Eat shit Fred Phelps!!

I guess $11M is the next best thing to your fucking head on a pike.

Another one?

Seriously, this trend of anti-gay Republicans being caught doing it with/trying to do it with dudes is verging on the comical. I keep waiting to find out it's some year long SNL sketch or something. My favorite is all the ways they try to deny it. It seems to keep escalating so now I'm expecting something really blatant where some Republican douchebag is caught with like, 2 dicks in every hole and is all "I had no idea we were having gay sex! I thought it was some kind of voter outreach program! None of them were white and they totally intimidated me into it!"

And then he belches up a gallon of semen.

Senator Craig Celebrates Halloween

Senator Larry Craig
Originally uploaded by Laughing Squid.

Last night I went to my friend Violet's place for cocktails and hangout time before a group of us went out to wander the Castro and check out the various costumes. I was decked out as the toe-tapping, tearoom sex-having Senator Larry Craig. I came up with the costume idea, bought conservative clothes at the Goodwill and materials to make my faux bathroom wall. But it was with the help of that I was able to execute it so well. I am often great with concept but shoddy with execution when it comes to crafty/visual stuff. But with my vision and his crafty know-how the costume totally knocked it out of the park.

When we went out into the Castro I got TONS of attention for my costume. Most people got it right away due to the fact that I had a nametag on. Some people thought I was a bathroom and others thought I was handicapped due to the sign on the back indicating a bathroom door. I got my picture taken a bunch, people stopped to tap their toe next to mine while passersby yelled out "SENATOR CRAIG" and one totally dykey cop came up to tell me how much she loved my costume. I swear, I've never gotten more validation and praise in my neighborhood than last night. I guess all I had to do was dress up as a closeted, bathroom cruising politician to get all the gays to adore me. I even got photographed by a guy from the the Bay Area Reporter so maybe I'll be in the papers. I have to say that it was a SHITLOAD of fun to dress up like Mr. Craig and get laughs at his expense.

More photos here:
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Main photo by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.

New Ex-Boyfriends Website is LIVE!!

So many EXBF happenings this week. Our new site is live thanks to the fantastic web skills of the one and only Hillary Johson!

CLICK THE PIC BELOW TO CHECK IT OUT!!

Why?

Why?
Originally uploaded by ohnochriso.

I seriously don't understand why anyone gives a flying fuck about Lance Bass' "life story". Yes, yes, he came out and I get that he is famous and probably lots of people admire him so maybe this will make it easier for the gays, blah, blah, blah. Well, easier with everyone but the thousands of teenage girls who had their hearts broken when they found out he likes dick and will therefore never fulfill their adolescent fantasies and desires. But maybe this will be important to those young women and a preemptive strike against a life of Always Falling In Love with the Gay Guy.

But I still think he's a total waste of space. A void. Where talent goes to die. What has he done besides be part of a boy band and make failed attempts to travel to space? Oh, he came out as gay! Stop the presses! Throw him a parade! Hold him up as a role model for....making shitty music and not quite getting into space and dating hairless, underwear model type dudes? What an inspiration!

Recently, there has been even more hoo-ha over the revelation of a famous figure's gayness. I am typing, of course, about author J.K. Rowling revealing that the character Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwart's School for Witchcraft & Wizardry in the Harry Potter series, was gay. "O RLY?" cried the Internets (and tons of people in real life as well). Of course some of the Christian douchebags of the world are getting their unders twisted into triple knots over this, but it's really no surprise. They already hated the HP books cuz of the magickal stuff and it's not all a metaphor for Jesus, etc. So fresh and unpredictable, that Christian Right! But personally I don't get why it's all that remarkable either way. Especially to those people who are all "Dumbledore is gay, this is so awesome!" To me it feels pretty tacked on and, in the grand scheme of those books, pretty unremarkable. I guess it's cool to think that this enjoyable character was "one of us". But let's take a look at Dumbledore before we get too excited.

- He was madly in love/obsessed with a straight dude when he was younger and it caused him to engage in horribly oppressive behaviors against others that ran counter to his true, personal beliefs. It's not that this kind of thing doesn't happen in real life. But it's so often the trend to portray gay characters in tragic, doomed situations when it comes to who they love or desire.

- He is completely asexual throughout the entire run of the Harry Potter series, an affliction which besieges many gay characters in various media. While many of the adults in the HP books are similar in their lack of overt sexuality, there's still a great deal of coupling among them, history of prior coupling and evidence of a sex life by their having of children.

