The greatest challenge associated with aging is not morbidity and mortality; it's novelty. More precisely it's the hunger for novelty, a hunger that grows increasingly difficult to satisfy. And when I was asked to review a new Logo film, Coffee Date, which premiered just this past Sunday, I found it very difficult to enjoy and report on the film with an open mind. How many times have I endured this particular story line? Coffee Date poses the prickly question: Can a heterosexual WASPy All-American hunk find love and companionship with a homosexual Latino stud sporting the perfect six-pack? It's the latest and trendy incarnation of the classic buddy movie merged with a social-consciousness raising unlikely romantic couple faced with top-of-mind social and political challenges.

Can rich Roman Catholic Bridget find love with poor Jewish Bernie? Can anal compulsive Felix survive life with Oscar the uber-slob? Can liberal Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy accept their snow white daughter's marriage to intensely African-American Sidney Poitier? Can straight All-American computer programmer Todd and steamy gay Latin lover hair stylist Kelly find love, friendship and sexual compatibility?

Enough is enough. At the risk of upsetting my tens of fans, I can no longer lie. Io non sono omosessuale! I'm not gay! There. Basta. It's out. Finally.

I've never been gay. And under no circumstances could I imagine ever being gay in the future. It's not a choice I would make. Why would anyone? It's unnatural and almost beyond reasonable comprehension.

Yes, indeed, I have spent the last 18 years of my life researching the gay lifestyle in order to better understand it. And in the interests of credible and indisputable research, I have worked diligently until reaching a statistically significant sampling--approximately 1,500 men with whom I have engaged in just about every permutation and variation of gay sex imaginable. Science be served. I have swallowed. I have explored every orifice available and allowed the same to be done to me. I have rope burns, customized leather goods and imported German sex toys that have set me back some serious Euros. (As an aside, rimming chairs can be converted into nifty lawn ornaments once you've completed your research. Sadly, I don't have a lawn.)

So, there you have it. I'm not gay.

I had fully intended to continue my research as a faux fag for many years to come, but I've been inspired by the Roman Catholic Church to come out and stand proud as an openly straight man researching gay sex so that I can better help real gay men and women walk into the light. After all, if you haven't waged the battle of teeth and breath control, how can you possibly understand the awfulness of homosexuality?

Now you know how I want to die. That will be the headline on the front page of The New York Post, on October 23, 2048, the morning after my 100th birthday celebratory orgy. Expect that the story will report that I was found with a diversity of men by age, ethnicity and fetish. My preference would be death by drowning on dry land (take a moment to think that through,) but simple suffocation under the weight of it all is an acceptable alternative. This may seem ghoulish to many of you. Get over it. Death is inevitable and death by orgy is certainly preferable to most of the alternatives.

I used to think it was an unrealistic goal, but according to new research published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, elderly and even extremely elderly Americans are much more sexually active than anyone imagined.

Among those 75-85, 38% of men and 17% of women reported sexual activity in the past year,

A urologist from Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., says men remain "sexually interested and active" into their 80s and 90s.

Estimates suggest more than 40 million men worldwide have been able to continue sexual activity into their later years because of medications such as Viagra, Levitra or Cialis.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine publication, more than a quarter of those up to age 85 reported having sex the previous year. Deb Choma, a nurse administrator for 17 years at an assisted-living center in Salisbury, Vt. told USA Today that seven years ago she found herself grappling with the realities of senior sex. First, there was the granddaughter who found her grandmother in a compromising pose with a gentleman resident. Then a 1 a.m. phone call alerted her to staff members finding that a female visitor had stayed over in an older male resident's room. They were discovered in the buff.

Fungible:of goods) being of such nature or kind as to be freely exchangeable or replaceable, in whole or in part, for another of like nature or kind. Interchangeable, flexible.

Science and contemporary Western culture are category crazy. All living things must fall into a phylum, class, kingdom, species,order, genus, weight class, demographic, ethnicity or zip code. And while I certainly understand the compulsion to bring order to our universe, few things challenge this human impulse more than human sexuality. Heterosexual. Homosexual, Bisexual, Transsexual, Asexual. But what if there's another way?

