Free Gay Excerpt: The Scottish Duke; Five More Things About Gay Sex; Gay Rights, Global Scale

Free Gay Excerpt: The Scottish Duke

I'm posting a quick excerpt today from the most recently pubbed book in The Rainbow Detective series, The Scottish Duke. 

Here's the blurb, and here's a link to Amazon. I've already posted more links to places like Smashwords, here. 

In this installment of The Rainbow Detective Agency, Blair and Proctor's passionate relationship has moved forward to the point where they begin a small family and don't even realize it. And that's because they're busy trying to solve the case of a well-known gay romance author, E. Q. Montana, who was so obsessed with Proctor he lined the walls of his unkempt West Hollywood apartment with Proctor's photos. 

But E. Q. Montana wasn't just any best-selling gay romance author. E. Q. had a few deep dark secrets and enemies of his own that Proctor and Blair have to figure out, one of which has to do with The Scottish Duke of Huntley. It's a peculiar case of dangerous literary subterfuge, with sudden twists and vicious, ambitious authors, that has them both stumped emotionally and intellectually, and in the end Proctor's worst nightmare comes true.

I promise, no spoilers.You can scroll down to the bottom of this post for the excerpt.

Five More Things About Gay Sex

Supposedly, here are five more things about gay sex "you didn't know." No need to get your smelling salts with this one. It's another Queerty advertorial, but it's funny...I think.

Here's one "fun filled fact you didn't know." 

Gentlemen prefer kissing (and BJs) to anal sex

Researchers at George Mason University and Indiana University conducted a sex study with nearly 25,000 gay and bisexual men. Participants were asked about their most recent same-sex encounters. 75 percent reported giving oral sex compared to 74 percent who reported receiving oral sex. 74.8 percent reported kissing on the mouth. But only about 35 percent reported having full-blown anal intercourse. The takeaway from the study? Apparently the question, “Are you a top or a bottom?” only matters one-third of the time.

Someone should tell this to all the guys I dated when I was single. That wasn't my personal experience. The moment they pin you down, you know exactly what they want, and they are eager to get it.

Here's the link. As usual, with anything printed by Queerty, you'll want to read the comments with this one. And I'm not knocking Queerty. It's free content.

Gay Rights, Global Scale

I always think it's important to know...and care...about LGBTI people in other parts of the world. Mainly because so many don't have the rights we have here in the US. It's the only thing I ever get political about.

Here's an article that talks about the best and worst places for gay rights, on a global scale.

Where are LGBT rights improving?

Parts of Latin America remain the standard for equality for LGBT rights. Argentina's Gender Identity Law 2012 allowed the change of gender on birth certificates for transgender people. It also legalised same-sex marriage in 2010, giving same-sex couples the same rights as opposite-sex couples, including the right to adopt children. Uruguay and Mexico City also allow equal marriage and adoption, and last week Colombia recognised its first legal same-sex civil union (not "marriage").

And it's still a concern here in the US, too. I had a conversation with someone recently about the Republican debates. Granted, this is someone older and not as informed because he doesn't have access to Internet news, so I did make an allowance for that. When I stated that I wasn't fond of a few Republican candidates because of their stand on gay marriage, he said, "You can't base your vote on one issue." Clearly, he didn't get it and I didn't bother to explain. That one issue, however, is what I base my votes on these days because that one issue is one of the most fundamental aspects of my life.


You can read more here.

The Scottish Duke...

Here's the excerpt. It's hard to post anything longer because I would be giving out spoilers. With a book like this a lot matters in that department. This comes from the middle of the book and I don't think it gives away too much. But if you're worried, you might want to skip it. And, Constance, of course, is a large Bengal cat, and Snowden is a new puppy that I introduced in this book.

When they pulled up to the house, Blair climbed out of the car without waiting for Proctor to invite him inside. Proctor didn't say anything that night. It was almost ten o'clock, they hadn't eaten anything all day, and Proctor was planning to make salad. Although he loved pizza, and he joked about eating pizza on Twitter with his fans, he didn't have it often. He was model who always focused on his body and his weight. And although eating pizza and doughnuts tempted him every day of his life, he knew that it was salad that would keep him in skinny jeans and skimpy tight swim trunks.

He also knew Blair wouldn't complain. He'd eat anything as long as he didn't have to cook it himself. Blair seemed to have this attitude toward food in general that always amazed Proctor. Blair ate to live. He didn't live to eat. It wasn't even something he focused on consciously. If there was a lot of food around Blair would eat it. If there wasn’t, he didn’t seem to mind. 

