Spring Walkabout

After a nice Bloody Mary brunch cooked up by Farmboy C, the three of us made a to-go Bloody and headed up Broadway for a stroll in this lovely spring weather. Somehow we kept going and going, first running into an anti-foie gras protest at Fairway Market, which was largely ignored by busy Seder shoppers. Then we stopped in at Columbia University to wander around the commons, getting trapped by locked gates at the north end of the campus. Sixty blocks from where we started, the furthest north I've been on the West Side, we dropped in at Grant's Tomb, where I finally put the joke to rest, once I saw the coffin.

Manhattan Peep Pimpin'

Father Tony took this great pic of Aaron and Jeff at Exit Art last week, perfectly capturing their opinion of performance art, or at least mine (usually). I was in hibernation for some pervy disco event and wasn't along for the excursion, but I thought I'd post this pic anyway, for pure beefcake value. Jeff is taken, but our boy Aaron (left) is available, tall, very furry, well-employed, and an excellent chef who makes his own pasta, bread, beer and even vodka. His hobbies are photography, European travel, and exploring the cave of the unknown. I've only pimped a friend on this here website thingy once before, but if this post disappears, it's because Aaron has murdered me for doing this.

The Fey Four

The Monica Geller in me compels me to mention the Fey Four, the penultimate round of Malcontent's March Gayness, in which I'm bracketed against Outsports. The other two survivors are Towleroad and OMG Blog. The original 64 blogs in the playoffs yielded me a couple of new reads, I recommend scanning that list for some fun new stuff. Voting in this round ends tomorrow, then comes the Championship Death Match, which will take place in the nude. Hopefully.

CBN Targets San Diego Pride

The Christian Broadcast Network has set their sights on San Diego Pride, today publishing a news story accusing that city's pride committee of targeting young children for recruitment, under the guise of family-friendly events, using "reformed" ex-gay, ex-con, and ex-drug addict James Hartline as their insider source.

Little do many realize how aggressively homosexual communities pursue and recruit youth to accept and adopt their lifestyle. But San Diego's James Hartline knows full well the battle waged to win America's youth. Just what would one see while attending San Diego's Gay Pride Event? Hartline, who marched in the LGBT Pride Parade nine years ago before coming to Christ and leaving his homosexual lifestyle of 30 years, gives us a candid, first-hand look.

Panning across the summer festival, one would see pornographers, transvestites, male strippers, female flashers and scantily clad adults imitating homosexual acts as part of the public display. The entire event is rife with derogatory visuals aimed at perverting young and innocent minds.

Last year, Hartline witnessed a man wearing a thong while pedaling the LGBT Pride Parade route on a bicycle and handing out candy to children. This year, one can expect to see San Diego Cooperative Charter, a public kindergarten through 8th-grade school, marching its students in the parade under its banner in a repeat performance.

Hartline is dedicated to putting an end to the K-8 students' participation. He brought their involvement into the public eye after witnessing children as young as six years old being exposed to the obscene atmosphere of the parade last year. Children participated while handing out pencils donning the school's Web address.

Licentious influences abound throughout the San Diego annual gay event, which openly invites children. Little discretion was shown by event organizers, as an 11-year-old girl was seen leaving the festivities with a bag filled with condoms and sexual lubricants. Hartline explained that the event provides an open market for gay porn companies, sex toy manufacturers, triple-x gay pornography and male escort services. Ironically, the San Diego LGBT Pride Parade is promoted as a family-friendly festival. Yet its organizers announced that this year's event will carry even more pornographic material than previous years.

The article continues with the typical Christian wingnut blather about gays using student groups such as the Gay-Straight Alliance for recruiting purposes. James Hartline is a member of Exodus, of course. Keep an out for ol' James on Manhunt, San Diego. And please email me if you have evidence of James having any recent homo-indiscretions. As always, we are our own worst enemy.
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HomoQuotable - Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum

"I absolutely believe that anybody in this generation who is at the forefront of social justice and making an impact on Judaism would care deeply about the role and the place of gays and lesbians." - Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, just named by Newsweek as one of top 50 most influential rabbis in America, who placed Kleinbaum 19th overall and one of only 5 female rabbis to make the list. (via - NY Blade.)

