Why no studio has mined the campy get-lei’d depths of Fantasy Island before now, we have no idea. Leave it to Buckshot Productions to reinterpret the show with Alex Chandler as a lecherous Mr. Roarke and twink gremlin Tory Mason as a nudist Tattoo. Add in a well-stroked cat and a leather-based kidnapping and voila: Fantasy Resorts!
Arty-Farty
2/F 33 Kyutei Blvd, Shinjuku
Tokyo
February 2, 9 PM
This party happens at a bar called Arty-Farty in the Shinjuku neighborhood of Tokyo, and beyond that all we know is that it costs 2,000 yen, it starts at 9 PM and someone named Ceyren is performing. Also, we’re told they give free refills if you bring your empty cocktail cup back the bar? Craziness. Info here (in Japanese).
Club New Age
Nastavnicheskiy 11
Moscow
February 8
We hear this is a hot place to hang in on a frigid night in Moscow, and that sex and drugs tend to be prominent themes (here too!). At this “porno party” there will be a “dark bar” where you’re only allowed into the special room if you take off your shirt (and preferably your pants). Our favorite part about this event though comes via the wonders of Google Translation, which translates the description for this party as, “The most intimate acquaintances! The most daring fantasy! We lie to you, forcing discard false shame and getting the most honest wishes. Nudity thoughts and feelings, dazzling whirlwind of passion and admirable!”
Nick Denton, Gawker Media founder and current Managing Editor of Gawker.com, yesterday dissed friend Aaron Hicklin’s decision to leave his job at the arguably more relevant Out in order to become Editorial Director for Planet Out Magazines–a job which Denton assumes will include the shutting down of The Advocate. The nation’s first ever magazine for homophiles saw us through Stonewall and disco and AIDS and Will & Grace–maybe it’s outlived its relevance?
Angry ficus Romaine Patterson won’t get off our backs and we’re worried a bit about her stability! After bearer-of-bad-news Jason Curious alerted the two to our predictions for their GayVN hosting highlights, Romaine suggested on air to gal-pal Derek Hartley that she’d attack us at the awards. We take back what we said about this event being boring!
“I’ll punch him in the face and show him what a hate crime is!” the new mom steamed. Moments later, Romaine threatened to bitch slap our erstwhile defender Jason Sechrest, while maintaining that she was not, in fact, a humorless lesbian.When she giggled at the suggestion of one caller’s offer to cut our throat, we finally believed her. Whoa! Those hormone treatments sure can make a gal angry. Derek would have grimaced if his face hadn’t been frozen in 2004.
Before being nicknamed “The Package” and officially committed to UCLA Medical Center last night, Britney had exhibited some behavior denoting nothing short of a full-fledged short-circuiting, faithfully documented by the omnipresent TMZ.com video cameras. In this amusing yet terribly depressing clip, Britney affects her favorite new British accent while chewing bubblegum, asking one paparazzo, “Why don’t you go film your friend? Maybe you guys can make a lot of money together. Gay videos are in, y’know?”
New York City, NY
February 1 – 8
Fashion week is for more than making fun of Marc Jacobs and getting shoved by Janice Dickinson backstage at the Heatherette show, it’s also for celebrity sightings! With the writers’ strike still in full effect, preventing the red carpet fuck-you moments that Hollywood’s fashionistas have planned for the awards season, they are flocking to New York to be photographed at Bryant Park instead. In between gawking at Lindsay Lohan’s trajectory off the wagon and Rachel Zoe’s terrifying collar bones at Halston, you might also try catching Madonna and Gucci’s Malawi Fundraiser at the United Nations (at a bargain of $350), Chlöe Sevigny’s party feting her eponymous line for Opening Ceremony at Webster Hall, or Marc Jacobs’ closeout show at the Armory on Lexington Avenue. A firsthand account might benefit you, after all, when the accusations of plagiarism inevitably hit the blogosphere the following Monday. www.style.com
Los Angeles, CA
February 8
We’ve all done our fair share of ogling rugby players, and LA’s Eagle Bar is giving us, yes, the gays, a chance to walk away with one of our very own! The Los Angeles Rebellion Rugby League is known for it’s all-inclusive spirit and support of gay athletes, and are hosting an auction to benefit their cause. With drink specials and bulging thighs in short rugby shorts, there’s no excuse to be anywhere else. www.larebellion.org
OK. We admit: That headline is a bit sensational.
