My Camera Phone Will Not Be Denied: Sanity/Fear Rally in DC

That's right. I was there, bitches. With my friends. And we couldn't hear shit. You know why? Because too many other people were invited. The closest we could get was 7th street/avenue (whatever) and we just couldn't squeeze any closer. But we did see a lot of signs! And we did hear Ozzy singing crazy train! (One curious thing: Cat Stevens was on stage singing "Peace Train" during the same bit, which was a little shocking because isn't he an extremist fundamentalist Muslim who called for the death of Salmon Rushdie back in the day? Has he changed his, er, tune?)

Anyway, you can click the photos for a bigger, better view. (But you still won't be able to hear shit.)

































And, lastly, the below photo, shot at the Marriot hotel bar, of a blurry Colbert getting ready to unwind.

Halloween Jukebox: Zola Jesus

Zola Jesus is one of the most exciting singers around these days, and her song "Sea Talk" is awesome for many reasons. One of these reasons is the video, which combines three of my favorite things: the movie Poltergeist, sleepwalking, and static electricity.

So on this Friday before Hallowe'en, in order to celebrate the birth of Christine O'Donnell, Delaware's most electable witch, I offer the gift of this video unto you, my readers, all of whom live at Riker's Island serving time for illegally downloading terrorist porn and then selling it to Todd Palin.

This Trannie Should Be New York's Next Governor, Obviously

Kristin Davis is not messing around in her direct mail pieces, not at all. You may recall I received this one on Monday and I fell in love with it for its glamour and pizzaz. Well, the one I got yesterday is even more gay, if you can believe it. And I don't just mean esthetically. I mean Lady Davis calls out Andrew Cuomo for being limp on gay marriage. And she uses the word "homo" in her tagline:

Vote Homo
Not Cuomo

And she prints the word "homo" in rainbow colors, yay!

Sure, the logic behind her tagline is a little bizarre, just like yesterday. Is she saying she's a homo? She sure looks like a trannie. Maybe she's saying she's an honorary homo, because she looks like such a trannie? (Or because she supports the gays, whichever.)

In any case, if Kristin Davis doesn't become New York's next ex-governor, she should AT THE VERY LEAST be given her own variety show at LipsNYC and her own talk show on Bravo.

Powerful Campaign Mailer of the Day

It's wrong to be swayed by a campaign mailer isn't it? Wrong, right? I must say, I've never even looked at any of the words on one of these mailers before, but something about this one sent by Kristin Davis—the former madam who provided Elliot Spitzer with high-priced ladyfriends and "went prison" for it (according to the flyer) and who is now running for Governor of New York—caught my eyes and dragged them across its giant, glamorous surface, all the way from the word Redemption at the top to the puzzling/alluring final couplet at the bottom:

SEND THE NEXT GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO A MESSAGE
VOTE KRISTIN DAVIS FOR GOVERNOR

I must say, as much as I like Kristin Davis and think that Kristin Davis would make at least as good a governor as Carl Palladino —if mainly because I firmly believe that any candidate for Governor of New York should have seen the inside of a women's prison, and much as he may have tried, Paladino just hasn't—that's a pretty confusing message to send to your newly elected governor. Kind of like a waiter coming to the table to announce the bodacious blonde dinner special of jumbo shrimp over angel hair pasta in a luscious cream sauce after you've already finished eating your plate of Italian sausages.

But she was probably just being funny. (Maybe she meant to put NEXT GOVERNOR in quotes?) The point remains, though: do we citizens of New York really want the same old 52-year-old Italian sausage in Albany, delicious as it is? Or do we maybe want to try a dinner special that looks delicious (pro-marijuana, pro-gay marriage, and pro-gambling) but might give us food poisoning?

Democracy is a series of incredible choices such as these.

Today on Sarah Palin Loves the Gerund

Americans love a leader who can speak clearly and convey in economical phraseology exactly where he or she stands on a particular issue. This is why Sarah Palin is so beloved by the country, because there is no better platform for such terse clarity than Twitter. But sometimes Sarah Palin, because she's so versatile, removes herself from her Tweet-machine and ventures out into the public arena to prove that she can do more than just type the -ing forms of words and construct entire sentences without subjects on her Blackberry. She can do this stuff orally, too:

"Marco Rubio started and kinda taking on the establishment and mavericky, going rogue, you know, doing it," exclaimed Palin. "And I look at him and I think, you know, we kinda started a whole bunch of this stuff. So, very very proud and encouraged by Marco."

