Jesse On The Brink

Going Home to Black Rock City!

2012-02-02T02:27:00.000-05:00

Just found out we were lucky enough to survive a confusing lottery tier system to purchase tickets to Burning Man 2012! This year's theme is Fertility 2.0 and I'm desperate for a re-boot.

The poster rather resembles the clusterfuck of that "lottery" ticket system - or a metastasizing cell, or maybe Charlotte's Web when she released all her baby spiders in the air? In any case, it's a very cool take on the layout of Black Rock City - and its expansive growth.

From the website: Theme camps cling in fertile clusters to its latticework of streets, artworks tumble out of it, like pollen on the air. These nodes of interaction mutate, grow and reproduce their kind. Burning Man communities have now escaped this capsule world: our culture in a Petri dish has effloresced - it spreads across five continents.

This fertility theme reminds me of the book I'm reading by Stephen Jay Gould, Full House, which postulates we human beings are not the apotheosis of evolution, as most would like to believe. So we have consciousness, but is the fact that our brains excrete thoughts any better than the camouflage excreted by an octopus; the speed exerted by a cheetah?

Gould suggests, as did Darwin (sometimes), that natural selection produces local adaptation - and not overall progress. We humans are but a flourishing bough on the arborescent tree of life. We all go forth together. And yet it's interesting to me how we think not only that we're the best - but we're the only! Our gods made no room in their heavens for other creatures, not even most of our own. How has our mighty consciousness helped; how has it hindered? I would wager that it is rather a curse, and that humanity's greatest gift is not consciousness but rather our conscience, which ought be more evolved.

Planned Parenthood lost their funding from the Susan G Komen Foundation, which caved to radical right wing pressure to drop Planned Parenthood because they provide legal abortion as an options to women. Yes, let's deny women at Planned Parenthood a cancer screening or mammogram!* This graphic sums it up succinctly:

This has rather blown up and yet it's not entirely surprising they have politicized health care yet again. Certainly they sure as hell politicized AIDS (lack of) funding, so cancer's rather late in the game no? Or is it just another case of the gays being way ahead of the trend?

In any case, it makes me wonder what kind of bough our species really is on that arborescent tree of life? And when I re-read that amazing short story, 'Big Blonde', by Dorothy Parker - about a bubbly woman's slow descent into despair, and the words Parker uses: "She was beginning to feel toward alcohol a little puzzled distrust, as toward an old friend who has refused a simple favor...." I realize I may feel this way toward the world in general. Like maybe it'll do me in. And/or that maybe that alcohol is the old friend I never want to live without?

Burning Man - get me hence, far from the maddening default world!

*Donate to Planned Parenthood here.

Australiana!

2012-01-24T20:28:00.000-05:00

We took a road trip up New South Wales and it's always like a nostalgic trip back in time.

Santa looks out of place

Produce section of a 1950's film set or Forster, NSW circa 2012?

idyllic subtropical sands

Greetings from the Mercantile

Off With Their Red Noses!

2012-01-23T00:08:00.001-05:00

The Republican Presidential candidates represent Republican values - if you squint hard enough! Abortion = SIN! Homosexuality = SIN! Adultery = HOW DARE YOU ASK ME ABOUT THAT! (followed by a Christian standing ovation).

While Newt Gingrich was having an affair on his ex-wife with his now third-wife, he was leading the charge to impeach President Clinton for an extramarital blow job. Of course, now he declares it despicable to question him about his own infidelities. The good ol' boys club (and a few crosshair-wielding women) always resort to crying victim of the "malicious media" when exposed for their glaring hypocrisy.

How interesting to find you have to make a choice between a thrice married, cheating lobbyist fat cat and a multi-millionaire Mormon. And so the party base looks up to see that, on the political stage, it's not like looking in the mirror anymore. Why, that's exactly the way I felt growing up!

What's it like to experience that disconnect as a fully grown adult? And so, the Republican Party is revolting. As Kevin Sessum notes, that last sentence can be read two ways - bless homonymy - and both reads are correct. This lesser-of-two-evils schism resulted in a South Carolina primary win for Newt Gingrich, and so we see multiple marriages still beat a cult based upon polygamy! Both choices, in their minds, beat a black muslim socialist!

I'm inclined to agree with Andrew Sullivan's Newsweek essay, "Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?" which argues that the current POTUS' long game will outsmart everyone. Except, of course, as he mentions, that startling (nasty) bit about being able to indefinitely hold US citizens without charges (WTF is with that?) and perhaps the policies that

Even so, as the overpowering stench of grease paint wafts off the circus clowns masquerading as Presidential hopefuls, Obama looks primed to coast through November, laughing all the way at such farce. He may not be perfect, but unlike these half-cocked hypocrital hopefuls and the bumbling half-wit who went before him, this President of the United States remains an elegant leader of men.

For Your Edification: Gifting (Lack of) Etiquette

2012-01-21T02:04:00.000-05:00

Giving and receiving is a special time meant to involve surprises - just probably not these ones!

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER: Much like Chlamydia, a brain or a billion dollar bank account, you can't tell by looking who may be in possession of a gift.

On the set of A Four Letter Word, I was in Central Park with my co-star Charlie David. Our director, Casper was nearby wearing a tank top with little hot dogs emblazoned all over it. I turn to Charlie to scornfully ridicule ("hot dogs?!) such a ridiculous shirt, and I remember ending with "You'd think, being Swedish, he'd have some sense of fashion!" Moments later, Casper comes over and I say, "What the hell is that shirt?" Casper smiles brightly and says, "Charlie gave it to me!"

RE-GIFTING: It's pro-environment and I'm all for it. And, much like theft, it's totally cool until you get caught.

Like the time I re-gifted a gorgeous journal to a girlfriend. I wrapped the thing up, and as she opened it she began to read what she thought was an inscription. It was, to our mutual horror and later hilarity, a diary entry I had once written and forgot about...

SAFE RECEIVING: Unwrap before you speak - it could ruin the mood.

At a birthday party, my friends Chad and Scott handed me a wrapped gift that resembled, in size and weight, a brick. So I launch into a story, laughing hysterically, about how my brother once sent me a brick. For my birthday. A brick! Could you believe it? He found it in "historical" Boston and sent it in the mail, and have you ever had more of a stinker for a gift? Moments later I unwrap, to the mortification of all assembled, a brick. Granted, this one had my name on it, but it was, unmistakably, still a brick.

Poor Unfortunate Souls!

2012-01-13T00:57:00.002-05:00

Depression is such a western luxury, as you never seem to see brown people in huts with five children and no food struggling with depression, or a crippling case of anorexia. Maybe it’s because we have so much time to think about existence, so much time to ponder why we’re here and not be distracted by daily survival, that we can claim depression, but tell me if you’re really thinking – isn’t existence the most marvellous thing?

I mean, maybe your life sucks, but (cue Liza)... it's marvelous!

Recently a girlfriend told me the reason her family is in Australia is that long ago a female ancestor had stolen some jewels from her boss in England and, stupidly, wore them down to the local pub to show them off! The lady-thief was sentenced…to death. But before she was to hang, her sentence was commuted to: banishment! And off she went on a convict ship to Australia. Fascinating story, and not only would my girlfriend not be in Australia had her relative not stolen those jewels, but if that sentence had not been commuted, she wouldn’t be here at all. Simple as that.

How lucky we are to have benefited despite the mistakes of each ancestor; the beneficence of some judges, twists of fate; counting on them to have survived scurvy, the plague, poverty, even an unappealing face long enough to successfully breed in successive generations that ultimately led to you. As if this miraculous accomplishment alone isn’t enough to boggle the mind, think of your luck in the biology department.

You conquered impossible odds to become the one sperm out of millions to successfully penetrate that one egg. That one particular egg out of how many eggs bleeding out for how many months, not to mention that one sperm from that one load of how many loads (and potential lives lost) found in crunchy handkerchiefs?

The sheer incredibility of your existence is too remarkable to not comprehend. The most amazing thing by far is that you're here at all. Depressing, isn’t it?

Sydney's a Superficial Bitch...

2012-01-11T05:15:00.000-05:00

and trust her love ain't Platonic! Check out this hilarious piece on Sydney by Joe Hildebrand in The Telegraph. He satirizes the place so perfectly, as shallow insipid and vacuous. I've been saying this for a long while - Sydney is a supermodel, absolutely drop dead stunning but what does she have to tell you? And would you wanna listen? I mean, Capetown is just as much a stunner but at least she's dangereuse.

Isn't she a knockout?!

Imagine my surprise when the piece concludes that yes Sydney is shallow and vacuous; she's stupid and sucks but... she rocks! He's never been prouder to live here! Too stupid too understand why, I'm left wondering if I should move to Melbourne? He says that if Sydney were a person it would be Paris Hilton. What's NOT to love? Seriously. And if Melbourne were a person it would be Jean-Paul Sartre...

On the topic of philosophers, and resting my (his?) case, I went to Sydney library yesterday to check out writings by Plato. I wanted to read some of his work, any of it really: Symposium, Republic, I didn't really care. I found the philosophy section at Custom House library contained on a shelf the length of my arm, but I couldn't find anything there, or in the system, for Plato.

So I asked a librarian to help me, see if there was something from another Sydney library to transfer, but there wasn't. Zilch. Not one work by Plato could be located in all of Sydney's library system. PLATO! The librarian herself seemed stymied and keen to oblige when I asked, "Can you maybe... buy some Plato for your collection?"

Imagine how much easier it all would have been if I asked to check out a volume of that great philosopher and scholar, Paris Hilton!

Envisioning 3012: Future Predictions

2012-01-08T20:23:00.000-05:00

Check out the Gen-Yers with their vague sense of entitlement and suave assurance (having been thus led to believe) they’ll found a billion dollar start-up or, if not, at least become (in)famous via youtube or (why not?) Xtube, without working too hard because they’ve all been raised by helicopter parents who hovered over their every move, not letting them out of sight, and if they did manage to make it to the backyard, a liberal application of 70SPF sunscreen shall have without exception (even on cloudy days) been required.

What could the Gen Y offer us. we the older wiser and better mannered? The natural tendency to characterize succeeding generations as sloppier than our own is itself a perilous mistake, because if you do look around, things are improving and always have – in areas where civilization is permitted to persist.

So let’s look around and imagine – what things are improving, at least in my opinion, and imagine the loftiness subsequent generations, who will no doubt be always maligned and discredited by their elders, may lift us.

Herewith, my predictions for 3012 (feel free to offer your own):

Euthanasia will be humane, legal and a popular end-of-life care option.
Most illicit drugs will be legal, taxed and responsibly sold – a governmental cash flow, draining drug warlord power, and lessening futile wars on drugs with their inherent bloodshed.
A lessening of violence in general, and its acceptance in entertainment. It will be less appalling in 3012 to see two men naked and kissing on-screen than it will be to watch 200 men being gruesomely murdered.
Vegetarians will no longer be mocked by meat-eaters as unbearable party poopers. The conscious disconnect between eating meat and slaughtering live animals will be exposed and vegetarian food will taste as good as it is popular.
Circumcision will be seen and discouraged for the mutilation it is.
Monogamy will not be seen as an undeniable symbol of fidelity.
Organized religion will be, on a large scale, abandoned in favor of individual spirituality.
A new fuel source will end dependence on barbaric nations and the rape of the planet’s resources. Back 2 the Future’s garbage alternative, perhaps?
Genetic modification of your child to weed out handicaps, disease. And though this tool may be used to weed out red-heads or gays, it will be used just as much to create a red-head or a gay.
Death of the circus, but rise of the zoos (traveling zoos?) with the exciting return of the Dodo Bird and the Woolly Mammoth.
The 9-5 work week will be an archaic joke as work is handled remotely, for the most part, and around the 24/7 clock.
Less borders, less walls. Nations will be run less like rival football teams, and more like enthusiasts of the same sport.
The use of non-biodegradable plastic, especially single-use plastic drink containers and disposable plastic bags for groceries, will be looked upon as insidiously wasteful, crude and sooo last century. Much like today we watch horrified as Betty Draper, in an episode of Mad Men, non-chalantly shakes out her 1950’s picnic blanket littering all its garbage onto the park’s grass.
Gender roles and designations will be more fluid. Colours, pink and blue in particular, will have no sexual assignation. We will think: why did they ever?

What else; what are your predictions? Future doesn’t look all bad, eh? Of course I left out the bad news: We’ll all be dead!

My Latest Film Now On DVD

2012-01-05T21:34:00.000-05:00

My first foray in Grand Guignol, the thriller Into the Lion's Den is now for sale, you can buy it at this link: Breaking Glass Pictures! With a stellar/disturbing script by Philip Malaczewski, the film takes all sorts of unexpected twists and turns as I head on a road trip through Amish country with co-stars Ronnie Kroell and Kristen Alexzander Griffith who are getting some great praise for their performances.

Here's a sample of the great buzz online (some below) to help entice you to pick up the DVD!

In this review from the Horror Fan, Into the Lion's Den is a hatchet-fest worse than a dozen American Idol wanna-bes with their claws out! And I play a ne'er do well who "reminds you of all the messed up, slightly charming bar boys with a destructive streak you've crossed path with." Wait, only slightly!? I'm losing it!

Christian Cintron at Edge says the film is sexy, startling and provocative - going beyond its B-list gore-fest to address deep topics, such as the gay community's flirtation with thanatos. Ronnie is captivating and "Jesse Archer shines as a washed up party boy with the perfect blend of sexy mischief and pensive introspection".

The Independent Critic calls it a relentless thriller, hailing Michael McFadden and Jodie Shultz as terrific villains and saying I have tremendous screen presence as the free-spirited Johnny. Awww. It was worth all the dungeons and electroshocks and slobber... oh my!

Check out more reviews, film stills and behind-the-scenes stuff when you like the fan page here on Facebook!

Along Came a Leader

2012-01-05T04:24:00.001-05:00

Governor Gregoire of Washington State held a press conference to articulate succinctly what equality advocates have been saying for years: it's not the business of government to discriminate.

Echoing Hillary Clinton's speech in Geneva that gay rights are human rights, Gov. Gregoire's speech here is enhanced at the end, when she mentions the battle with her religion. I know of nothing else, no rational reason, to deny equality besides religion. Religion consistently pits brother against brother, and not just my own brother, his wife and sundry relatives ('family' for me is a suspicious thing not to be trusted, for I never know who's with me and who's against me - thank you, "god") but it insidiously divides the brotherhood of humanity. Look around - not even the Presbyterians can support each other!

Yet this religious Governor has gone on a journey and discovered religion is a personal thing, not to be influenced by - or to influence - government as it relates to civil rights. Sadly, most don't get to this place because organized religions have a mandate to infect others with the "word" (as if those "called", most of whom knowing nothing of the world, let alone the inner workings of themselves they have sublimated - are qualified to minister to anyone) and whenever this gets me furious - people being bigots, immune beneath a veil of piety as they hypocritically speak for their chosen deity, I simply look to the past and remind myself: foolishness ain't nothing new.

In the words of philosopher Bertrand Russell:

People choose the book considered sacred by the community in which they are born and out of that book they choose the parts they like, ignoring the others. At one point in time, the most influential text in the Bible was: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Nowadays, people pass over this text, in silence if possible; if not, with an apology.

Yet how many "witches" had to suffer, burned at the stake before this particular piece of ancient text was passed over? How I would like to live to the day where Governor Gregoire's speech above is as archaic, as much a statement-of-the-obvious as the day there surely must have been when a press conference was held to declare that witch-hunting would no longer be the business of the government.

New Years Tribe - Glamping in Lismore!!

2012-01-04T01:38:00.004-05:00

Totally wretched after a New Years spent at the Tropical Fruits Festival. I blew a fuse, or maybe a total short circuit. It all began with a crude mood board. You see, the theme was: "Tribe"

the mood board: we were particularly taken with the slutty squaw at right

After senseless hours and dollars at the crafting store, Bam and I set out on our journey north. On the second day we stopped at our artist friend Carmel's in Red Rock. She enlisted her lovely lady friends to help, whipped out a sewing machine, and it was like a fag hag sweatshop! They began constructing our Indian costumes as we watched in awe.

Thanks Kelly and Carm! At right, Carm slices and sews my hedgehog beanie baby into a purse.

We left them the next day and get up to Lismore and set up camp. Tropical Fruits is a NYE dance party on the local country showgrounds, kinda like a farm. You camp out in tents with all locals, lesbians, transfolk and boys. Some of them really go all out.. in fact they couldn't stop comparing outposts: "my, that's the best erection I've seen yet!"

