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A really good fuck can have totally frightful consequences. We're sure a lot of you will be out and about this pre-Halloween weekend, so we'd like to remind you to use your noggin and keep your sexual selves safe. That's why we've made a visually stimulating field guide for you. Microscopic slides of the most common diseases definitely catch the eye, but the gory details will make you wary of catching the nasty bugs we've wrangled. Before you begin, however, keep in mind we're no experts and this isn't a comprehensive list. The Center For Disease Control definitely gets down and dirty, so we recommend you familiarize yourself with their website. If you're not too scared, of course. |
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You guys did super with the comments. Really. Just super - lisp and all. While we have plenty of thoughts on your thoughts on our thoughts, we're switching it up these week. As you're well aware, we've just kicked off The Style Issue. Before things go too far, however, we'd like to have a brief look back on some of our other issues and some of the bits that didn't make it. Take a look at some unpublished excerpts, after the jump. |
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Like so many good scares, it snuck up on us and sprung from We Want Your Art: our petition for you, our darling (and attractive) readers, to send us your aesthetic wonders. While we've loved everything we've seen so far, Alabama photographer Eric Sizemore's eerie, evocative work caught our eye, if you will. A real mensch, young Sizemore allowed us the abrupt interview found after the jump, along with some select images from "AutoBioPhotoGraphs". A grainy recreation of Sizemore's coming out process, this series successfully conveys the universal homo-horror of coming out. Further, The burnt edges and blacked out faces enhance the message, reminding the viewer of the identity-consuming anxiety surrounding closeted sex. Talk about totally frightful. (Oh, and to all the people who've sent us art that's yet to be posted: never fear, you'll get your turn.) |
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While those efforts will no doubt lead to wider prevention and treatment programs, a new report suggests that gay youth in the Western Cape region have not heard the calls for more vigilant safe-sex practices. South Africa's Independent reports:
New and improved medications have led to a similar trend in other nations, but the epidemic in South Africa may be one of the worst. According to the article:
So, what are these risky sex practices? Well, many people only use condoms to "punish" their lovers. We tend to think withholding sex entirely's a better method. |
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Fresh from working hard and playing harder at Berlin's Hustlaball and Venus Fair, a recuperating Buck was too under the weather to talk on the phone, but he graciously put up with Matt Sussman’s needling over email. Unless you're a total scaredy cat, you'll dive into the jump to ch-ch-check it out… |
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In fact, you could say the same thing for the entire album, Silent Shout: their first US offering from earlier this year. It may surprise you to know that The Knife first made their impact in Sweden back in 2001 with their self-titled album. Deep Cuts, their 2003 follow-up, bolstered their status as aural wonders. To celebrate their upcoming two-night gig at the CMJ Music Festival in New York City, Mute Records (the same folks who brought us the new Frank Tovey collection) will be releasing both The Knife and Deep Cut for the first time in The States. Appropriately enough, they drop on Halloween, meaning you'll have the perfect soundtrack to scare the pants off that certain trickster. |
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It’d be a glaring omission not to include the Irish-born painter Francis Bacon in The Totally Frightful Issue. Though he started his artistic career as an interior decorator, Bacon made a name for himself with his vivid, figurative depictions of humans in pain, yearning to capture, as he said, “sensation.” As is so often the case in art, the form of this sensation depends largely on the viewer. While some insist his work draws on the violent, world war torn period in which he came of age, others narrow in on his homo-ways to explain the radical sexuality in his distorted, often grotesque images. Regardless of one's take on the matter, we think he's dreadfully frightful - in the best way possible, of course. See a few of our favorite Francis Bacon paintings, after the jump… |
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The only problem was that we couldn't decide what song best fit our celebratory mood. Luckily we found ourselves paying a visit to our friends at Gayz of Our Lives (you know, the fashion mavens who brought us the top ten Freaky Fashion Trends for The Totally Frightful Issue). While there, we found this link to DJ Revolucian's myspace page where you can find the dance remix of Barbara Streisand's recent "Shut The Fuck Up" flare up. If there's a better song to dance to while telling homo-haters to "shut the fuck up" and let gays marry, we haven't heard it. Enjoy! |
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Our fear stemmed not from nerves over interviewing a so-called "celebrity," nor did they come from some deep-seeded attraction to the former Amazing Racer turned activist. We were actually afraid that we'd end up offending him. Much to our surprise, however, we didn't. In fact, we weren't even tempted. Shocking, right? As we made our introductions, touching on the fact that Reichen's from Cincinnati (love the 513) and a mutual love for The Grateful Dead, it occurred to us that maybe we were wrong to criticize him: maybe Reichen's actually a really nice, sincere guy whose using his elevated social status for good. And, you know what, we were right: he's nice, he's informative, and he's nothing if not passionate. Did the entire experience make us want to worship him? We'd really rather not say. What we can say, however, is that Reichen made a point of mentioning he was going to "Justin's" fashion show later in the evening (Timberlake, that is: apparently they're on a first name basis, which is good, because Reichen basically only goes by his first name). Anyway, after the jump, read what Reichen had to say for himself, including his opinions on Christianity in the armed forces, the very special message he has for his critics, and how he's already started his second book. |
