Category: General & Random

Mad Men and Glee, two of my favorite TV shows (okay, the ONLY two I watch) shocked exactly no one today when it was revealed that they dominated the nominations for this year’s Emmy awards. But this doesn’t mean there’s no news there. There is. It’s just…buried. To find out what their success means about the American character (and Drag) take a little click-walk over to Vanity Fair, where I’ve fabricated crafted some interesting theories that make sense of all of this.

I watched the first two episodes of The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers. And if you like hot, young, shirtless guys getting sweaty and nailing sweet dance moves, you should too. (Also, Glee‘s Harry Shum Jr. is in it, which gave me an excuse to call him and have him explain the whole show to me.)

Check out my review for the Vanity Fair website.

Mimi Gross is an incredible artist who had a lifelong dream: designing a children’s playground with structures based on elements of the human anatomy. And guess what? It actually got built. In Brooklyn. And it opened this weekend.

Gunc wrote a piece about it for Time Out New York Kids, which includes a slide-show of amazing images of this amazing place. (And, yes, that is a snot-trough slide.) Click here—>to slide on over there.

The Gay Uncle responds to that New York Magazine cover story about why contemporary parents hate parenting with two simple rejoinders (one of which is this titular question.)

Click here to visit the Vanity Fair website, where the answer awaits you:

The Jeep Wrangler does nothing, and everything, well. If you care anything about your country, you’ll read my loving and patriotic review of it on the Vanity Fair website. (And, yes, that is a chainsaw bald eagle in the background of this photo.)

Happy birthday U.S.A. <---Click here to see the fireworks.

Seen on the Palisades Pkwy by the NY/NJ border (!!)

All you parents out there need to read this! It’s about an enormous seven-passenger SUV that is motivated by an efficient diesel engine. It’s the Audi Q7 TDI!!

Read about how it carries five people, and a fortnight’s worth of baby crap, on an Upstate NY “Lifeboating” adventure, by clicking right here.

In honor of the Summer Solstice, and the Gay Pride festivities in NYC, I offer this instructive list of five way to gay it up this season, in Vanity Fair.

Check it out right here.

Other people seem to think it sucked–and by “other people”, I mean EVERYONE. But I really enjoyed Jonah Hex. Why? Mostly because it featured some hilarious and insidious Tea Party references, and because it included the stunning synthetic construction that is Megan Fox.

Read my review for the Vanity Fair site here.

Though it has nothing to do with cars, Glee, gays or any of my other usual topics (well, it’s peripherally related to lesbianism), I couldn’t resist commenting on a piece in today’s NY Times about catios. What are catios? Well, they’re little outdoor areas, frequently urban outdoor areas like apartment balconies, that have been enclosed with chain link, chicken wire or some other feline-impermeable material. Why? Sheer craziness! I’ve long held a theory that ownership of more than two cats qualifies as a mental illness, and if you read the article, you’ll note that all of the catio builders featured therein have at least three, and as many as seven felines. I rest my case!

I have three reactions to this “trend”. First, if you fear that your cat is inclined to jump off a ten story balcony and into the streets of Greenwich Village–as one of the owners cites as inducement to enclosing her once lovely outdoor space with a jerry-rigged assemblage of deer mesh and “Oriental” garden statuary–the animal is probably not suited to city (or any form of) life, so building a cage will ultimately not help it (or you.) Second, this futile desire to try and control for every potentially injurious situation that may confront an allegedly helpless being (and the correlative feelings of power, primacy, and panic it imbues in the guardian) is akin to extremely counterproductive contemporary parenting practices such as not allowing kids to venture outside for fear they will be immediately abducted or run over, and/or making them wear so much protective gear when they are allowed out from in front of the Wii that they are debilitated and denied any experience of what used to be known as “fun.” It is basically poor stewardship. Finally, these fenced-in structures are hideously ugly, and adding ugliness to your abode is not something I–or any of the gay pets that are forced to live in such eyesores (and statistics, and The NY Times itself suggests they exist)–can ever abide. I would like to note, however, that the Habitrail-style catio (pictured above) built by a pair of lesbians in Toronto, is kind of awe inspring, in a creepy house-with-far-too-many-Christmas-decorations-in-the-yard kind of way.

[Photo Credit: Steve Payne/NYT]