Kleinbaum is head rabbi at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the world’s largest LGBT synagogue. Last week, Kleinbaum made news when she and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force head Matt Foreman were arrested during the ACT-UP Army prostest in Times Square.

Jennicam Redux

In a real-life remake of the film Ed-TV, from San Francisco (where else) comes the story of Justin.TV, an internet show in which 24-year old Justin Kan is in the 11th day of wearing a netcam on his head and "lifecasting" to the world, 24 hours a day. Justin's site is sagging from the hordes of net zombies anxiously chatting as they watch, riveted, as Justin brushes his teeth and goes to McDonald's. The show's slogan is "Waste time watching other people waste time."

Corporate sponsors are rushing in to place their products in Justin's apartment. Critics are calling Justin TV the "last gasp of Web 2.0" and something that will be looked back at in as much embarassment as the dot-com boom of the late 90's. Justin's backers plan to have hundreds of Justins out there eventually, saying that they plan on capturing the vital 18-35 male demo currently slipping through the fingers of the major networks.

Are we really that bored, people? The only thing that makes Justin TV slightly different from the Jennicams of the 90's is his wireless mobility. I've tried to check in on Justin a couple of times this morning, but the site is overwhelmed. Maybe I should try a JMG-cam. You could watch my exciting life as I blog, change the kitty litter, and watch Law & Order reruns. On the other hand, a helmet cam on the second floor of the Eagle would be interesting, wouldn't it?

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Morning View - Nutella

In a nod to foreign tourists, the NYC hot dog carts are selling Nutella, a vile gelatinous hazelnut tub of muck that I'd never heard of until I moved here to work for a British company. My coworkers adore Nutella, but are grossed out by peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Go figure. The product was invented in Italy during WWII when chocolate was scarce and has been sold as Nutella since 1964. Yuck!

Arrests Taking Place At ACT-UP Demo

I just got a message from Rex Wockner saying that arrests are beginning to take place at the ACT-UP Army demonstration on Wall Street. Wockner estimates the crowd at 800, with about 20 arrests so far. More to come as I get reports.

UPDATE: Rex Wockner has filed this story on the protest. In San Francisco, Michael Petrelis covered the west coast version of the demonstration. Chris Schiffelbein of Queer Justice League has blogged a report. On Wall Street, photographer/blogger Andres Duque was on the scene and filed this post with photos, two of which appear below with his kind permission. He's also posted a short video to YouTube. TOP: Demonstrators clamber atop the iconic Wall Street bull. BOTTOM: The die-in begins.

Go Sanjaya!

As reality and contest shows leave me cold, I haven't followed American Idol since the Kelly Clarkson season. But I have to comment on the hilarity of reading about Sanjaya Malakar continuing to thwart the judges, thanks in large part to the sarcastic support of Howard Stern and the Vote For The Worst website.

American Idol has always seemed to me to be a flat-out cruel show, particularly the early shows of every season, in which self-deluded (or clearly mentally ill) contestants are given airtime, solely for the purpose of ridicule. Therefore, it's rather delicious to see the show's voting system hacked by the vote-for-the-worst crowd. As Simon Cowell himself said Tuesday night after Sanjaya's "performance", "I doesn't think it matters anymore what we say."

The vote-for-the-worst phenomenon has been around for at least a few seasons, to my knowledge. But this recent hack-success has actually got me interested in the show for the first time since Ms. Clarkson. Go Sanjaya!

UPDATE: The Times Of London has a great analysis of why a win by Sanjaya may signal the beginning of the end of American Idol. (h/t- Moncrief.)
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Morning View - The Frick

The Frick Collection sits at the corner of 5th Avenue and E.70th Street, facing Central Park.

ACT-UP Army Marches Today

Don't forget that today at noon will be the 20th anniversary ACT-UP march on Wall Street to demand universal health care, single-payer insurance and drug price controls. Marchers will assemble at 11:30am at the Federal Building, at the corner of Broadway & Worth. I have a work thing that will hopefully end in time for me to get down there, but if not, somebody please send me their photos to run later today.

