A day before Canada marks its 139th birthday this weekend, a young couple will wed in a ceremony that is sure to cast one of the country’s most iconic symbols in a whole new light. Dressed in their distinctive scarlet coats, RCMP constables Jason Tree and David Connors will exchange vows before a justice of the peace and a troop of other Mounties in their fabled red serge. (Link 365 Gay) The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Website

Bent on nothing short of assembling the biggest Polaroid-picture collection on the planet, Polanoid has the ambition and the goods to make it happen. This gorgeous collection revels in the early days of instant photography when the cameras were weighty, the pictures slid out immediately, and a delete button was nowhere to be found.

And now we come to reflect on my ongoing obsession with the Boing Boing website; catch the video of the Crazy 1960s German TV Robots Und Dance Moves. Video clip from the sixties German TV show Raumpatrouille. Episode 3: The Keepers of the Law. “The computer can malfunction… the tracks are a bit mixed up. I call it a cybernetic neurosis.” Link. Another vintage clip from the same TV program, mit futuristic frugging auf Deutsch.

Logo is the ad-supported network targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender viewers, launched by MTV Networks. Logo, nothing wrong with the cable channel, don’t happen to watch it, then again I don’t watch much TV anyway. Don’t mind getting an e-mail letting me know about new things, or announcing new services, but I do mind three exclamation points, because lets face it, I’m supposed to be shitting my pants with glee; “Check out the today’s NewNowNext blog to find out more about Logo’s launch on iTunes!!!”. I really got twisted around the axel over the following bit of copy;

Okay, your iPod is probably pretty gay already… I know you’ve got every Kylie bootleg ever created, Scissor Sisters vs. George Michael mash-ups, the Wicked original cast recording, Morrissey, some mopey Janis Ian, Chic and Donna Summer, and about 1,000 Deborah Cox remixes (Go Thunderpuss!). And yes, I know you’re also got Metallica, Fugazi, Tool and Rage Against the Machine on there, too. You’re cool and dark and edgy, too.

Excuse me? Who writes this shit? You ought to be stabbed in the head with a ball point pen. According to your press release Logo is supposed to be “a place where the LGBT audience can see themselves and be themselves through a mix of original and acquired entertainment, programming that is authentic, smart and inclusive” Does that include reducing people to a cultural stereotype?

Gone are the days when a punk rock hairdo caused you problems.

Having several older brothers increases the likelihood of a man being gay, a finding researchers say adds weight to the idea that there is a biological basis for sexual orientation. “It’s likely to be a prenatal effect,” said Anthony F. Bogaert of Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada, “This and other studies suggest that there is probably a biological basis for homosexuality.” Hmmm, I have no older brothers, only an older lesbian sister, what does that say?

if I told you things I did before, told you how I used to be, would you go along with someone like me, if you knew my story word for word, had all of my history, would you go along with someone like me?

Ingenious off kilter Stockholmo pop hummer that strays the usual course of pop-n’ fresh goodness. Funky drums, kooky maraca shaking, bongos and a pleasing lo-fi bass-line wrapped in understated singing and whistling. Victoria Bergsman of The Concretes guest duets with Peter providing a rasping, heart-on-sleeve vocal ride. Young Folks is just a sampling of the fine tunes found on their CD Falling Out, that’s 10 songs about falling in and unavoidably Falling Out of love with people, places, and ideas. Colored by glockenspiels, Speak-and-Spells, zithers, omnichords, and cheap synths this is some damn fine song writing built on wonderfully inventive and heartfelt arrangements. Peter Bjorn and John on MySpace

Yesterday, I went to the big lake, and swam out past the rocks…

Billy Banks and His Rhythmakers – Meana Old Bed Bug Blues (1932)
Crazy, kooky, almost surreal jazz number by one of the first racially mixed recording groups. Formed in Cleveland, Billy Banks was the front man for the Rhythmakers which included such future jazz greats as trumpeter Henry Red Allen, wry reedman Pee Wee Russell, pianist Fats Waller, banjoist Eddie Condon, bassist Pops Foster, and drummer Zutty Singleton. In some recording sessions, Benny Carter, Gene Krupa, Coleman Hawkins and Tommy Dorsey played with the band. On this track Banks sounds vicariously hipper than ever, but the real highlight is the falsetto stylings of Fats Waller.

Yesterday it rained, and rained and rained… then rained some more. The rivers and streams overflowed flooding many of the streets and overwhelming the sewer systems. It was hellish trying to navigate the city streets, while the storms blew through. Consequently, everything feels wet and damp today, and I feel a weee bit heavy headed. Me and Cora the coffee lady are going to be awful tight today…

With its stunning camerawork and striking compositions, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928), convinced the world that movies could be art. Renee Falconetti gives one of the greatest performances ever recorded on film, as the young maiden who died for God and France. A noted stage actress for many years, she is best known for Joan of Arc, the only film she ever made, and widely considered by historians to have been the single greatest performance ever put on film. Long thought to have been lost to fire, the original version was miraculously found in perfect condition in 1981 in a Norwegian mental institution. The new and carefully restored edition by Criterion is beautiful, dare I say pristine, featuring composer Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, an original opera/oratorio inspired by the film. Click here to watch a clip from YouTube.

