Newsvine and when Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson figured out that the template was directing a lot of traffic to an image hosted by Newsvine he swapped it with his own message of tolerance. Instead of a generic list of links McCain's site began displaying an announcement of his support for gay marriage.

This (borrowed, but not hot-linked from Newsvine) is what the upper left corner offered to visitors until McCain staffers replaced the pilfered code with the current muddled mess:

Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson insisted that the prank wasn't meant to be political.

Before McCain fans comment on this, let me reiterate that this was a prank. I'm not politically inclined, I'm not anti-McCain, and I'd have a beer with the guy anytime. Election season on Newsvine is sure going to be fun though.

It was, instead, intended as a lesson in internet etiquette: Never link to an image on someone else's server without explicit permission. (I.e. use linking prophylactics.)

Since McCain staffers had violated that cardinal rule, changing their message was barely even hacking.

So, the only thing necessary to effectively commandeer McCain's page with my own messaging was to simply replace my own sample image on my server with a newly created sample on my server. No server but my own was touched and no laws were broken. The immaculate hack.

Be careful out there, especially when you're in nasty neighborhoods like MySpace.

Labels: blog-on-blog, link bites, politics

Wayne Besen of Ex-Gay Watch made a great appearance on The Daily Show on March 11 that deserves another look. Activists don't often do well on this kind of thing, but we were impressed. So were commenters on Ex-Gay Watch.


[link to video part 1] [link to part 2]

Speaking of Comedy Central's nighttime, we've heard an interesting rumor from some friends who share our fondness for The Colbert Report. We're not sure how much stock to put in any of this since it mostly seems to be second-hand and third-hand rumors, but folks who know a lot more about what goes on at the comedy network tell us that Stephen Colbert is preparing to make a big-net hosting appearance.

The possibilities are fascinating. After all, that might explain Katie Couric's recent featherwieght interview with the satirist. Who knows, maybe she thought that was a good way to butter him up for an offer from CBS? What? A Letterman guest-host spot? (Except, of course, Letterman does repeats instead of guests hosts.) If they were smart, the folks at CBS Evening News might want to give Colbert the desk on that program. It would probably increase the show's credibility.

Dunno. There is common ownership among the parent companies of Comedy Central and CBS, but the more likely candidate would be ABC's silly show Regis and Kelly-Lee (as Letterman likes to call it). Regis is still on medical leave, so they've been running through guest hosts at a pretty good clip. Would they dare put Colbert on the air right before Rosie? Who knows. But wouldn't that be fun. Kelly might just have an on-air breakdown.

Labels: Colbert Report, link bites, TV

We both curse and bless Michael Goff, Andy Towle's new co-writer on Towleroad, for blogging about a service called Musicovery on Friday.



Goff also mentions a number of other web music services in the post. Some of the others might get you closer to hearing only the music that you already know and want to hear, but it's Musicovery that's had us transfixed for the weekend. (But then, as you might have noted, we who write this don't have a life.)

What we like about Musicovery is something that interface designers call "discoverability." Basically that term means something like this: You shouldn't have to explain how something works, it should just work.

Musicovery just works as highly customizable web radio. And that's high praise.

Labels: link bites, music

Since everyone else has already found this one too juicy let pass, we'll pile on and throw in a link to two to the blog-scrum. Seems this hunky Marine reserve corporal/Columbia student, Matt Sanchez, was popular on the right-wing talkies in the past week or two.

He had a story to tell about what he said was a rude encounter with a leftist activist group at a Columbia event. Fox's Hannity spun it out into major dissing-the-troops meme.

It's not hard to believe that a group of college leftist activists would be rude. And the story Sanchez tells fits in well with the standard woe-is-me conservative meme about about their victimization. It helps that Sanchez is an attractive and highly articulate spokesman.

So, what's the problem? Turns out Sanchez spent a few years in the gay porn biz where his considerable gifts were on display under the name Rod Majors and Pierre LaBranche. Here are the not-safe-for-work details.

