Friday, June 22, 2012

A Tired Old Queen & Another Dead Gay Porn Star, Among Other Things

The Inevitable Demise of a Porn Star. This is Erik Rhodes, gay porn star. No, really, a genuine star. He appeared in or directed over thirty films (including Super Soaked, The Farmer's Son, He's Got a Big Package, L.A. Zombie and It Gets Bigger) for some of the biggest porn companies in the business, like Falcon, Raging Stallion and Mustang. At the 2008 Grabby Awards (honoring work in the gay pornographic industry) he won in the categories of Best Actor and Best Versatile Performer. The muscular, 6'3" Long Island native died on June 14, 2012. He was 30 years old.


James Elliott Naughtin, AKA "Erik Rhodes." 1982-2012
According to Falcon's blog, "Erik died of a heart attack in his sleep." To be honest, I'd never even heard of the guy before this story scrolled through my Facebook news feed. Sure, I watch gay porn; I just never watched any of his. So I decided to look him up and discovered that he was somewhat of a celebrity in New York social circles. He counted Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears among his friends and had been romantically connected to fashion designer Marc Jacobs at one time. But Rhodes was also the author of a candid, sometimes clever and often harrowing confessional blog that pulled no punches about his porn work, prostitution, crystal meth binges and steroid abuse. Yeah, one of the ways you get a body like that is from steroids. According to a New York Times article, Rhodes waning porn career floundered when a company that requires HIV testing of its models informed him he was positive. Judging from blog entries, things took a dark turn for Rhodes in 2009. Eventually he went from using steroids to dealing them. Days before his death, he blogged this response to a question about his "roid cycle."
My cycle right now...
3000 mg of Test Enanthate a week, 2500 mg of Nandrolone Decaonate and 300 mg of Trenbolone acetate. With 5iu of Human Growth Hormone everyday.
I'm waiting until i pop. Or my liver to fails... which every comes first.
I've been reading stories about dead porn stars for decades. AIDS. Overdoses. Suicides. Now Erik Rhodes. How do we even classify this death? It simply cannot be summed up as "died of a heart attack in his sleep." People will ask, why do we care if a porn star dies? Some will literally mourn. Others will say he deserved it, even brought it on himself. And he'll probably be judged for his excesses by a lot of the same gay men who envied his muscles, his big dick, his masculine beauty and his career. I'll never make sense out of things like this.

Here's the thing... years from now some hormonal gay kid will find a photo of Erik Rhodes or one of his videos and beat off vigorously, probably never knowing, or even wanting to know, anything about the real James Elliott Naughtin or his demons. It's only a cautionary tale if someone's listening.
Tired Old Queen at the Movies. One of my favorite YouTube channels is Steve Hayes: Tired Old Queen. Mr. Hayes, a gay comedian, actor and classic film buff, entertains viewers with dishy, funny and very informative commentaries on everything from screwball comedies and camp classics to Technicolor spectacles and film noir. He doesn't just describe the films and show clips -- he uses his vast knowledge of film and Hollywood history to serve up fascinating details about the plots, the stars, the studios, the directors, the controversies and the scandals. It's nostalgic, insightful analysis, all recorded (with the help of fellow actor John Bixler) at his memorabilia-filled studio apartment in New York. The addictive segments are called Tired Old Queen at the Movies, and his latest -- a gay pride special -- is an enthusiastic tribute to 1959's Some Like It Hot, starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe.



Joe the Plumber, Revised.  Remember this guy? Sure you do. He gained national attention during the 2008 presidential election when he confronted candidate Barrack Obama about his small business tax policy plan during a campaign stop in Ohio. His real name is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, but he was dubbed "Joe the Plumber" by conservative pundits, hailed as some kind of everyman, and turned into a fishy metaphor for middle class Americans. The McCain-Palin campaign invited him to appear at several campaign events in Ohio, too. Wurzelbacher has milked this Joe the Plumber business ever since, ad nauseam, even writing a book about the experience, becoming a self-described motivational speaker as well a TV commentator, although he never has anything to say about plumbing. (And for the record, he was as an employee of a plumbing contractor at the time of his interaction with Obama and has never owned his own business, thus the president's small business plan would not have affected him personally anyway.)

So guess what? He's running for the House of Representatives as a Republican in Ohio's 9th congressional district. Yes, he's a politician now, even though he recently told CBN (The Christian Broadcasting Network), "I see the word politician as being one of the worst things you can call me. You know, I'm not a politician, nor will I ever be one." He says that while sitting in front of a bunch of signs that say "Wurzelbacher for Congress." In his campaign headquarters. For further proof that he is NOT a politician, you can visit his website, www.joeforcongress2012.com.

Full disclosure here. I think Wurzelbacher is hot as hell (when he's not speaking). I'd totally fuck the living daylights out of him (in a truck stop in a parallel universe). But he's dumber than a cinder block. For evidence of this, here he is telling CBN that the Bible, unlike science, has never been revised.


The mere fact that a "King James Version" of the Bible exists is simple proof of revision. There isn't even one common version of the Bible, as the contents and the order of the individual books vary among denominations. Joe the Plumber is either breathtakingly ignorant or just pandering to Christians who ARE ignorant. I suspect it's some combination of both.

So Joe's a Bible-loving Christian. But what does he love about America? That would be the 2nd Amendment. To prove it, he's going to shoot a bunch of fruit in a political ad while declaring, "In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, six million Jews and seven million others, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated... I love America." Um, yeah, Joe, the problem with what you're saying (beyond its mind-blowing insensitivity) is that the German gun control you're talking about was the 1938 German Weapons Act which forbade only Jews from the manufacturing or ownership of firearms and ammunition. Everyone else could get one at 18. So again, he's either ignorant or pandering to gun owners. I've decided it's both. Here's a plumbing metaphor even Joe can understand: This guy has all the charm of a toilet that won't quit running. Someone, please jiggle the hell out of his handle and make it stop.




My Favorite Music Video(s) of the Week. These...

In 2011, rapper/singer/lyricist Azealia Banks made every kind of year-end hot list on the strength of her debut single "212." Hailing from Harlem, New York, Banks is gorgeous, profane, publicly bisexual and 21 years old. She's not interested in defending her explicit lyrics either, saying she just uses "everyday speech," like it or not. The video for her latest rap/dance single, "Liquorice," is a glossy whirlwind of American iconography, Old West movie cliches and overtly sexual imagery (made to look deliberately ridiculous).




SSION (it's pronounced "shun") has been around since 1996. You could describe them as dance/pop performance art freaks, and they would probably be just fine with that. "Earthquake" sounds like an awesome '80s song that someone inexplicably forgot to release in the '80s. Music channel Noisey described the clip like this: "SSION's new video is a coming of age love story between an enigmatic instigator and an alien-brother-lover resulting in the purest form of magik with a bit of feminism and Las Vegas showmanship thrown in for good measure, all shot in Kansas City." I love it.



Peace out,
David

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