KickOff, kissing, Brent, bullying, difference and desire

Photobucket
||| The Down Low is dead. Or is it?

||| Meet college students Matty Daley and Bobby Canciello (right), who broke the Guinness World Record for Longest Continuous Kiss. The previous record stood at 32 hours, 7 minutes, 14 seconds. Matty and Bobby managed 32 and a half hours, without sitting down or separating lips. The whole thing was broadcast live. Facebook page.

US & CANADA

||| New York Times editorial: Don't enforce 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'.

||| They serve their country in the closet: "Photographer Jeff Sheng focuses on the personnel who can't be completely open because of the military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy."

||| Jeff Sheng: Don't Ask, Don't Tell opens 18th September (until 23rd October, 2010) at the Kaycee Olsen Gallery in Los Angeles.

||| "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture", an exhibition opening 29th October at the National Portrait Gallery in New York. It "brings together 100 works from the late 19th century to the present, examining how gender and sexual identity have altered the development of the genre". Left, "Salutat" (1898) by Thomas Eakins.

||| Meet the Rev. James Stoll: "For every star in the history of gay rights — think the politician Harvey Milk — there are many more bit players, people whose names do not even make the credits. In the world of religion, one of the great neglected actors, a man who had a marquee moment but then fell into obscurity, is the Rev. James Stoll, a Unitarian Universalist who died in 1994. Mr. Stoll, one of the first openly gay ministers in America, had a difficult life, and his demons seemed to follow him to an early grave."

||| The political risks of supporting gay rights.

||| Coming out of Wall Street's closet: "The Old Boys have a long way to go in terms of protecting the civil rights of all who work there."

||| Meet Troy Smith (left): out, highly recruited tennis player at a Catholic college. Picture via OutSports.

||| Majority of Americans now include gay couples with children in their definition of "family".

||| 9 in 10 gay students are harassed at school. Billy Lucas (right), a 15-year-old student at an Indiana high school, took his own life after such bullying. A Facebook tribute page can be found here.

||| And this (left) is Justin Aaberg, a Minnesota teen who took his own life after being bullied since coming out aged 13.

||| The American dream is in tatters: One in seven Americans
live in poverty.

||| NEW YORK: Thousands of migrating birds are trapped in the Twin Towers Tribute of Light.

||| NEW YORK: A smoking ban
outdoors too? Just imagine that summer stroll in the park, unspoilt by the toxic chain-smoking chimney walking ahead of you. Bring it on!

||| When gays fight! Bitch slappin' frenzy in LA...

UK

||| Pregnant nun ice cream advert banned - company vows to use alternative poster (like the one left, maybe?)

||| John Amaechi "too black" for UK gay club? (Or just a jerk? Queerty goes with that angle...)

||| Ken Livingstone
announces plans to improve gay equality in London. "I am proud that London is one of the great LGBT capitals of the world. We need to continually work to promote equality and tackle discrimination. Boris Johnson has downgraded important parts of work to tackle inequality, removed London government from the Stonewall equality index and abolished an annual Pride event at City Hall, whilst his friends in Whitehall are weakening the Equality Act which threatens the provision of equal services and employment for lesbian and gay Londoners." Livingstone is campaigning for re-election as Mayor of London.

||| Paedophile priests: Many of the Catholic clergy jailed in England and Wales remain in the priesthood.

||| Sex and death
lie at the poisoned heart of religion.

||| Let people come out for all our sakes, Gary Nunn writes at The Guardian. "Be they actors or MPs, it shouldn't matter who comes out in the public eye – not least because we need gay role models."

||| WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! Britain
facing attack from "a new generation of al-Qaeda extremists and Irish Republican militants".

||| SCOTLAND: Great Scot! Edinburgh's a fine and friendly town. "Edinburgh has a surprisingly broad gay scene for a city of under half a million, and its gay history stretches back centuries."

EUROPE

||| UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urges repeal of anti-gay laws at human rights meeting in Geneva.

||| Ireland has turned its back on dogma and become a more open, more tolerant society.

||| SPAIN: A gay couple in Valencia
have been told they can't register as parents of twins born legally to a surrogate mother in the United States.

||| Serbian doctor Miroljub Petrovic has found a cure for homosexuality. Hallelujah! At last I can be normal!