Joe.My.God promises an interview with Sanchez tomorrow, and links out to the wealth of other posts that have followed him and the aforementioned nsf Tom Bacchus on the story.

Andy Towle of Towleroad even dated him back in the day:

I was shocked to see this story this morning, for the main reason that Matthew Sanchez and I met at a gay bar in San Jose, California and went on a few dates in 1989 when I was a graduate student at Stanford. I haven't seen him since. It was brought to my attention after we had finished dating that he had gone on to do gay adult films but I had no idea he had joined the military and was also holding hands with folks who would be so loath to accept him into their ranks had they any clue to his background.

[update] Joe.My.God has the brief interview with Sanchez up on his site. Sanchez says that his conservative friends have been kind to him, and offers a few sound bites should (all things being equal) earn him more appearances on the right-talker shows.

There's something about the beleaguered gay psyche that wants to prove to the world that everyone is just as messed up as they are. So, they start off with the term hypocrite and work their way backwards looking for signs of deviant behavior in hopes of discovering some type of bastard kinship.

Sanchez has even more to say in a letter to Salon.

Being in the adult entertainment industry was sort of like being in a cult, and like all followers of a cult, I have a difficult time figuring out when I stopped believing in the party line. I can tell you, though, that by the time I finished my brief tour of the major studios, I was pretty disgusted with myself. It was an emotional low, and the people who surrounded me were like drug dealers interested only in being with the anesthetized in order not to shake off the stupor of being high.

Hmm. Maybe that's why the porn biz produces so many conservative voices. Max Blumenthal touched on it last night in an interview on MSNBC's Countdown.

[S]everal gay bloggers, like for instance T Rex and Firedoglake have talked for years about the existence of sort of a gay Republican underground railroad that's funneled people like Jeff Gannon and Corporal Matt Sanchez from the fringes of the adult industry into the core of the conservative movement and they've played an influential role in the backlash politics of the conservative movement and the Republican party. That's really what's relevant here.

Labels: celebrities, link bites

While gay activists were complaining that a Super Bowl ad and supporting website for Snickers candy were obnoxiously homophobic, the FCC was getting a barrel full of complaints that the game broadcast was promoting gay sex. Oh, the horror!

Smoking Gun has compiled some of the stranger letters to the broadcast regulators. [via AOL Sports] Both the Snickers ad and the halftime performance by Prince shocked many of the letter writers who asked, "What about the children?"

One letter writer was convinced that the CBS broadcast of Prince's performance would turn her son gay because it included a shadowy outline of the singer with his guitar straddled at the hip. (Page 4):

It was obscene to show Prince, a HOMOSEXUAL person through a sheet, as to show his siluette [sic] while his guitar showed a very phallic symbol coming from his below-midriff section. I am very offended and I would preffer [sic] not to have showed it to my 4 children who love football. One of them has hoped to be a quarterback and now he will turn out gay. I am actually considering to check him for HIV. Thanks CBS for turning my son GAY.

My, my. Such dirty minds they have.

Labels: link bites, sports, youtube

Local photographers are keeping the web supplied with quick visual records of gay parties and events in town. Photographers Matt Browning and Brian Westbrook have joined together as SeattlePaparazzi.com. They offer pics of recent Gay Bingo events. Browning also has pictures of this weekend's show by Lily Armani.

Malcolm Smith, who has recently offered us shots from the Revival parties has a good collection of pictures up on his site from Whistler gay ski week 2007, WinterPride.

Labels: gay party, Gay Seattle, link bites, photos, whistler

Celebrity rumor isn't our area. (For that we go to some of the sites listed on our Queer Pop page.) But, hey, we have that picture among the hundreds on our Rumor/Hunk Machine page, and we just hate to miss an occasional excuse to bring some of that beefcake eye-candy over here. So here goes...

Country singer Kenny Chesney insists that he is not gay. Really. That's not what his ex-wife meant when she listed "fraud" as the reason for requesting an annulment."

It's not true. Period. Maybe I should have come out and said, 'No, I'm not (gay),' but I didn't want to draw any more attention to it," the 38-year-old country singer says.