Notes:The Passion of Joan of Arc is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.33:1. This new digital transfer was created, at 24 frames a second, from a 35mm fine-grain master positive, made from the restored negative. The transfer was then restored utilizing the MTI Digital Restoration System. Telecine supervisor: Lee Kline; Telecine colorist: Jean-Marc Moreau/ Vdm Laboratoire, Paris. Also available from NetFlix.

Check out these handsome mustachioed gents! Beautiful illustrations of World Athletes from 1888-1900 or so, contained within a booklet produced by the Allen and Ginter Tobacco Agency and printed by W. Duke Sons & Co. (click Image or Here for more)

In the 1988 edition of Andrew Holleran’s 1978 book Dancer From The Dance, there is a touching and thought provoking introduction by the author. I often think about this introduction, the concept and misconception that the future is always more expansive than the past, not so. You ask yourself why, why write? Because something will go unsaid if you don’t. For You, it’s like breathing, you must. For me, I’m a painter who hasn’t found a way to paint, an artist who only rarely finds the time to make art, or photographs or whatever, and yes, that’s a whole other topic for another time-I’m working on it! Argh… In this increasingly claustrophobic world and these conservative United States it’s very important to make visible your energy, your spirits, your smarts as a gay man or woman. It allows us to be good caretakers of the past and good guardians of the future. What follows is Andrew Holleran’s 1988 Introduction to one of the most important works of Gay Literature;

Oscar Wilde said homosexuality was the problem for which there was no solution. Whitman had a vision of a nation of cameradoes stretched out arm in arm from sea to sea. Who knows? The story is hardly finished. Perhaps the needle would drop right onto the record waiting on the turntable, the dancers’ shirts would come off, and the party would begin again, if a cure were found today. Most likely none of this could resume as it was. For we are changed; changed utterly. The expansive seventies are gone-its dreams, goals, laments cannot be the same as this year’s. There were no quilts stretching down the Mall embroidered with the names of the dead, then. There were no gaps in the city-doorways in which friends used to stand waiting for us. That physical trust that enabled many to sleep with one another is gone, not to mention people who created much of this style and optimism. The memory of those who aren’t dancing is everywhere. Dancer- this period piece-still contains just about everything I feel on this mysterious subject;but I dedicate it this time to those dear, good, hilarious men I think of each time I see a stunning face, or step onto a dance floor, or walk down a city street at quarter to three in the morning. And the people who helped them. And still do. They are this book; their voices begin and end it. Dancer remains an attempt to say good-bye to what one cannot leave.

After years of neglect from the mainstream, queer lit undergoes a renaissance. At the beginning of the 20th century Rodin said that Americans had just lived through a renaissance and no one in America knew it (he was referring to the advent of painters such as Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Sargent). Something similar could be said about gay fiction right now, which is totally neglected and almost never reviewed by the mainstream press but which has never been more vital. In fact it could be said that gay novels and short stories are among the best being written anywhere now…I think there is a real phenomenon here, the arrival of a whole new generation of gay writers who’ve come along to fill the shoes of their predecessors who died too young in the 1980s and ’90s. Continue reading from Edmund White’s Village Voice Article.

The San Francisco based GLBT Historical Society has completed a two year effort to create a comprehensive archive of the city’s response to the AIDS crisis. Called the AIDS History Research Project, the archive was created with the assistance of the University of California, San Francisco, and funded in large part by the National Historic Records Preservation Commission. For more information about the AIDS History Research Project, go online to www.glbthistory.org

So let’s see if we’ve got this straight (pardon the pun): Feeling a physical attraction for another human being is a “mental disorder.” But launching an unprovoked war of aggression that maims, eviscerates and murders tens of thousands of human beings and sends the entire planet deeper into a spiral of chaos, hatred and terror is “sane.”

That quote is from Empire Burlesque’s Quaking with Queer Fear: The Pentagon’s Deep-Seated Sexual Anxiety. in response to a Pentagon document that classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder, decades after mental health experts abandoned that position.

The document outlines retirement or other discharge policies for service members with physical disabilities, and in a section on defects lists homosexuality with mental retardation and personality disorders. (Is this not proof positive that our government is living in the dark ages) Critics said the reference underscores the Pentagon’s failing policies on gays, and adds to a culture that has created uncertainty and insecurity around the treatment of homosexual service members, leading to anti-gay harassment. More from USAToday, a little something from The AP News Wire, check out: Lawmakers, Professional Groups Dispute Pentagon Document Calling Gays Mentally Ill; Report Card Gives Military Failing Grades.

This is a portion of my desktop at home. As you can see, Captain America stands watch over the Computer and the Chromolux lamp I created. Please note the Peter Saville knockoff in the background, and the smidge of a Gary Baseman piece.

Oh yes, it’s Monday, and it feels totally like a Monday should feel. It rained which means that the temps are cooler, and if we’re lucky more rain this afternoon. I have so much shit I need to get done, am I doing it? Nooooo, I’m on here searching for items, stopping and starting, pausing between spaces, really now, I’d rather slide into the afternoon with a giant cup of coffee. What? What’s that you say? You’re watching the Vincent Marco Pec Worship Video too! Tsk tsk such a slacker…you know you ought to, you know you gotta but first you should…anyway, I just had some lunch, spicy lentil soup with chicken, iced herbal tea to drink, yum, I have to run and plow through some work.