Nasty Pig

Victor Calderone @ Crobar - a review

Great description of last saturday's debut of Victor Calderone's residence at Crobar - I have absolutely nothing to add - thanks JJ for forwarding it to me.

"One step inside Crobar on a regular Saturday night and you understand why they're focusing on the straight market and relegating us to afterhours and Sunday nights.

Simply put, you can't sit down in Crobar unless you're very rich. All of those seating areas we explored during Alegria -- the skyboxes at the top of the balcony, the mid-level room just off the dance floor, the box seat section at the south edge of the main dance floor -- every single seat in the house is a VIP area. And every single one was occupied Saturday night. I have no way of knowing how many were paid for and how many comped, but clearly if even a substantial number were paid, that's a huge additional revenue stream for the club that the gay crowd would never generate.

Second, the drinks. Regular drinks aren't badly priced by New York standards -- $5 water, $6 beer, $8 mixed drinks -- but order something premium, and forget about it. One friend had a martini: $15. Another friend ordered two drinks with Grey Goose vodka and paid a total of $35.

And boy, do they drink. It wasn't as crowded as Alegria -- when we arrived at 2 a.m., it was actually just about the perfect size crowd, thick enough to convey a sense of energy but not so packed as to create traffic jams anywhere. (It was, however, one of the ugliest crowds I've ever seen. I hate to sound classist, but this wasn't the straight crowd that used to show up at Twilo before Junior went on. These were big-haired, purse-swinging, overlipsticked, underdressed women and their boyfriends, who ranged from cute-in-that-incipient-beer-belly way some young straight guys are, to downright scary, gangstas and no-neck football wannabees and everything in between.)

But they were sloshing from left to right and back again. And I'm pretty sure they weren't just on alcohol: at one point, I got in line to use the stall in the bathroom, and when someone came in to use the urinal, the (obviously straight) guy behind me said, wink-wink-nudge-nudge, "Nice to see someone who actually has to use the bathroom, huh?" One really can't party with drunks unless one is drunk oneself, so we stayed to the side and waited for Victor to come on.

What made the wait bearable was Angel Moraes, the opening DJ. I had never heard him before and, except for "The Cure," the song that was a big hit for Junior in the last days of Twilo, wasn't really aware of any of his work. The first hour we were there was a bit choppy but then he settled down into a tribal, Victor-ish groove bracketed by a couple of odd but welcome oldies, "Equitoreal" and Sandstorm's "Return to Nothing."

Shortly after 4 the music stopped, the lighting rig lowered to just above the dance floor, there was a huge blast from the nitro machine and then we heard Victor's signature drum sound. It was a nice way to start the party, by appearing to convert the place into a totally different club. Unfortunately it took a little longer to convert the crowd. Shortly before 4 I had wandered around looking to see if a gay element was discernable; I saw gay and potentially gay boys in ones and twos scattered around, but no critical mass yet. Between 5 and 5:30, however, a gay section formed on the dance floor, underneath the DJ booth at first and then metastasizing into the center and around, until by the end of the party the straight people had been pushed to the fringes.

As more and more friends came in, we starting hearing about long lines and searches at the door. We hadn't had to wait at all when we arrived at 2 and there was no search, but at peak after-hour arrival time between 5 and 5:30, people waited as long as 45 minutes to get in and there was a full search. Security was also very visible during the afterhours part; the people who had spent the first few hours keeping non-VIPs out of the seating areas seemed to have been reassigned to patrolling the dance floor. It wasn't the most oppressive security regime I've ever seen at a club by a long shot, but it was noticeably stricter than at Alegria. One (admittedly reckless) acquaintance even had his bumper confiscated, but was not thrown out of the club.

Victor's first few hours were kind of generic, drums and bass with the occasional shouted, chanted or spoken-word vocal. It's really nothing like Abel, who plays recognizable songs even if they're remixed, sampled and layered extensively. Nobody was expecting too much from him since it was a new club and a new event. Finally, he found his groove; the music didn't sound much different but all of a sudden it went right to my crotch and started tingling in the way that only Victor's music really can.

Unfortunately, the crowd never reached the critical mass necessary to really enjoy this music right. While the dance floor was loosely filled, people weren't packed together enough to create any sexual heat. It also didn't seem that people were there for that; they seemed more interested in just getting lost in the music. It went on like this for a couple of hours, the crowd diminishing one by one. I was tempted to stay till the end to see whether Victor would end with some morning music, which he sometimes does, but decided it wasn't worth the wait and left with my group around 10.

All in all, as the BP ads say, "It's a start." Maybe people were tired after Alegria and taking the weekend off, but they need to draw in more people, more consistently, for this event to work. The crowd they got seemed to be the party-literati of New York, the ones who know what's going on, read HX and NEXT for the articles and follow DJs around. That's not enough to fill that big club on a consistent basis. Hopefully they will start doing more marketing, have people stand outside Roxy handing out discount-admission cards, or even engage a real promoter to create a real "event."

