AatomBomb

MonkeyBusiness

I have to admit, the kerfuffle over the new cover of Vogue had me yawning. Yes, it was probably a very poor choice of poses, and obviously slightly offensive. But you know what, I doubt if LeBron hesitated when taking the big check they offered. I try to err on the side of not yelling racism in a crowded room if it's not absolutely necessary.

However, Gawker now gives us a revealing side-by-side look at why it's actually pretty damn offensive (or at best, derivative) after all. Even though Denton referred to him as James LeBron (hire a fact-checker dude!)

I mean, really? A giant black monkey with a German helmet and the words "mad brute"? Paging Al Sharpton...

I'm sure Wintour is so upset about all of the attention this is getting though.

MadAsHell

and he's not going to take it anymore.

noiZe#2:TheFlamingBuckNakedPornIssue

Our spotlight for the second issue of noiZe will be Fire Island, the scrappy little sandbar that houses many of the A and B list gay celebrities of New York during the summer.  We did a marathon of interviews with figures like Buck Angel, Peter Rauhofer, Colton Ford, Babylon tour promoter Adam Gill, and circuit performers/decorators RKM. Pick up a copy to try to figure out which ones we were the most drunk for!

The Pines is a very special place to me, I wrote about it once before when we were still known as Circuit Noize.  Yes, momo, I love Fire Island and know how to spell Madonna's last name, fuck you very much.  I guess I'm just a little tired of trying to be astereotypical and ironic all the time.

Here's a snippet of how I feel about my summer home:

Fire Island allows you to experience it in a multitude of ways, depending on where your head is at and what you are trying to get out of it.  For many, it is merely a scenic place to strip down to party and play like it’s going out of style.  For others, especially the long-time residents, it is a very real community of artists, designers, politicians, activists and others who have called this bohemian haven home every summer for several decades or more.  If you are lucky or smart enough to tap into this side of the island, you will discover a form of gay life that is difficult to find in bars or online.  The rich mingle freely with the not-so-rich and all pretension is left in Sayville.  I have had the honor to meet some of the more fascinating members of our community, usually while doing the mundane tasks and activities that a summer retreat demands, like shopping at The Pantry or wandering aimlessly on the beach.  Even the notorious Meat Rack, an idyllic network of wooded paths between the Pines and Cherry Grove where boys gawk and fondle one another, resists the sinister implications of its name.  It’s hard for anyone to maintain an urban scowl in the midst of a place so innocent and beautiful.

RockOn

I am retarded for the sitcom 30 Rock.  When it debuted, I absorbed the first several episodes with a religious fervor, mostly because I work across the street, and even after a decade of living in the center of the universe I still get a provincial rush when I see my world on TV.  Strangely enough, I got the same rush even when I lived in Virginia, watching Letterman.  Like the transgendered, I knew I was born into the wrong casing, and yearned to finally return home to a place I only really knew through a series of Top Ten lists. 

After the third episode, I was hooked for a different reason.  This shit was good.  Tightly written in the trendy reality-esque style that was taken to illogical extremes by Larry David, this meta-meta comedy about the life of a remarkable, scrappy writer named Tina Lemon not only entertained in a major way, it resonated quite loudly for anyone who lives The Life in midtown, and I would imagine even outside the confines of our insular universe that trounces through the global landscape like a self-absorbed Godzilla.  Kenneth the NBC page is reason enough to watch.

So, it is rather exciting to see that they have been picked up for a second season, because the show just keeps getting better.  It's no surprise to me that the ratings story is rather weak, even devoted fans like me are downloading it on iTunes.  It's a good sign that the Donaghy's of the world are finally starting to see past the raw numbers to champion a bit of quality in a world that could sorely use a little.  And is it just me, or has Alec Baldwin made a giant creative leap forward, in a medium that is more commonly known for nursing has-beens? 

BuckingConvention

I had the pleasure of attending the premiere of the Black Party docudrama Schwarzwald - Rites XXVII last night at The Box.  I have to say it was one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had in a long while, for several reasons aside from the free vodka. 

As my boyfriend and I arrived at The Box, I recognized the face of Joe from Joe.My.God waiting outside for the Manhattan Offender.  I'd never had the pleasure of meeting Joe in person, but I recently used his formidable writing skills for the launch of noiZe, so I introduced myself and we ended up chatting for much of the evening.  We all swapped wacky backroom stories, and momo from Manhattan Offender turned out to be as witty and amusing as I expected.  Joe had the best stories of course, the man is a wealth of anecdotal information. 

The star of the evening, though, was Buck Angel, the female-to-male transsexual porn star who has been making a big splash recently.  It's hard to ignore "The Man With A Pussy", as his business card delicately puts it.  He turned out to be one of the sweetest and most interesting people I've met, and we ended up talking with him until one in the morning.  My boyfriend is absolutely fascinated, and is already planning a trip to Mexico for us to visit Buck, who actually put his money where his mouth was when Bush was elected and moved out of the country.  Take that, you Hollywood pussies!  The courage of his convictions is something that Mr. Angel is certainly not lacking. 

