The great Scottish comic Stanley Baxter gives us his take on take away (take out in the US).
It’s pure gay camp full of sexual double entendres. “Ice Cream, All it takes is a lick,” he is determined to lose his cherry in the ice cream skit. Just for the record, Baxter is not gay but he sure can pull it off.
This choice of tonight’s camp is, of course, tied to today’s report on obesity in the United States.
Despite wide-ranging efforts to encourage Americans to lose weight, the number of U.S. adults who are obese increased almost 2 percent between 2005 and 2007, a new report found.
In 2007, 25.6 percent of adults reported being obese, compared to 23.9 percent in 2005, according to the finding in the July 18 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’sMorbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
“The epidemic of adult obesity continues to rise in the United States, indicating that we need to step up our efforts at the national, state and local levels,” Dr. William Dietz, director of CDC’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity, said in a news release. “We need to encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables, engage in more physical activity and reduce the consumption of high-calorie foods and sugar-sweetened beverages in order to maintain a healthy weight.”
The percentage of adults who are obese varies by state and region, according to the report. For example, in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, 30 percent of the residents reported being obese, compared with 18.7 percent in Colorado, which had the lowest prevalence of obesity.
Obesity was most prevalent in the South, with 27 percent of residents classified as obese. In the Midwest, the number was 25.3 percent; in the Northeast, 23.3 percent; and in the West, 22.1 percent, according to the report.
“Ahmet Yildiz, 26, a physics student who represented his country at an international gay gathering in San Francisco last year, was shot leaving a cafe near the Bosphorus strait this week. Fatally wounded, the student tried to flee the attackers in his car, but lost control, crashed at the side of the road and died shortly afterwards in hospital. His friends believe Mr Yildiz was the victim of the country’s first gay honour killing. (…)
Bungled efforts by a religious-minded government to loosen the grip of Turkey’s authoritarian version of secularism have triggered a court case aimed at shutting the ruling party down, with a verdict expected within a month.
Against this backdrop, the issues of women’s rights, sexuality and the place of religion in the public arena have been particularly contentious. Ahmet Yildiz’s crime, his friends say, was to admit openly to his family that he was gay.
“From the day I met him, I never heard Ahmet have a friendly conversation with his parents,” one close friend and near neighbour recounted. “They would argue constantly, mostly about where he was, who he was with, what he was doing.”
The family pressure increased, the friend explained. “They wanted him to go back home, see a doctor who could cure him, and get married.” Shortly after coming out this year, Mr Yildiz went to a prosecutor to complain that he was receiving death threats. The case was dropped. Five months later, he was dead. The police are now investigating his murder. For gay rights groups, the student’s inability to get protection was a typical by-product of the indifference, if not hostility, with which a broad swathe of Turkish society views homosexuality. The military, for example, sees it as an “illness”. Men applying for an exemption to obligatory military service on grounds of homosexuality must provide proof – either in the form of an anal examination, or photographs.
“The media ignores or laughs off violence against gays,” says Buse Kilickaya, a member of the gay lobbying group Pink Life, adding that Ahmet Yildiz’s death “risks being swept under the carpet and forgotten like other cases in the past”. Turkey has a history of honour killings. A government survey earlier this year estimated that one person every week dies in Istanbul as a result of honour killings. It put the nationwide death toll at 220 in 2007. In the majority of cases, the victims are women, but Mr Yildiz’s friends suspect he may be the first recorded victim of a homosexual honour killing.
“We’ve been trying to contact Ahmet’s family since Wednesday, to get them to take responsibility for the funeral,” one of the victim’s friends said yesterday, standing outside the morgue where his body has been for three days. “There’s no answer, and I don’t think they are going to come.” The refusal of families to bury their relatives is common after honour-related murders.
Mazhar Bagli, a Turkish sociologist who has interviewed 189 people convicted of honour killings, has never heard of a death revolving around homosexuality but has no doubt that it could be used as justification. “Honour killings cleanse illicit relationships. For women, that is a broad term. Men are allowed more sexual freedom, but homosexuality is still seen by some as beyond the pale.”" (more…)
Senate Passes the Lantos/Hyde Act
In an 80-16 vote, the Senate today approved the Lantos/Hyde U.S. Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act (S 2731) which reauthorizes the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and along with it, an amendment secured by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) that lifts a ban on travel and immigration to the U.S. by those who are HIV-positive. Under the current plan, HIV-positive people can be considered “inadmissible.” Permanent entry and short term visits can be denied by border agents under this policy. The bill now goes to conference committee before heading on to the President.
California Supreme Court Keeps Anti-Gay Marriage Initiative on Ballot
A voter initiative to reinstate a ban on same-sex marriage will remain on the November ballot, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously Wednesday. The court issued a brief order rejecting arguments that the initiative, Proposition 8, was an illegal constitutional revision and that voters had been misled when they signed petitions to put it on the ballot. The decision, reached in closed session during the court’s weekly conference, cleared the way for what some observers expect to be a close vote on the marriage measure. More from the Los Angeles Times.
