Did you know that?  No?  Me neither!  I only found out because someone I knew was just on one, and it was all totally bogus!

Last night I was watching some random-ass, ghetto cable channel, The Style Network.  It’s like channel 800 or something.  And they had this makeover show called Closet Cases, which is for people who have no style or, at least, have really messy closets.

So it’s this guy named Dave, and he supposedly contacted the show because of his girlfriend Cynthia, who had just moved to New York from Kentucky.  He was worried  that she wouldn’t fit into the big, bad apple, and needed a style infusion, stat!

Here are the before and after pictures of her:

before

after

The problem is, I used to work with this girl, like 2 YEARS AGO.  IN NEW YORK CITY.  And, beyond that, she was by far the most stylish person in the office.  While all the other girls walked around in jeans or dresses that looked like Daffy’s rejects, she always looked perfect.  In fact, she looked a lot like the “after” pic already.

So it was quite a shock then, to see her on this show, where she was a) supposed to have JUST come from Kentucky, and b) to have a crappy style that needed an update, when, in fact, neither could be farther from the truth.  It’s all totally fake.

And if makeover shows aren’t real, then who knows what else is?   Maybe all of reality television?  Maybe everything on TV?  I mean, is there really such a thing as the swine flu?  Was there actually an earthquake in California?  Do we truly have a black president?  My entire world is spinning out of control.  Damn you Closet Cases!!!

I never thought I’d ever say this, but I have a friend who’s got his own television show.

You may recognize him: His name is Lloyd Boston, and he’s appeared on several shows already, including “The View,” “Oprah” and the “Today” show. He’s also the official spokesman for Jones New York. Now, he’s the host of his very own series, “Closet Cases,” on Fine Living Network. New episodes of the show air at 9 p.m. Mondays. And like other cable channels, you can catch repeats throughout the week.

“Closet Cases” has its very own Facebook fan page, which you can join by going here.

Lloyd also deserves special props because he’s a Jersey native like me. He grew up in New Brunswick, N.J., the only child of Lynell Kollar, who now resides in North Brunswick.

In fact, Lynell will be featured in an upcoming episode of “Closet Cases.” Lloyd and Lynell share a very close relationship and make a point of getting together as often as possible. Mothers Day is a special holiday for them, as I discovered when I interviewed them last year at The Frog and the Peach in New Brunswick. Lloyd and Lynell have some great relationship tips for mothers and adult children on Mothers Day and throughout the year by going here.

Memo to the down-low craigslist skanks: It’s “D-I-S-C-R-E-E-T.” And please, please, please come out of the fucking closet already, because it’s fundamentally fucked up that the rest of us fags who are men enough to be out of the fucking closet have to fight for your equal human and civil rights, too. You closet cases want your cock and eat it too, but I say: Fuck. That. Shit. Thank you!

There are calls now to put restraints on craigslist, especially its “erotic services” category, in the aftermath of the arrest of a 23-year-old male medical student in Boston for the murder of a 25-year-old female masseuse he met through the online classified ad service.

But the larger threat to the public good than the “erotic services” ads on craigslist, even those “erotic services” ads that are just a cover for prostitution, it seems to me, are the free hookup ads on craigslist, which are a public health and safety nightmare.

Oh, sure, craigslist has its disclaimers and warnings (like the alcohol pushers who advise you to “drink responsibly”), and yes, it’s rather entertaining and often titillating to peruse the hookups ads to see what people actually will post, but should people really be enabled to have recreational sex to the degree that craigslist enables them to?

True, skanks probably are going to be skanks, and if it’s not craigslist it probably will be a park or truck-stop bathroom or the like, but I think that one could make a public-health and public-safety argument for at least some restrictions on craigslist.

At the same time, I’m a firm believer in First Amendment rights and the right to associate with whomever one wishes to associate, so I don’t know how curbing the damage that craigslist is facilitating* can be squared with constitutional rights.

Constitutional rights, however, take a back seat when there is public harm, and craigslist, despite its owners’ and operators’ self-preservation-minded claims to the contrary, is facilitating a lot of public harm. 

Should craigslist be allowed to continue to profit (yes, craigslist is for-profit) at the expense of the public good?

