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Month: July 2010

Why Priests Hire Male Prostitutes

Published on July 20, 2010

Mike Jones, the male escort that outed Ted Haggard, on why so many priests hire male escorts:

During the 1990s, when I worked as an escort in Denver, Colorado, I estimate at least 15 percent of my clientele were clergy or connected with the church in some way. There were one-timers and there were guys who came back again and again and again, and they were all the same: positively giddy when the encounter began, unable to look you in the eye as they left. The excitement that initially animated them was wholly overshadowed by the despondency and guilt that would overcome them as soon as it was over.

I can’t imagine the guilt they were feeling. Not only were they having sex with another man—a sin punishable by God, in their minds—but I believe many of them were doing exactly what Father Gray did: stealing from their own churches. Maybe not a million bucks, maybe not even so much that anyone would notice. But more than once I was paid for my services with a handful of crinkled ones and fives. I would think to myself, how could they take from their own church’s collection plate? The answer is simple and sad: addicts will do whatever they need to do to support their habit.

…and on how to tell if your pastor is gay:

What I also discovered is that there are usually plenty of clues to be found when someone is doing something on the sly, whether it’s sleeping with male escorts or stealing from their church’s coffers. But people don’t want to know that about their religious leaders. Many want to turn a blind eye, even when the truth is staring them right in the face. When I attended Haggard’s New Life Church after the scandal broke, I was amazed to see all the explicitly homoerotic statues and paintings—sculptures of nude, muscular men all over the place. I also noticed that all the people on stage where Ted would preach were young men—not a female in sight. I was later told that Ted picked out all the art work and the final decision as to who was on stage lay with him.

via Why Priests Hire Male Prostitutes, By Mike Jones – The Daily Beast.

Bluesfest 2010: Opening Night

Published on July 6, 2010

Bluesfest opens tonight with the legendary Iron Maiden!  This show ought to be epic if for nothing else than what will probably be a record number of noise complaints from sleepy old Ottawa!

I can’t wait… I’m not sure what my posting schedule will be like this year, but I’ll definitely be posting lots to Twitter, so check me out there.  I’ll do my best to capture photos and video, but honestly my camera isn’t any better than it was last year, so I’m not so inclined to grab a million dark/blurry/crappy photos and videos and then have to sift through them all to find the one that’s inevitably terrible-but-not-as-terrible-as-the-rest… so we’ll see, maybe I’ll just stick to getting a few shots while there’s daylight and post if I get anything good.

Anyway, happy Bluesfest everybody!

Party Down: The Funniest Show on TV that Nobody Watched

Party Down: The Funniest Show on TV that Nobody Watched

Published on July 5, 2010

Lizzy Caplan on the fans of Party Down, in the wake of its cancellation:

“Our fans, even though we didn’t have huge numbers, were exactly the type of people we were hoping to impress: smart and vocal and funny and almost snobby about their comedy preferences. You look at hugely-rated shows like ‘Two and a Half Men’ that get like a gazillion viewers – I have the sneaking suspicion that not one of them watches ‘Party Down.’ I think if a girl who liked ‘Party Down’ found out that her boyfriend liked ‘Two and a Half Men,’ she would break up with him. I wish we could have reached a larger audience, because more people would have seen it and we might still be on, but it always sort of felt like the appeal for our fans was that the show felt like it was theirs. It belonged to them, and they discovered it, and they told their circles of friends. It was like a secret club of people in the know.

“Of course, secret clubs don’t usually lead to TV show pick-ups.”

Yet another show that has gone long before its time.  You should definitely seek this out wherever you can find it – I’m sure the two seasons will be available on DVD soon, or in the usual places online.  This was definitely one of the best comedies on television in the past two years.  Unfortunately, apparently nobody watched it.

Finland: Broadband Internet is a legal right

Published on July 2, 2010

Starting today, every citizen of Finland has the legal right to a 1Mbps broadband connection, meaning that providers are now required to make the connections available to everyone. The government of Finland has also promised to make good on its goal of getting every citizen with a 100Mbps connection by 2015, saying that they now consider internet access a basic requirement of daily life.

How cool is that?  What an incredibly progressive idea.  (via Engadget)