Researchers in Switzerland have reached the first ever medical consensus that HIV+ patients on an effective anti-retroviral regimen for six months or more, who have undetectable viral loads and no other STDs, show no risk of transmitting the disease to sexual partners. There are, of course, as with all statements given by the medical community, many caveats.
The new issue of The Advocate has a story about a swell new option for transgendered children: hormone-blocking drugs to halt the onset of puberty. Call us crazy, but does this not sound like a dangerous tool in the hands of a neurotic mother who a) has fucked up ideas about what her child’s sexuality is or isn’t, or b) might want to keep her kid from growing up? This is a complicated issue to be sure. On the one hand, we’re all for making the lives of trans teens easier and helping all those pretty young ladies trapped in boy bodies avoid years of electrolysis and facial feminizing surgery.
Sirius Radio hosts Derek Hartley and Romaine Lettuce shot back at us today for us calling them houseplants. We issue the following retraction: it was rude to refer to their looks when we had so much material about them being boring. No offense! (BTW, Derek, Puffins are small, cute sea birds… did you just call your co-host fat? For shame! We just meant she looked like a muscular penguin.)
Jason Sechrest, our favorite Judy Garland-impersonator and passer-along-of- bad-news, kindly pointed out to the two radio hosts via IM
that they weren’t going to get a warm response in San Francisco, at
least as far as The Sword was concerned. Not entirely true!
Nightcharm, one of our favorite websites, recently highlighted the work of French artist Benoît Prévôt, who’s kind of like what Tom of Finland would be if he’d existed at the turn of the last century and drew illustrations for Gentlemen’s Quarterly. Prévôt’s artwork is male erotica, but set against a backdrop of Gilded Age glamor and style. Also: crazy penis fountain!
Even though Kathy Griffin is too busy to host the GayVN Awards this year, we still have a feeling it’s going to be a laugh-riot. In this yesteryear clip from the Tim and Roma Show, Sister Roma braves the crowd at the 2007 GayVN Awards so that she can get all of the inside scoop on Kathy from our hopped-up “hot link” Jasmine, before greeting the fabulous Ms. Griffin herself.
A bill before the Israeli legislative body would allow the city of Jerusalem to ban gay pride festivities, and one of its supporters has compared the homosex to a disease not unlike bird flu. Well golly! Looks like they’ve got their very own Mike Huckabee! Nissim Ze’ev, a member of the religious Shas Party, went on to use the old animal sex comparison (yawn) and to suggest that homosexuals seek rehabilitation like “alcoholics and drugs addicts.”
The Sundance Film Festival is a notoriously surreal cinema outpost. Somehow playing host to quaint snow lodges filled with young and unfinanced film talent, reporters, starlets and a veritable blizzard of Hollywood vultures all in one Park City stretch, the fest has become notorious for being more Hollywood than Un-Hollywood as years pass. And when you’re a gay underground artist like writer/director Bruce LaBruce, all bets are certainly off. “It’s another world premiere, but this time we haven’t pre-sold the U.S. territory,” LaBruce blogged on his MySpace profile, of his new zombie flick, Otto; or, Up With Dead People. Attending the festivities with his co-producers and sales agent, LaBruce and friends “[had] the pleasure of trying to sell a melancholy gay zombie movie with political overtones to a mob of distributors looking for the next Juno,” an uphill feat for a genre-bending auteur who brought us such transgressive and semi-pornographic classics as Super 8 1/2 and The Raspberry Reich.
