When you’re underemployed you have a lot of free time to do other exciting, cool stuff. Like, you know, making maps of the country’s unemployment rates.
Lighter colors mean higher unemployment. The darkest states have under 6.5%, the lightest colors have over 12% unemployment.
According to the latest stats, North Dakota’s faring the best by far, with 4.2% unemployment. Michigan’s the worst, with 15.1%. Rhode Island has dropped to #3 in unemployment; apparently Nevada passed us at some point. (Of course, these numbers count people who aren’t working but qualify for unemployment benefits. Self-employed people without work and people that gave up don’t figure in to the numbers, meaning that real unemployment’s a whole lot higher.)
Unfortunately, none of the states with really low unemployment, except maybe Vermont, seem appealing at all for a job hunter like myself. (Although have I ever mentioned that I’ve never actually been to Vermont?) Somehow I can’t see myself living in either one of the Dakotas…
The video for The Golden Filter’s new single Thunderbird came out earlier this week. Warran Wright directed it, and it’s quite nice to look at.
The song itself didn’t do much for me on the first couple of listens, but then it morphed rather quickly into one of my favorite singles of right now. It’s currently winding its way up The Pop Chart.
Filed under: books, gay, shameless self-promotion | Tags: jeffrey escoffier, Me Me Me, new york, readings, sex worker literari
The readers were just announced for the December edition of Audacia Ray and David Henry Sterry’s Sex Worker Literati and oh, hey, look who’s going to be there.
The magic happens on December 3rd at the Happy Endings Lounge on Broome St in New York City. I’m super-excited, as I’ve never actually read publicly before and this event has the distinct appeal of a) allowing me to read in a city where I don’t really know many people, but also b) having that New York glamour that’s so appealing to provincial yokels like myself. Also, the awesome Jeffrey Escoffier is headlining that night. (I don’t know why I’m the only one of the readers with a decent author photo, though…)
This also marks my fourth New York trip in two months, which I’m also excited about. And while I’m in the city I hope to check out the Mixtape show at the Jen Bekman Gallery. It opens tomorrow, and as as you know I’m all about the mixtapes and the Jen Bekman.
Filed under: art, gay, shameless self-promotion | Tags: art, providence, world of queercraft
For all of you Providence people, this is just a quick heads up that tomorrow’s the last night of World Of Queercraft, the show I curated at Craftland in downtown Providence.
Eight crafty artists working in textiles, video, photography, and printmaking; there’s a rainbow flag and drunk naked marines and Barbra Streisand karaoke; you should definitely check it out if you haven’t yet.
(Incidentally, it’s also the only place in New England where you can currently buy Pinups Magazine, the perfect present for anyone whose stockings you plan to stuff this year.)
[image: still from Evergreen, Monica Panzarino, single-channel video, 2008]
Filed under: design of a decade, lists, music | Tags: 2003, belle and sebastian, design of a decade, mike piazza, stuart murdoch
4. Belle and Sebastian, Piazza, New York Catcher
I’ve been a stereotypical Belle and Sebastian fan from the first time I pressed play: I bought If You’re Feeling Sinister on a high school trip to France because Jarvis Cocker told the papers that he liked it; I got a third or fourth-generation Tigermilk tape from a stranger on the internet; I bought The Boy With The Arab Strap the day it came out and then carried it to school the next day for no reason whatsoever, just on the off chance that someone might ask me if there was anything new and exciting in my backpack that day. I wasn’t making lifesized models of the Velvet Underground in clay, but I may as well have been, and I did get very uppity when people didn’t know who Scott Walker was. (I only knew who Scott Walker was because someone on B&S’s Sinister list put him on a mixtape they sent me.) Stuart Murdoch was shamelessly high school-ish and I was shamefully in high school.
That was the nineties. By 2003 I had grown up, and so had they. While it was cool in 1996 to flaunt anti-social bookishness, the new millennium was about exploring New Things. In Belle and Sebastian’s case, New Things meant producer Trevor Horn, he of the Buggles, fresh off producing the breakthrough album for tAtU. With Horn’s guidance, Belle and Sebastian’s fifth full-length ventured off in all kinds of different directions, most notably on Stay Loose, which sounds downright clubby.
