Why I Oughtta

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I am very much against the complicated straight guy handshakes.  I thought of this while watching John Stewart and Jake Gyllenhaal greet each other during Jake’s recent appearance on The Daily Show.

I just can’t keep up when meeting young straight fellows and they greet me with a complicated series of shakes, finger-grabby thingeys, fist-knocks, etc.  It’s too much — I just can’t keep up.

As a red-blooded gay male, I know what I like and what I don’t. I like my t-shirts fitted, my parfaits with blueberries and raspberries and my hand-shakes direct, straightforward and uncomplicated. Please cut me some slack.

1. It’s official: Rudy Giuliani can go fuck himself.
2. The New Amsterdams (or, really, Matt Pryor solo) does the whitest version of Hey Ya imaginable. But it’s still good fun.
3. An L.A. Times sports writer is coming out as a transsexual.
4. Fun context news: the new header of the baby is a photo I took in Vegas last summer. I covertly took the shot because I was afraid the mother would think I was some sort of predator if she saw me. I like changing the headers a lot because, for some reason, a lot of photos that aren’t good enough to stand up on their own (like that one and the flower one before this) make really good headers. Maybe it’s just because you have to sort of artfully crop it. The flower photo (this one:) was actually meant to be a a photo of this whole gigantic bed of gerber daisies. But the focus was all fucked up because I don’t know how to use my camera. But, part of the photo that was in focus made it workable and made it so the photo wasn’t a total waste. As you can see on the left, I actually flipped the photo (see the little baby alien head flowers on the right?).
5. Jake… and a baby carriage.
6. A thing I wrote and a chart I made on TV death.

1. Ira Glass talks to The Advocate about bringing This American Life to TV and how he’s not a gay. He says, “I don’t think I’m hot enough to be a gay man’s sex symbol. I live in Chelsea [in New York City] and have gay friends. I am definitely not in shape enough. If I wanted to sleep with a gay man, I think I’d have to work out a little more.”
2. Matt and Lance are out, Austin is in as Jake’s new supa-friend.
3. An annoying blog post about an annoying article about David Sedaris.
4. Engineering students made this out of post-its.
5. A picture of tomatoes.
6. There is no news or content attached to this — but did you guys ever see Scooby Doo Goes Hollywood? I must have rented that movie 15 times before my mom just bought it. It was Scooby Doo Goes Hollywood, The Goonies and my Fisher-Price record of Mickey Mouse and the Haunted House.

1. I wrote two pretty okay articles for my real job last week. They’re here and here.
2. Cate Blanchett might be in the fourth Indiana Jones.
3. Mike Luckovich sums up my feelings exactly.
4. This guy makes knitted posters of Jake. You can find them here, here and here (my favorite). (Thanks Ekrobi.)
5. My mom is flipping out over the existence of this site.
6. Vote in the TiFaux Hotness Tournament! The Ladies’ bracket is up now!

1. This isn’t really a newsflash or anything, but when you sit back and think about it, hasn’t Bush’s second term just been one flaming disaster after another? Can anyone really deny that? And fuckin’ Tony Snow. What a jackass.
2. Jake Gyllenhaal to come rescue me?
3. The True Colors Tour is where hope goes to die.
4. $1,000 pizza.
5. Is DC going to get voting rights?  Very exciting.

Jake’s new movie, Zodiac, is coming out this Friday. I won’t be able to see it right off the bat because it’s a concert-y weekend (The Thermals on Friday, Elvis Perkins on Saturday) — but let me know if you’re in.

Jake and serial killer movies — two of the great, yet somewhat shame-filled, loves of my life.

1. This PostSecret made me laugh my ass off.
2. Buy me this. It’s on sale.
3. Ekrobi has brought these gay marriage and terrorist finger puppets to my attention. Last Passover I had an experience with these 10 plague finger puppets (my favorite is death of the first-born).
4. Jake Gyllenhaal did Letterman. While looking handsome.
5. Arrah and the Ferns do some twee live tracks.

1. Jake. Why do you insist on talking about girls all the time. It’s unattractive.
2. Click here to watch Laura Veirs play a solo acoustic version of “Where Gravity is Dead.” And wear a fetching sweater.
3. Inara George has a new band called The Bird and the Bee. She’s on Leno right now, wearing this dress that looks like it was stolen from an extra on Laugh In.
4. Minnesota Public Radio has a lot of good stuff. Click here to listen to a bunch of bands’ live sets, including Snowden, Jamie Lidell, Now It’s Overhead, Matt Pond PA, Silversun Pickups and Tom Vek.
5. Worthy of mention: went to Express on my day off to pick over the remnants of the final clearance sale. I walked away with a $10 lamb’s wool sweater and a $10 dress shirt. My roommate Lems said that they are a “bluish purple” and strange shade of green, respectively. And she confirmed, just as I thought, that they would go quite well together. In fact, her mom would say they would look “snazzy.”
6. The man-bob is apparently a new fashion phenomenon. May I add We Are Scientists’ Keith Murray to that list?
7. Free crispy strips at KFC! Wooooo!