Pink Sauce

A couple of days ago, I was helping Slightly to prepare a lecture he gave for LGBT History Month. I knew there was going to be a sound system on the night and thought I would quickly put together a playlist of gay songs to play in the background while people were arriving. In doing my selection, I have deliberately moved away from the usual disco and dance anthems which are supposed to be favourites in the community but ultimately only speak indirectly about our experience. Since the event, I have done a little research and my (non-exhaustive) list has now grown to 55 songs, all of which directly and explicitly talk about the gay, lesbian, bi or trans experience. The only possible exceptions to this being three same-sex duets. It is interesting to notice, by the way how, many songs with a Trans theme seem to be out there. The last four tracks at the bottom are two songs with and a translation. The list of songs can be found below in blocks of 10 and in alphabetical order by artist fir...

This afternoon, I went to the Imperial War Museum (next door to where I live) to attend one of the two screenings of Sex and War , a documentary directed by Annie Paul in 1998 for the BBC's Timewatch series, the museum had scheduled to mark LGBT History Month. The film uses the stories of British servicemen who fought bravely for their country during the Second World War and the example of the Dutch Army which started to welcome gay people in its ranks from 1994 to explore the arguments in the debate around the legalisation of homosexuality which was taking place in the UK at the time of the making of the film. The film includes testimonies from gay (and straight) men from the three services as well as a particularly prejudiced interview with Air Chief Marshall Sir Michael Armitage, the former head of military intelligence (his view are reproduced in the contemporaneous links below). The ban on gays in the UK armed services was official lifted in 2000. The film was very and, with ...

The fourth edition of Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans History Month got on the way today. Learn more about the month here or find an event near you here .

Controversial author, John Perkins, a man who says he knows because, often, he was there, reveals the real reasons behind the Iraq War (part 1) and what is currently happening in South America (part 2) before answering a few questions (part 3). This was recorded at the Veteran for Peace National Convention in Seattle on 11 August 2006 (lasts about 1hr). And it all rather makes sense... part 1 | part 2 | part 3 This interview by DemocracyNow.org summarises his thesis and gives some background on Perkins in about 10min. John Perkins - Wikipedia

The view from the stage of the Palladium during the technical rehearsal on Sunday 16th, showing the gobo whose artwork I put together. The concert went very well. I am glad to say I made very few mistakes and as usual the next day the back-slapping emails were flying fast on the Chorus' mailing lists. The good news is that, having sold out we will be giving I think £5000 to the Terrence Higgins Trust and they got another £2000 from the raffle and bucket shake organised on the night. For fuller reviews of the show click here , here and here . More pictures available here

The camera I bought in 2002 just before going to Sydney with the Chorus, has died on me. It doesn't switch on any more and remain miserably stuck as if it was on (the zoom in unfolded). This was my first digital camera. It wasn't perfect but it helped me learn a lot. It's ease of use and flexibility not to mentioned the great results I got from simply pressing the button (compared to my previous camera: a cheap and nasty autofocus), really encouraged me to take more pictures and gave me a taste for it. No more pics for me until I can buy a new one... (everybody sigh of relief here) that will take a while :O( Unless some generous Santa gives me a nice new SLR... As if!

For those who don't fancy sitting through two hours of choral music, watching Accentuate the Positive in support of the Terrence Higgins Trust, on 16th December at the Palladium, but would still like to see a bunch of gay guys make a fool of themselves in public for Christmas (and yes that includes moi), a few opportunities present themselves to view parts of the London Gay Men's Chorus in action (and for free, apart from the Barbara Cook gig). World AIDS Day Saturday, December 1 St. Pancras Church, Euston - 12 Noon Barbara Cook and friends Word AIDS Day Concert Sunday, December 2 London Coliseum - 7:30 pm Covent Garden Carols December 13, 18, 20 Covent Garden Piazza - respectively 6.30, 7.30 and 9 pm on the 13th and 5.30, 7, and 8.30 pm on the other two dates. (I won't be there on the 13th) Selfridges Carols December 22 & 23 Oxford Street shop - 12.30, 2.00, 3.30, 5.00 (and 7.30 on Saturday only) first published on 28/11, updated on 10/12