The movie was decent for an indie film about a circuit party.  The best parts were the footage of the party itself, interspersed with a nonsensical pagan storyline that occurs in the woods, amusingly accompanied by peppy disco tracks most of the time.  Buck was strangely adorable throughout, looking surprisingly innocent for a muscular bald man with tattoos and a vagina.  He told us after how fascinated gay men were with him, to the point of almost being gang-raped on the floor of the Black Party one year.  Men, as it turns out, are indeed pigs.  Joe summed it up nicely.  He said imagine a room full of the most hardcore sex freaks in the city, men who make a regular habit out of practices such as fisting and bloodletting (the bloodletting scene of the movie was by far the most disturbing - and kind of hot in a wrong wrong wrong way) and then put Buck onstage wearing nothing more than thigh-high leather boots.  It's the one perversion none of them have ever experienced before, and it drives them crazy.  That might help explain why Buck no longer goes on the main dance floor alone anymore. 

All in all, a fabulous evening.  I'm still working off a bit of a hangover (no more gin on long nights. Just no.) but it made me blog again so it must have been pretty fucking special.

Here's a pic of Buck and my angel of a boyfriend:

Aww.

TheFirst(AndLast)PostAboutRadarMagazine

Eat The Press quotes the indestructible Maer Roshan today, defending his choice to give the whole dead tree thing one more go.  Keep in mind that Radar is essentially the print version of Gawker, or Jossip, or on a bad day, PerezHilton.com.  Their demographic, assuming anyone beyond the confines of the tightly-knit Manhattan gossip-blogger network actually buys the magazine, would ostensibly consist of people who ingest massive amounts of internet snark.  Also keep in mind that Gawker has, for its own masturbatory reasons, acted as a dedicated PR arm of the magazine during each of its launches.  To be sure, many of us would be far less likely to know anything about this tiny drop in the magazine bucket were it not for their exhaustive (and exhausting) coverage of it.

All of which makes this reactionary jab by Maer today so deliciously perverse:

"Certainly it would be more economical to hire pajama-clad post-collegiates to snarkily blog on content produced by others. But if your mission is to break new ground, dispatching actual reporters and photographers to cover actual stories still has an essential power."

Now, ponder this: Time Magazine has just made a fundamental paradigm shift in how it reports and analyzes the news.  A shift away from their straight news, no chaser standard toward a more polemic mindset, hiring boldname opinionistas like Bill Kristol to dissect the news and offer their own zesty perspective on it. I'm fairly certain that I saw Kristol wandering around the 22nd floor the other day in pajamas.  All of which begs the question - is Stengel more new media now than Roshan?  It's a strange new world out there, kids, take care of yourselves.

Gawker has officially gone insane.  I never thought I would miss Coen this much.

movmnt2.0

The second issue of movmnt is printed and will soon be available at a fine Port Authority-ish newsstand near you, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders and by subscription at our website.  I'm very proud of this issue, I think we really stepped up our game editorially as well as design-wise.  We went with a more eco-friendly paper stock, which made it less glossy but it has a more tactile magazine feel this time, which I kind of like.

I wrote two pieces for this issue. I interviewed the ceo of Rock Corps, an interesting youth volunteerism concept that seems to be doing very well after just two years of throwing concerts for kids who donate time to local non-profits.  The most interesting thing I learned from Stephen was that a majority of youth polled recently don't think the government can fix all of the world's problems (file under: duh), but they also don't think it will be non-profits or some do-gooder organization.  Nope, kids today think that the only thing that can save the world is....corporations.  That honestly surprised me.  The era of anti-establishmentarianism is over, apparently.

My main Society piece is called "I, Citizen", and I am quite proud of it.  I worked with my good friend Eddie Larios (who designed my Aatomic banner above) and he did me proud on the graphics.  It's about how technology empowers the rising generation to participate in society and enrich their lives in an unprecedented manner by putting the means of production and distribution into their hands directly, mitigating the need for larger bureaucratic/corporate infrastructures.  The workers' utopia, subsidized by free market capitalism.  The article, and the overall theme of the entire issue in fact, were inspired in large part by Instapundit's book An Army of Davids.  He certainly doesn't need my help to plug the book, but I would highly recommend it.  Thanks for the inspiration, Glenn!

I also helped compile a world map of factoids that highlight various flashpoints of volatile events around the world.  I included a mention of the Russian media, and its seeming return to a Soviet-era culture of fear.  Josh over at The Conjecturer has a great post that shows how prescient I was with that item. 

If you're not already a subscriber to movmnt, join in the fun!  We are truly a form of independent media; we have no corporate backing and won't survive for long unless we have your support.  Like a small Army of Davids ourselves, we publish this baby right out of a downtown apartment.  Power to the people!

Two of the best, and most transgressive, storytellers on the internet are back.  Bill in Exile 2.0 is up and running.  Welcome back, boys.

&Quote

"You know, if Briton Hadden and Henry Luce were coming up with a newsmagazine today, it would probably be electronic only from the start."

- Richard Stengel, Managing Editor of Time Magazine (via Eat The Press)