AMERICAS

||| NETHERLANDS ANTILLES: Three former Dutch colonies - the islands of Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatitus - are to introduce gay marriage and adoption laws as they come under direct Dutch rule in October.

||| JAMAICA: A Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica-led ban has forced the cleanup of "murder music".

||| CUBA: Fidel Castro's apology has opened old wounds in Cuba's gay community.

AFRICA

||| ZIMBABWE: Robert Mugabe focused on legacy as his reign draws to a close. Surely single-handedly destroying a once prosperous nation is a pretty impressive legacy?

||| Below, a young Mozambican protester stands by a burning car in Maputo.

MIDDLE EAST

||| Jerusalem must cease discriminating against GBLT community, and fund Open House center.

||| Saudi Arabia's juggling act on homosexuality: Brian Whitaker
writes for The Guardian, "As a gay diplomat seeks US asylum, Saudi Arabia seems torn between wanting a civilised image and appeasing traditionalists."

ASIA PACIFIC

||| India is Racist, and happy about it: An African-American's first-hand experience of India, where no one even wants to change.

||| SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) at Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions: "Lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) people in Asia and the Pacific Islands experience extra-judicial killings, torture, violence and rape, as well as discrimination in employment, education, housing and health services." In two parts:
Part 1, Part 2.

||| Wealthy BMW driver runs over Chinese toddler four times.

BODY & MIND

||| HIV was in monkeys for millennia: "What happened in Africa in the early 20th century that let a mild monkey disease move into humans, mutate to become highly transmissible and then explode into one of history’s great killers, one that has claimed 25 million lives so far?"

||| Getting a bargain in sales is as good as sexual arousal, boffins claim.

||| Loneliness
really does kill.

||| Plagued by nightmares? You could develop Parkinson's in later life.

||| Lack of exercise makes your face look older and fatter.

FOOD

||| Watercress: the cancer killer?

||| Fruit and veg – five reasons to
start buying frozen.

||| Wine by the tank - now, that's my kinda innovation! Michael K at Dlisted writes, "I can already picture the line of drunk ass whores waiting to suck off that nozzle." That would be me, then.

ZOOLOGY

||| Animal pictures of the week (28 more pictures). Left, dogs in Solvenia confront a canine graffiti artist. Right, a female bear, er, "presents" herself in a zoo in Finland.

||| In pictures: Eddie Nurcombe's amazing macro pictures of bugs, below (12 more pictures).

||| Armoured, wood-eating catfish found in the Amazon.

||| What killed the fish (below right)?

||| Sailor's body
found inside shark. In pictures (extremely graphic).

||| Boffins investigate massive walrus haul-out in Alaska, fear declining Arctic sea ice may have caused an unprecedented mass migration to dry land.

||| A rare "Asian unicorn"
has died after being captured by villagers in Laos. The saola was thought to be one of only a few hundred left in the wild.

PLANET

||| Arctic ice could be gone by 2030.

||| Small world: Everyday objects as seen under a microscope,
in pictures. Right, a butterfly egg.

WEB & GADGETS

||| Internet Explorer 9: The future of the internet?

||| Google causes brain damage. 

||| Google Instant is trying to kill me, Charlie Brooker writes at The Guardian. "For the sake of my sanity, and my attention span, the war against the machines starts now."

||| The death of the RSS reader.

DESIGN

||| Right: New auditorium enclosed by a red-lacquered shell, part of a new wing at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanei di Roma, designed by French architect Odile Decq.

PRINT

||| Queer Latino nuances in American literature.

||| Review:
Miss Shirley Bassey by John L Williams. "She was the youngest of 10 and her parents made money organising 'rent parties' for sailors..."

||| James McGonigal's biography of the poet Edwin Morgan reveals the "sadness, fear and thrill of national poet's secret gay life".

||| Review:
Aaron Bradley, Closet Detective by Timothy Owen.

||| Review: Lily White, Rose Red by Cat Ford.

||| Review: All of Me (Can You Take All of Me?) by Dirk Vanden.

||| Review: The Quarter Boys by David Lennon.

||| Review:
Billionaire's Row by Sullivan Wheeler.

||| Review: Crook by Michael Gouda.

||| eBooks: You can't
lend them out, you can't borrow them.

