Who Runs Bartertown?

One-Half NelSON Headdress >∞ Fischerspooner Headdress

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:21:40 -0500

One-Half NelSON Headdress >∞ Fischerspooner Headdress

themajorarcana: Callum Wilson for Candy MagazinePhotographed by...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:32:27 -0500

themajorarcana:

Callum Wilson for Candy Magazine
Photographed by Karim Sadli
Styled by Robbie Spencer

rachelanastasia: Henchman 21 found porn in the woods as a...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:12:00 -0500

rachelanastasia:

Henchman 21 found porn in the woods as a child! Did you experience this important rite of passage too?

Sure, if by woods we mean locked in my dad’s home office before he got back from sales calls using his IBM Aptiva (a system he didn’t even realize had a modem in it), trolling AOL chatrooms with my friend’s family log-in on the sly, or scouring query after query after query on AltaVista.

1997 was a magical time to be an eighth-grader.

In 2010 the look is guerrilla carnivore.

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:59:00 -0500

In 2010 the look is guerrilla carnivore.

I made you guys this Christmas card. The reverse side is a...

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:18:00 -0500

I made you guys this Christmas card. The reverse side is a collection of what looks like 400 videos pulled from YouTube with the following search terms: vogue battles, fulsom street, stag homme, dangerkat, house of aviance, homoerotic, slava mogutin, and many others.

Love you, dorlings.

Well, now that I have, at 4:45 am, completed my seven page final paper comparing the angels of...

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:51:08 -0500

Well, now that I have, at 4:45 am, completed my seven page final paper comparing the angels of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Duino Elegies” and several figures of authority from Kafka’s short sories to the major themes of the cyclical nature of acension in Hekhalot mysticism, in German, I think I will go to sleep. For three hours. And then wake up, take two finals in Modern English Grammars and advanced German composition; and then finish laying out three spreads for our magazine’s Tuesday deadline, and then complete three more portraits for the contributor section of a japanese photography magazine for Wednesday’s deadline.

…All on about 300 calories a day. I am ready.

Just in time for the holidays, the East Village Boys cum-shot...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:09:00 -0500

Just in time for the holidays, the East Village Boys cum-shot tee is back!

Surreal is watching a terribly shitty, but sometimes laugh out...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:15:00 -0500

Surreal is watching a terribly shitty, but sometimes laugh out loud funny queer flick, and suddenly realizing you shot one of the leading roles in your studio barely a year ago for illustration reference. So I guess way to go Michael (but he still looks better in my shot than he does in the movie).

There will never, ever be any candid shots of me, as somehow, I...

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:29:00 -0500

There will never, ever be any candid shots of me, as somehow, I am always, always aware when a camera is on me, and I am apparently never having it.

On the up, look at how wasted/having-a-wonderful-time my friend Liz is (she’s the ~~anime character~~ girl to my left with her right hand high).

This is at the Kid Sister show last month.

Bunker, I’ll see it, and I’ll raise it.

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 04:08:18 -0500

Bunker, I’ll see it, and I’ll raise it.

How about some Gay Gay Icons?

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:22:00 -0500

(This is prolly gonna just be a boner killer) I just finished reading Bullick’s post about Rufus Wainwright’s Gay Icons List.

Just once I’d like to see a Gay Icon’s list that I can 1) Identify with, and perhaps more to the point, 2) has actual homos on it. And maybe that’s a desire that comes with the privilege of living in a time when we actually have out, high-profile figures. Things that were landmark then have since become distant memories, and while I think they have a permanent place in our history — it would be affected and dishonest to pretend they had anything more than a subliminal influence on me.

I mean, in reading through Rufus’s list I realized a few things: I will never identify with the weird homo-normative canonization of Judy Garland. Who the fuck is Judy Garland? I mean, I have seen the Wizard of Oz. She’s got a great voice. I guess I just don’t get how I supposed to identify this with the fact that I am sexually attracted to men? I’m not seeing it, I’m not into her music, I think her lifestyle choices were pathetic, and I couldn’t care less about her daughter (a daughter who, again, will never be anything more to me than a supporting character on Arrested Development).

Frankly I think most of the reasons given for Garland being ushered into the gay community is one of the main reasons I feel like the gay community today is a tired punchline. It no longer requires courage to be the kind of performer that most of these people were/are, and truthfully the iconography they established has become hackneyed, trite and above all: a caricature of itself.

Also, I have never, really never, been aware of hearing a Barbara Streisand song (perusing IMDB, I realize I’ve never even seen a movie with her in it). Same for Morrissey, and with few exceptions, same for Kate Bush. And I am truly, truly baffled at the inclusion of Pink.

That being said, here’s my brief Gay Icons list — for the most part, it contains people that in one way or the other speak to my gay experience, named as they came off the top of my head. Many of the people on here made me realize that 1) it was okay to be gay, and to just be who I wanted to be: that being gay didn’t mean that I had to be a mincing, limp-wristed Broadway queen, or for that matter, some shaved, gelled, perm-tanned muscle queen who drove a Jeep Wrangler; and 2) that being gay didn’t make me special. These are people who taught me that people should probably never be patronized for their sexuality, but rather for what they bring to the table.

1.) Jón Þór Birgisson

The lead singer of Sigur Rós — a band whose music means more to than perhaps any other. Jónsi is a creative monolith whose music is spellbinding, experimental, and evocative. Had I discovered Sigur Ros during high school, I’m sure theirs would have been the lyrics I was writing on notebook covers or picturing myself passionately, embarrassingly reciting to my best (straight) friend Steven. Finding out Jonsi was gay was a revelation — here was this person I deeply, deeply admired and identified with, and lo, he played for my team.

