Another young beauty has gone down for the Big Sleep. Page Six reports that 28-year-old actor Heath Ledger was found dead today in a Broome Street apartment of an apparent drug overdose. Ledger’s film career tended toward independent projects, and his final film appearance may turn out to be the Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight, in which he stars as The Joker (scary pic after the jump).
It’s that time of year when urban gays across the nation begin making their resolutions. Some may vow not to use their credit cards anymore. Others might delete their Manhunt profiles and pledge to stop randomly hooking up with anyone who thinks they’re hot. A goodly number, though, have probably resolved in the last few weeks to lay off the Devil’s Dandruff. The Bolivian marching powder. The booga shuga. You know – blow. Just to give you all a hand in sticking to your guns, we offer this field guide to the great leveler of personalities that is cocaine.
In a statement released this week, the Centers for Disease Control issued an apologetic-sounding coda to the study recently released by the Annals of Internal Medicine regarding the new, antibiotic-resistant strain of staph bacteria infection among MSM (Men who have Sex with Men) in San Francisco and Boston.
Contentious presidential candidate and drag performer Hedda Lettuce is once again vying for sensational headlines in the blogosphere, and we at The Sword are happy to oblige. In consecutive blog posts yesterday and today, Ms. Lettuce suggested that teen heartthrob Efron was not in fact hospitalized for an appendectomy, as was publicized, but that “he went in and had his penis removed and replaced with a shiny new vagina. Or maybe they just freshened up his old vagina.”
Republican Presidential hopeful and former whale Mike Huckabee compared homosexuality to animal fucking today in an interview with Belief.net, stating his worry over the slippery slope our society might careen down should civil unions between gays become legalized. After expressing his desire to amend the constitution to read more like the Old Testament, Huckabee offered the following pearl necklace of wisdom:
If you don’t die first from gay MRSA-staph and plan to keep on kicking well past your dancing days and into your diaper days, you may have thought to yourself, “I’d like to die with my gays around me.” Well good news! Berlin just saw the opening of Europe’s first nursing and care facility for the LGBT community, just in time for the city’s big gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit, to bless it.
In a shocking and sad bit of news, TMZ.com broke the story yesterday that 25-year-old actor Brad Renfro was found dead in his apartment after a night out drinking with friends. Known prominently for his breakout childhood performance in The Client, Renfro later went on to perform in movies like Apt Pupil, Larry Clark’s Bully, Ghost World, and also portrayed the role of Huck Finn in the 1995 Hollywood adaptation of the Mark Twain classic. Although Renfro had a known drug problem (he was arrested in 2006 for attempting to buy heroin), the cause of death remains unknown.
Our favorite media-blitzing entre-porn-eur Michael Lucas “graces the cover”* of Genre Magazine’s January/February 2008 issue, on newsstands currently. The issue marks the latest in a long line of publicity for the Lucas Entertainment CEO/star, whom inarguably loves the spotlight as much as he loves his suspiciously anonymous boyfriend. “My boyfriend is the hottest man I’ve ever had,” Lucas tells Genre. “He understands me totally, and I am 100% dedicated to him.”
There’s no place like homophobia in the media! It seems that some news outlets are taking a study recently conducted by the University of London on spatial awareness and gender and giving it a makeover. The post-op result? The Telegraph of London has astutely interpreted the study to mean that women and the gays are bad drivers. We admit that getting one out of the two correct isn’t half bad (although it actually, literally is) but in our own defense: maybe we’d become better drivers if there were more gay car commercials. Oh wait… there are some already?
Yikes. Well then, I guess it’s because we’re drunk all the time.
For more on our incalculable inadequacies, proceed at your own risk.
The presidential candidates are madly on the stump for the next few weeks, and in getting a little service-y for you, our homo readership, we at The Sword decided to sum up what these nine presidential hopefuls have to say on gay marriage, and gay rights in general. Since Karl Rove isn’t involved this time, the homosexual agenda has not exactly been a front-and-center issue lately-but just you wait! Expect all of them to throw us under the bus any day now, with the possible exception of drag queens Hedda Lettuce and Rudy Giuliani (who, in fact, lived with some gays after his last divorce and has donned ladies’ attire more than once in the last decade). A few brief quotes, after the jump.