We believe him even if he does look like any number of guys at The Cuff's country dance night. Even the tight levis have never set off our (admittedly flawed and underused) gaydar.

The rumor apparently got some traction when celebrity sniffers, taking a brief break from their ANS obsession, discovered that Chesney's ex, Renee Zellweger cited "fraud" as reason for requesting an anullment of their brief four-month marriage.

He was interviewed for 60 Minutes by Anderson Cooper. (wink, wink, nudge...).

Labels: celebrities, eye candy, link bites, shirtless hunk

All that odd political wrangling going on with our red-state neighbors to the north, has one Alaska blogger seething:

Queer Alaskans are a friendly people but right now they're as pissed off as a polar bear with his nadds on the barbie. As the state gets ready to consider a proposal to amend the Alaskan Consitution for the soul purpose of discriminating against Gay couples us Queer Folk are getting organized, digging our fox holes, and building our armory. Nothing can be wasted -- each shot must count.

Tenpa points out that Alaska doesn't have a statewide LGBT advocacy group. "We depend on the local chapter of the ACLU and activists (we like to say AKtivists) in Juneau, Anchorage and Fairbanks," he explains.

He lists a large network of those "AKtivisits" who have banded together to raise money and to lobby to defeat this latest round in the long-running battle. And he quotes a friend who is one of the 55 people for whom legislators are spending millions to overrule a program that would cost the state, at most, a few hundred tousands per year:

"Tenpa, look what I have! It is my new insurance card and it includes my other half! Can you believe it! All of these years it has been so hard. Now we don't have to depend on public assistance and grants for his medical care and medications. Now I don't have to worry every month if I will have enough money to keep him going. My co-pay will be my co-pay. Our life can now be regular ?.. more predictable. I never thought this would happen!"

Labels: Alaska, LGBTQ, link bites, politics

Bottom bitching: Johnny Weir settled for a bronze medal at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Spokane this weekend. At first, it looked like the big non-skating deal at the event would be Weir's decision to skate as Jesus. But that all got buried when out-gay commentator Mark Lund started a cat-fight with the ambiguously-maybe-gay Weir about his "style."

During their brief discussion, the commentators managed to borrow all the same Isaiah-avoiding synonymns for "queer" that Mika stories have been using all week long.

At a Spokane press conference, Weir mostly kept claws in hand (for now) when asked about Lund's comments.

Chapter three: Now that the fake-Seattle-hospital star has ended his apology tour to enter rehab (whatever that means), posts about Isaiah Washington have mostly died down, except that the gay weeklies finally got their print-delayed chances to summarize the soap operatic story. Washington Blade cuts through the chatter, but Andy Humm at New York's Gay City News gives deeper treatment to the story by including Jasmyne Cannick's complaints that most of the complaints about Washington were coming from a white "gay mafia" that she compares to a lynch mob "defending their beloved Knight."

That link to an inflammitory and downright homophobic article by Cannick, is to a New Orleans black community newspaper where it was reprinted rather than to her blog where she's dealt with the whole issue great insight. QueerToday blog argues that "Cannick opens another door to understanding how both homophobia and racism are present even within groups." But is "understanding" really what is happening when an inflammatory article like hers gets reprinted in a black community newspaper?

Although he approaches it from a distinctly different angle, white guy Tony Perkins also accuses the "same people calling for Washington's re-education" of skipping over more important injustices.

Comedian Wenda Sykes, who often skirts thin ice with these sorts of things, manages to offer a funny summary on Ellen without adding too much to the furror.

But since we're sure it won't be seen by Glenn Beck who wouldn't (as usual) understand, we'll let the gay mafiosi at Queerty have the final word:

As for reclaiming the word: we did that ages ago. We're total faggots. Not only that, we're total cocksucking, buttfucking faggots and we wouldn't have it any other way. Except, maybe, if we were rich faggots?that might be better.