FILM



||| Rikki Beadle-Blair's long-awaited gay football flick KickOff gets its world première opening the Iris Prize gay film festival (his hugely successful FIT is also showing) 6th October in Cardiff.

||| Not in the UK? It's also showing at festivals in Prague and São Paulo. A DVD release is expected in March.


||| Here at ka-os|theory, Do Começo ao Fim (English: From Beginning To End) is the most anticipated film, like, ever. But when the hell is it going to get a DVD release (with English subtitles)? Check out the trailer. It's epic.

||| And yes, the two leads - Rafael Cardoso and João Gabriel Vasconcellos (
right) - are two of the most beautiful men in cinema. ROCK MY BLOG has got a batch of shots for your perusal.

||| A Jihad for Love: "Can one be gay and a pious Muslim at the same time? That's the topic that Indian Muslim film director Parvez Sharma explores in his controversial documentary A Jihad for Love through a range of colorful characters."

||| Argentinian director Mauro Andrizzi's film
En El Futuro (English: In The Future) has won the Venice Film Festival's Queer Lion prize.

||| Review: Plan B. "A deceptively affecting exploration of the complexities and contradictions of sexual identity and the human heart."

||| Review:
Pornography - A Thriller. "A bizarre, blurry journey that might not reach its final destination but is still one helluva ride nonetheless... that augurs more than promisingly for the future of queer cinema."


||| Writer/director team Christian Martin and Darren Flaxstone (Shank) talk about their new film, Release. Review.

||| Steve McQueen
cologne, anyone?

||| Sandra Bullock knows how to party!

TV

||| Introducing YouView, the new set-top box backed by (amongst others) the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and BT. Launching next year, it will feature a TV guide that goes back a week, allowing viewers to watch programmes they missed.

||| Brothers & Sisters' Gilles Marini's Luc to become underwear model in forthcoming season.

||| The Top Ten Hottest Homoerotic
True Blood Moments.

||| A new TV drama planned by ITV about the Titanic disaster aims to show that "the English were not all villains".

||| Party like it's 2005! Kat and Alfie (left) are back in EastEnders...

||| ...Whilst Devon Anderson (Billie Jackson) is on his way out.

||| Review:
The Road to Coronation Street. "There was no doubt that the writer who created some of the great women characters of British television was gay. This was very much his story."

||| Hollyoaks actor Kieron Richardson (right): I'm gay.

||| Top 10 1980s
TV theme tunes.

MUSIC

||| Sacha Baron Cohen - of Borat/Brüno fame - is to play Freddie Mercury in the forthcoming Queen film.

||| Why George Michael doesn't belong in pop music's hall of shame.

||| George Michael is a national treasure, despite the funny fags, Polly Vernon writes at The Guardian. "He occupies a special place in the hearts of the British public and is ill-equiped to spend time in clink."

||| Review: Seal 6: Commitment. As I suspected, it's "polished, overwrought, formulaic slop". Oh, Seal, what went wrong?

||| Ricky Martin gets touched up.

||| Nicki Minaj wants to
bridge 'gap' (how about yawning chasm) between gay fans and hip-hop.

SEX BIZ

||| Treasure Island Media seems to have figured out why people refuse to pay for porn (and no, it's not because they can get it for free). 

||| Raging Stallion Studios announces "star-packed sexpic". Race Cooper and Dionisio Heiderscheid (left) to star.

||| I want one: François Sagat doll.

||| The Kings of Porn:
My favorite porn stars, by ka-os|theory blog crush Mr. Toddy English.

||| Just how cute is Brent Everett's husband, Steve Pena? Hubby, meanwhile, was busy clocking in at his 9-5 (that's pm to am) in Pittsburgh (left)...


||| ...And the happy couple hanging out with Brent's pops (right). Now, ain't that sweet?

||| Model and porn star Omar Berger (left) is reported to have died of lung cancer in Tel Aviv last month.

