“How can I date a cop or fireman?” asks a poster on DataLounge, a lively gay forum that is one of Nightcharm’s favorite web stops.

Describing himself as a 41-year-old office worker, who is tired of meeting fellow cubicle slaves, the writer confesses that those cops and firemen “look great in uniform” and wonders if any posters can drop him a clue on how to meet these guys.

Naturally, all the jokers had to weigh in first (”Hang out at fires and crime scenes”), as did the village idiot (”Why would anyone want to date a cop? They are about the most no-talent knobs on the scale? It takes zero education to be a cop, and half are on the take. They get paid shit and have to work proms just to make ends meet. They commit suicide by the age of 40. No thanks.”)

But there were more thoughtful responses. You can never be sure on an open forum who is legitimate and who is not, but DataLounge regulars have developed pretty accurate bullshit detectors, and the following anecdotes had, for us, the ring of authenticity: (more…)

Slate’s gadfly art critic Lee Siegel takes a distinctly psychoanalytical approach to dissecting the vast array of portraiture included in artist David Hockney’s current retrospective, featured through May 15 at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Siegel has subtitled his Slate Slide Show, “The Shallow Lyricism of one of America’s Favorite Painters.”

Siegel points out that “of all the genres and mediums in which Hockney has worked—landscape, still life, and opera sets, among others—his portraiture is the least accomplished and affecting.”

The problem, for Siegel, is Hockney’s narcissism — coupled with his fear of being alone. Hockney remains too focused on his subject’s role in his life to make a convincing portrait of that person as a person. (more…)