Proctor unlocked the front door and he entered first, with Blair in tow. Before Proctor even switched on the hallway lights he looked down and saw Snowden at his feet, wagging his little tail. Then he heard a growl and saw Constance sitting on the bottom step.

Proctor turned to Blair and said, "Why isn't Snowden in his crate in the kitchen?" Constance had free run of the entire house, but he knew Jane would never have allowed a small puppy to roam freely that way.

Blair seemed to sense something unusual, so he headed toward the living room and flipped on the main light switch.

Proctor picked Snowden up and glanced into his living room. He gasped and said, "What happened?" The tables were turned sideways, chairs and cushions rested upside down all over the place, and one of his best crystal lamps had been shattered into a million little pieces.

Blair put his arm around Proctor and said, "Either you've been burglarized or we missed the earthquake."

Proctor held Snowden tighter. His first thought was relief, knowing that Constance and Snowden were safe. Then he looked at his crystal lamp again and sighed. "Why would anyone do this to me?" He had an alarm system, but Jane rarely activated it at the end of the day because she naturally assumed that Proctor would be home by seven o'clock. He preferred not dealing with alarms and code numbers. Now he was sorry he'd been so lazy about it.

Before Blair could answer him, a nasal voice spoke from a dark section on the other side of the living room. "Where's The Scottish Duke of Huntley?"

Blair blinked. "The Duke of what the fuck, man?"

"The Scottish Duke of Huntley," said the nasal voice, again. "I want to know where he is this minute. I know you've got him here and I'm not leaving without him. Release him to me this instant."

As a short, thin man stepped out of the shadows on the far side of the room, Proctor saw he was pointing a handgun at them. The guy had short red hair, with tight kinky curls, and a long thin neck. Proctor held Snowden tightly to his chest and said, "I don't know anything about this Scottish Duke. Who are you and what do you want?"

Blair stared at the gun and said, "Just stay calm, man. We don't know anything about a Scottish Duke. You've mistaken us for someone else. I think the people across the street are Scottish, you should check that out."

Proctor's first thought was the man pointing the gun at them was unhinged and possibly dangerous. He obviously had an unrealistic delusion that Blair and Proctor had kidnapped The Scottish Duke of Huntley and they were hiding him somewhere in the house. Proctor had a great uncle once who thought he was Napoleon. He decided the only way to keep this man calm was to placate him and ask more questions. "I'm sorry, but we don't have the Scottish Duke. We've never even seen him. What does he look like? Why would you think we kidnapped him?"

Kevin Bacon: More Male Full Frontal Nudity; Catholic Mom and Gay Teen Son; Heath Ledger "Not Macho Enough"; Terry Sweeney Refused to Be Closeted

Kevin Bacon: More Male Full Frontal Nudity

I've been posting about this for years now...the lack of male full frontal nudity in films and on TV. There isn't much out there, and the post I did about male full frontal on Boardwalk Empire is still, to this day, getting attention. And I know for a fact some people couldn't take their eyes away from the recent Lenny Kravitz mishap where he wound up going full frontal by accident. 

But I don't think it's just about the penis in a general sense. I think it's a little more specific. For example, films and TV shows like Magic Mike and Hung bait people with penis and never actually show it. James Franco has been baiting us with his in PR photos. Imagine the irony. A TV show that revolves around a guy who is allegedly HUNG, and you never actually get to see the penis. There's something flawed about that, and that's why I stopped watching Hung after the first few episodes. I felt duped, and that show didn't last for long. In other words, if you're not going to show full frontal male nudity don't bait people with it.

In any event, Kevin Bacon recently spoke out on this topic and he said some interesting things.

Kevin Bacon is just like us. He’s ridiculously tired of being cock-teased by films such as Fifty Shades of Gay Grey and Magic Mike. The handsome 57-year-old actor wants the entertainment industry to spend more time finding ways to get male actors out of their clothing in front of the camera for completely gratuitous nude scenes in TV series like Game of Thrones. You know, for equality, because if women are allowed to run around starkers so should men.

You can read the rest here, where there's a video. Frankly, I'm still looking for a glimpse of Ben Affleck's dick in that movie with that title about that girl that was gone. Affleck and his soon to be ex-wife sure did enough bullshit PR about it.


