Gay Bloggies

Because I wasn't feeling well yesterday and a Thanksgiving dinner with some college friends tonight, I technically have only thirty minutes to write this blog post. Fuck. (Also, dear college friends: Thanksgiving dinner? Now? In December? Really?) So I apologize if this blog post seems rushed, because it totally is.

"Share with us who you think is the Hottest Guy on Planet Earth. Go all out to convince us."

You know, this isn't going to help the impression that people think I'm not gay, but I've never really thought about it. Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of guys are hot, but it's not like I keep a running Billboard 100 chart of hot guys running in my head. Physically, I'm more attracted to huskier, stockier or more muscular guys. As far as porn stars, there's Waus Heston, but now he's dead and that would just be the biggest buzzkill if I blogged about a dead guy. Jim from popular gay blog Jockohomo is ridiculously hot, both in terms of his big arms and design aesthetic. (I do find myself wanting to hang myself after reading his blog, though, mostly because I'm not cool as him. Or as hot.)

That being said, a sense of humor and instant geek or pop culture credibility go for for me. I've had crushes on a straight former co-worker after we made fun of each other for three hours, then told me about his hacked Nintendo DS. (Hi Matt, if you ever read this.)

So, with tongue kind-of-but-not-really planted in cheek, I think the Hottest Guy on Planet Earth is Alex Albrecht, formerly of The Screen Savers and host the podcast show Diggnation. (Yes, that image above WOULD be of Alex, stolen from ValleyWag. Yes, he does look like Jason Bateman with LA hair and a double chin.) Why? Well, for the reasons posted above: previously worked in a tech company, has a slightly off-kilter sense of humor, and from all the time doing live television I'm sure we could conversate about something. (He even had a podcast about Star Wars Galaxies! Although that could be a minus.) Sure, hey maybe not porn hot, but - who am I kidding - I'd probably still hit it, even if he didn't have the geek background.

I realize that the four gay geeks reading this website are falling out of their chairs right now, and everyone else has no idea who or what I'm talking about. The editors of QueerClick will be thrilled about this blog post inevitably be posted on digg.com, then horrified when they find the sheer number of "lol fag" comments.

Everyone wins! Except for my credibility.

Thankfully, most Asians speak fluently in math. What.

Answer 1: Perez = P = 40
Hilton = H = 13
P - X = 4 ( H - X )
40 - X = 4 ( 13 - X )
40 - X = 52 - 4X
3X = 12
X = 4
4 years ago. [YIPEEE!]

Answer 2: MELANIE GRIFFITH [YIPEEE!]

Answer 3: Sweden, Lebanon. [YIPEEE!]

Answer 4: 1x1 = 5
2x2 = 5
3x3 = 1 [YIPEEE!]

Answer 5: Queerclick = The first posts started in October 7, 2004. As it's November 2007 now, Queerclick has been around for 3 years and 1 month. [YIPEEE!]

Answer 6: Towleroad [YIPEEE!]

Answer 7: Jeez, I don't know. Britney Spears? [WHOOPS!]

Answer 8: 19 Sponsors.
SeanCody.com
AussieBum
Focus on the Family. Just kidding. RandyBlue. [YIPEEE!]

Answer 9: There are NINE different designs underneath aussieBum's "freshhh" range. Congrats, this is the first and last time you'll see me browsing a speedo website with this much detail. [WHOOPS!]

Answer 10: What is this, Survivor? Okay, fine. From a purely strategic point of view, my vote is for [Name removed to protect the innocent]. Nothing personal.

First and foremost, I'm always just a little self-conscious when I write these entries. "Tell us about a secret you've never told on your blog! Tell us about your most guilty pleasure!" Between the eye candy and the porn stars and the erotica writers I kinda feel like the awkward math tutor that was invited to the sexy slumber party because our moms knew each other, but no matter. (It's also one of the reasons I'm kinda shocked that Pierre Fitch, the porn star was the first one eliminated. He might have lost, he think about it - he just wrote on his personal blog about how he went to McDonalds and watched Saw 4 at the theaters and his post got 49 COMMENTS. Forty-nine comments about eating at McDonalds. He might be the first one eliminated, but seriously, he wins.)