I was going to simply post the picture of a red ribbon to mark the day today. But then a friend of mine told me yesterday about World AIDS Day: "Don’t really have any response to it, I’m afraid. Feel like I’ve done my bit." His former partner is HIV+ My response was:"It's not about response, it's about taking part. The response is expected from governments and society. It's a way to remind them that there is still work to be done I think while remembering "our" dead." More controversially perhaps, and with reference to Armistead Maupin's ideas on Desert Island Discs this morning, the day could also almost be seen as a day of thanksgiving for what the advent of the "gay placgue" did to advance the LGBT cause. AIDS both forced and allowed society to talk about LGBT lives. It made us visible and showed us as caring and grieving people not that dissimilar from members of the norm. The epidemic also had positive repercussions within th...

Last night, I attended the pre-launch event of LGBT History Month 2008. This was the fourth event of this kind and I am pleased and proud to say that I have attended all of them. In 2004, the first ever pre-launch event took place at Tate Modern, the following year, we were at the Met Police's Empress State Building. Last year, the TUC welcomed us at Congress House and this year, we were in the grand surroundings of the hall at the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. This was also the event with the most guests, several hundred, I would say. After a few nibbles and drinks, people moved towards the end of the hall to take a seat and listen to the various speakers. After a quick word of welcome by the co-chairs of the Month, Sue Sanders and Paul Patrick, the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland of Asthal QC took the stage for a speech where she retraced the legal history of gay rights since 1967, highlighting the work done by Labour in fighting discrimination (read more here ). Th...

The London Gay Men's Chorus debut at the London Palladium on Sunday December the 16th 2007 with a stunning concert raising funds for the Terrence Higgins Trust. Featuring a celebrity host and special guests including West End star Alison Jiear, the evening will be an upbeat and poignant celebration of how people's experience of living with HIV and AIDS has changed. Including songs such as House Of Fun, One Night Only, Je Ne Regrette Rien and Being Alive , the evening will uphold the London Gay Men's Chorus' tradition of entertaining, informing and uplifting. Marking 25 years of the Terrence Higgins Trust, this will be a night to remember. Bring your lovers, families, friends and memories and join us in marking a quarter of a century of support, education, love, loss and life. Accentuate the Positive The London Palladium Argyll Street, London W1 7:30pm Sunday 16th December Box Office: 0870 890 0144 Tickets from £20 Performance will be BSL Interpreted www.lgmc.org.uk

Imagine your are the managing team of a big company and that you find yourself will a little spare dosh. You look around for what you can do with it and suddenly realise that, Richard Branson, the owner of your company is keen to get rid of it because, like its competitors, it is in trouble and is losing money. So you decide to buy Virgin Megastore. And because you have been working there for a while and you obviously know what a bad brand it is, that people don't like and don't recognise very well, you decide to rebrand the chain of shops with a new snazzy name that you are sure will work wonderfully: Zavvi ... I am speechless!

Salut Zefrog, I came across your blog and wondered if you'd be interested in a website I've set up called MenuLover.co.uk . I'm collecting menus for local takeaway restaurants and posting them on the site so that local people can easily find different sorts of takeaways. If you have a moment to take a look, and if the thought of takeaway food is not anathema to your French sensibilities, I'd really appreciate any comments you have. (The website's just a beta version, but hopefully it gives you a rough idea.) Also, in case you're trying to promote your blog, feel free to list it on Localmouth.com . It's (another) site I've set up which I hope will help people get more involved in their local communities. There are a few South London blogs there already, but I'm pretty sure yours would be the first gay(?) French one ;-) All the best. Cordialement, Matt

Today, I planned I attended an all day event organised by the Southwark Alliance. Or so I thought. The event was billed as their November conference. In fact it turned out to be a consultation exercise on the future of Burgess Park. The vast majority of the 60-odd people attending had no direct involvement with the Park and it seems to me it would have been more efficient to consult users of the Park and local residents. After people had been divided into groups, we were taken for a site visit of an area of the park with the instruction to put ourselves in the boots of a type of user. We walked around the area, we took pictures and registered our impressions of the park. Back to our base, we had to find words to describe the experience. Later on, we had to make a collage with pictures cut out from magazines showing our vision for the Park in 2025. That was more or less what the event was about. Because of our lack of knowledge about the park and the ares, the points we made were and ha...

