Earlier this week Pulp announced a show at Radio City Music Hall, and tickets went on sale at 10am, and when I checked at 9:59 tickets hadn’t gone on sale yet and when I tried to but two tickets at 10am they were sold out already and when I tried to get one ticket at 10:01am that was also sold out and then when I tried again at about 10:04 I got stuck in this endless loop of Ticketmaster wait time.

Argggggggggggh.

I haven’t been to a show, or tried to go to a show, in New York since MIA in 2007.  I am overdue!

The last time I had a chance to see Pulp, when they played Providence touring for Different Class, I was fifteen and trapped at a problem solving conference for nerds.  This was my chance!

Anyway.

Men nominated can be any age (or at least any age over 18), and profession and any body type.  The full list of suggested prompts is after the jump:

BODY PARTS

1. Hottest Eyes
2. Hottest Legs
3. Hottest Ass
4. Hottest Arms
5. Hottest Dick
6. Hottest Hair
7. Hottest Facial Hair
8. Hottest Chest
9. New Category: Hottest Body Overall

DATES

10. Hottest Man of the 19th Century
11. Hottest Man 1900-1949
12. Hottest Man of the 50’s
13. Hottest Man of the 60’s
14. Hottest Man of the 70’s
15. Hottest Man of the 80’s
16. Hottest Man of the 90’s
17. Hottest Man of the 21st century

NATIONS

18. Hottest Canadian
19. Hottest Australian/New Zealander
20. Hottest German
21. Hottest Mexican
22. Hottest Spaniard
23. Hottest Man from Asia
24. Hottest Man from Africa
25. Hottest Man from South America
26. New Category: Hottest British Man
27. New Category: Hottest Frenchman
28. New Category: Hottest Italian

JOBS

29. Hottest Athlete
30. Hottest Porn Star
31. Hottest Politician
32. Hottest Artist
33. Hottest Writer
34. Hottest Musician
35. Hottest Actor
36. Hottest Celebrity
37. New Category: Hottest Non-Celebrity

GENERAL

38. Hottest Younger Man (18+ please)
39. Hottest Older Man
40. Hottest Stylish Man
41. Hottest Smart Man
42. Hottest Man Who Just Exudes Sex
43. Hottest Man You Loathe As A Person
44. Most Unexpectedly Hot Man
45. Hottest Man Of All (vote counts twice)

The cover story in the new issue of the South Florida Gay News takes a look at a five-year sting conducted by the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office against gay men in county parks. It’s a very frustrating story, though sadly it’s also rather predictable: Two cops, Peter Lazar and Van Garner, made over 600 arrests between 2005 and 2010 by convincing men to expose themselves to the officers on public property.

Allegedly the detectives were there in response to a request from the Palm Beach County parks department, but the paper’s investigation reveals that no such request was ever made. The director of the parks department, at least, says he had no idea about the operation, even though it took place under his nose for five years.

It’s not surprising that the parks department didn’t make a claim about a rampant sex problem, though, because public sex seems to happen only rarely in Palm Beach County. During Garner and Lazar’s five years on the job there were a grand total of four arrests for men having actual sex with other men in the parks. (And if there were only four arrests, that might have only been two actual sex acts.)

That’s why the officers had to spend to much time figuring out ways to lure men into exposing themselves. (Their methods, documented in police reports, included making the first move, using the phrase “I like to suck,” and getting on their knees. Additionally, they’d pretend to play with themselves and then feign shyness if the poor guy they snared asked for a look.)

Attorney Jeffrey Weiner says that cases like this are usually dismissed when brought to court. But because the defendants don’t want to deal with the embarrassment or can’t afford legal fees, they think it’s easier to put the problem behind them, a fact the cops know and prey upon. “[I]t’s terrible what they put people through,” Weiner says. “The means they use are really offensive. The games they play.” One man interviewed for the story, arrested for loitering in a park restroom after a jog in the park one day, decided not to fight the charges because he couldn’t afford a lawyer and also because he had been warned about retaliation from one of the detectives.