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Like so many diseases, many people assume that Hep-B's someone else problem. But, of course, they're are wrong. To curb infection, some do-gooder Brits have launched a new campaign to spread the word. The B Aware Campaign estimates that "approximately 2 billion people are infected with the virus worldwide, it is the 10th leading cause of death globally…" Holy shit, right? That's a lot of people. What's even more frightening is this little tidbit from Pink News UK: "…gay men are said to be particularly at risk being approximately 10 times more likely to carry the diseases…" Ahhhhh!! We just shat our pants. Luckily, immunization against the virus is readily available in most developed. So, readers, if you haven't already taken the necessary precautions, head over to your friendly neighborhood doctor and get the needle prick so you can then get the human prick (relatively) worry free. Oh, and just to up the ante: peeps with Hep-B aren't supposed to drink. Now that's frightful… |
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Woof, talk about a scary statistic! Grand National Party Representative Moon Hee told his legislative peers that out of the 4,227 (known) HIV positive Koreans, 3,842 are men. For those of you not mathematically inclined (don't worry, we're not, either), that means that 90% of HIV positive Koreans are men. (Note: Given that our source, The Korea Times, is based in Seoul, we're assuming this is South Korea we're talking here.) Moon goes on to deride the government for its lax policy on testing men. She says:
Many of those men work in the "massage/entertaiment industry" (hooking?), the same industry that requires HIV testing for women. Oh, if you're interested in the "gay/straight" breakdown, here it is: out of the 3,842 men infected with HIV, 1,377 contracted it via M4M, while 1,801 got it from lady-lovin'. |
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If you don't know them, you've certainly heard at least some variation of their monster single, "Genius of Love:" it's allegedly the most sampled song in the world. Sure, it's a great song and all, but we've always been partial to "Wordy Rappinghood," which you may recognize from the Chicks on Speed cover. We love it so much, we've posted a vintage video above. So, why does this qualify as part of The Totally Frightful Issue? Their lip synching scares the pants off us, their dancing reminds us of a strung out zombie, and the random Spanish announcement caught us off guard. While there may be a few scary things about this video, it's still totally fucking awesome. But, don't take our word for it… |
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While those of you in Australia and Canada may know him from his talk show, Queer Edge, soon everyone can enjoy his eccentric, yet socially conscious humor when he launches his new Internet television channel, FU-TV, on Monday, October 30th on World of Wonder, ManiaTV! and The Akimbo Service. Before that, however, read his ruminations on the rise of AIDS, how fear helps forge new directions, and how the hell he came up with Jack E. Jett in the first place. In case you're too scared to figure it out together, you can find his piece after the jump. |
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Luckily, we had the newly released Frank Tovey retrospective to help us along. A definite whiz-kis and electronic music pioneer, Tovey made a name for himself as "Fad Gadget" during the late-1970s and early-1980s. Even after all this time, Tovey's innovative, ominous sound's a perfect addition to The Totally Frightful Issue Though some of his tracks garnered more attention than others - for example, the single "Collapsing New People" still gets play in the more aurally aware bars and clubs - much of Tovey's best work remains unknown. (We're particularly fond of "State of The Nation," for what it's worth…) Born in London in 1956, Tovey loved the experimental sound of David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop: influences he took with him to St. Martin's School of Art in 1974. It was there that Tovey's love of music merged with a desire to take his art to a more performative level. A mere four years later, Tovey became the first artist to sign to Mute Records. Unfortunately, Tovey's heart gave out on him in 2002, just one week after a concert in Sweden. Now, Mute's put out the two-disc, two-DVD collection celebrating Frank Tovey's radically foreboding tracks. Get a taste for Tovey's work with this 1981 performance of "For Whom the Bell Tolls." |
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So far this week we've looked at taxidermic hats, refuse art, a few diseases, freaky fashion trends and loads of other terrifying topics. Today, however, we've got a really special post on Timothy Cummings: a gay painter whose work captures the delicate, torturous transformation from childhood to adulthood. Subverting images of innocence, death, and sexuality, Cummings creates images as sinister as they are seductive. So, why's this piece so special? Well, it celebrates the opening of Cummings's new show at Nancy Hoffman Gallery here in New York. Opening October 21st (just in time for Halloween), "The Great Escape" brings the viewer back to Cummings's dark fantasy world where costumes are the norm, horror awaits in the shadows and beguiling children stare you down. While the viewer gets a taste of the Albuquerque-born, San Francisco-based artist's new work, he'll also be showing a video collaboration with Aaron Plant and Shane Francis entitled, "Iodine." To prepare for the show, Queerty's own Andrew Belonsky sat down with Cummings to pick the artists brain. The results are anything but frightful. |