REIN IT IN. . .

"Reign On King Jesus!" from the album Black Christmas:

. . . "Sweet Little Jesus Boy":

Yes, Lil Akim, Santa is a black man:

 

I feel like I could sing this one to a lot of "big boys" I know.  "Lit'l Boy (Christ in the Temple)":

"Mary Had a Baby":

"Glory, Hallelujah": 

Black Christmas, performed by Thomas Young, Vanessa Ayers and Robert Mosely

BALTIMORE IS THE BESTEST. . . GAY BAR PUB CRAWL GUIDE TO CHARM CITY!

Divine eats Dog Shit in Pink Flamingos. . . a Baltimore delicacy.

Now that the Ravens have reminded everyone that Baltimore is "The Greatest City in America," you better Natty Boh-lieve it.  It's time for Big Shoe Diaries to explore the roots of this charming city with a series of posts on why Baltimore is way more "awesomer" than where you live.  In response to a fan letter requesting some sights and sounds of Baltimore for an upcoming visit, we compiled a "Gay Bar Crawl How To" for the city that Edgar Allen Poe, Gertrude Stein and John Waters all called home.  What's your town's comparable gay bar crawl like? We'd like to know - bigshoediaries@gmail.com

Gay Charm City is quite easy on foot once you get to Mount Vernon neighborhood.  This part of town is easily accessible by Amtrak/MARC trains to Baltimore's Penn Station, BoltBus service from NYC and I-95 for those of you with cars.  There are several great bed and breakfasts in the neighborhood and an overpriced boutique hotel if you a shitty bottle of red wine on your bed is worth an extra $100.  Each bar is an experience unto itself that defines. . and is defined by this crazy little city!  Here's my recommendation for how to tackle a big gay night out in "Bal-mer" (it's how it's pronounced here).

Do them in this order (all are within 5 minute walk from each other).

Gay Bar 1: Jay's on Read - It's a piano bar on Read Street. Friendly older guys flirting with the piano player.  Have an old fashioned and don't stay too long. If you get drunk and overdo it on open mic/karaoke night, the upstairs neighbors complain about the noise and SHUT IT DOWN.

Jay's on Read. . . just precious.

Gay Bar 2: The Drinkery - famous dive bar, near to where Divine ate dog shit in Pink Flamingos.  Trashy and Cheap, just the way we all really want it, despite the fancified direction most gay bars continue to take.  Pottery Barns with Vodka? Snore.  Character, boys. . .it takes the cake every time.

Gay Bar 3: Leon's - it's the oldest continuously operating gay bar in Baltimore (even cheaper - terrible/awesome jukebox), low ceilings, high bear quotient. It's easy to stay here longer than you expected. Rite Aid's around the corner if you need a snack or some condoms.

Gay Bar 4: Hippo (Bar area, not the dance club), laid back pool/video bar, very late 90s.  It's not bad, it's not good.  Everyone is usually pretty nice here. If you luck out and end up here on their Showtunes night, you'll walk away with some serious schwag.

Gay Bar 5: Grand Central, the "scene" bar of Baltimore.  Get ready for some small town attitude from the staff and other patrons.  You didn't know you weren't good enough to get drunk in Bmore 'til you came here. And you'll be drunk from all those cheap drinks at The Drinkery and Leon's, so you'll have no problem letting everyone know how offended you are.* 

*Note: Picketing the bar for it's bad service and the bad attitude (not to mention bad fashion) of its managers at 1:30 a.m. will mean that they will call the police on you(this ain't the city of brotherly love), who will chase you down the alley behind the bar and politely remind you to get a permit the next time you try to stage an impromptu gay protest of a gay bar.

Add some attitude at the door.

Gay Bar 6 (if you make it this long): back across the street to Hippo's dance party for whatever ridiculously overpriced bad gay DJ night they have planned (excluding of the course the awesome and hipstere'd out DEEP IN THE GAME party and the Wednesday night hip hop party - those are actually awesome!!).

If you need a break, or food to fuel up. . . don't miss Brewer's Art (amazing local craft brewery and very gay-friendly/good bar food) AND Iggies (amazing BYOB pizza joint)...again all in the same 'hood.

Have fun!!!

BE MONUMENTAL, BE STRONG, BE MONEY

Riffing on Charm City's legal, local currency, the BNote, BSD reader Chris added me to an very exclusive list of Baltimore Bnote celebrities.  So far, the BNote only has two denominations, a 1BN and 5BN, each honored with the face of Frederick Douglass or Edgar Allan Poe.  Thanks to Chris's help, I beat John Waters!  With a "funny 20" drawing a comparison between Baltimore's Washington monument (the first in the nation) and my own miniature public monument of sorts, I couldn't be more flattered.

For his extraordinarily generous 170BN submission, Chris will receive an extraordinarily special gift-- a nappy pair of briefs unfit for further wear (per his specific request).  Enter the Colby Qash Kontest and send your own Colby-inspired bills to bigshoediaries@gmail.com.  I have a bin full of free DVDs with your name on it.

ARTISTS I LIKE: MAURIZIO CATTELAN

This Winter, the Guggenheim Museum plays host to a retrospective of one of my all-time favorite artists: Maurizio Cattelan.  Maurizio never received formal art training.  In fact, he completed his formal education with high school.  He comes from working class roots in Padua.  His father was a truck driver and his mother was a cleaner.  Despite his lack of education (perhaps because of it) his work forcefully blends witty art jokes with piquant social critique while never resorting to the pedantic overreach or oblique understatement common to many contemporary artists.  You're probably familiar with some of his more famous pieces, like "La Nona Ora" (1999) an effigy of Pope John Paul II crushed by a meteor, or "Bidibidobidiboo" (1996), a sculpture of a taxidermy squirrel committing suicide.  All are on view at the Guggenheim. 