* I refer to the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases; the enabling of sexually compulsive behavior; the emotional harm that is caused as the result of infidelity; the enabling of “bicurious” men (or men who even claim, surreally, to be completely straight even though they are seeking out sex with other men) to stay in the closet; facilitating violent crimes like robbery, assualt and battery, kidnapping and even murder; etc.

National Career Fairs, Diversity Recruitment & Career Resources for Women – Women For Hire.

Via queerty:

Totally not gay actor Kevin Spacey, with a guy who is totally not his boyfriend, finds himself drawn [to] The Big Penis Book, a coffee table tome featuring huge wangs.

If you want to see what the cover of the book looks like, you can view it on Amazon (then see what shows up in your recommendations on the mainpage while the boss is looking over your shoulder).  Here is an awesome review of the book on Amazon:

Oh dear. I am a 70 year old woman and I just happened across this big penis book in my son’s room. My son is 45 years old and still single. I think he might be gay. That said, his big penis book is now in my room under my bed. So now my 45 year old single son is probably gay and angry. Well, he should get a job anyway or at least go find some real penis and stop reading about them in books like this. Good Lord this is a big penis book. And I love a big penis. And so does my son, apparently. I give this book ten thumbs up. I can’t believe I never knew he was gay. He should get a job. Maybe as a dancer. Anyway, if you like a big penis, you will like this big penis book. Lord there are big penis’s in this book. I mean big. Oh dear.

I want to high-five whoever wrote that.  I love you, internet.

A pissant bitch, at that.

Why do I say that?  Well, you read this headline and tell me if it means anything, in English, which Grant Swank supposedly speaks:

Sarah Palin:  Muslim B. Hussein Gagged Jihad in any Speech

My favorite kind of stupid fundamentalist “Christian” dickhole is the kind who tries to speak English and fails.

I made fun of Grant Swank the other day for getting big gay bonerz for Levi Johnston, Bristol Palin’s redneck sperm donor.

It’s time to step on his poorly made brain again:

Why did B. Hussein Obama dodge the topic of extremist Muslim presence? Because he is a mask Muslim.

Not a seekrit Muslim, like they usually claim.  A “mask Muslim.”  You know what kind of mask he wears?  A Ted Nugent mask.  You know why?  Because B. Hussein Obama hates Ted Nugent.  And you know who looks like Ted Nugent?  White Jesus.  Setting aside the fact that it’s sadly obvious that the writer’s IQ is under 70, due to the fact that he refers to Obama as “B. Hussein Obama.”  The only people who have reactionary responses to Obama’s middle name are those who require inner tubes on land and play with their shame-shames in public.  Pastor Swank?  Please stop doing that.

He and Michelle sat through twenty years of pro-Islam indoctrination from Muslim cohort Jeremiah Wright.

Not even those most obsessed with jeremiah Wright ever accused him of being Muslim.  This is why Grant Swank is special.  Can you believe he lives in Maine?  Like…Poppy and Barbara Bush wouldn’t even put up with this shit.

If you can arrange the following sentence into something that makes sense in English, you get a prize:

Sermonic delivery was all pro-Allah devotees.

Seriously, I will pay you, in fun munny, if you can make those words make sense.  It’s a shame that Pastor Swank has apparently entered this country illegally, from his asshole, and refused to learn English.

Further, B. Hussein hires Muslims on his Congressional and campaign staffs.

To reach out to Muslims, who are also citizens, strangely enough.  Also funny?  The way Pastor Swank hates America.

He has befriended scores of Muslims in his own Illinois political district. In addition, the Nation of Islam headquarters is there.

Quick, Pastor Swank:  how many in a “score”?  Seriously.  And how many has he “befriended” and what is the extent?  Is there Bunco involved?  Also, you know what else is in Illinois?  Pig farms.  Guess who doesn’t pork?  Jews and Muslims.  Coincidence?  Well, you’ll just have to ask B. Hussein!

That means that B. Hussein and NOI head Louis Farrakhan are indeed tied at the hips.

In-fucking-deed!  The exact same way that being from Little Rock ties me inextricably to the Clintons.  Hillary, plz get off my hips!  I cannot make fun of Pastor Grant Swank with you on my hips!

Moreover, B.. Hussein communicates closely with his cousin in Kenya, the latter having run for that country’s presidency. While in New Hampshire campaigning, B. Hussein phoned his cousin to encourage him onto political victory.