"You people and your quaint little categories," says Captain Jack of the British science fiction television series, TORCHWOOD, as he drools over two women entwining tongues. And this is the same Captain Jack who exchanges spit with a more than willing male team member who had just risked his life for his girlfriend who was only half human. We haven't seen this kind of sexual flexibility since Jason Biggs made mad passionate love to his mother's hot apple pie and Portnoy went steady with raw liver. The whole category issue is very disturbing. Many of us don't believe in bisexuality. Choose a side. And we even become militant about our own sexual category. The other day I caught myself admiring a women's breast and felt the urge to play with them. I was immediately overcome by anger and guilt. I felt like I had just betrayed my phylum. But they were pretty and fluffy and needed to be kneaded--same reason I love playing with cookie dough. (OK, that was likely a pretty gay description of female breasts, I admit it.)

I try to stay light on weekends and just report on the most important gay story of the week, the story that advances our fight for civil rights, our sense of self-respect and the way the world sees us. This week the collective wit and wisdom of the media digs for the truth and reveals that an ornamental bird attacking a car is actually a case of gay rape. Yes, more gay birds.

So what the fowl is going on with birds? Gay penguins, gay flamingos, gay swans and now rough trade peacocks? It would seem that the avian world is more gay than an August night at the Meat Rack on Fire Island. It's an evangelical nightmare. Sodomites found in nature. Homosexual birds flocking from the Central Park Zoo to aristocratic manor houses in the south of England.

In fact, a British aristocrat has been forced to warn visitors to his manor home not to park cars painted a particular shade of blue on his property, after his "gay" peacock caused thousands of dollars worth of damage to a luxury car it mistook for another peacock.

The horny bird attempted to rape an employee's "peacock blue" Lexus parked on the grounds of Sir Benjamin Slade's country manor, Maunsel House, in Somerset in England's south, report English newspapers.

The car was left with thousands of dollars in scratches and dents as a result of the frisky bird's amorous attack, and Sir Benjamin has now erected signs in his car park warning drivers of blue cars of the danger presented by his bird.

"It started when he fell in love with this Lexus, which was in a very distinct peacock blue and looked like another peacock boy," he said.

"He couldn't control his urges and tried to shag it. He attacked the panels so hard that the car needs a total respray.

"The insurers, Lloyd's of London, are not very happy about it.

"They've had claims for all sorts of things like lions biting people, but never have they heard of a peacock sexually attacking a car before."

Sir Benjamin has also decided the peacock, whom he named Ron Davies after a former bisexual Welsh Secretary, is gay. "Peahens are brown, but Ron Davies is only attracted to blue cars so I can only assume he's gay," the aristocrat, who has made headlines before by offering to give his manor away and hire his dog Jasper as a "best man" at same-sex weddings, said.

A few weeks ago I shared with you the new PETA ad featuring a birthday-suit-clad Alicia Silverstone. The controversial ad, which has since been pulled by Houston, TX's Comcast Cable Company for being too racy, shows Silverstone and her ample breasts advocating vegetarianism by explaining to the world that eating veggies makes you feel (and look) like a million bucks. The ad, which seemed to be targeted mostly towards straight men (and lesbians) has caused quite an array of responses, both negative and positive.

One group that had a blatant reaction to the video was Shake State, a Vlogging group that does humorous videos and parodies for YouTube, MySpace and other video-centric websites. Their "Alicia Silverstone Naked PETA Spoof" is certainly that but does it go too far? The video has had over 14,000 hits in just 5 days and although I thought it was pretty offensive, I'll let you be the judge.

The New York Observer, a weekly Manhattan newspaper of some influence, recently posed the prickly question of whether or not the penis is poised for a major comeback in popular American culture. One of the paper's arts and culture gurus went on safari and lo and behold she discovered that penises are running wild throughout the concrete jungle.

Now before you poo poo the Observer's wisdom--likely because you've never heard of it and in truth the newspaper only boasts a subscriber list of a mere 51,000 readers--consider that the 51,000 consists of a hard core of very influential New Yorkers, the kind of people who tell the rest of you what's in and what's out. Yes, The New York Observer readers are the trendsetters and innovators who tell you what to think.