Cattelan is a bit of a personal hero of mine.  Imagine how thrilled I was to walk into the Guggenheim and see his whole body of work hanging from the ceiling.  The exhibition itself is a joke about exhibitions (and the Guggenheim's awkward spiral exhibition space).  All of Cattelan's work was hung from the ceiling.  To access information about each piece, you must consult an app with video commentary by John Waters. 

To own your own piece of Cattelania I highly recommend his reasonably priced magazine Permanent Food (I'm only missing a few issues) or his recent project Toilet Paper.   If you can't make it to NYC to visit the Guggenheim yourself, which I would highly recommend, you can also download the thorough app HERE.  It's almost as good as seeing the exhibition yourself.      

I SEE PENIS: bunny costume

CHAINED DESIRES

I'd like to give a shout out to my local sex supply depo Chained Desires.  My new camming venture with Randy Blue Live garners me enough success to require frequent trips to restock my supply of lubricant (though on slow nights, like this past Tuesday, a lack of enthusiastic viewers can make lil Colby more depressed than horny).

The generous staff at Chained Desires were more than accommodating in helping me find the right lubricant to suit my needs.  For a mid-sized city like Baltimore, you'd be surprised what goodies you can score at this local landmark, just steps away from the very corner where Divine ate dog shit.  Provided I can find future customers on Randy Blue, I may just have to save up for my own dirty deed, and splurge on a horse tail butt plug (pictured below).

Remember to support your local mom and pop sex shop!  Or come to Baltimore and visit Chained Desires.  Tell 'em Colby sent you.  ;-)

MEMORIES OF COCKS GONE BY

Thanks to a friend with an empty apartment (and dog in need of attention) I spent the last weekend in New York City.  Sunday, before I left to return home, I went to see a play.  I don't get to attend the theatre often.  As you might expect, the price is a tad too prohibitive for a minor porn performer like myself.  I tend to stick to movies.  The magic of Grindr didn't result in any hookups this go around but I did manage to score two free tickets to "The Atmosphere of Memory" at the Labyrinth Theatre in Greenwich Village.

The play starts off, appropriately enough, with a man confessing to his therapist.  He's been lying for months about his profession.  How exactly has he been able to survive the recession without a conventional job?  With a natural tendency toward the "profuse", he admits the embarrassing truth: he's been making money jizzing on things, most notably action figures.

Amusing enough, but not exactly the stuff of Shakespeare.  If the play stopped there, I might have been disappointed.  Cum jokes are a lot to process the first five minutes of a play (we usually wait at least 20 minutes in porn).  Thankfully, the scene abruptly stops.  The house lights come on, and a man, identical in height to the star, slightly younger but with similar features and a matching set of black eyeglasses hops on stage: a true doppelganger.  Turns out the play is actually a play inside a play, a story about a playwright writing the story of his own childhood.  To makes things even more complicated he casts his real mother in the starring role as his fictional mother and his girlfriend as his sister.   The story of both plays revolve around the main character's estrangement with his father and memories of past events that continue to keep them apart.  Don't worry, it sounds more complicated (and less funny and profound) than it actually is.

There are plenty of cock and incest jokes, a musical number about Nazis (and plenty of theatre references that might leave you blank like me), but trust, it's fucking GOOD.  And I don't say that only because my ticket was free.  If you have a chance to visit NYC before November 13th, I highly recommend it.

Plus, If you've ever visited the great state of Maryland, or know John Waters, you'll appreciate the father's perfect Balmer accent.

Written by David Bar Katz, starring Ellen Burstyn (Barb's mom on Big Love).  Pics of action figures courtesy of Dicks with Things.

   

MR. DIVINE: FILTHY FILMS

Mr. Divine discusses porn. . . and film.


This is a hilarious, dubbed version of the original trailer to "Salo", the 1975 film by Pier Paolo Pasolini, based on the book "120 Days of Sodom" by the Marquis de Sade. Pixelate my shit any day Signore Passolini!

MR. DIVINE: PERVERTS

John Waters discusses celebrity and tearooms. From thinkbig.com

MR. DIVINE: SOME OF THE BEST ART IS DEADLY

Baltimore's native son discusses art and sex. John and I actually eat lunch together all the time! (Me about four tables down in shades and a wig). Does anyone know how to work a wig-cam?

LITTLE CITY: BIG STARS

So, for those of us who DON'T live in NYC and LA, celebrity spottings are a lot less frequent. Carrie Bradshaw does not bump into us perusing organic pears at Whole Foods in Chelsea and we're not having brunch on patios within earshot of the new "It girl" and her BFFs.

In Baltimore, we have filmmaker and artist, John Waters. He splits his time now between NYC and P-town and his native Charm City. And here, I see him at openings, film festivals, City Cafe, on the street...it's kind of awesome. And in many ways, Waters defines Baltimore or what most people know of it. I'm wondering what other smaller cities and towns have a singular celebrity who you not only see on the street, but who represents the idea of the town itself.

Like, if Kelsey Grammer actually lived in Seattle...would that count? Thoughts from people who don't live in major cities with multiple celebrities? Who is your John Waters?

ARTISTS I LIKE: JOHN WATERS

I recently attended an art opening of John Waters' visual art. I've long respected and enjoyed his films and it was a blast to see him tackle some other mediums (ie. sculpture and painting). My favorite was of course this hilarious spilled poppers bottle...much bigger than life size. I actually don't like poppers so it really scared me at first. And none of the rich straight people in the room had any idea what it was.