Day: 23 November 2015

  • Modern Family Actor Comes Out As Gay, Subtly As A Tweet

    Modern Family actor Reid Ewing has come as gay on Twitter.

    Modern Family has come out as gay on Twitter after revealing that he found Eugene Bata onGood Morning America “as hot as f**k”.

    When questioned by a fan whether if he had outted himself the 27-year-old actor replied, “I was never in.”

    The actor recently wrote an article for Huffington Post to discuss living with Body Dysmorphic Disorder which resulted in numerous cosmetic procedures.

    He has starred in Modern Family since 2009.

  • Anton Stephans Eliminated From X Factor

    Anton Stephans has been booted from X FACTOR, but don’t worry you’ll see him again… on the tour.

    The soul diva has been eliminated from X Factor after a sing-off against Che Chesterman in last night’s show on ITV.

    The star, who recently backed a campaign to allow gay men to give blood, thanked Cheryl and Rita for their support as well as his mentor Simon Cowell.

    As he bowed out Anton joked that you would see him again… because he made the X FACTOR tour.

  • 15 Minute Self HIV Test Released In The UK

    A 15-minute self test kit has gone on sale in the UK.

    (more…)

  • RECIPE | Artichoke And Pistachio Pesto

    Serves 4 | Prep 5 mins | No Cook

    Quick & Easy / Minimal Ingredients / Vegan / Anti-Oxidant Rich / Digestion Helper

    Creamy, garlicky, and nutty, bound together with olive oil and lemon, this pesto makes a lovely change from the usual basil pine nut combo. This pesto also doesn’t have any cheese in it so is suitable for Vegans. You can whip this up in 5 minutes, you could have it “raw” and spread on toast, or use as a stir through sauce for pasta. I use it to stuff cod fillet’s in the Posh Cod & Chips recipe.

    ARTICHOKES- A long standing digestive aid, first discovered by the Egyptians, used to also combat acid reflux, stomach discomfort, bloating, and mild diarrhoea. (SOURCE: http://www.livestrong.com/article/471274-what-are-the-health-benefits-of-artichoke-hearts/ ). Artichokes are also a good source of anti-oxidants; silymarin, caffeic acid, and ferulic acid.

    PISTACHIOS – Rich in mono-unsaturated fats like oleic acid make the pistachio nut another good source of anti-oxidants. Pistachio nuts also contain carotenes, vitamin E, and polyphenolic anti-oxidant compounds which help remove free-radicals from the body. They are also rich in the essentials for boosting our immune system; copper, manganese, iron, zinc and selenium. (SOURCE: http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/pistachio.html ) Pistachios also contain potassium which can aid healthy digestion.

     

    Ingredients.

    1 400g can artichoke hearts, drained

    30g shelled pistachio nuts

    2 tbsp olive oil

    1 tbsp lemon juice

    1 garlic clove

    Small bunch fresh parsley leaves

     

    Method.

    1. Place all the ingredients in a small food processor and pulse until you have a paste.
    2. Serve or keep in the fridge for up to 2 days.
  • THEATRE REVIEW | The Prime of Ms. David Hoyle

    Have you ever loved a poxy, gaping wound that never heals?

    Have you ever loved a poy, gaping wound that never heals? Welcome to the pure disease of radical thinking, the open-heart artistry of David Hoyle. A precision provocateur, he’s a beautiful leper puking on the bland smirk of consensus dissent. Never afraid to offend, he’ll stare, point-blank, at dead-eyed conformity, and test-drive blanket idiocy to total destruction.

    So, tonight –in character as a no-limits, libertarian headmistress for tonight’s show, ‘The Prime of Ms David Hoyle’ – he’s in his element. And, as always – perhaps acknowledging some fractured, kindred mind-set – his intentionally smeared make-up is a cosmetic-Cubist’s spin on Liza Minelli. It’s pithy, visual ventriloquism, an instant, persona transplant of Liza’s unshakeable self-belief, an immediate, autocratic departure point for Ms. Hoyle.

