The Awl

The New Imperial Teen Record

Choire Sicha — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:40:04 +0000

The adorable and fun-loving Imperial Teen (who I always think of as the original New Pornographers; their excellent first album, 1996's "Seasick," did predate the Pornographers by three years, but that's irrelevant, they don't have that much in common, besides being awesome and having a love of jaunty pop) have a new album out today! You can stream the whole album right here. Or even purchase it!

---

See more posts by Choire Sicha

4 comments

The Safety of Categories

Choire Sicha — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:00:15 +0000

"When you start operating on the principle that you indeed can divide people into sheep and goats, then there’s also the idea that you must divide people into sheep and goats and there are certain boundaries that cannot be crossed without reclassifying."
—It's once more into the breach with trying to get society to roll back the helpful and also not at all helpful classification of people into "gay" and "straight." Anyway, that's Hanne Blank, author of Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, out next week.

---

See more posts by Choire Sicha

12 comments

Gay Disaster: Grindr Hacked

Choire Sicha — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:00:57 +0000

So this finally happened: "A popular 'meat-market' smartphone app that spawned a sexual revolution in Australia's gay community has been compromised by a Sydney hacker, potentially exposing intimate personal chats, explicit photos and private information of users." Ta da! But wait, there's more: "A security expert who did not wish to be named... said that the Grindr and Blendr apps 'had no real security.'" The modern age is fun where we just trust all our data and naked pictures to anyone who makes an app!
---
See more posts by Choire Sicha
10 comments

Dustin Lance Black: Mostly Gay Sex Was Invented in, Say, the 1940s

Choire Sicha — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:30:46 +0000

So here is raised again the question about why there's no gay sex in the movies, the main answer being "haha studios, obviously, they're total wusses." But the call is also coming from inside the big, dumb, gay house: in particular, the big dumb gay house named Dustin Lance Black, who is the writer, most recently, of the abominable and terribly, ridiculously bad J. Edgar.
Black, who won an Oscar for his Milk screenplay, says that a love scene would have been too revisionist historically. “I certainly didn’t want to see J. Edgar doing it,” says Black, who is gay. “In the 1930s, oftentimes, a loving relationship with gay men was never consummated.”
It... I'm sorry? Say what? I think I'm trying to understand his point but all I can hear is every gay studies professor crapping his pants with laughter. Yes but wait, etc., there's more.
“Here’s my thing with gay sex,” Dustin Lance Black says. “In terms of sex, we get plenty of that every day in our own lives and thrown on the Internet. I feel like what I’m really interested in is gay romance.”
So at least we know who the dumbest Oscar winner since Charlton Heston is. We hereby sentence old DLB to read Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality, for starters.
---
See more posts by Choire Sicha
43 comments

New York Writer for Left-Wing Website Is Also Homosexual

Choire Sicha — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:00:09 +0000

So, the wonderful 32-year-old Steve Kornacki—the Rain Man of election data, former Observer politics writer, frequent MSNBC guest and now Salon news editor—wrote a rare personal essay about how he's just started telling people he's gay. It's fascinating to hear that this is still a thing. And most of all, I enjoy that there are still Secret Homosexuals lurking among us, even in the most elitist enclaves of the coastal elite! (I mean: Salon!) I mean this sincerely: it goes to show how wonderful and complicated humans are. If I were going to make any sort of defensive comment, it would be something like, "Gosh, sorry I helped keep you in the closet with all of my mincing, bro!" (though to be fair to Steve, I did once make him listen to Madonna for like six hours in a small car filled with gays, and that would push anyone further in the closet) but moments like this are really no time for pettiness. God bless us every one!
---
See more posts by Choire Sicha
16 comments

Rugby Turns Man Gay

Alex Balk — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 09:40:04 +0000

You know, if it should ever happen that, while attempting to impress my rugby pals by doing a backflip, I break my neck and suffer a stroke that sees me lose consciousness for days on end and when I wake up I have suddenly become gay and I quit my job at the bank to pursue a career as a hairdresser and move in with my 19-year-old boyfriend, I hope I at least have better fashion sense than this guy. Good lord, those bracelets are hideous.
---
See more posts by Alex Balk
9 comments

Literary Gays Vaguely Randy

Choire Sicha — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:45:51 +0000

It seems worth mentioning that, as loaded as this charming Times style report on Alex Dimitrov's gay poetry salon is with the air of "hot dudes getting together and getting it on!" (for example: "The play between art and desire is always in the air" sounds spicy but is immediately followed by something about how the salon went to Brooklyn in summer?) and as... wanton as host Dimitrov himself comes off (like: “I sort of had a list of gays that I wanted to come, and some of them that I wanted to sleep with"), there's not a single incident in the story of anyone hooking up. Actually, just one gay divorce.
---
See more posts by Choire Sicha
14 comments

Gay Retirement Homes Are a Bust

Choire Sicha — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:40:22 +0000

"RainbowVision has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, wracked by financial problems and an increasingly bitter dispute between its residents and management. Its problems mirror those of many other gay retirement communities around the country that have either failed to open or fallen on hard times, victims of a weakened housing market, a deflated economy and, in some cases, poor business decisions."
—Ugh, now we're all just going to die on the streets, with all our cats and cute furniture, while you straight people have all the resentful children to barely support you in your older years.
---
See more posts by Choire Sicha
12 comments

Gays Brought Terribly Low by Heterosexual Newspaper's Makeovers

Choire Sicha — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:20:36 +0000

Finally, someone tells gay men what to wear! Not just any someone, but my one true fashion love, Cathy Horyn. Yet the results... well, the results here, where the Times has helped three gay male couples dress for their weddings, or for their anticipated weddings (couldn't find three couples getting married SOON???), some things that concerned me.

• “'I’ve only been to one gay wedding,' Mr. Bruno said as he was being prepped for his portrait with Mr. Ruales. 'The couple wore dark suits with white button-downs, no ties.'" THEY DID??? AND YOU STILL TALK TO THEM?

• "Of all the outfits, Bruce was perhaps most excited by a pair of dove gray suits from Calvin Klein, which will be available at Men’s Wearhouse and tuxedo rental shops." [*cries*]

• "'Until there are more examples — the gay beach wedding, the serious Four Seasons wedding — it’s hard to know what to market,' said Michael Kors, who wed his partner, Lance LePere, on a beach in the Hamptons, with Mr. Kors in his customary black T-shirt and white jeans and Mr. LePere in a chambray shirt and chinos." There is no gay wedding "market" and if there is it won't be emanating from the boutiques of Michael Kors, home of the worst belts in the western world.

This is just not how I pictured gay wedding makeovers. Gay people are better than straight people. This dragging of them by their hair down into the straight bargain torture basement is really upsetting!
---
See more posts by Choire Sicha
16 comments

Going for the Gay Curveball

Choire Sicha — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:20:28 +0000

Here you will find a treatise on books, including The Art of Fielding, in which dudes kinda randomly go gay.
---
See more posts by Choire Sicha
2 comments