Actually, though, the party’s a week from Thursday (the 12th).

We’ll be celebrating the new issue at Kings Cross on the Bowery, just about a block away from site of the seedy nineteenth century male brothel Columbia Hall, which features in the issue. We’ll have cheap drink specials, MR MORRIS (from Rhode Island!) doing the DJ business, and homework.

The party’s on the early side (7-11pm) because the idea of hosting anything until 4am is still so foreign and daunting to me. Which is funny, because it’s not exactly like we’re early-to-bed people. It’s free and open to all and people that live in at least six states will be there.

The story of my first-ever attempt at group sex is up now at Salon. I’ve already gotten one (very sympathetic) e-mail from someone else who went to one of the same parties.

…Paul Newman!

I wrote a little blurb about him on the Tumblr. Also up there, since the last time I wrote, are descriptions of the hotness of a few dozen other guys, some of which are longer than others. (I can really go on about Ewan McGregor when prodded. Or not even prodded, I suppose…) And I interviewed Kennedy Carter and Jesse Jackman and Aaron Tone, whose name you might not recognize but who placed in the Top Ten of the Hottest Men Ever (so maybe you should know him.)

Expect more posting here soon, now that that’s over, and now that I’m in my generally-more-productive annual Lenten sobriety phase. I feel like there’s so much to catch you up on…

More soon.

Hello,

Just a quick note to apologize for the complete lack of posting lately.  I’ve been a little busy releasing the new Headmaster and also starting work on the third issue (already!) but also I’ve been frankly a little dumb lately.  My Drafts folder is more full than it’s ever been–thoughts about my personal life, about news events of the past month, about music that I’ve been listening to lately, about professional wrestlers that may have made me gay, about movies I’ve been and books I’ve been reading, and about the not-new-but-still-fascinating-to-me phenomenon of Ben Cohen (see above).  But nothing is very good.  I am going to be kind to myself and blame the disgusting humidity of a Rhode Island summer rather than blaming my personal woes or mental

To make up for these things I’ve been diving pretty deep into entertainment, reading two books at once and watching movies every day and pulling out old albums to listen to.  In general this makes me more critical and makes me think more and will eventually (hopefully) snap me back to my old self.

Happy Canada Day!

In honor of our neighbors to the north, here’s an impulsively-made top-ten list of my top 25 favorite pop songs by Canadians.  Loreena McKennitt’s “The Mummer’s Dance” isn’t one of them, but I thought that deserved special mention because remember when that song was popular?  Aiiieeee.

For the sake of your browser loading time I’m splitting this into three posts:

25. France Joli, “The Heart To Break The Heart” (1980)
“Come To Me” is her classic, of course, but I’ve always been a little more partial to the lead single from the Quebecois disco singer’s follow-up album.

24. Dragonette, “Take It Like A Man” (2007)
Dragonette, who are on the radio now, were a big part of my summer of ’07.  At the time I was more into “I Get Around,” but multiple viewings of this video have made me think that this is possibly their classic.

23. Snow, “Informer” (1993)
Yes, yes, I know.  But it’s so catchy!

22. Ashley MacIsaac, “Sleepy Maggie” (1995)
The nineties were so weird.  Like when the modern rock/alternative radio stations used to play Enya, and Natalie Imbruglia, and Pavarotti duets with Bono, and weird bekilted Nova Scotian fiddlers with lady friends who sang traditional songs in a folk-rock style.  This song is probably horrible, I have no doubt, but when I was fifteen I liked it so much that I can sort of still only hear it with those ears.

21. Bran Van 3000, “Drinking In LA” (1997)
My boyfriend has this album and still plays it.  It was another odd, odd hit on modern rock in the nineties, a sort of “Scooby Snacks” for boozebags instead of stoners.  The part where the DJ asks people to call in with the Bran Van guy’s favorite cheese is a highlight.

20. Finger Eleven, “Paralyzer” (2007)
Oh be quiet this is good.

19. Jane Siberry, “One More Colour” (1985)
Jane Siberry, who apparently goes by Issa now, is not what you might call a “singles artist.”  However, her 1985 album The Speckless Sky is one of my favorites for zoning out to arty eighties pretension.  The video is also something.

