My my, how many haters/supporters are there in da house? APLENTY! Just look at the slew of comments here and here (over a 130? Woohoo~!). The fangs and claws are everywhere this last round, and you fellas got Toby here trembling... whatever happened to EMBRACING differences? (if you thought some of the comments were vicious, you haven't seen those we trashed!). Please boys, let's keep things civilised.
Onward! The votes are in for Challenge 9: Grand Tour and the blogger with the fewest votes is... BryanBoy.
BB, we are sad to see you go but getting to the top 4 isn't too shabby at all (good thing you seem to be taking the boot in stride... now that's the sporting spirit we like here. And how true, there's always next year! We will be in touch with your cash prize and free 1 year porn memberships as soon as the contest ends. You sweat glitter still!)
With three contestants left - Craig, Fausto, Frank - there will no longer be a list of bottom ranked bloggers given from this point forward. It's showtime!
When I first moved to Toronto, Canada, I had a concern that there would be no good Mexican restaurants, which I think was fair. When you think of Canada, do you think of its large Mexican population?
I moved here from New York, where I had lived for three years and where there are plenty of Mexicans, and thus more than a few reliable places I could get a good chorizo taco, though the best Mexican food I found in New York was actually not even in the New York metropolitan area (it was in Yonkers). But I digress...
Back to Toronto, my newest adopted home. When I moved here, I met new friends, one of whom is Mexican and of course shares my enthusiasm for the cuisine of her homeland. We started throwing "taco parties" and making all sorts of delicious dishes (my specialty is guacamole, hers is everything else), which entertained our friends but was a lot of work for us.
We wanted to sit down and eat something delicious made by other people, and so we started driving to remote locations all over Toronto in search of the city's best authentic taco. It's a pilgrimage that is ongoing, but I want to share with you all our findings so far.
Frank and Laura's Grand Tour of Toronto's Best Mexican Eats
Rebozo's 126 Rogers St., three blocks west of Dufferin
(416) 658-5001
The best Mexican food in Toronto hands down. The tortillas are homemade, the cochinita pibil is the best I've ever had, and they have a salsa that will burn off the roof of your mouth. It's in the middle of nowhere, but well worth the trip. I had my birthday party there last summer and ate so much...
El Jacal 1056 Bloor St. W
(416) 244-4447
Their tacos with chorizo and melted oaxaca cheese are killer. I could eat ten of them right now. Plus the owners have the most adorable baby.
El Camino Real 1 2848 Dundas St. W
(416) 769-5240
The food is good here, but more importantly there is a party room in the back with salsa dancing and karaoke in English and Spanish after 10pm on the weekends. It's the perfect place to have a nice, sober good time.
Mexitaco 828 Bloor Street W
(416) 537-6693
One of the first authentic Mexican places I found in Toronto. Very good tacos, and they have Sidral Mundet (Mexican apple soda), which scores them bonus points.
El Trompo 277 Augusta Ave.
(416) 260-0097
The tacos al pastor are delicious, if a little pricey. It's convenient if you're in the Kensington Market area.
Tacos El Asador 690 Bloor St. W.
(416) 538-9747
Not exactly Mexican, but the tacos are good and really cheap.
Yum, yum! Just thinking about all my favorite restaurants makes me want to eat a big belly-full of meat, corn, lime and cilantro! You might think my taco fixation makes me a little crazy, but at least I'll never be as crazy as this guy:
OMG, I just realized this is my first entry for Gay Bloggies that could actually be of some use to someone! Maybe I really do have what it takes to be America's Next Top Model! Or is it the Internet's Gayest Blogger?
Whatever the title, please help me get it by giving me the thumbs up! Don't I deserve it for making your next trip to Toronto so unforgettably spicy and filled with meat?
