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City, state and national statistics all point to an increase in HIV infections and unsafe sex, particularly among young people. Gay Men’s Health Crisis launched two new ad campaigns this week to raise HIV awareness among two at-risk groups.

The “I Love My Boo” campaign targets young men of color who have sex with men (MSM). (Boo is a slang term of affection.) The other campaign—“HIV: We’re Not Taking It Lying Down”—focuses on women of color.

The billboards and panels on phone kiosks are posted in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, in neighborhoods where infections are disproportionately high among people of color.

GMHC’s new “I love my Boo”campaign targets young men of color who have sex with men. The ads hit streets just as the CDC reports an 80% jump in HIV among that population.

Nothing Less than 8"

After the bust out success of The Big Book of Breasts TASCHEN presents the perfect companion, The Big Penis Book.

When it comes to pleasure, size doesn’t matter; as we all know it’s quality, not quantity, that counts. But let’s admit it: a big penis is undeniably compelling. Big shoulders, big lapels, and big hair may come and go, but the big penis never goes out of fashion. With those possessing more than 8 inches (How can this be? Everyone on Craigslist is 8"!) making up less than 2% of the world’s population, this rare accessory will always fascinate.

In this companion volume to The Big Book of Breasts, we explore the centuries-old fascination with the large phallus, a fascination common to men and women alike. This hefty book is profusely illustrated with over 400 historic photos of spectacular male endowments, including rare photos of the legendary John Holmes. The majority of the photographs are from the 1970s, when the sexual revolution first freed photographers to depict the male entirely nude. Photographers include Bob Mizer of Athletic Model Guild, David Hurles of Old Reliable, Colt, Falcon, Sierra Domino, Third World, and Champion Studios, with each of these iconic photographers interviewed or profiled, along with information about each of their models.

Easter

P.S. I LOVE YOU!

A full review of Robert Julian's  new book can be found here. But first, a word, or paragraph. I haven't read the book. I read the review. And it was strange as only a week earlier I had mentioned to someone moving from New York City to Los Angeles, that they must visit Palm Springs. After a litany of the obvious pleasures, I mentioned that Palm Springs has an underside, which is not spoken of too often, but very available if this is your desire. Robert Julian's book has created controversy because he writes about this very subject. And the natives are not happy. I would never make the claim that the residents of Palm Springs live this salacious lifestyle, it is actually the tourists who come from around the world, to bake in the mid-day sun, naked. That residents are willing to complain about this depiction is simply silly. Yes, most of the residents DO NOT participate in the sexual activities usually found in the Warm Sands area. But to make the claim Palm Springs does not harbor a very sexually active lifestyle is a like saying Cape Canaveral doesn't shoot off rockets.
It is best to keep quiet the secret of the Springs? Is it best to to not mention the sex clubs, the hotels, the dimly illuminated streets where people cruise? I have been visiting for decades, and it has always been like this. Always. The sun, the dry desert air, the flush of negative ions, the sheer beauty of the place, all contribute to a remarkable landscape fertile with the promise of sexual adventure. It may be one of the reasons why, men in their 50s seem to retire there. It's easy, and it's true, there is a Sinatra vibe, there is something jazzy about the nightwinds and there is, a lot of sex, not in homes, but in the 100 or more gay resorts, many, clothing optional, and you can just guess what happens when a group of gay men get together naked.

Fashion

It has been a week of fashion in Los Angeles. Starting with the GenArt show at the ever-stunning Park Plaza Hotel in MacArthur Park and ending at Union Station with the extravaganza called the Jared Gold show.

Fashion is a business. Exactly how it works, how money is made is beyond comprehension. Fashion shows are twenty-minute exercises in revealing next seasons "line". Presumably, what we might be wearing this Fall. Fashion shows are rarely practical. They are exactly what they claim to be, shows. Some spectacle, some drama, some static, usually accompanied by music, they are short films about thin people strutting a line across a stage. And they are fun. Usually.