Cheers,
Mr. A."

MEMÓRIA

7 de Setembro Square
Belo Horizonte - 1968

U.S. Man Hits Brazil Baby With Water: "An American citizen who spilled a cup of water in the face of a crying baby during a flight to Brazil, will be deported, the federal police said on Thursday."

Yahoo! News: "'I think I overreacted a little,' Duffy told Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper. "

Still No Regrets:
Paris Remembers Its Piaf

"Her mother disappeared when Édith was 2, and her father sent the child to live with his mother, who ran a brothel near Rouen. The girl apparently enjoyed being mothered by the prostitutes. Madame Billy later said that it was her girls who had taught Piaf poise and good manners."

something different:

let's have a SUPER BOWL party?

Martha’s Big Day

via the morning news

GEMINI
May 21 - June 21
With Mercury, your ruler, pushing ahead, your brainiac powers are increasing. Maybe you’ll decide to write a book. Pen a joint memoir about your Hollywood days, like Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese are doing. Or stick to a subject closer to home and write an angst-ridden tome about your dating experiences. Single Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry: Why Intimacy is Over-Rated. Create a self-help manual for the intimacy impaired. Given your expertise on the subject, it should hit the bestseller list in no time.

the powers of ten

A la Eames

where have i been?

Jornal do Brasil: Vitória inédita
'Cidade de Deus' é indicado a quatro Oscar e surpreende até mesmo o próprio diretor Fernando Meirelles

City of God is nominated for 4 Oscars including BEST DIRECTOR!!! But it was passed over for Best Foreign Movie. Go figure...

FOX News: "Brazilian movie director Fernando Meirelles, whose film 'City of God' was nominated Tuesday for four Academy Awards, asked production assistants a single question when he heard the news: 'Has the Academy gone mad?'"

United Press International: "In addition to getting a Best Director nod for Fernando Meirelles, Cidade de Deus is also in the hunt for honors in the categories of film editing, cinematography and best adapted screenplay."

mug shot

James Brown was arrested today on a domestic violence charge

a guy site

5 a.m.

"5 a.m. meant the morning sky was starting to drift onto the dance floor through the skylights of a dark disco while the music slowed to a sleazy and tweaked rhythm...or the sound of trash trucks and the smell of fog rising off the asphalt on the way home--and the power that came from knowing how special it was to be on the streets of L.A., San Francisco or New York City at 5 a.m."
Disco Mornings/Video Nights:
From Trocadero Transfer to Paradise Garage & Everything In Between

And I do not want what I haven't got

Worst Album Cover Ever

Ministers' Quartet: Let me touch him
At least they are asking first?

The Cheating Culture

Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead

Facts
* Tax evasion costs the government over $250 billion a year.
* Nearly half of resumes contain lies.
* 80 percent of "A" students admit cheating.
* Employee theft totals $600 billion, or 6 percent of GDP.
* 39 percent of workers say senior managers they work for lack integrity.
* Half of all major leaguers are using steroids.
* Ethics problems in law, medicine, accounting, and other professions worsened in the 1990s.

Why MORE cheating?
* Today's inequality means bigger paychecks for winners and less security for everyone else. More people will do anything to succeed, starting from a young age.
* The new bottom-focus on profits and efficiency exerts pressures on people to cut corners at work.
* Government regulators don't have the resources to crack down on cheating, especially by the super wealthy.
* American values have changed since the 1970s. We have become more selfish, more focused on money, and more cutthroat.
* Cheating takes on a life of its own. People cheat because "everybody does it."

A face not only a mother could love.

"Yesterday a friend and fellow blogger told me my blog was so angry..."

When I mentioned that you sounded angry was because of the contrast between the voice of your postings and the gentle persona I knew was writing them.

It was a surprise not a criticism. I'm angry as well but I guess I use sarcasm as a weapon.

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
I'm walking through the desert
And I am not frightened although it's hot
I have all that I requested
And I do not want what I haven't got
I have learned this from my mother
See how happy she has made me
I will take this road much further
Though I know not where it takes me
I have water for my journey
I have bread and I have wine
No longer will I be hungry
For the bread of life is mine
I saw a navy blue bird
Flying way above the sea
I walked on and I learned later
That this navy blue bird was me
I returned a paler blue bird
And this is the advice they gave me
You must not try to be too pure
You must fly closer to the sea
So I'm walking through the desert
And I am not frightened although it's hot
I have all that I requested
And I do not want what I haven't got

lasting impression or blindness?

"Me preocupo com seu isolamento, nao deixa isso acontecer nao. E nao
deixa a auto-estima ficar em baixa, voce eh como se diz 'um menino de ouro'.".