The Shirley Temple erection nearly killed me.

this is what you call GLAMPING

Decidedly more downtrodden, this was our home - after hours

and happy hours!

It was hilarious to hear the queens setting up camp - making sexual moans while hammering stakes, their friends commenting, "I don't care what they say - you can give a good pounding!" Or another claiming he needed to stretch before such heavy lifting (the esky cooler) when another said dryly, "C'mon - if you were any looser you'd be inside-out!"

The whole event really is as camp as a row of tents. The first drag queens even made their appearance in the campgrounds before noon.

We met all sorts of colorful creatures. Including this older man (sewing Bam Bam's feather headband). His name is Ivo and he's Belgian. When his flemish family rejected him for being gay, he sailed for Australia at 18, in the early 1960's, and he never spoke to them again. It amazes and inspires me what some people will do for freedom. Thankfully we had enough burlap and finger paint to make him an Indian, too.

heather numberone, clark, nick and denton: "all the ex-pats that Lismore allows!"

When I put the eyeliner on Bam he complained when he looked in the mirror, "What have you done? I don't want the flick at the end... it's too feminine!!" -- and he instantly became the laughing stock of the campground, known as the guy who thought his eyeliner was not masculine enough.

they're playing our favorite song

The dancing is in what's essentially a massive barn. The grounds also have an art exhibit, several chill out tents...

and a cabaret where my pal Heather NumberOne performed her famous glow in the dark routine.

Outside, I'm on a warpath without a tomahawk.

You know she's debating using my head as an ashtray.

The fireworks were so flash and explosive, my face felt dirty just watching them.

And then all the activity became too much for Haiawatha's burlap loincloth to handle:

My teepee for a safety pin. Thanks, Wade!

I pretty much got shot out of a cannon. So a New Year begins much as the one before! Happy 2012!

Happy New Year ~

2011-12-30T17:31:00.000-05:00

You survived! 2011 you're ending... thank heaven. We'll shelve the (Mayan) rapture 'til '12!

Top 3 Responses

2011-12-27T16:32:00.000-05:00

It takes a lot to get me to STFU, but these responses pretty well stopped me in my tracks.

1. I'm shout at Bam, "Stop SNORING!" when he wakes up to deadpan. "I wasn't snoring, it was a light purr."

2. Out with my friend Yvette, where I meet her 8 year old daughter Belle. "Are you named Belle after the pretty girl from Beauty and the Beast?" I lean down to ask her. "No," Yvette interjects. "I named her for the hooker in Gone With the Wind."

3. Chatting with a certain 85 year old man and asking him the secret to living a long and healthy life. "There's no secret there," he answered. "Choose your parents wisely."

Season's Greetings!

2011-12-24T20:38:00.000-05:00

Pricked by the Violet Quill

2011-12-24T09:51:00.000-05:00

‘I don’t belong here, I shouted at them silently’ intones the young narrator of Edmund White’s 1982 classic A Boy’s Own Story. What a hauntingly beautiful story it is, not just in the way its written (superbly) but in its emotional honesty. It could be any boy’s own story, but it so happens to be the story of a boy on the outside, a fledgling gay, coming of age in a world that doesn’t fit the worlds inside of him.

It’s not a book I should have read until now, because it wouldn’t have had the same impact without the benefit of the intervening years. It brought back feelings I had forgotten, or now (deliberately? Subconsciously?) deny or conceal. A time when innocence was not a contemptible weakness but rather wondrous, and lovely.

This is not my story, but much of it could have been - and much of it certainly informs the adult I've become.

Longing

I hypothesised a lover who’d take me away. He’d climb the fir tree outside my window, step into my room and gather me into his arms…
…His delay in coming went on so long that soon I’d passed from anticipation to nostalgia. One night I sat at my window and stared at the moon, toasting it with a champagne glass filled with grape juice. I knew that immense light was falling on him as well, far away and just as lonely in a distant room. I expected him to be able to divine my existence and my need, to intuit that in this darkened room in this country house a fourteen-year-old was waiting for him.

Bitterness

The solace of the condemned is scorn, especially scorn of an aesthetic stripe.

Hope

No matter how despairing I might be I was implicitly counting on my eventual happiness.

The constant coupling of fear and desire

Would I become queer and never, never be like other people? To overcome my scruples, Ralph hypnotized me. He didn’t have to intone the words long to send me into a deep trance. Once I was under his spell he told me I’d obey him, and I did. He also said that when I awakened I’d remember nothing, but he was wrong there. I have remembered everything.

Religious doubt

When they’d talk of Original Sin or the Creation or the Devil they’d become agitated, their cheeks would flush and their eyes would sparkle, as though they were hypnotizing themselves into espousing this obvious nonsense. And the more vague and absurd the things they discussed (angels, the resurrection of the body), the more they used such words as precisely, undoubtedly, clearly and naturally.

But I also felt surging within me a fierce need to be independent. Of course I responded to the appeal of divine hydraulics, this system of souls damned or crowned or destroyed or held in suspense, these pulleys and platforms sinking and lifting on the great stage, and I recognized that my view of things seemed by contrast impoverished, lacking in degree and incident. But the charming intricacy of myth is not sufficient to compel belief. I found no good reason to assume that the ultimate nature of reality happens to resemble the backstage of an opera house.

At one point, the teenage hero goes on a date with a pretty, popular girl at school: Helen Paper. He was set up by his best friend, Tommy, who he's secretly head over heels in love with. He goes on this date with Helen and at the end of the date, walks her home and nearly kisses her in the street – he knows she prepared for it, “Had I not seen her a moment ago covertly pop some scented thing into her mouth to prepare for such an inevitability?” They hold hands, but… kissing Helen Paper doesn’t materialize:

Dating

This moment with Helen – our tallness on the moon-lashed porch, the cool winds that sent black clouds (lit by gold from within) caravelling past a pirate moon, a coolness that glided through opening fingers that now touched, linked, squeezed, slowly drew apart – this moment made me happy, hopeful. An oppression had been lifted. A long apprenticeship to danger had abruptly ended.
After I left her I raced home through the deserted streets laughing and leaping.

I thought, reading, he was laughing and leaping – because he didn’t have to kiss her. I was so happy for him, having escaped this pressure to "perform" and be someone he wasn't. The oppression that had been lifted was his need to fit in, he had escaped unscathed!

On the following page I was jolted back to bitter truth - reading that the “apprenticeship to danger” that abruptly ended was… his own homosexual feelings. He was happy, leaping in the streets, at the possibility of now loving a girl, not of escaping her. He was not damned. He now had real hope to believe his attraction to Tommy would turn fraternal.

Of course, yes of course, sigh: that’s exactly what it’s like.

You exalt in the hope of fitting in. How I had forgotten; how I'm painfully reminded. And how pathetic it is when I look around to see how many adults are still willing to do anything, frantically, fanatically, hypocritically, politically just to "fit in".

White effortlessly gets to the heart of the human matter, and though set in the 50's, I never read about Howdy Doody. How much more affecting and wise writing is, always, when banishing pop culture, pervasive as it is. Notice in the quote above with Helen Paper - she pops “a scented thing” into her mouth, not Wrigley’s spearmint or a Certs, it’s something bigger, universal and forever. Timelessness is a quality shared by all great works of art.

And a great book, like a great person, strives to make others feel less alone. There is no more worthwhile an accomplishment.

A Xmas Whiff of Roma Therapy!

2011-12-22T20:33:00.000-05:00

Marking the first time a drag queen proudly display balls, this Christmas Tree was caught waltzing (Matilda?) down Oxford Street.

Roma Therapy's evergreen extravagance drew lots of attention. As I walked her to her shift at Stonewall amid stares and iphone snaps, she proclaimed: "It's as if nobody's seen a Christmas tree with massive tits before!"

Who wore it better?

Cuban Boob Job for Your Cock

2011-12-21T22:01:00.002-05:00

I write copy for the web’s top nude male objectification site Paragon Men! Each month, hunky XXX beefcakes flood my inbox and it's my job to make them sound interesting and engaging. So I make up a lot of shit. Who else will describe a hot naked muscle stud with both occupy politics and a nod to Tallulah Bankhead?

oh fuck, I misspelled Tallulah

That unlikely triple is a scalene triangle, all emphasis on its compelling hypotenuse. And that’s precisely how the copy gets carried away…

How many ways can you describe cocks, muscles and sperm? It tends to go back to basics like botany (sequoia trunks), geology (granite), and smutty metaphors (DNA pudding) that also weave in the likes of Carmen Miranda, Rhett Butler or being offered hard candy in the back of daddy’s sedan. The fact is, my copy better be unexpectedly captivating if it’s going to be read at all, seeing as it lives beside all those attention-grabbing, phenomenal physiques.

As I scrape the depths of horny euphemism and worshipful hyperbole - I discover. For example, I got the hot loaded line up for January which includes one stud who team Paragon thought had a wart at the base of his cock. When they asked him, he told them it was a “pearl” –

My only question was: “Is he Cuban?” and Paragon HQ responded, “How did you know?”

Behold: La perla, in repose (at cock base) - in one of the un-airbrushed photos

Let me just reveal all I know right here because there is scant info about this freaky Perla genital beading cock amplification online. It’s not pumping, not pills, not collagen – it’s PERLA! And it’s not uncommon in Cuba to cut open your cock (on purpose!), place a hard object (or two or more) known as a pearl (perla) inside, then – sew it back up and go on your merry way. Why? Oh why! Apparently, this rise or bump hits the clitoris when fucking – making sex more pleasurable to women. Or imaginably more pleasurable, which is the exact same thing.

This genital mutilation (Carribean circumcision?) is, from what I hear, not a big deal. And it's not a surgical procedure done at a licensed, sanitary doctor’s office, btw: this an at-home, get your anaesthetic from a pal, stick it in a syringe and shoot your dick before you slice it open like a papaya kind of surgery) solely to enhance sexual pleasure. So honestly, Perla is more like a boob job for cocks. A back alley, DIY boob job.

You can put anything you want in there. A pebble, a homing device, your mother-in-law – it’s not necessarily a pearl, or even pearl-like (who can afford a pearl in Cuba?) Anything hard or durable works. In fact, I met someone who inserted the broken end of a plastic toothbrush.Who knows - perhaps when in there long enough it will crust over and give birth to an actual pearl? Just add sand?

A profitable new industry may now be gestating inside the male members of this island nation. But tell me – can you (or your clitoris) get into this fetish? Is this gonna go global? Does the perla turn. You. On?

How Tallulah Bankhead Influenced Aliens

2011-12-21T01:26:00.002-05:00

I recently finished Felice Picano's collection, Portraits from My Past, essays nostalgically recollecting personalities he's known - some famous (Bette Midler), some not (a suicidal roommate)- and in one he's watching Tallulah Bankhead's final Broadway bow in Tennessee William's The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore.

The actors are in tableau and Tallulah steps forward to deliver a monologue - when some queen in the audience tosses a popper onto the stage. In 1964, poppers were glass ampules that you cracked to whiff. Tallulah picks up the popper, holds it up to the light, snaps it, inhales deeply, and carries on (divinely).

When I read that, I'm like, WHO IS THIS WOMAN? I've always known of Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968) but never really go it... until now. Investigating further, I find her infamous sotto baritone “dahhhhling!” salutation originated because Tallulah couldn’t remember names.

“I once introduced a friend as Martini,” she told a reporter, “Her name was Olive.”

And because of that guttural smoky voice of hers, a male reporter once asked, “Have you ever been mistaken for a man?” “No,” she responded, “Have you?” The same exact quip stolen and delivered by butch Latina Vasquez in the 1986 film Aliens.

In her youth, Tallulah would introduce herself, “I’m a lesbian, what do you do?” And who else was daring this kind of thing in the early 1900's? Though not a lesbian, she did dabble in everything sexually. At 31 years old, she contracted a case of gonorrhea so bad she underwent an emergency hysterectomy. As she was wheeled out of the hospital, she turned to her doctor and snapped, “Don’t think I learned a lesson from this!”

I love that, I mean - was she supposed to apologize? Repent? Heaven forbid: cry!? Not her.

Tallulah Bankhead is a reductive back burner figure in history (Aliens notwithstanding), probably because she was a grande dame of the stage - not of film. The bygone era of stage stars (the Lunts, Barrymores) leaves scant tangible record. We all know Bette Davis in Dark Victory, Jezebel and the Little Foxes – all starring roles which originated on the stage with… Tallulah Bankhead. Designer Edith Head modeled Bette Davis’ stage star Margo Channing in All About Eve on... Tallulah Bankhead - instensifying the faux feud between the actresses.

You decide: Bette Davis as Margo Channing (Left) and Tallulah Bankhead as herself (Right)

But Talullah was more than an actress, she was a (tour de) force of personality that could not be contained. Rushed into the hospital shortly before her death, a newspaper headline read: “Tallulah Hospitalized; Hospital Tallulahized” – testament to the hurricane power of her own personae. Indeed, when she did die several days later, her last two (coherent) words were: “Codeine…Bourbon”.

When I learned this bit of take-it-to-the-grave cosmic genius, I declared her my hero and the 600-page biography Tallulah! Life and Times of a Leading Lady by Joel Lobenthal landed in my lap! What a life!

Born in Alabama, her mother died due to complications from her birth, and her father Will Bankhead went on to become the speaker of the US House of Representatives. Both these influences being perhaps just part of what propelled her to become the most ouragaeous, outspoken and uninhibited woman of her day.

Lobenthal's book itself is over-researched, taking pains to focus on her professional work and keep the curtain down on much of her off-stage antics. She did come alive through its pages, oh she did, but I felt her suppressed by long passages exhaustively/ingly outlining each of her many plays and their often piffling plot points. I wasn't looking for the history of 20th century theatre, but rather the woman - and just where was the scoop on the Lizbeth Scott affair? Don't make me read another biography!

Leaving Alabama at 15, Tallulah scored in silents and vaudeville in NY, went to London for a decade where she became a sensation. Went back to Broadway, then Hollywood where she made a succession of films for Paramount, retreating to the New York stage when it was determined she posed no threat to Garbo or Dietrich. Besides the stage, she made frequent guest appearances on TV (her final appearance was as the Black Widow in Batman & Robin) and she made a splash hosting the variety program The BigShow, radio’s last spirited gasp before succumbing to television.

Bankhead chain-smoked and drank, popped pills and slept with everyone from Marlon Brando to Billie Holiday, and yet she was known as one of the most professional, hardest working women in entertainment. She may have been a tyrant when crossed, drunk or feeling vulnerable, but there are many, many instances of her kindness and generosity. She personally intervened to save Jews (Otto Preminger’s family) in WW2, stood up for the rights of blacks as she toured the South, and bravely spoke out against Senator Joseph McCarthy during the heyday of his HUAC witchhunts.

At the same time, she found underwear extremely inhibiting and never wore them. Though when sober she was known to pull up her dress, when drunk it became an imperative. Nights out with Tallulah became 36 hour affairs. At one point, when her husband refused to continue on, she dropped him off at their home, rolled down the window to say, "If I'm not home by 6 am, start without me!" and roared off.

Because of her unapologetic outrageousness, voracious sexual appetite and capacity for camp - she became, inexorably and for better or worse - a gay icon. Theatre houses were packed with her "cult", and to appease (and fuel) them, she might resort to playing a caricature of herself at the expense of the play. "You have no idea what I'd do for a laugh," she'd claim, hindering her reputation as a legitimate actress.

Reviews of her greatest roles, once read like this:

“Miss Bankhead specializes in the deadpan and often deadly squelch. Her general air of graciousness is never completely reassuring. For there is always the possibility that that marvelous voice of hers is about to pass from a purr of honeyed hospitality to an outraged bellow of professional rage. She is, in a word, terrific”

- Collier's

And later began to read like this:

“The extraordinary endowments which distinguish her also imperil her. She is as much a victim to her talents as she is the product.” – Saturday Review

In the late 1950's, she worked tirelessly to overcome her tendency to "Tallulah" and perfect her role of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, but the audience hooted and hollered at the inappropriate moments, at even the slightest hint of double entendre. Ribald fans there for her and not the story, much like the one who ultimately threw a popper on stage at her feet.

No other actor in the ensemble was able to compete, not even the play could compete, with her compelling personality - and though she didn't give in, she now couldn't control what she had long encouraged. She resisted caving, and at one performance of Streetcar, a co-star recalls Tallulah walked down to the footlights and begged the audience, "Please give me a chance!"