It’s so sad, for Jesus, that people like Grant Swank call themselves “Christians,” considering the fact that this last statement can be roughly translated as “Nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger Africa Nigger Nigger Africa Nigger!”  It makes me sad that so many white people are still so frightened of black people.  Pastor Grant Swank?  Does it make you jealous when you see their big penises in the bathroom?  Does it make you feel inadequate?  Really?  WELL HAHA, BARACK IS GOING TO BE YOUR PRESIDENT AND HE’S GOING TO REMIND YOU OF YOUR LITTLE POORLY EDUCATED FUNDAMENTALIST WEENIE-WANG EVERY DAY HAW HAW!

*Ahem*

Excuse me.

It is this cousin who informed the Kenyans that if elected he would establish the dreaded sharia — the so-called justice and legal system that straps youths to poles in public squares and buries those accused of adultery, burying them up to their necks so that their heads can be bashed in.

Now Pastor Grant Swank is simply breaking the 8th commandment (totally fucking lying), and it will be funny when he goes to hell.  Haw haw!  It didn’t exist before, but God decided that Pastor Grant Swank was a special case!  That entire premise is so funny, too.  Can you imagine the stump speech, on the campaign trail?  “Elect me, for I will strap youths to poles and bury you up to your necks!”  (Then again, the Republican party still exists, so it’s not entirely implausible…)

B. Hussein feigns being “Christian.” He says he prays daily to Jesus. Note: That Jesus is the Islamic prophet Jesus and not the incarnate deity Jesus as recorded in the Bible.

Um, hate to be delving into theology, since I think “theology” is bullshit, but, um, it’s the same Jesus. What’s funny is that Pastor Pantywaist seems to be conceding that Obama prays to Jesus.  Seekrit Moose-lem Jeezus!  Here’s another one of those sentences that seems like an amateur translation into English from another language:

The Koran is a bloodletting publication directed as slaughtering all non-Muslims worldwide.

It’s like…um.  “Bloodletting publication.”  Punchline completely unnecessary.  It’s really frustrating, actually, because, usually stupid retarded wanna-be pundits at least exhibit a layman’s grasp of the English language, so you can really go to town making fun of their ideas.  But in Pastor Grant Swank’s case…well…you almost feel like you’re throwing rocks at a Down Syndrome baby.

The UCC is pro-abortion and pro-sodomy.

Hey now, I go to a UCC church sometimes!  We like to call it “dead baby buttfucking,” thank you.

I’m not as think as you drunk I am when writing question words boop boop boop:

Why then did not B. Hussein refer once to the extremist Muslim presence particularly in the US while delivering his speech at the Democrat Convention?

Right.

It is obvious.

Indeed!

If this mask Muslim gets into the White House, Jeremiah Wright has already stated to media that he will follow Hussein into the Oval Office.

This would be a good time to point out that the first words in the title of this piece were “Sarah Palin.”  Was this closet case just trying to get web traffic?  Because I know my blog traffic has gone up exponentially ever since John McCain chose the lovechild of Marge Gunderson and a feisty moose to be his running mate…

Islamics lie all the time, especially their so-called leaders in both political and religious venues.

Just the other day I asked an “Islamic” if my ass looked fat in these jeans, and you know what she said?  She said “yes.”  Oh, haha, I’m not a fat-ass, guess the “Islamic” was telling the truth.

If B. Hussein gets onto Pennsylvania Avenue, Muslims will rise up to declare discriminations at right and left.

They will also declare shenanigans.  It will be hilarious.  Leaving aside for the moment that Muslims have been routinely discriminated against in this country since 9/11, I mean Rudy 9iu1ian1 Appreciation Day.

Muslim make candy where are Mommy bad touch:

They already espouse contacting the government if discriminated against, such data written on their web sites.

Can you imagine?  In a free nation, letting the government know that you’re being discriminated against based on your religion/ethnicity?  Pastor Grant Swank, the United States does welcome loons like you, but you’re living in the wrong country if these things bother you.

Muslim webmasters state they are for democracy.

Goddammit, we’re going after Muslim internet dorks now?

B. Hussein promises America that if elected to the White House he will mesh all religions into one

And by “promise,” Grant Swank means “Obama has said nothing of the kind, of course, but these words keep coming out of my asshole!”