- He essentially gives all his energy and strength to taking care of others, protecting them from harm and helping them to achieve a better, more evolved and informed place in the world. He ultimately sacrifices his life to this end. This is another hallmark of a gay character (care giver, free therapist, long suffering, self-sacrificing) in many stories and, in a larger sense, often the role of the "other" in general: always put yourself last and make endless sacrifices so the people around you, who generally occupy a more privileged place in the world, can have a happier, safer life.

- As far as we can tell from the text, he's totally closeted. Again, he is portrayed as basically asexual and never discusses any romantic relationships, past or present. And while some of his peers at the school are similar in terms of lack of information about their romantic or sexual lives, many of them are secondary and tertiary characters who we get very little background on in general. The more prominent ones may not be portrayed as having active love/sex lives in the present of the story, but they do have them in their past and that is written into the books.

So should we really be all that psyched that Dumbledore is "suddenly" gay (Rowling claims he has "always been" in her mind as she wrote him)? I mean, yeah, I'd rather have some badass wizard as a role model than some cheeseball, talent-free pop star. But should we really be sounding the trumpets for Albus? I don't think it's bad to be happy about this information, I'm just more skeptical. Surprise! I think we as a culture need to stop looking to celebrities and fictional characters to make us feel more secure in who we are as people. These figures are flawed and imperfect and rarely reflect us back to ourselves because they either A) live lives that are so remarkably different from ours due to their celebrity status or B) they don't actually exist. Either way, I think I'll take a pass on these two current, gay role models. But at least I know that ONE of them is well written.

Pre-Order the New Ex-Boyfriends CD!!

You can now pre-order the new Ex-Boyfriends CD, In With, from our label Absolutely Kosher!!

And while you're there you can preview a track off the album: Situation.

Go spend your money on us!!



P.S.You get all 3 covers no matter what! It's just random who is on the front when you first see get the sealed package.

Mark your calendars, mofos - EXBF CD RELEASE SHOW!!!

Ex-Boyfriends CD release party for our new album In With, which will be released on NOVEMBER 20th on Absolutely Kosher!!! Oh my god, you're so excited!!

When: December 13, 2007. Doors at 7:30, show at 8:00 - THIS IS AN EARLY SHOW!!! I cannot stress this enough folks.

Where: Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th Street @ Missouri, San Francisco, CA 94107. Here are some maps and other info.

Who: 21 and up. We tried for all ages but no go, sorry!

With: Audio Out Send (also doing a CD release) and 20 Minute Loop. Presented by and featuring special guest DJ Ted of Bagel Radio.

If you don't come to our CD release show and there is a reason other than your sudden death, the sudden death of a loved one or travel plans that were made well in advance of knowing about this show, we will consider you our nemesis and clearly have to destroy you!

Killing me not-so-softly with this picture.

I had to post this photo because I can't stop looking at it. It's Lauryn Hill.



There are no words.

And yes, it really is her. Oprah did not crash into a clown with whom she gave birth to a fully grown person.

This picture both depresses the hell out of me and completely fascinates me.

"Everybody run, the homecoming queen's got a gun!!"

Y'all homos can keep your Lizas and your Chers and Barbaras and your Madonnas. Tonight I met one of my gay icons. That's right, I met the awesome, hilarious and dangerously hot Julie Brown!!!



She was performing at the Balls Out Ball for the SF Fog (mostly) gay rugby team. She sang "I Like 'Em Big & Stupid" (during which she sat on my lap for a second!!), her new song "I Wanna Be Gay" and the classic "Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun"!! And yeah, there was a bunch of rugby guys who did a "Full Monty" style strip tease after her performance but I'll tell you right now - she was the highlight of my night. She was super sweet about taking a pic with me - my friend Philip approached her because I got all shy. And then we chatted a little bit about YouTube, how weird it is when shitty TV shows get put on DVD while she's still struggling to get "Strip Mall" released. It was totally rad meeting her and I am all giddy about it still.

You can see the rest of the photos here. I got a little bit of video too which I will post soon. YAAAAAY!!!

Black Sand Beach

black sand beach 04
Originally uploaded by ohnochriso

I didn't have to work yesterday and neither did my friend Rob. Our companies both inexplicably observe "Columbus Day" as a holiday which, while enjoyable due to the having of a day off, is politically dicey to say the least. I had planned a Whole Day of Nothing for the third day of my three day weekend. But when I ran into Rob and his husband Avery the other night he mentioned the idea of going to the beach on Monday and I was sold. That sounded much better than sitting on my ass and doing whatever all day like I would any other random day off from work.