Genetic Trait in Blacks Makes Them More Susceptible to HIV
New research suggests that people of African descent are much more likely to have a genetic trait that makes them more susceptible to infection with the HIV virus. Scientists estimate that the trait — which also provides protection against a form of malaria — might account for 11 percent of the HIV cases in Africa, the continent hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic. Details in the Washington Post.
South Carolina Is So Gay
No wonder Obama took Donnie McClurkin campaigning in South Carolina. The Palmetto state is a gay heaven. Not exactly.
Some residents of South Carolina are up in arms over an international advertising campaign that touts the state as a gay-friendly destination.
Tourism posters proclaiming “South Carolina is so gay” were plastered all over London last week to coincide with London’s Gay Pride Week, but state tourism officials have now disavowed the campaign and insisted that they knew nothing about it.
An unidentified ‘low-level’ state employee reportedly responsible for greenlighting the posters has since resigned his position.
According to state officials, the employee was unauthorized to approve the campaign.
Despite protests to the contrary by South Carolina state representatives, however, there is evidence that there were some well placed individuals in the state’s tourism department who were aware of the campaign before last week.
Gay Commercials
Gay-themed commercials from Dolce Gabanna, Virgin Atlantic, Levi’s, MTV, Israel Board of Tourism, TEN Male Pheromone Frangrance, ML Telecommunications, Guinness Stout, Gay Adoption, Fernet Cinzano and Israeli Gay Youth TV. We’re so marketable. The Vigrin Atlantic is a classic but the Fernet Cinzano ad from Argentina is clever. The MTV ad is painfully sweet while the Guinness ad will drive me to me have a Guinness this week, any ad that portrays gay men in long-term loving relationships is memorable. Kudos to Guinness. The TEN Male Pheromone, while sexy hot, is more typical.
All four members of supergroup ABBA appeared together on Friday at the Swedish premiere of the film “Mamma Mia!”, delighting fans with their first public showing for years.
Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad — known as Frida — and Agnetha Faltskog walked down the red carpet at a Stockholm movie theatre to the cheers of several thousand fans.
The movie follows “Mamma Mia!” the musical, which toured worldwide and features 22 ABBA songs, including “Dancing Queen,” “Take a Chance on Me” and “The Winner Takes It All”.
The foursome, who shot to fame when they won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, last performed together in public in 1986, although there were reports they sang together at a private birthday party for a friend in 1999.
They were once reported to have been offered $1 billion to reunite for a concert tour.
At the film premiere, Agnetha and Frida embraced with actress Meryl Streep, posing for pictures before the three did a dance together. Moments later, all four band members appeared on the theatre balcony.
They stood together with Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and other members of the Mamma Mia! cast.
I can’t believe the billion dollar figure but I’d go to see them. I saw them in Hamburg way back when. I had to beg my mother let me go. I mean serious begging. This time I would have to beg my partner to let me go. He’s not really a fan.
That’s perhaps my motto (Gimme, Gimme, Gimme a Man After Midnight) and luckly I have one but it is still so much fun to sing that tune and just get silly. And because one ABBA tune is never enough, here’s more.
Mamma Mia
S.O.S.
Fernando
Chiquitita
And finally the moment that launched the sensation, ABBA’s performance at EuroVision in 1974. Check out the conductor. How campy can you get?
1974 Eurovision Performance of Waterloo
I might just have to listen to ABBA the rest of the month. My partner is going to hate me by month’s end if not the end of today.
An hour ago, the din of the dyke march could be heard roaring through the Castro. It’s a nice tradition so I braved the wilds and the crowds to check out it. Normally, I barricade myself in the house with a few select guests for an evening of our own more modest frivolity. But venture out I did, dragged down by an insistent partner and more adventurous friends over my protestations of a roast in the oven and soufflés to start. The soufflés can wait, they said. I question whether any self-respecting gay man could ever utter such horror.
And yet glad I am that I was dragged down to see the dyke march, the official kickoff of San Francisco’s Gay Pride Celebration. I am a sentimental old fool because it did move me to tears to see many lesbian couples march under “Just Married” banners. There are no words. Human joy is immeasurable.
Now the din I hear is the crowd below on Castro and Market that is left to linger and progressively drink themselves silly. That make take some time or perhaps their definition of silly and mine are far different. I live up the hill and north of Market Street, so technically this is Corona Heights not the Castro or Eureka Valley as the neighborhood was formerly known but few know that and even less care. Being up the hill offers a measure of safety from the drunken hordes. Drunks can’t climb hills too well I have found. Still some will crawl themselves up the hill in search of their cars where they’ll sleep it off.
