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Video Feed: The Cure for Gay Wedding-Related Depression

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May 19, 2013 Gay Celebrities, Gay Culture, Gay Dating, Gay Marriage, Gay Movies, Gay Television, Gay Videos

SNL went all gay on our a**es last night, and we just had to share. Thanks to The Advocate for the write-up.

Saturday Night Live‘s latest episode, hosted by Argo director Ben Affleck, went full-throttle gay on the May 18 episode, with three LGBT-related skits.

With castmembers Bill Hader and Seth Meyers leaving the show, Hader’s club-kid Stefon married Meyer’s “Weekend Update” host. But first Meyers had to chase Stefon through the streets of New York and prevent him from marrying Anderson Cooper. There was also a skit poking fun at “conversion therapy” camps, and a fake ad for a new breed of Xanax, specially-formulated to treat the sadness straight people feel when attending fabulous gay weddings. Watch the latter below.


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News Guyd: In Shadow of the Stonewall Inn, a Gay Man Is Killed

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May 19, 2013 Gay News, Gay Organization, Gay Politics

New York City Anti-Violence Project writes:

In response to the horrific homicide of Mark Carson on Friday, May 17th, and the recent spate of other public anti-LGBTQ hate violence, the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) will join the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, Bronx LGBTQ Center, GLAAD, the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, other community partners, and New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn on Monday, May 20th at the LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, Manhattan, at 5:30 p.m. to march to West 8th Street and 6th Avenue. A rally and a speak out will immediately follow the march, where community members, elected officials, LGBTQ community leaders and allies will denounce hate violence, call for community safety and mourn the death of Mark Carson.

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Story courtesy of The New York Times and Marc Santora and Joseph Goldstein

Mark Carson did not hide that he was gay, and when he went out on the town he would often head to Greenwich Village, where much of the struggle for gay liberation unfolded, years before he was born. Yet late Friday night, just blocks from the Stonewall Inn, among the most important landmarks of that struggle, he was confronted with a man screaming antigay slurs, who then stalked him before pulling out a silver revolver and fatally shooting him, the police said.

On Sunday, the suspect, identified as Elliot Morales, 33, was charged with murder, an act qualified as a hate crime. He was also charged with criminal possession of a weapon and was ordered to be held without bail.

At a news conference on Saturday, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly described a chaotic scene that involved a man seemingly out looking for trouble when he crossed paths with Mr. Carson and ended up shooting him in the face. The violence was quickly followed by a police chase and an arrest on the corner of West Third and Macdougal Streets as scores of bar hoppers looked on in shock.

“This clearly looks to be a hate crime,” Mr. Kelly said, noting that there had been a rise in bias-related crimes in New York City this year — 22 compared with 13 during the same period last year. In just the past three weeks, there have been five attacks directed at gay men, including a vicious assault on a gay couple outside Madison Square Garden on May 5.

Timothy Lunceford, 56, who has lived in the West Village for 35 years, said he believed the killing was a brazen display of a kind of intolerance he had not known in New York for decades. “It’s outrageous,” he said. “They say we’ve worked through homophobia, but it’s not gone away. It’s just not usually as out there in the open like it was this morning.”

Mr. Carson, who was 32, had recently moved to Brooklyn from Harlem after scrimping and saving money from his job at a yogurt shop in Midtown, according to Kay Allen, a friend for more than a decade.

“He was a proud gay man,” Ms. Allen said. “A fabulous gay man.” She noted that he loved going to the Village.

“His spirit was too big for this city,” she said. “He didn’t have a negative bone in his body.”

Elected officials and other civic leaders were quick to condemn the killing.

“There was a time in New York City when two people of the same gender could not walk down the street arm-in-arm without fear of violence and harassment,” said Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, whose district includes the Village and who hopes to become the city’s first openly gay mayor. “We refuse to go back to that time.”

According to Mr. Kelly, the gunman was in the neighborhood with two other men shortly before midnight when he urinated in front of the Annisa bar and restaurant on Barrow Street at West Fourth Street.

The man then went inside and angrily confronted the bartender with antigay slurs, the police said, pulling up his gray hooded sweatshirt, and revealing a silver revolver in a shoulder holster. He threatened the bartender that if he called the police, he would be killed, the police said.

