Filed under: art, books, gay, heterosexuals, movies, music, tv | Tags: blondes, cookie crisp, evelyn everlady, fashion, film critics, henning mankell, idaho, israel, kylie minogue, latvia, michelle tea, moscow, negroni season, pigpiles, pride, pro-life, sex and the city 2, sugar
Hundreds of blonde Latvian women are marching through Riga in order to boost national morale. No, really.
For the first time, gay activists staged a Pride event in Moscow that was free of police intervention.
The new Kylie Minogue video is a little too silly for my taste — as is the song, although that could always change — but what I really want to see is the outtakes where people fall from the pile and dancers accidentally whack each other in the face.
An Idaho strawberry farmer and father of fifteen has legally changed his name to Pro-Life and now he is running for governor.
Henning Mankell, the Swedish mystery novelist I was told I’d love but who I’ve yet to really get into, isn’t appearing at the Hay literary festival in Wales right now because he’s being detained by Israelis.
One cherry lemonade from Auntie Anne’s has as much sugar as 11 bowls of Cookie Crisp. Articles about calories and sugar never really mean much to me, but holy crap, that’s a lot of sugar.
If I had more time I’d write an essay about male and female film critics and their seemingly universal hatred of women over forty having sex drives. Also their need to constantly refer to the characters in this franchise as gay men. This is but one of approximately 10,000 such articles written in the past week and a half.
Michelle Tea is fashion blogging?!?!
Finally, nothing has made me happier this week than this story about how Negroni Season is a concept that only a boozehound whore would come up with.
[image: Patti Smith, from Michelle Tea's essay on Just Kids and Ann DeMeulemeester.]
Filed under: art, books, gay, heterosexuals, in praise of athletic beauty, magazines, movies, music | Tags: bears, Boston, cool bear, country music, diesel washington, edgar awards, forget it it's a mystery, interracial porn, levi johnston, movies, playgirl, the gays, twitter
The first openly gay country singer? Maybe Billboard should try fact-checking?
A graphical guide to bear types.
This Levi Johnston porn trailer–which is not exactly new, but I’m not actually that up on current gay porn right now–looks okay enough, but the trailer is really worth watching for the words “I think I’m gonna give you something to Twitter about.”
Porn star Diesel Washington has a problem with porn being advertised as “interracial.” I’d like to know more about that.
The Edgar Awards were recently given out this week.
Larry King’s kids’ baseball coach–the one his wife was sleeping with–wants to be in Playgirl. This is not news, but I thought I’d mention it because he’s actually maybe kinda photogenic?
The Boston LGBT Film Festival‘s going on right now.
[painting by Alessio, via Cool Bear]
Filed under: art, heterosexuals, in praise of athletic beauty, movies, porn, tv | Tags: 10 rillington place, ashley dupre, cristiano ronaldo, jon gosselin, kick-ass, playboy, playgirl, prostution, roger ebert, serial killers, size queens
The Mirror on the first serial sex killer, which was apparently only half a century ago.
Is this month’s Playboy more feminist than usual? No, of course not, but one HuffPo writer points out the difference between women getting paid to be in the magazine and women not getting paid for having their pictures unwillingly passed all over the internet.
A so-called “fat girl” was hired to sleep with soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo and then talk about it. And she did. The Frisky points out that she’s not actually fat and also that this is a weird thing.
This is apparently my week for getting news from editorial warehouses that I never read. Here’s someone at Gather making fun of Roger Ebert for not liking Kick-Ass.
In another one of those “people pretending that an offer to do soft porn is a news story” items, Daniel Nardicio has offered Jon Gosselin $20K to do Playgirl, which is a lot less than he offered Levi Johnston. Nardicio said in a statement that Gosselin’s not very attractive and probably won’t do it, so of course people are pretending it’s a story.
Speaking of Jon Gosselin (for probably the only time ever on this blog), Hailey Whateverthehell posted a photo of a 2-inch penis on Twitter the other day, claiming it was his, because she is a classy person and that is what classy people do. I would like to point out that, no matter how small Gosselin’s penis is, he still managed to father eight children.
[image: Terry Fincher, Rillington Place, 1966, via Britmovie.co.uk]
Filed under: gay, heterosexuals | Tags: crazies, dadt, homophobia, the catholics
I don’t often speak here about hot-button LGBT issues, partly because there’s 5,000,000 other places on the internet for people to read that and partly because honestly I’m not personally very concerned with gay marriage and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Also, since this blog isn’t really about those things, I don’t want to alienate all four of my readers, since they’re not here to read one more person complaining about the government. Don’t get me wrong, I think gays should have the same rights as heterosexuals when it comes to burial rights and health coverage and life insurance. But personally I think the solution is to reform burial and health care and insurance policies so they’re not marriage-based, not to encourage more people to get married.