18. Hot Hot Heat, “Get In Or Get Out” (2004)
I thought Hot Hot Heat stayed good for longer than people gave them credit for (I like Elevator!) but this early song, which I first heard on some kind of British music magazine CD sampler, is still probably my favorite.

Part 2 – Part 3

[This is another one of those internet things that you're either tired of by now or haven't heard of at all yet.  I didn't mean to spend half my morning writing about it, but here you go.]

Earlier this week The Grid, a six-month old Toronto weekly owned by Canada’s largest newspaper, published an article called Dawn of a New Gay, and boy did it upset certain quarters of the internet.  A lot.  Paul Aguirre-Livingston, the 24-year old writer pictured above, approached the magazine a while back with the idea of profiling the “post-mo,” the current generation of gays who are less into activism than their elders.  What are they into, then?  Mostly their own wealth, it turns out:

We’re tattooed and pierced and at the helm of billion-dollar industries like fashion and television. We vacation with our boyfriends in fabulously rustic country homes that belong to our parents, who don’t mind us coming to stay as a couple.

Now, let’s not forget that rich people are people too, and that they have feelings like anyone else.  (Sure, they get cover stories for personal essays disguised as journalism, but they that does not make them inherently evil individuals.)  And the writer is not 100% wrong.  Lots of people have accepting parents and some of them even have parents with country homes that they are allowed to describe as fabulous, in print, without any editorial distance whatsoever.  It Has Gotten Better, as they say.

But I was very bored and mildly annoyed by the time I was about a third of the way through Aguirre-Livingston’s 3,000 words.  What a narrow worldview he has, I thought!  He is writing a trend piece about himself and only himself with no irony or distance whatsoever!  And there are so many bow ties!  And seriously, does the world fucking need the word “post-mo”?  (A: No.)

One of the nine men photographed for the article is a 21-year old who looks more or less like a lot of other gay people and who could easily be described as a cub, to use common gay parlance that has existed since probably before he was born.  “I always enjoy people’s accusation that ‘You can’t be gay’ because of my appearance, my tastes (in music, wardrobe, etc.) and my personality,” he says.

I too can attest to the fact that it is sort of amusing when my gayness surprises people, and while college-aged people tend to be kind of absorbed with the idea of their own uniqueness, this man is a cub in a fucking bow tie who lives in the fifth-largest city in North America.  Get over yourself, I wanted to tell him!  Your Deerhunter MP3s do not make you any less gay than that other guy’s Rihanna remixes.  And seriously, son, you look pretty gay.

Elie, another of the men photographed for the article, had something else to say, though not until after the story came out on Thursday.  The Dubai-born writer is easy to spot on the magazine’s cover because he is the only non-white person and also because he standing slightly to the side of everyone else and wearing black.  (And his bow tie is askew, because whoever the fuck styled these people is an idiot.)  Elie does not in any way share Aguirre-Livingston’s views, it turns out, and took to the internet to express regret over his decision to appear in the article:

As happy as I am to hear that there are queer folk out there who have loving homes and accepting parents, the last time my parent’s [sic] addressed my possible gayness was at an intervention when I was 13. Where Aguirre-Livingston got cottage privileges from his parents, I had a three hour beating. My mom’s last words that night were “being gay starts with AIDS and ends with AIDS”. She said she would have no problem forgetting that she had a son named Elie should I choose to be gay.

Elie’s experience is not unique, of course, and not one unique to other continents, either.  Statistics about injustices against LGBT-identifying teens (and LGBT-identifying adults, and straight people of all ages that are perceived as non-straight…) in the United States (and Canada, too, I bet) are appalling.

But, of course, this article isn’t about that.

Again, there is nothing wrong with an article highlighting positive changes, and there is definitely nothing wrong with questioning the meaning of the Pride festival, which this article was clearly timed to do.  And while Aguirre-Livingston might not attend Pride this year (“after-parties only, please!”) and while it’s his right to not do that, his Be Rich Or Go Away alternative is not necessarily feasible for 98% of gay men.  (The article neglects to mention the L, B, or T communities at all, which is fine, though the magazine could have framed the piece a little differently to acknowledge that.  Also it’s not the worst thing, since probably the writer would have just fucked that up, too.)