Twenty minutes: Nobody beyond some small circle somewhere (although which small circle and where was debated) had heard of a fellow who called himself "Donnie Davies" until a bizarre video showed up on MyTube [which has since been pulled] and sparked an "Is he for real?" debate. Unfortunately, the debate gave the guy far more publicity than he deserved. Before the week was out several big-gay-bloggers had weighed in on the umm... weighty matter, including Queerty, Andrew Sullivan, Dan Savage on Slog, Towleroad, and -- finally (we hope) and mercifully -- Joe.My.God. (Partly because we were so late in jumping onto the Mika bandwagon, we left this one to the big-guns pens keyboards. And besides, we thought the video was just creepy and not at all funny.)

Labels: celebrities, Dan Savage, link bites

One more, this one via Andrew Sullivan.

OutSports.com writer Jim Buzinski has a touching tribute to Anthony Castro, a young man who made it through a tough early life but died last week in a car crash.

Anthony was that rarest of people -- an athlete out to his team. In Anthony's case, he was out in high school to his football and wrestling teams, our two most macho team sports. It took guts to take such a step but Anthony never thought too much about it -- he was not ashamed of who he was and if you were uncomfortable, that was your problem.

[2/3/07:] ESPN.com has added another touching tribute to Castro in a superb column by LZ Granderson.

"He caught a lot of crap over the first six to nine months after coming out," says Phil Takacs, a Banning High counselor. "Sometimes he would come to my office and ask if he could just spend the rest of the day there. He would say that he couldn't take being called 'faggot' any more today and just needed a break. He even thought about quitting sports. But over time, Anthony just got tired of the other kids making him feel bad for who he was.

"One day he was in practice and one of the other wrestlers was giving him a bunch of crap about being gay. Anthony looked at the kid and said 'You have a problem with me; why don't we take this to the mat?' This guy wrestled in the heaviest division, but Anthony pinned him in less than 30 seconds. That guy never said anything else again."

...Takacs said that there are now 10 openly gay students at the school that he is aware of and that the community is a lot more tolerant.

"Anthony changed a lot of people's attitudes about gay people by simply having the strength to follow his heart," Takacs said.

Labels: coming out, gay news, link bites, sports

You've just gotta love the way that t-shirt drapes on Mika's slender (and what some folks have called "chiseled") bod. And no, he's not standing next to a bear in the upper pic. That's a poorly doctored picture of him next to a fan, but not just any fan, it's uber-gossipist Perez Hilton. We figured Perez wouldn't mind the doctored photo.

In our prior posts, we failed to link to Mika's own MySpace page. (We're usually scared that those things will be unreadable globs of buggy picture viewers and other junk, but his is OK.)

Over in the UK, where's he's all that, the Guardian asks (but can't quite answer) why he's the only "camp" and/or "flambouyant" or "sexually ambiguous" or __ (fill in the blank with non-Isaiah adjectives) pop singer out there. (Is he really?)

And the Sun pressed him on the question that still pops up often in our search strings:

He refuses to say whether he is gay or straight, claiming his sexuality is of no consequence to his career.

He said: "I never talk about anything to do with my sexuality.

"I just don't think I need to. People ask me all the time. But I just don't see the point.

"In order to survive I've kind of shut up different parts of my life, and that's one of them, especially this early in my career."

Lifelong has some great pics by Matthew Browning up on their blog from this month's Superhero Gay Bingo event. The photog has a few more hotter pics on his interesting blog.

And congrats to Lifelong for recognizing what this whole blog thing is all about and for somehow managing to create something on MySpace that's actually readable even if it isn't very linkable. From the evidence of others on that service, it isn't easy to do that on MySpace.)

If you don't yet have tickets for upcoming bingo nights, you should act fast (or meet someone who does have the tickets). Both February's Pirate Gay Bingo and March's Groovy '70s Gay Bingo are now sold out and tickets are already half sold for April 14's Art Appreciation Gay Bingo. If you're still a Bingo Virgin, come see what everyone is talking about and get your tickets for the remainder of the 2007 season now!