Open Thread Thursday

Have you had sex with somebody from your office? Have you had sex with somebody AT your office?
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Family Affair

LOGO apparently doesn't see any homophobia in Blades Of Glory, as the cast of the movie will host an upcoming episode of the gay cable channel's Click List video countdown show. Of course, that doesn't have anything to do with LOGO and Paramount being sibling Viacom companies. Not at all.

Cut Hets, Not Gays, Says UN

The United Nations' health agencies recommended today that heterosexual men undergo circumcision, citing "compelling" evidence that the procedure may reduce their odds of contracting HIV by up to 60%, while also noting that the procedure has little benefit for men who have sex with men. UNAIDS and the World Health Organization said that up to 5.7 million new cases could be prevented in sub-Saharan Africa alone, were circumcision to be widely implemented. About 30% of men worldwide are presently circumcised.

Foley Faces Possible Charges In Florida

ABC News is reporting that Florida law enforcement officials are building a possible case against disgraced former Rep. Mark "measure it for me" Foley (R-FL) for sending lewd messages to minors on the internet. The decision on whether to bring charges is said to be a month away and will depend on the testimony of the former congressional pages who received the messages.

Federal charges have not been possible because actual sexual contact with a minor was never proven. The age of consent in Washington, DC is 16. However, Foley apparently sent at least some messages from Pensacola, in violation of Florida's very strict internet predators law. Foley has resurfaced in Palm Beach after spending time in Arizona "rehab" for his drinking problem and his supposed own childhood molestation issues.

Foley is definitely a creep and an embarassment to gay people. Still, I'm of mixed opinion on these possible charges. It seems like 16 and 17 year old boys should be able to fend for themselves on the internet and that law enforcement should focus on the scumbags that target kids less able to protect themselves. On the other hand, the super-high visibilty of the Foley case could serve to give all potential child predators pause. What do you think?
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LGBT Athletes To Speak At Final Four

The Human Right Campaign, Nike, ESPN, and the Women's Sports Foundation are jointly hosting a discussion panel on LGBT athletes at the NCAA Final Four competition in Atlanta on Friday. Openly gay athletes expected to appear include former NBA star John Amaechi, former pro baseballer Billy Bean, former NFL players Esera Tuaolo and Dave Kopay, and others. The press release from the HRC doesn't mention if this event will be televised (perhaps on ESPN?). Check out the Women's Sports Foundation's site, It Takes A Team, which advocates for making high school and college athletics a safe and welcoming place for LGBT athletes.

Paper Or Paper?

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted yesterday to ban plastic shopping bags, the first major U.S. city to do so. Mayor Gavin Newsom is expected to approve the legislation, similar to laws already enacted in many foreign cities. The ban is expected to save 450,000 gallons of oil and reduce the annual amount of landfill SF creates by 1400 tons.

Everybody's going to have to get one of those reusable canvas bags that all the hippies use, otherwise there will be a lot of groceries rolling downhill from ripped paper bags. I always reused my grocery bags as garbage bags at home, but I knew myself too well to get a canvas shopping bag, as I'd never have it on me when I needed it.

Morning View - Third Avenue

A Sign Of Spring

Who's Your Favorite Big 8 (Blog)?

JMG survived the first three rounds of Malcontent's March Madness gay bloggers playoffs, somehow squeaking by Queerty in the third match. Go vote for your favorites in the Big 8 round, this time I'm up against 2007 Bloggies finalist Scott-O-Rama. I think the Final Four round will come at the end of the week. Go Ohio State! I mean, Towleroad!

Quebec Says "Non" To Boisclair

Lead by openly gay Andre Boisclair, yesterday the Parti Quebecois suffered a huge setback in Quebec's provincial elections, winning only 36 out of 125 seats. This means that the long-festering Quebec separatist movement will not get another referendum anytime soon. One of the things I don't miss about living in South Florida was having to endure incessant news babble about the Quebec secession issue, thanks to the massive French-Canadian snowbird community that favors the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood area.

