Thankful For...Regina Spektor

I'm not going to post a full review of Regina Spektor's newest release--Regina Spektor: Live in London, a CD and full blu-ray concert DVD--because there's no real point in gushing about her brilliance. I watched the full concert last night and was simply blown away by Spektor's talent. I'm watching it again right now. If you haven't given Spektor a chance for whatever reason--maybe you heard "Fidelity" on the radio and thought it was stupid, maybe you think she's too girly, maybe you just don't like her style of music or writing--you ought to go see her perform sometime. The New York-based Russian immigrant plays piano, keyboard and guitar. She sings a cappella. She writes all her own music and lyrics. And she's completely genuine, and even seems to be embarrassed by the attention she gets.

Just watch this performance of "Eet" before you make up your mind.

Robyn Goes Back To The Future

Body Talk Pt. 3 came out yesterday, fulfilling Robyn's newest perfect pop formulation. Pt. 1, released last spring, was a mixed bag of dance-pop (Dancing On My Own, Fembot), electro-hip-pop (None Of Dem), and avant garde or unexpected acoustic tracks (Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do, Jag vet en delig rosa). The song Hang With Me takes up real estate on parts one and two of Body Talk--acoustic on the first and mixed perfectly on the second. Body Talk Pt. 2 overall is edgier, with explicit (but fun) tracks like Criminal Intent and U Should Know Better, featuring Snoop Dogg. Part two ends with the stunning ballad Indestructible--Acoustic Version. From that name, we knew to expect a dance mix on Body Talk Pt. 3. Robyn doesn't disappoint.

Just as she did with her two versions of Hang With Me, Robyn pulls off the rare trick of making both an acoustic and an electronic-mixed version of Indestructible sound like the original. The acoustic version is as close as Robyn gets to a power ballad; the part three version is power pop. On the whole, Body Talk Pt. 3--brief at five tracks--is the most cohesive third of the trilogy.

On yesterday's issue, every song is pure dance-pop--no balladry, no hardcore. In Indestructible, she opens the EP singing, "I'm going back through time at the speed of light." The sound is very retro--a sonic theme that continues through every song on the EP. When she revs up her Time Machine engine (the second song on the album), we're solidly in the 1980s. And if you weren't sure from what decade Robyn was pulling, she gives you a handy Back to the Future reference ("All I need is a time machine/All I want is a delorean"), which is the song's extended metaphor. Call Your Girlfriend, the third song, opens with a fairly contemporary sound, but we're in full ABBA mode by the chorus. You'll love it, even if you didn't know how much you missed Electric Light Orchestra. Get Myself Together and Stars 4-Ever would have been perfect in the mid-90s, and they're pretty perfect now (although probably the weakest two songs on this mini-album, in my opinion).

Considered as a whole, Body Talk--parts one, two, and three put together--make for an astonishingly polished, diverse, and failure-free album. Normally an album with 24 original songs has some serious misfires, but at its worst, the weakest songs in the bunch (In My Eyes, Love Kills) are better than serviceable. It's incredible that Robyn isn't better known in the U.S., but at least she's appreciated by critics and the people who know her music.

Here's a taste of Part 3, if you're one of the sad few who don't have the album yet. Let's go back in time...

Fall Bounty: More Hot Chris Fawcett

See more--or buy the clothes off his supple bottom--at Undergear.

Gorgeous Christopher Fawcett For The Holidays

Sometimes publicists and model managers ask me to post pictures promoting photographers, models, products. A note to all: Use Christopher Fawcett, and you won't even have to ask.

In the past, I have obsessed over Ian Somerhalder and Ryan Philippe. Here is my new obsession.

Model Christopher Fawcett is just...he's just stunningly beautiful. There's no other way to put it.

Thanks to Undergear for bringing us some beauty and joy this holiday season. Behold Mr. Fawcett in all his glory. (Well, not *all* his glory, but pretty close in some of these pictures!)

A Comment On The Recent Wave Of Gay Teen Suicides

This morning, I read about yet another gay teen who had killed himself this week because of having been emotionally tortured due to his sexuality. This isn't easy to write because it's honest, but I have very mixed feelings about the tragedy of these events. In many ways, I think these young men are better off. Many of my "friends" (via Facebook and Twitter, that is--not friends in real life) have encouraged me to post a video to The Trevor Project explaining how "it gets better." Well...in some ways it does, and in some ways it doesn't. Here's the story of my gay life, abbreviated.

I was a happy kid, and I got along with just about everybody in elementary school. When I was in fifth grade, some kid moved to my neighborhood from California and started calling me "faggot." By the next year, my best friend of five years was calling me a fag and he and a little pack of new friends were literally running me down on their bikes at the bus stop when I got home from school--they were still in elementary school; I was in my first year of middle school. From that year on, I was pinched and hit in the locker room, my ears were flicked in the classroom, and I was called every variation of "faggot" in math class, English class, business class, without a protective word from any teacher, ever. My own sister refused to sit next to me on the school bus, literally pushing me off her seat and into the aisle, where I squatted and was yelled at by the bus driver. My defense was to miss as much school as possible--40 to 44 days a year on average--and to convince people that I was dangerously insane. Every morning I woke up, my first conscious thought was, "oh, no, not again. Not another day." I read "The Final Exit" and even began to amass pills that had various effects on the nervous and respiratory systems, thinking that maybe the right combination would help me end the pain without rendering me a vegetable. I did not have a single friend again until college.