Privately, she began to despise the “dahhhling" gargoyle, though she never seemed to say no to going out with the gang, and above all she hated to be left alone. She would even accompany guests to their cars pleading for them to stay just a little bit longer. In the end, it appears gays who were the only ones who could keep up/put up with her, entertaining a person as she was. Delighting as she’d spew out fast ones, like:

“Cocaine’s not habit forming, I should know… I’ve been doing it for years!”

Her fans would ply her with more and more alcohol just to see what would come out of her mouth. (Hey wait, Bam has been doing that to me for years!)

Lobenthal notes, "She offered herself to her claque with a certain amount of cynicism and despair. It was her default strategy. Fulfilled her on some of her darkest levels, these fans a fun-house mirror reflecting her own distorted picture of herself."

But although the squandering of her talent, looks and stamina has been absorbed into legend, she never played the victim. In her last years, she spoke of her cult. “The boys didn’t do it to me," she said, "they did it for me.”

It all makes me want to stay up late with her, dahhhhrling, even if, now, I'd respectfully decline to toss poppers at her professional feet. There are many words to describe Tallulah Bankhead, and so contradictory: Sincere, Ridiculous, Tyrant, Professional, Insomniac, Addict, Shrewd, Indulgent, Hardworking, Generous, Iconoclast. The sum total, I'd say, adds up to bonne vivante.

Violet Tendencies on Hulu

2011-12-13T15:41:00.001-05:00

and it's not censored! If you're a hulu fan, please give the old girl a whirl :)

For a Good Time Call C.U.B.A.

2011-12-12T07:02:00.001-05:00

My Aussie friend Conchita was able to visit a land without McDonalds or Starbucks, with nary a laptop or cell phone in sight. In its place, a world of 1950's Chevys and Buicks and ElDorado's with massive silver hood ornaments, who with each scrape or scuffle, much like its resilient owners, is sanded down, rebuffed, replastered, repainted and put right back out on the road to carry on.

She says everyone has their price. Because the government owns everything from the bus lines to the hotels and they pay only $20 a month so you better be clever, hopefully clever and sexy, to survive.

She recommends you hit up Cuba Junky site for information on how to stay with the locals in a casa particular. Apparently they call it that because you do get hooked on Cuba and will no doubt return.

She says Castro must be jealous that history always favors the more attractive ones who die young.

Che Guevara... on her handbag.

At night, the party people gather along an outdoor stretch of waterfront they call the Malecon. Here locals meet up to dance and sing, play trumpets, pick pockets, chat and drink and smoke and flirt.

When Conchita gets hungry late one night after too many rums at the Malecon, new friends walk her to a gas station, but there is no food - just spare auto parts, 1950s parts, of course, and motor oil. But the locals go into the back and later emerge with TuKola sodas and sandwiches. The midnight attendants sell homemade lunches in secret, to pad their income.

I'm told the only advertising is propaganda. That according to the billboards, everything is done in the name of a "revolution" that you might think is happening today. But it happened in 1959. And you must not speak poorly of the revolution or its despots, because there are informants and you will go to jail.

"all our action is a cry of war against imperialism"

A wonderful bounty of food, is always artfully served.

In a country village called Vinales, there are caves with rivers and stalagtites.

Where they smoke these kind of cigarettes.

But no matter how popular the locals are, tourists like Conchita will always be more popular. And they will pay for everyone the meet, wherever they may go (nightclubbing?), and while off-putting at first, this comes to feel natural because if you can afford a plane ticket, you are extraordinarily wealthy.

One day, on a perfect white sand beach, she was speaking with a young local man who had big dreams. As they spoke, she looked around at the sun and white sand and palm trees in the breeze, and she said, "You live in paradise". He smiled and asked her what was paradise if it came with a cage?

Through the remainder of her balmy nights in Havana, swaying to rum and soaking up salsa, Conchita wondered about the meaning of paradise.

Published By People I know!

2011-12-09T23:21:00.000-05:00

Xmas reading or gift ideas? Congratulations to these friends who have had their works published. Understanding the fortitude (butt-glue) it takes to creatively produce, I'm very proud to present:

My pal Marc Andrews, and his two co-writers, Claire Isaac and David Nichols worked at Australia's number one pop magazine, Smash Hits, during its heyday. They provide all the gossip that's fit to print from behind the scenes during their tenure in the just-released Pop Life.

Thrilled attend their awesomely 80's-themed release party at Hard Rock Cafe last week and though unfamiliar with Smash Hits - I can't wait to read all about it!

My pal Damon Suede (rough, but soft!) writes a seude-like sexy, successful (a best romance finalist) debut novel featuring two Brooklyn firefighters, 10 years post 9/11, in Hot Head. It's hot, it's heavy, it stars flame-haired Griff and Italian stallion Dante who look the same in my head as they do on the cover. While catering to the MM market, Suede manages to throw in subtle messages about family, truth, the American way - with a sweetness that by the finish gets downright mushy!

And now for some poetry! Carl Miller Daniels writes in the world of half-naked young hung men doing outrageous, naughty, sweet, heartbreaking things that they don't usually know they're doing. But Carl does! In his scintillating collection, Gorilla Architecture, read all about the remorseless Squid Fuckers (pg. 127), wild burnouts in Equals (pg. 53) or the ballsy guy and the mousey guy in Ozone (pg. 64). Of course it's not all about big-dicked men - it's poetry, which goes to places of whimsy, skunks, the smell of metal - asking just as many questions as it writes to resolve.

Down on Sydney's William Street, a plaque on a building reads, "This building was the setting of Vanity Fierce, Graeme Aitken's celebrated 1998 comic novel of gay Sydney". Europe may have building plaques reading, "Joan of Arc burned here" - but Sydney is far more modern!

I rushed out to read all about the antics of uber-hot scene stud Stephen Spear in hot meddling pursuit of his best friend (and love interest) Ant, who he has unknowingly hurt with his own selfish insensitivity. Vanity Fierce is, I presume, based on WM Thackeray's Vanity Fair anti-heroine, Becky Sharp - and I have to say that a vainglorious gay world makes for an ideal update/retelling. I quickly finish and bump into Graeme and HAVE to know if Stephen ever gets his comeuppance?! He tells me there's a sequel he published last year - The Indignities - next on my hot/hit list!

I've loved Sharon Lintz from when we were part of a writers group in NYC and was introduced to her twisted, wonderful genius. After working for years in the porn world, she wrote insanely funny tales from her time (and creepy co-workers) in that world, and had it illustrated by various artists in her first comic, Pornhounds.

She's back with Pornhounds 2 - finishing up her "career" (where she was ghostwriter of the porn star "editor" named Cytherea), a move to Tampa to teach college, and tales that include being a pawn in a "war" between two rival oncologists as she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. Who's gonna do her double masectomy? Find out here! For only $6! If there's anyone who can weave both porn and cancer together in a web of collectible hilarity, it's Sharon.

The Mind of a Bam

2011-12-08T01:47:00.000-05:00

Yum-Cha is this type of Chinese dining where you are unceremoniously seated and then attacked by a flurry of bumper carts filled with noodles, dumplings, soups, veggies, desserts and platters of clamari, duck and WTF is that??! All you have to do is nod your head or raise a hand as they swirl around and slam-bang! That dish is on your table and your menu card is stamped and the bill ends up way over $80 for two people (no booze) because they know you're there because you're a glutton who can't say no until lying on your right side praying for a puke so you can at least finish all what you were foolish enough to flag down.

Mid-shovel during our most recent Yum-Cha fiasco, Bam looks at me perplexed and asks, out of the blue, "What year was the General Slocum disaster?" I answer, "1907?" He says, "Wasn't it earlier than that?" Only then do I wonder what the General Slocum disaster - America's little-known and yet biggest domestic loss of life prior to 9/11 - came to mind at this precise moment of time?

The disaster featured German immigrants on a picnic who boarded the General Slocum in the East River of Manhattan. It quickly caught fire, flames fanned and over 1,000 people died - burned to a crisp or unable to swim in that period's fashionable, drown-happy petticoat garments. Since they were only poor immigrants, nobody much cared what happened to them and distraught at both the loss and the lack of public outcry, German widowers, sans wives and children, packed up and left the area then known as "Little Germany" - altering forever the ethnic makeup of the Lower East Side.

The General Slocum disaster, of course, has nothing to do with Yum-Cha, China, or Sydney, Australia, where we are; or pigging out, what we are now doing. In fact, it is so abstruse a topic that I ask, no, I insist upon knowing from whence it came. Bam racks his brain and here we follow the mind in all its leapfroggery:

All the Chinese food swirling around made him imagine there was just one massive kitchen in the back with arterial tunnels leading to all the Chinese food restaurants in Sydney's Chinatown.
This reminds him of the row of cheap Indian restaurants in New York's East Village, where we have long imagined there is one long corridor in back, with a massive kitchen serving the same slop to all the restaurants.
The row of cheap Indian restaurants is on the south side of 6th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues.
On the north side of 6th street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues is an old Jewish synagogue.
Said synagogue was once the St. Mark's Lutheran Church, founded in 1846, and attended by the German occupants of the area at the turn of last century. It was the same Lutheran church that organized the ill-fated excursion on the General Slocum.

And the brain train chugs into the station. What a dreamy ride. But isn't it nice that someone today remembers all those poor souls lost? And he was right - it was a bit earlier, as an iphone soon remedied:. June 15, 1904.

Working Within The Box

2011-12-07T06:50:00.002-05:00

The little light of my life, my favorite gym instructor, abandoned me. He left the evening Fitness First Body Pump class and, like an old testament test of faith - switched his class to 6am to see if I would follow him! Like Abraham ready to slaughter his son (now that's what you call ~~fucked up~~ devotion!) my shoulders, bicep and ass sacrificed themselves to Fitness First at the appointed hour.

Unlike that story, this one didn't end with some angel saying, Just Kidding! I got myself to the altar
expecting to find another two acolytes at such an hour. Instead, I find 4 men and 100 women because women are always more attuned to, more appreciative of, vitality. "So you all got here at 6am!" he says with a wink, "That was not the hardest part!"

Fitness First ate up most all the gym competition in Australia and has become a corporate answer to fitness across 15 nations. Their fitness classes are farmed out to another corporation, Les Mills International. Les Mills sells fitness programs to 75 countries - and each of these classes, Body Pump, for example, are regimented and set to licensed tunes - usually bad 90's covers (read: affordable!) choreographed with every step the same each day. Every day each same step, until the next "session" is launched every three months.

There is no room for creativity. No "freestyle". Whatever happened to the instructors who lead with their own music, stamp their own style, and recruit a following? One in particular I recall from NYC, Tina Thompson, champion bodybuilder and dancer, who while giving a kick-ass (always varied) workout of her own would make us laugh and teach ("You won't be able to do this forever, how many more years to do you have to sweat like this!") in the way of philosophy, empowerment, awareness.

Les Mills' corporate, planned, structured, strict, "get fit with same same same" is intended to suck out an individual instructor's substance (and with it, gym patrons' notion of free thinking - and don't let me finish the logical conclusion of this train). All classes feature a ton of equipment, even the abs class (or, um, CX-WORX) involves a contorting and pulling of rubber ropes (?) when let's face it - all of these fitness classes could be handily accomplished without a single apparatus.

But my favourite instructor, even at 6am, manages to make this regiment his own and take the piss. In the middle of the exacting choreography, comes "This is agony! Cruelty! What do you say we hang it all and go to breakfast?" without missing one raise of the barbell, lunge or lift. With winks, grunts and a trademark infectious joy, he'll say, "This music track I really can't stand - I mean, can you? Britney Spears being sung by a man. Homo, he didn't!"

What's most curious is he's individually managed to make even the same exact routine, set to the same exact music, new and special and inspiring each time. He's inserted (effortlessly?) creativity into (or out of) staid corporate confines. Let that be a lesson to me.

Tree of Life - Film Review

2011-12-05T19:58:00.002-05:00

The Tree of Life won the Palme D'Or prize at Cannes, so I sat down with a bottle of chardonnay and figured I'd give it a whirl. It begins with an almost whispered (a recurrent theme in this film) soliloquy on grace (accepting insults, forgiving, loving) versus nature (self-involved, wanting it my way, struggle). We're in the 50's with Brad Pitt and his wife, we learn they lost a child. Then we're 2011 and Sean Penn is the brother of the one who died, and so far I'm following along although it's non-linear, features a window motif and artsy pans up into tree branches until suddenly it's a nature film.

Jellyfish. Canyons. Horizons. A wobbling underwater creature that looks like a flying vagina. And then, I swear they were in there, dinosaurs! I thought either the disc was damaged or someone spiked my wine. I went to shut it off and give up on what I determined to be piece of cinematic masturbation, picturing as I did the self-important snobs at Cannes roundly applauding as they turn to one another, tearfully nodding in silent assurance that they, and only they, understand implicitly the nobility of such an undertaking.

But instead of shutting it off, I had a huge gulp of wine. Maybe a few gulps of wine.

And when I got over my need for narrative or the built-in desire for a story to be specific, I allowed the film to be a mood. When the credits rolled and it read, "Written and Directed by Terrence Malick" I was confused because it didn't feel like there was any writing. It felt like a humble session of therapy. A religious experience that reminded me (in a meaningful way) that nothing matters in the grand scheme. It became an ode to existence, a hymn to eternity.

I recommend this film to anyone who had a child die, or anyone with a bottle of chardonnay to kill.

Total Hilarious Eclipse of the Heart

2011-12-03T20:00:00.001-05:00

Bonnie Tyler's video FINALLY explained!! "Staring at the swim team gets you killed by a gang of ninjas who know how to twirl"!

Total Eclipse spoof by chinesedaughter

Sydney Marriage Equality March

2011-12-03T03:27:00.000-05:00

Bam and I joined several thousands to march today for marriage equality in Australia. It was a funny and empowering to force bystanders, shoppers, grannies, to take notice. And in a country with so little to complain about; a land where people are so mellow, it was surprising and exciting to see so many people come out for a cause. As I overheard someone say, "This is the most people Darling Harbour has seen since the Bicentennial!

We ended up filing into the harbour to chant at the government who were having a "conscience vote" (whatever that means) on whether gays should have equal civil rights. Basically, to show the ginger disaster that PM, Julia Gillard, that she's not only resisting inevitability - she is a hypocritical twat.

At one of my favorite local shops, BANG, the back of their promo postcards reads: "Julia Gillard recently declared her objection to gay marriage being 'our heritage, traditions and history' - so may we remind her that if we stuck to our 'heritage, traditions and history', black people would still be slaves, immigrants would only be white, women and aboriginal people would not be allowed to vote, and Australia would never elect an unmarried female PM living with a defacto partner."

It's Time

2011-12-02T03:06:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you've seen this affecting Australian propaganda. It went viral this past week. I wish both that I could master the art of cinema by saying something profound without uttering a single word, and that we didn't have to prove we are "just like everyone else". In any case, well done Australia's Get UP.

Equality rally/march tomorrow in Sydney's Hyde Park, 1pm. It's the first rally, protest or demonstration I've heard whisper of in this comfy country. In other words, see you there!

People in the Pool

2011-12-01T08:12:00.003-05:00

The waters of Boy Charlton Pool are a filtered mix of harbour saltwater and chlorine and it's practically empty on the weekend. That's when the starboard side wooden planks are overrun with a fashion show (and accompanying jury) mainly of gays and honorary gays (Hugh Jackman) strutting, admiring and sunning for one another.

But in the morning, the deck is empty and people are actually swimming laps. The pool is at rush hour peak from 6:30 to 7:30am with squads taking up three lanes and the rest jam-packed with the pre-work crowd. It's all strokes, flip-turns and foaming water. I keep eyes on them as I languidly swim my 32 lap mile, and really want to know what, if anything, they're contemplating as they complete their rotations?

On the outside, it appears their minds are harmoniously syncopated with each breath (once every four strokes) as their bodies slice the water. Swimming is meant to be meditative. Escaping worlds of stress as you paddle to and fro, alone in your head as it lulls into indulgent me-time. But in my (head) case, there's not the still safe, sensory deprivation. There are voices and they don't shut up! Swimming with the others, it would appear we're all in it silently together, but in my head I'm not sure if we're all part of the same school - or if I'm a separate fish, surrounded?

I know the others by their behavior. In a busy (not slow) lane with seven other swimmers, a certain woman unfailingly decides, suddenly, to do a few gentle lengths of breaststroke. The breaststroke purports to be exercise, much like pizza purports to be a vegetable. Everyone knows if you don't really want to workout or even bother getting your hair wet, but still give the appearance of aquatic exercise - have a breaststroke. And though everyone is passing her, while trying to avoid oncoming swimmers as well as the sudden and dangerous frog-leg kick of her breaststroke, she carries on seemingly unaware: an obliviousness I always attribute to arrogant discourtesy.