Catholic Mom and Gay Teen Son

When I read things like this my automatic response is that there's something wrong with this woman. I, too, come from a Catholic background and no one, ever, told me things like this. No normal Catholic would ever respond to a kid this way. And trust me, I know plenty of Catholics. And I think it shows how extreme something on the Internet can get...if you don't know any better.

‘After we got over our initial shock (and I had taken some time to grieve the loss of my dreams of his one day having a family), we sat him down and told him we loved him, and that what he had told us wouldn’t change that in the slightest,’ she said.

But for the last three years, the parents have been teaching him the only way ‘people like him’ can lead life is to remain celibate.

She said: ‘We also set up other defenses for his chastity: we pulled him off of the basketball team (the locker room would just be an unnecessary temptation, and his presence there would be inappropriate and unfair to the other boys in his situation).

‘We took the door off of his bedroom since privacy would just tempt him to experiment in the ways teen boys tend to do, and we forbid him from having sleepovers or spending one-on-one time with any of his male friends unsupervised…we also forbid him from dating, or participating in activities like his high school prom…unlike our other sons, we never allowed him to have a cell phone, since he might use it to access inappropriate and confusing images.’

She reached out to social media for advice and people responded aggressively to everything she said. You can read the rest here. But trust me, again, she's not the normal Catholic I've always known.

Heath Ledger "Not Macho Enough"

First, I love how straight people making a gay film use a word no gay person would ever use. Most of you probably didn't even pick this up.  If gay people had been making Brokeback Mountain they wouldn't have been searching for a "macho" actor. They would have been looking for "butch."

In any event, while they were trying to fill the role of Ennis there was another actor they had in mind. That hasn't been disclosed, ever. However, they weren't sure that Heath Ledger was "macho" enough. He obviously showed them all and he was brilliant in the role.

‘Another actor had committed [to the role of Ennis] and we had suggested Heath. But the studio [Focus Features] didn’t feel he was macho enough. I thought that was a rather odd comment. But we just sort of stuck with it. And when that [other] actor backed out — and he did, after three months — I called Heath’s agent.’

Ossana has never revealed the identity of the actor originally cast as Ennis but, she says, ‘I plan to write a book about it all someday.’

You can read more here.  Maybe she'll get a gay guy to help her write that book.

Sorry for the small rant, but there are still things happening today where gay people still don't get the same respect as those who come from places of straight, white privilege.

Terry Sweeney Refused to Be Closeted

Here's an interesting piece about SNL cast member, Terry Sweeney, and how he refused to go back into the closet when they wanted him as a cast member.

He said he wasn’t going to do the standard closeted actor thing of giving interviews about a made-up fiancé who died and he never got over it or saying he’s never had time to find the right person.

Sweeney had simply been too impacted by the AIDS epidemic that had killed so many of his friends. This was 11 years before breakthrough life-saving drugs were available.

‘I’d been to so many funerals and I wasn’t going to join in the shame by hiding in the closet,’ he says. ‘It would have been a disservice to my friends who had died, my friends who were sick. If you were gay, you were always going to memorials or to visit people in hospitals. Straight people were able to go merrily along their way, but this disease was picking off talented gay people one by one.

‘I thought, “I’m not gonna do that. I don’t care if this is my big break. At the end of my life, I want to live with myself.” I didn’t sign the morals clause in my contract. I just said no. I have to give Lorne and [NBC exec] Brandon Tartikoff credit for going along with that.’

There's more here.  He does give credit to those who went along with it and didn't fight him.

As a side note, which I blogged about last year, Sweeney was NOT asked to be part of the 40th reunion for SNL last year. Even though he was the first (and only) openly gay cast member at the time. If he'd been the first member of another minority to join the apologetic left wing liberal cast of SNL I wonder if things would have been different. They might have crowned him Queen for a Day or something.

From my post last year:

Sirius XM Radio talk show host Frank DeCaro was among those outraged by what he considered a slight. 

'Leaving Terry Sweeney -- the only openly gay male cast member in the forty-year history of Saturday Night Live -- out of the anniversary special doesn't sit well with me,' DeCaro wrote in a Facebook post. 

'His Nancy Reagan impression could easily have been included in the political clip montage

The Rainbow Detective Agency Book 6

The Scottish Duke

Amazon Link for Kindle Readers 

Lenny Kravitz Full Frontal Nudity; Stonewall Trailer; Clay Aiken on Donald Trump

Lenny Kravitz Full Frontal Nudity

Of all the posts I've done on full frontal male nudity in pop culture, from films to television, none have ever been able to compare to this, and none ever will. It was so spontaneous, and so innocent, I don't think I could love Lenny Kravitz more than I do right now.

