One Million Years Old
I'm standing with a co-worker at my night job.
"I have a new thing," he tells me. "I like leaving obscure videos running on the monitors."
What a fun idea, I think. I don't want to be subversive but it's a fun way to inject personality into a retail job.
He continues:
"I get next to girls and put on Usher videos from YouTube and they're all like whaaa?"
Facepalm.
I suggest: "Next time try Klaus Nomi."
"Who's that?"
"David Bowie's dress designer from the 70s."
"He wore dresses?"
Double facepalm
He wanders off. Ten minutes later he comes back.
"Dude..." is all he can say.
Pride 2010
Just some video of the Pride Run and some special dancers throughout the weekend.
Pride Tips for Out of Towners: 2010 Edition
Holy crap! With all that was going on in my life the last couple weeks I utterly forgot to create my superhelpful Pride tips! I apologize, incoming tourists, for this oversight.
Here's my last couple entries:
Pride Tips 2008
Pride Tips 2009
Both still stand, with a couple interesting edits:
Dining
PLEASE. However attractive the patio at O'Grady's looks during the summer fun sun, scope out their food portions and how frantic their staff are. I can assure you that at least one of those points will be a disappointment. This goes for pretty much all restaurants on Church. Take a moment and look at the menu and the actual portions they're placing in front of people before eating on Church Street. If you must, go to The Church Street Diner. These boys are back and have their head screwed on right.
The Parade
There are Three Parades now, in the spirit of inclusion and togetherness: The Trans March, the Dyke March and the Pride Parade. Next year we will have enough time during Pride week to have the "I can hold the iPhone 4 without losing bars" parade as well as the "Do these shoes make me look bisexual?" parade.
Hooking Up
If you're trying to pick up a local, don't mention the G20. We are still sore from it (see below). This year I would suggest combing your hair to look like a wet badger fell on your scalp from a great height, with a slight swirl, will get you laid. It's working for Justin Beeper or whatever his name is. That or wearing jeans that are so skinny in the leg, yet make your ass look like you've dropped the remnants of a spicy burrito in the backside. Tsk. Kids today.
Post-G20 Politicalness
You might have heard that Pride was pulled back from the precipice of disaster by allowing a certain group to keep nasty words in their name while the streets of our fair city were overrun with thugs in black hoodies kicking the shit out of Starbucks on Yonge Street. Know that Torontonians have had their damn fill of political posturing and just want to have fun. If you have an axe to grind, make sure you find like minded people to grind it into.
That's about it! I wish all your Pride miracles come true!
Golden Locks and The Three Decades
Brock's Finest Moment
This morning I passed a porn star on the street. Not just any porn star, mind you. No. I passed a porn star I came dangerously close to stalking when I was in my early 20s.
Back then, I gravitated towards a specific porn director that made a splash on the world of porn by carefully choosing and grooming his models meticulously (man-scaping and tanning were a must. Not one hint of body hair - hey I was in my 20s and didn't know the whole bear scene, ok?) to his design and desire. His name was Kristian Bjorn and his impact on gay pornography has not been surpassed.
Not that I follow gay pornography much these days. That's another post entirely (that would probably freak out my straight readership, but hey).
I'm getting side tracked. Back then I had a thing for big, beefy blond dudes. One model Bjorn would use was a massive chap by the name of "Paul" who had a striking resemblance to Brock Samson of The Venture Brothers cartoon (I think that's why it grabbed my attention in the first place). He had shoulder length blond locks that even then, at that time, was a bit ridiculous. But he had a look of stupid hockey jock so the hair was forgivable. In my head we enjoyed long walks on the beach, working out together and fine wine during a azure sunset while dining on a tiki encrusted patio located somewhere tropical. Then I would finish up and put the magazine away.
Jump with me in time to 1997 when I got a job at The Black Eagle, working as a bar back, delivering beer to the various stations in the bar. My first weekend there I came into work to discover that the very same pornstar "Paul" had been hired as bartender. Impossible! I thought he was some Brazilian or some angry lout from Los Angeles, but then again, that's what I had constructed in my head as one does, when using someone for intimate, personal pleasures. At first I was shy and would not talk to him much but after a while we passed a few comments. However, we worked together for almost a year and I never once asked about those photos or his past career as a porn star or his background at all. I guess I didn't want to spoil the fantasy.
Or I never asked because he was as dumb as a cedar plank. Typical "Paul" conversation (not an actual one as that I can't recall the horrid details from 13 years ago, but you get the gist):
Me: Oh hey! You're playing The Pet Shop Boys! I like how they write their lyrics to be ambiguous commentary across straight and gay relationship boundaries.
Paul: Hu?
Me: I like how they don't actually come out in their songs. But their lyrics can mean they're gay or straight.
Paul: Gru?
Me: Pet Shop Boys funny!
Paul: ... (Stares. Goes back to trying to pick up some sugar daddy at his bar)
Not a mental giant. Our time together as co-workers was spent in a curious state of stand-offish-ness. I didn't want to learn anything about him lest I spoil years of built up fantasy and he wasn't interested in me at all since I didn't have a condo in Palm Springs that he could visit and sunbathe during the long Canadian winters. He was fired from the bar for some suspicious reason - Stealing? Stupidity? I don't recall. One day he was working, the next he was across the street at the old queen's bar chatting up the older guys with the expensive shirts.
This morning he passed me on the street as I wandered into work. His face was scraggly. His hair was buzzed down, the long golden locks forever gone into history. The body he once used for money was now soft. Pudgy. The glory and strength was bled from him, gone from him, and I wondered what he was doing these days. I imagined he was like a soccer coach set out to teach kids his skill, but winding up just boring them with stories of glory days.