Those Q-lens links under the Cruise box on our web site (which we copy to this post so that they'll also show up in the RSS feed) are our way of sharing some of our favorite links and blogs. The Gay news lens and the Gay Seattle lens both now feature news digests at the top. Even though the pages from that service are slow to load, once they do load, each of those (and the others) give you a quick way to keep up with 'mo stuff flowing through the 'net tubes.

The first Revival apparently worked out well at Element. It will return with more "dancing, queers, and $1 beers" on Feb. 4. Models Benjamin Bradley [sfw profile of his porn career] of Falcon and Ethan Reynolds, founder of Bratboy will be featured.

Labels: blog-on-blog, Gay events, gay party, link bites, Mika

As we mentioned when we posted Toronto speedo pics, we were waiting for this one.

As he does each year, Towleroad now has a rich and varied collection of pictures of the original Santa Speedo Race that was held this weekend in Boston.

The sixth annual race, held Saturday, is a creative benefit for Ellie Fund to fight breast cancer.

A full collection of photos of the race by Patrick Lentz is available on Flickr.

You'll also find more pics on the benefit's own site.

Labels: eye candy, fundraisers, link bites, shirtless hunk, speedos

We love it when folks from cold places get creative with Christmas-time fundraising, like, oh... Santa Speedo races. The Parisian Boys blog found pictures (including the ones seen here) from the Toronto Santa Speedos who took to the streets of the Yorkville neighborhood last Saturday December 9th 2006. The run was a benefit for a children's health charity.

The original Santa Speedo run in Boston is scheduled for next weekend.

Labels: fundraisers, link bites, shirtless hunk

Quote o' day: From King County exec Ron Sims: "You don't want people being stunned by the size of your package. None of us like that."

Sorry, Ron, but we actually do like to be stunned by the size of a package. OK, sure, we've been reading too much about Foleygate, but still... (And, by the way, he's talking about transportation tax packages.)
---
Secretary of State Condi officially swore in the new (and openly gay) head of US international AIDS efforts. She introduced his partner and "mother-in-law." Andrew Sullivan:

There you have it. Among decent elite Republicans, there is often great acceptance of gay people as individuals, and of their families and spouses. "Mother-in-law" is itself an affirmation of marriage for gay couples; and the secretary of state just used those words. And yet her party officially regards gay unions as, in James Dobson's words, a prelude to the "destruction of the earth."

---
Seattlest featured a cameo appearance by a wonderfully bitchy fashion maven who, of course, finds most of us around here woefully lacking in fashion sense. He railed against our collective lack of umbrellas and other fashion sins last week.

He is, of course, from elsewhere, and apparently hasn't yet discovered that significant and umbrella-launching winds usually accompany those rare days when our drizzle turns into full-out rain. Nonetheless, we hope to read more bitching about the local fashion scene before a shoulder is de-socketed as he tries to hang onto his fashionable bumbershoot.
---
"YouTube" can be a verb. Go ahead, Google it.

We first noticed it from Andrew Sullivan: "I'll be YouTubing short segments of my presentation at the Cato Institute last week..."

Beyond the grammar lesson, however, the segments YouTubed by Sullivan are a fascinating glimpse into his new book, The Conservative Soul. Find the YouTube segments here, here, here, and here.
---
Look beyond the firemen. You can now get a calendar of buff shirtless Marines. (And, yes, we've added at least one of them to our rumor machine.)
---
Re-Bar [see map] is for sale.
---
Last week, Slog republished drunken photos of a UW sophomore being sophomoric. Metroblogging called the stunt "mean-spirited," which prompted this explanation by Slogger-in-chief and Stranger editor Dan Savage:

While some might argue that young Hugh Foskett engages in behaviors typical to college sophomores everywhere -- group groping, same-sex soaking, projectile vomiting?it needs to be said that Foskett isn't any ol' college sophomore. He's a College Republican. And not just any ol' College Republican--, no. Young Hugh Foskett is the GOP's anointed candidate in the 43rd District. And Foskett's party--all together now--is the party of values, moral majorities, and personal responsibility, to say nothing of the party of abstinence pledges and opposition to same--sex marriage, groping, soaking, etc.