Chicago may be the "Second City" but it's first in nicknames: "Hog Butcher to the World," "The City that Works," "Chitown" and my personal favorite "The City of Broad Shoulders" --va va va voom! Chicago is a truly fabulous place to live. For this challenge I decided to "go home" and return to my "roots" as a podcaster, or as we used to say "audio blogger" and take you on a sound-seeing tour of our quaint neighborhood, Andersonville.
In the early days of podcasting, way back in 2004, bloggers added audio mp3 files to their entries to enhance the flavor and depth of their usual entries. Boy has this development grown to incorporate so many fabulous types of podcasts. The podcast genre presents information that you just can't experience through the written word, YouTube clips or photographs alone. Recorded interviews, round table discussions, music samplers, oral histories, sound-seeing tours and other auditory experiences created as podcasts enrich the internet in exciting new ways.
Listen as Marc Felion and me, Fausto Fernós take you on a little tour of our neighborhood Andersonville, as we flirt with sexy pastry chefs, peek into people's windows to see their Christmas trees and talk about the gay bars and lesbian hangouts that make our fabulous neighborhood.
We start our little tour in my living room, playing my favorite piano in the whole wide world, a fabulous sounding Yamaha U1 white upright piano. You can follow my sound-seeing tour with my sweet and handsome husband Marc Felion either by checking out my photo gallery on Flickr or through Google Maps Streets View, which allows you to see the location as if you were walking down the street with us. We'll let you know when to head south when when we reach 5449 N. Clark St!
It's really cold today in Chicago. We had to wear several layers of clothing to keep from freezing as Marc and I left the apartment to give you guys the grand tour of Andersonville. Once a Swedish neighborhood, Andersonville has become lesbian central, hence it's nickname Ander-snatch. After all, if Chicago calls the Lakeview neighborhood that caters mostly to gay guys "Boystown," why not call Andersonville "Ander-snatch?"
According to gaydemographics.org, the zip code 60660 has the highest concentration of lesbian couples in the city and the fifth highest in the country. Gay or lesbian, Andersonville is where couples come to nest. It's quite cozy around here.
The great thing about our neighborhood is the close proximity Vietnamese, Middle Eastern, lesbians, Lebanese, gay men and Swedish people live in. If you walk from Bryn Mawr to Foster on Clark Street you can easily hear all kinds of people speaking in several languages.
Whoa! I almost slipped on the ice there.
Although our neighborhood isn't as severely decorated for the holidays as some suburban homes in Chicago, it's still fun to see people get creative with their decorations. Still, I don't know why these folks thought lime green lights would look good in the front of their house. Lime green? Yuck. That is one ugly display. It makes some people's MySpace pages look elegant by comparison.
Some people just put up a Christmas tree by the window to say to themselves and the world "I am not that lonely this Christmas." It's kind of touching, but also odd to see these sad Charlie Brown trees peeking out from the windows like abandoned cats waiting for a more loving family to adopt them.
Be sure to check out the Flickr photo gallery "The Horrors of Christmas" that showcases the psychedelic and obscene side of the holidays. I love these sick and crazy holiday decorations, don't you?
The odd thing about Clark Street in Andersonville is the unusual number of Sushi restaurants per lesbian resident. In just a six block street I counted over SEVEN sushi restaurants. I know ladies like fish but come on! SEVEN?
I really love the wacky fundamentalist Philadelphia Church that looks like it was converted out of an old bank building. It even has a sign that harkens back to its history that states "Jesus Saves." It always reminds me to get a passbook savings account. They also decided to keep the big clocks but have removed the hands to remind the public that Armageddon can strike at any time. After all in Heaven (or Hell) time has no meaning. I've sat through some folk music shows and church services that felt like an eternity too.
Stargaze is known among some circles as the "lesbian prison bar" because it seems like women get dumped there after being released from prison. Everyone jokes that upon released from prison, they give you a token for a free drink there. True? Maybe not, but I wouldn't dare ask.