She bookends the man who outfits himself with fins, hand paddles, and - so he won't have to turn his head to breathe - a snorkel. When I watch him, he's always nipping at someone's toes, and when he takes a break at the end of the pool, I perceive in his face a mix of both pride in his speed - and an aggravation that, though with none of his props, everyone else swims far slower than he does.

A rather out of shape man stands at the end of the slow lane, hanging onto the lane line. I'm not sure he ever leaves that spot, and yet I picture him going into work, hair wet and smelling of chlorine, proudly telling the girls he works with what a workout he had at the pool, when really all he did was get wet.

One really truly beautiful man wears red speedos with a white poinsettia print on the ass. He comes at about 7:27am and stretches, arms over his head, for many minutes, strategizing which lane he's going to dedicate himself to. Which one has the least amount, not of people, but of people who are aware of their own abilities/disabilities and have chosen a lane accordingly. Once he makes this decision, he will not leave this lane. I always hope its mine.

The Slapper is a trim older man who looks sweet in the locker room, but in the water his freestyle is armed with a right hook that comes round like an out of control windmill and WHAP! punishes the pool. Beware the newcomer who, unaware, does not know to swim far to the left so as to avoid the unbridled slapper which will, and does, swat you hard in the arm, back or even head. It's a slap and swim, because he doesn't stop to apologize, or amend his form. Olympian Janet Evans had one wild arm, sort of a seal flipper, but she was Janet Evans.

I think Slapper may have seen her in Seoul back in '88, made a go at imitation and since then, underwater, imagines his frenetic technique to resemble, above water, that of a champion gold medalist.

Of course my head is extrapolating, processing, making all of this up. I speak to nobody and nobody to me until one young woman does. "I'm puffed," she exclaims as she finishes a lap. "This thing is taking all my energy," and she points down - I'm almost afraid to look - to her distended, very pregnant belly.

I consider the little creature swimming inside of her, and of her swimming here with all of us. And that each of these characters at the pool, they might stand for something. Maybe we are not people at all, but metaphors.

2011-11-25T00:28:00.002-05:00

Going Down in La La Land (Fact Fused Fiction!)

2011-11-23T02:59:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Matt J. Horn for this fun interview (and for posting a pic of me from 2005! Note to self: update the gallery!) on his blog. I share my experience filming Going Down in La La Land, mean queens, travel, and somehow we got to seating leggy Cyd Charisse at a table beside math whiz Bertrand Russell. Read it here - it's all the goss that's fit to print!

It's always too quick!

2011-11-20T02:16:00.001-05:00

I gotta say it's not everyone who can put up with me, but those who do are dynamos!! And it's always good to spend time together - even if it's never enough time. Not sure what's the point of missing (or, for that matter, regretting). It seems like misplaced, wasted energy - missing is a form of backpedaling, and easily exacerbated with alcohol.

If you started missing everyone and everything you wouldn't take another step forward. So: hello friends, goodbye friends. It feels just like I never left you. And that makes me very happy.

Crazy Dan and Wayne

Mikey, Bam, Chad and Danny

Devan and Becky

Crazy!!

Cooldan and Esteban

The Gang's All Here

Pom Pom Frenzy

2011-11-17T05:13:00.000-05:00

I appreciate football. The pomp and circumstance, the grandstands, the excitement, but appreciation is not understanding. Imagine attending a Broadway drama in 1922. The audience is rapt, weeping uncontrollably at a performance you consider not only utterly un-moving, but unbelievable. This is the way I feel when I enter a football stadium.

I don’t understand the lathered effect football produces upon its fans, the irrational highs and lows –always seemingly one beer short of murder or suicide. From the perspective of an outsider, fans - a cute abbreviation for fanaticals – don’t seem to remember it’s just a game.

But game can be a scary four letter word, especially if you’re in ancient Rome and the fans are screaming for the lion to tear your Christian ass to shreds. Or if you’re a lion today, you’re game. Game like the Grizzly killed only because he’s got a head and you've got a rifle, space on the wall, and a taxidermist father-in-law. Humans have dominion over the other animals – large and in charge, but instead of looking after lesser species, we're wont to hunt and kill. Worse, we look the other way as others hunt and kill for us.

They’re not living creatures that feel pain and fear – they’re only game. Game as in the hunted. In that same genre of game, unspools the sordid pedophilia coverup by Penn State football. The lesser creatures, in this case, being human boys. Sucked, sodomized, fondled rampantly for years as easily poachable prey. How this Sandusky racket endured for so many years is a disgrace to our race.

Assistant Mike McQueary saw him raping a ten year old boy in the Penn State showers. McQueary did not stop the rape. As key witness for the prosecution, McQueary must have immunity as “whistleblower” even though his whistle was a whisper. Here was a 28 year old man who put his career and school sports program ahead of protecting a child from rape. He skittered off, told his father and, the following day, the coach. Who are the Penn State apologists for “JoePa”? Imagine being told your assistant was anally raping a ten year old boy! Coach did not want to know details, coach did not call the police; coach did not, in his capacity as head coach, help the kids. He told two higher-ups, they told the President. For the love of the game, not one of them called the police.

Reputations took top priority, as fanaticals prefer pom poms to perspective in this blurry thing we call reality. Reality TV is not even reality. We allow, even encourage our news cycle to cough up yet another “story” about the rumors surrounding Obama’s birth certificate or how gay marriage is tantamount to terrorism, but (even with an eyewitness) the media (and law) can’t sniff out assistant coach Sandusky sodomizing youth for years.

Until the actual game is measured less between stadium goalposts and more in sensitivity to the suffering of others; until victory is not pummeling an opponent but prioritizing empathy, our hometown scoreboard (have I exhausted this metaphor yet?) will continue to flash a big bright LOSE.

As the scandal unravels, how it blackens: Another married Republican in a sex scandal– who has adopted several boys. A timely early-retirement. A missing DA, presumed dead. Sandusky having founded a victim mill he fronted as a charity for “at-risk” (ahem) youth. His autobiography titled “Touched” (you can’t make this up). Now we see clearly – now, after how long? How many years with how many people simply looking the other way?

Maureen Dowd nails the truth: “Like the Roman Catholic church hierarchy, the Penn State hierarchy appears to have covered up pedophile crimes to protect its brand.”

Madonna sings the truth (about the AIDS crisis, and apt here): Some say life isn’t fair/I say people just don’t care/They’d rather turn the other way/And wait for this thing to go away.

And, for the triple shot, Martin Luther King, jr: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Wonder what breed of human beings are embroiled in the scandal? Many only became complicit because they willingly refused to know, report or look into it. How do we know that under the same circumstances, would want to know the details - to protect and serve the prey?

The only hope for humanity in the Grand Jury Report lies in the reaction of one single janitor, and even he didn’t alert authorities. Read it. Read the report and ask yourself if Sandusky is guilty, if the witnesses testimony is credible. Ask what you would have done. If you don’t want to read the details in this report and you are a coach, teacher or parent of young children you need to ask yourself why not. Why exactly aren’t you game?

New York Was Not Sleeping!

2011-11-15T08:31:00.002-05:00

Not last night - or ever. And I can't tell what I hate more, that shit is going on or that shit is going on and I'm not there for it? The hive of activity swarmed my Facebook and Twitter (this is to say not via mainstream media) as I was informed concurrently that a) Fire Island was on... FIRE and b) OWS was raided and destroyed by the NYPD. It was a most remarkable night (mare) in NY.

Fire Island Pines went up in smoke. The central harbor: Sip & Twirl, Pavilion, apparently all gone. So far, no injuries or deaths reported. I'm happy to know it didn't burn in August, when all flamers would have gone up in flames, but I can't help thinking of not only my wonderful friends who live and own businesses there, but the memories. If you haven't been it's hard to relay the magic that Fire Island is. I've seen grown men cry on the departing ferry, fearing return to the cruel real world. It's a safe homo haven that exists nowhere else on earth. I've no doubt this special place will rise again, resilient.

via Towleroad.com

The next thing to blow up was the sudden 1am raid on Zucotti Park and Occupy Wall Street by the NYPD. They moved in with batons and pepper spray and took back the park from the protesters, telling all press they were "no longer press" and claiming they needed clear air space to avoid helicopter news coverage. The MTA halted all subway service to downtown Manhattan, cutting access to supporters. Still there were hundreds of supporters who heard, via Twitter, and hit downtown.

I predict today a seriously massive rally/protest, that involves what's left of New York's middle class. Perhaps it was time to transform, perhaps tent city had run its course, but OWS now has the support of the 99%. There's a reason 2/3 of my parents children had to seek employment overseas. A reason why believing your politician cares about you is like believing your rapist loves you (credit: Judah Friedlander). It's interesting to note US capitalism is touted as the best political system when we owe millions to communist China. Explain that shit!

Explain why instead of changing the lobbyist maws that feed off your representatives and the fact that corporations are considered people, why the government shuts down peaceful protest with force and a media blackout? If you don't allow citizens a peaceful protest, despite nihilist anarchists and addicts who may suckle onto the movement, may I predict a future of desperate (times and measures) third world tactics: kidnapping and ransoming of the smarmiest of the 1%.

It took the left (and middle) a long while to come together, but now... it's (ahem) too big to fail. Bloomberg, you've got some 'splaining to do!

Next Tuesday Night in NY!

2011-11-14T23:14:00.000-05:00

Congrats to my pal Mike Cavnaugh on celebrating two years of his non-profit gaylifenyc.org, a news, resource and entertainment site for newly diagnosed people living with HIV/AIDS. Here he speaks with two fabulous females: Wanda Sykes and one of my personal favorites, Cyndi Lauper (showing her true, very serious, colors).

To celebrate gaylifenyc.org/hivhero.org's 2nd anniversary party, join Mike and the hot boys of Chicago (the musical) Peter Nelson, Broadway hero Brian Spitulnik, Mr. Broadway 2011 Michael Cusumano; afruitfli Jamie T. Ranieri and knockout performances by Kelly King and Jonathan D. Lovitz! Tuesday, November 22, 11pm. @ The Ritz: 369 West 46th.

Photos: Occupy Wall Street Prepares for Winter

2011-11-12T01:46:00.000-05:00

It's like Burning Man - without the dust. Radical self-expression is still self-expression, even if you have the same complaint. OWS is not huge, but it's representative of something huge.

Down at the park, I overheard one woman telling an occupant what he needed to do differently to be a more effective activist. They got into an argument with him telling her he'd do things his way, and she could do things her way, and that together they will enact change.

Needless to say, there's a lot of cat-skinning going on.

Funny to see other agendas attempting to use OWS hype to fuel their own causes. Free Tibet (above)

I like this attitude above: This is not a protest, this is an AFFIRMATION of the vitality and idealism underneath the present American nightmare. The Whitman quote, "I contain multitudes... Do I contradict myself? Then I contradict myself" reminds me of a piece from Emerson's Self-Reliance:

"Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. - Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood." To be great is to be misunderstood. Maybe OWS is misunderstood as it doesn't seem to elicit any single definable demands or goal, but may it speak with hard words today and hard words tomorrow!

Check this front page story from the Huffington Post on the beginnings of the movement: "re-awakening the radical imagination" (or is that the great slumbering giant?)

Nearby, 1 World Trade Center crawls out of the ashes...

The Latest on My 2011 Films!

2011-11-07T07:13:00.000-05:00

Eating Out 4 is now out on DVD! Buy it, please don't pirate it. Support independent filmmaking and save your pirating prowess for big budget bullshit! In Sydney, pick it up at Darlinghurst Bookshop.

Not much budget was spent on my costume, er, cocksock! Here's a screenshot from the shower scene with sexy Chris Salvatore:

Notable as the only film this year where Jesse Archer did keep his clothes on, and playing prestigious closing night at Chicago's 30th Reeling International Film Festival is Going Down in La La Land!

Whaaaa??! I know!

La La Land is scorching the circuit! Lauded director Casper Andreas and Allison Lane (who rightly won Best Actress at the Iris Prize in Wales for her role as the outrageously ambitious roommate Candy) will be present. Not sure if the superstar center of it all Matthew Ludwinski aka he who went down will be there, but dammit - get to Chicago and lick the poster!!

Also playing Reeling is my thriller flick Into the Lion's Den! It's playing Tuesday and my co-star, pal and supermodel Ronnie Kroell will be in screening attendance, and also hosting an after-party!

Where am I and what am I doing missing all of this action?! I do not even want to talk about it. Luckily, I was able to join for the Into the Lion's Den in Washington DC last month at Reel Affirmations. Fantastic to see the gorgeous cast and crew; fast friends made during the hectic shoot. It was also different and special to see them outside of rape dungeon!

writer Philip Malaczewski, Ronnie Kroell, Kristen-Alexzander Griffiths and me

Joey DiGuglielmo at the Washington Blade called Into the Lion's Den genuinely suspenseful and nerve-jangling. He also called me a grown-up-and-gay Dennis the Menace. Ha! And that was before I went blond!


Lovely cast and crew!

The lineup. Below, writer Philip talks about writing the script and popping his cinematic cherry. Ronnie is just happy to have passed the mic and not have to talk about how he couldn't drive stick shift!!

The outrageous Fire Island (set and shot!) comedy Half-Share, just had a successful run at the NYTVFest and we're finishing up some hilarious video promos I'll be sharing here shortly!

In the meantime, have you seen the trailer? Alec Mapa kills me every time.

As Half-Share plays more shorts festivals, we're already in talks for circulation and distribution. And speaking of births - Violet Tendencies is not only now available for download and purchase, but she made her debut on the LOGO channel last month!

She was also, tramp that she is, recently spotted hanging out in a DVD vending machine in King's Cross, slumming between Vin Diesel and Justin Bieber. This is not a pleasant sandwich for a fag hag, please rent/rescue her!!

Why Have His Kisses Gone Cold??

2011-11-06T05:26:00.000-05:00

Because her cooter's gone feral! Check out these fearsome vintage vaginal douching ads from 1948. "Feminine daintiness and charm" is in grave danger here. If the marriage is foul - it's her own foul fault! That's the scare tactic approach to get you to buy Lysol douche. Couldn't be he's stepping out with the maid or a man... it's you and your non-disinfected, unsanitary vagina. Click on this QUIZ:

Lysol Vaginal Douching - Or Else

I'm not sure how this qualifies as a quiz if all the answers are supplied. But you'd better squirt Lysol up your vagina - to save your marriage! Forget that Lysol is now used to disinfect toilet bowls, the fine print guarantees it is "non-injurious to delicate membrane". I'm no expert here, but this cannot have been good for you -- do women even douche anymore?

The ads are otherwise fairly consistent with what you see today - lose fat with "Protam" and oxidize fat at a rate of 7 pounds a week with no: drugs, hardship, exercise or massage! Buy "mum" to keep you free of underarm odor (a bath is not preventative; a bath only removes current man-repellant odors). Also, dont' forget to join the "tampax millions"!

Clearly it's women reading "Silver Screen" magazine - and though advertising is and has always been scruple-free, don't you feel sorry for these fretful housewives whose feminine daintiness is besieged by such "scientific facts", "doctors" and "facts"? Even worse, pity the models! How does your career recover after inhabiting the role of the nailbiting young wife who realizes, too late, she could have saved her charm had she only zapped her shameful, disgusting, marriage-killing coochie with Zonite?

send away for the booklet

November 1948 - 63 Years Ago

2011-11-04T16:34:00.000-05:00

Imagine yourself interviewed today - and being able to then look at what you said and who you were, in the distant future. What would ring true? What would appear uncanny or ironic; what would you think about the unexpected twists of fate that were to befall you? I guess that's why people go to psychics.

I got my hands on a copy of Silver Screen magazine, November 1948, and here are tales of three screen queens found in its pages. Gene Tierney, with her sexy overbite, is to me the most stunning of sirens. Here, she talks about how all the attention of celebrity would make you go mad if you didn't laugh:

Gene Tierney didn't laugh enough, one might discern, as a few years after this issue, mental illness saw her undergo 27 electroshock treatments. She lost a ton of her memory and went on to scorn the use of this method. Gene didn't have it easy, even with the beauty and fame. Her daughter Daria was born severely retarded because of rubella contracted when a female fan broke quarantine (with rubella) to meet Gene Tierney when she (pregnant) was selling war bonds.

Add to that failed romances with prince Aly Khan (his father wouldn't let him marry yet another movie star after the debacle with Rita Hayworth) and JFK (he had political ambitions; she was divorced), and the tabloid headlines after she was discovered working in a dress shop post electroshock-therapy - and Gene's career, together with her sanity, struggled to survive.