MANIKINS

||| Real live manikins! It's the GANT window display in New York.

||| Pierre Debusschere lenses a gaggle of model fances for Vogue Hommes Japan (below right).

||| Below right, Guido Carminatti, lensed by Andrea Vecchiato for We Men magazine.

||| Dirk Merten shoots Jean-Luc Weitkamp for WINQ magazine.

SPORT

||| England cricketer Jimmy Anderson strips for Attitude magazine. "There's a perception of lots of committees and old men being quite prim and proper, but I think the game is moving with the times. From my point of view, I think doing this could be fantastic for cricket. Hopefully this will attract a new sort of fan."

...AND FINALLY

||| The demise of glasses: something to lament?

|||
Racist toothpaste!

||| Is this the real meaning of boy pussy (left)? (Via thegayte-keeper).

||| And finally: the Top 10 sexiest vloggers - and do you know a Dickhead like this?


Photobucket

||| On the cover: Taylor Siluwé's Dancing With The Devil.


||| Remember what was going on this time last year? No? How about a reminder? Read Issue 27.

||| Help me make next week's copy even better. Contact me with tips and suggestions. If you're a model or photographer, contact me about being on the cover.


Issue 77: 13-19 September 2010

ka-os|theory is not responsible
for the content of external websites.

© 2010

Best viewed on Google Chrome.

POSTSCRIPT
"You know, we might just as well not have bothered to come.
The whole thing's been ridiculous."

Tired old queen at the movies

review
The Philadelphia Story


Good Lord! Tracy Lord's getting married again! And look who's here to bust up the wedding!

Katharine Hepburn finds herself up to her long neck in man trouble when former Husband Cary Grant hires reporters Jimmy Stewart and Ruth Hussey to cover her society wedding for Spy magazine in George Cukor's hilarious The Philadelphia Story.

This was the great part of Hepburn's career and the role that saved it. Having been labeled "box office poison", she retaliated with the help of her then boyfriend, Howard Hughes, by buying the screen rights to Phillip Barry's hit Broadway comedy, which she'd starred in and selling herself and the property to MGM, making a killing. She also had casting approval and when Gable and Tracy weren't available, chose Grant and Stewart, who subsequently picked up his only Oscar as Best Actor for his efforts. It's smooth, fast paced, witty and handled by a group of seasoned pros with all the MGM glamor the studio could muster. The Philadelphia Story proves unequivocally that indeed, they don't make 'em like that anymore!

Steve Hayes


Steve Hayes' Tired Old Queen At The Movies on YouTube

Steve Hayes' Tired Old Queen At The Movies on Facebook
Photobucket
Here at ka-os|theory, Steve Hayes is regarded as a legend. He's opened up a whole world of cinematic pleasure, and fired up my appreciation of film. His enthusiasm is infectious, electrifying, and unfailingly on point. The films he recommends are always worth seeing, and several have become firm favourites. If you have even a passing interest in movies, watch a couple of reviews. They're fun, funny, and you'll be intrigued. As he says, "Trust the tired old movie queen, this is terrific!"

Cops, God, tragedy and Dallas

Photobucket
||| How can gay Asian men conquer internalised inferiority?

US & CANADA

||| Judge: Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy unconstitutional.

||| An analysis of the ruling by Ari Ezra Waldman.

||| Marriage equality is not the last hurdle to equal rights for the GBLT community. Employees cannot be judged on "irrelevant personal characteristics such as race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability", but no protection is afforded to GBLT workers. (Surely getting that right should have been given priority over marriage rights?)

||| Microsoft decides Fort Gay is a real place after all.

||| Arnold Schwarzenegger's got jokes. Palin's the gift that keeps on giving...

||| President Barack Obama won't continue to support the tax cuts for wealthy Americans introduced by his predecessor.

||| Gay Saudi diplomat seeks asylum.

||| And the latest in bad World Trade Center ads...

||| Just following orders? Seymour Pine - who led raid on Stonewall Inn over forty years ago - is dead. He was 91.

||| Jewish religious attitudes toward homosexuality are slowly shifting.