The man and two companions then headed south on the Avenue of the Americas and ran into Mr. Carson and another man at West Eighth Street, the police said. A confrontation ensued.

“There were no words that would aggravate the situation spoken by the victims here,” Mr. Kelly said. According to the police, the gunman once again used antigay slurs, and at one point asked, “What are you, a gay wrestler?”

Raquan Johnson, 22, was in a pizza shop on the Avenue of the Americas and watched as the argument escalated.

He said that Mr. Carson’s friend shouted back at the gunman: “Oh yeah? Well, what do you look like?”

After a few minutes, Mr. Carson and his friend continued on their way, assuming the exchange was over. The two men walked along West Eighth Street, but the gunman apparently did not want to let the matter drop. One of the gunman’s companions tried to talk him out of following Mr. Carson, according to the police. That companion left, the police said.

The gunman caught up with Mr. Carson outside of a building at 60 West Eighth Street, and began shouting at him. “Do you want to die here?” he asked Mr. Carson, according to Mr. Kelly, before pulling out the revolver and shooting Mr. Carson once in the cheek.

“I didn’t think nothing of it, it was just an argument,” Mr. Johnson said. “Then a minute later I hear boom! I ran to the corner and I see him lying there dead.”

Mr. Carson was taken to Beth Israel Medical Center and pronounced dead on arrival.

After shooting Mr. Carson, the gunman fled, trying to disappear in the crowds that filled the streets. A police cruiser on a nearby corner took off in pursuit and a call went out over the police radio describing the gunman.

Police Officer Henry Huot, who was on foot patrol, chased Mr. Morales and arrested him. Mr. Morales was carrying a silver Taurus .38-caliber, six-shot revolver that was used in the killing, the police said.

Gary Rookard, 54, a shop clerk on West Third Street near Macdougal, said the streets were flooded with uniformed officers.

“It was pretty hairy,” he said. “The cops were all bunched up and they were running, and there were a lot of people looking. There was a lot of confusion.”

Mr. Rookard said that despite the neighborhood’s hefty real estate prices and fancy boutiques, a rough element still descends on the weekends.

“We get a lot of fistfights, we get brawls in the street,” he said. “But hardly ever shootings.”

Mr. Morales, whose last known address was on Avenue D in the East Village, served more than 10 years in prison for robbery, according to state correction records.

He was carrying a fake ID at the time of his arrest and for hours refused to answer any questions. He was finally identified through facial recognition technology, the police said.

On Avenue D on Saturday night, Edith Gutierrez, Mr. Morales’s sister, said she had not seen him for months but she thought he had “accepted his time and moved on.”

Ms. Gutierrez said she found it difficult to believe that her brother would kill anyone. “He’s a good kid,” she said, adding: “We’re not prejudiced.”

A few hours earlier, relatives and friends of Mr. Carson gathered at his mother’s Harlem apartment, saying they wished to mourn in private.

At an improvised sidewalk memorial at the scene of the shooting, Takis Kouvatseas, 47, lit two white candles behind a bouquet of lilacs. “Somebody took his life because he’s himself,” he said.

For more on this story, visit The New York Times.


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Diva Guyd: The Jinkx Monsoon Interview

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May 18, 2013 Featured Interviews, Gay Celebrities, Gay Culture, Gay Fashion, Gay Movies, Gay Pop Culture, Gay Television, Gay Underwear

RuPaul’s Drag Race season five winner Jinkx Monsoon marches to the beat of her own drum—a stride that’s led her all the way to seizing the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar. With her endearing campy style and quiet determination, the Portland born Seattle native quickly became a fan favorite. We’ve been in flood preparation mode for weeks, and Monsoon season is finally upon us.

Early in the season it seemed Jinkx’s offbeat take on old-school Hollywood glamour might be too far left of center to generate mass appeal—or anything less than a shady look of disdain from Michelle Visage. But once she found her stride on the runway, Jinkx propelled through the competition on the strength of her well-honed performance skills, charming personality, and killer comedic timing.

We talked to the recent winner about her experience on the show, how life has changed since taking the crown, and—of course—her favorite pairs of underwear in and out of drag.

