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?

I admit that I'm somewhat angered by several of the insulting comments and very rude emails that I've received in response to my Barney Frank post--so my blood pressure is already high and my temper at the moment is hot. I say this because FOX News just jumped on my last nerve.

So I find myself wondering why it is that we so easily go after each other's throats, but so quickly climb into bed with the enemy every chance we get? While we were gutting Barney Frank, FOX News was once again gutting us and Khadijah Farmer in particular. For many months I have called for a boycott of all things Murdoch including the FOX network and The New York Post. My pleas have mostly been met with silence, and yet the rush to tear into Barney Frank over principle has been fierce. But where are all of you hypocrites when it comes to FOX and The New York Post?

Sure, it's easy to slam tireless and heroic Barney, but give up Page Six, American Idol or any of the other crap shows that depend heavily on the support of the gay audience? All of these Murdoch products pour millions of dollars into Murdoch's anti-gay monster machine. Our noble gay community will take a stand on ENDA in terms of devouring Barney Frank and his supporters--even though ENDA is a bill unlikely to pass because we, as a community, are too self-indulgent and self-absorbed to deliver the kind of activism and civil disobedience that would drive Congress to positive action. But boycott our guilty pleasures even though they are openly funding the crusade to drive us back into the closet? We'd love to but not if means giving up our fun.

Thousands of queer Americans have attacked one of our few influential leaders, Barney Frank, with emails, calls and letters. Hundreds of gay advocacy groups have done the same. But with regard to Murdoch and Fox? Silence.

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?

Back in June, I called Tony Award Night the gay equivalent of Super Bowl Sunday. Well, how 'bout Super Bowl Saturday. Yes kids, it's finally happening: 'Legally Blonde' will air on MTV on Saturday, October 13th at 1 PM EST.

Now, what I've tried to do here is give a little theatre to those of you who don't live in New York, or get to come here. What MTV is doing is REALLY bringing the theatre into your home. This is great news.

Like movies and television, theatre provokes emotion -- and even the fluffiest shows can jump-start a conversation. 'Legally Blonde,' for instance, can be the catalyst for talks about women's rights, men vs. women, law, marriage, Chihuahuas, hair extensions and, well, the color pink.

While MTV is sure to rerun the show clear through 2028, I thought I'd give you a peek at a backstage video I found on YouTube. Can I get some snaps for this, please? Watch it after the jump ...

With Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger expected to veto a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in California, a multimillion-dollar television ad campaign will be launched this week, one that is meant to push buttons and appeal to the emotions--in the hearts of straight people. The TV commercial, which will air in major California markets, shows a bride on her wedding day, as she heads to the alter where her handsome groom awaits. On her way, she encounters a series of obstacles--debris in her path, a guest tripping her with a cane--until she falls to the ground and the screen reads: "What if you couldn't marry the person you love?"

Take a look at the commercial....

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.)

During the Weekend Update segment of this past week's Saturday Night Live, the increasingly reliable Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler took on disgraced but defiant Senator Larry Craig, who was caught soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom. In their recurring "Really?!" bit, they state the obvious, but do so with such entertaining disdain, as they mercilessly taunt Craig. "And, really, you oppose gay marriage. What? You think that marriage takes the sizzle out of it?" Meyers teases. "Or are you just afraid that if gay marriage is legalized, there'll be fewer single gay guys trying to have sex in airport bathrooms?" Take a look....

I've always been a little awed and heartened by the success of NBC's My Name Is Earl. The sitcom, now in its third season, manages to be subversive and edgy while appealing to mainstream audiences--perhaps because it's so consistently funny and genuinely good-natured. Even my own mother watches it--in fact, she's the one who first told me about it, laughing uncontrollably as she explained the premise: a guy tries to reverse his bad karma by trying to undo all the damage he's done to people in the past, one by one from a list he scribbled onto a scrap of paper.

Last night's episode took Earl's gay-friendliness to a whole new level, and, despite its broad caricatures (that's what the show deals in, after all), presented a gay love story really unlike anything I've seen on a network sitcom. Sure, My Name Is Earl has gotten gay before--the pilot episode in fact dealt with Kenny, a gay copy shop employee. Earl decides to shun his own homophobia after getting whacked with a telephone and nudges Kenny out of the closet. But in last night's episode, gay romance--and hot gay romance at that--was integral to the plot.

Murdoch's murder of the soon-to-no-longer-be prestigious Wall Street Journal is--as I predicted it would be--months ahead of schedule. The official prediction was that Murdoch's changes wouldn't become apparent until mid or late 2008 and, in fact, the sale of The Journal to Murdoch won't even be finalized for another two months. But how could this media and culture-devouring megalomaniac resist playing with his new very big toy gun? Well, he couldn't.

The world's wealthiest homophobe will soon be ready to turn this powerful and extremely influential newspaper against us with the same outrageous bigotry and hate-mongering that characterizes most of his other properties--including The New York Post and FOX News. Unfortunately, The Journal will be taken very seriously by Washingtonians and corporations. You can stick your head in the sand or you can face the fact that the homophobes have opened up a new and very dangerous front in the war against queer America.