I flourished in college; it was the only happy period of my adult life. I had tried to join George Mason University's gay pride group, but the attempt was unsuccessful, as I don't have the social skills to meet new people, and none of the gay guys in the group had any interest in talking to me. I was befriended by a very gay guy in my French class who asked me to tutor him. He was a recovering drug addict and alcoholic with no driver's license, and I became his driver for a while. He took me to a group therapy of sorts led by a man named Ric Chollar, who was tremendously important to my later survival and helped me to deal with longstanding self-hatred. Through this group, I ended up involved with the gay pride group, and friends with the new boyfriend of the guy from my French class and a lot of lesbians. (None of the guys ever spoke to me.) Nevertheless, I was happier than I had been since childhood, and I excelled in my film and media studies--with a concentration in cultural constructions of sexuality and gender issues. I graduated among the top five in my class with honors and high distinction from the university. I thought I could do anything.

The next year, I was looking at grad schools, feeling on top of the world, when my sister told me that the kid from my childhood--the one from California who I had always regarded as the catalyst for my downward spiral--had partnered with Nelly and another bully from my high school to launch Vokal and Apple Bottoms clothing lines. He was a millionaire. I was...what? Working a job I hated, in debt, and I had never had a relationship. It is humiliating to admit, but learning the news of this person's success changed the whole psychological trajectory of my life. To me, it was as if I had been a Jewish escapee of a concentration camp and had just discovered that Hitler had also escaped and become emperor of his own small country. It all started again.

Ten years later, I am living in the heart of Washington, D.C.'s gay neighborhood. I have lived in my small studio apartment for almost a year now, and I don't have a single gay friend in real life. Over the years, I've tried many things to distract myself and make my world better. I went back to school and got an MFA in creative writing. I've tried writing fiction to turn my discontent into "art." I've painted for the same purpose--because color and the right composition can temporarily elevate life into something worth living. But I haven't had much success with either, and so I feel like a hopeless failure in those regards. I wrote for a little while for Advocate.com, contributing Q&As with entertainers, but eventually the company stopped paying me and then stopped responding to me. The reason I wrote for them was because I had this idea that, if I could get recognizable, high-profile people to speak out in support of gay rights, then maybe it would open the minds of their fans and make the world a little easier for LGBT people. But the company stopped paying me eventually after publishing many of my articles, and then the editor stopped writing to me altogether. Ultimately, that relationship did more harm to my self-worth than helped it. And that's the moral of this story: gay people are going to keep hating ourselves and killing ourselves as long as gay people continue to spread hate among one another.

Just minutes ago--the reason I am writing this--somebody on an online gay dating site wrote to me, unprompted, "YOU can email me when you get a better body. And face." That's the general response I've gotten from just about every gay man I have tried to befriend in my life. I've been called ugly, average, and told that if I work harder at improving myself, I might be worth knowing. "You can write to me once you gain some more muscle," one guy wrote, not long ago.

I am 32 years old now, and I still wake up thinking, "Oh, no, not again. Not another day," every day. Every single day. I spend my time alone in bed or with my family, who try hard to cheer me up. My sister wants me to stop feeling sorry for myself. My mother keeps telling me that someone is out there for me, somewhere, someday. My father always asks what he can do for me; he treats me like an absolute invalid. In other words, he pities me. There is no romantic involvement in my life, nothing sensual, no human connection, and I don't have anyone of my own kind on my side. I feel as alone as those kids did. I may represent their futures, if they had had them. I am not trying to say that they didn't deserve a chance, but if I am being completely honest--and I am right here, right now--then I have to say that I feel pretty sure their lives may be better over than as living hells.

I have tried therapy, and I've tried everything I can think of to make the world better, but the bottom line is that any person's experience in life is largely determined by the way that person is treated by others. I get mail from the Human Rights Campaign and other similar causes close to weekly asking for contributions, but I am a gay man who, despite great efforts to become involved in the so-called gay community, has been met only with rejection after rejection after rejection. I think about suicide during all of my waking moments. I go for walks during my lunch break and look down over bridges and think, "is today the day? Is this even high enough?"

My grandmother's life was ruined because her first husband revealed himself to be a gay man in denial. He died slowly from alcoholism, and she married my grandfather, a tortured and abusive alcoholic, and she hated all men--but especially gay men--for the rest of her life.

I don't believe that misery and self-hatred is the nature of gay men; I think it comes from knowing that, out in the rest of the world, we're not equals. But in my experience, gay men strive for perfection in everything, including other gay men, because we're always trying to prove ourselves worthy. Eventually, hopefully, this will change. But I still look down from every bridge I walk over, and I still spend time at home looking up lethal combinations of pharmaceuticals online, and I still take long baths and think about slicing open my veins. Because it just hurts to be here.

