December 1st 2003 - December 7th 2003
Sunday Living doll
Saturday Balaclavad
Friday Eye, eye
Thursday Satan's List
Wednesday Efficiency
Tuesday One of those things
Monday That Day
Sunday 7th December 2003
Some very uncharitable remarks passed about the dress that Grayson Perry wore to receive his Turner Prize this evening. Given that I celebrated the occasion (in the company of, amongst others, Wolfgang Tillmans) at Radio Egypt, the off-off-Hoxton drag-dedicated performance-night on Hackney Road, I must say I found his frock rather lovely - not a decapitated doll in sight!
And anyway, no criticism of Perry's dress-sense can match that of his art which I recently heard delivered in all seriousness (by someone who'd best remain nameless): "Horrid! You have to look at it!"
Saturday 6th December 2003
An alleged terror suspect found with a balaclava at his girlfriend's home was planning to go to a fancy dress party as Osama Bin Laden, a court heard yesterday...Asked why Findlay would want a balaclava to dress as Osama Bin Laden, Miss Beveridge said: 'That is what Osama Bin Laden wears.'
Friday 5th December 2003
Speaking of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, how about Straight Eye for the Queer Guy?
Thursday 4th December 2003
How wonderful to see a musical critique of US evil-empire policy zooming up the charts. And at Christmas too! Satan's List. By...Cliff Richard? Hang on, that can't be right.
Wednesday 3rd December 2003
I had quite a lot to say about Chris Bryant and the Gaydar phenomenon, as it happens, but, as it happens, Mark Simpson has said it for me:
The evil of internet cruising - and the reason why it will become irresistibly, devastatingly mainstream - is precisely its efficiency. IT plus a wired world means lust can be more productive, much more accurate, much more all-consuming, and much more pointless...
But efficiency is precisely what sex is not about. Sex is a journey where, if you're lucky, you get lost - like Hampstead Heath on a foggy night. Arriving is not really the point...
It's a slight shame that I have to direct you to Simpson's own site to read this; if you care to pay a pound you can read it on the Independent's own web-site, and note that his title for the piece ("How to turn promiscuity into bureaucracy") is not the same as theirs ("Confessions of a Gaydar junkie"); I blame the subs.
But it does give you a chance to read his uber-bitchy piece on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy whilst you're there - complete with underspoken reference to Andy Bell (who seems to be following me around lately; I expect him down Ver Swam any night now).
Speaking of Gaydar, and of Boy George's Gaydar profile in particular, am I the only one to have chuckled over the contrast between the exhaustingly extensive entry under Sex ("Bondage, Exhibitionists, Kissing, Phone Sex, Rimming, Spanking, Wanking") and that for Drugs ("Rather not say")? A whole barometer of changing sexual mores, right there.
Tuesday 2nd December 2003
Your worst nightmare? (or "one of those stories that gay people have to put up with from time to time"?)
Monday 1st December 2003
In the last three months, three highly-intelligent, well-educated, friends of mine (each with a name starting with the same letter of the alphabet, oddly enough) have quietly told me they were diagnosed as HIV positive recently.
Two of them had become extremely, and messily, ill before they even thought to have their blood tested, one of them was actually given the last rites, and all three are now doing well.
If you're going to fuck someone, use a condom.
......previous week
