Support Starbucks Against Anti-Gay Boycott

Thank You Starbucks

Starbucks stuck its neck out to publicly support the right of all people to marry, regardless of the gender of their partner.

Now it is under attack by the ironically-named, ultra-conservative American “National Organization for Marriage”. Already over 4,000 NOM members have pledged to boycott Starbucks.

Let’s blow the right wing out of the water by getting more than ten times as many consumers from around the world to thank Starbucks for standing up for gay marriage.

Join us in showing our support for Starbucks by signing our giant Thank You card. If 40,000 of us sign it, we’ll deliver it to Starbucks executives to give them moral support to keep standing up for equality.

NOM is targeting Starbucks because the company recently stood up publicly to support gay marriage legislation in their home state of Washington in the United States. When it passed, the bill’s lead sponsor said that support from business convinced moderate legislators to vote for it. Without support from companies like Starbucks, the gay marriage law might have failed.

Now, if Starbucks backtracks because of opposition, then it will set the gay rights struggle back to a time when big corporations couldn’t come out and support gay people for fear of public backlash. Even worse, it will embolden anti-gay activists around the world to target other companies that support gay rights, and serve as a lesson to other companies to stay out of the fight for equal rights entirely.

Starbucks isn’t perfect — and in the future we’ll probably be asking it to improve its policies on other issues. But it’s a big deal when a giant multinational corporation with no particular connection to the gay community realizes that there are real business benefits — from better employees to happier customers — to standing up for progressive ideals. As SumOfUs members and ethical consumers, we can’t just criticize corporations when they do bad. We also want to encourage them when they do good.

Let’s show that supporting equal rights is good business: Add your name to this thank you card.

Thursday: Handling It All...

March 8th! NYC temperature at 4:45pm? 70 °F. This is just wrong!

WNBC is too foolish to oust anchor Sue Simmons. She is a local TV News Goddess... These stupid consultants... They want new, hip, cutting edge... But, local audiences prefer their hometown feel. WNBC is done.

One month only... newly restored Keith Haring bathroom is open to the public til March 31. Details of the Keith Haring Mural at the LGBT Center.

According to the NYTimes, new gay club XL is up and running with different themes... "At the moment, Friday is popular with clean-cut young professionals, while Saturday draws an older, well-muscled crowd from Chelsea. Sunday is Latino night. Earlier in the week, there are also occasional cabaret shows featuring drag queens and other acts. And starting today is a new party called 20-Something Thursday". So far, I don't see a theme for me... lol.

I've been groovin on some Stevie Nicks lately... Here's Stevie Nicks official You Tube channel... I especially dig her other worldly stuff...

I can tell you that Eric R. Kandel is a brainiac. "I have no difficulty about enhancing memory. Removing memory is more complicated. If it’s to reduce the impact of a particular trauma, I have no difficulty with that, but there are other ways to deal with it — cognitive behavior therapy, exposure therapy, drugs. To go into your head and pluck out a memory of an unfortunate love experience, that’s a bad idea... You know, in the end, we are who we are. We’re all part of what we’ve experienced... It shapes you."

Don't forget... Clocks spring forward on Sunday!

New mantra from the book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers: "I can handle it"...

Warm Up Wednesday: Calvin Klein Underwear

Warm Up Wednesday: Buster Crabbe

As winter progresses, Postcards from Hell's Kitchen provides another Warm Up Wednesday...

Vintage Pinup Fella: Buster Crabbe. (February 7, 1908 – April 23, 1983.)

Swim star and Flash Gordon actor Buster Crabbe couldn't help becoming a gay icon.

"If the role required it, I guess I'd strip... If you have the body, you do it."
Buster Crabbe - After Dark interview, 1972.

Oh, Buster...

NewFest 2011: Rent Boys, Sick Comedy and a Slick Biopic

 

As longtime readers of Postcards from Hell's Kitchen readers will recall... Summer vacation for me means the opportunity to engage in all kinds of New Yorky people, places, and things that I'd never have the time (or residue energy) to enjoy during the regular work year...

And so it was with last week's NewFest film festival...

This year's fest seemed well run from my perspective... Even the occasional broken air conditioner, ticket order mix ups, impromptu Director Q&A's, and delayed film start times, were all handled smoothly and professionally by cheery NewFest staffers...

NewFest is dedicated to bringing together filmmakers and audiences in the building of a community that passionately supports giving greater visibility and voice to a wide range of expressions and representations of the LGBT experience. We are committed to nurturing emerging LGBT and allied filmmakers. We support those artists who are willing to take risks in telling the stories that fully reflect the diversity and complexity of our lives. And we’re committed to bringing our audience stories that transform our vision of who we are and who we can be.

Through the New York LGBT film festival, presented annually since 1988, and year-round programming, NewFest celebrates fine domestic and international film as part of our mission to break through closet doors and glass ceilings everywhere.


The German documentary Rent Boys Die Jungs vom Bahnhof Zoo tackled the compelling world of male prostitution in Berlin without falling into cliche' by focussing on the psychology and sociology without the prurient appeal... The story lines focused on the biographies of five rent boys including Ionel and visiting his home village in Romania. There was also Nazif, a former civil war refugee from Bosnia who came to Germany as a child and began working the Bahnhof Zoo train station as a hustler.