I’m also not really jazzed about the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, because at heart I am a peacenik and a hippie. Sure, DADT is basically job discrimination, but I also don’t really understand those LGBT individuals (or, for that matter, those straight individuals) that are so anxious to join the military. (Unless it’s for the scholarship money, but again, I think there are other solutions.)
However, I couldn’t not comment on an editorial in Saturday’s Providence Journal. It comes, rather horrifyingly, from a professor of sociology and a former state Senate Majority Leader, and it makes one of the craziest arguments I have ever heard with regard to DADT.
Filed under: gay, heterosexuals, hookers, hot, internet, magazines, movies, music, people from rhode island, Uncategorized | Tags: "guys", airports, anomie, billy miller, brown sex week, brown university, child porn, craziness, critics, full-body scanners, hookers, julianne moore, music videos, patrick kennedy, personal freedom, providence, sexting, stock photos, straight to hell, ted kennedy, twitter, xiu xiu
You should not hire a hooker to tease your husband and see if he is going to sleep with her. This is a fact because Julianne Moore says so and she is brilliant and also has amazing hair.
People are finally willing to admit that sexting is not the same as child porn. Surprisingly, it was Floridians that decided we maybe shouldn’t be treating teenagers as lifetime sex offenders.
Full-body airport scanners have been in UK airports for a month and already airport employees are being reprimanded for misusing them. There’s a lot going on here–the idea that airport scans are sexual is sort of insane to begin with, but it’s also odd that the public is subjected to them without question and an airport employee snapped going through one feels so violated that she can’t return to work.
I somehow missed that there’s an interview with Billy Miller in the new-ish issue of Unzipped. Billy’s the editor of Straight To Hell, and he also did No Milk Today and When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again, all of which are really cool publications. I’ve actually met him briefly a couple of times now and he seems pretty nice, too, although I don’t think he ended up using the filthy story I sent him for Straight To Hell that one time (hmmph).
The Foundation for Intellectual Diversity–the website with the tagline Ideas Without Labels–has discovered Brown’s Sex Week and decided to behave like Bill O’Reilly about it. A little further probing reveals that the Foundation for Intellectual Diversity is mostly just one angry Brown grad who attends a lot of events at Brown and then complains about them afterwards. Still, there’s some kind of “advisory board” which includes Providence’s current Republican candidate for mayor, so, I don’t know, make of that what you will.
Imagine if every essay about Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video was about a different video instead? Like the new Cate Le Bon video with the horse skull wrapped in bacon? Or maybe the one for Xiu Xiu’s “Dear God, I Hate Myself,” where Angela Seo throws up a lot and Jamie Stewart manages to come off as even more of a hateful prat than usual?
Providence is the third-craziest metropolitan area in the US, and this Providence Journal writer would like to do his part to demonstrate that. (Dude. Calm down. East Providence is part of the Providence metropolitan area.)
Rhode Island representative Patrick Kennedy left a note on his dad Ted Kennedy’s grave saying “Dad, the business is done.” At first I thought that meant maybe he had somebody killed and thrown in a river, because that’s what phrases like “the business is done” sound like to me, but I guess he was talking about the health care bill. Whoops!
This article about Twitter and Yelp and the death of criticism makes me wonder once again whether anyone realizes that people have always trusted the opinions of their friends. And that if you’re in a new city and looking for somewhere to eat, of course you’re going to ask the internet rather than dredging up old newspaper reviews. And people that read what critics thought before are still reading what critics think; they just have a choice of critics to choose from.
Are we lost in personal freedom with no norms to cling to or rebel against? I’m inclined to say no, that makes no sense, but this is sort of worth reading, anyway, maybe.
Filed under: books, gay, heterosexuals, internet, magazines, money (lack of), people from rhode island, personal, porn, Science | Tags: abortion, andrew wk, books, circumcision, farmers, food, food stamps, geil magazine, hard print, health care, hipsters, lambda literary awards, nomenclature, porn, providence, providence's best blog, sex crimes, tournament of books
Salon’s Hipsters On Food Stamps article seems to have caused something of an internet furor; I’m not totally sure why. As a Hipster On Food Stamps, I think I can pretty safely say for sure that a) EBT purchases are still something of a rarity at Whole Foods, at least the one I go to; b) since the state actively encourages people to eat healthy food, I’m not sure why people eating healthy food is a bad thing for some people; and c) I definitely would not publicly announce how much money I had remaining the way the two people at the beginning of the article do; it’s bad enough that I live in a small city and half the time recognize the person in line behind me. Also, on my visit to the (very busy) food stamp office, the only other people in my age bracket had kids with them, so I don’t think this phenomenon is quite as widespread as people are suggesting.
And, oh yeah, more about hipsters.