B. Hussein knows there are sleeper cells for Allah throughout North America.

Yes, they’re called “mosques.”  Funny story:  I was driving in an unfamiliar part of town today, and I happened to drive past a mosque.  My reaction was “Oh, so that’s where it is.”  I knew there were a couple in town, but hadn’t seen them.  It occurred to me that many people would have had a visceral frightened reaction to something like that, much like Pastor Swank obviously does.  He is so frightened of everything that is “other,” and he also obviously has painfully low self-esteem, so he has to construct these false narratives as a way to hide from his own unhappiness and fear.  Thank goodness the internets are here to stomp on his face some more!

That is why it was prudent for Sarah Palin to underline in her speech the absence of any references from B. Hussein regarding extremist Islam

Oh.   That’s interesting.

What a fucking moron.

Anyway.  World O’ Crap also parsed this piece, if you want to read their take.

In which The Gay Recluse visits a friend’s garden.

Sometimes we long for more gardening space, so that we could enjoy exploding swaths of bee balm every July.

But then we would have to drive everywhere.

And our head would be filled with dangerous little songs.

Don’t get me wrong, i think it’s terrible to make homophobic ads, but i also think it’s terrible to demand changes on something cause it offends you. Whatever happened to dealing with it. I’m in theatre and i get called gay all the time, and it offends me because I’m not, but i get on with it and don’t whine on a damn website about it. People hate you, i don’t because that’s not who I am or how I operate, but there are a ton of ignorant bastards out there who hate you for no reason. There are people who hate me, and there are people who hate my family, but somehow I manage to survive without being a whiny little bitch. Deal with the shittiness of the world and get on with your life, and do something productive.

Robby K — July 28, 2008

In which The Gay Recluse again laments the suffocation of the gay voice in American literature.

If you’re like us, when you scanned through the list of books included in New York Magazine’s recent “New York City Canon 1968-2008,” you had one reaction: wtf! where are the gays? In every other format, gays are represented in numbers that are fairly typical, if not stereotypical: film (Todd Haynes); theater (pretty much everyone — “PME” — with a special feature on Tony Kushner); art (Andy Warhol and Keith Haring); television (the Robyn Bird show); architecture (Philip Johnson); classical music/dance (Franco Zeffirelli/PME); even pop music (Suicide — ? — and Magnetic Fields); there are others, of course, scattered throughout — we have listed only the most obvious.

Yet in books, the closest we get is Susan Sontag, who while perhaps one of the more brilliant thinkers of the dark ages post-war era must also be remembered as one of the hugest closet cases ever. (So may she rot in hell — kidding!) On the “literature” side of the equation, the list is filled with the usual suspects: Norman Mailer, Bernard Malamud, Don Delillo, E. L. Doctorow, Philip Roth (Zzzzzz), Jay McInerney, Michael Chabon and other straight guys (Zzzzzz) who while possibly “gay-friendly” (in the case of Chabon) are as a rule assholes ambivalent at best about the gay story, and in any case cannot be said to have ever written in a gay voice. The most tedious of these authors ignore the question entirely, which does admittedly have the benefit of ensuring a quick burial of their works in the sands of time.

But! Where is Andrew Holleran? Where is Dancer from the Dance, the one book that more than any other describes the beautiful, urban (and devastating) decadence of the 1970s and miraculously (if unconsciously) foreshadows the greatest and most compelling tragedy of New York City in the last forty years, namely the death of 100,000+ (mostly gay men) from AIDS? Or if not Holleran, where is Edmund White? Or Michael Cunningham? Or David Leavitt? (or David Sedaris!) Or Rick Whitaker? Or Sarah Schulman? Or anyone else who has written about New York City through a gay lens (which to be included in “the canon” should at least tacitly address AIDS, in the same way any serious work of literature these days must somehow acknowledge 9/11)?

While the lack of diversity in this list (meant to represent what is arguably the gayest city in the world) begs the question of what was blinding the editors (or critic Sam Anderson, who wrote the piece), our point here is not to lambaste New York Magazine; particularly when — ironically enough — in the same issue they feature a very compelling article about Ramon Torres, a once-renowned AIDS doctor who is now basically a homeless crystal-meth addict (and HIV-positive). Rather, we lay the larger portion of the blame on the publishing industry — and of course, the cultural tendencies it reflects — for the continuing suffocation of the gay voice in American literature, just as we did last fall in response to several articles in The Times.