I've always heard wonderful things about Kravitz because we rented our guest apartment out to his excellent piano player one year, George Laks. Laks was one of our best tenants ever. I loved listening to him rehearse on weekends. But aside from everything else,  from what I've seen on Twitter, Kravitz handled the awkward situation like a true professional.

During a show in Europe, while he was wearing tight leather pants, Kravitz made a quick move, squatted down on stage, and the leather pants ripped and his penis fell out. And a magnificent sight it was to behold.

You can check out the photos here on the OMG blog, or see a video of it here.  

Stonewall Trailer

I've been waiting for this film, Stonewall, for a while. I'm not old enough to know anything first hand about Stonewall. I'm not really old enough to know much the worst days of the AIDS crisis. I only know what I've read or seen in TV documentaries. Of course Stonewall was pre-AIDS, however, many believe it set off the movement for modern day gay liberation. I know there are conflicting opinions on this. Some claim it was a club in LA that sparked the movement. But since Stonewall gets the most attention and I'm no expert, Stonewall fascinates me.

a fictional young man caught up during the 1969 Stonewall riots. Danny Winters (Jeremy Irvine) is forced to leave behind friends and loved ones when he is kicked out of his parent’s home and flees to New York. Alone in Greenwich Village, homeless and destitute, he befriends a group of street kids who soon introduce him to the local watering hole The Stonewall Inn; however, this shady, mafia-run club is far from a safe-haven. As Danny and his friends experience discrimination, endure atrocities and are repeatedly harassed by the police, we see a rage begin to build. This emotion runs through Danny and the entire community of young gays, lesbians and drag queens who populate the Stonewall Inn and erupts in a storm of anger. With the toss of a single brick, a riot ensues and a crusade for equality is born.

You can check out the rest here. Interesting to note there are no comments here. I guess it's not sensational enough to spark a shitstorm...like say, Donald Trump's hair.

Clay Aiken on Donald Trump

Speaking of Donald Trump...I never get political here and I'm not going to start now. I want readers to know there's a place where they can go that's not political. I'm just stating the facts.

Clay Aiken, a former American Idol contestant, who is openly gay and ran for office in his home state last year, commented on Donald Trump possibly breaking the two party system. My only comment is that I almost did need smelling salts to get through this.

‘I think he has a really great opportunity even if he doesn’t win the Republican nomination to do something I think the country has needed for a long time, which is to try to break this stranglehold of the two-party system,’ Aiken, an openly gay Democrat, tells Billboard.com.

‘I kind of hope he decides to stick with it and maybe give people another option outside of the Republicans and Democrats.’

You can read the rest here.  

So far there's only one comment, but I have feeling there will be more. I think I know this guy who commented, too, from social media. The comment begins with, "Clay, how much of a moron are you?" and devolves from there.

The Rainbow Detective Agency Book 6

The Scottish Duke

Amazon Link for Kindle Readers 

M/M Romance in Fiction: The Scottish Duke; Straight Guys and Bro-Jobs; Caitlyn Jenner's Conservative Politics

M/M Romance in Fiction: The Scottish Duke

Update: Since a few have asked, I figured I'd better explain it here. The Scottish Duke is really Book 5 in the series, however, it's listed as Book 6. The reason for this is because the "Box Set," which is books 1-4 in the Rainbow Detective series, is considered Book 5. It's never come up before because I never did a box set before. There's no way around it. I tried. So The Scottish Duke is listed as Book 6, but it's actually Book 5. However, each book is considered a stand alone and they don't have to be read in order. It helps, but it's not mandatory. I didn't do any cliff hangers in this series. 

This is book five in The Rainbow Detective Agency series, subtitled, The Scottish Duke. The subtitle is part of the story line but the book itself is NOT set in Scotland. It's set in LA just like the rest of the Rainbow Detective books. The next book, Book 6, however, will be set in Provincetown. 

Here's the blurb:

In this installment of The Rainbow Detective Agency, Blair and Proctor's passionate relationship has moved forward to the point where they begin a small family and don't even realize it. And that's because they're busy trying to solve the case of a well-known gay romance author, E. Q. Montana, who was so obsessed with Proctor he lined the walls of his unkempt West Hollywood apartment with Proctor's photos. 