    And it’s wholly appropriate. Tonight, David’s manifesting – and inverting – that patronising sense of belonging British schools cram into pitifully vulnerable minds. Quite brilliantly, he’s subverting the crypto-fascist overtones of Muriel Spark’s Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie novel into a school-night for unedited, sexualised scandal. How? With extreme satire, the preferred poison for killer, social comedy since theatre began. Essentially, it’s the freedom to question any standards of etiquette, taste and so-called decency, and push them to blatant heights of self-evident absurdity.
    Therefore – as headmistress in tonight’s mock, end of school-term assembly – David unflinchingly proclaims his inflammatory manifesto. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, and those clever enough to have transcended gender’ he begins, ‘We are now free from the ridiculous expectations of our genitals. It will be trans people, and trans consciousness that will liberate the whole of humanity’.Wow. Simultaneously utopian, hilarious and upstaging blinkered identity politics, it’s a typically stellar David Hoyle starting-gun, but not one winning full approval. One heckler –ex-forces, befuddled, confrontational – obviously feels his servile, binary-sexed values are being mocked, a surly, potential flash-point. But immediately, he’s beautifully love-bombed by David, and instantly evolves from feisty reactionary to besotted disciple.

    How could he not? David’s seductive power of surreal persuasion totally rewrites any opposed punter’s world-view with a stunningly queer lexicon. Fittingly, David queers our global pitch from its first, bedrock principle – education – and, as always, asks gloriously awkward questions.

    ‘Does education make us conform’ David ominously inquires, ‘by hacking off our beautiful eccentricities?’ Oh yes; British state and public schools give a kiss of Guantanomo Bay brutality for arty queens enduring term-time torment. But not tonight, as, quite gorgeously, our devil’s advocate headmistress unleashes three recent graduates of his maverick regime.
    First, there’s Bambi Sexsmith, self-styled, queer conversion therapist, with her projectile-diction sermon on avoiding ‘Straight Complex’. In an assured blizzard of quips, she diagnoses, treats and cures any obstacles to thoroughly liberated, thoroughly queer existence. And, remarkably, that’s just for starters; each fabulously unpredictable prodigy from the Hoyle class of honour ramps the anti-hetero stakes stunningly higher.

    Take Ray, a flawless, drag-king Fred Astaire clone. Tap-dancing like a frenzied needle probing an addict’s veins, she strips to a startling androgyny, all duct-taped, flattened breasts and stencilled six-pack. A take-no-prisoners attack on the mediocre, mundane and pointlessly mean, David’s graduates conclude with the starkest, cautionary warning yet; enter, ‘Cis White Male’.

    Naked, mute and nervous, his name scrawled on his belly, ‘Cis’ is a shocking indictment of state education crushing social and sexual dissent. Is there an antidote? For sure -Ms Hoyle’s fearless call to self-expression at any cost. It’s a fantastically liberating lesson that, ideally, should be taught and memorised from birth, the ferociously humane heart of David’s stunning rejection of global despair. Live free, live fierce, live now; there’s no finer riposte to mindless fascism.

    David’s next show is December 9th at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.

  • Dear god. Wine Is Now Available For Men In A Can

    The end is nigh. We’re telling you this. Why? Because someone has created wine in a can.

    (more…)

  • Paris Attacks Fugitive Who Was Seen In Gay Bars Still At Large

    One of the main suspects in the Paris Attacks Salah Abdeslam, is still at large after Belgian police arrest 16 suspects.

    ◼︎ 16 suspects connected to the Paris terror attacks arrested by Belgian police.

    ◼︎ Salah Abdeslam who was spotted in gay bars in Brussels is still at large.

    ◼︎ Gay bars in Brussels are working with the police to ensure the safety of customers.

    ◼︎ Abdeslam is the subject of Europe’s biggest manhunt with around 2000 officers searching for him.

    Salah Abdeslam is still on the run from authorities after police conducted 22 raids yesterday (Sunday) arresting 16 suspects connected to the terror attacks in Paris on the 13th November leaving 130 dead and 350 injured.

    Brussels remains on high alert, the Government keeping the terror threat level at its highest level. The Belgian capital is in lockdown as the manhunt for Abdeslam continues.

    It was reported that Abdeslam was spotted in gay bars in Brussels’ Saint Jacques quarter. A bartender at one of the bars told the Sunday Times (sub) that they had him down as a rent boy. He was always hanging out with that kind of crowd.”

