Not only does Nightcharm have a new face, we’ve got a new editor-in-chief as well.

Meet Shawn Baker. Of course regulars to NC and the humor site Lurid Digs have been reading Shawn’s irascible entries for awhile now. Proof positive that consistently interacting with your favorite site can land you a job. (Yep, we discovered Shawn after taking note of his cogent comments to our articles, several years ago.)

Once NC’s longtime editor John Calendo decided to step down to focus on his new novel, it was a no-brainer that the site’s editorial mantle would pass to Shawn. He’s feisty, funny and willing to poke at the tender (or taboo) belly of a story. Shawn also brings discipline and concentration to his writing, qualities often lacking in the slap-dash and sloppy world of ‘blogging.’

Here are some insights from my recent interview with the new chief:

David K.: Tell me about your education and influences.

Shawn: I went to Fordham (good ol’ F.U.), the Jesuit University of New York, which was a bust even though I graduated top of my class. I didn’t really need to learn to write, though. I’d always had it in me. I have whole words and casts of people in my mind, all of the time. Book-wise I like H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, L. Frank Baum, Robert E. Howard. Definitely a cult movie buff: Dario Argento, Russ Meyer, David Lynch, to name a view. (read the full article)

When I was eighteen I did what many budding homos from the burbs did. I moved to Hollywood. My mom helped me secure my first apartment, gave me her old car and wished me luck for finding work.

I’d have gotten a job sooner, and not depleted my minuscule savings so quickly, if I hadn’t lived right down the street from Santa Monica Blvd and its prize pink jewel: The Pussycat Theater — with its always flashing, always tempting marquee.

And there was a new enticement each week. Who wouldn’t want to explore The Opening of Misty Beethoven or Beyond the Green Door? It didn’t bother me in the least that these were 100% heterosexual porn films. Straight or gay — if a film featured buff guys with boners thrusting about various orifices, I was interested.

If only the colleges in California taught what colleges across the country are now offering: Porn-studies. I would have gladly returned to school (something I swore I’d never do after escaping high school) to learn more about my “calling.” And I would have launched my career as a porn publisher much sooner — instead of waiting until I was 40 and intrepid and slightly crazy. Think about it. Studying the theory of porn, the art of porn is a fascinating compliment to the blind, instinctual consumption of porn. I would have felt so much more balanced. (read the full article)

As a kid I grew up with my mother and grandmother’s copies of Rona Barrett’s Hollywood and The National Enquirer scattered around the house.

My grandmother especially was unapologetic about the gossip rags, and her ardor made it all the easier for me to revel in them too.

Some of my sweetest memories involve everyone in my family lying around on Sunday afternoons discussing Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand having sex together on the set of The Way We Were. Or at least how we imagined they were having sex together. Tabloid time like this was considered quality time in my family.

To this day I still argue with friends about the veracity of The National Enquirer, and why I still read it — explaining how the potential threat of high-cost litigation keeps the paper trustworthy. This pretty much guarantees that whatever sort of outrageous revelation they are publishing is fact-based (well, maybe). (read the full article)

To feature a woman on Nightcharm’s front page she must be a creature who mirrors the pagan, crystal vision that inspires our staff to conjure all of the high quality juju we offer up to you, dear reader, week after week.

And who better to feature this week than the earth and moon-inspired blond witchy woman herself: Stevie Nicks.

When I caught Camille Paglia on tour recently she mentioned how the entirety of her new book Break, Blow, Burn was written with Nicks’ Trouble in Shangri-La spinning in the background.

Paglia considers Stevie Nicks a nature poet, a poet of the earth and sky: The planets, sun and the moon (and then some). A few audience members balked at Paglia’s statement, but I nodded my head in agreement while fingering my love beads.

As Joyce Millman from Salon reminds us: “The women in Nicks’ songs are free birds and gypsies: independent, unafraid to be alone, uncaged. In the manly world of rock ‘n’ roll, Nicks articulated a yearning female spirituality. She put her womanliness right out there, undiluted.” (read the full article)

“One Never Knows When a Homosexual is About.” The voice-over is extreme and distinctly 60s in tenor. The scenario could be an outtake from The Donna Reed Show. The narrator continues: “He may appear normal and it may be too late when you discover he is mentally ill.”

My dilemma, at age 14 when I first saw the instructional film Boys Beware — during a special boys-only junior high assembly — was that it wasn’t too late … and I did already know: I was a homosexual. And I wanted some of that man-on-man stuff. But please mister, let me live after you’ve blown me!

Ah, yes, my 1970s school days: Lunch money, my collection of Diana Ross records and stewing in the cautionary wisdom offered up by 60s kid-films director Sid Davis. (read the full article)

HBO’s Bill Maher is back from a two-month break. I caught his show this morning thanks to TIVO. Favorite moments abounded. Like Maher asserting the word “worse” right after panelist Carly Fiorina said something about Bush being our president … “for better or for worse.”

And Bill’s New Rules riff on monster-mouthed Colorado pastor Ted Haggard’s miraculous 30 day Gay-Be-Gone conversion was a scream. As Maher told it: “You can’t make a gay man 100 percent straight in a month, especially if that month contains fashion week…A month to change your sexuality? I’ve spent longer than that on hold trying to quit AOL!”

But the best part of the show was also the smartest: Maher’s interview with John Amaechi (right) the former NBA star who recently outed himself.
(read the full article)

There she sat all listless, cocooned girth — occupying the couch completely. Her pooch Sugar Pie nuzzled against her belly. There would be no nap time interruptions — despite the spooky, toothless Texan cousin hovering outside the front door hankering to “just show Anna how much I love her.”

With her head buried into the sofa, Anna made slo mo swatting motions towards her lawyer and E!’s production crew.

But wait, suddenly she was stirring, squinting at the camera — the description of her cousin’s dental condition had captured her attention. Soon she was whining through a medicated haze, demanding “donut holes and chocolate milk.” Dough and libation were delivered.

Jump cut: Meticulously coifed and upright Anna. Gorgeous and glittering in her limo, ever-present drones beside her.

The Middle East crisis was broached. Anna: perplexed and blank and “Who’s killing the Jews?” she wanted to know. Her lawyer explained the political situation. Anna’s facial expression was pure female mall rat who’s just discovered that T.J. Maxx is no longer stocking her favorite shade of lipstick. Suicide bombers? “Why would they do that? Don’t they think it’s kinda painful?” (read the full article)

People are missing the not-so-obvious heart of Lifetime’s latest dollop of TV goofiness, the twice-weekly show Gay, Straight Or Taken. Yes it’s a reality show. And yes it feels like the unfortunate offspring of the romance-driven Boy Meets Boy and Fox’s horrifyingly bad Playing It Straight.

But Gay, Straight or Taken is much more than its premise of a gal in a quandary — trying to date and mate whilst maintaining her dignity — suggests. As a cultural phenomenon the show continues to smudge the already blurry boundary that divides straight, gay, bi and try anything guys. A tide shift that started with the 90’s metrohetero and is looking to end with the 00’s uni-sexual Ubermensch.

Gay, Straight or Taken’s set-up is lame but beguiling (in a train wreck sort of way): Attractive gal must decide which of the three attractive guys she is scoping might be single, straight and not taken (I guess for Lifetime if you’re homosexual it’s not possible that you’d be dating or married — you’re simply a promiscuous slut). If Miss Gaydar Savvy chooses correctly she wins her hunk and a trip to some exotic location. (read the full article)