He came and picked me up at noon and, after dropping off some replacement contact lenses to my poor boyfriend who was at work with a torn one in his eye, we headed out for the Marin Headlands and Black Sand Beach. I'd never been to a black sand beach or a nude beach before, so I figured it would be a little adventure. I also figured I might not want to go starkers so I brought along swim trunks just in case. If the beach was crowded I'd wear them and if not I'd probably go au naturel.

The beach turned out to be pretty deserted - only a few people were sprinkled along the shore, all fairly spaced out from one another so as to allow naked privacy. Rob and I laid out our blanket, dropped our bags and soon we were as bare as the day we were born and applying mass amounts of sunscreen to all parts of our bodies. I had put some on at home but I felt like this was definitely a "better safe than sorry" kind of scenario. We both agreed that any sunburn is bad but that we'd heard many horrible tales of foot sunburns from unfortunate beach goers who forgot to apply the SPF on their hooves. We also liberally applied sunscreen to our nethers because, as we both agreed, we'd totally be willing to endure a foot sunburn any day over a wang sunburn.

It turned out to be a beautiful beach day, even though it was only in the mid 60s. One of the benefits of the black sand is it warms up the area more than white sand would. So sitting there on our blankets we were nice and roasty toasty even though the water, which I dove in for a second, was seriously cold. But I can't stay out of the ocean completely if it's in front of me. It must be some sort of fishy, Piscean instinct. We ate some overly warm sandwiches and chips and discussed future plans. It seems like San Francisco is quickly becoming less than ideal for Rob and his partner and me and mine have also discussed leaving behind the city by the bay one day. But regardless of our various dissatisfactions with the place, everything felt pretty perfect at that moment. Tucked away on this little beach with nothing but ocean, horizon and sometimes fog in front of us, it was hard to imagine wanting to leave that behind.

At one point a park ranger came down the nearby steps and, fearing that we might get ticketed for nudity, we put our trunks and/or underwear on until he'd made his way up and down both ends of the beach and then left. Shortly after he departed, one of our naked neighbors from further down the beach came over to ask us if the ranger had approached us. He was so incredibly orangey in his tan-ness that he was like a neon beacon approaching us. He had put on some ratty boxer shorts to cover up since, as he told us, the park ranger was really aggro about people not being naked on the beach. Our neighbor informed us he'd been coming to the beach for 35 years (which clearly showed) and he'd never had any law enforcement people be so insistent about clothing. In fact he referred to a time when something washed up on shore that seemed to be a bomb and the cops who came to the scene spoke to him and other unclothed beach goers and never said boo about it. He let us know he'd be filing a complaint the next day. I momentarily imagined what it would be like to be on the receiving end of that complaint. To be the bored office worker who had to process such a thing and pass it on to their superiors to go into this park ranger's file.

We left the beach shortly afterward, climbing the steep, winding path back up to our car, stopping twice to catch our breath and take in the view. As we drove back over the Golden Gate Bridge towards home we passed through an ever growing bank of white fog, as if we had to access some magical mist to leave behind the world of warmth and nudity we'd just inhabited to re-enter the chilly, overcast city full of noise and clothed citizens.

Mozzarella Sticks & Revenge

**This is the first draft of a memoir-esque piece I've been working on. I was recently talking to Ryan about how I used to love working after school/summer jobs. They seemed like so much fun in contrast to the jobs I've held as an adult. I say "memoir-esque" because I can never remember things with the accuracy of some writers so things like dialog and order of events are being filtered through my only halfway decent memory. So think of it as a short story based on actual events, just like "Law & Order" or something. Feedback welcome.

I started working summer and after school jobs when I was 15 years old. I didn't have to work to help support my family or anything like that. But my parents wanted me to learn about earning and saving money, having responsibilities outside of school or household chores and, most likely, not have to pay for my comic book habit anymore.


I don't remember the application process for most of these jobs. This is most likely due to the fact that once you fill out one or two job applications your mind goes into a sort of fugue state and you fill them out while on mental automatic pilot. I think my mother might have been involved in helping me get my first job - an unremarkable stint as a dishwasher at a local restaurant that I would work at as a waiter 8 years later during a semester off from college. The one thing I took away from the dish washing job was the indelible odor of food service work. Whether you work as a dishwasher, a busser, a waiter or a chef, your hands will always smell like a combination of grease, bleach and wet food. The smell makes anyone into an instant Lady MacBeth, furiously scrubbing his or her hands with hot water and heavily scented soaps. But it's a fruitless effort while you're still working at said food service job. Only a change of employment and time can remove this smell from your skin. But just a whiff of it, even decades later, will trigger memories faster than the scent of a lover ever could.