Paying fines seems easier than fighting the county in court, but most of the defendants interviewed seemed unaware that the misdemeanor charges lingered on their criminal records.

Real sex activity in the park was apparently so scarce that the pair of officers even resorted to the internet to get business. One unnamed man met the officers after they answered a Casual Encounters ad he placed on Craigslist. They chose the place, and when he got there and pulled his dick out he was promptly arrested.

And yes, okay, it’s true that the man knowingly went to the park with the intention of getting off there, and it’s true that public park cruising is a thing that happens in some places. And while it’s completely harmless, I understand that it’s illegal and bothers some people. But that’s not the point. The sad, annoying point is that the man only went there in the first place because the cops invited him to.

That’s entrapment, and it’s also discriminatory.

The SFGN reports, predictably, that there was no team of female officers trying to talk men into whipping their dicks out (even though a small number of women were arrested for prostitution in the county’s parks during that time.)

“I’ve never ever seen an operation where police utilized a female officer to come on to men,” said Russell Cormican, defender of over a hundred indecent exposure cases in Palm Beach County.  [He's also the partner of Norm Kent, the SFGN's publisher, although they don't mention that.*] “If you took an attractive female officer and put her by the restroom in a city park and she walked up to guys as they went in and out and asked them to show their private parts I think they would arrest a lot of guys.”

[*Maybe it's one of those "you'd know if you lived there" sorts of things?]

Over on Naked Pictures Of Your Dad, I’m taking nominations for next month’s list of The 100 Hottest Men That Ever Lived (Or At Least Lived During The Era of Photography and Video).  To give the list some diversity, I’m offering prompts each day and asking people to email me up to three suggestions for each category.

As of right now I’m taking suggestions for Hot Athletes and Hot Canadians.  I’ll keep updating this post with each day’s prompts…  If you have favorites, send suggestions to mixtapesforhookers@gmail.com.

We’re rapidly closing in on the end of the year, so I thought I’d present you with 2011′s twelve most popular posts on Naked Pictures Of Your Dad.  (I’m going by unique hits to each photo’s page, not the number of Tumblr likes and reblogs.  Though I should mention that, despite several lengthy posting breaks this year, my number of Tumblr followers more than doubled.) Actually, each of the top ten posts got about a thousand more hits than the corresponding posts did last year.

Boners and stuff after the jump:

12.) With 1563 hits and 231 likes and reblogs, this photo of newish porn star Patrick O’Brien was the twelfth most popular image on NPOYD this year.  [He's also pictured at the top of this post, in a shoot he did for Randy Blue.]

11. Posted August 19, this vintage beefcake is Fred Jensen, and he’s photographed by David Martin.  It got 1599 hits, but only 61 notes.

10. The tenth most popular post, hilariously, was my mirror self-portrait with boner and thunderthighs at the Hotel Richelieu in New Orleans.  Because I am modest–ahem–I’m just going to make that one a clickthrough.

9. This strapping fellow comes to us via the great Men Of The World blog.  I don’t know who he is or who the photographer is, but he scored 1,808 hits and 305 notes.

8. The oldest post on the list is this one, originally put up on January 21.  1,909 hits for this girthy fellow, plus 237 likes and reblogs.

7. Via Visions of Penis, this odd image scored 1967 hits, plus 161 Tumblr notes.

6. This February 2nd guest post by James, commemorating NPOYD’s second anniversary, was quite popular.  The Ron Amato photograph got 2,524 hits over the year and 302 Tumblr likes and reblogs.

5. This Jack Off Material post from July got 2,529 hits and 261 notes.  Again, no clue about who this fine, fine, fine, fine man is or where this photo first appeared, though it’s very Playgirl-looking.

4. Another unknown model, originally posted on February 18, this guy racked up 2,636 hits and got 377 likes and reblogs.

3. Finally, something with a little bit of narrative.  This Men Of The World post from March 13 only had 204 notes, though it did get 2,657 unique hits in its own right.