HomoQuotable - Buck Angel

"I would never fail to tell anyone before we got home that I am a man with a pussy. That is not cool at all." - Buck Angel, in an interview with Outrate (NSFW). Having seen Buck in action several times now, he certainly doesn't lack for amorous attention from gay men, but the disclosure issue is certainly Topic #1 for our burgeoning FTM population. On the flipside, I have heard of many instances of transitioning MTFs waiting too long to make their own "big reveal", with often unfortunate results. Maybe there are similar stories on the FTM side, but the relative novelty of the movement just hasn't gotten the stories out there yet.

Leave But Also Stay

Yesterday Hillary Clinton said that if she were president, she would definitely sign the House bill that demands total pullout of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by summer of 2008. But she also said that a continued indefinite American presence was necessary to sweep Iraq for terrorists, continuing her strategy of making absolutely no one happy about her policy on the war. And of course, she has yet to express any regret for her support of the invasion and occupation in the first place. This is a real sticking point for my potential support of Sen. Clinton during the election run-up.

YouTube Awards

Aside from the clever OKGo treadmill video, I was unfamiliar with any of the winners of the 2006 YouTube Awards, announced yesterday. I just can't believe Mr. Pregnant didn't win anything.

Expired Love

Today my lover turns one year old. Should I expect problems to begin tomorrow? I write this post to pre-empt the jinx.

Bedtime Story

Dancing With The Boys

Chris of San Francisco's Remember The Party hipped me to this incredible performance by two boys who incorporate break-dance moves into a rollicking, hilarious swing-dance routine, in what will undoubtedly become one of YouTube's most viewed clips. The person who posted the clip slyly disabled blog embedding in order to drive traffic to his NSFW twinkie-porn site (which he links in the clip description), and further attempts to create controversy by titling the clip "Two guys dancing together. Is this gay?" Asshat. Don't go the jerk's site, but do watch these boys dance. It's a beautiful thing.
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Attractile Dysfunction

BELOW: DJ Michael Fierman leans over his record as he sooths the morning masses shortly after taking the Black Party stage at 11AM. Notice that unlike the preceding two DJs, Fierman is using vinyl. That's Bonnie Pointer's Heaven Must Have Sent You on the turntable.

Another Black Party has come and gone, always with an astonishment of how quickly time passes inside the Roseland Ballroom. "2pm? It's not 2pm! That's crazy talk. Stop that crazy talk you crazy bottom!" This year's production ran much more smoothly than last year's. I arrived at 2am to find no real line at the box office or will call window. My backpack was quickly inspected and without even the traditional cursory circuit party pat down, I was inside. Even more amazingly, there was only a very short line at the coat check, all the windows were staffed and I checked my coat in under 3 minutes, a far cry from last year's almost 90-minute door-to-dance floor ordeal. On the main floor we found yet another leap forward in nightclub technology: air conditioning! It was actually quite comfortable on the dance floor, despite the body heat of 5000 men.

I arrived on the main floor as DJ Michael Marx cued up The Bird And The Bee's Would You Be My Fucking Boyfriend and it seemed for a moment that this would be another in an almost unbroken string of great Black Party nights. Yet, despite dramatic operational improvements, over the evening there proved to be a prevailing sense from those I spoke to that this year's event never quite reached critical mass. We never really got to that "we're all here together" place. No one could quite put their finger on why, exactly. A few I spoke to actually blamed the pleasant temperature, saying that in order for the energy to rise, so must the heat. I think there's something to that. Others criticized the murkily-understood NASCAR theme of the party. Banners ringing the dance floor limply leather-mocked NASCAR's corporate sponsors. Logos spotted: Fist Union, STD, Daring Queen, Dick In A Box, Penis Oil. It wasn't until near the end of the party that it was pointed out to me that the text inserted on the banners between the logos could be read as one continuous sentence that wrapped around the room: "You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements." That's Norman Douglas.