I love getting freshly made Italian cookies from Pasticceria Natalina. Natalina and her sexy husband Nick decided to open up the shop on a whim and make some delicious cookies. Honestly, this by far one of the best pastry shops in the city. They make everything from scratch with the finest, freshest ingredients. Their prices are a bit steep, but worth every penny. Try the cannoli, you won't be disappointed. If you stop there, flirt a little with her husband. He may act shy but something tells me he really likes the attention!
Our tour ends at Women and Children First Bookstore, one of the finest feminist bookstores in the country that regularly brings in fabulous female authors to sign and read their books there. Even Hilary Clinton has done a book signing there.
Thanks for joining us on my little tour of Andersonville!
To subscribe to the Feast of Fools podcast for free using iTunes, click here.
Her-rrro gay broggies! Me sucky sucky 5 dolla me lab yu long time 10 dolla you pay 20 dolla i gib free roost duck!
I really wanted to haul my fat ass downtown to take new photos + videos of good ol' third world scenery and play "show and tell" but I've been bedridden for the past few days. As much as I want to concoct some sad sordid story on how I contracted some sort of illness so you can sympathise with me and send flowers, I'm gonna go ahead and confess that I've been depressed and extremely lazy as of late and in the past 48 hours, all I did was eat (BINGE AND PURGE FTW!!!), smoke a lot, watch DVDs and catch up with my Gossip Girl and Ugly Betty iTunes downloads.
Enough dilly dally. Grand tour, eh? Grand tour of my hometown? Please. Let's not kid ourselves, shall we?
As some of you already know, I live in the cesspit of the third world called Manila, Philippines. Do you know where that is? Can I see a show of hands? No? Can you point it out on the map? Anybody? No? I'm not surprised.
The only time the world's media pay attention to my neck of the woods is whenever there are stories that involve the usual political turmoils, the never-ending corruption scandals, something about overpopulation, something about the poor -- or should I say, the REALLY POOR (because I'm poor... but there are millions more in terrible conditions compared to mine so I'll call them the 'really poor') or government officials gone wild. You'll also hear something about earthquakes, something about typhoons, something about flooding and other "acts of god", something about mall blasts or something about rebel groups such as Abu Sayyaf, Jemaah Islamiyah, Chukchakchenes Chorvaloo and of course, the SamMilby Pansclub Putanginangmasa Magpakamataynakayo Bulacanchapter etc. Just kidding.
Ask any non-Filipino living entity what they know about Manila or the Philippines and chances are, they'll say something about cheap booze and cheap brown coochie, 3-inch penises, poverty, Imelda Marcos and her shoes, and of course me. HAHAHAHA! I knew I had to say that. Why? Over the years, a shitload of Filipinos outside the motherland share their endless tales how strangers from other countries ask them where they're from and when they say "the Philippines", people then ask them if they know "Bryanboy". I shit you not! There was this time a French journalist went to Manila for reasons unknown to me (yeah, the same one who got cruised on by random faggots in my other story) and got to know a few showbiz faces here. When he got back to Paris, we had a little chat and he was all like "blah blah blah random actress, yaddi yaddi yadda random actor, are not famous but you are, because nobody in France had heard of them and even my other colleagues have heard of you".
Hearing things like this makes me giddy -- not only I put myself on the map, my country gets known to the rest of the world, too. Isn't that exciting? Right from the start I've always said geography is no boundary when it comes to Bryanboy's faggotry and world domination is my ultimate goal. Haha!
Ugh. This is becoming a me-me-me post. Enough about me and more about the land of the brown, the exotic and the natives!
Anyway, IMO there really is more about Manila (and the Philippines in general) compared to usual crap you read/hear on the news and the only way to find out is to get your fat ass ovah here to see for yourself. Manila may not rank high up there with the usual tourist heavyweights (why do most Americans go to friggin Acapulco or Cancun during summer or spring break when teenage Europeans flock Asia on their gap years? Bitch. Please.)... heck, I think Bangkok is more progressive than Manila, but still... this is the city I call home and I think you should still come over for a visit. I love my city even though it's crowded and over-polluted. I love my city even though the average guy here is fucking ugly and I could go sex-less for months. I love my city even though luxury goods are more overpriced compared to the rest of the world. It's one of those blood is thicker than water things... $8 haircuts? $40 facials? $1 for a packet of marlboros? Hella there's definitely no place like home.