But E. Q. Montana wasn't just any best-selling gay romance author. E. Q. had a few deep dark secrets and enemies of his own that Proctor and Blair have to figure out, one of which has to do with The Scottish Duke of Huntley. It's a peculiar case of dangerous literary subterfuge, with sudden twists and vicious, ambitious authors, that has them both stumped emotionally and intellectually, and in the end Proctor's worst nightmare comes true. 

And here's a link to ARe.  It's priced at 2.99 everywhere.

Here's the Smashwords link. 

Amazon Link for Kindle Readers

It's also in other places like Kobo, iTunes, and Barnes and Noble. I don't always post link to those web sites because they aren't the most popular. But if anyone ever has questions please e-mail me. My e-mail is on the side bar with my bio here on the blog.

It runs around 47,000 words which is about 3 thousand words less than what I normally do with a full length e-book, however, I did edit about six thousand words out during the final edits. I didn't think all that needed to be there and I wanted the book to be tighter.

I also discussed a topic I normally don't discuss in fiction: the m/m romance genre, people writing with pen names, and fictionalized authors who will stop at nothing to succeed. Of course it's all exaggerated, but I think I touched on a few topics that might interest readers of the m/m romance genre. I see a lot of unfairness with good writers and it bothers me sometimes. That's all. No spoilers. There's also an important transgender character in the book and if I say anything else I'll be giving away too much.

Straight Guys and Bro-Jobs

This is an advertorial, not a real article. It's from Queerty.com. They do that a lot...advertorials...but they lead you to believe they are articles. I like to be clear about that up front. But it's some of Queerty's best cheesy, trashy clickbait and I think it's an interesting topic...that no one thinks about often. It's not something you'll ever want to take seriously. But you might wonder a little when you're finished reading it.  You might even smile and feel like tweeting something.

Here's the cheese:

What is a “bro-job”?
In a nutshell, it’s when a straight guy gives another straight guy a blowie not in a meaningful sexual way but in a friendly, NSA, I’m-just-doing-you-a-little-favor, totally not gay sort of way. Or something.

You're welcome. Don't you love the way they phrase it..."blowie"

Here's the link to the ever so dignified Queerty.  

Caitlyn Jenner's Conservative Politics

Of course now that Caitlyn has gone through all the motions of coming out, in public, she's starting to get some backlash from other trans people who don't like her politics. It was bound to happen.

It surprised many when Caitlyn Jenner – in her final interview as Bruce – told Diane Saywer of ABC News that she is a Republican.

Since then, Jenner has emerged as probably the most famous transgender woman in the world and made clear her intention to do some good with her renewed fame.

On Sunday’s episode of the docu-series I Am Cait, Jenner found herself sounding very stereotypically Republican and at odds with a group of other transgender women while discussing the needs of their community during a road trip.

You can check out the rest here.

I think this falls into an even bigger category. The category of true tolerance. It seems these days that if anyone LGBTI goes against the norm and isn't following the PC left wing liberal band wagon he or she is criticized for what they believe. I've seen it happen time and again. I'm a registered Democrat and even I get disgusted sometimes when I see the intolerance some people have for anyone who is different. I just don't see how it's possible to preach equality and tolerance and still remain so hooded and intolerant of an opposing view. In other words, I might not agree with anything Marco Rubio has to say but I'm willing to listen to him and I'm not willing to dismiss him. I have respect for him. And when I tell you I don't agree with anything about that man, I'm not joking.  

Making Gay "Whoopie"; Looking Cancellation Painful; Russian Gay Propaganda Laws

Making Gay "Whoopie"

At first I thought this might be about Whoopi Goldberg. I honestly didn't know WTF "whoopie" was.  I'm not the only one either. I tweeted something about it and a few other people didn't know either.

Then I thought maybe it's the Amish cookie.

As it turns out it has nothing to do with either of those. But it's Monday, it's summer, many of us are working hard, and it's good stupid clickbait from none other than Queerty.com that will make you smile.

It's another one of those meme collections that Queerty is becoming known for. And, "Whoopie" means hooking up...having sex. Here's what one says:

In college I had sex with a teammate on the field in the middle of the night. We stuck the condom over a drinking fountain after. Sorry to whoever found that. 

And there you go. You're welcome.

The strangest place I ever made "whoopie" was in an empty school bus in the parking lot of a gay bar in New Jersey.