"Oh, really?" you scornfully retort. Really. For example, among other things, The New York Observer publishes Candace Bushnell's column on Manhattan's social life, a little something called Sex and the City. Heard of it? So sit up, shut up and pay attention. You never heard of Manolo Blahnik until The New York Observer kicked you in the consciousness. So when the Observer says the penis is back, the penis is back in all of its full frontal erectile functionality.

It would appear--and it is appearing with increasing frequency on stage, screen and television--that Harry Potter's peter in the revival of Equus was merely a harbinger of things to come.

If you're like me, you are finding it very difficult to keep track of Republican and Evangelical sex scandals. Goodness, they just keep screwing and screwing up faster than my aged brain cells can synapse. Well, fret no more! The naughty liberals over at Nation Books have felt your frustration and on October 28 their newest title, The Brotherhood of the Disappearing Pants: A Field Guide to Conservative Sex Scandals will be available nationwide. You can, of course, pre-order this essential reading immediately on amazon.com or bn.com or any number of other vendors. The fun in that, I find, is that it's like buying it twice, once on-line and then once when it comes. It's a double shop.

The publisher boasts that this remarkable treatise on right wing penis antics will list over 60--yup 60--conservative Republicans and Evangelicals who diddled in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Among the star-studded heroes of the carnal and the libidinous will be Mark Foley, Bob Packwood, Tim Hutchinson and Ted Haggard. Stick it in your pack pocket and just yank it out whenever you feel the need for a little right wing erotica.

The publisher does point out that the hero of their story, taking top honors in bad behavior ,is our own beloved Mark Foley. According to this new guide, "The [Republican] party was undoubtedly hurt most (at least as far as scandals are concerned) by Congressman Mark Foley's tireless efforts both to establish a national child predator database and to keep his own name off of it. "

"Foley managed to drown an already foundering party, proving yet again that, when it comes to politics, there's nothing the public remembers and reacts to quite like a lurid sex scandal. But while Foley's prominence thrust the story into the media spotlight, his is just the tip of a very large, very phallic iceberg. Indeed, there's far more to the conservative creep-fest than the high-profile Foley scandal, Clarence Thomas's Dadaistic come-ons, and Bill OReilly's many chickpea-related indiscretions.

Over the years, conservatives across the country have spun webs of deception, hypocrisy, and grotesque lechery that have shot so many holes in their pretensions of moral superiority, it's a wonder they can even mouth the words "family values" without getting laughed out of the bordello.

It's enough, at least, to fill a book."

CRUISING is the black sheep of gay cinema history. It's the kind of gay film we want to see but it is also the kind of gay film we'd rather nobody makes. What's most extraordinary about this high-profile controversial film is that it is extraordinarily mediocre, one of Friedkin's lessor accomplishments--of which there are many.

Friedkin is an odd director having created a few classics (The Exorcist, The French Connection), but mostly he's responsible for a whole slew of bad to boring film and television productions. CRUISING is not bad enough to be a camp classic and it's far from good enough to be a landmark film. So why all the attention--surely not just because a young buff naked Al Pacino is trussed up for a good poking? What Friedkin accomplished with CRUISING is an almost documentary-quality look at an important and influential part of the gay world circa 1980. CRUISING is, like it or not, a major record of a very important and influential moment in gay history--and from many aeries, it ain't a pretty picture.

At the time, gay activists condemned the film claiming that it would mislead straight America into thinking that the gay world is dominated by leather, S&M, fetish, sex clubs and relentless anonymous sex in every dark nook and cranny of New York's night world. Gay activists insisted that this world was on the fringe and did not represent mainstream gay America. Obviously, to suggest that the leather, rubber and fetish community was on the fringe of the 70s gay sex scene is not entirely accurate. Just ask The Village People or just about any New York or San Francisco queer who survived it..

I may not have itty bitty titties (although mine are real), I can still appreciate a grass-roots-style lesbian feminist movie any day of the week. That's why I was thrilled to be able to attend the West Hollywood movie premier of "Itty Bitty Titty Committee" and the after party on Monday night.