Tags: Link bites

Labels: link bites, shirtless hunk

J &/or K, the authors of the CapitolHillSeattle blog, appear to have become a bit tired of the frequent snipes taken by Sloggers at 43rd District House candidate Jamie Petersen. They explained the tiff much more elegantly than we did. In contrast to our overly wordy exegesis, the CapHill explanation neatly fits onto a t-shirt with a Stranger-esqe acronym: JP: TGFDS. The t-shirt even offers an acronym expansion: "Jamie Pedersen: Too Gay for Dan Savage".

Are Southern Baptists too gay?

Speaking of "too gay"... It seems incredible that anyone would find the Southern Baptist Convention too gay, but the wackos of Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas (aka "GodHatesFags.com") thought so when they sent some of their zanier members to picket the church's annual convention in Greensboro, NC.


The woman who spoke for Westboro at the convention also appeared on Fox News in early June where she seemed to be channeling Piper Laurie's character in the movie Carrie.

FYI: Seattle's gay-friendly copper-topped First Baptist Church on First Hill is a member of the more liberal American Baptist Convention and is not part of the larger Southern Baptist confederation.

Episcopal Church kind of apologizes for gay bishop

Another denomination was in the news last week as bigwigs of the Episcopal Church met in Columbus, Ohio for their triennial general convention. One of the big issues for conferees was responding to a flurry of criticism from members of the worldwide Anglican communion about the US church's consecration in 2003 of a gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire.

The conference sidestepped a deepening controversy when the Episcopal Diocese of California in early May voted to elect one of the four non-gay candidates as their next bishop. Three of the seven candidates for that post, including the Very Rev. Robert Taylor, dean of Seattle's St. Mark's Cathedral, were gay or lesbian priests.

An angry debate about the election of a gay bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions in the United States has frayed the church at home and threatened to fracture the Anglican communion, the world's third-largest church body. [NYT]

But then, the conference seemed to highlight their theological and cultural clashes with other Anglican conferences and some US Episcopal churches by electing a woman, Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schorli of Nevada, as their presiding bishop.

The election of the first woman to preside over an Anglican conference deepens the divide between the US church and other national conferences.

Many Anglican conferences do not even allow the ordination of women priests.

Jefferts Schorli told the New York Times

"We need to send a message that we fully intend to be part of the [worldwide Anglican] communion," she said on her way to the daily Eucharist service. "All of this calls for us to grow and stretch. I think we're willing to stretch very far indeed."

She quickly signalled that she wouldn't back down from the US Church's embrace of its gay and lesbian members.

Interviewed on CNN, Jefferts Schori was asked if it was a sin to be homosexual. "I don't believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us," she said.

Later in the week, however, the conference that had elected her adopted a less tolerant stance when it accepted a preliminary resolution that apologizes for offending other national Anglican churches in 2003 when it approved consecration of Robinson as bishop.

The approved statement says the U.S. church expresses its "regret for breaching the proper restraints of the bonds of affection" with the events surrounding the 2003 convention and "the consequences which followed."

It offers the church's "sincerest apology" to those "who are offended by our failure to accord sufficient importance ... to the impact on our church" and asks "forgiveness as we seek to live in deeper levels of communion one with another."

Executions in the name of god

More disturbing religious news filtered (without much US media coverage) out of Iraq where the US military (aka "coalition forces") admitted that it was aware of the murders, but hadn't done much about religiously motivated executions of gay folk in the country. The killings had accelerated when Iraq's primary Shiite cleric, the Ayatolla Sistani, issued a stern fatwa calling for executions of homosexuals. In May, A London-based group of gay Iraqi exiles managed to get Sistani's people to remove parts the fatwa from their website, but it remained in effect and the executions apparently continued as well. (The section of the fatwa calling for execution of lesbians remained on the website.)