I am just back from a meeting of the Southwark Anti-Homophobic Forum and I am feeling elated and disappointed at the same time. The meeting was great. Good company and good food were the least of its positive points. Yes, Columba Blango, Executive member for citizenship, equalities and communities (Lib. Dem.), had left mid-meeting during a presentation on domestic violence in the LGBT community but the whole meeting was very positive and in many ways empowering. Simon Hughes , the local MP, had suddenly remembered his (in more ways than one) communihttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifty (I have never seen him at any of our events) and was present at the meeting (although not for long), talking about working with us on several local issues and asking for advice on the current Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill and the government's proposals to introduce a new offence of incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. This was followed by an intervention by members...

Slightly dragged me to Blackheath last night to watch the fireworks. Rather than joining the crowds gathering near where the fireworks were taking place, we decided to stand back a bit and stayed about halfway in the middle of the heath. The view was good. We apparently missed the music though. As for the fireworks, I might be getting blaze but I don't seem to have enjoyed the last few I have seen. Last night's were rather boring. This was mostly due, in my view to a lack of rhythm. There were long periods with little happening and all in all the event was a bit too long. After that we went nearby to the place of one of Slightly's friends who was having drinks. That was quite nice. I got home very late after a bus driver waving at us rather than stopping! and a punch up with police involvement on the bus I finally managed to board. Ah! Deptford!

"Sagging" is becoming increasingly contentious in the US. The fashion trend of wearing jeans sagging low displaying the underwear, favoured mostly by young black men was popularised some years ago by hip hop artists. It is said to originate in American Jails with their ill-fitted uniforms and the lack of belts (for security reasons). Several communities and schools in the US have recently been trying to ban this way of dressing and black organisations have been quick to point out possible racist undertones to these moves. Now the attacks against sagging are coming from a different angle. Texan rapper, Dwayne Brown aka Dooney the Prince, has released a single titled "Put Your Pants Up". When interviewed last week on BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight, Brown explained that sagging is another example of "moral decay". Despite the title of his song, Brown claims not to be trying to tell young people how to dress but simply to educate them on what is for him ...

Sigh

I am just back from the Police Station and the experience there was as dismal as I expected it to be. This was the third time I had set foot in a Police Station. The first time had been to report problems I had had with a friend of my first landlord (I might blog about this someday - I don't seem to already have) and the second time was to report the theft of my wallet on a bus . The theft report had been quite uneventful but during my first visit, I had not been taken seriously (despite the seriousness of what I was reported) and nothing came of it. As I got to the bus stop to start my way home earlier today, I found a battered mobile phone. Being the good Samaritan that my mother taught me to be, I picked the thing up and decided to bring it to the Police. The owner might be glad to get it back. I went to Vauxhall Police Station which is one I know of and close to where I live. When I entered the place I found myself in a small hallway with only two seats and several people alre...

What goes around comes around ! A study of American youths (aged 16 to 29) by The Barna Group shows a declining respect towards Christianity in this age group. It seems that this is at least partly due to the negative attitude of the religious rights (and most established Churches) towards homosexuality. 91% of young non-Christians and 80% of young churchgoers said "anti-homosexual" describes Christianity. Both groups feel that Christians "show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians." They also mention the tendencies of Christian groups to turn homosexuality into a "bigger sin" than anything else while doing little to help young people apply Christian principals to their relation with LGBT friends. 75% of young non-Christians and 50% young Christians also think that Christians are too involved in politics. Read more about the survey here .

It seems that life has made a come-back to the desolate shores of my existence. After the busy past week at the Cycle Show and starting work on the remodeling of the shop, today, I received a phone call from a recent new member of my reading group inviting me, for some incomprehensible reason, to share the bonanza of free tickets to the musical Hairspray at the Shaftesbury. The previews opened on the 11th and the show opens properly on 30th. The guy is an actor and a friend of his, who seems to be managing the Front of House team (or something like that) had lined up for him two circles tickets complete with complementary Champagne and 3 track CD sampler of the original Broadway recording (the tracks can be downloaded here ). The show is based on John Waters ' 1988 film and stars Michael Ball (in Divine 's role of Edna Turnblad), Mel Smith (as Edna's husband), Leanne Jones (as their daughter, Tracy) and Ben James-Ellis (as Tracy's love interest). While Michael Ball is...