2. No idea who this hunky man is, either, and again no idea about the photographer, either.  But he was popular, getting Liked and Reblogged 455 times in addition to getting 3,689 unique pageviews.

1. The single most popular post of the year was an anniversary guest-blog by Billy Miller, editor of Straight To Hell.  This PG-13 photo of a Wolverine opting for the patdown got 4,666 hits, almost 1,000 hits more than any other post I put up this year.

Well, there you go.  Check back on the Tumblr to see all 1,998 posts I’ve put up so far this year, and expect a few more before tomorrow’s over with.

Over on One Week One Band this week people are guest-posting about their favorite album closers…  The posts on Blur’s “Yuko and Hiro,” Fiona Apple’s “I Know,” and the Magnetic Fields’ “Take Ecstasy With Me” are all excellent.  I wrote something, too.  I was one of the few (the only?) person to choose an album-ending single and it’s one you’ve probably known forever, even if I didn’t know it myself until I was in my mid-twenties.

Actually, with the move I’ve got all my vinyl with me but none of my CDs, which is part of the reason why I didn’t end up writing about “Bar Italia” or “The Dancer” or “O Girlfriend” or “Constant Craving” or “Glory Box” or “Just Call Me Joe.”  Also, I considered “Jealousy,” but I’ve already written about the Pet Shop Boys there…

Amid all the year-end obituary roundups that have recently surfaced on the internet, one name I haven’t seen yet is that of Kathy Kirby, the British singer who died this May and who was, at one point, Britain’s highest-paid television star.

I suppose that shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise. Kirby never had any hits in the US, and her last British chart appearance was forty-five years ago. Still, her booming voice and her bizarre, sad personal life gave her quite a dedicated fanbase.

In 1954, at the age of sixteen, Kirby approached famed bandleader Burt Ambrose and asked him outright whether she could sing with his band that night. Hearing her powerful vocal chords he agreed, and that led to Kirby’s traveling the nightclub circuit with Ambrose for three years before she embarked on a solo career. He eventually became her manager and, later, her husband, despite the fact that he was forty-two years her senior.

Ambrose styled Kirby as a cross between Doris Day and Marilyn Monroe, all big blond curls and bright red lipgloss. (Her lipgloss was so poppin’, apparently, that a 2005 biography of the singer was actually called Secrets, Loves, and Lip Gloss.)

“Secret Love,” Kirby’s biggest hit, is a Doris Day number cranked up to eleven, as over-the-top as it is totally fabulous. It was also quite a sensation, with NME readers naming Kirby the Best British Female Vocalist of that year.

She had a second top ten hit, “Let Me Go, Lover,” but soon her rather outmoded stylings lost resonance with British audiences who preferred the more modern Dustys and Petulas and Lulus and Mariannes. Though Kirby herself wanted to sing fresher material, her husband–then close to seventy–refused to allow it. And once Kirby had a brief affair with game show host Bruce Forsyth, Ambrose stopped booking shows for her because he was afraid that she would leave him. “I think I could have played romantic leads or light comedy roles in movies,” she said in a rare 2009 interview, “but my silly affair with Bruce had inadvertently brought it all to an end. I could feel frustrated and bitter but in the end I just put it down to experience. What else could I do?”

Ambrose died in 1971, at which point Kirby realized that her finances had been badly mishandled. Four years later she was bankrupt and homeless, finding herself in court for skipping out on a hotel bill. Due to her homelessness, apparently, the court ordered her to a psychiatric hospital, at which point her life took another odd turn.

A fan named Laraine McKay began visiting Kirby in the hospital and the two grew close. Once Kirby was released the two began a lesbian affair, one which ended abruptly when McKay was arrested and imprisoned on fraud and forgery charges. Not too long after, Kirby was diagnosed with schizophrenia and, tired of being haunted by tabloid journalists, by her early forties had retired to a quiet life in West London.