UK

||| Former Mr Gay UK (and serving police officer) Mark Carter denies rape charges.

||| Comptons, one of London's best known gay bars, has been bought by chain operator Faucet Inns.

||| Societies without God are more benevolent.

||| Catholics, it's you this Pope has abused, Johann Hari writes at The Guardian. "It is my conviction that if you review evidence of the suffering he has inflicted on your fellow Catholics, you will stand in solidarity with them - and join the protesters."

||| Hold the front page! The Catholic Church is homophobic and misogynist, a reform group claims.

||| Black Pride and prejudice. Kevin Maxwell (left) writes about the racism he experiences in the GBLT community.

||| Ricky Preddie - one of two boys jailed for killing 10-year-old Damilola Taylor in 2000 - has been released from prison. He served just four years for his part in Damilola's murder.

EUROPE

||| The European Commission must force all EU member states to fully recognise same-sex partnerships, say Euro MPs.

||| Why the EU should tackle Serbian homophobia.

||| Does Ikea's new ad represent bisexual inclusion? Or slutty stereotypes?

AMERICAS

||| MEXICO: 400 same-sex couples have now married in Mexico City. It's been six months since a law permitting gay marriage went into effect.

||| Spanish-language network Univision asks readers, "Is soccer compatible with homosexuality?"

AFRICA

||| Exporting Homophobia: American far-right conservative churches establish influence on anti-gay policy in Africa. Gay Ugandans face daily fear for their lives, Jody May-Chang writes.

||| SOUTH AFRICA: Johannesburg threatened by rising tide of toxic acid mine water.

||| SOUTH AFRICA: It was the kiss that last month caused uproar in bigoted South Africa. Bjorn Czepan and Mark Dean Brown were pictured at the annual Soen in die Laan (Kiss in the Avenue) locking lips. The shot was used on the cover of student newspaper Die Matie, triggering a tsunami of hate. Now, Czepan is dead and Brown is critical after a tragic car crash.

ASIA PACIFIC

||| Chen Xiaomei - a lawyer in the Chinese city of Xian - is suing a cinema for wasting her time by showing 20 minutes of adverts before the film Aftershock.

||| Being gay in Malaysia.

||| Australian swimmer tweets, "Suck on that faggots." Which I guess makes her a twat.

BODY & MIND

||| FRANCE: HIV spread "out of control" among gay men. Infection rates are 200 times higher than in the heterosexual population.

||| The spread of the disease in Europe (including the UK) is largely down to young, white, gay men.

||| More things you can die from, no.1: Boffins prove the link between poor oral hyiene and heart attacks.

||| More things you can die from, no.2: Sleeping pills.

||| More things you can die from, no.3: Stress. It increases the chances of dying from heart-related problems by five-fold, boffins claim.

||| And don't rub your hands together after you wash them. That'll finish you off too.

||| Meet Khagendra Thapa Magar (pictured with body builder Tiny Iron), who will become the world's shortest man when he turns 18 next month. Londoner Iron, meanwhile, has the biggest biceps in the UK.

FOOD

||| Know your Sémillon from Pinot Noir? No? You're not alone. Moreover, many wine drinkers don't know how to pronounce the name of their favourite alcoholic grape juice.

||| Shot of pissky, anyone?

||| Guess this is what they call a cereal misdemeanour.

||| The top 10 worst foods to eat.

ZOOLOGY

||| Animal pictures of the week (24 more pictures). Left, starlings harass a prairie dogat St. Louis Zoo. Right, a young black bear falls from a tree into a net in Montana.

PLANET

||| The bee decline is already having a dramatic effect on the pollination of plants.

||| Intergalactic pearl necklace.

WEB & GADGETS

||| Google Instant launches...

||| ...And decides that "lesbian" is a pornographic reference.

||| Put.io - a "cloud storage service" - threatens to make pirating films as prevalent as music piracy. And that's bad news for the movie business, and everyone involved in it.