The Army spokesman, Maj. Joseph Todd Breasseale, who talked with the Washington Blade insisted there isn't much that the US can do about any of this.

Faced with a highly volatile atmosphere brought about by warring Islamic factions, the U.S. and its coalition allies must use caution in addressing the issue of homosexuality, Breasseale said.

"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, when we're in a fledgling time like this, to go in and say, 'Here's these issues that are going to repel 80 percent of the population and this is what we want to inflict on you,'" he said. "We're trying not to get into too many values judgment type issues and just do the right thing."

But that attitude might not be all that surprising given the US military's own recent fatwa-light against gay folk.

Another indication of how bad things are for gay folk over there comes from the story of a Canadian peace activist, James Loney, who was kidnapped and held captive for 118 days. Loney is gay, but his partner in Toronto, his family, the Canadian government, and the church group he worked with conspired to keep that a secret, fearing that he would be killed if his captors discovered his sexual orientation.

Back home in Toronto, Dan Hunt had to endure a double dose of pain. He had to contend not only with the daily anguish of wondering whether his partner was still alive, he also had to cope with being forced back into the closet.

Shout-outs

As part of its Pride issue, Seattle Weekly finds and talks to a few gay evangelicals.

Metroblogging Seattle discovered that The Weekly's writers has now started blogging. We're guessing that they won't call it "wogging". (Metblogs also noticed our pride list. Thanks.)

Speaking of which... yesterday, we added a few more events that we missed in the original to our roundup of Pride events. And let us note for SOP's lawyers that when we put up a graphic on other pages of this site for the listing, we avoided using the term "Seattle Pride." Happy?

For whatever this kind of endorsement might be worth, the Seattle Times's Nicole Brodeur thinks that City Council member Sally Clark has stepped to the front.

We were delighted to get a shout-out from WonderRobbie, [we think that will take you to the post, but we'll admit to being often confused by MySpace] whom we featured a while back. Rob was even kind enough to thank us in an email, "I just wanted to say thank you. Who'd have ever thought this little froot with a videocamera would be the topic of a fantastic blog?? haha I'm just having fun and I'm glad people love it." Now, we just hope that he might make it over here to the left coast in early August sometime so we could feature him on the Cruise.

We mentioned CapitolHillSeattle up top. They were feeling neglected a while back on behalf of all us little local blogs. Let us mention that we display links to them and other local blogs via a secondary way via those Squidoo links over to the right. The Seattle Info page has links to CapHill and several other neighborhood blogs (most of which CapHill has pointed out to us), along with some of the local biggies. The Gay Seattle page has some feeds and links to local LGBT resources. And the Gay News page shows feeds from a few of our favorite gay-info blogs.

Tags: Link bites Washington politics, Iraq, equal rights, religion

Labels: link bites, video, WonderRobbie, youtube

Our favorite post-Eyman post comes from Blatherwatch who asks, "What's a 'ho to do after she's given all her johns the clap?"

Clearly, though, the Eyman john with all the money is still horny for more.

The Stranger's Eli Sanders wonders if the pro-rights groups who tried diligently to separate Eyman's referendum from the gay-marriage issue didn't make a mistake.

The Olympian takes a broader view of Tuesday's flame-out by Eyman by looking beyond the initiative huckster toward the long-range electoral prospects of one of the favorite GOP bogey-man issues: equal marriage rights.

Take a virtual trip east on I-90 to see how that kind of thing is already playing out:

In Montana, a populist farmer-candidate, Jon Tester, handily beat out a Beltway favorite to win the Democratic nomination to run against the state's Abrimoff-soiled incumbent for US Senate. Through Sen. Elizabeth Dole, the national GOP machine's first instinct was to paint Tester as a "puppet of national liberal special-interest groups who does not share the mainstream values of Montanans."

Just what "special interest groups" might Dole have been talking about? Montana bloggers quickly spotted the meaning of Dole's early attack: The GOP incumbent, Conrad Burns, had voted in favor of the failed marriage-discrimination amendment in the Senate while Tester has said he doesn't think the issue is worth an amendment.