Exactly. God, someone give this woman a book contract!

This Dog Is Not Having Fun at This Parade

So I was at the Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade last Saturday looking around for dogs dressed up like Sarah Palin, and I saw this poor critter, whose owner had seen fit to dress her up as Scarlet O'hara. It was a great costume, sure. But as I marveled at the amount of effort put forth to construct the unwieldy thing I couldn't help but think that that dog looks pretty miserable.

Sure, that might just be a function of her genetic predisposition to be cloudy-eyed and have her tongue flopped out sideways, but the overall effect was of a Scarlet O'hara that, as God as her witness, most certainly WOULD be hungry again, in fact she's hungry right now and her acid reflux is acting up and she's about to take a dump in her dress and she has an itch down below and why couldn't you have dressed her in a much more comfortable Batman costume and who are all these assholes taking her picture and she doesn't care if they want to burn Atlanta again just get her out of this goddamned dress!

Tune in Tokyo Gets Some Love from the Logo Channel!

Great news for you, readers! My book Tune in Tokyo has been written up by the Logo Channel's Trip Out Gay Travel site, yay! I know it's very important for all y'all to have new TiT-related things to read while blowing off work and touching yourself inappropriately.

Your welcome!

My Camera Phone Will Not Be Denied: "Meet the Breeds" Dog and Cat Show, Manhattan

This past Saturday was the day that all of Middle Earth's hobbits and fraggles descended upon the Javits Center in Manhattan for the Meet the Breeds dog and cat show, and I was there because I'm both a hobbit and a fraggle. (I'm also a muppet, but only while playing the drums.)

There were many breeds! And lots of exhausted puppies 'n pussies. As usual my camera was ready, willing, and able to capture the magic.

Oh my God, Toto! You are hella old and that scarecrow behind you will be a neverending presence in my worst nightmares.

Sleepy dawg.

I lose my journalistic impartiality in this video.

This cutie is tired of these tedious people.

This is gonna be an awesome Christmas card.

This French bulldog is pissed, but not at me, I swear to God. I was just there to capture the tantrum.

Soft, soft doggies.

I tried to get this weird cat from Mars to look at me but she was not interested in my stupid blog post.

This was the most popular dog among my fellow fraggles.

It's not sure about my friend Ruth.

Kawaii city.

This English bulldog is all like, "do what you want, whatever, wake me when it's over."

I didn't know Chrissie from Three's Company was gonna be here!

Poor dog dropped its sombrero.

Every dog wants a pink clown collar to wear around its neck.

This dog is standing as far away as possible from everything.

Who's sleepy? Yeah, who's a sleepy li'l thing? I see someone who's sleepy! That's right, I see someone who's sleepy! WAKE UP!

This picture doesn't have a dog in it, I just needed a shot of that beard. That beard deserves a magazine cover.

Screechy Sarah Palin Screeches Her Way Through a Preview for What Will Surely Be the Screechiest Show in Teevee History

It's a shame for Sarah Palin that screeches aren't made of $100 bills because if they were she wouldn't even have to do the little amount of work she does to make a living--she could just chill by her waterin' hole back in Wasilla and whenever she needed money for the moose jerky vending machine or the Updo's 'n Don'ts Hair Salon she could just screech out one of her meaningless (and patented!) collections of gerunds into the air and then go cash them suckers in.

What I'm saying is good GOD this show looks teeth-gnashingly awful. Like, even worse than Outsourced.

My favorite moment: when screechy Sarah screeches out the following screech: "HOW COME WE CAN'T EVER JUST BE SATISFIED WITH TRANQUILITY???!!!"

YES, LAMESTREAM MEDIA AND BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE TRANQUIL AND LOW-KEY LIKE SNOWBILLY SARAH???!!!

Is Jesus Living in My Mom's Thomas Kinkade Painting?

Jimmy and I were down in NC last week for our friend's wedding and we visited for a while with my ma and pa in Raleigh, during which time we finally got the opportunity to see this Thomas Kinkade painting she'd been talking about that features an image of Christ Almighty in the window of a cute little cottage in France or something.

"So where's this alleged Jesus?" I asked her all uppity-like as I walked into the room and saw Jimmy shaking his head and saying to her "no, sorry, I don't."