Berlin, Germany
January 25
Javier Peres is one of the hottest international art gallerists with his Peres Projects located in Berlin, Los Angeles, and Athens. After launching DADDY the magazine, Peres has also become known for his full-tilt dance parties that commemorate the release of each issue. Guest edited by a different artist each time, the latest issue “Black Daddy” was curated by Franz West and contains imagery ranging from Jeff Koons’s statue of Michael Jackson and Bubbles, to Lindsay Lohan’s vagina, to Sid Vicious, to the corpses of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Details are TBA, so check back at their website for more information. www.daddythemagazine.com
Washington D.C.
January 18-21
Why settle for AEE when lovers of leather can have their own convention? Washington D.C.’s Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend is sponsored by Folsom Street Fair, and brings that new car smell to the Plaza Hotel. Browse whips, shackles, and bondage gear by day, and take it all off at one of the weekend’s fetish dance parties by night. We find it inspirational that even in starkest winter, leather daddies are content to sport nothing but chest hair, chokers, leather jock straps all in the name of making a statement. www.leatherweekend.com
Bangkok, Thailand
January 13, 20, and 27
Think Pink at Bangkok’s own BED Supper Club is the nightclub destination for all of the city’s most fabulous fags. Featuring burlesque performances, drag emcees, and resident DJs Eddie Frampton and Fred Jungo, Think Pink is a gay oasis that’ll have you feeling at home no matter how far from it you really are. www.bedsupperclub.com
MEN Arena
Manchester, England
January 23, 24, & 26
Isn’t it funny that the torch bearers of worldwide girl power are playing at a venue called MEN Arena? Well, there ought to be enough gays in attendance to live up to the namesake, at least. They may no longer be power girls in a 90s world, but between them they’ve got a bestselling fashion tome, a gorgeous soccer star husband, somewhere around seven children, a baby scandal with Eddie Murphy and over 55 million albums sold. It was just the other day when an aggressive Spice Girls megamix leapt out of our iPod Shuffle reminding us of what exactly made them the Fab 5 in the first place. Catch them if you can, and be sure to bring enough zig-a-zig-ahhhh. www.thespicegirls.com
Arosa Ski Resort
Gemeindeverwaltung Arosa
Rathaus
Postfach 165
7050 Arosa
Arosa, Switzerland
January 5-11
This highly popular gay ski week takes place at Arosa, which rests right at the top of a 6,000-foot Swiss valley. Spend the day enjoying the slopes, ski back to your room with a Swiss mister, or simply go to check out the parties. Always sunny, always snowing, it sounds too good to be true because it probably is: hurry up before you miss it. www.arosa-gayskiweek.com
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
January 27 – February 3
No, Beef Dip isn’t some grotesque relic left over from spending the holidays at my Aunt Barbara’s house, it’s a bunch of bears from around the world coming together in Puerto Vallarta to party and hang out together on the beach. Duh!www.beefdip.com
Triennale Design Museum
Viale Alemagna 6
Invitation Only
January 12
It’s nice to know men come first in fashion in at least one regard: our Fall ready-to-wear collections debut before any of the women’s wear, and whether you’re pining for Prada (pictured left, from the Spring ’08 collection) or fiending for Fendi, Milan is where the menswear rules the runway. It’s even set us on an alliterative rampage. Fashion week runs the 12th through the 15th, starting with a bash at the Triennale Design Museum thrown by Sak’s Fifth Avenue in conjunction with The Wall Street Journal. www.cameramode.it
Bilbao, Spain
January 20-25
Beginning in 2004, Zinegoak Film Festival showed 25 GLBT films in one screening room over the course of four days. This year, the festival takes place at four theaters, showing 95 films over five days in Bilbao before traveling off to assorted Bizkain villages. Spend time watching international queer cinema in Bilbao, home of the infamous Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim museum, where you can stop in and check out some Richard Serra sculptures between screenings. If all this art and design fails to keep you entertained, thank God for good old fashioned Spanish gentlemen! www.zinegoak.com