Check out our exclusive interview below, and let us know how you’re faring through Monsoon season!

The Underwear Expert: How has life changed for you since winning the show?

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Jinkx Monsoon: I usually say, ‘How hasn’t it changed?’ Because literally every aspect of my life is different now. I’ve learned so much about myself as a person and as a performer. I just feel like a more fully realized drag queen and a more fully realized human being. It’s allowed me to really reflect on my life and be very thankful for the things that helped me get to where I am, and I just love every moment of it.

UX: What was it like watching the show air for the first time? Were you surprised by anything you saw?

Jinkx: There’s so much I don’t get to see until it airs, like the confessionals of the other queens and things I wasn’t present for. So it was fun to watch my fellow competitors’ experience as well as relive my own. But it’s a hard thing to wrap your mind around, watching yourself on TV can be a little surreal at moments.

UX: Was there anything you would have done differently?

Jinkx: It’s like a catch-22, because I feel like I learned so much about drag and the art form, and I feel like I’m performing at a whole new level now. I wish I could have gone into the competition with the skills and talents that I’ve acquired now, but I never would have acquired these skills had I not gone through the competition.

So it’s kind of like, you can’t have it both ways, you know? [Laughs] But yeah, I wish I had taken a few more sewing lessons, and maybe a couple more wig styling classes before doing the show. But otherwise I wouldn’t change a moment of it, because I just really feel so fortunate for my experience on Drag Race.

UX: How did it feel to find out you were the fan favorite?

Jinkx: That was probably the biggest surprise. I just thought I would be too much of an acquired taste for people, just a little bit too kooky for your average Drag Race viewer. But I was excited to see that the audience liked it—that they got where I was coming from, and that there are a lot of people out there who feel similarly about life, love and drag!

UX: You’ve cited Meryl Streep, Lucille Ball and your mother as drag inspirations. What do they all have in common that you take away from?

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Jinkx: I think they all have class and integrity. They’re true ladies, but they don’t take themselves so seriously that they can’t be a clown—that they can’t goof around and show the goofy, ugly parts of themselves as well. If you look at Meryl Streep’s body of work, she’s not only been a glamour icon and a true diva, but she’s also been a huge clown at times and done some of the kookiest, funniest things. And that goes without saying for Lucille Ball, and my mom is a lot like that too. She’s a very sweet, well put-together woman, but she’s not afraid to commit to the joke. [Laughs]

UX: Your mantra on the show ‘Water off a duck’s back,’ helped you stay true to yourself through a lot of trying times. Is there a message there you hope to pass along using this new platform?

Jinkx: One thing I learned in art school, when you present art to someone or you present a scene to your theatre class, you’re asking them to critique the work that you put on stage. Sometimes you can take it really personally, and sometimes people’s critiques can hit you in the heart. But they’re not talking about you at all, they’re talking about the work that they watched.

So on the runway, I constantly needed to remind myself to take the critiques in and take the notes and be able to learn and to grow from them, but not take them personally. Listen to them, but don’t let the negative aspect of it weigh you down—let it be water off a duck’s back. I think that’s a philosophy we can all take into our lives and into our work. You have to be able to receive critiques to grow and to become better, but you don’t have to take it personally to the point where you’re beating yourself up about it everyday. I think we all face those kinds of situations in day-to-day life.

UX: Okay, so we’re going to move on to some underwear questions.

Jinkx: Wonderful! I’m sick of Drag Race, let’s talk about underwear!

UX: Right on! Firstly, we’re big fans of the Andrew Christian pit crew…

Jinkx: Yes, me too!

UX: That Whatcha Packin’ mini-challenge was pretty much beyond!—did you have a favorite crewman?

Jinkx: Well, Shawn Morales and I, he’s the one with the tattoos and the mustache?

UX: Oh yes, we know Shawn!

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Jinkx: He’s actually such a sweet guy and has such a good sense of humor. Also, he is of the au naturale persuasion—he doesn’t wear deodorant. So at times when I was feeling really homesick for Seattle, I would just stand next to him and take it in and feel like I was at home for a moment, because he has that kind of Seattle-grunge-funk about him. He was my favorite just for the fact of sense memory purposes! [Laughs]

UX: What kind of underwear do you wear in drag, men’s or women’s?