"Jimmy doesn't see it!" mom exclaimed, flabbergasted. "Now, I've shown this to everyone who walks in here and he is the only person who hasn't seen it. That just doesn't make any sense!"


Well, there's Jimmy in a nutshell. And I have no doubt that mom has indeed shown this Jesus to everyone who has walked through her living room, from UPS delivery men to neighbors to the cat to girl scouts selling cookies to her trainer to the contractor coming in to give her an estimate on the countertops she wants to my dad wandering around the house with his dog in his arm.

"Well, show it to me, I wanna see it!" So mom gets out her ruler and points it out to my skeptical eyeballs. Here's the video. (I eventually get the camera angle right.)



In conclusion, my mom is awesome and she has finally succeeded in leading me to Jesus. He's smaller than I imagined he would be.

I'm Broke-Ass of the Week!

Adding to the long, long list of awards and kudos I've been receiving in the wake of the publication of my book (full disclosure: it's a very short list), I've now been named Broke-Ass of the Week on Broke-Ass Stuart's Goddamn Website.

Next stop: the Daytime Emmys.

There Will Always Be Assholes

I must apologize in advance, because I'm about to get sincere.

Like a lot of people over the past week I'm sure, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the recent suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, who jumped off the George Washington bridge after being publicly humiliated by his roommate via webcam (the long and short of it: his roommate set up a webcam to capture Tyler having sex with another guy in their room and broadcast it on the Internet). This story is tragic for so many reasons. For the first few days after the news broke, the only image of Tyler the media was running was the picture he'd taken of himself using his computer cam. But it was when I saw the above photo of him playing the violin in his high school orchestra that I kinda lost it and got really sad over the loss of his young life and for the shame and embarrassment he must have been feeling as he drove to the bridge where he would end it.

Some of you may know about Dan Savage's recently started "It Gets Better" youtube campaign, in which adult gays and lesbians are encouraged to leave video messages for gay kids struggling in middle and high school in order to encourage them to hold on, to not think that the sum total of life exists within the walls of whatever dreary educational institution they currently attend. Now, this is an excellent project. I haven't recorded a message yet, but I plan to. Ironically, it was begun just days before Tyler killed himself. Days.

But what could a video project have done for Tyler? It gets better? Even after you've been publicly mocked, turned into the punchline to a stupid, stupid joke by a sadistic roommate during an incredibly private moment? It gets better?

The events leading to Tyler's suicide demonstrate the limits of video projects, hate crimes laws, "greater vigilance" campaigns, and all the rest of it. Because you can't stop people from being assholes. You just can't. And the breathtaking number of adult assholes in this country—such as South Carolina Congressman Jim Demint, who recently decreed that gays shouldn't be allowed to teach in public schools or that godawful anti-gay megachurch preacher-troll in Atlanta who is now known to have sexually abused at least 4 young men—means that when we adults tell young kids that "It gets better," we also must admit, though under our breath, that "it's still sometimes gonna be pretty irritating and stupid."

It does get better. Absolutely. Not only does it get better, it gets fun, crazy, hilarious, amazing. But in this case an asshole did something so incredibly nasty that a young tortured soul careened out of control as a result. I wish Tyler had just somehow managed to get through to the other end of the terrible darkness. But, as this Gawker essay from last week so eloquently put it, "It's because being a gay teen can be akin to prolonged torture." Tyler couldn't see an end to the torment. So he ended it himself.

Tyler was on the cusp: he was a freshman just out of high school, was incredibly talented, was surely bound for great things. There was in his future lots of music to be played, lots of hook-ups with random dudes at parties, some broken hearts, some mended hearts, and love--from friends as well as lovers. But even this member of the most liberated gay generation in American history was probably still reeling from a harrowing high school life. Maybe he had high hopes for things changing for him in college, and maybe this awful experience just sent him over the edge. Maybe it showed him that, no, it doesn't get better, it gets fucking worse.

My heart aches for Tyler and for his family. And it aches for all the other gay kids that just don't see a light at the end of the tunnel. Because there is a light. You gotta just keep your eye on it. Pick up your violin, get out your paintbrush, play some ping pong, read a David Sedaris book, do some freakin' push-ups or yoga. Eat some pie. Listen to some kick-ass music. Breathe deeply and exhale. Treat yourself well and let assholes be assholes.

Because they will always be with us. Always. But there's also always the possibility that one day those assholes will get well and truly fucked. Because karma can be a bitch.