More fun and games here. 

Looking Cancellation Painful 

It seems that when HBO's "Looking" was canceled it was painful to the gay president of HBO. It was painful for a lot of us. I didn't think Looking was perfect at first, however, I always thought the one most important thing about it was that it represented a big segment of the gay community that's never really had a voice. It was honest and for once the gay guy was not turned into the clown and court jester.

I thought the show, creatively, was really doing something that I hadn’t seen on any other show, particularly dealing with gay lives. As a gay man, in particular, I was very proud that there was a show that felt like it was dealing very honestly and openly with gay men and their lives, without putting them into a comedic mode.”

You can read more here. 

There are about 40 comments that I didn't bother to read. Looking is over now and I don't care what the people who didn't like it have to say. I'm starting to think that the ultimate problem with all gay content in the future is that now with gay marriage legal everywhere, and that one common goal to fight for gone, gay men are so diverse it's not going to be possible to put together any content that everyone loves. And that's not such a bad thing after all.

Russian Gay Propaganda Laws

This falls under the category of I told you so for me. Whenever I think of the gay people from the US who went to the Russian Olympics most recently I still cringe a little at their lack of support and their need to get attention. It's not something I could have done.

And here's another reason why. Thanks to the gay propaganda laws in Russia a young gay man was fined for having an LGBT gay youth web site.

Elena Klimova, founder of Deti-404 (Children-404) – an online support group for LGBT teenagers in Russia – was fined 50,000 roubles (US$850) after a court in Nizhny Tagil ruled that the site was guilty of distributing ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors,’ the Guardian reported.

The name is a reference to the internet error page ‘404 – Page Not Found’.
Klimova, who is journalist, became notable in Russia after publishing a series of articles about a minor’s homosexuality.

You can read the rest here. He's a bright, courageous young man.  And I'm going to come back to this in the future next time I hear about Robbie Roberts going to Russia for some other sport. He's already started making excuses ahead of time. 

 

The Rainbow Detective Agency

Box Set

Four books in One

Amazon 

 

The Way We Almost Were

Amazon

 

 

 

Texas Gay Man Dies In Custody; Young Gay Men Come Out on Youtube; Gay Man Beaten by NY Cops

Texas Gay Man Dies In Custody

A 32 year old gay man in Texas allegedly died after he was denied medication that he'd been on for a long time. It's interesting because the medication was Xanax and he was taking it as a treatment for severe anxiety. I hear so much about gay people with severe anxiety...and Xanax.

I'm not all that familiar with Xanax as a regimen medication, however, I have heard that people can have seizures if they stop taking it suddenly. Which is allegedly what happened in this case.


There is no disagreement that Jacobs was denied Xanax, which he'd been taking for over a decade to treat a severe anxiety disorder, but Galveston police officials claim the young man died of "natural causes."

After checking himself in to Galveston County Jail to serve a 30-day sentence for driving while intoxicated, Jacobs began suffering seizures after his fourth day in custody. On his seventh day in jail, he was found unresponsive and taken to the University of Texas-Medical Branch in Galveston, where he later died. How he was initially discovered as unresponsive is unclear as police officials have different versions, including reports that medical personnel found him in his cell and that he collapsed when he was being administered medication.

The family is looking for answers. You can read more here. 

Young Gay Men Coming Out on Youtube

Here's something that I've been seeing a lot of lately. Young gay men are coming out, in public, on Youtube.

YouTubing—the act of vlogging (video-blogging) about one’s life on YouTube in a way that appears natural, unscripted, and entirely relatable—has become an important creative outlet for young gay men. More than that, in videos that last a few minutes uploaded weekly over the course of many months or years, many of these YouTubers—including Troye Sivan, Connor Franta, and Joey Graceffa, who today constitute a core community of vloggers with millions of followers and numerous lucrative side projects from books to music to coffee—come out in the process of vlogging and choose to invite viewers into that process.

I never thought vlogging would take off the way it has. I recall a few vloggers from ten years ago that I used to interview for bestgayblogs.com, but they never stuck to it for longer and a few months. The hits just weren't there back then. Evidently, it's become something of an outlet, mainly on youtube.

Here's the rest of the article.

Gay Man Beaten by NY Cops

This story is kind of questionable, but the point is that NY cops allegedly beat this gay guy brutally and yelled homophobic slurs at him. Which makes most normal people wonder if that's the best way the situation could have been handled...even if the guy was out of control. In other words, if this guy was a troublemaker would there have been a more professional way to deal with this?