Last night, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert turned to expert-gay Dan Savage to unravel the complexities of the hate crimes bill, Larry Craig, tea room sex, mujaha-queens and more. Brilliant.

George Takei, the actor who played Sulu on the original 'Star Trek' series and now appears on 'Heroes', learned this week that an asteroid has been named after him.

'7307 Takei' isn't the result of a vanity naming thing that anyone can just buy on the internet. The honor was bestowed by the International Astronomical Union, an elite body of scientists who apparently are able to name things like stars and asteroids. What that means is that astronomers and other smart people will now refer to this particular piece of flying rock only as '7307 Takei.'

Takei was nominated by Tom Burbine, a Mount Holyoke College astronomy professor who, according to the AP, wanted to pay tribute to the actor "in part out of appreciation for his work with the Japanese-American Citizens League and with leading gay rights group Human Rights Campaign." Takei is an official spokesman for the Coming Out Project at HRC.

As news of this is bopped around among some of the gay bloggers today, a couple of other interesting things entered into the conversation. First, while everyone is happy for our fella George Takei who is universally loved in the gay community it seems, the gays aren't satisfied with only one asteroid with a gay namesake -- and rightly so. I will tell you why.

As if Daniel Radcliffe claiming that he would play gay weren't enough to stoke my lurid fantasies, dreamy English singer-songwriter James Blunt just might be willing to date me if I'm at least as butch as Ellen DeGeneres. I don't think Ellen is particularly manly, so it won't take much for me to assert just enough masculinity to entice James Blunt into my secret homosexual lair.

Oh, wait a minute, maybe I should explain....

I was incredibly honored when Queersighted editor, Kenneth Hill, sent me a story he was sure only I could handle. The fact that my editor would trust me with an important story after such a short time on staff was truly humbling. I opened the article with great anticipation. Let's see, it's called ... MTV's boundary-breaking sleaze? Wow, that sound's dreadful, but I'm still humbled, and appreciative. Let me read more before I judge.

According to LA Times.com, it's "a serialized bisexual dating show starring Tila Tequila, mistress of MySpace."

I stop reading momentarily to search for an old Xanax prescription. I'm back.

"Tequila will welcome 16 straight men and 16 lesbian women into a mansion, where they'll all live for a scandalous season while vying for her affection. MTV's first serialized dating program represents a big commitment from a network devoted to the short-attention-span crowd, meaning we can expect as much squabbling, back-stabbing and pansexual make-out sessions as 10 episodes can hold."

Oh, I understand now. Richard Rothstein has passed on this and Kenny hates me. Or, Richard passed and I'm the only other writer old enough to remember MTV's humble beginnings. That's why I got this story. I'll never forget the day MTV aired the first ever music video. It was just a guy with a Victrola and some sock puppets.

Although I made a personal vow to not subject QueerSighted's regular readers to more High School Musical madness, the phenomenon has just jumped back into my consciousness because the Los Angeles dates of the national touring stage version of HSM have been announced (December 12 to 23, 2007, at the Kodak Theatre, with plenty of dates in other cities). Now, this stage production is not to be confused with the High School Musical concert tour or the High School Musical ice show or the High School Musical cult indoctrination. (Okay, I don't think that last event exists, but it might as well.) This is a huge stage musical with professional actors, a new book, and extra songs added. Oh, yeah, and it's gayer than the movie.



As you may remember, I mentioned that there are plenty of hints in the HSM movies about how the character of Ryan Evans is gay. The angry tweens who left vitriolic comments to my guest post about the HSM sequel were appalled that I would suggest such a thing, and they (understandably) did not know what I meant when I used the word "pitcher."

I had heard that the stage version of HSM was less coy about Ryan Evans's homosexuality. And legitimate news sources have confirmed that this is true, which makes the prospect of spending my hard-earned AOL cash to go see the stage show seem far more enticing.

My QueerSighted guest post, 'High School Musical 2': Chock Full of Gay, generated so much traffic and so many comments (1,800+) that I was tempted to make this--my very first entry as an official member of the QueerSighted team--as controversial as possible by writing something like "The Little Mermaid Was a Big Lesbian" or "Donald Duck Bottoms for Dollars." But I know better than to court controversy on purpose. It's wiser to offend people unwittingly--that way, I can claim ignorance and escape persecution relatively unscathed.

So I will instead use my first QueerSighted post to stake my claim as this blog's resident nerd by expressing my excitement about DoorQ.com, a new website for gay fans of everything related to sci-fi, horror, and fantasy. Launching this Halloween, DoorQ.com (pronounced "dork," as pointed out to me by the far more perceptive Kenneth Hill, this blog's managing editor) will provide news, reviews, and interviews, as well as original fiction, comics, and short films. And as if that weren't enough to satiate your inner gay geek, the site will also have a slew of social networking features like personal profiles, forums, chat rooms, and matchmaking tools--'cuz nerds need lovin' too!