She pulled herself together for a couple small roles, a bio "Self-Portrait" (I even read it) and ultimately married a rich oil baron who had previously been married to the next star in this issue, Hedy Lamarr.

It must've been a lot of pressure to be labeled 'most beautiful woman in the world', but such was Hedy's lot.

In this issue, Hedy is returning to the screen in Samson and Delilah, after taking a two years off because being considered not much more than a smoldering glamor girl tired her. She once said "Any girl can be glamorous; all you have to do is stand still and look stupid." Here in 1948, she just wants to be happy, with shades of Garbo's "I want to be alone" or rather, as Garbo clarified, "I want to be left alone" (there's a difference).

Lamarr would soon be left mostly alone, until an embarrassing $21 shoplifting (laxatives and eyedrops, honey) arrest (charges dropped) erupted in the early 1990's. In early 2000, she died alone in her sleep near Orlando, Florida, but not before something enormously surprising would top even her world-famous beauty.

Once married to a jealous Nazi arms dealer in Austria, Hedy had to drug her maid and don the uniform to escape him. But from that marriage, she learned much about weapons, and with a deft composer she met in Hollywood, George Antheil, she would patent frequency hopping, to make radio guided torpedoes harder to detect. She did this seven years prior to this interview - in 1941. Though such technology was not yet available, it was later used in war and her spread spectrum patent became the basis for cell phones and the wifi technology we use today. Finally given credit (but never a penny) for her invention in the late '1990's, she said only, "It's about time."

In 1948, Lizabeth Scott (below) was Paramount's husky answer to sultry vixens Veronica Lake and Lauren Bacall. They even labeled her The Threat.

In private life, she went by "Scotty", wore only men's cologne and didn't care for "frilly" femininity. On screen, she seduced men and audiences alike- but there's a reason you don't recognize her name like you do the above. A few years after this issue of Silver Screen hit the stands, an issue of tabloid "Confidential" outed her as a lesbian. A "baritone babe" - busted as a client on the rolodex of a famous female call-girl house. Her reputation ruined, she sued for libel - lost - Paramount dropped her and it all spiralled.

Of the three ladies here, Lizabeth Scott is the only one alive today. She's the only one now able to look back with perspective, elucidate or comment, but of the scandal, the alleged lesbianism, any of it, for all of these many years, she refuses to speak. The Threat declines all interviews.

The Toilets of Havana

2011-11-01T15:58:00.000-05:00

What's one thing you take for granted every day that they don't have in Cuba? Pens for writing, shoes for walking, the freedom to criticize your stupid government for perpetuating this grudge of an embargo for so long - and not be thrown in jail? Yes! But here's another luxury you didn't even realize was a luxury: TOILET SEATS!

Imagine the welcoming ceramic as it caresses your backside. Apparently toilet seats/lids are impossible to come by and when they are come by - cost hundreds upon hundreds of US dollars. Mainly, it's state-run hotels have these extravagances. So if you ever go to Cuba, smuggle toilet seats in your bags and do their asses a favor!

Back to the Brink

2011-10-19T16:33:00.000-05:00

NYC is enjoying a fabulous Indian summer and here I am with all the freaks atop the Standard Hotel over the High Line. This is the boutique hotel where people walking their dogs look up scandalized to see guests in the windows performing a striptease. It's a good thing they can't glimpse the top at night or they'd really be in for an eyeful! ... Especially in Boom Boom nightclub's floor to ceiling windowed bathrooms.

I gotta say Tuesday night is always the best night out in NY, NY.


the rooftop bar and midtown manhattan beyond...

creatures of the night

Dee Dee Luxe and drag king Murray Hill

Transparency is important

My Argentine ex Gabriel is taking the city by storm with his BF Emanuel. I've been having a blast with them and thankfully my Spanish came right back as they don't speak any English. This does not impede them from launching into conversations in Spanish with my friends here and also complete strangers - who have no idea what is going on.

When I tell the guys why they can't just speak Spanish to strangers and expect them to understand, they reply with: "But people here speak to us in English and expect us to understand!" and then they smile and flit off. They're like big kids and I love it.


Gabriel takes the swing.

Emanuel, Amanda Lepore and Gabriel

When they started yammering away to Amanda Lepore, I asked her if she spoke any Spanish. She replied, "Yes. I can say HOMBRE." !!


If you haven't noticed I'm a blonde and yes I'm having more fun :)

Gentlemen prefer me!

Raspberries!

This Circus is Simply TAWDRY, Dahlink!!

2011-10-09T01:31:00.001-05:00

There's a movie in this. Maybe 15 movies. Who is writing the screenplay!? 94 year old Zsa Zsa Gabor was rushed to the hospital after losing consciousness and bleeding from a tube in her stomach. Odds are Zsa Zsa will soon outrace Rev Billy Graham at the top of the dead pool, and she only has one leg!
Nobody is gonna detain this bitch either, remember what happened last time she got caught speeding?

2011 may be Zsa Zsa's most notorious year to date. The 94 year old had one of her legs amputated in January and suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed. In August, her 9th husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, took out a billboard in LA, announcing a party for their anniversary.

This caused huge controversy, especially from Gabor's daughter Francesca Hilton who is refused visitation rights to her mother and claims Von Anahlt is creating a "circus atmosphere" around her mother's health. No, you don't say! And how about that party? Everyone was there except Zsa Zsa herself, who reportedly watched it on a screen from her bedroom. TMZ reports: let her eat cake! And despite rumors that Zsa Zsa was not there and actually dead, The Prince said she "had a great time!"

I recently read up on Zsa Zsa and her sisters Eva and Magda - the "Budapest Bombshells" - in fanbook Gaborabilia (thanks Richard!) and they all lead spectacular and fascinating lives. Glamor holds nothing for me, but there is something remarkable in the ambition, personality, drive and determination that made and keeps Zsa Zsa famous. As she once put it, "If I only had a little humility - I'd be perfect!"

Zsa Zsa (not born Zsa Zsa) is the original "famous for being famous" celebrity self-creation - and it seems her only real competition these days is her husband. Prince (not born a prince) Frederic has more circus acts up his sleeve than a billboard and party for an old woman out of her wits. This year, he declared Zsa Zsa's body will be preserved with a process called plastination ("my wife always dreamt that her beauty would be immortal"), while also telling CNN his plans to find a surrogate to make 94 year old Zsa Zsa a new mama so she can "once again enjoy the wonders of motherhood."

AND, we're not finished yet, Prince Frederic announced his plans to run for Mayor of Los Angeles! The man has clearly taken pages from Zsa Zsa's publicity-hungry book. Are they not made for each other? They should be awarded most quintessential Hollywood couple. A paralytic Zsa Zsa could accept the award live (or otherwise) from her bedroom, suckling her newborn child.

It all seems a most befitting end to the Queen of Outer Space.

Excercise Your RIGHT to Molest!

2011-10-08T00:15:00.001-05:00

I don't even recognize myself as the fembot alien drag queen MayDay (Mayhem?) who exploded into the Glitter Ball rocking vintage Pucci! Who wants to blend in at an event called the Glitter Ball? My friend and fellow ex-pat friend Ben aka Heather Number One is a fabulous queen on the scene and promised not just to transform me, but to take me all the way to "Sydney-Level Drag". Ben took me under his wing at his place and hours four later,we emerged:

MayDay and Heather... forever!

Bam took that four hours as an opportunity to nap. How can you sleep through this? Heather had everything, from chicken cutlet breasts to spirit gum to smash my real eyebrows flat into my face. When we got to the Glitter Ball, they let us in for free! Why oh why did I pre-buy that $70 ticket!?

Heather is looking flawless as a young Liza (if there ever was such a thing!) I got the mohawk wig at Paddy's Market earlier in the day just before hitting Chinatown for our "last meal" - as you can't eat and drag. We loaded up on (now this is revolting) french fries, pork buns, emperor puffs and...pizza.

At some point in the night, I wanted to be a boy again - not just because the heels were killing me and my balls were smashed. Drag is a responsibility. You're like an art installation that musn't fuck up while on display. You can't be a drag queen off your tits on the dancefloor! Well, I guess you can, but no thanks. And dressed up, I did get to enjoy certain other perks including but not limited to "The RIGHT to molest!" as Heather puts it.

Drag queens get away with most everything, and they're granted unwritten but understood permission to fondle any man in any way, at will. Not that I haven't been doing this for years, but in drag nobody is going to push me away!

My friend Lesley saw this picture on Facebook and asked which one I was? "The one with too much makeup" I told her and she still couldn't figure it out! Ok, "I'm the one with the fake tits!" When I finally put an end to her anguish, she said flatly that MayDay's lips were "overdone". A drag queen overdoing it? Now that is shocking!

There were many trips to the bathroom for re-touching.

Bam!


Trishy Dishy!

We met this rock star, Trishy Dishy, who told us she was the "Party Queen of Sydney" and promptly levitated her breasts, "Just like I did for Joan Rivers when she was here!" We couldn't get enough of her, and soon discovered she was raised Jehovah's Witness, has 5 kids in their 20s, and is the subject of a reality show. I love to see people who survive religion become such transformative force. I'm a fan!

The party queen of Sydney was later bumped off stage during a routine co-starring a plume feather, as Kitty Glitter, Dallas Dellaforce and Decoda Secret stormed the stage for a knockout performance. The kind you can only find in Sydney, with back up dancers, mythology, choreography with Sinbad swords morphing into air guitars. It was ridiculous, it was hot, it was ridiculously hot and you had to be there!


Kitty Glitter

We headed home for touch-ups at dawn and then hit the after-party at Phoenix club. Girls on the go!

Heather's looking fresh at 7 am in the taxi to Phoenix!

This guy in green was cosying up, passing out on Heather like she was some kind of Madonna mother figure. And we later spoke to a fierce drag queen named Little X, who gave us the entire etymology of her drag name, whose origins ("foxy") began on government documents... ?

By this point, close to noon, we were ogling a hot shirtless man who looked like he just got coughed up at Bondi beach wearing only his 8-pack abs. He was being madly groped by a drag queen with legs like tree trunks and a face like Morgan Freeman. "See?" Heather nudges me, "She is exercising her RIGHT to molest!"

The Meaning of Gay Pride??

2011-10-06T06:30:00.001-05:00

An excuse to go mincing about in parades wearing rainbows and ribbons -- just because, what, you're queer? How is that PRIDE?

I'll tell you. Gay Pride is having made it through an incarceration of aggression, intimidation and abuse perpetrated by bullies in the morphing form of peers, parents, society and the church. Pride is freedom from dogma - which is the (toxic) trap of obeying the results of other people's thinking. Gay Pride is a celebration of survival.

And it is an ongoing celebration, because the shit never really ends does it?

Unlike other minorities, the gay movement has never been backed by a US President. We didn't have a Truman to de-segregate the military and the Supreme Court still allows the majority to vote/trample on our civil rights. Everything the LGBT movement has achieved has been fought loudly on the ground.

That's Pride.

But there can be no pride if you don't survive. Today, everyone knows bullied gay or gay-perceived kids are killing themselves. And, based on my unwilling expertise on bullying, I know this exposure is adding to the arsenal of bully munitions: Kill yourself like the others -- the world would be better off with one less FAGGOT!

Recently another kid, Jamey Rodemeyer, 14, killed himself after enduring years of anti-gay bullying and the thing is - he knew he wasn't alone. We all told him "It Gets Better". He even made a video telling others it would get better, and thanking Lady Gaga for singing he was "Born This Way"!

Upon hearing of his death, Lady Gaga, for her part, promised to meet with President Obama to put an end to bullying. She tweeted, she dedicated a song to Jamey in concert. She has already made good on that promise to meet the President. What would it be like to have a pop star so firmly in your corner?

The Trevor Project: a 24-Hr, Toll-Free, Confidential Suicide Hotline

In my bullied youth, there was no pop star, no media attention, no adult allies aside from my family, far as I knew. That was just fine by me. In the war zone of Fowler Middle School, I certainly didn't want more attention drawn to me. I was embarrassed when people (girls) tried to shield or help me, and humiliated when (rarely) adults tried to intervene. I only wanted one thing back then: to disappear.

These kids can't hide. They're caught in a media glare and, much as it is important (and high time), I worry about that spotlight. Some days I worry my own small contribution to visibility has made it worse, for saving kids like I was. Yes, we're here. We've told and shown them; they know we've all "been there" (in hell) and they're not alone and it gets better. Right?

Knowing is one thing. GI Joe says knowing is half the battle. But considering this new illumination component, knowing may be part of the battle. I used to fantasize about suicide, how best to do it, if anyone might miss me. In my darkest hours, what if I had known there were people out there in the ether, millions, who might miss me? Jamey must have known his suicide would not go unnoticed. So did he want to disappear? Or did he imagine re-birth as a martyr for the zeitgeist?

Either way he chose to end his life despite knowing, albeit abstractly, of a brighter future.

Thing is, when you're on the front lines you can't mentally permit yourself to ponder a peacetime. It's the power of now, full force. Survival is moment by moment. It is not waiting nor even wishing for things to improve, but rather finding that steely resolve that knows you are better, so that when it does actually get better you will have emerged (bruised, battered, but fortified) on the other side, with pride.

How do you impart that?

Remember the Next Time They Call You a Pussy...

2011-10-04T19:53:00.002-05:00

...And because you LOVE Betty White:

Come See My Brand New Film!

2011-10-04T16:55:00.001-05:00

There will be blood!! We had a lot of laughs shooting this thriller out in rural Amish Pennsylvania this past June. Into the Lion's Den has a twiiiiiisted script with lots of surprise twists, so come and check out the world premiere October 16 in Washington DC at the Reel Affirmations Film Festival (tickets here).

If you can't make it to DC, stay tuned for more screenings and a DVD release date. In the meantime, play the teaser below and click "into the lion's den" label below for all the behind-the-scenes fun stuff with the amazing cast and crew including Ronnie Kroell, Kristen Griffiths, whipped cream vodka, and my rape table!

My Career So Far

2011-10-03T02:17:00.000-05:00

Did you know I was made in Taiwan? Here's a fun interview/write up on my life and film career thanks to Leo Buck at Kansas City's Camp Magazine (click here to read). He even got me to tell what I think is most worth doing, and how 9/11 is an analogue for my romantic life with a certain special someone.

One correction, I didn't write Slutty Summer - I only lived it (thanks, Casper)!

http://www.campkc.com/campkc-content.php?Page_ID=1733

There Goes Another First: COLONICS!

2011-09-29T23:26:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you really DO want to feel empty inside! I've done it, my first colonic irrigation "treatment". I've met people who swear by colonics, and word on the advertising street is that they will not only clear your bowels, they'll clear your complexion, cure cancer and probably do your dishes (don't visualize that one).

I lay down on a table beside a panel of knobs and levers that look like something from the Apollo shuttle. The intrepid aeronautical engineer (aka "therapist" Cecilia) sticks a well-lubed tube up my bum and massages my stomach while we literally talk shit for an hour!

She fills me up and lets it out just as I feel full, "There's a good movement," she says as we watch it float by in a large glass tube in the mechanical panel, "Looks like you have a bit of candida, oh - take it easy on the fizzy drinks and whoa...there goes Ali Baba's treasure trove!"

Afterward - I did feel lightweight and like giving high-fives to the world. Yes, I finally understand why ads accompanying colonics always feature exuberant women gaily frolicking in wheat fields:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

All of this kinda makes you wonder what is REALLY going on at the nunnery?

As an anniversary gift, I brought Bam along for the experience, but(t), er, not in tandem. Later that day, we went to the dentist for a cleaning and checkup. One day, two men, four orifices! It was epic.

According to Cecilia, you're actually supposed to get 3 colonics over the course of a month in order to reach the black crud tucked away far up there in the transverse or ascending colon. Three colonics would obviously result in a Katy Perry video:

Who's ready to go full-firework?

Hang On Little Tomato

2011-09-28T09:15:00.002-05:00

Dared open a book as thick and musty as The Neverending Story. I can practically visualize Etrayu and Falcor while reading the 'Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell'. And just when you're slipping into the swamps of sadness (or madness, as the case may be), a dose of a wise old philosopher like Russell will halt your descent, if not yank you out.

Artax, TRY!! (How sad was this scene?)

Of the future, and hope, Russell writes in 1951:

"Men are slow to learn even when all that is to be learned is the road to happiness. Perhaps they can only learn by even more bitter experience than they have already had of the opposite road. But if they are to learn, if torture is to bring them sanity rather than madness, it will only be because some men have preserved sanity and hope throughout. And the more such men there are, the more chance there is that experience will bring wisdom. Each separate one of us can do something to increase this chance, by steadfastness and courage throughout the days of darkness."