The guy's mother called the police because he was in a fight with his brother. When the police arrived they pulled him out of the house, handcuffed, and beat him. There's a video with the link below of the incident.

The video does not capture what the officers said. Falcone alleges that they were yelling homophobic slurs, calling him a “fag” and a “faggot.” He says he had blood in his mouth after being thrown to the ground and one officer said, “Don’t let it get on you, he probably has AIDS, the faggot.”

Falcone also says the police threatened to kill his dog. He’s planning to sue, alleging his civil rights were violated. 

This isn't the first time I've heard about things like this happening to gay people. In a general sense, I know for a fact that many police departments set gay men up at cruising spots and do all kinds of unthinkable things to them...from shaming to beating. The police know the gay men will never fight the abuse because they can't afford to come out of the closet and let anyone know they were at cruising spots. In many cases the gay men are in the closet and that kind of publicity would ruin them.

I'm starting to think that in order to become a police officer in the US there should be mandatory requirements. One being they should have at least a bachelors degree in criminal justice...or a major in police science.  In this case, I think that four years of college would make a huge difference in the kind of police officers we have, especially in small towns. In other words, if you can't pass the SAT test to get into college you can't be a cop. Plain and simple.Or, at the very least, require an associates degree.

You can read more of this here, and see the video.  We complain about privacy a lot these days, but the one of the best things about all the technology we have now is that incidents like this can be caught on video for everyone to see.

Again, could this have been handled differently by the police?

The Rainbow Detective Agency

Box Set

Four books in One

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Steve Grand's Music: All American Boy; Etsy Toys; 21 Things About Orgasms

 Steve Grand's Music

In an unusual twist, here's something about Steve Grand's music, not Steve Grand, not Steve Grand's swimwear, or Steve Grand's looks. Just his music. I have it and I love it.







My debut album, "All-American Boy" just came out! Get it on: iTunes, Amazon, GooglePlay and all the other usual places.
Signed copies and merch on my site: shop.stevegrand.com . iTunes link: (https://itunes.apple.com


You can check out his web site here where there's more information. 

In publishing there was a term several years ago that was used all the time...crossover. It was used for books in genres like YA that crossed over into adult contemporary fiction. I think Grand's music is a good example of this in the entertainment industry. It's not just for gay people. I think there's something everyone can enjoy.

Etsy Toys

I'm always a little surprised when I post something on Facebook...always on Facebook...and people don't know what I'm talking about. It's my fail and I shouldn't just assume things. So, if you haven't heard about Etsy, here's some basic info...

Etsy is a peer-to-peer (P2P) e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items and supplies, as well as unique factory-manufactured items. These items cover a wide range, including art, photography, clothing, jewelry, food, bath and beauty products, quilts, knick-knacks, and toys. Many sellers also sell craft supplies such as beads, wire and jewelry-making tools. All vintage items must be at least 20 years old.^[3] The site follows in the tradition of open craft fairs, giving sellers personal storefronts where they list their goods for a fee of US$0.20 per item.

I love it. And the link I'm using right now talks about the darker side of Etsy with photos of some interesting/creepy toys they sell. There's something for everyone there, too.

If you thought Etsy was all twee knitted doilies and Blitz-spirit bunting, you’d be wrong.

Etsy has a dark side. A nightmare-inducing childhood-ruining dark side, of utterly terrifying not-at-all cuddly toys.

You can check out the photos here. 

21 Things About Orgasms

Here's a link to an article that talks about 21 different things about orgasms that most people probably don't know. I didn't know a few of them. A few I question, but it's still interesting. 

7. Coregasms are a thing
Certain abs moves and pull-ups can apparently induce orgasms in some people.

9. Boregasms are a thing
As in, if you’ve got nothing else to do it’s apparently possible to induce an orgasm using only the power of your mind.

16. Nearly a third of men have faked an orgasm (ie haven’t ejaculated but acted like they have)

I think number 16 is fascinating because most women don't ever stop to think that this can happen...at all. Forget about it happening with a third of men. I see it all the time on Twitter with jokes. Women who seem to think they are the only ones who can fake orgasm, patting themselves on the back as if it's a hobby and a form of control. It makes me smile. 

I'm not going into detail about that. But men can, and do, fake orgasms just as well. 

The rest are here. 

The Rainbow Detective Agency

Box Set

Four books in One

Amazon