One Night Only! One Night Only! Our favorite homosexual suitcase pimp videoBLOOGGGGer is back for the second time in as many days—but like a crack dealer peddling a rock of concrete, he won’t actually let us get hooked. La Curiousity, it seems, doesn’t want us to get used to these daily updates, but he SO doesn’t like the news from GayVN Central about newly announced award hosts Derek and Romaine he just could not stay mum. Watch as he demonstrates, in an innovative blend of manic pantomime, storysong and slapstick, how he and fellow red carpetbagger Angel Benton might improve over the current hosts of GayVN. Hint: Tori Amos medleys. “I’m not a racehorse!” he proclaims in a flawless Judy Garland, but that doesn’t mean the glue factory’s not around the corner! We kid, we kid … just give us an update tomorrow, J.
— Jason’s News Desk (JasonCurious.com)
— Jason Curious’s YouTube Page (YouTube.com)
Normally we find women who so openly embrace fag-hagdom either terrifying or morbidly depressing, but we just can’t help loving Kathy Griffin. Sure, the refreshing, brutal honesty and shameless love of gossip have been so played out in our direction that it at times feels like a condescending retread even from the best of them, but there are moments-shining perfect moments-when Kathy Griffin rises above every stereotype she wants to fulfill and really makes us proud to have her. We refer, of course, to the times when she actually manages to piss people off.
Faces-for-radio Derek Hartley and Romaine Patterson will host the newly revamped GayVN Awards in mid-February, GayPornTimes reported today. Drag legend and Lucas Entertainment star Lady Bunny will also be on hand to fight for the microphone. Derek and Romaine will bring their celebrated sixth-grade- late-night-phone-chat brand of entertainment to help enliven our industry’s annual rite of auto-fellatio, but honestly we’re more looking forward to the following inevitabilities:
1. Jason Sechrest Storms the Stage, Performs “The Trolley Song”
The director-cum-blogger-cum-publicity agent has already expressed his dissatisfaction with Derek and Romaine being chosen over him and Angel Benton, but we’re aching to see him make those threats a reality and do his patented porn-title-song-medley- in-the-style-of-Tori-Amos. Controversial!
What is the measure of a man? While some might answer “his cock” or “his bank account,” this trailer from Red Devil Entertainment and co-directors Jett Blakk and Ty Hudson poses some more complicated answers, which apparently have something to do with a wizard cloak, a chess game, a spooky dragon stamp and lots of butt sex. The movie is based (loosely?) on Dante’s Inferno and stars Chad Hunt, Trevor Knight, Trent Atkins, Damon Phoenix, and Eddie Stone.
In Jason Sechrest (alias Jason Curious)’s latest video blog, he sounds off on a defensive blog comment left for him by Jason Ridge of Ridgeline Films. It seems as though Ridge took issue with being brought up in Sechrest’s previous video blog, associating him with Erik Rhodes’ ongoing relationship struggle and bout of public self-loathing. “I consider Erik a friend of mine in this industry and you will not fuck it up,” Ridge declared.
“Something tells me that I won’t be doing PR for him as of this post,” Sechrest responded. “Oh well. He can fire me if he wants. I’ve been good to him and haven’t even told the half of it to you guys — nor do I intend to.” He then went on to post a lengthy and meticulously edited response video to our gross delight and later took it all back. “I spoke with Jason Ridge this morning and he took the video in good humor, saying he’d laughed and watched it a few times. We both apologized for any outbursts,” he blogged in an Update. Whatever the outcome, it doesn’t make Jason’s hissy fit on YouTube any less grotesque and/or funny.
The first in a two-part series looking at new online personals/matchmaking options for gays in the market for a relationship. This part: the advertising push.
If being single on a frigid, rainy night isn’t bad enough, the non-monogamously inclined in San Francisco now have to deal with insecurity times a thousand at the Castro underground MUNI station:
Rhode Island School of Design student and Kansas governor’s son John Sebelius is marketing a limited edition board game on his website that makes child’s play of many of the ups and downs of actual prison life. Game pieces pictured include a “glock” and “bag of coke,” and the website describes game play as: “Escape prison riots in The Yard, slip glass into a mob boss’ lasagna in
the Cafeteria, steal painkillers from the nurse’s desk in the
Infirmary, avoid being cornered by the Aryans in the Shower Room…”
Globe-tramping superstar Collin O’Neal will do anything for a piece of ass, but his accidental encounter with terrorist group Al Qaeda last Thursday was adventurous, even for him. O’Neal was taking the models from his latest shoot-Jacko, Jean Franko and Jesus-through the streets of Gaziantep, Turkey when a bomb went off. (And no, it wasn’t from Michael Lucas.) A twelve-hour firefight with police ensued, but O’Neal took advantage of the high anxiety and racing blood-pressure to film a scene with the men back at his hotel room.