The author’s sex life–he claims to have as much of it as he wants (only forgetting the condom sometimes!) despite not having kissed anyone in three years–is maybe not that unusual for someone of his age and class, and it actually is pretty honest of him to acknowledge that there is a lack of HIV awareness among men who were too young to have seen all their fuck buddies die 25 years ago.  But that’s just a tangential note, a passing mention in a 3,000-word article about what it means to be a [shudder] post-mo.

And, in case you are still wondering what the hell a post-mo is:

If I had to, I would trace the beginning of the post-mo, and our true introduction as functional members of society, to the premiere of the NBC sitcom Will & Grace in 1998.

Oh, right.  That show with the prancy queen and the fag hag that came on after Ellen got cancelled, the one which PopMatters in 2000 rightly noted confines its portrayal of queerness “to gay, white, upper-middle class men who only represent a fraction of the queer folks living in the cosmopolitan hub of New York City where the sitcom takes place.”

“I have been known to visit New York City,” that review continues, “and can say without a doubt that Will & Grace basically erases the queer melange one finds on every block.”

While today the characters on Will & Grace seem only marginally more realistic or transgressive than Mr. Humphries, and while I doubt the credentials of any writer who traces the birth of a cultural movement to a sitcom, let’s pretend for a moment that Paul Aguirre-Livingston is not a person with shit coming out of his typing fingers.  So, what is it really at the heart of being a post-mo?

The aspiration is: Act and look less Perez Hilton or Jack McFarland and more Anderson Cooper, Nate Berkus or the rugged straight dude you had a crush on in first year.

So the moral is… be less queeny and try to look more like Oprah’s decorator friend or that shiny Vanderbilt heir who used to host The Mole and who refuses to publicly discuss his sexuality?  Okay, dude.  Whatever.

Last year, in a different article, Aguirre-Livingston said that after seeing an ex come out to his parents he “began to understand and construct the importance of pride – or rather, having pride… With no one to turn to, it was other gay friends (and a whole community, really) that supported the newly liberated like him and the utterly clueless like me.”

How things change!

While The Grid is a publication that I’d never even heard of before three days ago,  they’ve got a weekly print circulation of about 88,000, which means that their decision to acknowledge Pride by giving a cover story to a completely classist, ill-informed article is not a minor one.

The uproar on the internet has been pretty significant.  There were 87 pages of comments on the original article last time I checked, and a whole bunch more on The Grid’s defense, which was quickly put up yesterday.  The most recent comes from someone calling herself POC-MO:

Last night my girlfriend and I got gaybashed on the subway heading back to Queer West end rental. A few younger girls came to our defense, one recounting how she was publicly groped while others stood by. Most people just stared.

As a queer woman of colour the last thing I feel is safe or validated in a group of apathetic overprivileged and underengaged group of white hipsters. Enjoy your twisted and rotten version if Toronto, The Grid.

[photo from Aguirre-Livingston's Twitter]

After a very, very jam-packed week I am looking forward to a few days of nothing and then this.  Rumor has it that I may even show up in drag, something I’ve only ever done once before.

I may even have to play Zoli Adok:

Although I don’t know, that might be too much.

The Deal sisters, Kim and Kelley, turn the big five-oh today, so I thought I’d remind you of the existence of “Off You,” my favorite Breeders song and one of my favorite songs ever written, basically.  I’ve mentioned it here before, but it is worth repeating, particularly since the band’s 2002 Title TK album didn’t do particularly well commercially.

Many years ago, back in the era of flickering torch gifs, there was a website called RockInBoston.com, which was run by a guy named Joe Harvard.  He had lengthy and (I thought) fascinating stories about pretty much every rock musician to pass through Boston during the eighties and nineties, and he had this whole story about Kim Deal and about how you should never, ever give her pot because she just wasn’t very good with it.  When Title TK came out and there was that song “Sinister Foxx” about the iguana, and how in interviews she explained that the song was about how pot dealers always had pet iguanas that always seemed to be escaping from their tanks, I was genuinely confused.  For years.

Two more Breeders favorites plus a Kim-led Pixies classic after the jump:

The Breeders, “I Just Wanna Get Along”

The Breeders, “Oh”

The Pixies, “Tony’s Theme”