In non-hipster news…
Filed under: art, books, gay, heterosexuals, hookers, hot, magazines, music | Tags: art theft, bearchatroulette, bravo, brothel ads, chatroulette, cold war pt II, grave robbing, hoity-toity, isabella stewart gardner, jamaica, jews, kristin hersh, male prostitution, nevada, rentbears, rusty mccann, scandinavian crime fiction, the economist, the hollies
Rusty McCann, a 47-year old Vegas rentbear, wrote for Salon about his experiences and how, while he may not be everyone’s type, he’s also working with a completely underserved market. (I’ve been saying that for years now.) I’m slightly wary of him, because he’s apparently developing his own reality show and this may just be some kind of early push for that, but at the same time I’m always happy to read the writings of male escorts who aren’t hairless twinks.
Brothel ads are not protected by the First Amendment even in Nevada counties where brothels are legal.
Bravo’s developing a TV series about male escorts. Presumably, it being Bravo, it will be considerably gayer than Hung.
“Prostitution is not the world’s oldest profession — grave robbing is.” (from a fascinating article about the 20th anniversary of the big heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum)
Kristin Hersh’s new album is also going to be a book and hoo-wee am I excited.
Emily Gould, who is perhaps not quite as hoity-toity as I may have previously indicated, wrote this week about “Carrie Anne,” one of my favorite British Invasion songs (and one that featured on a very early Mixtape For Hookers.) The Hollies were really good for a while there, before they got all druggy and started making crap like “Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress,” although I guess the same could be said for most bands of that era. (Actually, I wonder if my lifelong crush on the Dave Clark Five has to do with the fact that they broke up before this happened.)
The Economist on the popularity of Scandinavian crime fiction.
Like the rest of the world, I can’t resist a good newscaster flipout.
Finally, the Russian-American battle over Chatroulette. Out of psychotic boredom yesterday I tried Bearchatroulette. Which was stupid, if you were wondering.
[image: John Currin, Bea Arthur Naked, 1991, via Popular Sizes]
Filed under: art, books, gay, heterosexuals, hookers, in praise of athletic beauty, internet, movies, music, personal, tv | Tags: books, child prostitution, complaining, cumshots, feminism, gael garcia bernal, google, google buzz, kathleen hanna, lukas moodysson, making money online, maria bamford, michael winterbottom, new hampshire, news, olympics, pet shop boys, prostitutes, steven miller, surfing, television, the killer inside me, videos, wriggling around in excrement
Nearly one third of juveniles taken in by police for prostitution are treated as criminals and not as victims.
Does feminism need a rallying cry?
Michael Winterbottom’s new film The Killer Inside Me apparently features a lot of violence against women, so much so that people apparently walked out during the Berlin Film Festival. But the director points out that violence ought to be ugly, and that the gross thing to do would be to present it as entertainment. Winterbottom’s made wonderful adaptations of Thomas Hardy (Jude) and Sterne (Tristram Shandy). His heroes are usually kind of assholes (see also: 24 Hour Party People), and he’s made some movies about some very violent situations (The Road To Guantanamo, A Mighty Heart) so I’m not very surprised this is happening.
Gael Garcia Bernal has a thing for a Thai prostitute in Lukas Moodysson’s new film Mammoth.
Speaking of films, This Recording has an essay by Liz Colville about Blue Crush, the Kate Bosworth surfing movie that I hold very near and dear to my heart.
This week I discovered and immediately fell in love with Seattle photographer Steven Miller’s cumshot photography. While a few of his more romantic photographs come across as kinda hokey, “There Are No Accidents,” from his Reclamations series, is really a thing of beauty.
Filed under: heterosexuals, hookers | Tags: bad reporting, mandy stadtmiller, markus, new york post, shady lady
Yesterday New York Post reporter Mandy Stadtmiller reported on her visit to the Shady Lady Ranch in Nevada, where she met Markus, the man people keep wrongly insisting is America’s first legal male prostitute. The experience was apparently very annoying to Stadtmiller, who oddly went to the ranch with no intention of fucking Markus and no concept of why the gigolo might find that unusual.
Stadtmiller refers to the trip as an “undercover assignment” which the Post paid for, so we’re supposed to believe that she gave no hint of who she was. But she says the ranch charges $300 an hour and won’t book back-to-back meetings. How, then, did she book a two-hour meeting with him? (Plus she took photos of them together? Something tells me that’s maybe against protocol…)
While Stadtmiller’s seemingly lying to Markus about who she is and why she’s there, it’s completely unthinkable to her that he may be lying right back to her. He tells her that she’s only his second client and she believes him. He also says that he lost his virginity at 23 and that he’s only ever slept with six women; she believes that, too. I don’t know, that could well be true, but it apparently never occurs to our intrepid reporter that part of a prostitute’s job is to tell you what you want to hear. (more…)
Filed under: heterosexuals, hookers | Tags: male prostitution, markus, prostitution, stupidity
This Markus clown is not America’s first legal male prostitute.
For thirty years in Rhode Island, anyone–anyone–could have consenting sexual relations with anyone else in exchange for money, as long as the transaction wasn’t done on the street or in a car. That ended just two months ago.
So shut up, everybody.
[photo from Details magazine, who don't seem to credit their photographers online.]
