Seems us gays are a talented, children's (?) book writing lot! FYF Friend Carl Schutt surprised me the other day by announcing he'd written, illustrated and self-published a book, "I Want My Foreskin for Giftmas" and pointed me to his website where I could watch the musical read-a-long video embedded here and "preview" his book. The video's amazing, as is the full-length poem about Mr. Schutt's "skinflute" and its missing "hood", the hand-cut (no pun!) illustrations and the myriad euphemisms for penis, throughout.
Visit the website to purchase your copy today! It's sure to be a conversation starter for years to come.
"In the book everything about me had happened. The book was something I simply couldn't disavow. The book was blunt and had an honesty about it, whereas the movie was just a beautiful lie. (It was also a bummer: very colorful and busy but also grim and expensive, and it didn't recoup its cost when released that November.) In the movie I was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book: I wasn't blond, I wasn't tan, and neither was the actor. I also suddenly became the movie's moral compass, spouting AA jargon, castigating everyone's drug use and trying to save Julian. ("I'll sell my car," I warn the actor playing Julian's dealer. "Whatever it takes.") This was slightly less true of the adaptation of Blair's character, played by a girl who actually seemed like she belonged in our group — jittery, sexually available, easily wounded. Julian became the sentimentalized version of himself, acted by a talented, sad-faced clown, who has an affair with Blair and then realizes he has to let her go because I was his best bud. "Be good to her," Julian tells Clay. "She really deserves it." The sheer hypocrisy of this scene must have made the author blanch. Smiling secretly to myself with perverse satisfaction when the actor delivered that line, I then glanced at Blair in the darkness of the screening room."
- from Imperial Bedrooms, Bret Easton Ellis' sequel to Less Than Zero coming out June 15. Esquire has a longer excerpt (from which the above is pulled). In the meantime, my dog-eared copy of Blair, Clay, Julian and Trent's fun-filled romp in the California sunshine will get a re-visit. Don't be a bum and just NetFlix it, as the movie simply isn't the book.
Via kottke
Village Voice Editor, Tony Ortega, has directed his media blogger, Foster Kamer, not to apologize for making a dick joke (or bemoan having done so) that cost The Voice a million dollars in advertising.
As you may guess, This is FYF enjoys a good dick joke (and a good dick), so it's nice to hear Mr. Ortega stand up for his writer, not only because he made a dick joke, but also because the "joke" is a nice play on words and...is actually funny. In addition, the whole episode shows a level of fiestiness (for a media outlet) we approve.
NY Mag gives a full explanation (as does Mr. Ortega's post, for that matter) here, but all you really need to know is it involves Cablevision's James Dolan, Gothamist and its founder/publisher Jake Dobkin and Dobkin's own remark about the NYTimes' oral technique.
After the late 20th century corporate buy-up of nearly all traditional news outlets, this marks a refreshing departure from the kid-glove treatment with which most media outlets treat their advertisers. In a day and age when advertisers and writers of like mind are better able to find one another than ever before, there is little reason for this "ballsiness" not to become a trend (which may be the most well qualified application of ballsiness ever). America is ready for REAL real talk ... or at least more dick jokes. Am I right?!
Image via Mr. Ortega's post where it was labeled, "Not Jimmy Dolan's cock"
(Image by A.D. Winans)
There's a lively bunch o' commenters over at New York Mag's Daily Intel's Sex Diary. The Sex Diary is purportedly autobiographical and covers a week in the author's sex life, but it seems there's invariably at least one comment tinged (if not coming right out, baldly) with disbelief and suspicion regarding the true origin of the week's diary. What's funny to me; however, is when the subject is a gay male, the commenters (mostly regulars who don't miss a week) show varying levels of ignorance and confusion regarding gay male's sexual habits/practices. More then that, it's surprising to me what - specifically - is surprising/shocking/unknown about male homo-sex for the commenters. This past week, there was immense confusion over the 25-year old protagonist's attraction to a 40-year old sexual partner with the conclusion arrived at being it must be a "kept" situation (as if a young man is inherently more valuable and more desirable to ALL than an older one, and thus must be held to the older male by money, or some equivalent trade-off).
It's fast and furious, so I recommend reading a few before diving in and telling them all "what for", but regardless it's entertaining enough to while away a Monday afternoon, scratching one's head at the naivete.
Besides Buzz, all the buzz right now seems to be about Chatroulette and New York Mag has done a wonderful job translating a purely visual experience that lasts - on average - less than 3 seconds per person into a 3 page long article examining the site and its ramifications. As a media ecologist, this sh*t gets me HARD!