My sister - i should say my family in Brazil - consider me a 'golden boy'.
Why does it make me cringe? She just brought tears to my eyes with a beautifully written email - she is the intelectual in the family - professing unrequited love.
Family.

glamour

I have been working with some friends, putting together the Givenchy stand in the Men's Fashion Trade Show that starts tomorrow in New York at Pier 94.
It's a long way from when I was younger in Brazil with dreams of high-end fashion. It's also a very long way from what I imagined working with a prestigious label would be like. I can honestly say the work of these last few days falls within the most unglamourous I have done here. I am not complaining at all. We had fun: K, S , D and I. It just downed on me when I was taping a carpet down, my butt crack exposed to the world...

belo horizonte subway

thanks jj!

Editorial Observer: The Whole Cow and Nothing but the Whole Cow: "The reason is that the parts of a slaughtered cow go everywhere. The official British B.S.E. Inquiry Report put it this way: 'It has been said, and not altogether facetiously, that the only industry in which some part of the cow is not used is concrete production.' The problem isn't just global meat. It's global cow."

Kung hei fat choy!

One third of the world celebrate the new year today:
the year of the monkey!
photo via MemeFirst

SNAXX
FUN, FRIENDLY, FURRY, FOXXY.
DJ Gustavo
Friday January 23rd
Westside Tavern
360 W.23rd @ 9 Ave.
in the basement, after 10, $3

the door alice did not open
I was at the last one (and the one before that) and it was GREAT! One of those truly New York happenings, which are so rare these days. You walk thru this packed straight pub and in the back, past the pool table there is a little door that I would dare Alice to cross. RichKing and Gustavo are able to attract the crème de la crème of FUN, FRIENDLY, FURRY, FOXXY New Yorkers.
A MUST!

Please God, help me cleanse the computer of viruses and evil photographs which disturb and ruin my work

An Israeli rabbi has composed a prayer to help devout Jews overcome guilt after visiting porn web sites while browsing the Internet. The rabbi recommends that Jews recite the prayer when they log on to the Internet or even program it to flash up on their computer screens so they are spiritually covered whether they enter a porn site intentionally or by mistake.
via The Minor Fall, The Major Lift

nothing i do is my fault

Wing sings 'Close to you' via AndrewSullivan.com

the complete marbles

An exhibition of work by British artist Marc Quinn

"If the Venus de Milo had arms, it would most probably be a very boring statue," says the artist, who -- shortly before he began this series -- wondered why we gaze raptly at ancient statues with missing limbs but avert our eyes from real people in the same state. Instead of the perfection of incomplete statues, he heroicizes incomplete bodies -- specific ones. These are portraits of actual people with missing, amputated, or deformed limbs, survivors of car crashes, motorcycle accidents, birth defects, or in the case of Selma Mustajbasic, a cafe bombing in Sarajevo.
Village Voice

The current show consists of a series of eleven carved marble sculptures that depict adults who, by defect of birth or amputation, have partial or missing limbs. Quinn presents these men and women as life-size heroic figures. The medium and realistic rendering aligns the sculptures with classical antiquities, where incompleteness, contextualized by our regard for survival, begets its own form of beauty. The exhibition will run through February 28, 2004.
Mary Boone Gallery

"This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me"
E.D.

super macro of a poppy seed bagel
via [daily dose of imagery]

le weekend

I know, it's wednesday and I should be thinking of the coming weekend, not the one that has passed. But I can't stop thinking about it.

XS is staying in my apartment and it's amazing how deeper our friendship has gotten - it's amazing how open I can be with him - that i actually feel comfortable confiding in him.

I met some wonderful people over the weekend. People I would like to get to know better.

It's funny what happens when you open yourself up to new situations...

Brazil Adopts Strict Gun Controls to Try to Curb Murders

"No country in the world has a higher rate of homicide by firearms than Brazil, and the toll is highest in large cities like this one. But now, in what gun control advocates describe as a bold but risky social experiment, Brazil has virtually outlawed the possession of handguns.
Since just before Christmas, no one in this nation of 175 million except police officers, soldiers and prison and security guards has been authorized to carry a pistol.
The sale and trade of weapons has been similarly limited: the illegal purchase, possession or furnishing of arms has become a criminal offense with no bail and long prison sentences. Gun owners are being told that most of them will have to hand over their weapons within six months."
Via NYTimes

ALEGRIA @ Crobar was amazing!

