MR. MAN: The 2026 Nudity Hall of Fame nominees have been announced by Mr. Man — all the text related to this item is courtesy of that site … and if you subscribe to them, Boy Culture gets a li’l somethin’ somethin’.

See the full uncensored clips from this year’s inductees

“The 2026 inductees include Jack O’Connell, who bared all in Starred Up and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Gael García Bernal, whose early role in Y tu mamá también brought a hookup with his best friend, and Mark Ruffalo, who showed off his daddy dick in In the Cut and I Know This Much Is True.”

“Two Irish stars complete the class. It’s always the Irish, isn’t it? Cillian Murphy went full-frontal in 28 Days Later and later delivered several steamy moments in Peaky Blinders, while Paul Mescal made quite the impression early in his career by showing his big dick twice in Normal People, followed by gay sex scenes in All of Us Strangers and The History of Sound.”

“Click here to check out the best of what these sexy stars have to offer. Holla fame!”

PEOPLE: Dylan Efron talks about going to big bro Zac Efron for advice, calls him “the most important person in my life.”

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: RIP Irma P. Hall, 91. She was the lady who experienced a late-in-life burst of fame thanks to A Family Thing and Soul Food.

KENNETH IN THE (212): Soulless murderer Chris Watts, who killed his pregnant wife and both of his daughters in order to have a fling with another woman, is reportedly already deep into a “gay sex harem” behind bars. That … was fast.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: How sad to read that Boston Common and Yes, Dear sitcom star Anthony Clark has died at 62. They haven’t given any hint of a cause yet. My full obituary, with thoughts on how out he was as a gay man here.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Mitchell Robertson of Half Man fame will play Bill Bast, the secret lover of James Dean, in Guy Guido’s One Hand Tied. Brandon Flynn is on board as Dean.

Director Guido says:

“The moment I saw him in Half Man, I knew he was the one. I was looking for vulnerability and an innate likability, but also strength. Bill lived in a time that was hostile to anyone even perceived as gay, yet he sustained a five-year roller-coaster relationship with James Dean. That takes resilience.”

CNN: The writing had been on the wall for, like, ever — but it’s now official: Democrat Scott Colom has defeated sitting Sen. Cindy Hyde-White in Mississippi. He is the first Black senator elected in 150 years, and the first Black senator in the state ever elected by voters. (The other two were elected by the legislature during Reconstruction.)

There have only ever been 14 African-Americans appointed to or elected to the U.S. Senate in 250 years— and seven will be serving simultaneously in January.

Shockingly, Hyde-White conceded:

TWITTER: Man, it is looking like Sen. Chuck Schumer is hanging on by the skin of his teeth — Sen. Raphael Warnock is on record showing interest in new leadership in the Senate:

COACHELLA: Madonna is playing the Dance Tent at Coachella in April. Rumor has it she will announce a limited arena tour for spring/summer, with tickets dropping in January (or possibly around the Grammys in early February?).

Look at the line-up … Giorgio Moroder?! Wowza.

POLITICO: If you know anything about Howard Lutnick, you know he’s pure evil. So, it’s satisfying that the Nvdia Chinese-spy scandal appears on the verge of taking him down.

BOOKS: Fabro Tranchida and Ilya Kharkow are collaborating on a series of queer stories based on the concept of: What if a guy in a painting wants out?

PEOPLE: President Joe Biden gets very open and honest about his cancer battle, and says had he known he was feeling bad due to cancer, he would not have run for a second term:

Anthony Clark, the sweet-faced stand-up comic who was the star of his own series, Boston Common, ahead of a longer run on Yes, Dear, died November 10 at 62.