In a more pedestrian way, this reminds me of a piece of graffiti I read on a wall somewhere in Paris. It read better in French and I'm butchering the translation, but it was something to the effect of: if the crazy person survives the crazy times, he will become wise.

Wisdom is a funny thing, no? It is love, you can see that, yet it retains distance from passion. It is above anger, envy and ego; it is quick to admit it does not know. You can trust wisdom not to have ulterior motives or an agenda. Wisdom is more than intelligence. A janitor may be wise where the biophysicist is a simple scoundrel.

But what's the perk? Why would you want it? it's not as if wisdom is a career option. It doesn't pay, not in dollars. It pays only in the currency of civilization, and only to those who pay attention.

Crazy person, if you're paying attention: I wish you steadfastness and courage.

Suicide Rollercoaster!

2011-09-26T07:45:00.000-05:00

A mile high. 7 loopty loops. 10 G-Force. Guaranteed death! I'm obsessed with the euthanasia coaster.

Who needs death with dignity, when you can have death with...euphoria? That's just what happens when the blood flows out of your brain for too long: you get silly, then you die of cerebral hypoxia. But first, euphoria. What a way to top an action-packed life!

The coaster is hypothetical and remains a scale model that won't be built until "the politics of technology become more democratic" but read all about it - and tell me it shouldn't be an option?

One day, choosing when and how to end your own life/pain will not be criminal, and the future will be filled with euthanasia. I find that life-affirming.

I definitely want to take the rollercoaster. Loved ones there to bid you farewell. The slow 3-minute ride to the peak, as you contemplate life. A 223mph descent, screaming as you whip at 10 G-force, mouth agape, and - flash! - that was the coaster taking your photo. You laugh imagining pulling an emergency handbrake because, honey, you're seconds from dead but still vain enough not to want your final photo to be in the freaky throes of cerebral hypoxia on the roller coaster. That look cannot be pretty!

But you don't really care. You're euphoric.

At the end of the ride you arrive, a quickly cooling cadaver, as a technician unloads you into a silver cylinder. This technician, now imagined on this blog, will be the anti-hero of a dystopian sci-fi novel and later, a blockbuster screenplay.

He unloads your body into a silver cylinder because you have ordered (it's all decidedly dignified) the works and will become the main ingredient in a solution also involving lye, 300 degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure. In 2011, dissolving in this way was done only infrequently to dispose of animal parts and human bodies donated to science. But now, in the space-conscious, ethically aware future, going out as the brown goo alkaline hydrolisis is all the rage.

If all the action on your final day is at all reflective of your life, there will be much cause for celebration. Your friends have planned a massive party in your honor. And they have promised to toast you...with you.

Half-Share plays for Free in NYC!

2011-09-20T07:49:00.000-05:00

Re-live all the ~~glamor~~ scandal of your summer in Fire Island Pines as Half-Share plays at the New York Television Festival this week! This is the industry's first festival for independent TV artists and a pioneer for showcasing innovative, risk-taking pilots. We're thrilled just to be nominated :) But c'mon, let's hope the festival serves to find it a fitting home on cable!

Sean created a totally jawsome teaser for this week's festival:

If you are in New York City this week, hit Tribeca Cinemas where Half-Share is playing for *FREE* (my absolute favorite four-letter word) this Thursday, Sept 22 at 7:45 or Friday, Sept 23 at 6:15.

Mark your calendars and share the laughs! You can also guarantee entry by reserving multiple seats to either screening for one small fee.

For more on our pilot, catch the trailer below featuring the all-star cast (Alec Mapa! Sam Pancake! Jack Plotnick! That mindless eating, machine Anita Spinoff!) and more on the Half-Share website.

Unweaving the Rainbow

2011-09-19T08:01:00.001-05:00

Richard Dawkins notes how poet John Keats blamed Newton for destroying the beauty of the rainbow by ‘reducing it to prismatic colors’ instead of marvelling at it in ignorant poetic bliss.

After unweaving the rainbow, Dawkins delves into dizzying tangents of enthusiastic science. It's not always cohesive or easy to follow, but when I wasn’t in over my head, I was rapt. Confession: I had to check it out twice (two renewals apiece) and still wound up with overdue library fines!

I’m curious about human behaviour, even if it is terrifically predictable (see later notes on “redundancy”) and there is a lot to glean here. We begin as children both curious and credulous (favoured to listen and obey), not testing when parents say not to swim with alligators or touch burning stoves. This key to our survival also holds a dangerous by-product: blind belief in untruths. Santa’s watching, Jesus lives, masturbation blinds.

How then do we stop being credulous and question? To keep creativity and curiosity and alive, yet not kill the cat? The exciting thing about scientists is they are willing – thrilled, even – to be proven wrong with the right evidence.

Dawkins honors poets (and prefers Keats the man over Newton), but believes in the poetry of our natural world – without laziness or poetic leaps. If there’s a lapse in the fossil record, don’t poetically conclude the Cambrian explosion bloomed brand new species via macromutation. Perhaps the correct fossils have yet to appear?

And about our intelligence– how did it evolve? Did cave drawings lead to maps which led to language? Did the rudimentary act of tossing projectiles to hit fleeing prey – anticipation and timing -– literally toss our thinking into the future?

Our brains are so small, yet able to comprehend so much in because of the economy of “redundancy”. Our brains are layered with the expected, not taking note of our every step or sight because it’s familiar. It doesn't need to pay attention. Explorers and scientists are constantly experimenting, discovering, and absorbing new stimulus. Keep traveling! Without new information it gets stagnant up there; a dead end job performed by rote.

I learn our brains are so used to the redundant they make things up– take poetic license to fill in the blanks and maintain normalcy. In one example, Dawkins uses the hollow face mask illusion (check out a great visual here). Our brains fill in the hollow mask to make it 3D because we’re used to faces being 3D. We see what we expect to see - and that includes scary monsters in the moonlight on your curtains to virgins in your toast. To the credulous, they’re as fleshed out as that hollow face.

I surmise this is why it’s so easy for us not to think outside the box, to be lazy and not expand, why it’s so easy to gaze at a rainbow without wondering why. It’s most likely the reason behind the human tendency to look out for evidence which supports, rather than refutes, our current belief system.

But we do evolve. Dawkins likens the human brain to technological innovation. How software reaches a critical mass that forces hardware advances. There is a self-feeding pressure to evolve, which works for everything, from technology to genes to fads to memes – anything replicating itself from brain to brain:

· Bestseller lists

· popular actors

· proliferance of ridiculous rubber bracelets

· why this video went viral at this particular moment in time

· how that dumb “Who runs the world (girls)” song got stuck in your head

It’s curious to imagine how we might infect others with memes. There may indeed be something to the collective power of thought, wishes, prayer. If enough put it out there, the world will have no choice but to bow before popular demand. So can we please stop making war, walls and reality TV?

“Ahead of their time” individuals have infected the globe with once fringe ideas like anti- slavery, suffrage or environmental awareness. What germinated small, grew to critical mass and toppled to victory. Victor Hugo said: there’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. One might add irrefutably powerful because many ideas, like the millions of sperm that tried to make you, fail. Each and every successful idea, breakthrough and revolution underwent a rigorous, unseen Darwinian selection.

How cool is that?

To put it more superficially, it’s that monologue from Devil Wears Prada, where Miranda Priestly rips into Anne Hathaway about her lumpy "blue" sweater:

This... 'stuff'? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.

After all this don’t you want to know more about the proverbial pile of stuff? Is ignorant appreciation (exemption) not now less fascinating than understanding the why behind the colors of the rainbow, cerulean and otherwise?

As Dawkins argues, a rainbow unwoven is even more wondrous. It’s poetry, with a glossary.

Bible Belt Bulletin: Please Read

2011-09-15T21:27:00.000-05:00

The Tar heels are definitely NOT doing the Cha-Cha in North Carolina!

I have friends in the state, hear beautiful things about Charlotte and Asheville, and it is the only remaining southern state without a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Perhaps because they have bigger things to worry about: Massive unemployment? Hurricane Irene cleanup?

Nope! The Republican dominated Senate this week approved a house bill this week to put an anti marriage-equality constitutional amendment referendum on the ballot in May 2012.

An editorial in the Asheville Citizen-Times reads, in part:

The unemployment rate in North Carolina is at 10%. Against that backdrop, the General Assembly met in a special session this week, at a cost of $50,000 a day, to railroad onto the ballot a measure to amend the state Constitution to ban gay marriage. Well. That should fix everything.

Chris Hughes, the gay co-founder of Facebook and a NC native, wrote to the assembly to say this is bad for business:

The amendment would show the state “does not welcome the diverse workforce that any state needs to compete in the international marketplace. The nest Facebook or Apple or Google could be created by another North Carolinian,” Hughes wrote. “Be mindful of how you treat them and their families.”

With double digit unemployment, legislating discrimination is a priority? Can you imagine all the money they’d make at the Piggly Wiggly if they were to allow it? What’s more – it's redundant as gay marriage is not even truly legal in any state because federal DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) blocks its way. For the unaware, even if you are gay married in a state where it is legal, you still cannot file federal joint tax returns.

If your same-sex partner is a foreign national, as mine is, you cannot provide him or her US citizenship as straight marriages are afforded. In fact, the US government has been using gay marriage as justification to deny visa extensions to married foreign husbands and wives citing said marriages as “probable cause” they will overstay visitor/work visas and thus breaking up state-legal families. Check out the heartbreaking injustices from the stories on my friend Lavi Soloway’s presciently important website Stop the Deportations.

As these bi-national marriage cases, and more, wend their way toward the Supreme Court – the Obama administration has refused to defend (not to enforce, the law is most certainly enforced) DOMA because he believes it is unconstitutional.

Bearing this in mind, what is North Carolina thinking? Last gasp to codify hetero-supremacy in basic “civil” rights? You know big bucks will flow to NC from the usual (out-of-state) suspects like NOM, AFA, church congregations and members of my own family. You can counter bigotry by visiting and donating to Equality North Carolina – to assist the fair-minded, unprejudiced and reasonable people of that state save face.

Meanwhile, the younger set doesn’t give a shit – the culture war they see being perpetrated by grey-headed bible beaters is already over. The young are for equality and on the right side of history. More importantly, they just want a job.

At what point did wisdom and leadership become qualities we must expect of our youth? Because Americans today, quite literally, cannot afford to trust their elders.

I Know What Happened Last Night

2011-09-14T00:24:00.001-05:00

Have you tried the new Sleep Cycle app? You put it next to your head in bed and somehow it knows (by how much you rustle? Telepathy? Invisible alien probing?) how much and how well you slept. I caved to peer pressure and finally gave it a whirl - I even went to bed before midnight. Check this out:

I'm nocturnally bi-polar! More hills and valleys than the Himalayas!!!

I tried to blame each unfortunate peak on the lumbering oaf beside me rolling over or sawing wood. The lumber oaf countered that the only peace he gets in a 24-hour day falls within those remarkably short dips. So what's this pseudo-knowledge good for?

Let's face it - the app probably gives you brain cancer as it measures your REM (be sure to switch off wifi) and the only real advantage I can see is a masochistic curiosity - because now if you have a foul night of "sleep" not only do you know it - you can show it! Sorry to be so cranky today, but have you seen my sleepcycle flow? It's gender-free PMS, a perfectly excuse to be a bitch! Hmm, I may be onto something here.

Who Says Alcohol is a Depressant?

2011-09-12T20:57:00.000-05:00

I decided to go on a reverse binge (only extremes pour moi) of no alcohol all month long. I’m having, yes, a “September to Remember”. And I’ve never been grumpier!! I have no idea what’s going on, but I imagined being productive, thinking clearly, intimating happiness. Instead, I’m a bitter little pill. Snip, snap.

I’m not even halfway through September, and I realize that what’s supposed to be a depressant actually works the opposite for me. I’m happier with alcohol! Which got me thinking: maybe it takes more time for positive results? Maybe pineapple juice, like a hermit, is enough on its own? When I suggested to Bam the possibility I’d carry over my experiment in teetotalism into, er, “Ocsober”, he said flatly: “No, you won’t!” I'm that bad!

Is there too much blood in my alcohol system?

Remembrance of Things Past

2011-09-10T07:36:00.001-05:00

How does Ayn Rand fit into the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Probably in many ways, but on a personal level, Bam bought and began her epic last novel, Atlas Shrugged, ten years ago on 9/11/2001.

I only found out recently that on 9/11/01, Bam boarded a cross-continental flight from New York at 6am to San Francisco on United Airlines. He could have been on one of those planes! Still, he's completely un-phased about it, doesn't read into why he lived, didn't find god or anything drastic.

His plane made an emergency landing that morning in Kansas, where he stayed for three days and where he picked up Atlas Shrugged. It's still with him, he says he'll have it read by the 10th anniversary, tomorrow. He's been about 100 pages out since I met him, and still it waits there on the shelf - the 1168 page manifesto of Dagny Taggart vs. the insidious looters who would poach all that achievers create. Good luck, Bam!

I remember 9/11. Making breakfast, I heard a loud crash, looked outside my Lower East Side window, and saw it couldn't have been lightning - weird - the sky was crystal clear blue. It was voting day, so I went and voted. Saw the smoke billowing out of the towers, went to my roof and took photos. Then I took the subway to 23rd street. It was still running, and the conductor kept apologizing for the delay, "due to the explosion at the WTC". When I got out of the subway at 23rd street, the first tower fell.

It wouldn't happen like that anymore. No more inertia. Nothing we can do to change what's changed, and ten years on - have we changed for the better? The new tower is still not built - largely due to the victim's families, who, despite payouts, desperately bid to make lower Manhattan a hallowed cemetery. That wasn't the spirit. Neither was the trillion dollar wars which continue to get blank checks from the government despite the fact none of my friends have jobs.

Most memorable about the attacks was the outpouring of goodwill - at home and worldwide - which followed. It felt less Atlas Shrugged and more Atlas Hugged - and then, the sprouting of flags, the war-hawk lies, that idiot in the White House. What if, instead of vengeance, we had harnessed that goodwill and used it to foster more? That's what you can take from 9/11. When an opportunity for goodwill presents itself, no matter the circumstance, don't squelch, don't squander, don't fuck it up.

Felons Need Friendship, Too!

2011-09-08T22:57:00.000-05:00

Trolling cyberspace, I happened upon the prison pen-pal website Gayprisoners.net. I had ulterior motives, researching a prison script, but I became quickly taken by the personal blurbs from the men behind bars.

They might be in for a guesome murder, and introduce themselves with, "Sure I made some mistakes in my life, who hasn't? But I'm a good person with a big heart and a lot to offer..." which I thought was hilarious and tragic in equal measure - and in the middle, always ripe for exploration, fell considerable intrigue. Why can't someone who once murdered be a good person with a big heart and a lot to offer?

I mentioned the site first on FB, which lead to the editor of SameSame writing a piece. Everyone seemed to be curious about a prison pen pal. My curiosity led me to the wittiest, most articulate and engaging writer of the gang - Andy, who, in his ad, promised "super-delish" correspondence. He also happens to be in jail for pedophilia.

Note how that word - pedophilia - is an immediate door-slammer. You summarily dismiss the man, the topic, the discussion. You'd probably rather write to a mass murderer. You might have already stopped reading this.

Especially the gay community - which even more vehemently distances itself from mention of the topic, if only because the religious right always resort to accusing us all of preying on their children. Nevermind the fact that most pedophiles are heterosexual.

With no disrespect to victims, it's pretty fucked up how we readily forget the forgotten - the ignominious, the criminal, the maligned. As if they aren't human. Andy won't ever escape the pedophilia label. A term he hates, as he does "sex-offender", which implies he's still offending even after ten years in the slammer. So yeah, I wrote him pen to paper and you know what? He writes back with the most super-delish correspondence.

There's something refreshing about being able to write to a condemned convict, what are they going to do? Judge? They're locked up, but that makes them free-er than any of the facsimiles I meet every day - to be open and honest. I felt okay being candid: "Do you get raped?" and "WTF were you doing with an 11 year old boy?

Andy offers reasons, including the toxicity and deceit of the closet, and all the rest that led him introduce a boy into a world he was far too young to understand. Andy gets all that. He's taken his licks, paid the price, learned his lesson - and is avowedly "off the chicken". What's not clear is why he's meant to feel the weight of guilt all the rest of his days. At what point do we forgive ourselves and at what point do we forgive others?