Perhaps we were too earnest to be taken entirely seriously when we first said it, but nothing in the intervening months (and we have read a fair number of books) has changed our fundamental opinion that we are living in an seriously wounded and diseased era in which we have barely begun to acknowledge the traumatic impact of what we (as a culture!) endured as a result of AIDS (and still do!). That this is reflected in lists of books such as the New York Magazine Canon is obvious; like so many others we have seen, it perpetuates distortions and ignorance; if you read it, we encourage you to so do with a rueful laugh and a bitter smile at the sad impulses on display.

The truth is in our hands: we, too, have a history of oppression and a corresponding literary tradition that should be included in lists of the New York City Canon! We already have our Toni Morrison, and his name is Andrew Holleran! To fight for our civil rights is one thing, but it is equally if not more important to fight for our literary voice in a culture that belongs to us as much as anyone else; our stories are here within us, we shouldn’t have to beg to have them recognized, or apologize to have them told.

–The Gay Recluse, November 2007

In which The Gay Recluse kills two birds with one stone.

Today we received a certain amount of shit for “trashing” Arthur C. Clarke as a major closet-case only milliseconds after he died. Fair enough, we trashed him a little. But our purpose in doing so — besides being an internet traffic whore, of course — was to demonstrate to more impressionable young minds that it’s possible to be a commercially successful, influential artist and a cocksucking faggot.

Coincidentally, we happened to receive the following letter:

Hey Gay Recluse: My name is Jeffrey and and I recently found your blog while surfing the web. Last year I lived on 161st and Fort Washington, now I live in Bushwick, and by the end of April, I’ll be somewhere else. Sheesh!I just finished reading your post, “On the Suffocation of the Gay Voice in American Literature.” I thought it was beautifully written (though I have a hard time understanding things that are really academic — but I try!) and really hit home for me. I’m a young artist trying to figure out my voice and style, and occasionally I’ll find it and be reminded by others that I really do have ‘it’. I really resonated with the opening paragraph of your post and totally related it to my own artwork. Before I came out three years ago and still to this day, I could never figure out why my artwork, as expressive as it is, seemed to depict a very sad young guy. It’s as if a weight is placed on his shoulders that makes him gloomy. I attempted to write that my artwork was nothing more than a typical generational experience here in America — that any young adult feels the same way as the characters in my work. After reading your opening paragraph, I know that I can attribute my artwork as being gay.

Jeffrey [http://www.gus23.com]

Jeffrey, thanks for writing! We know exactly how you feel. We suspect the reason you feel sad is because society (and in all likelihood, a certain percentage of your “close” friends and family) hates you for being gay — whether they admit it or not — and that you have not perhaps come to grips with this yet, which is understandable: it takes time. The good news is that with a little luck and patience you will eventually appreciate this reality for the blessing it is, and learn to really love the 2 percent of people who genuinely love you back!

We think of ourselves at the age of 10 or 12, reading books and books and books by legions of post-war writers and wondering why not a single one — regardless of subject matter — was openly gay. Or maybe that’s too strong; at 10 or 12 it was more like sensing that nobody was gay, much in the way we sensed that we in fact were. From here it’s not long before we were living in a cloud of toxic self-hatred and melancholy that persists to this day (except of course we kind of love it now, but that’s a light at the end of the tunnel).

So when people — heroic figures, even — like Arthur C. Clarke are closet cases, it leaves many inexplicably sad young artists like Jeffrey in their wake. Our hope is to elevate Arthur C. Clarke by pointing to the truth (albeit in a satirical fashion that we try to make entertaining), which is that he was a major queen by almost any reckoning. We like to imagine some gay kid out there reading about the death of one of his favorite writers and then reading our obituary, and in this way getting a glimmer of hope from knowing that they are not as different as perhaps meets the eye. Doesn’t the letter from Jeffrey rest our case?

I have previously written about Going Republican.  Seems like Ruben Bolling is on the same page.

Via monstersandcritics:

Another elected official was caught toe-tapping in the boys room. The Times-Picayune reports yet another Republican was caught soliciting in a public restroom.

Joey DiFatta is the chairman of St. Bernard Parish Council and a prominent Republican leader (until 2004 on the GOP state party Executive Committee).

He just withdrew from his state senate race, after his arrests for lewd behavior in a public restroom were made public.