PRINT

||| Are The Advocate, Southern Voice, stealing stories?

||| Wanted: hypersexualised teens.

||| Review: By Nightfall, by Michael Cunningham.

||| Review: Tomorrow May Be Too Late, by Thomas Marino.

||| Review: The Silver Hearted, by David McConnell.

||| Review: Secret Historian, by Justin Spring. It's a biography of Samuel Steward, who was "an influential teacher and tattoo artist, a talented writer, and a dedicated homosexual when such sexuality was deeply taboo. He was a masochist intoxicated by authority (especially in sailor's clothes), a transgressive artist and writer, a source of inside knowledge for the sex oracle Alfred Kinsey, and a comfort and inspiration for George Platt Lynes, a fashion photographer of the 1930s and '40s also known for his images of male nudes."

||| Remembering John Stahle, a "writer, photographer, graphic designer and the editor of Ganymede, a journal based in New York City devoted to gay men's art, literature and culture".

FILM

||| Beginners: A coming out story with a difference.

||| Indian film director Sanjay Sharma talks about Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyon, which opens the South Asian Queer Film Festival.

TV

||| The birth of Coronation Street: Scriptwriter Daran Little talks about the BBC Four drama that looks at the creation of the 50-year-old soap.

||| Here's something we don't need to see, but which I'm going to show you anyway: Matt Smith, half-baked lead in the half-baked abortion that is Doctor Who, on the cover of this month's Gay Times, writhing with Douglas Booth for BBC drama Christopher and his Kind.

||| US cable network TNT is developing a new series of Dallas, based upon the sons of Ewing brothers J.R. and Bobby.

||| CNN suddenly decides it's not so cool to ask if gay characters on TV are "bad for society".

MUSIC

||| Lady Gaga isn't loved or loathed here at ka-os|theory. She's just not interesting enough. She doesn't grate on my nerves, but the hype that surrounds her does. Now Camille Paglia, "America's foremost cultural critic", has zeroed in on everything I dislike about the cult of Gaga.

||| Gaga is a "nonconformist, a misunderstood artist" - with a huge corporate machine pulling her strings. Paglia says Gaga's voice is banal, her public appearances "lavishly scripted", and condemns the singer as so false she fails to have an identity or sexuality. "Gaga isn't sexy at all – she's like a gangly marionette or plasticised android," Paglia writes. "How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation?"

||| I'm with Paglia on this one, but in the interest of balance (not that that's on the agenda), Alex Needham at The Guardian writes, "Camille Paglia's attack on Lady Gaga is way off the mark. The professor who once heralded the future of feminism now seems marooned in the past."

||| Still, I'd like to let Gaga loose on 50 Cent. Maybe she could stuff her (by now) rotting meat dress down his toxic throat.

||| So, Darryl Stephens sings too? Listen to Envious Moon here.

||| The JLS condom range is finally here. Yes, finally!

SEX BIZ

||| Matthew Rush presents: So You Think You Can Fuck.

||| Everything you ever wanted to know about Race Cooper - but were afraid to ask!

||| Diesel Washington fires his agent - war of words ensues.

MANIKINS

||| David Agbodji gets lensed by Boo George for LOVE magazine...

||| ...Whilst Santiago Peralta and Dominique Hollington do I-D. They were shot by Karim Sadli.

||| This week's cover shot is one of Robert Mapplethorpe's iconic shots of Ken Moody. Find more of his work at the excellent blog Black Muscle: 1940-1980.

SPORT

||| Plastic boy slut puts a shirt on to launch some watches. But there's much more of Cristiano to come...

||| Swoonworthy's Fantasy Football Team 2010...

||| ...And Gavin Henson naked - which is always a good thing. There might even be a reason for it!

...AND FINALLY


||| Buzz Lightyear: The Carrot!

||| And finally, the moment we've all been waiting for. Yes, it's the full length (hehe) Cristiano Ronaldo Emporio Armani ad. Don't ya wish you were that maid...?


||| Read last week's copy.

||| Remember what was going on this time last year? No? How about a reminder? Read Issue 26.

||| Help me make next week's copy even better. Contact me with tips and suggestions. If you're a model or photographer, contact me about being on the cover.

Issue 76 covers 6-12 September 2010


ka-os|theory is not responsible
for the content of external websites.

© 2010

Best viewed on Google Chrome.

POSTSCRIPT
"You know, we might just as well not have bothered to come.
The whole thing's been ridiculous."
 
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