On that note, let's play pictionary shall we?
Instead of giving a "virtual tour" (which I already did earlier this year on a different blog), let me share to you some hilarious old random snapshots taken in various parts of my town.
How can you **NOT** love a place where people look at **YOU** all the time??? Attention whores unite! Hahahaha! I love it!
This is what they were looking at...
BTW, don't believe that whole "Asian is skinny" bullcrap. Earlier this year, I did a little social experiment. I sat near the fountain in one of our malls.
I took random pictures of people in less than 5 minutes and and look how healthy and festively plump people here are!
And there you have it. God I love the third world, flaws, scars, anal warts and all. Just look at my shameless celebration of my personality. I bet you if you pull shit like I do in other countries you'd be lucky to come out alive!
The funny thing is that it's not unusual for people to tell me to get out of this shithole. Some people believe Manila is hopeless. I beg to differ. Folk from all walks of life often say things like I need to spread my wings and fly or how I don't deserve to be here or how I could grow more as a person if I live somewhere else. I can't even count the number of times I've had the opportunity to move elsewhere. While tens, if not hundreds of thousands of my compatriots seek greener pastures overseas year after year, for some strange reason, I've always chosen to stay here no matter what. Perhaps the right opportunity hasn't landed yet... or maybe, just maybe, in the grand scheme of things, I was really meant to be here and my purpose in life is to put the third world on the map and perhaps make a difference in my own, special little ways, right here, right now, in my own backyard.
What do you think?
My, my, my Manila!
PS. Roast duck, anyone?
PPSS. You may want to check out my friend Carlos Celdran's blog, http://celdrantours.blogspot.com. He knows Manila more than I know my way to a man's crotch. He's definitely a national treasure and he works his butt off day and night to change the way people view my lovely hometown of 14 million people. Yes!!! 14 Million rodents y'all, everyone loves bareback sex here!!! JK. :-)
Hey Folks! Craig from Puntabulous here! We're getting close to the end so I'm supposed to show you where I live. How exciting! I feel like I'm a contestant on the Bachelorette! Okay fine, it's more like Average Joe, but still! SIDENOTE: I wish they would bring back Average Joe. I loved that show! Remember at the end when the couple got into that huge fight because he found out she once dated Fabio? LOL!
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Mom! I said not to disturb me when I'm playing with my lightsaber!
Oh hey! Sorry, I didn't realize it was you! Come on in!
Please abide by all the rules while in my room.
Oh my! Did you just ask to look in my drawers?! Goodness you're making me blush!
Oh...those drawers.
Here's my underwear drawer...
Which is where I keep this thing in my sock...
A fancy floating hourglass! OooooOOOOoooooo!
Here's where I keep my razor in case I ever start growing facial hair.
Fingers crossed!
And here's my lightsaber. See! So it wasn't just a double entendre for masturbation before!
Finally, here's where the magic happens!
Actually, this is where the magic happens.
And this is where the magic ends up!
That's about everything! Don't be a stranger! I'm strange enough for the both of us!
The only time the world's media pay attention to my neck of the woods is whenever there are stories that involve the usual political turmoils, the never-ending corruption scandals, something about overpopulation, something about the poor -- or should I say, the REALLY POOR (because I'm poor... but there are millions more in terrible conditions compared to mine so I'll call them the 'really poor') or government officials gone wild. You'll also hear something about earthquakes, something about typhoons, something about flooding and other "acts of god", something about mall blasts or something about rebel groups such as Abu Sayyaf, Jemaah Islamiyah, Chukchakchenes Chorvaloo and of course, the SamMilby Pansclub Putanginangmasa Magpakamataynakayo Bulacanchapter etc. Just kidding.
