Panama here I come!!!

Most of you already know that I am going away to Panama for a much-needed holiday this season. I am taking my mother down to celebrate her 89th birthday with my sister who lives down there.

As you get this post in your email, we are winging our way to Panama City where we will be staying at this lovely little B&B, The Balboa Inn, that just happens to be at the top of most lists of Gay-Friendly Hotels in Panama!

I will keep you all posted as to my discoveries down there. Wish me luck on a surfboard!

Cheers and Happy Holidays everyone!

You "syrup suckers" better watch out! Better not cry!

Television host Stephen Colbert is going the comedic distance with his image splashed on the glossy cover of Sports Illustrated decked out in a skin-tight speedskating uniform, complete with a tie.

The satiric host of The Colbert Report appears on the latest issue of Sports Illustrated, due out this week, as part of his ongoing support for the U.S. speedskating team.

The mock right-wing pundit came to the aid of the team after its largest supporter, DSB Bank NV, declared bankruptcy in October. Colbert's fundraising efforts have so far netted $250,000 US for the team.

The magazine's latest issue, emblazoned with "Stephen Colbert and his nation save the Olympics," concerns sports media. It's also a sly reference to the comedian's jab at Olympic officials in Canada.

Colbert has launched a campaign against organizers at Vancouver's Winter Olympics, labeling Canadians as "syrup suckers" and "ice holes," after reports that staff have limited access to the Richmond Olympic Oval and other venues to international athletes.

No God?...No Problem!

Celebrating a new kind of holiday tradition, the American Humanist Association has launched a new advertising campaign. Ads will be blazoned across transit systems in five cities--including Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco--marking the first-ever nation-wide humanist holiday advertising campaign.

"No God?...No Problem!" proclaim the ads, featuring an image of several smiling, Santa hat-clad individuals. The ads will kick off in Washington, D.C. in time for Thanksgiving weekend, running inside 200 buses, fifty rail cars and on the side or tail of twenty buses. The campaign will continue with ads appearing on select buses in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco starting in early December.

Canadian Gothic

"Scott Brison describes it as 'Canadian Gothic.' ... 'Just a couple of guys and their dog standing in a field,' he says about his Christmas card this year.

But there are others, the Nova Scotia Liberal MP says, who are describing it as 'The Brokeback Brisons' – an homage to the Ang Lee movie about two gay cowboys and their love affair on a Wyoming mountain. This is the first time, meanwhile, the couple has posed together for a Christmas card and it is likely the first same-sex married-couple MP Christmas card...

It was sent to about 5,000 friends and constituents.

Jully Black's words of wisdom

Have you ever had a notebook that you wrote everything in? A reminder to call someone, a phone number that's changed, a note to read something inspirational or simply a great idea? That's what THE BLACK BOOK is about.

It is more than just a book, a diary, an agenda, a phone book or a glossary. It's the place where the mental notes, important details and words of wisdom have manifested themselves into songs. These are lessons that I've learned and lessons that were taught to me through the experiences of mine and of others.

Jully Black is a Canadian R&B singer of Jamaican heritage, and was brought up in the Jane and Finch area of Toronto. She has collaborated and written for many notable artists, including Nas, Missy Elliott, Saukrates, Choclair, Kardinal Offishall, Destiny's Child, and Sean Paul.
In summer 2005, a newly recorded album, This is Me, was released by Universal Music Canada. The album included the hit singles "Sweat of Your Brow" and "5x Love". According to a piracy report by IFPI, the international music industry body, there were "2.8 million illegal file swapping requests for her music in the first two weeks of her album’s release in 2005". At the same time, Black reportedly "struggled to sell 15,000 copies of the same album".

In summer 2007, a new single entitled "Seven Day Fool" was released, eventually becoming Black's first Top 10 hit in Canada. Her second album Revival was released on October 16, 2007 and was awarded the Juno for R&B/Soul Recording of the Year in Calgary on April 6, 2008, at which she was the closing act on the telecast performing "Seven Day Fool".

The Golden Age of Video

A fun compilation of many classics.

Maybe Texas ain't so bad after all!

On Saturday, Houston, Texas became the first major U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor, Annise Parker, after a hotly contested run-off election that gave gay and lesbian supporters a symbolic victory following defeats over legalizing same-sex marriages in California and Maine.

"The voters of Houston have opened the door to history," Parker told supporters at a convention center in Houston. "I know what this win means to many of us who never thought we could achieve high office."

Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Musician Eric Woolfson, a singer and songwriter best known as co-founder of progressive rock group Alan Parsons Project, has died. He was 64.

A songwriter since the early 1960s, Woolfson created 10 albums with Alan Parsons, an engineer who had worked on the Beatles' Abbey Road and on the Pink Floyd album, Dark Side of the Moon.

Their low-key albums, recorded with a revolving cast of session musicians, had a cult following, especially in Germany and the U.S. Their biggest selling album was 1982's Eye in the Sky.

Other albums included I Robot and Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which was based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

In the 1960s, Woolfson worked alongside two then-unknown writers, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

Canada Border Services Agency are DINX

An award-winning film, on its way back to Canada from an international gay and lesbian film festival in October, was held up at the Canadian border for more than a month.

On Nov 24, Edmonton filmmaker Trevor Anderson received a letter from Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) informing him that his short film DINX had been detained on Oct 21 and was being investigated for obscenity. A few days later, the tape was returned to him in the mail.

"It concerns me that the determination of what gets into our country is in the hands of individual border guards," he says.

A fun parody and a call-to-arms

Bash’d – A Gay Rap Opera will be at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa from January 12-31.

Billed as “a gay rap opera,” the Edmonton-grown, Fringe-Fest-honed musical Bash'd has intrigued and titillated audiences in Canada and the United States. It garnered the 2007 Outstanding Musical Award at the New York International Fringe Festival and the 2008 GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Media Award in the category of Off-Off-Broadway Production.

The plot follows two star-crossed lovers who fall in love and get hitched. As the name implies, one of the men is eventually gaybashed. Enraged at the brutal attack, his spouse vows revenge. That’s the opera part. The gay part, of course, is that the lovers are a couple named Jack and Dillon, who first meet in a gay bar.

The rap element is a twist that might initially perplex the average theatregoer. While there is indeed music, spoken word, and a bit of good old-fashioned poetry thrown in, this approximately hour-long production is presented and narrated almost completely through the medium of rap — by two MCs named Feminem and T-Bag.

Gay rap or hip hop, aka “homo hop,” has existed as an underground movement since the late ’90s, thanks to the influence of such pioneers as Tori Fixx and the Deep Dickollective. However, Nathan Cuckow, co-writer and co-performer of Bash’d, admits that he was unaware of the movement when he created the character of Feminem ten years ago, for Edmonton’s Loud & Queer Cabaret.