Gay Men's Health Crisis Fundraiser

REMINDER: A tribute party to the Paradise Garage's DJ Larry Levan will take place Sunday, January 21st at Pacha in Hell's Kitchen. The party benefits Gay Men's Health Crisis. Martha Wash will perform and the DJs include Danny Krivit of Body & Soul. Tickets are $35 , but only $15 if you still have your old Paradise Garage ID! Levan, who died of a heart ailment in 1992, spent ten years at the helm of NYC's Paradise Garage and was one of the most influential DJs of the house music era.
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Total Gay Overload

What could be gayer than a room full of drag queens watching Robbie Williams perform a song about Madonna? How about if the song was cowritten and produced by the Pet Shop Boys? How about if Robbie's in drag too? Result: Total. Gay. Overload.

Florida Calls Bluff

Of interest to those with homes or family in Florida, the Florida Senate has voted to ban insurance companies from "cherry picking" which coverage they will offer in the state. Some insurance companies have been retreating from offering home owner's insurance in Florida ever since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but they continue to sell auto and life insurance. (My mother had to pay three separate deductibles in 2005 after her carrier ruled the three hurricanes that struck in six weeks as three separate events.)

Insurance companies have threatened to leave Florida entirely if they are forced to offer all the coverages they offer in other, less hurricane-prone states. Now that the state legislature has called their bluff, it will be interesting to see what happens. Obviously, this move has huge implications for those in Texas, Lousiania, etc. Florida Governor Charlie "Closet" Crist campaigned heavily on his promise to approve this legislation, about the only issue Miss Crist got right.
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The Hottest Fake Cabbie In NYC

I'm actually watching a game show regularly these days. Discovery Channel's Cash Cab is a neat concept: a NYC cabbie grills his passengers with trivia questions for cash prizes. But the real reason I'm drawn to Cash Cab is the superhunk host Ben Bailey. Sexy voiced Bailey is a 6'6" shaven-headed comedian who reminds me of Chris Meloni. And that ain't a bad thing.
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Now, About That War Thingy....

Nancy Pelosi's pledge to pass six critical bills in the new Congress' first 100 hours has been met in only 42 hours, 15 minutes.

- Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission enacted.

- National minimum wage raised to $7.15.

- Bush's restrictions on stem-cell research overturned.

- HHS required to negotiate Medicare prescription costs with drug manufacturers.

- Federal student loan interest rates cut in half.

- $145 billion in tax breaks to oil drillers rolled back.

Republicans in Congress mocked the 100 hour pledge as a publicity stunt, saying Democrats stopped the clock during mundane House business. Then they passed a resolution of their own. They wished Mohammed Ali a happy 65th birthday.
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Wifey's Revenge

Former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey's wife has a book coming out called The Silent Partner. Chapter 1: Rest Stops Of The Jersey Turnpike...
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Hot Photoblog: Atomische

Check out Atomische, the hot photo blog of Brooklyn photographer Tom Giebel, who adds a new gorgeous photo to his site everyday. There's tons of great NYC images there and some striking nature photography. Recommended!

Sing It!

In 1978 when I was budding 19 year old gay activist, one of my most treasured possessions was my copy of Tom Robinson Band's Power In The Darkness. That summer I had gone shopping for the album just to get the hit single 2-4-6-8 Motorway, which I'd seen at the top of UK charts. Back in those days, I often bought records unheard, based merely on their position on the British charts.

But scanning the back of the record in the store, I was thrilled to see a track called Glad To Be Gay, and hoping that the song wasn't some sarcastic punk anti-gay rant, I rushed the album home. Two minutes into my first playing of Glad To Be Gay, I was standing in front of my record player, weeping. Recorded live, the song was a blistering recounting of gay-bashing by British police and media.

Don't try to kid us that if you're discreet
You're perfectly safe as you walk down the street
You don't have to mince or make bitchy remarks
To get beaten unconscious and left in the dark

Yet after ticking off all that misery, Tom Robinson urges his audience to "Sing if you're glad to be gay!" Sing anyway. And they do. Later I found out that Robinson was a well-known gay activist who originally wrote the song for the 1976 London Pride rally. These days, Tom Robinson is largely retired from music, working as a broadcaster for BBC Radio 4. He raised the ire of gay activists in the 90's when he came out as bisexual, married a woman and had children. His last album was titled Having It Both Ways.

Today Glad To Be Gay is in the news again. Alan Johnson, the British Secretary of State for Education and Skills told BBC Radio 4 listeners yesterday that he would be happy if the song were included in a new songbook being published for schoolchildren. As you might imagine, this has caused a huge controversy. Johnson has been a stalwart supporter of gay rights in the UK and has a chance of becoming deputy leader of the Labour Party. Hats off to Mr. Johnson!

You can download many of Tom Robinson's tracks, free, on his personal website. I recommend his great love song War Baby (which was especially meaningful to me in 1984), and his cover of Steely Dan's Rikki Don't Lose That Number.