"The soul has moments of escape -
When bursting all the doors -
She dances like a Bomb, abroad,
And swings upon the Hours"
Emily Dickinson

"If she were not poor, she would not have lost her teeth, and if she had not lost her teeth, perhaps she would not have remained poor."
The people who received promotions tended to have something that Caroline did not. They had teeth. Caroline's teeth had succumbed to poverty, to the years when she could not afford a dentist.(...)
Caroline's is the face of the working poor, marked by a poverty-generated handicap more obvious than most deficiencies but no different, really, from the less visible deficits that reflect and reinforce destitution.
NYTimes Magazine

"Free at last,
free at last
Thank God Almighty,
we are free at last"
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Brazilian Slums Seen as Pawns in Political Games

Estrutural, a Brazilian slum near the capital, Brasília, is home to 20,000 people. A United Nations report last year said that squatting worldwide had become a "business, often carried out with the active, if clandestine, participation of politicians, policemen and privateers of all kinds.

thank you

thank you. thank you.
Mr. DF and I had been talking about having a home made brazilian dinner ever since we became friends.
He had it yesterday at his home.
We had Muqueca de Peixe and we drank much wine. And we talked.

MR. DF: It was an amazing quality time the one spent inside your home.
love.
v

Chinese New Year of the Monkey

A male Proboscis monkey named Victor relaxes at the Singapore Zoo. The Chinese New Year, the Year of the Monkey will be ushered in with great fanfare and celebration on January 22.

"You're doing what 17th-century English Catholics living under Protestant oppression called ''equivocating.'' Rather than be drawn and quartered, some Catholics would deftly respond to an inquisitor with an answer that was in some sense true but likely to be misinterpreted. Q: Have you engaged in forbidden religious practices? A: I have not. (The rationale being, they are not forbidden by God.) Many were as troubled as are you by this evasion.
To deceive people, even passively, is (in most cases) not ethical. But avoiding the question altogether is fine (if socially awkward)"
The Ethicist

IT'S A DRAG

''I was reading 'The Man Who Would Be Queen,' '' writes Patricia Dorfman of Sunnyside, in the borough of Queens, New York, about a book by J. Michael Bailey subtitled ''The Science of Gender-Bending.'' (The title is a play on Rudyard Kipling's story ''The Man Who Would Be King,'' and the subtitle is a pun on ''fender bender,'' a minor bump on your car that costs a bundle to fix. The name of the borough in which Ms. Dorfman lives is not a play on anything.)

''I realized I didn't know the origin of the expression drag queen,'' she continues, ''and I don't have the slightest idea why a drag race is called that. I am from the South, so I understand the use of 'she's draggin',' meaning 'tired,' or 'it's a drag,' referring to weight, I assume. I guess I could look it up.''

Why bother, when I'm right here at onlanguage@nytimes.com, and the query is about one of the most multi-meaninged words in the slanguage?

''We shall come in drag, which means men wearing women's costumes,'' is an O.E.D. citation dated 1870 from an English newspaper. Three years later, the fourth edition of J.C. Hotten's slang dictionary included drag, noting that ''a recent impersonation case led to the publication of the word in that sense.'' In 1909, the philologist J. Redding Ware provided a Victorian-era etymon: ''Petticoat or skirt used by actors when playing female parts. Derived from the drag of the dress, as distinct from the nondragginess of the trouser.'' The slanguist Eric Partridge reported that earlier, around 1850, the usage ''to flash the drag'' meant ''to wear women's clothes for immoral purposes (in drag, thus dressed).''

The verb to drag comes from the Old Norse dragga and Middle English drawen, ''to draw,'' specifically ''to haul with difficulty.'' The word became a noun when applied to a horse-drawn wagon, leading to a 1785 definition in Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: ''go on the drag, to follow a cart or wagon in order to rob it.''

It followed that a street on which many drags rolled became known as a drag, and in 1851 a man was jailed for a month for ''griddling in the main drag (singing in the high street).''

That brings us to the mid-19th century with a horse-drawn stagecoach called a drag, rattling along at top speed with a John Wayne character riding shotgun. And a short century later, in 1954, American Speech magazine noted, ''Drag, a race between two cars to determine which can accelerate faster.'' Here we are with the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (Nascar) drawing millions to drag strips even as drag queens drag drag into the mainstream. Great word.
Via NYTimes'On Language

The extraordinary becomes the routine:

a foreign traveler had his finger scanned last week at Kennedy Airport in New York. Color Crazed
Terror Policy: Between Fear and Freedom
"For every new border protection program - like the fingerprinting of many foreign visitors, initiated last week - civil libertarians and Arab-American groups express concern about ethnic profiling."

photo by quarlo

Amazonsaurus

the first - and only - Brazilian Dinosaur

O primeiro dinossauro encontrado na região amazônica (no norte do Maranhão), além de único, também é o mais antigo do Brasil e data de um tempo que se confunde com a eternidade: 110 milhões de anos. Seu nome de batismo é Amazonsaurus Maranhensis. , a mais nova e sensacional descoberta da arqueologia nacional. Um achado que abre a perspectiva de se encontrar outras espécies na região e aprofundar cada vez mais o conhecimento científico sobre a origem do Brasil, do continente, do planeta e das gentes.
via Jornal do Brasil Online

is your man a brawny man?

