If you are a regular here at Ultrasparky, then there’s a good chance you’re either a type nut, or kind of a homo. (Those are both wonderful things, and I applaud for either. You may still be lovely even if you are neither.) If you are either of those things, there’s a chance you’ve heard this song. If you are both of those things, than I would be horrified if you were not aware of this beautiful moment in time when Towa Tei (formerly of Deee-Lite) got Kylie Minogue to sing a song about a typeface.
Not to brag or anything, but I have been obsessed with this song since the moment it was released in 1998. It may have been the first time I ever encounted Kylie Minogue, and it’s still the only thing of hers I really love. [Note, added 11/27/2024: What the hell was I thinking? Kylie Minogue is iconic and it pains me that I didn’t think so at the time.] The original CD shipped with a font called German Bold Italic, but as you can see, it was dreadful:
I’m sometimes surprised to have made it this far. I guess now I can attract, uh, guys who are into gerontophilia — which is a really ugly word. But, old chickens make the best soup! I prefer being a filth elder.
Pink Mince is all packed up for our two-month relocation to New York City, including a stack of back issues for any orders that trickle in. Now to think of what to publish while we’re there! Also, invitations to hang out with readers and collaborators would be awesome.
Overall, I’m a big fan of the It Gets Better project. I think it’s an incredibly important message to send out into the world, if only because there are so many kids who really, really need to hear it, and get a little strength and encouragement from it. The world isn’t an easy place, and I know the truth really is that — as a wise friend of mine expains — it gets complicated. Overall, though, I’m for the effort, and regularly touched by the variety of ways I see the idea repeated, and the variety of people who have taken the time to repeat it. Tonight I found this one by Murray Hill and friends, and it was immediately my favorite:
What I love about this is that it’s joyous. Not glib, not maudlin, not too specific — just filled with spirit and energy and good will. This is what would have really reached me when I was young: the site of that huge, happy, heterogenous, homosexual crowd all having fun in one place without it seeming weird or scary or dull or over-the-top. In fact, it captures the spirit of many, many nights I’ve spent out at shows or little clubs over the years, and it makes me happy to see it.
On the whole, I’m not a happy person. Believe it or not, I keep a tight lid on most of my moping and griping. The honest truth is that my baseline emotion is one of frustration and futility, peppered with a generous dose of poor self-confidence. You know what, though? The gay thing has never been the cause of that. Sure there were scattered moments of anxiety during the coming-out years, but never despair about that part of the equation. As the realization that I was gay crept up on me, I never thought I was wrong or bad because of it. It was just stressful to figure out how to change course.
I cling to the few and fleeting things in life that make me feel really happy, and the truth is that a lot of them connect to being gay, and I couldn’t be more grateful for that. Whether it’s been the love of interesting men, the comaraderie of friends, the link to a variety of subcultures that resonate with me, or even the increasingly outdated thrill of being a little outré, there’s a lot about being gay that makes parts of my life good. There’s been plenty of pain in life over the years, but the gayness — the sexual identity, the cultural identity, and the permission to figure out my own way in the absence of an established model to follow — has generally been the salve, not the sore.
I’ve been lucky in that I was able to stay below the radar (mostly) before coming out on my own terms, and then I found that no one loved me any less, or thought any worse of me. Because of that fortune, it’s a little hard to really and truly understand what it’s like for kid trying to figure all this out in worse circumstances. But you know what? That just makes me even more sure that every kid deserves the love and support that I realized was there all along. And they deserve to find themselves — if that’s what they want — in a roomful of energetic, interesting people not just telling them — but showing them — that it gets better.
Gross Indecency Article 0009 Section L Paragraph L
In a world saturated with images of sex, the male form still remains the most controversial. Throughout human history, men have sort to control the male image, while exploiting the female form.
The rise of the male nude in the last twenty years has been meteoric, thanks largely to Calvin Klein and the world of fashion. However, the image of man that they have laid bare for us, is plucked and groomed, sanitised and homogenised, lying passive, pretty and (usually) in their underpants. The last taboo remains the penis — obsessed over far more by men than by women. The prolific recreational use of Viagra alone highlights the male obsession with being bigger, harder, longer and faster. But it’s potency lies in it’s mystery — it must be kept under wraps as, laid bare, it may wilt under the spotlight and potential ridicule. Whether male or female, straight or gay, when we gaze upon a naked man, it is hard to look beyond the penis. Oh, that’s a big one, oh that’s a small one, oh that’s a bit bendy
With Gross Indecency I have selected 144 regular and irregular men and have chosen to obscure their genitals, so that we can see the man behind the cock. As a footnote, the collages I have chosen for this purpose are photographs of the genitals of Greco-roman sculptures. In Victorian times, these brazen bronze and marble statues were censored with a fig leaf, so I enjoyed the irony of using them as my modern day equivalent.
