Only In San Francisco

Many thanks to François for bringing All Thumbs Press, Justin Hall's self-publishing venture, to my attention. He was pointing out True Travel Tales in response to this blog entry of mine.

I, on the other hand, want to show you the cover to this mini-comic, because it's awesome:

The Danger Room Is Angry

Sparky spoils this week's Astonishing X-Men unwittingly. I thought he was talking about the last issue, so I clicked through like a moron. Oy.

Not my dilemma

Lance Arthur recently wrote Fat! The Gay Man's Dilemma for Queer Day.

I wrote up my response: Not My Dilemma. Read them both, and let me know what you think.

PS, I wrote that entry on my new Yahoo 360 blog. I've got Yahoo 360 invites if you want to test it out. Just contact me via email.

Drunk Egg

This is a photo that I took at the easter egg party that I attended on Saturday. More pictures in this Flickr set.

Now I Know

According to Dagon, Morrissey has updated the lyrics to "Bigmouth Strikes Again" to include an iPod reference. Nice.

It's a party

Yesterday I attended my first easter egg party for bears. The boyfriend, who volunteers regularly for a big local bear non-profit group (they run IBR, yadda yadda yadda), gave me the low-down beforehand: lots of food to eat, beer to drink, and eggs to decorate.

The success of the party, as the host pointed out, depended on two things: plenty of jello shots, and plenty of glue guns. There was an entire craft table, and it was jammed with men attaching sequins and feathers and googly eyes to their eggs.

My favorite moment occurred while I was in the kitchen. I was helping myself to a lime jello shot when a harmless but loud drunk guy came up to me and shouted, "The green one is a party... and we all get to come in your mouth!"

My smile froze. "Thanks," I said as I slowly backed away from him.

He realized that he said his punchline wrong, so he tried again.

"No, wait. The green one is a party in your mouth... and we all get to come! Ah, forget it."

My second favorite moment was when I saw a cute-ish guy sitting on the couch with one ball hanging out of his jeans. Let me rephrase: he had pulled his ball through a tear in his jeans. Once I saw it, I couldn't stop looking at it: I wasn't turned on, by any means, but I still kept coming back to it.

The boyfriend had been sitting in a different room, and the same guy had his ball out while sitting over there. Which means that every time he sat down, he had to rearrange himself just so.

I like to think that he pulls his ball out of his pants everywhere that he goes: on the bus, at work, at church. His friends probably have grown so used to his ball that they don't even see it anymore. The rest of us are too polite to say anything, as if he had a bad combover.

Journeying

I'm in the process of planning a big summer trip. It's work-related, but I'll know that I'll have a blast. I've received some money from my job to cover some of the travel, and I might get some more if I can convince my boss that it's "professional development" to go (I think she'll agree).

I'm interested in travel writing, and I've got some vague ideas that I'd like to write up my experiences on this trip (as well as a similar trip that I took last year). So I'm reading this article detailing exactly how and why most contemporary magazine/newspaper travel writing sucks. And I'm bookmarking World Hum's weblog and story archive, as well as Written Road and Vagablogging.

I'm a sucker for the Traveler's Tales Best Travel Writing series (2005 was just released), and the Best American series.

One thing that I've noted, though, is that very few gay men seem to write good contemporary travel articles or books.

There's Wonderlands: Good Gay Travel Writing, edited by Raphael Kadushin, and featuring mostly contemporary gay authors (e.g., Edmund White, Colm Tóibín, Wayne Koestenbaum). Here's the Lambda Lit review.

And there's Out Traveler magazine, which makes me want to slit my wrists, although I do enjoy editor Matthew Link's writing.

And that's about it, as far as I know. Am I missing anything obvious? Is there some reason why gay men aren't getting published in the contemporary travel writing circles?

Sweet

Recently spotted on The Digital Bits:

In other DVD news today, SonyBMG has announced that the soundtrack CD for Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith will street on 5/3. So why is this DVD news? Well, as it turns out, the CD will include a bonus DVD-Video disc that will feature a 70-minute presentation of some 16 newly-created music videos of composer John Williams' signature themes from all 6 Star Wars films (set to footage from the films) that takes viewers chronologically through the entire saga. Each will be introduced by actor Ian McDiarmid (Senator Palpatine) and will feature the music along with dialogue and sound effects excerpts in full Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. The package will also include a booklet with liner notes by George Lucas and a poster.

Also via the Digital Bits is the link to this three-part Onion AV Club series of interviews with Warner Brothers's George Feltenstein, Home Vision's Lee Ferdinand and Something Weird Video's Mike Vraney, all talking about releasing classic films on DVD. Feltenstein is the force behind the amazing Warners's DVD collections such as the recent "Film Noir", "Classic Comedies" and "From Broadway to Hollywood" sets.

Thanks for sharing your cookie

Ernie describes a conversation at the Lone Star.

Why is it that I never see Ernie (or any of my friends) at the Lone Star? <napoleondynamite>Gosh!</napoleondynamite>

Cavalcade of Links

I just love finding an image like this one (warning, probably not safe for work), and realizing that it's called "Like a Prayer". I mean, how bizarre is that?

The work is by Clark Moss (also NSFW); I found Moss's website linked on The Gay Comics List linkspage.

GCL also mentioned that Tim Fish's Cavalcade of Boys is being collected as three digest-sized volumes with plenty of extras. Woo-hoo! Order your own copy now!

The Luck of the Irish-American

Which is cutest?

a. That my mother sent me a St. Patrick's Day card this year?

b. That she included money so that my (non-Irish) boyfriend and I could buy a drink?

c. That she apparently thinks that $5 will be enough for drinks for two in San Francisco?

I love my mom.

Teen Bear Redux

There's a new Teen Bear cover and interior spread. Your favorite fake magazine is apparently a regular feature over at the GenEx blog. Real t-shirts are apparently coming this summer.

My favorite bit? The fact that barcode includes an image from Go Fujimoto of JapanamationBears.com. I'd be willing to bet that both GenEx and ThoughtNot (who is now using that same Go Fujimoto image as a mascot) discovered Go's work from this Fleshbot entry, which was suggested by me. I've blogged Go's work twice now.

(Previously on A Bear in the City: Teen Bear and Return to Teen Bear.)

New Echigoya Website

The Japanese artist Echigoya Shinnosuke (who I've blogged three times previously) now has an official G-Project fansite with plenty of art.

I love Echigoya's sensibilities, his cute 'n cuddly, yet still sexy teddy bears. As always, I wish I could find his work here in the states. I still don't know any Japanese, so I have no idea how to go about ordering his calendars on the web.




(Previous posts about Asian Bear Art on A Bear in the City: Even more Asian Bear Art; SugarBear Weekend; Moritomo's Abnormal Works, Echigoya's Bears, Calendar Bears, Samson & G-Men cover galleries, Samson magazine, G-Project and G-Men magazines, Japanimation Bears, Rainbow Shoppers and Gengoroh Tagame and Aki.)