O’Neal is no stranger to the war-torn Middle East.
In this classic clip from The Tim and Roma Show, porn star, man-about-town, and village drunk Rod Barry takes to the streets (Castro Street, to be exact) to figure out what the porn-crazed public thinks of performers who are purloined from the hetero- market to play Gay-For-Pay. From “straight” pedestrians naming their prices to opinionated pornophiles, Mr. Barry stops at nothing– except every bar that’s open at 3PM– to uncover the truth.
It’s now been two years since green beret-turned-porn star John Paulus claimed to have done some dirty deeds in a hotel room with singing robot-muppet Clay Aiken, and the singer now tells New York Magazine he has never had a relationship with anyone and simply has no time for romance or sex of any kind.
“I just don’t have an interest in … any of that at all. I have got too
much on my plate,” he says. “I’d rather focus on one thing and do that
when I can devote time to it, and right now, I just don’t have any
desire.”
Resident porn industry drama queen, self-congratulatory friend to the stars, and bastard child of Bobby Trendy and Liza Minelli, Jason Curious, has started a video blog and let’s be real: we’re hooked! In fact, we think maybe Jason has found his perfect medium. He gets to have a one-sided conversation (which is something every queen wants sometimes), burst into random song whether you like it or not, pull those jazz hands out of retirement, and it’s only 5 minutes long! Just when you think that if he says one more word you’re going to slam your laptop shut, it’s over as quickly as it began, and all that’s left is the foggy image of a fairy with too much hair gel dancing in your head.
While electro-torture is nothing new to porn fans (witness Dark Alley’s Gaytanamo or Titan Media’s Folsom Filth), fans of gay independent cinema are in for a shock with Socket, TLA Releasing’s new queer horror flick. Then again, most of you are more perverse that we give you credit for.
If conventional wisdom were true, and porn stars were all unrestrained, sex-addicted animals, they’d have fucked you already. Not so fast, whore-monger. We sat down with five stars to talk about what gets them hard, who wins their heart and what the challenges of finding romance as a public sex figure.
“I look at your face. I look at your ass. If those two things look good, I’m on you,” says Raging Stallion’s Jake Deckard. Is this news to his boyfriend of ten years? Hardly. The detailed rules and regulations the two have established have keeps Jake sated and his boyfriend unwavering in his devotion. In the Lazy Susan-esque sexcapades of polyamory, everybody wins.
Not everyone is so traditional.
Remember that scene in Go (1999) where Sarah Polly sells Benadryl to those teenagers and tells them it’s E and they sit in the van an hour later going, “I think I feel something!” and “Is it, like, a wave, or more of a zoom?” That was funny.
Ecstasy was super hot in the 90s, but judging from the pile of orange slices on offer at the last circuit party we breezed through (guest list, stood horrified, left within twenty minutes), and the way those twinks were rubbing each other like demented kittens in line for the bathroom, amateurs are still rolling in droves.
Sex education in this country is a disgrace! That’s why the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center has produced In The Moment, an in-your-face (?) web series about the lives of a gaggle of West Hollywood gays dealing with love, relationships, and life as a gay man in this crazy mixed-up world of ours. Find out what happens when people STOP being polite and start getting STD’s because they can’t unwrap the condom before their boyfriend sticks it in! Listen, the writers’ strike has all of our favorite shows in full-tilt rerun mode, so maybe these Degrassi-esque webisodes are just what we need to whittle away 5 minutes. There is partial nudity, after all.