The Jared Gold show aptly entitled, Czarina is inspired by the fabled Russian Bolshoi Ballet Company and "how dancers become animals". The show featured x porn star Traci Lords and former Madonna boy toy, Tony Ward (seen here). The music in the show, I believe was "Switched-0n-Bach" from the 1968 Wendy Carlos album and it worked to conjure up a carnival like atmosphere. Union Station is the Amtrak train station for Los Angeles. Built in 1939, it said to be "the last of America's great rail stations." The show takes place in a great hall just off the entrance. With high vaulted ceilings, the room feels Moorish, and though the capacity is 1500 people, the audience fits snugly in the space. If the show is spectacle, so is the audience. Actor Billy Zane, quite bald and sexy in a mustard suit sits in the VIP area, which are five rows closest to the stage. An ever animated club kid author, James St. James, swirls, dives, beckons and cajoles every would be star or starlet. Old fashionistas, arrive still flawless in their finery, seasoned members of a tribe, in this hall, they get respect. Everyone dresses. Girls drag their remarkably handsome boyfriends, who stare off at the ceilings during the show. Two gay boys chat endlessly about who is who, and what everyone is wearing. The lights lower and the show begins.

Fashion. Style. How much are we, the public, influenced by fashion? Gay men adopted Calvin Klein underwear sometime in the late 80s, early 90s because the advertising featured sexy, muscled men. Mark "Marky Mark"  Wahlberg essentially stormed the market in the 90s with his underwear ads to the extent that the underwear became known as "Calvin's". And gay men wanted to be seen in Calvin's. The American public was sold the concept that if you wore Calvin's, you too might be seen as sexy if even for that brief moment—undressing at the gym.
Watching the Jared Gold show, one realizes that this has absolutely no impact on reality. It is theatre. We will not be wearing cossacks this Fall. Of the many shows seen, it can reported that the public will not be wearing most of what was modeled. For men, at least. We sought counsel from fashion guru and former frequent night clubber, Richard Velasco, who suggested that it was marketing, a kind of brand recoginition for the designers themselves that create the need for fashion shows. "They are not selling clothes, but their name."
And it must be true. I had never heard of Jared Gold. Now I know, and I like him.

Leonard Cohen

By now it should be evident that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame doesn’t always have a lot to do with rock and roll. Playing loose with the definition, the RRHF has inducted such non rock and roll legends as Miles Davis, Nat King Cole and trumpeter, Herb Alpert. This year is no different. The inductees this year are: John Mellencamp, Madonna, The Ventures, Dave Clark Five and, poet/songwriter Leonard Cohen.
Of the five, two have shaped and influenced my musical tastes. Madonna, for better or worse has been an influence on culture and music, whether we like her or not. She has managed to survive, invent and reinvent herself without seeming self-consciousness. She has a knack for picking the right producers at the right time, and her music certainly has evolved. Without a glorious vocal range, she has managed write some of the music’s best-hooked songs. If anything, she knows melody. Her induction is long overdue, given that last year, Patti Smith of all people was inducted before Madonna. We love Patti Smith, but must concede that Madonna has had a far greater effect on culture, and music for that matter.
We must now speak of Mr. Cohen. In my personal Hall of Fame, there are few like Leonard Cohen. Two summers ago, a good friend was moving from his modest home in Los Angeles to the swank Country Club area. He had lived in this house for a good six years. Leonard Cohen was his next-door neighbor.
They had become friendly, chatted off and on, and I was usually disappointed when I asked him if Leonard had said anything profound. At one of my friends birthday pool parties Leonard unexpected showed up, meticulously dressed in black with a black fedora hat—a stark contrast to the scantily clad boys of summer.
On the last day of my friend being his neighbor, I watched Leonard and his girlfriend wash their car. An ordinary summer day, an extraordinary man doing something so casual, I was reminded that poetry, song, often come from the dark places, far from light and the shine of a newly cleansed auto.
I came very early to Cohen. I had read his novels, his books of poems and lyrics. I had bumped into him once in New York City on Seventh Avenue and had been many times to his concerts. He was romantic, cynical and love was and is always a haunting experience.

“Many men have loved the bells
you fastened to the rein,
and everyone who wanted you
they found what they will always want again.
Your beauty lost to you yourself
just as it was lost to them.
Oh take this longing from my tongue,
whatever useless things these hands have done.
Let me see your beauty broken down
like you would do for one you love.”