Jinkx: When I am in drag, I wear men’s underwear pulled up. What I do is I wear soft-top cotton briefs, I tuck my junk in between my legs and then I pull my briefs up past my bellybutton and turn them into a thong, and that keeps all my stuff in place for the evening. I think they’re just basic cotton underwear from H&M, and that’s what I use to tuck with. Not every drag queen does it that way, but that’s the way that’s worked for me my whole life.

UX: Are there certain types of underwear that work better for that, something that’s soft and cotton?

Jinkx: Yeah, I like whatever is the softest. Because when you’re in drag for a long time, you can kind of cause a little bit of friction down there. Sometimes I use a dance belt, but dance belts can be very… [woof]… they can just be very… chaffy. [Laughs] I don’t know how else to put it more eloquently!

UX: Do you have a lucky pair of underwear that you wear while performing?

Jinkx: No, I don’t have any one for performing, but I do have a lucky pair of underwear for when I’m not performing.. you know, when I’m offstage, Mama!

UX: So, what are your top three favorite pairs of underwear out of drag?

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Jinkx: Out of drag, my three favorite pairs of underwear are: I have a purple pair of Diesel underwear, I have a turquoise pair of Andrew Christian underwear, and I have one pair of assless 2xist—you know the underwear-jockstrap assless style, that’s for days at the beach! [Laughs]

Daniel Webster is another one of my favorite underwear designers, and he’s local to Seattle. He sells a lot of underwear though Under U 4men [the underwear store]. He does these amazing underwear designs that are not only really comfortable, but really unique. Like I have a pair of striped bubble-gum pink underwear—and what he does as his signature, the crotch piece has its own special design that you can only see on the inside.

UX: What’s the sexiest cut of underwear on a guy in your opinion?

Jinkx: I really like a guy in boxer briefs, because it kind of takes me back to high school [Laughs]. Even though I think it’s such a stupid thing, there’s something that still really turns me on about a guy with his jeans sagging and his boxers coming up over the top. In high school was when I first started noticing boys, and that’s when the skater-punk thing was in vogue so everyone had their boxers on display. I remember trying to stop myself from noticing that in high school so that I didn’t look like too much of a dick-pig! [Laughs]

UX: Right, like that scene in Clueless where all the guys are walking away with their boxers hanging out.

Jinkx: Yeah, totally!

UX: Now that you’ve won 100k, any plans to treat yourself to some luxury designer underwear?

Jinkx: Oh yeah. Actually today is my first day in Seattle, I came home yesterday and I get to spend the week here with very few obligations so it’s my first chance to go shopping with some of the money I’ve made from this tour I’ve been doing. So I’m very excited because I’m going to go update my boy wardrobe and upgrade my tech supplies [Laughs]. I want to get more of those David Beckham underwear, they’re actually pretty good and pretty comfortable.

UX: What can you tell us about The Vaudevillians, the show you’re performing at the Laurie Beechman theatre in NYC this summer?

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Jinkx: It’s a very unique show, it’s something that me and my music partner [Richard Andriessen] created our junior year of college together in theatre school at Cornish College of the Arts. It started as a joke, like what if these two really, really old people were singing pop songs as if they were songs back in the day?

So we invented the characters ‘the vaudevillians,’ they’re a married couple from the 1920s, and they were frozen alive in a freak cocaine-induced avalanche accident. They’ve been frozen alive for the last century, and thanks to global warming they just thawed out and they return to the stage to perform their original music.

The premise is that all these pop stars have ripped off our music but we’re playing for you the original versions. We do a vaudeville version of ‘Paper Planes’ by MIA, and ‘Toxic’ by Britney Spears, ‘Bad Romance’ by Lady Gaga, we do some Madonna, some Cher. We go all over the place with the covers, but they all sound like they were written in the 1920s for the vaudeville stage. It’s a lot of fun, and it also has a lot of comedic scenes and character-work, so it’s a very unique show.

UX: Sounds like a blast! What’s next for you, any other projects on the horizon that you can discuss?