He shows his strong side by:
Hauling wood
Confronting difficult subjects head on
Supporting you through your toughest times
He reveals his gentle side through:
Interpretive dance
Treating you to romantic surprises like flowers or an unexpected caress
Playing with the kids
You knew he was truly well-rounded when:
You saw him walk and chew gum at the same time
He took you to a ball game and the ballet in the same week
He balanced the checkbook while watching the baby and making a perfect risotto
Register Your Man

The World History Of Male Love

Department of Homeland Security: US-VISIT Program Overview
US-VISIT helps to secure our borders and expedite the entry/exit process while enhancing the integrity of our immigration system and respecting the privacy of our visitors.
US-VISIT uses scanning equipment to collect "biometric identifiers," such as fingerprints, in an inkless process, along with a digital photograph of the visitor. Together with the standard information gathered from a visitor about their identity and travel, the new program will verify the visitor's identity and compliance with visa and immigration policies.

EXEMPT COUNTRIES
Andorra, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom (for citizens with the unrestricted right of permanent abode in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Channel Islands and Isle of Man)

CNN.com: "Critics say the broad-reaching program will cause unnecessary travel delays and may never prove to be effective.
'There's so much information in such volumes that there's a limit to what any analyst can absorb,' said Larry Johnson, an aviation security consultant."

Boy with a Pipe (1905)
Pablo Picasso

Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World

"The Industrial revolution was proving that not all man-made advances were perfect and many could be awful. (...) Nature by contrast seemed pure and bewitching. The great travelers turned away from civilizations and went to explore the wild world. Fascination with what man could create gave way to the question of how man was created and what if anything distinguished humankind from the rest of the natural world.
The Victorians were tireless name-givers and classifiers, and they set out to categorize the living diversity they were finding on other continents. At the center of this enterprise was the locating, indentifying, and classifying of orchids, the greatest of all plant families. As modern living became chaotic and bewildering, the Victorians looked for order in the universe, an outline that could organize their knowledge of every living thing and maybe at the same time rationalize the meaning of existence."

from The Orchid Thief : A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean

I saw Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World last night and loved it. Didn't expect to. But the movie is MUCH more than what the previews lead to believe. It's reconstruction of the period, including the depiction of Brazil, historically correct, is amazing. But, just for the part filmed at the Galapagos it's worth more than $10.25 (yep, the cost of movies here in NYC)

Reflecting Absence

"The water defines the voids and cascades down through them. To get to the lower levels of the memorial, visitors will walk down along the face of the slurry wall, as though they are descending through geological time. Indeed, in the depths of the memorial, one comes to bedrock, the very foundation of the towers that were destroyed on 9/11.
The initial version of 'Reflecting Absence' was powerful but stark. The memorial design jury performed a great service to the city by encouraging revisions that produced a purity of design deserving strong protection. The design that was revealed yesterday is one in which privacy and community work together, where one can find intimacy in the broad expanse of ground zero. Above all, it is a place where the urban texture of lower Manhattan is reunified and given something it never had before: an inviting, natural, open space."
NYTimes Op-Ed

on other news

'Taboo' announced that it would close on Feb. 8 because of disappointing ticket sales with no sign of improvement.

Light Snow and 11°F (-11°C) in New York, NY 5-DAY FORECAST Thursday Hi: 14°F/-10°C Low: 4°F/-15°C Snow Friday Hi: 19°F/-7°C Low: 18°F/-7°C Mostly sunny Saturday Hi: 27°F/-2°C Low: 25°F/-3°C Mostly sunny Sunday Hi: 34°F/1°C Low: 25°F/-3°C Snow late Monday Hi: 35°F/1°C Low: 27°F/-2°C Mostly cloudy

update

From: Fetishbuck
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 07:04:50 EST
Subject: Re: hi ray

HI!
GREAT to hear from you. Thanks for putting me on your site. WOW, it has been so long. Would love to get together with you
And yes, I am still part brasilian. LOL
Call me sometime and let's have lunch or dinner. Take care! Hope all is well with you.
B U C K/ RAY xoxoxo
www.buckbondage.com

op-ed

Warsaw's Mayor to Cancel Visit
The mayor of Warsaw said Tuesday that he would cancel a visit to the United States to protest its policy of fingerprinting visitors as part of new antiterror measures.

Brazil Jails American Airlines Pilot Over Fingerprinting Snub
The dispute heightened Brazilian-American tensions that started Jan. 1 when Brazil demanded that arriving American citizens — and American citizens alone — be photographed and fingerprinted. The policy was in retaliation for increased security measures in the United States that require citizens of all but 27 countries, mostly European, to undergo nearly identical procedures.

OK. This is getting serious. In spite of the situation in the US that has 'created' the need to fingerprint tourists, I think if such measure is adopted it should be equal to ALL countries. Why are some (27, mostly europeans) more equal than others??? What is to say a terrorist has not become a german citizen? (As some Al-Qaed cells were found in Germany where Muslim Immigrants had married german citizens and become themselves germans). It's not a well thought out policy and it feels - or comes across - as racist.

i use to heart ny more...