Face. Face. Face.
I present to you Cindy St Pine Costa Del Sol:
I am FiERCE
Via Just a Dude
Hey Ash! Whatcha Playing? Orson Scott Card is a Dyke
I just finished Ender's Game a week ago and thought, ok... I can see how this would rile up some people. Kids being killers, unrealistic portrayal of child geniuses, ends justify the means, bla bla bla. But I thought the newly revised forward was much more interesting, where Mr Scott Card (Or is it just Card?) rants on for page after page of how much trouble his book stirred up and how many people responded saying he was a literary god. I swear to you it's 40 pages of ego masturbation that crosses over the borders of embarrassing into megolomanialand. Much like a blog, really.
El Yawn-o.
I know. I shouldn't pay this homophobe any attention other to mock him with signs that say "I Have a Sign!", but I got caught up in the hype and thought I should read one from him, if just to figure out what makes him so controversial. I can assure you, after gnawing through that forward alone, I'll never bother again. No the book wasn't that shocking - maybe it was in the 70's, like a meddling John Hughes film, but it doesn't stand the test of time in a post 9-11, liberty eroded society. What actually made me think this man a dork was his comments about same sex marriage, utter flabbergasting and so tired (open the link, read the first paragraph and die a little inside. That's all you need.).
Take heart in knowing there are people out there who can make light of the whole "Should an avid gay gamer buy an amazingly developed game that puts money into a homophobe's pocket?" conundrum. HAWP's "Ash" has impeccable comic timing. I wish she was my best friend.
Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know
When I lived in Ottawa from 1994 to 1996, I was dating a Big Steel Man store manager.
I know, right? Big Steel Man. Who remembers those chrome and glass and NuWave consumer fortresses to men's 80's fashion? For my non-Canadian readers, Big Steel was a chain store that tried to usurp Le Chateau as a safe place for men to buy shoulder padded bolero jackets. It smelled like the death of the 80s when you walked in. I think Big Steel Man morphed into a trimmer, 90s-named "Steel" and then sold their last shiny suit in '94.
I still have a Big Steel Man belt. Is that wrong?
I digress. His name was Marty.
...
Marty...
And Marty loved to Party.
*sigh* Yes. Yes he said that when I met him. When he said that I should have collected my shattered self respect and run the other way, but I didn't. You see, Ottawa in 1994 was a gay wasteland with gay tumbleweeds and gay desert horizons. When you did hear of a gay in Ottawa they were one of only two types that populated our nation's capital: Dinner Party Gays and Centretown Pub Trolls. I'll explain:
The Dinner Party Gays were never EVER seen in a gay bar, purely because they held public servant positions and would never sully their reputation to be seen in career-killing establishments. It was like they were living in a Soviet Era spy novel. Like lava tube-hugging sea urchins at a great cold depth, DPGs would go from house to home and dine with political elites. They would skim the Ottawa gay barrel and invite the common gays into their realm every so often for amusement or scandal. If you were lucky to be invited to one of these parties and yet subsequently dumped by your invitee, it was impossible to stay within this realm, unless you suddenly sprouted a government job from your ass. I was dating one of these DPGs the first 3 months of my Ottawa occupation (a federal archivist with a hobby for poetry - yawn) and attended a couple parties where I was paraded as the "quaint new Torontonian". When we broke up I was banished to...
The CentreTown Pub Trolls. These were your basic bar flies - but due to the hierarchy the DPGs created, the clique system within the CPTs was tight, savage. If you thought making friends in Toronto was hard, try chatting someone up in a gay bar in Ottawa - when a CPT found out you wern't a DPG, slumming it for the night (or god forbid a snobbish ex-Torontonian) you were promptly branded and ignored. I didn't seriously meet anyone for 6 months after my break up and when I did start to get into this fortress of gay, I was finding a castle full of queens and fools. No kings.
Marty... right... back to Party Marty.
He was dressed in a suit - which immediately made me think he was an extricated DPG, banished for some reason to CPT status. Today I realize Marty probably wore a loud suit of sorts but back then I was suit-blind. To me, a guy could be wearing a white suit with big lapels and cuffs on pantleg and sleeve, while it was October 12, and I'd only see "a guy in a suit". I know better now. Marty was in a suit. I thought a suit in the Centretown Pub was classy. Memory fails but I am sure the suit was a big old shoulderpaddy monstrosity.
Hi... Marty... Party... Yes. The personal slogan tripped alarms off in my head. Instead of running, we grabbed a drink. And another. And... you get the drift. We closed the bar and managed to get back to his place. To my horror, his small apartment was decorated in Big Steel Man shop racks. I kid you not. Chrome and steel and glass clothing racks dominated the room. As store manager he was pilfering all manner of product and store display to bring home. It was like Hoarders, but with Confessions of a Shopaholic and Devil Wears Prada thrown into the mix. I swear we actually had to push through racks of poly-cotton blends to get to the bed.
Where nothing happened. We were too drunk.
Repeat three times. Three drunken dates where I tried to keep up with him, liquorly, but he was from the East Coast, where liquor is like air. I failed miserably but thankfully kept it all in and did not throw up on his massive collection of clothes. To this day I think I only ever saw Marty with his shirt off. We would collapse onto his futon fully dressed, pass out, and not do anything.
The upside was that I had fabulous clothes to wear home the next day. No walk of shame for me!
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