I’m largely ambivalent about the holidays this year.

The forced sentimentality, the self-martyring Christian hand-wringing, human beings trampling each other like lemmings for home theaters, the syrupy TV movies starring Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Rob Lowe — combined it’s all enough to make any Atheist with deep-seated misanthropic tendencies and nothing to lose want to cut a bitch.

Only one thing can warm the cockles of this heart of ice: the niche that is amateur Xmas porn.

The cornucopia MerryXXXmas has taught me to love again in a way that visiting Christmas spirits or being inappropriately touched by an angel ever could. There’s enough here to supply me with thousands of Lurid Digs entries, and some are so magical that I want to encase them in a shakeable snow globe for posterity.

How can I even choose a fave? The Ben Cohen-ish guy with Charlie the Jack-In-The-Box from the Island of Misfit Toys posed at groin-level? The naked guy laying by the Christmas tree who’s either been ruffied or nodded off waiting for Santa? The two hot geeks seated naked on a pile of comics with a Tolkien poster and snuggly Transformers blankies as backdrops? It all makes me want to deck the halls hard and nasty.

One caveat though: however will the elves find a box big enough for the gigantic muscle bear in red briefs with a Santa buckle? And what the hell am I going to feed him?

No, not a porn site for Christ’s sake.

Would the creators of such tawdry pit-stops as Lurid Digs and Trainwrecks honor something as unnoteworthy as porn?

No, this year we cast our eye far beyond the cock (and ass) and decided to esteem a site that helps each of us remember why we celebrate being homosexual. Sites that remind us that being an Outsider is a good thing, especially if ostracism equates with having escaped the soul-killing clutches of “The American Family.”

Which leads me to this year’s award winner: The fabulous aggregate site Awkward Family Photos.

Aside from the whimsical (and hot) candid gems, like the opening wedding album shot pictured above, Awkward Family Photos reminds us of how truly horrid childhood can be. How uncaring and narcissistic parents often are. Remember Shawn Baker’s surreal deconstruction of this shot, last month? (read the full article)

It seems like we scan a thousand blogs each week. Queer blogs especially. It’s an occupational hazard. We understand that. But does the process need to be so painful?

Not everyone, god love ‘em, has the creative wherewithal to pull something together that warrants regular eyeballing — be that journalistically or graphically. Given that folks don’t really read anymore, the importance of an original visual theme for a blog is doubly important. That was our criteria this year for choosing Nightcharm’s second annual Queer Blog of the Year Award.

And the winner for 2007 is: (read the full article)

Naked boys fondling their finely-tuned instruments.

Depending on the context, that’s a giddy single entendre or a cheeky double one.

In the case of Wayne Berry (below right), it just happens to be both.

As webmaster of Wayne’s Nude Musicians, he prides himself on being an epicure of what in retrospect is now called “prop porn” — physique nudes in which nubile young Adonises pose seductively with various musical instruments. (Like this demure cutey on the left.)

“While I’m sure your mother and mine would certainly disagree with me on the artistic merits of porn, I think present-day theory would mostly agree on pornography’s status as art,” Wayne explains. “Certainly a lot of it is bad art, but art nonetheless.” (read the full article)

(read the full article)