Sony is launching a venture aimed at promoting talented gay and lesbian recording artists.
Record label Music With A Twist will send talent scouts across the US to discover new musicians.
Several compilation albums and a syndicated radio programme are also planned as part of the collaboration. The first release is expected to come out in June to coincide with National Gay Pride month in the US. More at BBC News.
If good reading is your thing you will be most intrigued with Blair Mastbaum, author of Clay’s Way: A Novel and Christopher Rice, author of A Density Of Souls, The Snow Garden: A Novel and Light Before Day. I have recently finished all of these pieces during the Christmas period and I am very impressed and eager to read more by both of these authors who give Gay Literature a whole new platform.
via http://amazon.com Clay’s Way:
A wannabe punk rocker who writes bad haiku poetry, 15-year-old Sam is fed up with his middleclass parents, his geeky best friend, and his inability to do the raddest skateboard tricks. Then he meets Clay. Mistaking lust for fate, Sam becomes obsessed with the 17-year-old surferboy, whose island cool masks an internal conflict even darker than Sam’s. Directing his furious energy toward winning Clay’s heart, Sam goes on a reckless odyssey to become everything Clay seems to be. Through hurricanes, car accidents, teenage parties, and monster waves they ricochet off each other until, on a remote beach, in the flickering light of torches and campfires, the violence and tumult of Clay and Sam’s dynamic propels them both through the hardest decisions and obstacles of their young lives.
Set against the dazzling backdrop of Hawaii’s Oahu and Kauai islands, Clay’s Way seethes with the energy and the hormonally charged nihilism of its characters. Twenty-four-year-old first-time novelist Blair Mastbaum has written a startlingly authentic account of 21st-century teens, careening toward adulthood, devoid of guidance, fueled by alcohol, drugs, and rage. A Density Of Souls:
Take the sensuous, fecund New Orleans setting, add a generous helping of tangled Southern family history, and season liberally with a sensitive teenage boy rejected by his friends and frightened of his own homoerotic impulses and you wouldn’t be surprised to discover that the novel containing all of the above was written by someone named Rice. But a few paragraphs into the first page, it’s clear that Anne Rice’s son’s first novel isn’t about vampires or witches and does not otherwise read like one of her exceedingly popular books. The only family resemblance is in the setting, the sexual orientation of the lovingly described male characters, and the scent of overripe magnolias.
There’s murder, suicide, and madness at the heart of this rather clumsy coming-of-age story, which focuses on the youthful friendship of Stephen Conlin, Meredith Ducote, Greg Darby, and Brandon Charbonnet. This friendship is destroyed by a sexual incident that takes place just before the foursome enters Cannon, an exclusive prep school. There, Stephen is ostracized by his former friends, now the most popular kids on campus, who’d just as soon forget their own complicity in the event. Envy, passion, and rage drive the narrative, but the emotions are as juvenile as the characters, and the long passages depicting the rituals and cruelties of high school, from pep rallies to football games, slow down the pace without really illuminating character or motivation. The novel reads like a roman à clef. Rice might have been wiser to tell someone else’s story rather than his own. Snow Garden: A Novel:
It’s the beginning semester at Atherton College, a private, posh, and richly endowed school where a cross-section of freshman are getting their first taste of freedom from adults. Eighteen-year-old Randall is in the middle of an affair with his male, middle-aged, and married professor. He’s desperate that his best friend Kathryn Barker, also a freshman, doesn’t find out about the relationship because he wants to keep her respect and friendship.
Kathryn’s friendship is the least of his problems when his professor’s wife dies, the toxicology report showing a high level of alcohol and narcotics. Randall learns that the professor was involved with another woman who also died in a similar manner. With the help of a friend, Randall investigates the matter but he stirs up secrets that are better left buried for everyone’s sake.
THE SNOW GARDEN is gothic in content and tone, a dark picture of the lengths people go to so they can hide their true selves. Just about every character in this novel is wearing a mask, but it is up to the audience to decide whether it is to fool others or themselves. Christopher Rice, author of A DENSITY OF SOULS, is a talented, creative, and intellectual writer who knows how to lay bare the truth about human nature. Light Before Day:
Twenty-six-year-old journalist Adam Murphy is trying desperately to recover from a life fuelled by cocaine and alcohol. Haunted by the violent death of his alcoholic mother, Adam traverses the streets of West Hollywood, temptation always just a hairs breadth away. Having obtained a job working for a local gay lifestyle magazine, he tries to talk the owner into publishing some of his more hard-hitting stories, one of which is an inquiry into the apparent suicide of a supposedly straight marine pilot. The editor, however, is convinced that a gay man’s lifestyle doesn’t include much “beyond his pecks and his underwear.”
But Adam refuses to give up, and is determined to find out the real truth behind the young man’s death. When Corey, his new lover inexplicably disappears from his apartment leaving behind his car keys, his cell phone, and a rancid carton of milk, Adam’s suspicion is aroused. Could Cory’s disappearance be somehow linked to the suicide of the marine pilot? The puzzle becomes even more complex when a crystal-meth addicted friend of Adam’s tells him that one night while walking the streets of West Hollywood, he witnessed the pilot up to some suspicious business.