Filed under: art, gay, lists, magazines, movies, music, porn | Tags: adam lambert, aliens, bears, coat hangers, cub country, cupcake car, fever ray, jodi bieber, people, photography, porn, robert pattinson, roger ebert, sasha gray, stupak amendment, the associates
People has come out with its annual Sexiest Man Alive list, which is topped for some reason by Johnny Depp. It is a very, very dull list, notable to most of the internet (though not me) for its absence of Patrick Dempsey. I, am the other hand, am mainly bugged by the presence of Adam Lambert, who is not sexy in any way whatsoever. I may have been misguided the other day, complaining about gay media struggling to convince us of the sex appeal of every white entertainer under the age of 30. Straight media does it, too.
Speaking of people that are on that list, gossip rags are taking something Robert Pattinson said out of context and running with the story that his penis is small. Ho-hum, who cares. But have you ever heard the expression “highlight zone” before? I hadn’t.
Back to reality. Jodi Bieber’s Real Beauty series takes ordinary-looking women and places them in sexy situations. The results are pretty, but also sad. (via a syntheticpubes post I must have deleted.)
Natalia Antonova likes Sasha Gray.
Send a coat hanger to the twenty pro-choice Democrats who voted for the Stupak Amendment.
NPR is streaming the Fever Ray live album in its entirety.
Last.fm suggested to me that I might want to see the Cub Country show in Boston last night. Sadly, I learned that Cub Country was a Jets To Brazil side project and not a furry Associates cover band.
Also on the hair front, Got Fur? announced the nominees for its annual Bear Awards. I started perusing the nominees list and researching nominees before coming to the conclusion that I don’t know who any of these people are and should probably leave the decisions to people who do.
Speaking of awards, if you were wondering what Roger Ebert’s pick is for the Least Sexy Scene Unintentionally Suggesting Sex Between Two Aliens, wonder no longer.
Finally, I know I keep complaining about all the money I don’t have, but if I could scrounge up the twenty-five grand for this cupcake car I’m pretty sure everything would be A-OK.
[image: Back when I was barely legal, I used to really like a site called adidasboy.co.uk, which I just remembered today out of the blue. It hasn't been updated since 2004, but it's worth a trip down memory lane if you have a Web 1.0 fetish.]
Filed under: personal, shameless self-promotion | Tags: naked men, photography
Remembering today that I actually have some latent creative skills, I’ve decided to rehang my shingle as “naked man photographer.” I started doing it here and there a few years ago, when I finished college and wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Now that Craigslist is out as a viable option,* this mainly involves hanging out on gay social networking sites and waiting to offer my services to gentlemen who haven’t quite mastered the whole digital age, while at the same time fighting off loserish skeezebags that just want me to blow them.
One thing I like about this kind of photography is that I meet open-minded people who I’d probably never see otherwise, like the rugged little cigar bear pictured above. We shot this in the boiler room of an abandoned Elks Lodge two or three years ago; it was a lot of fun (though at the time I hadn’t quite gotten the hang of some of the technical parts) and we still keep in touch periodically.
More of my photos here (X-rated) and here (G-rated). Feedback is of course welcome.
(*I don’t usually include it in my search terms wrapup, but I do get a couple of his every day from people wondering things like “why the fuck does craigslist say I already have an account?” and “what if craigslist says my phone number is already taken?” You’re not alone, angry Googlers!)
Today:
retro naked
the best brothels in armenia
“dick mitchell”
when you’re down sam phillips original
hookers n roscommon
Yesterday:
sexual bucket list
mary lou lord escort
nineties one hit wonders in shrek
list all songs with “sweet guitars” in
naked art happening
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: don carcieri, stephen colbert, the catholics, the gays
Stephen Colbert had something to say about Rhode Island last night. Also, WordPress needs better embedding capabilities. Just saying.