Tom Robinson Band
Glad To Be Gay
Razor & Tie Records 1978
#18 UK Pop
Purchase / Download

UPDATE: Tom Robinson responds:

Hey Joe

Thanks for your kind and appreciative words, they mean a lot. And Robin, I'll track down the Secret Policeman's Ball version and get it YouTubed ASAP. But there is now a decent version there of the "Elton's Song" video - which depicts a story of unrequited gay love and for which I wrote the lyric. Have made a page with links to the YouTube version (and a higher-res Quicktime file) at http://eltonsong.com/

With all good wishes from London

Tom Robinson

The Time Is Now 11:55

Yesterday the hands of the Doomsday Clock were moved two minutes closer to midnight. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists cited global warming and the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran as the reasons for the change. The time on the clock has been changed 17 times since its creation in 1947.

Iraq War Cost Put In Perspective

Embiggen the chart to see the outrageous cost. Universal healthcare? Unaffordable! Thousands of lives to enrich Haliburton? Affordable! (via New York Times)

Canadian Marriage Stats

Some interesting marriage stats came out of Canada today. British Columbia, which apparently tracks these things more than the rest of Canada, reported:

-Those entering into same-sex marriage were an average of 13 years older than hets getting married. The average age for gay men getting married was 44, for lesbians it was 42.

-As we've seen in Massachusetts, lesbians outmarried gay men, although not by such lopsided numbers. Of 774 same-sex marriages, 422 were lesbian, 352 were gay men. Only 3.5% of all marriages were same-sex, versus 5.5% for Massachusetts (in 2005).

-Over half of gay marriages involved non-Canadians, but only 5% of hetero marriages involved those that live outside of Canada, which suggests that BC has a thriving gay wedding industry that draws heavily from the U.S. west coast.

It still surprises me that younger gay people are not running headlong into marriage. All along, I've feared that we'd see an unfortunate rash of giddy boys in love getting married, but I'm glad that's not happening.

Open Thread Thursday

What are you reading?
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Back On The Chain Gang

According to Sunday's New York Times there are now over 200 Starbucks in NYC. There are 220 Duane Reade drugstores and soon to be over 200 Rite-Aid stores. There's more than 100 each of Payless Shoes and Gap. In Manhattan alone, there are two Home Depots and two K-Marts. It's true, New York City is a shopper's paradise! There's a 7-11 in Times Square!

The powers that be
That force us to live like we do
Bring me to my knees
When I see what they've done to you

Haloscan Malfunction

The comments tally has not been updating since last night, so new posts will appear to have zero comments. Hopefully Haloscan will have this issue resolved soon. The "recent comments" widget in the left column is working correctly.

The War With Iran Is Coming

The war with Iran is coming. Bush is taunting Iran. Russia announced yesterday that they have sold air-defense missles to Iran. The new war is coming and the Democrats know it. What country are we living in? How is this happening? The president is insane and needs to be removed.

Morning View - Gapstow Bridge, Central Park

Diana Ross Loves You

"Yes, I've heard a lot about it. I'm going to see it with my lawyers." - Diana Ross, joking on last night's CBS Late Show, when David Letterman asked her if she wasn't curious about Dreamgirls. Ross said that she'd been too busy to see the movie and had never seen the musical, but was otherwise gracious about Beyonce' Knowles. She also mentioned that she will appear on this season's American Idol.

Ross then performed a rather limp cover version of Spiral Starecase's 1969 hit, More Today Than Yesterday, which is on her latest release. Her new album, I Love You, was released months ago in the UK but just launched in the U.S. yesterday. The album is all covers, save the title track, and includes her take on Heatwave's quiet storm classic, Always And Forever. Here's a ten-minute promo for the "new release" that was posted on YouTube back in September.

Maloney Lands On His Feet

Failed New York State Attorney General candidate Sean Patrick Maloney has been appointed by Governor Elliot Spitzer to be his Deputy Secretary. Maloney will work with Spitzer on policy priorities, presumably including Spitzer's campaign vow to approve gay marriage. This appointment may help lay the groundwork for Maloney one day becoming NY's first openly gay governor, unless Christine Quinn gets there before him.

Joe - 1, Bitch - 0

This morning a woman brazenly cut into the front of a long checkout line at the place where I pick up breakfast, bullying the cashier into waiting on her. Speaking for the rest of the customers, I told her that her manners were "as brittle as her fried dye-job". Don't you love it when you don't walk away thinking, "Ooh, I shoulda said...."? Still, I suppose I should feel guilty.

Last FM

Always slow to jump on these social networking trends, I finally joined LastFM in December. LastFM is an service that tracks what its users are playing on their iTunes player, creating individual webpages for each user, allowing members to see each other's playlists. For those interested, here's my LastFM page and a listing of the last several hundred songs I listened to. It's kinda hilarious that my top ranked track is Disco Santa Claus, that's what I get for torturing a house guest with it. Anyway, any of y'all that use LastFM, g'head and friend me. I need to find some new tunes and I want to see what you are listening to.

