The Modern Romantic

Taschen's The Big Penis Book had its release party in Los Angeles last night. Over at Popnography, I size it up in a brief (get it?) article.

Labels: books, gay, los angeles

I'm so copping out on new material here. I've been really busy the past few weeks-- shooting a couple of videos for BCBG, writing articles, doing some work on the comic book and finishing up a screenplay, so it's been a YouTube palooza here. Now I'm cheating another way-- by answering your emails via blog:

Greg writes:
Just saw that you are a BSG fan. So glad to hear it! I have been coming to you site off and on for about 5 months now and have always found it to be a great place to get a fresh look on things or reaffirm what I was thinking already. Now to also see that you are a fan of the re-imaged Battlestar Galactica makes me just giddy. Have you watched it from the beginning or did you recently start watching it? I also have to agree with you on whining Lee Adama versus HOTT Sam Anders; in my mind there is no competition. Are you a fan of any other kind of sci-fi?

Hey Greg! I joined the BSG phenom about halfway through Season One, which meant a lot of catching up on the miniseries. Like most people, I thought a show about robots named "Battlestar Galactica" sounded stupid and like everyone, I was hooked after an hour. There are no BSG-haters, just people who haven't seen the show yet. That said, the final season is driving me nuts. They've taken serialization as far as you can go and I feel less like I'm watching a one-hour TV show and more a giant movie that's been cut into hour long segments. That said, I'm glad to see that Lee's found a way to make a career out of his whining. And Anders-- still waiting for the badass Cylon side to come out. Hopefully, the arrival of Leoben on Starbuck's cruise ship from hell will light a fire in him.

As far as other sci-fi goes, yeah- I'm a big sci-fi dork. The screenplay I'm working on now is definitely sci-fi, though more in the Twilight Zone vein than anything else. That's one of my favorites to be honest and I've always loved the combination of noir and sci-fi. Heinlen's Stranger in a Strange Land is an important book to me and for some reason I seem to have watched both of Majel Rodenberry's shows, Final Conflict: Earth, who'se plotline about the Latino-looking aliens inviting men and women to become half-breeds in their sex pods, felt like the futuristic equivelent of Imitation of Life and that other show with Hercules on it. When I had the flu recently, I sat down and started to watch Firefly, but I thought it was self-important crap and was relieved to find out Joss Whedon wouldn't be directing an episode of BSG this season after all.

Labels: books, personal, tv

I asked Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The Times Book Review and Week in Review, who is writing a biography on William F. Buckley:

"Who in your -- or perhaps Buckley's estimation should you know it -- carries on his legacy of intellectual conservatism? If you had to nominate someone to ascend to the lectern of Buckley, who would it be?"

Read his answer here.

Labels: books, new media, new york, personal, politics

A dazzling blend of gritty noir and superhero zip, Ninja #, the new independent comic by Edmund Alexander Sims and Jason Adam is worth checking out if you want to remember just how much fun reading a comic can be. Some of the best parts of comics are the little throw away moments when a superhero suddenly finds himself interacting with your average everyday Joe. There's a moment like this in the first issue of Ninja # (by the way, it's pronounced "Ninja Number". I thought it was "ninja pound" at first). The eponymous hero, who looks like a kimono-clad pissed off version of the 'Have a Nice Day' smiley face, is in the middle of a fight with a teleporting bank robber whose head is best described by his name-- Tunnel Diode. The two rampage through a suburban home and wind up in the room of a teenage kid playing a video game (hilariously, it's Pac-Man). The normal comics bit of the kid recognizing his hero and lending in his hand to help happens, but then the villain blasts the kid away, turning a familiar comics moment on its head.

Sims and Adam play on our expectations of what we expect to happen in these kinds of comics, but it's not cynical or deconstructive. From the first issue, it seems these guys are genuinely in love with the goofiness and absurdity of the superhero comic and are interested in wringing it for all its worth. The result is reminiscent of Sin City, but without the self-importance. You can almost see these guys sitting around saying, "Wouldn't it be great if..." and then jamming each new idea into the story. While the first few pages suffer under the weight of too much exposition, the banter between Ninja # and crime bosses and the police is clever enough to sustain you until you get to the rumble between Ninja # and Tunnel Diode, which has all the thrill and scope of a summer blockbuster. Here's a comic with enough danger and menace to make even the most sophisticated and jaded comic reader feel like a kid again.

Get Ninja # at www.ninjanumber.com

*Full Disclosure: Ninja # is drawn by my pal Jason Adam and that's how I nabbed an advance copy. I told him I would only review it if I could be totally honest.

Labels: books

So, one of the promises I made to myself when restarting blogging was to be more personal. Everyone says 28 is some magic year of major life transition and so far, for me, it has been. This has mainly occurred through recognizing bad habits I have developed over the years. By far, one of the biggest, that I'm finally owning up to is my love of "bad boys".

A friend of mine handed me Addickted: 12 Steps to Kicking Your Bad Boy Habit by Kristina Grish yesterday, and I haven't been able to put it down. This is sort of embarrassing in itself. I'd like to think that I'm not the sort of fellow who would read chick-lit self-help. I mean, this is from the author of something called Boy Vey. But she's speaking my language. I mean, how many times have I told myself, "I'm the only person who understands this guy!", caught up in the complexity and mystery of their tortured soul.

There's a great bit that made a light bulb go off in my head, that once read, made everything else make sense: "For bad boys romance is simply a means to having a good time". The doting affection, the wild nights, the impromptu whirlwind trips are just an ends to themselves and aren't actually leading to any kind of deeper love at all. This makes total sense to me, or at least it rings as true.

The first step to liking nice boys is recognizing that you really do have a thing for the bad boys. In no particular order, let's do a quick jog down memory lane of Boys of Japhy's past (cue wavy transition here):

• Ben told me he really wanted to be with me, though he said it outside of his bedroom where the other boy he was sleeping with was waiting for him to snuggle with him. He eventually wound up on Judge Judy.
• Eric had a problem with coke and when I left him at a bar because he was doing it, he wound up picking up a boy who looked just like me and was one foot in the taxi when I strolled by. He asked me to come along and we sat awkwardly on this guy's couch for an hour before I left. We never spoke of it again. Later, he would call me "trash".
• Donald wanted to burn down everyone in our hometown. He threw a text book at the wall during our gay youth meeting one day and never came back.
• Nick was a Republican corporate exec. He worked late hours and would make me wait for him outside his building in the cold. "Just one more hour", he'd say. When he finally came down, we went home and he passed out. This happened four or five times.
• Met this hot model at a club one night. We went uptown to Harlem where he left me in the subway station while he went to pick up what I later learned was opium. He did it in a Kinko's bathroom and then told me he knew a place where we could go. Turns some guy told him if he brought another guy to his apartment, they could have a threesome. When I finally left, he told me "You're just like all the other guys."

Now, the thing is, I'm not really bitter about any of these guys. They were sexy and exciting and fun. You can hear it in my descriptions if them: Ooooh, I'm dating someone with a substance abuse problem! The problem is that in the end, this usually works out to me crying, wondering what I did wrong and collecting Arizona tea cans in my room for an art project (don't ask). So, I need to wean myself off the high that comes with dating these dudes and somehow, someway learn to see 'nice guys' as interesting, sexy people. But before that, I need to get it out of my head that it's fun to be the only person who really understands your guy, that you can somehow make him into a better person, that gifts are a sign of a deeper commitment and all that bad boy jazz.

Have you dated a bad boy? Any advice? Stories? Comment away.

Labels: books, gay, personal