Anyway, I digress - most guilty pleasure. [sigh] Alright, fine. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. (If you're unaware of the premise of the show: a bus full of designers finds a family that is down on their luck, they re-do their house, said family crawls into a fetal position and sobs for the remaining of the episode due to overwhelming happiness. Lather, rinse, repeat.) Here's why:

• First off, episodes of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (hereby called EM:HE for short) are usually shown on weekend nights. This is when your self-esteem is already completely trashed because instead of having that fabulous gay social life you see on gay.com banner ads, you're at home feeling sorry for yourself and watching television. And that show you're watching, of course, is EM:HE.
• Ty Pennington is a fucking crackhead. Yes, because I'm gay I HAVE see him on Trading Spaces, thank you very much - but where he was once the beefcake comic relief, he's now been relegated to an incoherant man running around with a megaphone, screaming and fake-crying over some eight year old kid with leprosy and three fingers. if I were one of those volunteer crew members, I would steal a nail he was hammering and drive it into an eye socket rather than deal with his "wacky antics."
• It's an unspoken rule that every family that EM:HE helps must be a child ages four to thirteen, presumably for one reason only: so some god-awful designer can make a tacky theme room in the new house. They interview the kid, where they kid says something off-hand like, "yeah, I'm struggling with school, but science is alright. I don't mind it that much." But then someone from the EM:HE will take the idea, run it to the ground and build a fucking LABORATORY in their bedroom, where there are beakers full of dry ice and they remodel their bed into a life-sized petri dish. "Little Jimmy loves science; we'll think he'll cherish this room for years to come." Do they not think these kids will ever go through puberty?
• Here's the most important part - you would think that by making fun of said children and families and host I would be completely apathetic to the shows plight, right? Wrong. Every two-hour special episode has me an emotional basketcase, because if I see grateful people cry, I start tearing up. What, a family full of quadraplegics had a house that was lost to Hurricane Katrina? God bless you, ABC Network, for building that house full of ramps. A single Marine veteran father with five kids, all blind due to complications from diabetes? And the EM:HE crew built a fully tactile house so the kids would know what room they were in AND a "support the troops" flower garden? Pass the fucking kleenex, that's what the human spirit is all about. You start openly sobbing along with the families, getting caught up in their causes and EM:HE's over the top solutions, but by the time you think to yourself, "oh my god, that house is STUPID," the show has been over for three hours and you feel ashamed.

And there you go, my guilty pleasure. (Don't get me started with Amy Grant's Three Wishes. That's my second favoritest show ever.)

(Word of warning: this will not be a ha-ha funny post.)

Nature versus nurture. It's something I had questioned myself, practically every day, for years on end. It's the type of shit that kept me up at night, and I would be lying if I said there wasn't a little bit of me that still wonders to this day.

But I'm not talking about being gay. Let me explain.

I briefly mentioned it a week or two ago, but my sister was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and Schizophrenia when she was fourteen. I was four years old at the time. As of the time this post is published, it'll be my thirty first birthday, which means my family and I, as fucked up and dysfunctional as it is, has somehow coped dealt with a family member with a severe mental illness for over 27 years. In that time, I have become the older sibling even though I'm ten years younger, my relatively private parents have had no other choice to deal with people they don't necessarily trust: social workers, psychiatrists, psychologist, policemen. With a steady stream of anti-psychotics and anti-depressants and sedatives my sister is manageable on a day-to-day basis, although my parents have written her off as a lost cause - a piece of evidence for blame on other peoples actions but never their own.

When you ask my parents individually what happened - what was the trigger point that caused my sister to start yelling at the voices of her head in the middle of her ninth grade French class - they would give you a laundry list of possible things that went wrong, usually due to the fault of the other: Handymen that were brought in without my sisters knowledge that started banging on roof with their hammers. My maternal grandmother, a woman who I never met but "had issues." My father's military-based discipline which involved a lot of yelling. A lot of yelling. And because of this - because my sister and I grew up under similar conditions, I had always assumed that there was something inside of me - a mental illness time bomb, if you will - where one fateful day it would go off and I too would be instructed to dump Thanksgiving dinner in the trash because Jesus told me the devil poisoned it. My sister's final dramatic mental breakdown happened in her mid-twenties, and a couple of years ago if anything overtly stressful were to happen to me, I would say something like, "technically, I still have two more years before I go crazy." Later, it became "Hmm, I should have gone crazy two years ago." I'm in my early thirties now, and while I don't want to say I'm 100% "in the clear," well, I think I'm in the clear.

As to whether my sister's mental illness was nature versus nurture: I don't know. If some relatives assessments of my grandmother are correct, then yes, there is evidence of mental illness in my direct family. But do I think my sister's episodes could have been avoided, if my sister and I were in a better family situation? Yes, I do. So I think it's nature and nurture.

And I can see the evangelical Christians having a field day with this one, but I'll say it anyway - I think that applies to being gay as well. The classic Exodus International excuse of "if you have a overbearing father and a mollifying mother, you'll be gay?" I have one. But I've never been sexually attracted to girls, either. So, nature or nurture? I think it's a bit of both. I'd like to think it's nature, but if I die and some Deity taps my on the shoulder and said told me I turned gay on August 18, 1982, I'd be all, "Oh, snap! Figures." And that would be that, because honestly, I'd be dead to you guys anyway, and I'm not sure if they have straight sex in the afterlife, much less gay sex.