Club Krave
Planet Hollywood Casino & Hotel
3663 S. Las Vegas Blvd.
Las Vegas, NV
January 11th
Every year, all of the hottest porn stars on the planet make a pilgrimage to mecca, otherwise known as Las Vegas, for the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo. While the plebeian gentry of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales swapped stories along their journey, our more contemporary visitors swap business cards and bodily fluids. But alas, when in Hustlaball, do as the hustlers do! Just be sure to check out the live stage shows before you go back to your dens of rented iniquity. www.HustlaBall.com
Park City, Utah
January 9-13
With gay and lesbian ski weeks traversing the globe, what better place to hunker down and commence snowballing than in Park City? Running through the 13th, Community Visions’ Gay and Lesbian Ski Week has an itinerary bursting with lunches, cocktail parties and assorted meet and greets that’ll have your sun goggles transmitting psychedelic rainbows so brightly that you might fall off of a chairlift (that is, if trying to successfully attempt a handjob doesn’t do the trick first). Stick around for five more days and you might catch a glimpse of the Hollywood winter jamboree of the Sundance Film Festival, spy Emile Hirsch getting a Starbucks, and maybe walk away with a free gift bag or two. www.communityvisions.org
Related: Snowballing (Gentlemen’s Video)
The misguided shyster who purchased the domain ismellperfect.com is currently marketing a product called NodorOâ„¢, a cream intended to combat male crotch odor and thereby threatening to destroy one of the basic tenets of gay bear culture. With the tagline, “Lose the odor, not your lover,” the ad campaign is clearly targeted at the more hygienically inclined amongst the gays (and, also clearly, at straight men, and the uncut).
In the wake of the writers’ strike, Cher and Chastity Bono have reportedly been shopping around a new reality television program in which they help closeted homos confront their friends and families. Critics have been quick to seize on the famously fractious relationship that followed Chastity’s own coming out, during which Cher kicked her daughter out of the house. The now sober Chastity was once reported to be drinking cooking sherry, before moving on to more sophisticated tastes like Oxycontin and cheeseburgers.
When Britney Spears was rushed to Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Phil wasn’t the only ambulance-chaser in tow. Indeed, Bobby Trendy, the infamously tragic interior decorator that Anna Nicole Smith once fired (and whose coattails he’s still riding post-mortem), decided to take time out of his steady lipgloss application to hold a candlelight “visual” for the fallen idol outside of the L.A.-area medical center. For those who can’t decode that term, “candlelight visual” evidently refers to the act of holding a candlelight vigil, while physically holding a visual aid, all the while dressed in a belated holiday outfit that may hurt your vision.
All flouncy faggotry aside, Bobby does make a point when he compares Brit-Brit’s plight with the “Anna Nicole saga”. Could this bedazzled z-lister be some type of malapropistic prophet signifying Britney’s end of days?
Click over to TMZ.com for the video.
When she isn’t visiting Britney in the hospital, NY performer Hedda Lettuce has been pounding the pavement on the campaign trail in a valiant bid for the presidency, but this past weekend saw the drag legend almost throwing in the towel after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses. In two consecutive blog posts, Lettuce resigned the race in favor of pursuing a list of other goals (“learning how to bake, needlepoint, drug mule, cult leader”) and then courageously rescinded her resignation, saying “I will continue to campaign… until someone puts a gun to my head.”
Hedda Lettuce may be the only one running for
office, but that hasn’t stopped our favorite cross dressers from weighing in
on their current crop of presidential candidates. After discovering that most
of our favorite porn stars are voting for Hillary, we thought we’d check in
with the drag queens. Turns out sisterhood ain’t that powerful …
Wednesday, January 9th
9th Avenue Bistro
693 9th Avenue
9PM to 11PM
Will Clark’s Wednesday night Porno Bingo game is always a great opportunity to meet, possibly make out with, and definitely get drunk, with some of your favorite stars of the sticky screen.
Mainstream advertisers have been courting homosexuals for years, but apparently this is news to the editors of Radar. Like a titillated tween gasping at the not-so-coy references in The Canterbury Tales, or a hard-up college professor detailing the hidden lez in a Willa Cather novel, Radar bravely confronts “subtly coded” gay advertising in mainstream publications. The only problem? Most of these ads ran in Out and the Advocate and the meanings are about as subtle as a Pride parade.
