Sometimes there's nothing like a little soft-core porn to brighten up a rainy Wednesday afternoon. Even if it's not raining wherever you are, you can still enjoy our new slideshow of images from Craig Seymour's photo-travelogue, American Boys, which chronicles the
writer/photographer's adventures in gay strip clubs
across the country from 2006 to 2009. The book features adult film stars
including Brent Corrigan, Blake Riley, Cameron Marshall, and Austin
Wilde shot in clubs like XL (Providence, RI), Nob Hill (San Francisco,
CA), Splash (New York, NY), Mr. Black (New York, NY), and Spin
(Chicago, IL).
In his book Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor, Matt Latimer claims that decisions on who received the medal, given to "individuals who make an especially meritorious contribution to the
security or national interests of the United States, world peace,
cultural or other significant public or private endeavours" and considered to be America's highest civilian honor, were colored by political considerations. Rowling was taken out of the running because the conservative Bush administration didn't want to celebrate a woman whose books -- while selling more copies than almost any other book since the Bible and being responsible for millions of children ditching their joysticks in favor of reading -- supposedly promoted the supernatural.
Ted Kennedy was also allegedly denied a medal because he was a liberal. President Obama recently honored the late Senator with the award in August.
It's a crime, it's a shame, it's ridiculous, but we can't say we're surprised. Sorry, J.K. Might we suggest you spend a little of that $1,000,000,000 you earned on an island or your very own space station to cheer yourself up?
TMZ.com is reporting that Chaz Bono will publish a memoir "chronicling his decision to transition from female to male" sometime in early 2011. An unnamed source claims Bono signed a "handsome, six-figure deal" to pen his story, tentatively titled Coming Clean, for Dutton publishing house.
Hape Kerkeling is a gay German comedian whose first book, I'm Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago (Free Press) was a huge best-seller in Germany when it came out in 2006. Last month, he released a Borat-like film in which his alter ego, Horst Schlämmer, a bumbling small-town newspaper editor, announces his candidacy for Chancellor. (Kerkeling has long been known for his costumes: in 1991 he dressed up as Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and almost talked his way into a state dinner.) The fictional Schlämmer polled 18% among non-fictional Germans for the election, to be held on September 27.
Out Editor-at-Large Bruce Shenitz grabbed a brief kaffeeklatsch with the genial German in New York’s Lincoln Center on the first day of his 10-day American book tour:
Out: When I finished reading your account of your trek on the pilgrimage to the Spanish shrine of St. James, I thought “Wait, remind me why he did this self-described couch potato do this crazy trip?” Hape Kerkeling: [Laughs] I started the pilgrimage simply because I had a gall bladder removal and a hearing loss. And after that I decided not to go on just a normal vacation but to do something different, because I thought I should meditate about what happened. So I decided to do the pilgrimage, to walk alone these 630 kilometers (390 miles). In a way I wanted to find out what my relation is to God, and during the way I thought it’s not only about finding out what my relationship to God is, but first of all, my attitude towards myself.
"I think my mother, of course, very innocently was the kiss of death when she said to my then-boyfriend Tom, “You’re prettier than any of the girls.” [Laughs] And in those days, that was maybe the first red flag -- when the guys were prettier than the girls. And frankly, when the guys wanted to be prettier than the girls. I didn’t know exactly what it meant to be gay, I just knew I wanted to be near them."
-- Kathy Griffin discussing the first time she first became aware of The Gays during her Out.com interview. Kathy's new book, Official Book Club Selection, hits stores on September 8th and she'll be at Barnes & Noble in Tribeca, New York City, (97 Warren St. [at Greenwich St.]) at 7:00 pm that night to read a little something-something, sign books, cavort with her adoring fans, and officially kick off her career as a splashy celebrity memoirist.
Photographer: Paradise Gonzalez; (l-r) Ali Kahn, Dillon Porter, Kesh Baggan, Tjasa Ferme and LaChrisha Brown
My boyfriend and I had recently started reading poems by Walt Whitman each night before falling asleep, so when I noticed the poet's bearded face staring at me outside The Cell, a local incubator theater for emerging artists in New York's Chelsea, my curiosity was piqued. Looking at a flier with his likeness, I soon discovered Walt's words are now the springboard for an innovative one-hour staging called Leaves of Grass Unbound.
The magnum opus has always been known for its overt sexuality, with one critic at the time of its original release calling the work "trashy, profane & obscene." In this dramatization, director Jeremy Bloom has added a visual element that some might consider pornographic: a cast of nine ethnically diverse, naked actors chant selections of Whitman's poetry including "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," and "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" while his words are projected onto their unclothed and gracefully moving forms.
Despite the presence of beautiful nude bodies, the performance comes across as neither erotic nor lurid. Instead, the program feels quite sacred, in part because the audience sits upon church pews in an intimate white-walled setting. Whitman once wrote, "If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it." I'm sure he'd be fully supportive of this effort to celebrate the human physique.
Tickets are $20 per person ($15 Student/Senior discount) and are available for purchase at Brown Paper Tickets or at the door on the evening of each performance.
Leaves of Grass: Written by Walt Whitman, conceived and directed by Jeremy Bloom and produced by The Cell
Playing August 14-29, 2009 at The Cell, 338 West 23rd Street.
Michael Cunningham is spending his summer in Provincetown, hard at work on his latest novel. (And yes, we're a little jealous.) EW's Shelf Life caught up with him and gleaned some details about the new book, tentatively titled Olympia, and his other projects, including the screenplay for a Dusty Springfield biopic starring Nicole Kidman.
An excerpt from the novel appears in the current digital issue of Electric Literature (along with work from Out contributor T Cooper), and "charts the relationship of two brothers growing up in 1970s suburban
Milwaukee, the flamboyantly gay Matthew (he even figure skates!) and
his younger brother, the presumably straight Peter." On how the story fits into the novel in progress, Cunningham explains: "Peter is the central character. He’s an art dealer and he finds that he
is increasingly drawn to his wife’s very much younger brother, who
evinces for him everything that was appealing about his wife when he
first met her. He’s not gay. Well, he’s probably a little gay because
we’re all a little gay, right? But it’s certainly eroticized."
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