In interviews, Cohen would organize thought and language that resembled lyrics, in way that I wished people really spoke: lyrical, poetic, deep and alluding. The same way one wishes that life were more like a musical. His voice, sounding like a broken anvil was legendary. A slow baritone without reverb, he speaks most of his lyrics, leaving the challenge to  better singers, the k.d.lang’s to finish his music. At 73, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cohen continues to record, to write poems and on weekends, wash his car.

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Those Funny Europeans

Fiat 500 has picked up the LeDorga 2008 Gay Car of the Year award.

It is the first time the gay community voted for a non-convertible and stayed ahead of cars like the Alfa Romeo 8c Competizione, Audi R8, Aston Martin DBS and new BMW 1 Series coupe. For the very first time in the history of the election of the Gay Car of the Year, the present winner is not a convertible! The FIAT 500 has won the election hands down, outdistancing distinctly more prestigious contenders such as Aston Martin or Alfa Romeo. CREDIT: Autoreader.net

The whole top 10 is:
1 Fiat 500
2 Alfa 8C
3 Volvo C30
4 Aston Martin DBS
5 Aston Martin V8 Vantage
6 Audi R8
7 Maserati Granturismo
8 Rolls Royce Drophead coupe
9 Audi A5
10 Renault Twingo

This Just In...

VH1 has announced plans to center a new show around queer-loving comedian Margaret Cho.  This from The Hollywood Reporter:

"The Cho Show" (seven episodes) chronicles comedian Cho's "anything goes" lifestyle as well as her interactions with her friends and parents. It's executive produced by Rico Martinez and Cho for Crossroads Television.

Fun. Expect gay chat, Korean heritage jokes, and mother impressions galore. And if none of those deliver the ratings, expect Margaret to either eat a ton so that she can cross-promote on "Celebrity Fit Club"; take up heroin so that she can get on "Celebrity Rehab"; lessen her fame so that she can qualify for "The Surreal Life"; schtup Greg, Bobby, or Jan so that she can guest star on "My Fair Brady"; or have an affair with Scott Baio so that the next season of his eponymous show will become "Scott Baio is 47 and a Dirty Cheater."

Patrick Swayze Ill

Patrick Swayze is undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer but does not have just weeks to live, the actor's reps and doctor said Wednesday.

"Patrick has a very limited amount of disease and he appears to be responding well to treatment so far," Dr. George Fisher, Swayze's personal physician, said in a statement. "All of the reports stating the timeframe of his prognosis and his physical side effects are absolutely untrue."

Fisher's remarks were in rebuttal to the National Enquirer, which broke the news of Swayze's illness on its website and said the Dirty Dancing star had recently dropped 20 pounds and been given only five weeks to live.

"Patrick is continuing his normal schedule during this time," the actor's reps said, "which includes working on upcoming projects."

Speaking to E! News, Swayze's mother, dancer and choreographer Patsy Swayze, echoed the optimism of the star's doctor.

"I don't really want to talk about it, but I know he's sick," Patsy Swayze said. "But he has great doctors and a great prognosis, and that's all I can say."

According to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, pancreatic cancer is the deadliest of the leading cancers. Fewer than 5 percent of patients live more than five years after diagnosis.

Swayze, 55, was recently cast as a gay cheerleading instructor in Fired Up, a big-screen comedy that began shooting last month.

Swayze is best known for his role in the 1987 film "Dirty Dancing" and was seen in delightful drag in the 1995 flick, "To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar".

We wish you good health, Mr. Swayze.

If You Just Wait Long Enough....

By Leon Neyfakh/New York Observer

A writer whose books explore the sweetness of mutilation, the beauty of violence and the eroticism of school shootings has found an unlikely home at the corporate-owned publishing powerhouse HarperCollins. Until now, Dennis Cooper, nothing if not a cult icon, has only ever published with independent presses; last week, he left his longtime publisher, Grove/Atlantic, and signed a three-book contract with Harper Perennial, an imprint at HarperCollins that specializes in paperback originals and literary reprints.

Mr. Cooper is a guy who couldn’t get interviews with Marilyn Manson and Trent Reznor when he worked at Spin because they both thought the things he wrote about were too weird. Why is a major conglomerate willing to come anywhere near him, let alone put him under contract for a book of short stories, an essay collection and a novel that he has not even begun writing?