Demonstrating that those wily freshmen twinks are indeed ahead of than their never-been-kissed nerd brethren, scientists unveiled that the secret to getting straight men into bed is… alcohol. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University in University Park observed that male Drosophila fruit flies engaged in homosexual activity when under the influence of alcohol, and by the third day had succumbed to gang-bang-style “courtship-chains.” No word on whether they did the elephant walk after the Zeta Phi Beta Three-Day.
In a separate study, drunk female fruit flies spent their evenings cutting themselves and reading Anaïs Nin.
Anyone who’s tried hooking up on Manhunt or Craigslist in the last decade, has encountered a mystery: How can so many young people bareback without contracting HIV? Thanks to a new report, we now know the answer: they can’t! They get AIDS just like everyone else!
Semi-lebrity Spencer Pratt has refused Michael Lucas’s lecherous advances, telling In Touch magazine that he won’t leave the lucrative world of reality TV “until I am 100.”
While actual details are sketchy and smell vaguely of poppers and fever
dream sweat, Lucas had allegedly propositioned The Hills “star,”
suggesting that he’d be perfect for a gay porn blockbuster.
The Bush Administration has approved $300,000 dollars in funding to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis to fight crystal meth abuse in the gay community.
Has the vivisection that is holiday shopping robbed you of your holiday spirit? With less than a week until we all hunker down at Mom’s, rifle through the medicine cabinet, bogart a bottle of champagne and wake up dazed in a living nativity somewhere down the street, time is running out to get our loved ones what they really want from us. Of course, a porn site membership will successfully impress your gaggle of gay friends, but for your most special partner, nothing says “Season’s Greetings” like reaming him in the ass with a giant red and white candy-cane vibrator! Alright fruitcakes, we give you (after the jump): Our Holiday Wishlist!
When it was discovered that a Chinese toy company had inadvertently made colored beads that turned into GHB when broken down by the digestive tract, homos everywhere began popping Lite-Brite pegs (nevermind that the culprit, Aqua Dots, were quickly recalled). The Sword, however, felt it was time to set the record straight about one of our least favorite date rape drugs. Our complete field guide after the jump.
Erstwhile Project Runway contestant Jack Mackenroth seems like a real doll, and one with a head not only for PR, but PR as well. Whilst awaiting the airing of his appearance on and subsequent staph-infection-related departure from the show, Mackenroth not only posed for some nude-y “art” photographs that got “leaked” to the internet, shot a cameo in the Sex and the City movie and started dating fellow reality fag Dale Levitski, but he also uploaded a charming video spoof of himself lip syncing to Irene Cara’s 1983 classic “What a Feeling” while fagging out on the D train and
getting a bucket of water thrown on him (clip after the jump).
If you’ve got a question about religion, ask the man who produced Heaven to Hell. When CBS News covered the decision of The Diocese of San Joaquin in California’s Central Valley to break away from the larger Episcopal Church for its ordination of women and support of gays (calling it “morally and spiritually bankrupt), they asked Falcon Studios prexy Todd Montgomery to set the record straight. “Jesus wasn’t exclusive,” Montgomery told the unsuspecting film crew outside San Francisco’s tony Grace Cathedral. Not a Falcon exclusive, maybe, but we suspect Dark Alley would have signed him.
Holiday YouTube videos have replaced Christmas
cookies as a seasonal MUST over these past couple of years. For fags like us, YouTube isn’t just another
sensory replacement for food (just ask our dealers!), but also a chance to
catch some of the most bizarre and under-appreciated queer cinema ever made. We’ve
known that gays and yuletide cheer are an incompatible match ever since we came
out during Christmas of freshman year and our crazy Aunt Rachel threw her turkey leg at us, screaming “fuck” a lot-so you can imagine the tongue-in- cheekiness we have in store for you with our 12 Gays of Christmas Video Collection.
Let’s say you’re a poorly closeted celebrity who
hasn’t seen a lot of press since 2003.
You go to the trouble of seeking a skin care professional in
Beyoncé said he was the bomb and you’ve been told that the Danes are very
discreet.*