The first job that really made an impression on me was the summer I spent working in the snack shack of a swim and tennis club near my house in Amherst, New Hampshire. Amherst was one of those towns that seemed to only contain people spanning from middle class to owning class. It always felt like no one was poor or working class in our town, which is more than likely not true. But there was definitely a difference between families like mine who lived very comfortably and didn't have to worry about finances and the people who owned multi-million dollar homes and gave their 16 year old children new Mercedes as birthday presents and then replaced them without a moment's hesitation when they were totaled in some typically teenage car wreck. These were the families who also bought pricey memberships to swim and tennis clubs and to whom I served cheap junk food for an entire summer.

My tasks at the snack shack included grilling burgers, hot dogs and various melts-type sandwiches, frying things in the fryolator and serving candy, soda, ice cream-based confections and other sundry, cavity-inducing treats. I usually worked with a second person, crammed into that tiny bungalow alongside the grill, the fryer, the freezer and the soda machines. But I really only remember working with Liz. Liz was a lanky blonde with a big, unapologetic laugh. I did some community theater with her brother Doug but Liz was the one who left a really lasting impression.

Liz helped me get acclimated to the many faux-cooking aspects of the job which included introducing me to the wonders of mozzarella sticks. How could I have lived for almost 16 years and never experienced such junk food perfection? And I considered myself a connoisseur of the medium. But these fried, breaded sticks of cheese that I could dip in the traditional, canned marinara as well as ketchup or mustard or any condiment my grease-loving heart desired? It was as if I'd only had half my taste buds until the moment I bit into one of those crunchy-melty sticks of magical goodness. I consumed foods other than mozzarella sticks that summer but every time I did it felt like I was cheating on someone. And cheating myself. But I had to make sure that there were sticks left to serve the other patrons, whom I resented for depleting my supply with each greedy order.

One afternoon Liz and I prepared a hot dog, french fries and soda for a young boy swimming at the club that day. A few minutes after he walked away with his lunch in hand his mother came stomping up to our shack, all brown one piece bathing suit with a tasteful, matching cover-up skirt and a look I could recognize from a thousand miles away: dissatisfied customer face. To this very day, even when I am witnessing at as a fellow customer, it fills me with a white-hot hatred for all humanity. "You served my son a raw hot dog," she exclaimed before even reaching our window.

"We did," I asked, taken aback by the force of her glare. I wasn't sure how to handle this and instinctively turned to Liz for assistance. I had cooked the hot dog and now assumed this would spell the end of my career in summertime snack service.

"Actually ma'am," Liz said in a sunshiney voice that was not-so-subtly dripping with condescension, "hot dogs are a pre-cooked food, so there's no way we could have served your son a raw hot dog."

Momentarily silenced, the mother replied in a less forceful tone, "Well...it's cold. It's too cold to eat so I need another," she said, passing the bitten hot dog in it's bun to me. "And I think I should get a free soda for my troubles!"

"No problem ma'am, we'll do that right away," Liz replied, her ghoulishly fake smile still plastered across her face. She turned to me and whispered "Get the soda and follow me to the grill." I grabbed a large soda cup, filled it with ice and pushed the button for "Coke", wondering what Liz needed to whisper to me about it. She was clearly planning something and, if the mozzarella sticks were any indication, Liz always had the best ideas. I fixed the plastic lid on the soda as I approached her at the grill where she was busy heating up another hot dog, pressing it to the hot metal surface so it sizzled loudly. "Is she watching us," she asked, peering towards the dual windows at the front of the shack.

"No," I answered, following her gaze. "She's out there talking to some other woman."

"Probably telling her the tragic tale of her hot dog," she grumbled, flipping the it and pushing it into the grill again. "God, I hate her and all those other Stepford wives that come here. They think they're so much better than us because they've got more money than God."

Amherst was full of women like our cold hot dog-bearing customer. Women who were married to men who made boatloads of money and left their wives to endless days of childcare, long lunches, lounging at the pool and shopping. It sounds luxurious on the surface but I always thought it would be akin to living as a bird in a very big, very expensive cage. A few years before our summer at the snack shack, Liz and her brother came home from school to find their mother hanging from a homemade noose in their basement. Maybe she felt she couldn't keep up with these ladies who lunch. Or maybe she got sick of trying. Liz never said so but I always assumed that her bitterness towards most of the patrons we served had something to do with her mother's suicide, at least partially. Maybe she saw them as contributing to the dismal world that her mother chose to exit prematurely. Or maybe it was for nothing more than they were alive to complain about the temperature of their children's junk food.