The Olympian also offers up an AP story on slightly improved prospects for LGBT-identified candidates, thanks, in part to organizations like the Victory Fund (which held its annual meeting in Seattle last winter).

The story doesn't mention a different group, Progressive Majority, that is also working to bring sensitivity to LGBT issues to down-list offices like county or city commissioners/council members and state legislative races. The group got its start here in Washington, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin with a focus on swing areas of the states. They've now expanded to other states, according to this article from The Nation.

LGBT rights is among the issues that the group insists its supported candidates embrace:

Candidates must get 100 percent on a forty-item questionnaire that tests their commitment to economic justice and civil rights, including gay rights, public education, universal healthcare, environmental protection and abortion.

Too much political politics? Then maybe you'd prefer to get involved in a net-roots effort Save the Balls. That would be the iconic orange and blue 76 gas station logo-balls (which, it turns out, were originally designed for the Seattle World's Fair). The brand's current design-blind owner, ConocoPhillips, is working to replace the orange balls with red disks at the very moment that orange has become the new beige (or tan or black or pink or something). (You can still find one of the orange balls at the First Hill station near Harborview. A bizarre new red-version station can be found on Beacon Hill.) [via Seattlest]

Not enough political politics? Check out the new KIRO 710 host, liberal blogger David Goldstein. He embarks on his new part-time radio career tonight from 7 to 10 pm.

Tags: Link bites Washington politics, Montana politics, equal rights, eyman, gay marriage

Labels: link bites

Let's take a stroll through the blog neighborhood and check in again with some neighbors, shall we?

Since we've noticed that a few folks still trasit quickly though here looking for his popular blog, we'll start with hottie Rico Suave. His popular blog now sports an attractive and highly readable new format.

We'll admit that the picture like the one we posted when we last mentioned Rico and like the one we're posting this time are relatively rare. But, hey... Can you blame us for a bit of cherry picking ?

Rico still calls his blog "the sexy, sassy, scandalous life of a city boy." But it is generally a simpler thing than that. Blogs like Rico's (and his is among the better examples) do what TV reality shows can only pretend to do. They present glimses in brief installments of a sometimes mundane and occasionally fascinating simple life in the real world.

Rico's elegant little posts are mostly about studies, jobs, or the rare visit to the parents. They're about apartments, and shopping, with the occasional party to spice things up. It's the spare simplicity of presenting those moments that makes it worth an occasional visit.

Another local blog that also features occasional diary-like moments about things like dating and turning 30. (We suspect that will get a bit more play in weeks to come. It's one of those scary decade birthdays, after all.) Mostly, however, In a Vault Underground features posts about music, theater, literature, TV and all the works of imagination that lend a life or a moment some extra meaning.

Example from a post about a visit to SAM:

After seeing quite a few works, I turned the corner to be confronted with a huge Hockney. It had to have been 10 feet tall. It was a painting of a man on a couch facing the viewer and another man in profile. The coffee table in front of the man on the couch had a huge paint blotch. When I saw this painting, I burst into tears. There was no reason whatsoever for it. It was strange and powerful experience.

We don't have an elegant seque from that to this mention of a local artist, since we do not mean to suggest that you'll have the same kind of reaction to these simple and quick drawings that we first mentioned back in November.

Gary Skinner is still drawing Capitol Hill, but you'll also now find several drawings of Microsoft's elegant little Red West campus -- which, we're guessing, says something without words about where Gary is working these days.

It remains one of the more unique uses of blogging software that we've seen. It is, after all a diary much like the other two mentioned here. But it's a diary that tells its story mostly without words.

It might also be worth mentioning those Squidoo links over in the far right column. The WebWrangler of this blog has used that unique service to collect some notable links about gay Seattle, some worthy general-interest Seattle news feeds, and some notable gay news feeds.
Other "blog find" posts:


Technorati tags: Seattle Capitol Hill Gay blogs Blog+finds Underwear party

Labels: link bites, shirtless hunk