The film’s main protagonist is Daniel (Pictured), who began working as a male prostitute at sixteen. He longs for a simple post-prostitution career with a simple job, raising his son, and a simple life with his female partner.

I saw a nonsense movie called Varla Jean and the Mushroomheads which was totally not my cup of tea. Interesting premise of twisted drag queen tries to alter her narcissistic career into a TV kid's show... But I draw the line at references to pedophilia (later recounted to depict that the suspect was only guilty feeding kids illegal prescription drugs... Meh). Film lacked so much of the John Water's aesthetic that it tried desperately to achieve. That's one I HIGHLY UNrecommend!


I also caught that terrific bio documentary on Carol Channing. Follow that link to my review of Carol Channing: Larger Than Life that I had published last week...

Kudos to all involved with NewFest. Here's a list of 2011 NewFest Awards.

Of course all who were able to widen their audience base with their film work were winners... The good, the bad and the ugly...

Kevin Keller is No Wendel!

Isn't it Bromantic?

Archie Comics will spin off Archie's gay pal Kevin Keller into his own comic...

Is this merely a publicity stunt??

Or could such a thing be sustainable and actually make a profit...?

No doubt the opening issue will be a HUGE collector's item!!

More at New York Times' Gay Character Gets His Own Comic Book.

My duh prediction is that Kevin will never be another Wendel... (Created by my brilliant friend Howard Cruse)

His The Complete Wendel is on sale now... If you want to see a real gay comic character...

Says Howard, "Every episode of my Wendel comic strip series, which was regularly featured in The Advocate during the 1980s, will be waiting to be savored (or re-savored) in The Complete Wendel, along with a new introduction by Alison Bechdel and my newly-drawn orgy of cartooned speculation, "Where Are They Now?"

I wonder what comic icon Frank Miller thinks about all of this??

Next time I pass Frank outside on a Hell's Kitchen neighborhood street (he's a Hell's Kitchen neighbor), perhaps I'll ask him... LOL

Update: Wonder Man reported on the Gays in Comics Panel at Comic Con and reports that Kevin Keller comic will deal with issues such as Don't Ask Don't Tell and Gay Marriage.

Extra Special Gay Pride Day Today

Happy Birthday to Derek Jeter!

He's 37 today.

While that may be old for a professional ballplayer...

... You'll *never* be too old for me...

Was just thinking... With same-sex marriage being all legalized and all...

Whaddaya say, Derek?

Will you marry me?

Let's you and I make this Gay Pride Day extra special...!

Just in Time for the Pride Parade

The New York state senate has passed Governor Andrew Cuomo's Marriage Equality Act by a vote of 33-29. All Democratic senators but Bronx pastor Ruben Diaz, Sr. (who spoke vehemently against the measure) voted to support the measure. They were supported by Republicans Roy McDonald and James Alesi, who had announced their intentions to support the bill before the vote, and also Steve Saland, who spoke at length about his decision, and said, "I hope that my parents would be proud." Mark Grisanti, too, spoke touchingly about his change of heart. The latter group had held out for alterations in the bill designed to offer increased protections to religious groups who object to same-sex nuptials. Those amendments were agreed upon Friday afternoon and passed in the assembly 82-47 in the early evening. Once the bill is signed by the governor, New York will become the sixth and largest state to legalize marriage for gay couples, more than doubling the number of self-reported gay couples allowed to marry in the United States. It joins New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and the District of Columbia, which variously legalized marriage equality through the legislatures and through court rulings.


Cuomo's updated bill, which grants same sex couples the same legal rights as heterosexual couples, will go into effect thirty days after it is signed into law.

From New York Magazine by Chris Rovzar.

Special Thanks to all the bold-faced names above...

Site of the Week: Male Models Vintage Beefcake

Here's a find that I stumbled on while doing a Google Image search for something completely unrelated...

Male Models Vintage Beefcake recalls the yesteryear era of Male Physique magazines.

These are classic captures of society's view of masculinity at the time...

And these models are classic captures of ______________________________________ .

You fill in the blank.

I love to see these little blogs that capture little niches and preserve them, and make them accessible...

Some topics are more interesting than others, of course... This one rocks! LOL

You're Perfect as a Pig

Shari Lewis, Lamb Chop and Big Bird state an important self-acceptance lesson for the ages...

So... Let's all sing along along with them...

"Forgiveness sake,
 Don't change a thing,
You're perfect as a pig!"

Yummy Winkelvoss Twins Should 'Give It Up'

OK, Boys: Give it up...

I mean lit and fig...

This second Facebook lawsuit makes you both look greedy and petty. You already got your millions in the first case...

Now: Let it go...

Now... Do something that goofy looking Mark Zucker could never do... Earn a fortune directly from your own talent... Or for starters: your twin youth and double good looks...

Take off some garments and pose for a calendar, for starters...

OK, that's MY idea... So if you do it, I'll sue you...

How do you like them apples??

Or... We can come to "an arrangement"...

Call me, we'll do lunch and a test shoot... All sounds yummy to me.

TGIF Music Break: Cazwell's Get My Money Back

Congratulations to Joe.My.God

Congratulations to longtime fellow NYC blogger buddy Joe.My.God on receiving the first ever GLAAD media award for Outstanding Blog...

This is GLAAD's first ever blogging award...

Much deserved, Joe!