Jinkx: The same music partner and I are working on some original music, so that this year I can produce an album. A lot of the Drag Race girls produce music and they go for dance tracks, but I’ve never been too hip to the discotheque. I’m actually going to produce an album that’s more musical standards, show tunes and torch songs. So, it’s going to be a little bit more lyrical than you’re used to from drag performers.

I’m also going to be playing Velma Von Tussle in the 5th Avenue Theatre production of Hairspray this summer  [in Seattle]. I will be in a show that I’ve worked on for a few years with some Seattle performers called Freedom Fantasia at the Triple Door. Then I go on a European tour in the fall, and it’s my first time ever visiting the countries over the pond. So those are the big things, and of course the Absolut Tour that I’ll be headlining with fellow performer from Drag Race season 5.

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- See more at: http://www.underwearexpert.com/2013/05/drag-superstar-jinkx-monsoon-interview/#sthash.ghLtk6PG.dpuf


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News Guyd: Gay man shot dead in Village after gunman shouted homophobic slurs: authorities

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May 18, 2013 Gay News, Gay Organization, Gay Politics

Courtesy of The New York Post

A gay man was gunned down in Greenwich Village early today by an armed bigot who hurled homophobic slurs at him — and claimed to be the Newtown, Conn. killer before the murder, police said today.

The 32-year-old Brooklyn victim, whose name has not been released, was walking with a pal on Sixth Avenue near West Eighth Street about midnight when they were approached by three Hispanic males, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

One man snarled homophobic slurs at the men and asked them if they were “gay wrestlers,” Kelly said.

The men continued moving and made a right onto West Eighth Street.

One of the Hispanic men left and the other two continued to follow the victim and another man.

Both the victim and another man with him were wearing tank tops, cutoff shorts and boots.

“Do you want to die here?” the shooter asked the victim.

He pulled out a .38-caliber revolver and shot him once in the cheek.

“It was a quickie. He shot him and he went straight to the ground,” said a bouncer at a nearby club. “Half his body was lying on the sidewalk and half was on the street.”

The man died shortly after at Beth Israel Hospital.

“This is clearly a hate crime,” Kelly told reporters.

There have been 22 bias attacks in the city so far this year, up from 13 at this point last year, he added.

After wounding the victim, the shooter ran east and then downtown. Police nabbed him shortly after on MacDougal and West Third streets.

When he saw the cop car, he tossed his revolver to the ground and surrendered.

He is currently being questioned at the Sixth Precinct but has not been conclusively identified because he has a phony ID on him, cops said.

The shooter appeared crazed and confessed to the shooting after he was nabbed, a police source said.

Twenty minutes before the slaying, the suspect had gotten into confrontation after urinating on the wall of a bar called Annisa, on Barrow and West Fourth streets.

When a bartender confronted him, the brute told him that if he called police, he would shoot him.

“Don’t you know I’m wanted? Do you know about the shooting in Sandy Hook?” he bizarrely told the bartender, according to Kelly. “I’m a wanted man.”

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn — who is running to be the New York’s first openly gay mayor — said she was horrified by the attack.

“There was a time in New York City when two people of the same gender could not walk the street arm-in-arm without fear of violence and harassment,” she said. “We refuse to go back to that time.”

Police are asking anyone with information about the murder to call the Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS.

Additional reporting by Natasha Velez and Antonio Antenucci


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Whose Underwear Do You Want to Slip Into? Weekend Beef-Cap

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May 18, 2013 Gay Fashion, Gay Fitness, Gay Model, Gay Porn, Gay Underwear

It’s rainy here in New York, so what better way to spend the day then by re-checking our five hotties and picking a winner. Peruse, pick, peruse some more, then tell us who you want. The winner shows off more of his goods on Monday. Yes, it’s raining men!

Monday Beef: Ben Foden

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Tuesday Beef: Huge Viera

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Wednesday Beef: Jeffrey Hawkins

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Thursday Beef: Max Ryder

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Friday Beef: Steven Dehler

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The Underwear Expert is the new men’s underwear resource covering 200+ men’s underwear brands including Calvin Klein Underwear, 2(x)ist and more. Be sure to like us on Facebook!


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