She died on May 19 at the age of 72.

(read more about Kirby here)

Shame was basically made for me. It’s intensely slow-moving, there’s full-frontal male nudity within the first two minutes, there aren’t very many characters, and more attention is made to arty cinematography than to keeping the audience happy. I like all of those things. We also get to watch the man who played both Magneto and Mr. Rochester this year fucks a bunch of people, which is not a small thing, either. As with the Marvel antagonist and the Bronte character, we are attracted to his charms even though we’re constantly reminded that he’s kind of a dickbag.

Or is he?

The beautiful Michael Fassbender plays Brandon, a successful New York businessman. Society and economics and Michael Douglas movies have all trained me to understand that New York businessmen are all kind of jerks. But Brandon’s not a bad guy, or at least he’s better than his young boss, a married lecher who wears expensive hoodies under his sportcoats and hits on women like a tenth-grader would. Just because Brandon has a fancy apartment and a delightfully long penis and a suave ability to nail roughly 50% of the women he sets his eyes on doesn’t make him evil, or even particularly troubled. He’s single, happy that way, and consensually doing what he wants to do with women who also seem to like what he’s doing.

But actually that isn’t even what the movie is about. Early reviews of Shame suggested a twenty-first century version of Mike Leigh’s Life Is Sweet, an unsexy drama about people have on-screen sex so troubling to look at that it takes years after viewing to look at a jar of peanut butter without squirming. Entering the cinema I expected a bleak drama about addiction.

But it’s not, really, despite what the press kit might say. Shame is about the relationship between Brandon and his troubled sister Cissy, played admirably by Carey Muligan. If anything, it’s a bleak drama about families and, more generally, about wider gender disparities in America. Because Brandon and Cissy are presented as two sides to the same person. Except that he’s smart, successful, and able to get laid without much effort, while she’s sexually confused and barely employed, a victim of some unspoken past that we as an audience never really fully understand. From their first interaction, when he stumbles upon her naked in the shower and she makes no effort to cover herself, we are uncomfortable with their own physical comfort with one another, even though emotionally there’s obviously a lot of fucked up history between them.

And that’s where Shame goes where I wish it hadn’t.

I had a conversation about sex addiction with a friend a few months ago, and how what’s pathologized in straight men (and women) is basically what a lot our gay friends consider routine behavior. Yes, promiscuous fucking can have consequences sometimes, and those deserve to be addressed. But the idea that a fondness for sex is necessarily rooted in some kind of fucked-up upbringing is just dumb. Have you ever had casual sex? It’s fun!

I hope that’s not what Shame is doing, although I’m still undecided. Are Brandon’s urges to pick up married women on the subway the same as Cissy’s urges to constantly leave needy answering machine messages. (Relatedly: do real New York businessmen even have landlines in 2011?)

The vagueness works pretty well, though. Details aren’t explained any more than they need to be, and I like that. Brandon says that he was born in Ireland and moved to the US as a teenager, while Cissy describes herself to Brandon’s boss as a Jersey girl. Is he really that much older than she is? Is one of them lying? Does it even matter? At least once, during a failed hookup, there’s even some intentional confusion about what’s happening.

I do like the movie, though, for its atmosphere and, let’s be honest, for the movie’s treatment of Fassbender’s body. His sex face is 99% less silly to look at than most porn performers’, and also I like how the movie gets all the dick shots out of the way at the beginning. We don’t need to fantasize, because we see it right away. And it is magnificent, especially during a gratuitious(ly awesome) rear-view pissing sequence.  The only flaw, visually, is a really brief scene where we’re introduced to Brandon’s porn collection.  It’s jarring and unnecessary.  But it’s also about ten seconds in a hundred-minute movie.

