Ted Levine is the host of Chilled Podcast, which showcases chill tracks ranging from electronic to acoustic. He is also known to enjoy making hour-long mixes of dance tracks for no reason, while at other times he enjoys subtle ambient music. It was the way Ted said, “I love this mix,” that got us. There are a hundred podcasts to be found on iTunes. Ted has since gotten into making his own, original tracks, which are excellent – especially Ea. They can be found on his lastfm channel. Enjoy.
Sam gets up at 4:30, and I sleep in ’til 7:30, almost every morning. “Delicious sleep,” he said to me recently, “you get 780 more hours a year than I do. That’s like a whole month.” It’s actually 32.5 days.
How adorable I must be, drowsily wishing him a great day as I snuggle back into the pillows and drifting back off for another couple of hours, as Sam departs, his sleep envy fermenting into mild resentment. It took a day to sink in, and so this morning I set my iPhone alarm for 6:30, with productivity in mind.
The goal is to focus on a few (gulp) chores, or a simple home improvement project that doesn’t require neighbor-waking power tools. I tried it for the first time this morning, making the following findings: Read the rest of this entry »
So, Friday night, Sam and I enjoyed some champagne in what is definitely an ongoing celebration of our new digs, which culminated in a bit of friskiness, which just happened to be recorded. Go figure. I then took a screen grab – in which we could not be identified, as no heads or tattoos were showing – so that the exhibitionists in us could discreetly contribute to Rich Jank’s gaysexnearby on Twitter.
Well, my Twitter skills aren’t as good as my other skills. So I sent a direct message to gaysexnearby with said photo attached. The photo then posted to Twitpic, and since everything I post to Twitpic posts to Facebook, a link appeared there, which lasted until a censor took it off. No matter, it was up for long enough for twelve of our friends/family/followers to get to know us a little bit better (than they had ever planned to). Only two have stepped forward, and I’d bet that one of them dragged it to his desktop. You know who you are.
The photo is definitely more information than I wanted to share on Facebook. (My friend requests did shoot up quite a bit this week.) Not quite the Dustin Lance Black moment, but it felt liberating to be able to say, “Whatever, it’s out there now.” Besides, I learned that a friend of ours – and a woman – thought the picture was hot. Strangely, that made it all worth it.
It was this poster on Roger O’Connor’s bedroom wall. I remembered staring at it, dazzled, and not even sure why. The squareness of her smiling bottom lip recalled that of my mom, but the rest was all Farrah. Then there were the jokes I heard in school about Farrah’s last name, and then the talk of her connection to the Six Million Dollar Man, and so on and so on and so on, for decades. No matter what was said, we were all changed by her existence: the blonde standard to which all other beauties were compared and doomed to fall short. Ultimately even Farrah fell short, as time and cancer changed the woman, even as the images remained seared into our memories. Beauty is fleeting, and is the least of what we have to offer the world. Beauty was certainly the least of what Farrah had to offer, and that’s really saying something.
There’s a lot to be said for a 13-year old red Miata with 40,000 original miles, and it’s all good. My buddy, Hud, has loaned me his, since he’s living on the other coast for a while. Being a 1997, it isn’t exactly what I’d call vintage, and it has a few dings and blemishes, but as I told Sam: it’s a Japanese (read: reliable), well-designed, automotively significant, rear wheel drive convertible with airbags that gets upward of 26 MPG combined. Not to mention fine specimens can be had all day long for $5K or less.
I’ve driven classic cars that restoration has made ‘new’ inside and out, and I worried about them all the time, just like a new car. Not to mention the fact that being 40 years old, interior surfaces are mostly metal, there are no airbags, and you’re strapped in with only a lap belt.
Driving an older car like this says something about one’s dedication, one’s commitment to resist trend and planned obsolescence and besides it makes Suze Orman’s nipples hard.
Fetishism is the unconscious attempt to fill a lack (often sexual) by displacing that desire onto something else, often an object. In marxist theory, commodity fetishism occurs because the worker is alienated from the product of his/her labour. The worker then confuses the use value of an object with the exchange value placed upon it capitalist society (i.e., its economic value). This is knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing.
I’m guilty. I’m not so sure about the sexual lack, but the worker alienation definitely feels familiar. All I know is that my Honda Fit is the last in a string of about 20 cars that I’ve owned since I turned 16. The madness stops here, for a while anyway. I’ll take the bus and drive the Miata sometimes, until Hud reclaims it, and then who knows. I’m loving cars from a distance these days. Just another way in which this accident has left me a changed man.
I was reading the Huffington Post this morning, when I discovered this AP story about the latest “scandalous” Calvin Klein ad.
“I think it’s obscene,” said Rachelle Brunn, who was passing by the extremely large billboard in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood. “They always have ads that are pushing the envelope, but this one is the worst I’ve seen since I’ve been here. My biggest concern is that it gives teens the wrong idea.”
Is this pushing the envelope, and what exactly is “the wrong idea?” When I was 14, I had never seen this ad, or any image like it, and I figured out pretty quickly that two horny classmates from school plus some Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers could (and did) potentiate a scorching menage that left no part of any of us unexplored, and we all three grew up just fine.
Besides, I don’t see any wedding bands on any of these models, and even if there were, so what? Is it “the wrong idea” for a beautiful young woman to have her pick of any one, two, or three of these hot young men? They’re having fun, not sizing up a mate for life. What’s more, they’re not even really “having fun.” They’re posing, to look like they’re having fun (for an insane day rate).
It does call to question what one might consider to be “the right idea,” and why this puritanical standard still exists. What kind of ad should it be then? Fully clothed young woman holding hands with fully clothed young man, and cuddling a puppy? Kissing him goodnight at the door as her father waits inside with a shotgun, or perhaps sitting on a sofa: she’s just starting to show and they’re studying together for their GEDs? Hot, but only if it’s Levi Johnston, and he’s wearing as little as possible.
Meanwhile, tourist Jodi Baron, who was visiting New York City from Cleveland, said, ”One girl. Three guys. No shirts. It’s not the best way to depict women,” Baron said. “I don’t care if it’s New York City. I think it’s really inappropriate.”
Jodi, it’s not a gang bang. Girlfriend is clearly in the driver’s seat, and what’s more empowering to women than to be able to indulge in the same pleasures men are depicted enjoying all the time? She could have one, two, or all three of them; a sailor in any or every port she wishes, if you will, or she may just get them all boned up and leave them to their own devices.
I realize that the rest of the country looks a lot more like Cleveland than Los Angeles, but really, it’s an AD. It’s just sexuality, fueled by the primitive brain’s driving desire to reproduce: the thing that drives more of our actions and thoughts than some would care to admit.
If it offends, shut up and look away. If you can’t escape it in NYC, then move. That’s essentially what conservatives are telling gays, when it comes to marriage rights: “If you want equal rights, then move to a state that will offer them.” If you can’t take the completely human sexuality you can’t come to grips with in public, OR in private, then let me recommend Utah as a state you might find to be less confronting.
Let’s throw in a Marky Mark gallery for purely prurient reasons:
Bravehound’s great taste in music, unexpected choices, (and cute ears) give him a distinctive style that truly sets him apart from the rest, and doesn’t leave you feeling like you’ve been listening to “just another big gay mix.” That’s why his latest Summer release, Glory Afternoon, is a must have. Download it at bravehound.com, and enjoy. Andy’s gonna leave you wanting more, for sure, so check out his past downloads, too, which will rock you as hard as his body might. Well, maybe not, but close.