The Happy Hooker

Last night I had a drink with Mike Jones, your 2006 choice as Queer Of The Year. Jones is in New York City to meet with the publisher of his coming tell-all book, and to appear as the guest of the Gay & Lesbian Task Force at their cocktail reception tonight.

Mike was charming, a gentle muscleman with arms so huge (sorry folks, I had no camera) that ten minutes into our conversation, another patron at the pub interupted our conversation to say, "Oh, man! That how I wanna get, like that!", jabbing his fingers into Mike's biceps. Mike just smiled and shook the guy's hand and thanked him, and the man drifted away.

I asked Mike if he planned on staying in Denver, with his high visibility as America's most famous hooker (not to mention the death threats!), and he just shrugged, saying, "Hey, I'm fourth-generation there. I'm not going anywhere, for now." Mike thanked me and readers of JMG profusely, referring to our Paypal project, telling me, "You guys saved my life, you really did. It meant so very much to me, I want you all to know that."

Mike Jones seems to be naturally happy, an almost soft-spoken guy who interupts his own stories to laugh at himself. I asked him why he kept his notorious AOL email address (massageandmuscle@aol.com) after the scandal broke, and he said, "You know what? I just said to myself, 'Fuck that and fuck THEM!'. I kept my email and I kept my phone number, death threats and all." And then he laughed again.

This weekend, Mike had dinner with Steve Schalchlin and Jim Brochu, after attending their hit musical The Big Voice: God Or Merman. Steve wrote a great piece about their meeting on his blog, and included a video clip of Mike at dinner. Check it out. It's encouraging (if overdue), that a major gay organization like the Gay & Lesbian Task Force is honoring Mike Jones tonight. Finally!

UPDATE: A Denver Post article about Mike Jones appears today, and it includes a mention of JMG.

HomoQuotable - Christine Quinn

"I think that the New York City electorate will always elect the person they feel most connected to and the person they think is most competent and effective." - Christine Quinn, the openly gay Speaker of the New York City council, when asked if NYC is ready for a gay mayor. Quinn is high on the short list of probable candidates for the 2009 mayoral race.

I wasn't crazy about Quinn's plan to require NYC nightclubs to record the IDs of all their patrons, but by all accounts she has been quite effective as Speaker. David Cicilline, the mayor of nearby Providence, Rhode Island is openly gay, but I don't know if the millions of residents of Brooklyn and Queens, many of whom are from socially conservative countries, would vote for a lesbian mayor. Still, gay mayors are the rage in Europe, and New Yorkers are nothing if not trendy.

Related:
Bertand Delanoë is the openly gay mayor of Paris.
Klaus Wowereit is the openly gay mayor of Berlin.

The Good Foot Was Gotten Upon

I'll be in recovery from last night's Body & Soul party for the rest of the week. After a couple of warm-up Manhattans at the Farmboyz' Upper West Side pied-a-terre, the seven of us cabbed down to Pacha in Hell's Kitchen to find the Will Call ticket line snaking down 46th Street. Thirty minutes outside, another 30 in the coat check line, and we finally hit the mobbed dance floor around 8PM, just in time for a mammoth James Brown tribute set. We got up offa that thing, we were sex machines, we were black, we were proud.

It was a very happy, very smiley crowd, with all the usual Body & Soul contingents in the house: Harlem ball queens, Japanese tourist-hipsters, bears, and Brits. Lots and lots of Brits. I met a few JMG readers on the dance floor, including a cute little bear wearing a Jewcy shirt and a handsome couple that told me they had met at one of my readings! How cool is that? The musical highlight of the night was Archie Bell & The Drell's 1968 anthem Tighten Up, quite logically played at the end of the James Brown set and resulting in me getting my freak on so wildly, that today my freak is quite sore. It's a price I gladly pay.

Tighten Up - Archie Bell & The Drells
Atlantic Records 1968.
#1 Pop, #1 R&B, #1 UK.
Download 3:14.

Below: The 2007 Body & Soul Dancers.
UPDATE: Dr. Jeff's account of the party, with pics.

Stop Lying, Condi

Above: Condi Rice advising Congress on Bush's "troop surge".

Ain't No (Brokeback) Mountain High Enough

During his opening monologue on last night's SNL, Jake Gyllenhaal nicely skewered his rabid gay following, saying he wanted to send them a "special thank-you." Then he put on a black bouffant wig, ripped away his suit to reveal a full-length sequined gown and launched into a pretty damn good version of Dreamgirl's And I Am Telling You. I bet a certain NYC-based news blogger was just wetting himself in delight. Still no sign of the clip on the web, or I'd point y'all to it.

UPDATE: Here's the clip! Be advised, it might have a short life on YouTube Google.

What I Learned Last Night

If you stick a fork into an electrical socket, you get a bit of a buzz. Wasn't expecting that.