Prison is, in his words "Chaos...between the cops & other cons & the neverending cat and mouse game it can all be crushingly wearisome...I've witnessed men crumble mentally quickly as the machine devours them." He recently lost his janitorial job to budget cuts (the recession hits the big house!). He likes WrestleMania and describes prison food: "brutal, turkey-ham bologna in gravy with biscuits. Really?! Really. Oh, the humanity..."

He even knows who I am (they get OUT magazine in jail) and no, he hasn't been raped. But he has plenty of sex, like a long-standing steamy affair with a former cell-mate called "Butters", a goofy guy from Missouri who was blond and loved to be naked. Recalling Butters, he laments, "Ah....2006".

The oldest of his many penpals is old Boopsy, 87, who lives in the desert in Cali and who's been writing since '04. Andy says the key to survival is establishing and sticking to a routine, part of his routine are the letters: "I've been at this pen pal gig for a long time...it's what's kept me sane, relevant, inspired and determined to survive the mental war that is incarceration..."

Reading that was enough to motivate my friend Jack to get on the website and write to a double-murdering tranny called....wait for it...Angel.

I'm in Your DNA (Magazine)!

2011-09-06T08:28:00.001-05:00

It's the only interview you need to be drunk to read! Thanks to Marc Andrews and the fabulous folks at DNA Magazine for featuring me in the August issue #139 . I talk about the Aussie release of Violet Tendencies, and my other film projects out this year and all my co-stars in Going Down in La La Land, Half-Share, Eating Out 4, and the upcoming Into The Lion's Den. But it's much more than that...

not me on the cover, in case you were wondering :)

DNA is like Playboy - you subscribe for the explosive articles! And I'm in a rare mood here - bouncing all over the place with advice, rants, merde and musings. Dodo birds, Stockholm Syndrome, and the reason I'm not into marriage is because I like a little tarnish (?) Do you ever read what you said and go...WTF? And yet I can't ever claim to be misquoted by anyone. Misunderstood, but never misquoted.

click to make it bigger

avatar by Walter Laruccia!

How to Ruin His Sex Life

2011-09-04T07:35:00.001-05:00

Who doesn't love a cunning woman? My friend Rowena is just that - and we were out the other night, eating when she spotted a very attractive, tall blond man at the bar. Very hot, very her type - and being a sophisticated, sexy lady, Rowena would not have to work to get the man's attention. But then we caught a tall, attractive blonde woman stood beside him. He grabbed her ass, they made out.

Rowena pouted. Clearly she had no chance as she is black and he is clearly into women who look like they could be his sister. We watched them kiss and I said: "Twincest" - which gave Rowena an idea.

"I know how to ruin his sex life," she declared. If she can't have him, nobody will! We watched them grope for a moment as Rowena composed herself and told me to play along. Then she called our waiter, asking him to bring the man to our table - she was a model scout and needed to speak with him.

The blond man obeys - which is what men do when coaxed to tables by sexy women. Seated calmly, Rowena shakes the beautiful man's hand imperiously when he arrives: "I'm with Moda Model Management, and we're looking for brother/sister twins for an upcoming campaign."

"I'm sorry?" he says, flustered. "That woman, the tall blonde," Rowena indicates the woman he was just groping: "She is your sister, right?" "No...no, we're not..." he says and Rowena shakes her head dismissively, "Oh I'm sorry, nevermind, we're looking only for twins for this shoot."

The man is so flabbergasted, he just stares at Rowena - no doubt picturing his girlfriend as his sister - before asking, "You're who again?" "Moda Model Management. Sorry to bother you." And with that, she turns back to me absolutely straight-faced.

Rowena refuses to look back to the bar, she's all business now, having just ruined his sex life. But I narrate what's happening behind her head: "He's pointing us out to his girlfriend..." "He's telling her what happened..."

Rowena cackles: "...And she's drying up like the Sahara!!!"

The Fitness First instructor

2011-09-03T10:10:00.001-05:00

It's not even a crush, but he seriously makes my week. He wears these short shorts and smiles and winks and makes jokes while we workout. I never thought you could laugh and exercise - but there he goes all energetic and enthusiastic and totally camp!

You know when you're down in the dumps and feel everything is just sucking your good energy - there's always that one song you can listen to; that one place you can go, that one person you can call for a lift. I never thought it would get to the point where a fitness instructor is that one happy thing, but I'll take it! Maybe it is a crush on his attitude. His joy is positively infectious. I even told him last time, "you make my week", but I doubt he knows I actually mean it.

"I have the weirdest boner"

2011-09-01T09:10:00.000-05:00

that's the number one comment on youtube for this German video/short film by Cold Star. Watch and tell me, is it loaded brilliance or pretentious masturbation?

Not really clear on much here, but I'd much rather be in that pool than out of it.

The freedom of diving into the fluidity of sexuality and gender roles. The sublimation of desire results in a sad affair with French Fries. I especially dig something beautiful we rarely see - intergen(d)erational hand-holding. It's gonna be okay, everything's fine says the drag queen with her defiant air of reassurance.

I'm gonna run with loaded brilliance.

The Man Burns in 7 Days

2011-08-30T08:54:00.001-05:00

WHAT AM I DOING IN THE DEFAULT WORLD? Thinking and missing all my friends who are on the playa right now - living the art and welcoming atmo of the way we truly could treat one another - at Burning Man festival.

For more info and photos from past trips and times to the festival, click on the Burning Man tag below. For more info and photos from 2012 -- come back next year!

Top Ten (Culturally) Gay Films

2011-08-29T08:54:00.000-05:00

Dear Young Gay Man,

Here's a list of the ten movies you must watch, if you haven't already. They are like family, you have to know them. You will be dealing with them forever.

I asked this question on Facebook: which are movies that are not gay - but which say something about or speak to gay men. I've culled the 96 responses into the top 10. You may not like all these movies, but you cannot deny they are with us - almost preternaturally. These are the films most referenced, more often quoted, and passed down from generations. I remember the older man I was dating (he was 27) who, clutching pearls, gasped: "You haven't seen Auntie Mame!?" and then swiftly educated me.

For whatever reason, this is the collective gay experience.

The list, in a more-or-less particular order of importance:

1. Auntie Mame (Rosalind Russell version, duh!)

2. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

3. All About Eve

4. Mommy Dearest

5. The Women (1939 version!)

6. Steel Magnolias

7. Valley of the Dolls

8. Sunset Boulevard

9. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

10. Postcards from the Edge

Notice a trend? All strong, often camp, mostly-deluded… women! What IS that? Who cares, I love it. And so do you!

Honorable mentions: Beaches, Showgirls, Suddenly Last Summer, Death Becomes Her, Wizard of Oz, anything by John Waters and for a Bette Davis trifecta: Now, Voyager.

Feel free to object or offer your own suggestions in the comments.

Renaissance Woman!

2011-08-28T03:17:00.000-05:00

I just finished NOMAD, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. This followed up her heroic Infidel. I especially relate to Hirsi Ali because, in my own way, I'm also an infidel and a nomad. She is now in the US, still under 24-hour guard, simply because she dares to speak the truth. She's not only an inspiration to the power of the mind to overcome the clutches of implacable culture, but she's overhauled my own thinking on how to handle immigrant Muslim populations in the West.

In Nomad, she recounts more stories of her upbringing - mixed with stories of relatives who made it to the West and who, mostly, have not assimilated. She talks about her own refugee claim in Holland, how officials asked her all about her history of abuse and suffering - but never about what she planned to do once accepted into Holland. Her thesis here: How do we make citizens out of refugees?

The top ten refugee nations - are all Muslim. So why then, when Muslims arrive in the West - are they allowed to continue traditions that clearly have not worked?

The Quran is "perfect scripture" not to be questioned and among its injunctions: kill the infidels, take their property, convert them by force, kill the homosexuals and adulterers, condemn Jews and treat women as chattel. Women under Islamic law cannot travel, work, study, marry or leave their home without permission. They don't choose with whom they have sex, (or, once married, when and whether to have sex), what to wear, whether to work or to walk down the street.

Such traditions are allowed to continue in host countries in the West - and it's here Ali posits:

"Well meaning Westerners, eager to promote respect for minority religions and cultures, ignore these practices in the name of religious sensitivity - or to stop society stigmatizing Muslims - they deny countless girls the right to wrest their freedom - and thus fail to live up to the ideals and values of a democratic society. "

I used to think what's the fuss? Let 'em wear the hijab, the birka (I look rather ravishing in one)

I used to think they should be allowed to cover up in a birka and nudists should be allowed to run around nude. I still think the nudists should be given free range flesh, but now I'm not sure about the other bit. It's like the way I feel about my own circumcision: I lacked choice in the matter. I hadn't thought about the implications a cage has for a woman - her mind and her humanity.

Nomad is a call to wake up and get real. To expose and address the prime delusion - that transitioning to the West can happen without choosing between values. One side wants to better their circumstances without changing; the other side is too mamby pamby to force assimilation. Assimilation into citizens.

Hirsi Ali is not short on solutions. She calls upon three institutions which could ease the transition to civilization:

1. Public Education: Keep critical thinking alive and don't gloss over the facts for the sake of sensitivity - no matter how impolite the truth may be.

2. Feminist Movement: 2.0! Feminists (men and women) should make the plight of women their own. Why haven't they awoken to gendercide?

3. Moderate Christians: Compete for the hearts and minds of Muslim populations with a religion that is not so whacked.

Hirsi Ali an atheist so this last suggestion is perplexing. However, she allows that some people are unable to live without a spiritual anchor and that the community of Christian churches offer a more moderate view and a more loving prophet in Jesus Christ. This suggestions has even opened my mind (which is, once opened, now mostly shut to the idea that religion can be good for anyone...) not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Christianity is (at least today) the lesser of two evils.

For her views, Ali has been branded conservative. She finds this odd, seeing as conservatives want to retain the status quo and she most definitely wants to enact change. Nomad is an alarming call to action - and a must-read for anyone interested in helping to solve a problem that is not going away anytime soon.

All over Clover!

2011-08-24T21:55:00.000-05:00

Bam and I entered Aussie politics volunteering for Lord Mayor Clover Moore's re-election campaign. A friend asked us to help out, and Clover's politics are progressive and gay-friendly and most importantly independent - but little did we know she is the notorious politician responsible for too many bikelanes in struggle-free Sydney! Gasp!

On the day, we handed out flyers to voters in Woolhara- and Clover graciously stopped by the polling station and even snapped a photo with us. Little did we imagine that after winning re-election, we would land on the cover of her newsletter in all of Sydney's box! It's kind of exciting - what other politician would want to be seen with us, let alone featured on their widely distributed junk mail? And I'm not even a constituent!

It's a Clover sandwich

She won re-election, BTW!

Teaser for my new thriller film

2011-08-22T09:38:00.000-05:00

Into the Lion's Den! It's coming soon and looks bloody awesome ;)
Check out the teaser trailer here.

Things may not have ended very well for us in the film, but we sure had fun on set. There were lots of Liza Minnelli impressions. And my poor pal Ronnie had some really bad grass cuts, as you can see.

blood can be sexy!

Click on the "Into the Lion's Den" tag below for more posts on the film and behind-the-scenes on set. Click here to LIKE the film's page!

How Norway got its Cherry Popped

2011-08-21T08:59:00.004-05:00

Lie down with mammals, rise up with mass murder. One month on and I’m still sad about it.

While the rest of us all muddle about in medieval middle earth, there's lofty Scandinavia riding so high above us all. A place like Norway has until now defied the laws of evolution – it's like they skipped gradualism and macroevolved into an entirely different species. One that is truly holy - intelligent, just, civilized, compassionate (read: godless). Then a massacre happens by one of their own and Norway is yanked back, yolked to the beastliness of the homo sapien.

Norway’s innocence has been punctured, much to their surprise. Police took 90 minutes to arrive at Utoeya island where at first 10 were reported dead, then 86, now 69. They were so confounded they forgot how to count. But the biggest shock as the gunsmoke settled was the global sigh of relief: It wasn’t the Muslims.

That’s what everyone assumed, even peace loving Muslims. But then shhhhh Jesse - you can’t say that! The media hushes these truths – because they don’t want to be labeled assumptive, Islamophobes, “religiously intolerant”. So they’ll say it in other words, like these, in virtually every report: “The killer is a blonde, blue eyed…”

Nope, not a Muslim!

In 2006, none of the media, not even New York Times, that showed the Danish embassy burning in Beirut (torched because of Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed) –dared to show the cartoons themselves. Yes, we’ll show the destruction radical Muslims caused, but we won’t show the cartoons which caused it. Religion gets a free pass even in the “free” press.

Why is religion allowed to hijack the truth? His government’s similar “handling” of the 2006 cartoon violence is one of the arguments Norway’s killer Anders Behring Breivik was making in his screed against Muslims and “cultural Marxists” and political correctness.

This topic is not going to go away – and it raises very important questions that beg for even more important answers. Answers that are being bandied about by people branded conservative, people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali (see my post on her bestseller Infidel). Her latest, “Nomad” has changed my thinking on assimilating refugees to host countries in the West; into creating “citizens” and yes this may mean dropping our tolerance of the hijab and our unwillingness to call an honor killing an honor killing.

According to this conservative essay I’m not supposed to agree with, PC is deadly serious and totalitarian. Or consider this teacher in Florida who was suspended last week for calling gay marriage a “cesspool” not in his classroom or on school time, but at home on his own Facebook page. Where does the first amendment end and thought crime begin? Wouldn’t you rather someone show their true colors than have them pretend they’re not a bigot? It's not as if he’s the only homophobic teacher in our schools.

So Breivik is Norwegian, a right wing Christian. But now we’re not supposed to say that because Christians take offense. He’s not one of us, they shout. Someone who believes in Jesus wouldn’t do that! So screeches Bill O’Reilly.

And then you have the Guardian saying that he’s not Christian - he just hates Muslims.

But Breivik is Christian, if only because he says so. It’s the same conclusion the Austrian government recently came to when it finally relented and allowed a staunch believer in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a “pastafarian”, the religious exemption to wear his religious headgear (a colander) in his driver’s license photo.

Pastafarians have been touched by His noodly appendage

Nevermind that Breivik calls himself a Christian, and wrote the word “Christian” over 2000 times in his rambling manifesto. What’s odd to me is instead of espousing love – Christians distance and deny. They don’t gather for love or against fear and hatred, but hundreds of them (joined by a few Jews, together again –for the first time!) marched in New York the very same weekend of the Norwegian massacre– shaking their bibles and ranting because the state allowed gay people to marry.

Are they not Christian, but just hate equality?

Another fact, avoideded mention again for reasons of “sensitivity” is that these Christians were mostly minorities – which is the marriage (minorities against civil rights!) most resembling a cesspool I've encountered. Instead of uniting for peace or against murder (or even divorce!) the religious find common ground in advocating division. And when this turns to suicide or bashing or murder or civil war – they cry victim. We only provide the atmosphere, we don’t push the madman over the brink – we love him. We said hate the sin, not the sinner! Don’t question my faith!

"We have just enough religion to hate, but not enough to make us love one another"
- Jonathan Swift

I wish people would look inside to find their gods. I wish instead of reading Neitzche and deciding to become an overman like Hitler or Breivik – that they would read it and rise above their homo sapien tendencies and be their own gods with mantras like the golden rule coupled the sentiment of Norway’s Prime Minister, Jens Stolberg, who said this about his holy land following the massacre:

Evil can kill a person, but never conquer a people.

More, please! Alas, the mammals would rather march vs. marriage equality in New York and further divide. They even distance themselves in their rally from Westboro Baptist Church protestors holding signs like “God Hates Fags”. They said as much to them: You are not one of us – we can’t look at you because you are the manifestation of our love! I prefer Westboro because, again, show me your true colors – Westboro doesn’t disguise the truth that their god hates.

Their god kills and likes it. As does the god championing an end to “cultural Marxism” when he kills kids in Norway. And the god invoked with Allahu Akbar yesterday when the towers tumbled, today in Syria and in tomorrow’s honor killings. No matter what the media or peace-loving Christians may tell you, Brehvik is Christian, same as Al-Qaeda is Muslim.

The religious must absorb radicals as their own because at the end of the day, no matter how born into and brainwashed you are, religion is and will remain a choice. It’s whether or not you say you forgive - or what mood you decide you’re in right this moment. Religion is what you’re going to eat for dinner.

My First Gaga Post!

2011-08-18T22:58:00.000-05:00

I was lucky enough to see her and her disco stick at the Highline Ballroom before she blew up. It was her debut CD release party where she not only dove into the crowd and surfed, she went to the back of the stage to get a running start! In her underwear! We all felt it - both her ass, and the fact she was going to blow up.