Fassbender’s suave performance is really good, actually, as is Mulligan’s in what is probably the tougher role. She’s troubled and needy without being condescending or trite. The music is all spot-on, the editing works well, including the lengthy scenes of Fassbender running and of Mulligan singing a rendition of “New York New York” so slow that even Cat Power would be embarrassed.

If you get a chance to see it, go. I had to drive to Boston, because Providence is a backwater sometimes and also one of our only two art-house screens has been showing My Week With Marilyn for two fucking months now.  It was worth the drive, though.

I realized, at about 11:15 tonight, that I hadn’t really spoken today. Through an odd combination of events–my boyfriend being out of town, my work consisting of walking dogs and editing photos, my familial Christmas obligations being over for now–I just didn’t have anybody to talk to today, excepting the one girl I ordered a coffee from this afternoon.

I had no intentions of going to a bar tonight, but realizing that I hadn’t spoken yet made me worry slightly for my sanity. So I went to the E&O, just to say something to somebody.

The E&O is a divey bar, three blocks from my new apartment, that is simultaneously small and yet oddly cavernous. It’s located on a side street, which by Providence law means that it’s forced to close at midnight. And it is, for lack of a more meaningful term, our hipster bar. There are a lot of beards and a lot of plaid and a lot of people getting shots with PBRs. Which isn’t a value judgment; I’m pro-beard and pro-plaid and, if forced to choose, would take a PBR over a Narragansett any day. But you know what I mean. I played the game I usually play when I’m lonely at a bar–How Many People Here Would I Consider Doing It With Based On Sight Alone?–and there were nine, which is a lot.

While it’s generally a rock bar, Tuesdays at the E&O have become kind of a thing. A DJ plays a lot of poppy stuff from the late seventies through the early nineties, with the videos for each song projected onto the giant screen that occasionally dominates the space. His song choices are novel the first time you see him and slightly less so once you know his schtick. But that’s fine, whatever. Tonight I heard/saw “Love Come Down,” “Best Of My Love,” not one but two Billy Ocean songs, and “Head To Toe,” Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam’s number one single from the summer of 1987.

Of everything I saw in my forty-five minutes there, “Head To Toe” was the one song that really got heads bopping. Yeah, the one girl in the cheetah-print minidress was already singing meaningfully into her straw when “Get Outta My Dreams Get Into My Car” started. But “Head To Toe” really hit big with the crowd as a whole, most of whom were my age (I’m guessing) and most of whom (unlike me) probably hadn’t heard the song in quite a while.

The first single from Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam’s Spanish Fly album, “Head To Toe” hit number one right after my sixth birthday, which is more or less exactly the point when I clearly remember knowing all the songs, and the videos, that appeared on MTV and on our Top 40 station, 92 PRO-FM. (Honestly, though, I preferred “Lost In Emotion,” Spanish Fly‘s second single, the video for which is notable for featuring the single most hilarious condiment-specific product placement in music video history. Sorry, Gaga.)

This year I actually saw Lisa Lisa in concert, at the nostalgia-heavy Freestyle Rush, a package tour of artists (Stevie B! Expose! Brenda K Starr!) who could only really afford to make two stops: Springfield, Massachusetts, the city where freestyle never died; and Providence, where the mayor himself came out before the show to thank the audience for keeping the spirit of freestyle alive. He seemed genuinely tickled that Lisa Lisa was actually gracing our little burg, and that made me love him even more than I already do. (Our mayor is Dominican-American and forty, meaning that he was a teenaged boy when Ms. Velez hit it big, so it’s probably not that surprising that he was a fan.  But still.) The Freestyle Rush ended up being my favorite concert of the year, despite Stevie B’s child support arrest-related absence, although honestly that probably says less about the show and more about the bleak state of my concert-affording finances and the even bleaker state of live music in Providence.

But I digress. “Head To Toe” is a good song. A great song, probably. I was done with my drink and I stayed to hear the rest of it. But of course after a few minutes it ended and then the lights came up and then I wanted another drink. (Note to people with taste buds: the Sam Adams Saison is bad. Even if it’s only $3, don’t bother.)