I met Ray Sakata (aka Buck now) back when I worked at Charivari, across from the Museum of Natural History. Coincidently we also worked at Macy's together later. (I was the Manager of Mans Suits and he a Sales Specialist at Ralph Lauren Home.)
Ray is part Japanese and part Brazilian. Or so he told me, Brazilians being cool at the time.

"My mom's Japanese and she was born in Hawaii. She met my father—they were part of this pot-smoking vegetarian commune, anti-fur, trying to be all about one with earth. Then my dad went corporate and went to work at the Mead notebook company. They got divorced when I was five. My mom moved to Jackson Heights."

Ray has always been an actor. Not that I have seen him in any movies or plays. But he has always acted. All the time.

In your latest film, Physical Education, you play a coach chloroformed by his students after you torture them on the track.
My debut. It was one of the top sellers by Todd.

The DeadGuysCinema website says, "This movie . . . contains graphic images of implied rape and murder." Is this like demonlover, where everyone wears French clothes and goes to Mexico on a secret plane to be filmed in a jail cell wearing a hood?
We made Physical Education in New Jersey. We're not making them in Russia and killing people. It's all implied. There's no penetration. I'm usually nude. I've developed a cult following because of it. People recognize me on the streets. Before, I was a manager at Saks—DKNY. I've been in retail mostly. I worked at Charivari. I was a salesperson there after Marc Jacobs. I worked on 57th, then ended up on 72nd.

Ray lives on the UWS in a studio, same neighboorhood as Lennon once did and Sigourney now does. The studio is small, even for NY standards, yet he made it feel larger.

"I painted this apartment like Monica's on Friends. She had it lavender and then the moldings were green. The ceiling was like a fuchsia. I took the same three-color scheme but did it yellow, green, periwinkle blue. Everyone said it would make it look small. But I love the colors. "

I remember wonderful Christmas parties there filled with impossible-to-imagine-how-this-group-got-together people...
I miss those days...

via plasticbag

"He was twenty-six, bright, loved nature and had ideas about what he wanted to do with his life.
A little like the flip side of me.
Funny what can give you a sense of loss. It's a shame I'll never get to meet the guy."

un-pc: howard dean, the youth files

Before he was being taken seriously, I convinced my dear Mr. DF to come with me hear Dr. Dean speak at the NYLGBT center. It was very crowded and hot but I was happy we were, for once, doing something that seemed more meaningfull than cruising boys together. Nothing wrong with that but friendships need more important memories to grow.

via Gawker: Campaign Cheesecake For the Shallow Voter
and The Wage Slave Journal

What is the Hollywood Foreign Press Association?

"Though the group claims to represent the world media that connect Hollywood to its vast international audience, few of the world's most prominent publications are members. Correspondents for Le Monde, The Times of London and Yomiuri Shimbun are not members."
Lobbying for Golden Globes Is a Hollywood Ritual
"In recent years there have been attempts to lend greater legitimacy to the group. The association adopted a rule that movie stars could not sign autographs for members at the press conference; instead, the autographs would have to be requested by mail."

The Beast in the Bathhouse

"Bob looked haggard but was feeling fabulous. Chewing gum at a manic clip, circling the labyrinthine halls of the West Side Club on a recent Sunday afternoon, he had been awake since Friday, thanks to a glassine pouch of crystalline powder he had tucked beneath the mattress of a room he rented in this Chelsea bathhouse."
"For now, researchers say, crystal meth use in the city is largely confined to gay white men in Manhattan, although they fear its eventual spread to the wider gay population and beyond.
There are no numbers, however, to show what health care workers say is the growing role that crystal meth is playing in transmitting H.I.V. Although the evidence is anecdotal, health officials say that crystal, which erases inhibitions and spurs sex marathons with multiple partners, is helping to spread the virus."
via NYTimes

I want to know what it feels like to care for something passionately.

"I asked him what it was about orchids that seduced humans so completely that they were compelled to steal them and worship them and try to breed new and specific kinds of them and then be willing to wait for nearly a decade for one of them to flower.
"Oh, mistery, beauty, unknowability, I suppose," he said, shrugging. "Besides, I think the real reason is that life has no meaning. I mean, no obvious meaning. You wake up, ou go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody's always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help them pass the time"
The orchid I really wanted to see was Polyrrhiza lindenii, the ghost orchid. (...) The reason was not that i love orchids. I don't even specially like orchids. What I wanted was to see this thing that people were drawn to in such a singular and powerful way. Everyone I was meeting connected to the orchid poaching had circled their lives around some great desire, (...) a desire that then answered questions for them about how to spend their time and their money and who their friends would be and where they would travel and what they did when they got there. It was religion. I wanted to want something as much as people wanted these plants, but it isn't part of my constitution. I think people my age are embarassed by too much enthusiasm and believe too much passion about anything is naive. I suppose I have one unembarassing passion -- I want to know what it feels like to care for something passionately."

from The Orchid Thief : A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean

Spiral Jetty
by Robert Smithson
For nearly three decades Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" lay underwater in the Great Salt Lake. Since 1999, as drought has lowered the water level, this famous American earth sculpture — a 1,500-foot coil of black basalt rocks — has slowly re-emerged. Now it is completely exposed; the rocks encrusted with white salt crystals are surrounded by shallow pink water in what looks like a vast snow field.