What I don't understand is all of those calling her a copycat and a rip-off artist. She's postmodern pastiche - with something to say. I imagine that it's the latter which drives people nuts. She has something to say and says it. If you have nothing to say, you'll skate through life like a contended goldfish. But realize you're inside a fishbowl and - whoa! Dare to have opinions and express them artistically, you can expect a backlash of bile from anonymous predators who can only ever critique, never create.

What's most baffling is that never before has a pop artist been so vocal and active in the fight for equal rights, and never before has a segment of gay men been so vocal against her - and lesbians largely indifferent. What is that about? I love her work and what she stands for. I don't call myself a Monster but she can if you like.

Have you seen the video for You & I? It's not at all my favorite song on the album (despite my fondness for country music), but the video is a stunner. And, as usual, all over the place: Gaga in (very convincing) man drag, crop circles in cornfields, barns, mermaids in bathtubs:

It's fun to hear fan takes on the symbols and metaphors - "Gaga realizes her boyfriend is changing her into something other than what she is, and at the end she's someone he wants to love but can't!".

It's also fun to hear what she says about it herself: it's not meant to be an answer video; it's meant to be a profuse number of questions.

On how you can have sex with a mermaid: You can't! Sometimes in love you can't make it work. There's this giant boundary between you and someone else.

On the ice cream truck at the beginning: When going down the road of life, the memories of destruction of youth get in the way...

Or...we can stop analyzing and just be arrested by the art!

We hope you aren't squeamish!

2011-08-16T16:58:00.000-05:00

Here's the latest promo poster for my upcoming film, Into the Lion's Den! Things do not go very pretty for me in this one. But that doesn't mean there aren't pretty people people in it - porn stars, too!

Click poster to make it bigger. Click the link above to like us on FB!

Too Edgy, Too Out There? You Judge.

2011-08-15T09:06:00.000-05:00

What are you doing this hump day? Out Professionals is hosting a benefit screening of Half-Share at The GLBT Center in New York. Afterward, a panel of media pros will discuss the state of television and the difficulties of selling an original scripted series like ours in 2011.

Come drink, network and laugh your ass off at Half-Share!

Moderated by fabulous Editor-in-Chief of Edge Media, Steve Weinstein - the panel will be graced by my co-creator Sean Hanley as well as US Weekly Senior Editor Bradley Jacobs and pals Josh Rosenzweig - host of "Just Josh" and SVP of Programming and Development at Here Media; and Chris Willey, Logo TV's head of East Coast Development and Production, now overseeing the A-List series and Be Good, Johnny Weir.

This incredible line-up of insiders will discuss a range of topics and answer questions on the state (and economics) of TV today, the reality phenomenon, and how the industry is managing with the growth of other viewing platforms siphoning audience.

Admission is $15 ($10 for OP members). Also along for the screening ride are cast members Kyle Spide, Kevyn Morrow, and the scene-stealing drag queen Anita Spinoff! And did I mention there's Bulldog Gin?! The cocktail is ALWAYS half-full! Drinks kick off at 6pm Wednesday at The Center.

Feast upon the 'Lime Parfait'

2011-08-14T21:57:00.000-05:00

also known as "best reason NOT to select a paint color based on its name":

The 'Lime Parfait' looked good on paper!

The 'Sassy Scarlet' looks good in the bedroom and 'Fairy Dust' lavender is fabulous - but the Lime Parfait? Yikes, I mean...yum! Bam says it's alien poo. I say rather more like Predator blood:

Bam had the opportunity to buy another color at the hardware store this wekeend but says we're keeping the Lime Parfait. Not because it's growing on him, but he says he wants to have something to rant and rave about for as long as we live here. He calls the wall "Jesse's Folly".

Are you a word freak?

2011-08-11T07:56:00.000-05:00

If you surf Urban Dictionary (or write its entries) or just love language and the way English never ceases to evolve (or, sadly, devolve) then you'll get a kick out of the neologisms below - and hopefully sprinkle your conversations with them. Got any of your own to add??

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:

1.. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent

for an indefinite period of time.

2.. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3.. Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4.. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5.. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.

The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6.. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7.. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high

8.. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9.. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon : It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right?

And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido : All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through

a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning

and cannot be cast out.

What's the death etiquette?

2011-08-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

Not that I'm partial to etiquette - but it's a question I explore in this essay in the Advocate.

Some commenters argue it's just not gay enough, which is the first time in my LIFE I've heard that criticism. But you got what you wanted, integration, and now the whole world knows homosexuals cope with life and death and digital age moral dilemmas same as other humans! Click below to read:

Op-ed: One Final Status Update

Photo (and Photoshop!) credit to Kevin Hees

Dead Facebook Friend credit to Arron, Mark and Anthony. I miss you. And Arron, really? That last status update - did you catch the hilarity on your computer screen as you strangled to death?
Content credit: my thoughts mixed and influenced by Facebook friends after a status update.
Thanks to Matt Breen and the editorial staff at The Advocate.

Fire Island Then and Now

2011-08-08T17:08:00.000-05:00

Fire Island has a storied modern history, once the reputed home of smugglers and pirates. It grew, slowly, beginning in Cherry Grove - to become an artist enclave. The "hamlet" of Fire Island Pines became a homo haven over the wishes of its earlier inhabitants, who were not happy about the influx - putting up signs like: "Welcome to Fire Island Pines: A Family Community". I think they should put a sign back up today: "Welcome to Fire Island Pine: A Family Community of Smugglers and Pirates!

Learn more about the history, legend and lore of Fire Island from this well researched blog post by my friend Elisa Rolle. She talks about the early influences and notables such as Auden and Isherwood and artist collectives - including notable experts in the lost art of egg tempera paint (with egg yolks!) such as Jared French and Paul Cadmus.

Point of View, Paul Cadmus, 1945

It makes me want to know more - about the arrival by sea plane of Halston (which I read about in the hauntingly poignant novel, Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran), or what it was like on the island during the early 80's AIDS decimation as was touched on in the powerful must-read And the Band Played On, or the history of Water Island - at the end of the island - without any store, just a few homes and accessible to only a select few, or even the storied legend that continues today of the men's only castle known as Belvedere Guest House, still successfully run by my pals in Cherry Grove.

Elisa shares a few books to read up on the island, and (on a lighter note!) she ends with (thanks, Elisa) our comedy pilot, Half-Share, which is making its LA debut on Tuesday at the ITVfest! Get tix here!

From 1959

2011-08-04T16:59:00.000-05:00

A message to the future from philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell.

Next up, his essay "Why I Am Not A Christian" (because religion is based, primarily, on fear)

That stench coming from Marshall, Texas

2011-07-29T02:08:00.002-05:00

You must listen to this astonishing piece of investigative journalism by NPR’s THIS AMERICAN LIFE, as they examine “when patents attack”. That’s not a typo…there's no 'i' in patents!

Patents, the thing that was meant to encourage invention: the laws that gave monetary incentives to inventors for sharing their inventions. Increasingly, as this report details– the great maw of greed has opened up and patents are now not nurturing, but rather crushing, invention.

So who is squelching innovation in America? Hollow (operative word here) shell companies of lawyers are buying up patents, saturating the tech market and making pouncing “patent trolls” the bane of Silicon Valley.

Companies with 1984-styled names like “Intellectual Ventures” own patents so broad that you and I are right now probably infringing on them. Then, with empty offices and no employees, “based” largely out of Marshall, Texas, they sue (or threaten to sue) all and sundry for patent infringement.

Though they are not creating anything with these patents, you – the creator – will be sued or forced to pay if you want to make anything. It’s a double dip into the dark reality and future as forecasted by George Orwell AND Ayn Rand…together at last, living out the American dystopian dream. The looters and the profiteers are here in full force, and we are not winning!

Dagny Taggart had it right when she took her brain and got the hell out of dodge.

Because now you can be sued by those who do nothing for you who do everything. Even if it’s not a new idea, they can probably sue. There are new patents for things like toast – only it’s not toast, it’s now: the thermal refreshening of bread.

Of course you aren’t sued if you pay to use the patents they sit upon. As the show descends further into the cavernous void of one “troll on steroids”, they are told in plain Newspeak that such “businesses” merely protect and defend inventors - by which they mean their investors.

If the do-ers and creators and providers don’t pay up and comply with these trolls, they’ll go out of business. As NPR astutely notes, it’s a mafia style shakedown. Pay us and we will protect you, don’t pay us (shrug and cue your Godfather accent), who knows what’ll happen?

Earpopping.

Hey FOGGOT!!

2011-07-28T22:50:00.000-05:00

Remember that internet prankster from a couple years ago who tried to pay his overdue utility bill with an image of a spider?

David Thorne is back—or rather, I discover, he's still pranking - and herewith a new literary inspiration. His pithy pranks observe and expose our life and times like a mini Mark Twain, only modern and meaner. In a nice way, if you know what I mean.

His book is already an NYT bestseller “The Internet is a Playground” and it’s all bite size back ‘n forth bedevilry with those brave (read: stupid) enough to willingly wander into his digital, 7-legged spider web.

The not-invited to his neighbour’s party in Apt. 3 is a gem. As is this reply to the guy who wrote to tell him he was a “foggot”, which just may prove David Thorne is the most trenchant smart-ass the internet has ever known.

I’m still hyperventilating at the references to manning motor homes or the girlfriend two KFC buckets away from altering the earth’s rotational access. *Fanned, favorited, fuck me with your head!

Grab Gully!

2011-07-26T08:00:00.002-05:00

My pal, party promoter Justin Luke has a hit on his hands with Gulliver Travels, which I got my paws on recently and couldn't put down. It's all about a twink who comes to NY to escape, only to find he's run into a whole lotta adversity - that includes a ton of fun, wit and porn (of course, with blue hair!)

Justin Luke self-published, using the digital world to bypass the old fashioned publishing world with its meager royalties (don't I know it). But I'm proud to announce that the big time is coming back for him - the senior editor of Amazon's professional publishing arm, Encore, just signed him for a three-book deal. That's like the 2011 equivalent of a 7-year contract at MGM!

The travel adventures with "smutty spitfire" Gulliver have just begun. Who knows - it could be an east coast Tales of the City? Doesn't that give all you aspiring writers out there exciting hope for the future? Sit your butt down and get write to it. In the meantime, click to get your (now collector's item!) copy of Gulliver Travels!

Sext Me!

2011-07-25T08:53:00.002-05:00

Eating Out 4: Drama Camp just won the audience award for best comedy at Philadelphia's QFest, rocked LA's Outfest, and already yesterday premiered on the LOGO channel. All that and we only shot it in April! Congrats to all involved...

I'm told Logo censors pixelated my cock sock! Which makes me wonder what they did with the rest of the film? I haven't seen it yet, but can't wait. Also really happy for my dear darling sexy pal Ronnie Kroell! Check him out below, around the ten second mark. Nobody is going to mind if he sleeps nude. Unless he's pixelated!

Don't blink around the minute mark and you'll see me in the makeout montage. The sexy poster is below, and click here for my blog post from the Eating Out 4 set with all the cast & crew hotties!

What a Woman!

2011-07-16T22:47:00.001-05:00

Wow - have you read Infidel? It now means hero. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is living proof that sometimes you have to lose absolutely everything in order to find yourself.

Her story begins with the final moments of free speech martyr Theo Van Gogh - the Dutch filmmaker who was brutally murdered in the Netherlands for having made a film criticizing Islam. His Muslim killer shot him several times in broad daylight, his throat slit and a 5 page letter stabbed into his back. "That letter was addressed to me," begins Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Infidel.

She was the impetus and writer of Van Gogh's short film, "submission", criticizing the oppression of Muslim women. She now lives with bodyguards in safehouses, but Ali grew up a Muslim in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya - firmly believing in Allah, often abused, learning multiple languages and all about her "clan". She and her sister endured female circumsion when a man came to their house and as their clan held them down, he mercilessly snipped off their clitorises with scissors.

The excision results in a scar that covers the vagina so thoroughly that there's barely room to leak out urine. Girls who could be heard urinating a full stream were mercilessly made fun of - as clearly they had not been genitally mutilated and thus were unclean. It also meant that sex was a painful experience and the new husband, post-wedding, having thrust and penetrated through this scar, would run around to show the family his pride: the blood-soaked sheets.

Unlike many, Ali was given an education and occasionally got her hands on Western books that spoke about sexual and intellectual liberation. Not that she ever dared at all in the way of insubordination. After all, "submission" is the very definition of Islam. Her father was a rebel leader attempting to free Somalia (still hopeless!) and her mother a woman who learned to accept her lot and constantly blamed others for her unhappiness. When her father arranged a marriage to a devout Muslim from Canada, she uncharacteristically tried to reason her father out of it.

Then, on her way to Canada to consummate the marriage to this man she had met once for 15 minutes, she had a layover in Germany and something sparked. She walked out the door, took a train to the Netherlands, registered as a refugee and disappeared. Somehow she summoned a courage she was never taught.

Infidel is a riveting journey of awakening, nothing short of a woman's total renaissance. An escape to home that is hope and inspiration for humankind. We don't have to be afraid of the dark.

Of course, her "husband" and her clan chased her down, but by now she was strong enough to resist their wrath and say yes to freedom. She even got her sister Haweya refugee status in Holland but she did not fare as well. Haweya said it was like being locked up in a house and suddenly the walls fall down and you are confronted with so many options you simply become paralyzed. She floundered, refused to assimilate, retreated into Islam, raced back to Kenya, went mad and died.

But Ali was empowered, ignited by the flame we call purpose. She learned the language, studied political science, and was elected to Dutch parliament where she spoke out about the dangers of Holland's tolerance of new immigrants who still practice customs like female genital mutilation and honor killings. Ayaan Hirsi Ali became wholly apostate after 9/11.

Ironically, it is in finding purpose that the struggle truly begins.

Binge Drinking for Betty Ford

2011-07-13T08:50:00.001-05:00

I'm a prissy boss? Yup! After a glowing review in Variety and universal praise for its truth-telling and talented leads Matthew Ludwinski, Allison Lane, Casper Andreas and Michael Medico, Going Down in La La Land had its sold out premiere at Outfest last weekend. I hope you see it! And if you don't recognize me in this film - it's because I'm wearing clothes!

Before the curtain rose on Going Down in La La Land's premiere, I was Going Down, Down Under! I woke up in an unfamiliar bed beside a lump of blankets, with all my clothes on, although the shirt I'm wearing is not mine. But the first thing I think is: At least I have all my clothes on! Then I recognize my girlfriend Yvie's apartment. I thank the lump in bed for her hospitality. She says no worries.

The day before, Bam and I went to breakfast. After I order a coffee, Bam orders a glass of Chardonnay. "Betty Ford just died," he says, looking up from his ipad. I say, "From an overdose of painkillers?" and then scratch the coffee and order a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Thus begins the morning that leads to the day that heralds the night we spend binge drinking for Betty Ford.

Funny that a lot of people in Australia don't even know America's most famous pill-popping boozer. Or that when you wake up at my age in unfamiliar surroundings in strange clothing with little recall, you are shipped off to the Betty Ford Clinic for addiction. Heck, I didn't even know the former first lady was still alive - in the same way people are shocked to learn (usually from me) that Doris Day and Esther Williams and Olivia de Havilland are, in fact, still alive (I'll drink to them another day, Scarlett).

After breakfast, the day moved on to boxed wine "chateau du cardboard", and was met with several friends along the way...culminating in an XL taxi to Newtown and the legendary drag show at the Imperial Hotel. Multiple cartwheels later (on the stage runway, of course) everyone else heads for home but Yvie is not done. She's still hanging! Yvie is a trooper, she'll keep up! And we're starving.

We go to get a kebab and walking down King Street a complete stranger stops me to ask about my t-shirt. It's a pec-hugging "I heart Puxi" tee and I say "Puxi is the Times Square of Shanghai!" He loves the idea of Times Square in Shanghai and I decide he simply must own the shirt. He agrees and we swap shirts - strip right there on King Street and sayonara, Puxi. This explains the baggy butch sporting shirt, the one I woke up in; the first one of its kind in my closet. Do not drink and trade.

Yvie and I finally sit down for kebabs and I only realize Yvie is drunker than I am when she ducks under our table to vomit up a half-eaten kebab. "I didn't have time to make the toilet," she declares when she reappears from underneath. I shift our table slightly to semi-cover the spill and non chalantly finish my food. The next day, as I'm cursing Betty Ford, Yvie calls to say: "I found the other half of the kebab in my handbag." Hey, at least she didn't find the puke!