The West Side of Providence being what it is, the clock striking twelve leaves two options on a Tuesday: a possibly quiet bar playing an iPod stocked with songs I’d know, or Metal Night.

Metal Night is loud, and the metal is not any kind of metal that I know or can speak about.* It could be from 1976 or it could have come out last week, and it could be by guys from down the street or it could be by the blackest, most famous band in the history of Scandinavia. I just don’t know. I hear no songs that I know and don’t know that I hear any songs that I actually want to know. And I kind of like it that way.

But that got me thinking about what it is about bars that I actually like. Because I went and had one beer and a fine time. But because of how bars on the West Side of Providence work, most of the people that were rocking out to Lisa Lisa showed up at Metal Night at the same time I did, and I wondered what their thoughts were.

I know people go to bars because people are social and they like drinking and sonic ambience is not necessarily at the top of their agenda. (See also: people that go to karaoke bars but who aren’t there to sing.) But for me, an occasionally lonely snob, I feel like there’s a different answer. For me the songs are important, which is why my go-to bars are the ones where you can hear Leonard Cohen and Boards of Canada and not, say, the gay bars, where there are just so many songs from the Glee cast that one can hear before one considers enrolling oneself in a hetero conversion camp.

But why do I go? The bar is open, which I guess it not a minor point. And also I was a little bit deprived socially. I could have just gone home and cracked a beer or made a cocktail and put on my own freestyle records. I mean I was doing that this afternoon, anyway. But I guess I like knowing that there’s a DJ in the room who is making conscious decisions about what’s getting played, and who knows things that I don’t know. Anyone with internet access at this point can thoughtlessly cobble together really awesome playlists, which is why I’m often overjoyed with things I hear at Whole Foods. But knowing that someone cares, and that it’s someone’s job to specifically make you care about what you’re hearing? That’s a really valuable thing, even if ultimately you don’t even really know what you heard.

[*As an aside, I just Googled the DJ's name, because I don't know him and don't want to be the one that's all like "DUDE what is this song?", and apparently we went to the same high school.  He was two years ahead of me.]

Last year, in lieu of making one New Year’s resolution, I decided to resolve lots of things.  Rather than One Big Change, I thought what I really needed was A Bunch Of Little Changes That Might Add Up To Something Significant.  There were 38 items on the list I came up with, ranging from the very specific (eat more vegetables) to the very general (rely less on others.)  Some would be very easy, like look at more art and get glasses, and some would require major work, like getting published more and being more fiscally responsible.

In general, I failed almost completely at just about every action item.

A lot of that had to do with my continued un/under-employment.  I didn’t get glasses because the glasses I want to get are kind of pricy.  I didn’t brush up on French because, even though an organization called L’alliance francaise opened up just two blocks from my home, I couldn’t afford to take any of the classes there.  Being a snappier dresser was also a challenge, although I did do myself a favor by donating most of the older clothes I wore whenever I didn’t feel like doing laundry.

Not to be a total downer.  I actually did a lot of things in 2011 that I’m proud of:  I was profiled in the local alt-weekly (twice), organized a couple of successful readings, wrote (and later spoke) about libraries as safe spaces for queer youth, promoted the debut issue of a magazine and then put out a second issue.  My photography’s gotten better, I actually look in the mirror before I leave the house these days, and in general I’m not in an awful mood.

But none of that pays the bills, and unfortunately that’s really annoying.  I genuinely want a real job–very much so, in fact–and it keeps not happening.   I don’t own a car, don’t pay for cable, don’t have a family to feed, I’m on a cell phone family plan with my boyfriend, and I still can’t manage to scrape together enough money to not be completely stressed out all the time.

This year, my goals are the same:  to read more, to write more, to drink less, to look better, to manage my time better, to be on the internet less and in the real world more (even if that just means music venues and movie theaters.)  I also really want to spend more time with people that I like, because I am spectacularly awful at that.