"Hand me that soda," she said, a smirk crossing her lips. She pried the lid off and took one last glance at the windows before she spit right into the dark, fizzy liquid in the cup. I was astonished. Like the mozzarella sticks had awakened my taste buds to amazing new flavors, Liz's spitting opened my eyes to a whole new world I'd never even knew existed: service worker revenge. She handed the cup to me, a gesture that seemed to come from some ancient, primal initiation rite. "Your turn," she smiled. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if we could be fired or even arrested for such an act. But then I saw Liz staring at me expectantly, her eyes goading me on, reminding me of the disdain our customer had in her voice when she informed us of the "raw" hot dog we'd dared to give to her spoiled kid. I gathered the saliva in my mouth and spat it into the soda, where it mingled with Liz's. She reached for a straw from a nearby shelf, yanked the paper wrapping off and dipped it into the soda, stirring in the evidence of our mutual rebellion.

We walked in unison back to the front of the shack to hand our customer her piping hot weiner and her free soda. She tossed us a "what took you so long" glance and muttered "Maybe next time you can cook it right to begin with" and stomped away, further proving how justified our actions against her beverage had been. I turned to Liz, my mouth turned up in a goofy grin, and whispered "I've never done that before!"

"I know," she beamed back at me, "I could tell. Wasn't it awesome?"

"Oh, totally," I enthused. I almost couldn't wait for the next cranky customer so we could once again secretly retaliate against them via their food and drink. And there were no shortage of them that summer, believe me. And the same goes for every food service job I held after that. But at each one, I took the seed of vengeance that Liz had planted in me that fateful summer day. That's not to say my saliva could be found mingling with the meals and beverages of every rude diner I encountered. But it was always good to have the tools necessary when a customer pushed me to the point that I was gritting my teeth haw-achingly hard so as not to release a torrent of obscenities at them for their appallingly entitled behavior.

Near the end of the summer I was taking a dip in the pool during my lunch break on a particularly hot day. I was lazily swimming laps and as I did I splashed a bit of water on some muscular jock and his tiny-waisted girlfriend. Before I could even apologize for what I did the jock grabbed me by my scrawny neck and held me underwater. I panicked for a minute, my asthmatic-induced fear of dying because I couldn't breathe kicking in. But a second later I started squirming in his grasp and, realizing I couldn't break free, rammed my knee as fast and as hard as I could into his crotch. He let go immediately and I emerged from the water, coughing and breathing hard. "What the hell bro," he cried, wincing in pain. "I was only joking!"

"I couldn't breathe you fucking asshole," I shouted, making my way towards the ladder at the side of the pool. "Don't ever fucking do that to me again!"

He continued to yell after me as I made my way back up to the snack shack, shaking and spitting out water as I walked. Where any of the overpaid lifeguards was at that moment was anybody's guess. When I told Liz what happened she flew into a fury, calling our manager instantly. By the time I had dried off in the bathroom, gotten dressed and came back to the shack, Liz was handing the phone to me so I could tell our boss firsthand about the near-drowning. He sounded as mad as Liz and told me he'd speak to the club managers about it immediately. I tried to put the incident out of my mind for the rest of the day and prayed that my athletic assailant wouldn't come to order any food from us. I was worried he might have retaliation on his mind for the abuse his testicles had suffered.

I had the next couple of days off and when I came in for my shift that Friday Liz was there with the news. "He's been banned from the club for the rest of the summer," she exclaimed, smiling like the proverbial cat with the canary. "Can you believe that?!"

"Wow, no way," I murmured, amazed that his punishment was so swift and exacting. He attended a different high school than I did so my fears of possible requital on his part evaporated. I'd somehow won in a situation where it was skinny, sickly me versus someone buff and sports-oriented. I knew this was a rare occurrence and that I probably shouldn't get used to it. But at that moment I was reveling in my triumph. And I celebrated it as any downtrodden person who'd risen up against an oppressor would. I ate a shitload of mozzarella sticks.

Separated at Birth?

French-Canadian singer Celine Dion:




AND


Medusa the alien Inhuman with the super strong, prehensile hair:



Either way, I am very afraid.

San Diego's Republican Mayor in Support of Gay Marriage

I found this via the Dykes to Watch Out For blog.

Republican Mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, expressing his support of same-sex marriage in press conference.

Near the end he talks about his reasons why, among them being that his daughter is gay. Get your hankies out, it's a tear-jerker.