In West Hollywood where expediency rules the day, and the emphasis on youth and beauty is often misplaced, older, wealthy men are seen to take advantage of younger, wide-eyed and innocent boys. Young guys from the country who move to LA in their twenties to leave their difficult histories behind, fall under the spell of predatory men and often start to do vile things. Particularly despicable and depraved is an Internet, satellite based pedophile ring, which Chris learns may have involved Corey. But in what way is Corey connected? And is Corey even alive?
Chris, with the help of his new employer, James Wilton – a notoriously curmudgeonly mystery writer with his own battle scars – travels from the suburban landscape of Oceanside to the wild valleys of Central California where he races against time to put the disparate pieces of the puzzle together and hopefully find Corey. Here he encounters Caroline Hughes, a forceful young surgical resident, who has been scouring the back lots of central California, seeking out a serial killer with almost legendary mystique who she thinks is responsible for her mother’s death.
Caroline is convinced that her mother had witnessed something evil taking place, especially as her charred body was found next to a burnt out trailer masquerading as a crystal meth laboratory. Chris is also haunted by the fact that the main player in porn video involving underage boys bares a striking resemblance to him. Did he do something he shouldn’t have when blacking-out on one of his drug-fuelled binges? Sometimes Chris wonders if his mission to protect people from the truth has left them defenseless and vulnerable. And he’s constantly accused of bleeding judgments – “leaving a trail of them wherever he goes, perhaps he’ll even drown in them someday.”
What is so mesmerizing about this novel is the total immersion in the culture of crystal meth, with author Christopher Rice, vividly bringing to life the effects this terrible drug has on both the mind and the body. His ability weave a narrative that connects the drug to the problems of pedophilia, is generally inventive and cleverly done.
Light and Day is a complicated slice of drama, with plot threads and characters that weave in and out of the narrative with a full-on and sometimes-violent intensity. An angst-ridden twenty-something man is hopelessly in love and ardently obsessed, but he’s tormented by his past and also by obtaining the truth; a woman’s interminable quest to find a killer, and who resorts to kidnapping and torture to achieve her ends; and a group of wealthy, technologically savvy men who take advantage of innocent young boys, while desperately trying to avert being caught.
The cast of characters is almost Dickensian in size and scope and they are written with particular attention to their connections to the darker side of the human heart. This is the perfect formula for a labyrinthine Southern California mystery that is at once, challenging thematically, but also distinctively and uniquely satisfying.
Leandro Becker, born in 1979 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is a Brazilian actor and model. Prior to becoming an actor/model, he worked as an electrician and a barman. Made In Brazil has scored an exclusive Q&A With DJ Leandro Becker and is now requesting for readers to submit their questions for compilation. Send in yours today.
Clammy balls? Bat-wing syndrome? Sweaty cheeks? Balla Powder to the rescue. This men essential can be sprinkled into your fudgies for all-day-long comfort and dryness and can also be used between your cheeks, as well as on fetid feet and aromatic armpits.
(Spotted over at Tranism. Hey Tran! How are yooo?)
So, we here at QC have done a fairly decent job at wishing pretty much every single one of you a very “Merry Click-mas!” Now it’s time to acknowledge our Jewish Queer Clickers and say “Happy Hanukkah!” Have a safe and happy holiday boys!
With much love and respect,
The QC Team
Public Service Announcement: There’s a members-contest happening over at AmateurStraightGuys.com. Here’s what you may win yourself:
The Grand Prize winner gets a trip to sunny Arizona to visit Doug and Jay, watches a hot video update being filmed, AND an iPod loaded with ASG videos. Second prize is an iPod loaded with videos and an ASG DVD collection. Third prize winner receives an iPod loaded with ASG Videos.
Don’t miss the promo video with Jay reading his lines off the prompter! Haha.
The drawing will be broadcast Live online on February 14th, 2006 at 7pm Pacific. Good luck and Berry Merry X’mas!!
Also known as the “How Can There Be A Hottest When Everyone’s A Hottest?” Contest.
Head over to Made In Brazil and cast your vote. Contest ends 31 December.
Truck Nutz are a high quality, automotive accessory that hang from any bumper and let you show the world your nuts. So the next time someone tells you that your rig has no guts, just tell them, “that’s ok cause I’ve got truck nutz!”
The Civil Partnership Act, which was passed in November last year, gives gay couples the same property and inheritance rights as married heterosexual couples and entitles them to the same pension, immigration and tax benefits.
From December 5, same-sex couples were able to tell register offices of their aim to form a civil partnership but must wait 15 days to be able to do so.
However, unlike those in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Canada, Britain’s civil partnership is not a marriage. Britain’s procedure is an exclusively civil one in which the partnership becomes binding with the partners signing certain documents; whereas a marriage becomes binding when partners exchange spoken words in a civil or religious ceremony.
According to local reports, some 1,200 couples scheduled ceremonies set to take place between Dec 19 in Northern Ireland and Dec 21 in England and Wales.
Popular singer Elton John has announced plans to enter into a civil partnership Dec 21 with his longtime partner, David Furnish, a filmmaker.
“It is a major, major change,” Furnish said in a recently published interview. “It is one of the defining issues of our times. And I applaud Britain for embracing the diversity of our society.”
Ex-Wham star George Michael has meanwhile hit out at reports which claimed that he is planning to marry his partner Kenny Goss, Michael insisted the pair would only consider a same-sex union for legal purposes.
(News source: Fridae)