Adding to the '07 flaccidity was a remarkably unremarkable lighting design. In 2005, we got the hypnotic videodome. In 2006, we got the carnivorous steel spider with a murderous mirror-ball body. This year, a two-tiered framework of video projection screens flickered with quick-cut porn images as silhouetted dancers writhed from behind. It was very Isaac Hayes performs Shaft at the 1971 Oscars. There were some suspended lighting rigs that fanned out and moved a bit, but the effect seemed slight. Overall, I found the light show disappointing and not up to the Saint's usual breathtaking standards. The DJ booth continued its baffling but reliable annual counterclockwise relocation around the dance floor, looking small and lonely at the west end of the room, location of last year's unforgettable mammoth goth castle inhabited by copulating porn stars, witches, and Buck Angel. This year's shows included a Buck Angel manpussy redux and a yawn-inducing fisting "demonstration" that finished up with the long-ball end of a baseball bat. Oh, um, "shocking!"

DJ Tony Moran took over the "turntables" at 4am, then delivered an interesting, if overlong, reworking of Ofra Haza's house classic Im Nin'alu. Man, I loved that track. The sample/remix thingy, not so much. Moran then proceded to skip through the Now That's What I Call Circuit! Best Of 90's Edition: Jam & Spoon's Right In The Night, Luminaire's Flower Duet (second only to Yoko Ono's Unfinished Music #1 as the most annoying record ever made) and Nalin & Kane's Beachball. He also played the disco version of the Brokeback Mountain theme song. I am completely serious about that.

Before you lend too much weight to the above bitchery, I must stress that the dance floor suffered not one moment of being less than wall-to-jockstrap packed with the menz. There was a very high beauty/grizzly quotient on hand this year, keeping the crowd race-walking the sidelines and balconies, to make sure that nobody missed getting a look at their asses. Among the celebs I spotted were a wobbly Rupert Everett, Pulitzer-winner Michael Cunningham (The Hours), Andrew Sullivan, and some others best not named here. That's Gawker's job. Speaking of which, the Manhattan Offender arrived with a Gawker/Fleshbot film crew at 10am to conduct interviews with wide-eyed departing leatheristas. Be afraid.

A personal highlight of the party was meeting National Gay & Lesbian Task Force head Matt Foreman (pictured left with realtor-to-the-stars Joe Bongionvanni) and Foreman's charming partner, with whom I bonded over our mutual Southern roots. Also making the scene was Provincetown bon vivant Scott Hayes, spotted glad-handing porn stars and Broadway divas with equal aplomb. A special surprise was colliding with loyal JMG commenter Freddy In PTown, whose simple-yet-effective jockstrap/boots ensemble turned a few heads so hard, I think I heard bones crack. Freddy is as delightful in person as he is here on JMG and I've got the PG-13 photos to prove it. I also met lots of great guys that read this here website thingy, thanks all of you for your kind words.

As longtime readers know, I sort of live for the final portion of the Black Party, and DJ Michael Fierman was reliable once again, opening with Depeche Mode's Black Celebration, his signature opening number. The next four hours of disco biscuits are tough to cherry pick for titles, but I particularly enjoyed hearing Boris Midney, Marlena Shaw's required-by-law-Saint-classic-so-Michael-had-to-play-it, Touch Me In The Morning, and Donna Summer's MacArthur Park Suite. Finally, around 3pm, Fierman finished his encore with Diana Ross' Ain't No Mountain High Enough, and we, the two hundred or so remaining, filed slowly for the coatcheck, arms around each other. This year's Black Party was a low point in this century's Saint history, but do not doubt that I will be back next year.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that for the first time in memory, none of my group witnessed any patrons in drug-related distress. Wahoo, my people! In fact, I almost took a picture of Roseland's hired paramedics sleeping in their ambulance parked behind the venue.

BELOW: Christian, of New York Boys Of Leather steps outside the Roseland at 1PM for a smoke break. Passing Hasidim were unfazed by the codpieces and chain mail jocks. On the far right, you can see the Hello Deli, well-known to Letterman viewers.
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