    Brussels has been in lockdown after the Belgian Government raised the Terror threat level to the highest level; “very serious” indicating that a terrorist attack is serious and imminent.

    The entire Brussels metro network was closed on the 21st and 22nd and many events, such as football matches had been cancelled.
    Last week the British Government issued guidance on how to survive a terrorist attack.

    Some of Brussels’ gay bars have remained open during the lockdown but have issued statements saying that they are working with the police to ensure the safety of customers.

    One of Brussels’ busiest gay bars, Le Boys Boudoir, issued a statement that it was keeping normal hours, but asked patrons not to bring bags into the bar.

    The Chez Maman issued a statement that on the advice from police “not to run no risk and exceptionally close its doors”.

  • Cassandra Wilson As Billie Holiday Will Leave You Breathless

    Is the pop-music business truly gay-friendly?

    Does it support, or viciously distort, perceptions of clearly gay pop? Both, actually. For every Bowie, Boy George and Marc Almond, there are others encouraged to view public disclosure as career suicide. It’s not surprising. If undeniably high-profile, pop’s also a hugely juvenile art-form, subsisting on one novelty sugar-rush after another. At best, it’s trashy, and, at worst, wholly undignified, a screeching, ridiculous hag reminiscent of Bette Davis’s classic, cinematic nightmare Baby Jane.
    Ah, but there are far more dignified arenas for expressions of gay, artistic presence, jazz music for one.
    Elegantly bypassing pop’s embarrassingly public temper tantrams, jazz, more subtly, encodes the intuitive leaps of gay logic in seductively complex rhythm sections. Put simply, that just means jazz – unlike pop – mimics the mercurial flow of queer creativity

    It’s not surprising. Historically, jazz swarms with majorly influential outsider figures, all injecting a distinctly queer, unpredictable sensibility into the music itself. There’s Billy Tipton, the acclaimed, secretly female bandleader who lived her life as a man, complete with bound breasts and a padded crotch. More famous still, there’s Josephine Baker, the infamously banana-skirted toast of 1920s Paris, and finally, effortlessly heading any list of queer artistry, Billie Holiday.

    All three women, quite aptly, embraced gay affairs, and Holiday, additionally – as a smack-binging black woman – had triple outsider status. So, in a world increasingly celebrating bland excess, it’s beautifully liberating to have Cassandra Wilson – arguably the finest singer in modern jazz – channel Billie’s brilliance.

    Never heard of Ms. Wilson? You will. In brief, her voice is gorgeous, post-coital, smoked honey, a swooning, breathy rapture drowned in the instrumental love-making of her backing musicians. And, quite simply, her artistry soars unreachable heights beyond pop’s brain-dead, battery-farm divas pumping out clueless cover-versions night and day. Rather, her newest album– Coming Forth By Day – reworks key, Holiday songs as sultry tone-poems of loss and redemption.
    So cultural expectations, perhaps, ran unrealistically high for her centrepiece appearance last weekend at London’s annual jazz festival. But in the shocking wake of the Paris atrocities, any appearance by Ms.Wilson seemed improbable, due to fraught, security fears.

    Only minutes before show-time, a muddled announcement seemingly cancelled the gig, but Ms.Wilson, admirably, refused to be intimidated by philistine fanaticism. And in a stunning gesture of triumphant, queer solidarity, she unleashed the full force of her talent as standard-bearer for Billy’s sublime, queer misfit mystique.

    Yes, she was unavoidably late, but heartfelt music’s always been thrillingly life-affirming, and Wilson’s short, if haunting set, spoke moody volumes.

    ‘Hush now, don’t explain’, she sang, bringing wrenching depths of situational sub-text to one of Holiday’s greatest songs. Weaving a spellbinding, definitive refusal to oppression onstage with just her voice and band, Wilson’s serene dignity was a master-class in queer resistance.

    Someday, perhaps, the most diligent pop-divas might distantly approach Wilson’s unruffled panache, but don’t hold your breath waiting. Pure art – like integrity – never settles for second-best. Frankly, for artists, as exalted as Cassandra Wilson, the Simon Cowells of planet earth merely serve as closed prison cells, not express highways to intoxicating art. It’s their loss – and ours.