You may remember back to June when fellow blogger, Arlan, posted a blog called "Raise Your Fist If You Like Boobs" where she talks about her love of breasts and gives the new movie, Itty Bitty Titty Committee a shout-out and brief introduction. The movie first debuted at the Berlin Film Festival, and has since played at several other film festivals, including the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. The movie is meant to make a bold statement about women, how society views them and how they view themselves.



Itty Bitty Titty Committee is one of those movies that gets you all fired up and makes you laugh while doing it. The movie succeeds in spending equal amounts of time exploring the characters and documenting their wacky works involved in their feminist group, C(I)A - "Clits In Action". The main character, Anna (played by Melanie Diaz) takes a journey which is quite profound; she goes from a shy conformist to a subversive, pro-femme anarchist who celebrates her newly found acceptance into the lesbian community. Responsible for introducing her to this underground world is Sadie, who is attached to her controlling girlfriend despite all the verve and sass she displays as the C(I)A's unofficial leader. A wild romance develops between Sadie and Anna, propelling the central conflict of the plot and causing all sorts of chaos within the group dynamic.



In a character-based comedy, casting is everything, and in Itty Bitty it's spot on.

And I thought I was bad! When I poke the beast I try to keep a safe distance between myself and the fangs. Not so the leather queens of San Francisco, a much sturdier lot than I, who have taken it upon themselves to push the neo-conservative Christians right off the cliff.

Apparently the organizers of San Francisco's Folsom Street Fair--the gayest street fair since the Founder's Day Arts & Crafts Festival in Sodom-- have come up with the nifty idea that we can win this religious war by simply making right-wing Christian heads explode en masse.

The nation's most famous leather queens have have come up with their very own understanding of the Da Vinci code and "reinterpreted" The Last Supper as an extreme gay S&M banquet. The bread and wine representing Christ's broken body and life-giving blood are replaced with naughty sex toys.

One ultra right wing Christian group released the following statement just last night:

I have a theory that masturbation--or a lack of it--is directly responsible for the problems we're having with religious fundamentalists. They don't. Can any of you imagine just how frustrating that must be? There you are alone. It beckons. Yoo hoo! I'm here. I'm easy. And instead you force yourself to imagine a very old and very angry man in a long robe and white beard. Well just how grumpy would that make you? If you consider this carefully, how can you not feel a renewed sense of compassion and pity for Evangelicals, Al Qaeda and Hassidic Jews?

How can a human being survive without an occassional voyage of self-discovery? As Socrates once said, "An unexamined life is not worth living." If you read between the lines, you know he was taking about unexamined genitalia. And who would argue with the obvious fact that any man or woman' must begin the voyage of self-discovery between the legs?

So it being Sunday and all, I thought what better place to rethink the concept of Sunday School? Pay close attention. You will be tested.

See you in Hell, possums!

At first I thought it had to be a spoof, but nope. Twelve Mormon Missionaries walk into a bar...oops, I mean twelve Mormon Missionaries returned from saving souls and then stripped off their shirts for the new Mormon Men On A Mission calendar. Sporting plucked eyebrows, seriously coiffed hair, strategically placed make-up and trimmed treasure trails, Mitt's storm troopers are hoping that perfect abs, meaty pecs, lightly fluffed armpits and perky Salt Lake City nipples will have us all rushing to embrace the Church of Latter Day Saints--and, I suppose, voting for Mitt. Works for the MSNBC reporter and works for me as well.

These missionaries have assumed the calendar position in the hopes that it will dispel stereotypes about Mormons. Having watched the videos and listened to the interviews, all I can say is that my belief in the stereotype that many Mormon men are hunky, hot closet queens has totally been put to bed.

You can purchase the calendar at mormonsexposed.com. Do visit the website whether or not you intend to purchase 12 semi-nude Mormon Missionaries for your on-your-knees praying to God pleasure. It's chock full of great info on each model's missionary position and includes an interactive photo gallery where you can slide your mouse across a Mormon man's white-shirted body and strip him bare for your viewing pleasure. Oh, and don't forget to pick up a few items of hot Mormon man apparel! I can't imagine wearing anything else to the clubs and bars--at least until the Rabbi's of the Yeshiva release their calendars and T-shirts.

Oh Mitt, let me lick your Great Salt Lake!

Sometimes these posts just write themselves, if you know what I mean.