I wish I could say that "it gets better." The bullying itself? Yes, that gets better when high school is over. But the general misery? I don't know. Maybe for some. Not for this one. Not yet.

Gaga Tells The Senate

Love her, hate her, can't bear one more moment of her, whatever. You've got to give it to Lady Gaga, our modern-day hippie.

Like civil rights activists of yore--and, really, no one since--Gaga has taken LGBT civil liberties to heart and has become a true outspoken activist. She has protested in Washington, D.C. on behalf of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and yesterday, she released this video on behalf of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.



Even if you don't like the woman's style or publicity antics, you've got to give it to her: She's consistent with her message and she's a more articulate and empassioned spokesperson that most. Imagine any other 25 year-old pop star (Britney? Ke$ha??) relaying such an elegant plea. You can't, can you? That's because there's only one Gaga.

Fantasy Photoshoot

We're suckers for anything with homoerotic visual references to Jesus Christ, Ancient Greek deities, U.S. military circa WWII, and rodeos--but only if they're all combined!

Fortunately, photographer Gabriel Wickbold delivered with this "Fantasy" photoshoot.

Ricky Martin Gets Inked

In case you missed it, Ricky Martin recently tweeted this picture of himself getting a tattoo on his shoulder/chest...looks like it hurts! We wonder what it'll be??

John Travolta Crashes Airplane Through Wall

Oprah's Audience Freaks Out Again
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To commemorate Oprah's 25th anniversary, she and John Travolta thought it would be fun to fly an airplane through the wall of her set...two days after September 11!

Classsssssssssssssssssssssy.

But she is taking her whole audience to the land of Olivia Newton-John, Ryan Kwanten, Paradise Beach, and adorable koalas!!

Tastes Like Fall Cocktail Recipe

For the first time since April, the temperature has dropped below 85 degrees.

In the face of global warming, we're officially declaring it sweater weather!

We wanted a taste for something crispy and autumnal, and we found a delicious-sounding "pumpkin divine cocktail" recipe. And then we discovered that we couldn't find Grey Goose poive and pumpkin butter on short notice, so we improvised--and for once, my improvisation turned out to be a good thing!

Without further ado, the Tastes Like Fall cocktail:

• 1 part SKYY ginger vodka
• 1 part pear butter
• 1/2 part simple syrup
• 1/2 part Triple Sec
• Pinch ground cinnamon
• Pinch ground clove
• 1/2 pinch grated nutmeg

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker.

Shake till your arm hurts.

Strain.

Garnish with apple slice.
Drink.

Chill out.

Even The Vatican Knows Better Than To Fuck With Robyn

Even the French know better than to fuck with Robyn.

Part two of Robyn's 'Body Talk' sonic triptych reveals the genius behind the body of work's three-part structure. Part 1, released earlier this year, showcased Robyn's diverse talents, but felt incongruous and stunted by its short conclusion. The album gave us the straightforward dance-pop track "Dancing On My Own," aggressive electro-hip-hop "None of Dem," and two acoustic tracks, one a traditional Swedish ballad, and the other, "Hang with Me," quiet standouts from the rest. The first album didn't have a weak song, but taken together, it felt like a bit of a mishmash. But the second mini-album brings it all together; "Hang with Me," for example, gets a spectacular dance-pop treatment. Without the time and space that separates 'Body Talk Pt. 1's' acoustic version from this one, either might seem like a weaker version; but given the distance the staggered release gives us, each version can be appreciated on its own merits. And to Robyn's credit, both versions are great successes, taken on their own or together.

Part two also gives us a bit more of the Robyn that impressed us with her recent self-titled release, with the bitingly hilarious "Criminal Intent" and the self-aggrandizing "U Should Know Better," a duet with Snoop Dogg. In turns, Robyn informs us on "U Should Know Better" that everyone, including the French, the Russians, the FBI, the CIA, and (most bravely?) the Vatican "should know better than to fuck with me." Robyn's strengths are her delivery--such hip-hop bravado from a blonde Scandinavian pop tart never ceases to surprise--and her writing. She disguises unexpected moments of hard-hitting emotion with a unique wit, achieving something more than run-of-the-mill entertainment value. The final track on 'Body Talk Pt. 2,' "Indestructible," is a fragile and heartfelt piece, but the (Acoustic Version) tag keeps us looking forward to part three. We expect a stomping dancefloor-friendly version to follow, but with Robyn, it's hard to predict. Which is exactly how she keeps us wanting more.

Check out "Hang With me" and "Criminal Intent":

Gorgeous Model Christopher Fawcett Surfaces At Undergear

Christopher Fawcett (aka--to us, anyway--Chris Flawless), the male model who has officially supplanted Ian Somerhalder and Ryan Phillippe as prettiest man alive, has shown up recently in a Nordstrom campaign...but we're much more interested in his current appearance at Undergear.

As evidence of Chris's Flawlessness, we encourage you to zoom in on the photos and check out every detail...mmm...