Tourist-Minded Rio Resists Fingerprinting of Americans: "Though government officials have repeatedly said the countermeasures, widely popular here, are not a reprisal against the United States, few take those declarations seriously."

One of my (american) readers (who thought?) asked my opinion on the whole fingerprinting issue and whether Brazil was just doing it to get back to the USA.

OF COURSE IT IS!

Through my friend's
new blog
I 'discovered'
Universe's Hottest Homo Boys,
my new favorite Tribe.net:
FUCK FRIENDSTER!

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about

Oscar Wilde

photo by quarlo

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy

"By feeding the absolute cheapest forms of energy and protein to animals it treats as machines, the industrial food chain has succeeded in making the protein we eat unimaginably cheap. Just look at what you can get for a buck or two at Wal-Mart or McDonald's.

These infectious diseases shoot the brain full of holes, making it look like a sponge.

The Fore of New Guinea were nearly wiped out by kuru, which bears a striking resemblance to B.S.E.; they spread it among themselves by ritually eating the brains of their dead kin. Biologists think that evolution probably selected against cannibalism as a way to avoid such infections (among other things). Many animals' instinctive aversion to their own feces and to the carcasses of their species may represent similar strategies to avoid infectious microbes and parasites. Through natural selection, animals have developed what amount to a set of hygiene rules that function much like taboos. One of the most off-putting things about factory farms is how cavalierly they flout these evolutionary rules, forcing animals to overcome deeply ingrained aversions. For their instincts we substitute antibiotics."

"Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luke steeple his fingers and bow his head for a split second. Surprised, I said, ''Sweetheart, what are you doing?'' He wouldn't tell me, but a few minutes later, he did it again. I said, ''You don't have to tell me, but if you want to, I'm listening.'' Finally he confessed, ''I was saying a little prayer for Daddy.'
'That's wonderful, Luke,'' I murmured, abashed that we, or our modern world, somehow made him embarrassed to pray for his father in his own home."

Some people believe faith is a gift; for others, it's a choice, a matter of spiritual discipline.

"Most of the other atheists I know seem to feel freed or proud of their unbelief, as if they've cleverly refused to be sold snake oil. But over the years, I've come to feel I'm missing out."

Flabbergasting.

The picture of the shirtless Dairyman on the back of the flatbed pickup truck was supposed to be ridiculous, not sexy. The image of the Dairyman squinting into the morning sun was intended to embarrass him, with that water hose held at crotch level like a large green schlong. By god, he was posing in front of an outhouse!

THE DAIRYMAN COMETH
He is a walking testament to the benefits of drinking milk.

tragedy happens when we stay too close

(Hollywood Movies) suggest that tragedy arises when the bonds of family and community are too weak and too thin. But tragedy, traditionally, is what happens when these bonds are too strong, when they entangle and distort the individual will with the force of law and tradition.
The American Tragedy Is a Family Affair

The Wedding Photo

Britney Jean Spears weds Jason Allen Alexander
via low culture

it's freezing here!

-11°C
Feels Like
-17°C

frosty brooklyn window
by rion.nu

our friend

Marc Spitts/Glenn Swallows
new video

i heart ny

"The city is always ours, and rarely itself, when there are as many New Yorks as New Yorkers."
"I think that much of the magic of New York is born from the interactions and intersections of the different points of view brought to the city. If every New Yorker were just a passive observer, a spectator, then there would be no New York. Most of those who come here bring their solid dreams, they expect to fight for these dreams and they usually act on them. The dream might be to build the next World Trade Center, or it might be one of building a better life. It appears as though the city listens to all the possible dreams and expectations and then includes each of the mosaic pieces into its growing bigger picture."
Witold Riedel via The Morning News

Confessions of a Male Prostitute

Published in 1964, disguised as a serious work, it is an example of what gay male erotica was like.
via Pansexual Sodomite

my subconscious is throwing an after-hours party

I never gave much weight to dreams, and I’m still unsure about their meaning, but lately I’m fascinated by them. (...) It may just be that I am bored and looking for meaning in every available subconscious image. But it’s amazing, to me, that my head puts on such a show every night, all by itself.
via dogpoet

the friday times

"This suggests a neurological basis for how people can actually shove something out of mind"
Brain May Be Able to Bury Unwanted Memories, Study Shows: Unwanted memories can be driven from awareness, according to a team of researchers who say they have identified a brain circuit that springs into action when people deliberately try to forget something.

say what????
Subatomic Tracking Finds Clues to the Unseen Universe: "An experiment that tracks subtle motions of subatomic particles called muons has found tantalizing evidence for a vast shadow universe of normally unseen matter existing side by side with ours, scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory said yesterday."