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge
133 Turk Street
San Francisco
10 PM til 12:30ish, Fridays and Saturdays
Get your dollar bills ready as the girls pull out
all the stops (and at least five costume changes apiece) at this
old-school, non-ironic dragztravaganza.
Care of The Sword’s tireless editors, we bring you this roundup (by
no means complete, or even-handed) of stuff going on for those of the
homo persuasion this weekend in the two meccas we currently have
bandwidth to cover, San Francisco and New York. Check back soon to see
us cover more gay urban centers near you (sorry, Cheyenne, we may never
get to you).
Our heavily editorialized listings after the jump…
While in NYC, The Tim and Roma Show decided to pay a visit to the offices of Lucas Entertainment, where Michael told us about what it’s like growing up with a sophisticated appreciation for fashion, and also took us inside his exclusive wardrobe department. Buy it all on Ebay now!
While other staph-afflicted urban centers like Boston and New York are frantically posting public service announcements about the disease on Craigslist, men in San Francisco have a different agenda, using “staph-free” and “No staph” as a way to get laid. A quick search of Craigslist M4M in Boston, New York and Los Angeles turns up nothing but well-meaning alerts about the new MRSA strain that’s been spreading among gay men. Even seemingly sexy enticements (“Hot Sex in Chelsea — 25”) turn out to be warnings in disguise.
It’s all a matter of taste, and this is where the popular trend has led us, apparently, but there’s just something a bit unseemly about a strapping young lad wearing a pair of jeans bedazzled with shiny rivets and adorned with embroidery. In an effort at authenticity, casting directors for Gus Van Sant’s Harvey Milk biopic, shooting tonight, Wednesday and Friday night in San Francisco, have asked that all extras appearing for next week’s scheduled crowd shoots try to wear clothing appropriate for the late 1970s: traditional blue jeans, wool or cotton sweaters, leather boots, clogs, canvas sneakers.
Looks like the Fort Lauderdale set of Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild was hotter than we originally imagined. At the last minute, Falcon’s monogamous exclusives Aden and Jordan Jaric joined the formidable cast, which already included Brent Corrigan and Michael Lucas. Playing the Vanna Whites to RuPaul and the Lady Bunny’s combined Pat Sajak, the studio’s latest It-boys participate in “Gays Gone Wild”-the film’s titular Spring Break-style game show-as presenters.
For the couple, who popped up on the industry’s radar mere nanoseconds ago, the casting marks a serious career jump-start.
Michael Lucas railed against online gay site Queerty today, charging its editors not only with anti-Semitism, but also using his good name to generate controversy and being a third-rate Perez Hilton. Queerty responded by posting a photo of post-tween sensation Zac Efron’s underwear-clad buttocks.
The battle began when Queerty posted an item about Lucas’ ebay auction.
Comment posters with Arab-esque monikers began taunting Lucas with
accusations of bad taste, fallen empires, Semitic money-grubbing and
invoked that weary Lucas standby, the Zoolander comparison.
Lucas responded with his now well-traveled merengue of anti-Semitism,
playful self-effacement and victorious pronouncements in the
third-person.
We, and just about every other news outlet on the planet, reported yesterday on the “tragic,” “shocking” and “devastating” death of Heath Ledger. But, frankly, we’ve become as fascinated by the proliferation of the media’s over-wrought and bad-tasting mourning as we are the one-time gay cowboy’s convoluted demise. Twenty-nine hours after the announcement, we present these five newsy low-lights of post-Ledger crepe-hanging.
We’re apparently not the only Negative Nancys around who always foresee the end of a relationship before it even begins. State lawmakers in Olympia, Washington unveiled legislation on Tuesday that would extend the state’s already established domestic partnership rights to include provisions for separation or divorce as well. The legislation would establish community property rights, probate protections and joint responsibility for debts for domestic partners, as well as extending end-of-life rights, nursing-home visitation, veterans benefits and spousal testimonial privileges now held only by hetero marrieds. Openly gay state Representative Jamie Peterson (D-Seattle) says, “[it’]s just an issue of basic fairness,” and we would have to agree.