Pride always brings reflections on my own journey. I did not take kindly to being gay. Whose sick joke was this? And yet the idea of dating girls was an anathema. Happily, I had my books and my athletic prowess to keep my mind off sexual urges that I neither wanted nor could really control to the level that I wanted to control them. In college, I did date more for show than anything else though in truth I also did date for necessity, attending a Viennese Ball alone is not exactly much fun and a Strauss waltz and polka were things I loved that unfortunately required a female partner. So date, I did. I should send those poor women condolences cards now. What was I thinking?
In college, I also met Dr. Ned Spofford, my classics professor and my academic advisor. Ned is the guy up on the left. Ned’s tale is quite the tale. It’s a PBS documentary actually, The Great Pink Scare. I love Ned to death, through my time at Stanford, we had dinner every Thursday night. Long after he ceased to be my academic advisor, he remains my mentor, my guide to civil liberties enjoyed by Western men and a reminder that everything we see now humanity has seen before and will see again. He introduced me to the beauty of fine glass, Japanese silk prints, Herotudus and Alberta Hunter. I still go down to Palo Alto now and then to see Ned but on Pride he is much on my mind. What happened to Ned should not have happened in the Western World.
On Labor Day weekend in 1960, Massachusetts state police troopers swept through the small, idyllic town of Northampton and hauled 15 men off to jail. Three of them were professors at Northampton’s elite Smith College.
THE GREAT PINK SCARE tells the story of the devastating persecution that followed, when the three Smith professors were charged with possessing and dispersing obscene literature, tried in Northampton District Court, and eventually convicted as felons.
“Police Break Up Major Homosexual Smut Ring!” screamed newspaper headlines, first in Boston, then across the country and even internationally.
On the surface, it was the routing out of pornographers, but in reality, it was a McCarthy-like witch-hunt against homosexuals.
The alleged ringleader, Professor Newton Arvin, was considered America’s finest literary critic. The other two accused were Smith junior faculty members Joel Dorius and Ned Spofford. All three lost their jobs.
It’s Pride so Happy Pride, the highest of the high-homo holidays as I call them, given its close approximation to summer solstice, I have often viewed it as the Gay New Year kicking off a series of events that last through the end of the calendar year. The San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Film Festival is currently on-going. And over the next few months, there are a plethora of events celebrating aspects of gay life and culture.
For a full schedule of San Francisco Gay Pride Events, please visit SF Pride. For more on the San Francisco Frameline Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, please visit Frameline 2008
Heinz has released this commercial for its Heinz Deli Mayonnaise for the UK market. The TV ad is the first by Heinz’s new ad agency AMV BBDO since it won the £10m a year UK business last year. BBDO Worldwide is the world’s second largest ad agency and is owed by Omnicon, a US based holding company that owns other ad agencies and public relations firms. Over the years, BBDO has created commercials such as Wisk’s “Ring Around the Collar” and Burger King’s “Have It Your Way” ads.
AMV BBDO said that the concept behind the campaign is that the product tastes so good “It’s as if you have your own New York deli man in your kitchen”.
Personally, I like my deli man to look less like Robert DeNiro and more like Brad Pitt. Still, kudos to Heinz for portraying gay men as loving fathers in a committed relationship. Needless to say, this ad could never run in the United States.
I never though I’d write a title like that! Via Le Monde, Bülent Ersoy, 56, is a Turkish transsexual singer. She is immensely popular across the entire country, especially among the working class. She is now risking 18 months in prison for her call to pacifism on television, on behalf of Turkish mothers.
She did so in the midst of a wave of patriotism, last February, as Turkish troops launched an assault against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan. Taking everyone by surprise, as she was hosting the Turkish version of American Idol (I guess crappy television programs are the stormtroopers of cultural globalization), she declared “I am not a mother and I will never be” but that if she had had sons, she would have refused to send them “to their graves.” She continued, in front of the live audience, “Our children continue to be sent there, there are only tears, blood and funerals and we continue to propagate the same cliches [the nationalist and vengeful slogans]. Why can’t we find a solution?”
The very next day, a prosecutor in Istanbul filed charges against her for “inciting the hatred against the armed forces” as well as demeaning military service. Such charges carry a maximum of three years in prison.
This has to be understood in the context of Turkey. Turkey is a democracy but the military is a very strong institution that has long dominated political life. It plays a central role in maintaining national unity through mandatory conscription for all men. As the proverb says, “every Turk is born a soldier.” Conscientious objection also carries a prison term. However, in recent years, there have been calls against military propaganda and the military establishment.
This is not the first time that Bülent Ersoy gets in trouble with the authorities. Until 1988, she was banned from public performances by the military regime because of her “social deviance.” Apart from her singing, she has made headlines for her marriages and divorces with much (much) younger men.