The point is this, though: what's done is done. My sister is mentally ill. I am gay. Is it nature or nurture? It just is, and everyone has to deal with it, for better or for worse. We do as much as we can to make my sister's life safe and comfortable, and I'd like to hope that people are doing what they can to make my life safe and comfortable as well. Everyone's lives, really. That's just the human condition.

Fuck. I just realized to my horror that I have exactly two whole minutes to complete my first challenge for the Gay Bloggies: Confess Something You’ve Never Written On Your Blog.

Well, fuck me with a 2x4. I'm in a difficult situation for a variety of reasons: I've written about my family. I've written about various job situations. Thanks to the power of the search engine, there's no way in sweet hell you're going to have me writing about my lack of a sex life, unless somehow I want that brought up at my next technical job interview.

I guess I can write about the Bachlorette party, seeing that it happened last than 24 hours ago and I had never been to one previously. Since I'm a gay groomsmen at my friend Min Jung's wedding, I'm in the unique position of having the opportunity to go to both the Bachelor and the Bachlorette party, and seriously, you know what to expect from a Bachelor party (cigars, strippers, cocaine) unless the dude is Muslim. The bachelorette party is a newer world for me. Here are some notes from last night:

• You must get the tackiest SUV Limo available. With flashing lights and neon and big wheels. Keep in mind though, I'm in tree-hugging gas-conscious San Francisco, where if you're not driving a hybrid car, you're accused of raping the earth. Last night, my friends, we raped the earth, and we raped the earth hard.
• Penis hats, penis necklaces and a giant penis inflatable doll are funny for exactly seven minutes.
• Someone must always get into an altercation with a fat white girl. Always.
• Me and alcohol don't get along. The first time I hung out with the Bride was seven years ago, where she had me do something called "friendship loyalty shots." Apparently, if you don't do shots of Crown Royal you don't score high enough on the Korean friendship scale; I had four shots and threw up for the next six hours. Needless to say I don't drink much anymore. The one nice thing about being sober is that you get to judge your friends when they get belligerently drunk, trash a limo and get in altercations with fat white girls (see above)
• The maid of honor had this great idea where if a custom-made scavenger hunt wasn't completed, the limo would be forced into swinging by an all-male nudie bar. The caveat, of course, is that the all-male nudie bar in San Francisco is the Nob Hill Theatre - think gloryholes and strung out twinks giving lap dances to closeted high school principals. While a bunch of women walking in the theater with little penis hats would be hysterical, it probably isn't the nudie fest the maid of honor had in mind.

Alas, it's tough for me to write under time constraint. My apologies. At least you have that photo of me pretending to give oral sex to a giant inflatable penis balloon.

So, we've been told to introduce ourselves. Very well then.

Hi, I'm Ernie. First thing's first: let it be known that you'll never, ever see a photograph of me with my shirt off or in a pair of speedos, at least not without the thickest sense of irony ever. C'mon, you don't want to see that and, thanks to a poor self body-image, neither do I. (Christ, it's like the shirtless guy from the SeanCody.com ad is just sitting their with his arms crossed, judging me.) Instead, I'll include a photograph of my very first time at a firing range, at an event called, no lie, "Geeks with Guns." Buck buck, muthafucka.

I've been writing a blog called Little, Yellow, Different for seven years or so, back in an age when blogs were short for "web logs" and the people that write them weren't being paid to talk about Paris Hilton on VH1's Best Week Ever or making an appearance on The View. I'm also the editor of the absolutely-nothing-to-do-with-being-gay website 8Asians.com, which is a website about, uhm, Asian America. (No porn. Sorry, rice queens.) In any case, I started my website at a time where everyone who wrote a blog was a raging computer geek.

And believe you me, I am a computer geek. Not in a cute "OMG Peter from Heroes is so cute" type of geekery, but a horrifying type of geekdom where if I were to start talking, your eyes would probably glaze over and you'd quickly require a porn chaser (which, might I add, is available for you conveniently via one of the sponsored links to your right.) I currently work as a web developer for a major Internet company in San Francisco. A good amount of people at said major Internet company are aware that I have a blog, and every so often I'll lie in bed in horror at the realization that a major Fortune 500 executive has read in vivid detail about my friend of a friend's asshole when they had come to my website expecting a synopsis about decentralized social networking. But so long as I'm not divulging any company secrets - and I'm not - it's all good.

As far as home life, I had previously lived in the suburbs for the past four years, where I dutifully lived ten minutes away from my elderly Chinese parents and bought a condominium and did what dutiful Asian sons do, which consist of listening to your parents complain about each other and ask, on a near-daily basis, when they're going to move in. After having a small mental breakdown, I got the fuck out of dodge and moved to the Mission district in San Francisco, where I live a block away from a hipster Lesbian bar and two blocks away from a bunch of crackheads.

And there you go. Vote as you wish.