Straight at last! Straight at last!

Good God Almighty, Pastor Ted is straight at last.

Ted Haggard, of whom we have written copiously (link) (link) (link) (link), has just stepped out of a reprogramming center and has gotten all those filthy thoughts about tweaking and rimming out of his perky blond head. The dizzy little smile has returned in all its Happy Holy Jesus insanity.

From today’s Denver Post [with choice Nightcharm commentary added]:

The Rev. Ted Haggard emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced he is “completely heterosexual” and told an oversight board that his sexual contact with men was limited to his accuser.

That is according to one of the disgraced pastor’s overseers, who on Monday revealed new details about where Haggard has been and where he is headed.

The Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur also said the four-man oversight board strongly urged Haggard to go into secular work instead of Christian ministry if Haggard and his wife follow through on plans to earn master’s degrees in psychology. [Pul-eeeze! We're gasping!].

In the [email] message [to members of his church], Haggard revealed that he and his wife, Gayle, intend to leave Colorado Springs and pursue master’s degrees through online courses. (more…)

Join us in our holy crusade to put the triple-X back into Xmas! Here is what we want — what we’ve only ever wanted — for Christmas.

And kids, it’s not peace on earth. (That’s the second thing on our list.)

It’s this fan-tastic coverboy on the 2007 Dieux Du Stade calendar, at left : Julien Arias.

Jesus — the face, the chest, the arms, the ass (unseen, but you can tell!) — and all he speaks is French!

Oxygen, please! The cabin is rapidly losing pressure!

Natch, he’s a French rugby player or something: the Dieux Du Stade series specializes in rough-and-tumble Euro sportsmen, all of whom have L’Uomo faces of the most florid, full-blown beauty, as well as those high-and-tight footballer arses and lovely half-concealed (but we’re sure, uncut) packages.

Oh, it’s a pricey little import, this calendar. Beautifully executed, of course — more like a high-end photobook, with the months divided in half, so you get double the boy for the buck. At about $37, we think it makes a great gift for that special someone. (Surely it’s too deliciously indulgent to give to yourself!)

Below the jump is a vid of the studly Julien from his maddeningly naked photo shoot featured on the Dieux du Stade: Making of the 2007 Calendar DVD. But we must warn you: Not since Kubrick’s 2001:A Space Odyssey, have we seen Johann Strauss’ magnificent Blue Danube Waltz so lushly, so unforgettably complemented. (more…)

“Gay culture has been a feature of seafaring life for centuries,” states the website for Liverpool’s maritime museum. “It is still a hidden one, even today when the Royal Navy actively recruits gay sailors. ”

The Merseyside Maritime Museum, which is dedicated to the seafaring history of that port city, is throwing a light on this hidden culture in an exhibition charmingly titled Hello Sailor: Gay Life on the Ocean Wave.

To promote the show, which runs to the end of March, a series of brief essays have been posted on the museum’s website filled with insider tidbits and an unmistakable first-hand authenticity.

Here we learn that though homosexuality was a crime in Britain until 1967 (sometimes punished by prison sentences, most famously that of Oscar Wilde, as well as the man who broke the Nazi war code, Alan Turing), the “sodomic” tradition was allowed to flourish in the Royal navy as an open secret. It thus endured as a haven for randy middle-class boys who, with often only nominal attempts to pass for straight, joined up to meet men and see the world. (more…)

But enough about you…let’s talk about us.

It’s official! Nightcharm is a cultural phenomenon. How do we know? Well, we’ve just been on Oprah.

I was munching a burrito and channel surfing when the face of a tear-streaked blonde brought me to a complete standstill. The woman was talking about the shock — the disorienting shock — of finding out that her marriage had been a sham.

A wail went up from the audience. The camera dove into the crowd and settled on an gaggle of housewives, all misting up and getting ready to blow.

I settled back into the couch with delight! Yep, I had stepped into the middle of a big ole Oprah Cry Fest.

The remote dropped from my hand and I hunkered deep into the couch, as rapt as a cat.

Just then the show broke for a commercial and the title of the episode came up — It was then that I knew I would be there for the entire fucking hour:

My Husband Is Gay!

I counted the minutes as the feminine hygiene commercial ran its course in a burst of animated daisies and butterflies. Then the episode resumed. The gay husband was speaking. No more than four words were out of his mouth when his image faded into one of those famous Oprah reenactment montages. There he was, banging away at a computer keyboard, hungrily searching the monitor for — something. (more…)

Everything was going so great in the Garden.

Then Steve showed up.

Are you ready to rumble? Film after the jump. (more…)

They’re written for teenage girls, right? (Over 18, of course.)

For little pink things with pink cell phones text-messaging each other about parties and the proper way to give a blowjob (in a nutshell, girls, watch the teeth. Men are real crybabies about shit like that.)

Yet why do gay men — fully grown ones well, well out of their late-onset teens (which for a gay man means he’s about 30) — why do gay guys often quote these twiddling, diddling lyrics at you like they are bridging some shimmering chasm of profundity, which mere words, un-levitated by string sections, could never span?

Why, you chucklehead 30-year-olds — why?

And why do the same soppy lyrics crop up in farewell letters and over long-distance phone lines and in coffee shops where first-lovers stare sadly– and with such large, glistening corneas — into each other’s eyes?

Must the lyrics always come from the songs of innocence, never the songs of experience? Never from say, that snappy little toe-tapper by Peggy Lee, Is That All There Is? (more…)

Admit it. More than having sex with movie stars, you’d rather be the movie star everybody wanted to have sex with.

Better: you’d want to be an out gay movie star so you wouldn’t have to waste time dating Hollywood princesses and could zero in on all the beefcake on the hoof.

Plus, you’d be on the A-list, so you could — just for laughs — brazen up to all the Colins and Brads and Tobeys, the Vins and Tommy boys with even the strayest ambiguous twinkle in their eyes.

Talk about charmed lives! You’d soon never be surprised again by what could pop up (and so quickly) in even the most unlikely swimming pool or cabana hut.

You’d want, in short, to be Rupert Everett (at left).

Most people remember Everett as Julia Robert’s real best friend in My Best Friend’s Wedding. There he was her gay man-pal who shows up to lend Julia support at the wedding of her ex-boyfriend. Though the boyfriend was played by Dermot Mulroney — a dark-eyed, dagger-jawed humdinger in his own right — the real romance was between Julia and Rupert. (Everett, in real life, had long been an out gay man.) (more…)

Nobody can screw up a room like a gay man on a mission.

All the mythology about the deft taste of gay men may be great to keep the rubes shelling out the big bucks to home decorators with fire in their eyes — but buyer beware. Lemmings are committed to a vision too.

One thing that gay men have in abundance is taste. Not necessarily good taste. Just tons and tons of vivid taste.

And this aesthetic imperative, this relentless ordering of the world into “pretty” (or “trendy” or “ugly beautiful”) boxes, smacks up against another gay imperative. The swinish male onrush to have sex everywhere and with everyone. (more…)