“Hey, are you gay?” the man asked, grinning wide enough to give his gums a sunburn. I’m not, but it was a fair enough question — I was walking through the East Village in a white linen jacket on the Friday before the Pride parade.

“Uh, no, not yet,” I responded. He wore an large navy blazer over a spectacularly filthy t-shirt. Scabs adorned the corners of his smile. He held an overstuffed shopping bag in his arms, cradling it like an infant.

“Want to give it a chance?” he asked, stepping closer.

“What, now? With you?”

“Well, yeah, I mean, I’ve got all these condoms here,” he said, and tipped the shopping bag towards me. It was bulging, brimming, boiling over with condoms in every color of the rainbow. “We could …”

I cut him off. “Look, dude, we’re not gonna go off and use all those condoms together. Even if I was curious, I just don’t have that kind of time. As it stands, it’s been 32 years and I think I’m all set as a straight guy.”

“Hey, okay!” he said, real chipper, and rolled on down the street to find someone else to share his enormous latex bounty.

This photo was taken in my kitchen — my roommate started celebrating Pride a little early this weekend, and left a display for me. I wish I could have gone to the parade with him, but this little diorama sums it up nicely.

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By the mid-’80s, there were two types of kids: kids who got hurt by imitating pro wrestling in the yard, and kids who hurt other kids by imitating pro wrestlers in the back yard. No matter how hard it is to pull off a Camel Clutch without injuring someone in real life, imitating the Kalamari Wrestler’s even tougher — he’s got eight arms and a giant bulbous head.

There’s not a lot else to say about this trailer for Japan’s Kalamari Wrestler, except what everyone already knows — as a people, the Japanese are out of their freaking minds. Every last one of ‘em:

Found via Popularity: 21% [?]

The Coney Island Mermaid Parade is the sweet and freaky collision of drag, burlesque, special effects and little girls’ birthday parties. It’s a cavalcade of glitter, grease-paint and family-friendly toplessness, a celebration of summer and fun and art sweeter and trippier than Spongebob Squarepants singing for a Flaming Lips session at a gay pride parade.

The loudspeaker in the parade staging area said it best:

If you are the parent of a small child, you should know that there may be exposed body parts that could damage your children. If anyone walks by with those body parts exposed, please make sure to cover your children’s eyes.

Words can’t say what the pictures can — here’s a collection of photos David and I took at the 2008 Mermaid Parade this Saturday:

More after the jump:

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A couple weeks ago, we ran a big fat blog post about a bunch of people sparring in Union Square. They were practicing mixed martial arts (MMA), and letting pretty much anyone get in the ring who wanted to fight.

In writing the post, I tried to focus on the vibe in the air, how cool it was to witness the thing happening — as well as describe some of the utterly ridiculous videos David shot. The post got a ton of traffic (for us), and a corresponding ton of utterly retarded comments that totally missed the point.

David’s videos were pretty choice — and we intentionally focused on the ridiculous side of the thing to attract more attention. The blogosphere’s principal exports are bullshit and outrage, and its chief currency is attention. I’m not a journalist, I’m a storyteller, and I don’t mind altering the telling of an event to make it work better as a story. The thing about stories is, when you tell one story, you’re not telling another one.

All that aside, here’s some really spectacular photos of the Union Square Spartans by Anya Roz that really capture the dignified ballet of the thing, all the grace, training and prowess — and of course, tons and tons of rock-hard man-candy:

More photos and some video after the jump …

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Speaking of otherworldly creatures, check out these Golden Age Mexican lobby cards:

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There is ice, actual frozen water, on Mars. I am not lying. Where there’s ice, there’s water — and where there’s water, there’s life. Life on Mars means actual Martians. They could just be protozoa at this point, but the mind whirls.

It could mean terraforming, too — like, creating actual offworld colonies with homegrown ice for cocktails to drink in the dusty sunset.
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Folks with extra weight on them have always had it rough. Whether they were called “husky,” “stocky,” or today’s “33 percent of the population,” everyone knew the truth behind the euphemism. A little respect, no matter how flimsy and transparent, is better than this old ad:

I love how they kindly tell concerned parents that “everything is priced the same as regular sizes,” because, you know, they’re using SO much extra cloth to make these darling little mini-tents.

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It was a real armpit jungle on the subway this morning, people jammed up in there scalp-to-nostrils like a bunch of soft and complicated Tetris blocks. Everyone flexed their brains real real hard to create a personal force-field, either by staring at a piece of reading material or cranking the iPod and doing the sort of vague-dance-lip-synch that says “hey fuck you, world, I’m so not a part of this that I am astrally projecting myself into a nightclub and at that nightclub on the astral plane I just don’t care about NOTHIN’.”

Then somebody’s weapons-grade anal vapors wafted through the car like a grey-green angel of death. Most people completely ignored it, though the dancing lip syncher did seem to stop opening her mouth quite so wide. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do, just sit there and suck it up in the most literal sense.

One guy just stood there ignoring the fragrance and just eating his breakfast like everything was cool. He methodically worked his way through a baguette, pressing a flattened palm against the tail end and shoving it into his steadily chewing mouth like a log into a wood chipper.

On a good day, eating on the subway is a narrow cut above eating in the bathroom. And we all know that any food that is taken into the bathroom is automatically garbage. There’s molecules flying around in there, man, and they settle on everything. This was far from a good day to eat on the subway. This was bringing food into a funky molecule hurricane.

The human mind naturally tries to draw patterns, to find relationships and pull a thin skin of order over a chaotic world. I was certain that this baguette-chipper was the train farter, immune to his own poison. Then he got off the train and whoever it was crop-dusted the car again.

The train finally stopped and disgorged a couple people, let some fresh air in. For a moment, the deadly anal death-angel aroma traded places with its musical equivalent: the lilting sounds of an Amazonian pan-flute band. For just a second there it was all farts and flute music and faces too close — then some folks got off, the A/C kicked in, and the train doors clipped off the music before we pulled away.

It could’ve been worse, though.

My sister was in a pretty horrible auto accident this week. She was driving on 64 in Norfolk during rush hour and some guy plowed into her from behind. Twice. We still have no idea how that happened. The car is pretty much totalled. The rear of it crumpled all up and busted her back windshield in, and her body’s pretty rattled.

The guy who did it got out of his truck and said “Wow. Hell of a way to start a Monday, huh?”

It was Tuesday.

It’s going to be a long and painful process for Jess, getting money from the insurance company, renting a car, either fixing or replacing her car. But it’s just money and time. She can still talk and walk, and she can still express her love with cuss words and laughter, and for that I’m really, really grateful.

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Brooklyn-based photographer Meg Wachter has a new series called DUMPED!, wherein she pours miscellaneous oozy, drippy materials — mostly foodstuffs — onto peoples heads and snaps the reactions, framing her shirtless subjects from the shoulders up:

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I’m still doing a little tidying up here, as you may notice. Like most white people, I’ve been through renovations before, and they’re a bitch. Everything’s dusty and there’s no time to cook. All you can do is order takeout and eat it next to the paintbrushes and plaster buckets and then fall into bed.

Until I can get it back together, here’s some truly excellent blog pizza.

I found this photo and video on Clayton Cubitt’s routinely mind-blowing blog The Constant Siege. Cubitt’s a photographer, a great one, and just got back from a trip to New Zealand. This video is shot in Cubitt’s hotel (I think), of a Maori tribesman talking about his moko (face tattoo) and the way that homosexuality is viewed in his tribe.

Here’s a portrait …

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