2.) Rufus Wainwright

I feel like Rufus gave me a vocabulary to talk about how I felt about men. His music was important to me because I discovered it before I discovered club music: I never really associated “gay music” with gay disco until much later. For the first part of my sexual awareness, gay music was men singing about how they felt about men, not pantomiming what they wanted to do with other guys through a flimsy hetero lens. People talk about the inherent confusion contained in works shot through with the Male Gaze, but I feel like if you want to see the most pathetic display of gender politics, get a load of a bunch of gay guys desperately singing along (simultaneously mentally code-switching) to the words of a song sung by a cartoon of a straight woman who is belting out what she thinks straight men want to hear. And I mean, who hasn’t, even for a brief moment, sang along to Kylie and thought ‘Wow, she really gets me - I should do the Locomotion with her;” all I am saying is that I am glad Rufus came along first.

3.) Keith Haring

Here’s a guy whose work I’d been seeing since I was a toddler watching Sesame Street — his playful, thoughtful artwork is something I’ve liked since I was five. The more I learned about his life the more and more respect I gained for him. His pieces, like himself, are at once serene but also saturated with raw emotion — which I don’t know, is something that I’ve come to recognize as a hallmark of a lot of my gay friends lives, this kind of permanent Interrobang Introspection.

4.) Maurice Sendak

Another favorite since childhood, this year may as well be called the Year of Sendak to me. My love began with Little Bear, and grew with Where the While Things Are. When I read a couple years ago that Sendak’s partner of 50 years had just died, it was the first I had ever heard of his sexuality — and it was a major aha moment, as was this quote: “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.” Following this he made a remark that as an artist he felt like a failure, and that he feared he had never risen above being a “mere illustrator” and I was devastated. Sendak’s drawings were one of the reasons that I got into illustration, and his books are the reason that I want to be a teacher. He is and will always be more than a mere illustrator to me, he’s a hero, and an example. I was thrilled when they announced Jonze’s and Eggers’ adaptations, not because there would be a movie… but that there would finally be the touchstone treatment he and his work deserves, handled by people that saw more than the illustrations.

5.) Julie Goldman, Ellen, and Margaret Cho

Three ladies that compete for “World’s Funniest” in my head. I think they’re iconic for me for very different reasons, but when I try to sort out what those reasons are they all sound the same: they’ve all made me laugh at the stupidest fucking parts of being gay, so many times, that I forget there’s ever any trouble in it at all. Julie ruthlessly lambastes the culture, and self-seriousness of the community; Ellen manages to be so, so likable, and so, so unthreatening — all while remaining completely true to herself, and hinest about her life; and Margaret manages to do both of these things, but somehow in a mirror, backwards, in an entirely opposite way as the others.

I’m sure there are others - probably some Björk, some Michael Chabon, some… I don’t know, Little Richard?, but grandpa is tired, and has a 15 page paper on Rilke to write and illustrate.

Imagine if Tumblr was like Facebook. If you ever liked a post, you'd get notifications telling you who else liked it as well.

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 19:29:00 -0500

hihellogoodbye:

Imagine just how many notifications you’d get. Imagine.

Yeah, except I think Tumblr does do this — but they figured out a way to make you want those notifications, and rather than spamming your mailbox, they get you to actively log in and check to see them — they just called it Tumblarity.

Two can play at this game, Jcup: The first manifestation of my...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:58:29 -0500

Two can play at this game, Jcup: The first manifestation of my faggotry. If this were in the Marvel universe, this would have been the moment that I accidentally burned down a shopping center with lasers from my eyes, or inadvertently phased through the earth’s mantle.

Meanwhile, check out my mom’s wicker chair and brass butterfly wall art, coordinating with her wicker shoes and argyle socks.

Everyday I become less and less capable of explaining, even to...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:38:00 -0500

Everyday I become less and less capable of explaining, even to myself, why I am not currently living in Germany.

Yamil Castiglione photographed by Antonella ArismendiFrom...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:12:00 -0500

Yamil Castiglione photographed by Antonella Arismendi
From Gnosis, for 160g’s Erotic Issue.

This is like Jcup meets Gaga meets that Keith Haring shot by Annie Liebovitz

"I had slept with one man whom I loved, and learned to love another man so much that it would never..."

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:41:00 -0500

“I had slept with one man whom I loved, and learned to love another man so much that it would never have occurred to me to want to sleep with him.”

- Michael Chabon

Hi, yes — I have far too many of the latter and does anybody want these leftovers? Let’s have a little more of column A, thanks; I’ve had my fill of column B.

farpointstation: Fuck the Mayans, Aughra will tell us what’s...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:34:55 -0500

farpointstation:

Fuck the Mayans, Aughra will tell us what’s going down in 2012.

THE GREAT CONJUNCTION?

Ahahahaha. Also, get a load of those rocknips.

“Oh Gomez I am just like any other modern woman: a loving...

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:23:18 -0500

“Oh Gomez I am just like any other modern woman: a loving husband, loving children. It’s just that I wish I had more time to seek out the Dark Forces and join them in their hellish crusade.”

Morticia Addams: Style Icon and Life Coach.

(via inventaire) I — um, I… sorry, I forgot what I was...

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:08:35 -0500

(via inventaire)

I — um, I… sorry, I forgot what I was going to say.

Step — Kid Sister feat. Estelle “Let ‘im juke it...

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:32:00 -0500

Step — Kid Sister feat. Estelle

“Let ‘im juke it from behind and pop in the front.” This was the fuckin’ jam the other night when she played. Shades of Salt n’ Peppah, little bit En Vogue… all Kid Sis.