New Jersey to Recognize Gay Couples

Brazil's Happy Dance Party
After the predominating samba, forro is the 20th-century popular music from Brazil that won't subside. You hear it all over the country, and despite its age and earthiness, that's not embarrassing; it remains genuinely popular. It may have taken 60 years, but now it's cool in the East Village, too. At Nublu, a bar on Avenue C, a band called Forro in the Dark has been playing this music almost every week for more than a year, and the movement and the feeling in the room are almost as important as the genre itself. Forro is a loose concept: it really means a kind of happy dance party in close quarters, in which musicians and dancers are both taking part in the same ritual.

UTE LEMPER 'I still feel I have this precious career, a supersophisticated audience, and they respect me for what I do. For that, I don't do the compromise for the commercial world. I present it with a strong grip of anarchy and truthfulness and I don't get sucked into the commercial thing. I'm very free. I'm as free as I've ever been.'

In the photograph, the 11-year-old girl stands stiffly before a plain wall in her sleeveless, white crocheted dress, arms leaden, mouth shut. Her grave face is tightly framed by long hair and bangs, which almost conceal her eyes. She stares back at us from the shadow cast by the bangs, with a look that I might register as fear, although who is to say for sure? The heavy formality of the transaction between photographer and subject announces itself. The girl is clearly responding to the person making this portrait, whose presence we sense. By its nature the picture tells us who this photographer is. She makes sure that we know: Diane Arbus

Getting Caravaggio From Video, With Several Hearts of Darkness
A video installation about the making of a real film about a real life, 'Set' throws a fistful of themes at us as we move from screen to screen, watching a young actor and film crew at work on a movie set. These include masquerade and illusion, social difference and conflict, religious art and ritual, artistic collaboration and individual expression.
The work revolves around the magnetically androgynous face and considerable stage presence of Lazaro Ramos, a handsome young actor, as he stars in 'Madame Sata,' the award-winning film debut of the Brazilian director Karim Aonouz. Mr. Ramos plays the role of Joao Francisco dos Santos (1900-76), a legendary inhabitant of the Lapa, the impoverished bohemian quarter of Rio de Janeiro.

via lightningfield
and here same idea in black&white, different photographer, in an earlier posting.

You are what you love.

Not what loves you.
Charlie Kaufman
Recycled Quote of the day

broken promises

the 'promised land' is a
broken battlefield,
a ghostly graveyard.

familiar landmarks evoke
waves of regret and loss.

the bon vivant new yorker
i thought i was destined to
become... morphed into a
solemn, sodden, sordid
seer of shrieking and sycophantic
social boors.

when did it all stop being fun?
and more importantly, was it
ever REALLY fun to begin with?

this concludes your daily affirmation.

joe

quote du jour

"The self-fisting is getting remarkably easier with practice."
belle de jour

21 grams

QUESTION: Do you know anything about the Venezuelan poem that Sean Penn and Naomi Watts are talking about in the restaurant in 21 Grams?

The earth turned to bring us closer,
it spun on itself and within us,
and finally joined us together in this dream
as written in the Symposium.
Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices;
time passed in minutes and millennia.
An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh
arrived in Nebraska.
A rooster was singing some distance from the world,
in one of the thousand pre-lives of our fathers.
The earth was spinning with its music
carrying us on board;
it didn’t stop turning a single moment
as if so much love, so much that’s miraculous
was only an adagio written long ago
in the Symposium’s score.

The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer
Eugenio Montejo
(translated by Peter Boyle)

via Meccapixel

K-Etiquette: Don't Mention Martha

via gawker
"However, there is one aspect to K-Mart that I almost always despise... the customers. Man, that place would totally rule if we never let anyone into the doors."
Shaun's Guide To Not Being A Dick Customer:
Don't Bitch About Martha Stewart to Me
Yes, I am aware that Martha Stewart has a line of shit at K-Mart. Yes, I know she was involved in a stock scandal. Yes, I know she is an uber-bitch and quite possibly a Nazi. However, I don't need to hear some yokel dipshit telling me about her and all of her problems. First of all, I don't give a shit about her, I make my 7 bucks an hour no matter what. Secondly, most of these people have no idea about the real intricacies of the case, though you seem to think you do. Thirdly, I DON'T GIVE A SHIT!!!!!! Oh wait, I said that already... oh well.

via Satan's Laundromat