Mr. Cooper’s agent, Ira Silverberg of Sterling Lord, is optimistic about the deal, if not a little puzzled by the fact that it happened.

“I’m very, very protective of Dennis, and the whole idea of sending him to this big house was a little bit scary,” he said on Monday. And yet, the big house wanted to publish him, while Grove/Atlantic—once home to the Beats, the French avant-garde, as well as radically experimental New York writers like Kathy Acker and Robert Coover—did not.

As of last year, Grove/Atlantic had published seven of Mr. Cooper’s novels and one collection of his poetry. The first of those novels came out in 1990, while Grove was under the stewardship of publisher Aaron Asher. At that time, Mr. Cooper was already a star in the New York art world and a favorite on college campuses, and Mr. Asher published him with great enthusiasm.

But late last year, when Mr. Silverberg went to Grove’s current publisher, Morgan Entrekin—who bought the company in 1991—with a book of short stories called Ugly Man that Mr. Cooper was ready to publish, Mr. Entrekin said he wasn’t interested unless the collection came bundled with a proposal for a novel. Mr. Cooper didn’t want to do that—he hadn’t yet figured out what his next novel would be about—so he walked away.

Leaving his longtime publisher was something Mr. Cooper had been thinking about for a while anyway, and he has written frequently about his turbulent breakup with Grove on his blog.

“The thing is that the writing has been on the wall with Grove Press for a while now, so although I’m very sad about getting the heave-ho, it’s not a shock,” Mr. Cooper wrote in January. “The head of Grove Press does not like my work much at all. He only really kept publishing me because my work is connected to Grove’s history, and he wanted to maintain that image of the press.”

(Mr. Entrekin could not be reached for comment because he was traveling.)

With his bags all packed, Mr. Cooper just needed somewhere to take them. As luck would have it, one of the people reading his blog was Tony O’Neill, a novelist who had just placed a book at Harper Perennial and was working with a young editor there named Michael Signorelli, whom he liked and recommended. Mr. Cooper mentioned Mr. Signorelli to Mr. Silverberg, who was skeptical at first. “I was kind of like, you’re kidding—Dennis at Harper!?” he said. But when he learned that Harper Perennial publisher Carrie Kania had been a devout reader of Mr. Cooper in college, and that Mr. Signorelli was genuinely interested in working with him, Mr. Silverberg ditched his reservations.

After working as Ms. Kania’s assistant, Mr. Signorelli, just 24 years old, was made an assistant editor two months ago. He is “shocked” and “very excited,” he said, to be editing Mr. Cooper, who, at 55, has already served a full term as an icon of outsider literature. Mr. Silverberg is interpreting Mr. Signorelli’s enthusiasm for Mr. Cooper’s work as a sign that a new generation of college-age Cooper fans might be ripe for recruitment.

The fact that Harper Perennial is a major rather than an independent shop does not bother Mr. Silverberg, who has been a champion of small-press publishing ever since 1985, when he took his first job in the book business as—wait for it—a publicist at the Grove Press. As it happened, Mr. Silverberg said, it was he who brought Mr. Cooper over to Grove in the first place.

“[Harper Perennial is] doing what a lot of us used to think the smaller and independent presses were meant to do, but they’re doing it with a lot more muscle,” Mr. Silverberg said. “It’s kind of the new version of this old-school hipster publishing, happening within a major conglomerate.”

Mr. Cooper doesn’t have any qualms about leaving an indie for a major, either.

“If Sonic Youth did it, I figure I could do it!” he said, referring to when the avant-garde rock band signed to David Geffen’s record company in 1990. “They used their power effectively.”

The Gay Season of Idol

This very funny chart from 236.com uses Ryan Seacrest's head as a barometer of this American Idol's male contenders. They omitted former go-go boy David Hernandez, because, well, he is.

"¡Gaytino!"

Dan Guerrero will present "¡Gaytino!", his one-man show examining his experiences as a gay Latino, for free at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall. The show provides a nostalgic and sometimes comedic view of Guerrero's life and includes song-and-dance sequences. "¡Gaytino!" was first performed by Guerrero in 2006 as a Los Angeles Center Theater Group presentation.
7 p.m. on Thursday, March 6

A Unique Voice