His longtime friend Mike O’Malley, another Yes, Dear star, announced his death, writing:

“Anthony Clark died yesterday. He was a hilarious guy. When my wife Lisa and I were dating back in the mid-nineties, Anthony was already famous in Boston, regularly selling out comedy shows. The first time we saw him at The Comedy Connection we laughed and laughed and laughed. He was so unique — one of those comics who is laughing along with you at the absurdity of his stories and observations and it just made you laugh harder because he was laughing. I was a fan before I was a friend. We spoke on the phone three weeks ago. He had us laughing loudly as he always did. Attached are some snapshots from our last episode of Yes Dear which ended twenty years ago after 122 episodes. He invested his money well and essentially retired after we wrapped. Rest in peace, Tony.”

Clark was a bit of an invisible man in the world of sitcoms — in the same way Yes, Dear, which had a considerable run, is a slept-on series. And yet, I fully expect many to mourn his death as they are reminded of his work.

He was lowkey about everything, including being gay. He reportedly did not talk about being gay in his stand-up act but was referred to casually as gay by a fellow comedian and never corrected him, so could be considered to have been quietly out, sort of like how Luke Evans was right after his movie stardom hit (and before he reiterated his identity years later).

Still, when he was plugging his shows, nobody would ask about his sexual orientation anymore.

It was out there so much so that in the ‘90s, National Enquirer took advantage of the situation to soft-out him in a piece that accurately reported his orientation was a matter of public record, but that was clearly fishing for some shock from its readers.

The same piece casually mentioned he and River Phoenix were “inseparable” and that Clark was inconsolable over the tragic actor’s death.

Clark was born April 4, 1964, in Lynchburg, Virginia. He grew up in Gladys, a town he said you should move to if you were dying because “every day feels like a frickin’ eternity.”

Right after college in Boston, he moved to L.A. and hit the stand-up circuit. He was almost immediately placed on an up-and-comers bill with Dave Chappell and Louis C.K. by Garry Shandling, which led to some acting work. That included the minor films Dogfight (1991) and The Thing Called Love (1993) both of them starring Phoenix.

He was also a stand-out as a flaming barber in The Rock (1996), starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery.

Clark had back-to-back sitcoms, starting with the charming Boston Common, in which he played a Virginian delivering his sister (Hedy Burress) to college in Boston who falls for a girl (Traylor Howard) and sticks around.

In spite of lasting just two seasons, it was a big hit in Season 1, but was doomed when it was shuffled off to Sunday nights. It aired 1996-1997.

Next up was Soul Man (1997-1998), Dan Akyroyd’s stab at sitcom greatness for ABC.

In 2000, he became Greg on Yes, Dear, a well-liked sitcom on CBS that starred Clark, O’Malley, Jean Louisa Kelly and Liza Snyder, and that included mega guest performances by Tim Conway, Vicki Lawrence, Jerry Van Dyke and more.

The show ran six seasons, and Clark then hosted Last Comic Standing for a single season (2006).

After that, Clark mostly retired. He appeared in the 2012 feature My Uncle Rafael and on an episode of West of Liberty in 2019 (presuming this is not an IMDb error based on his common name), but otherwise had invested his sitcom money wisely enough to be able to leave the public eye.

His final major stand-up stab was the special he produced in 2012 called Ambiguous.⚡️

KENNETH IN THE (212): Oh, my.

POLITICO: Hakeem Jeffries appears to have his votes sewn up, but … Chuck Schumer might be in for a rocky ride.

HUFFINGTON POST: I like Robert Garcia as someone’s veep. Just saying!

CBS NEWS: Incumbent Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Florida) barely won reelection — but it’s been called, and she did win.

THE NEWS & OBSERVER: Rep. Virginia Foxx, the hideous North Carolina congresswoman, still hasn’t had her race officially called. While it had seemed she was dead meat, she has flipped back and forth with her opponent. Now, as more votes are counted, her Democratic challenger Chuck Hubbard has a lead of about 325 votes — which his grown due to Democratic-leaning provisional ballots.

JOE.MY.GOD.: House Republicans blocked the impeachment vote on Pete Hegseth.

GR8ERDAYS: Stacy Keach, TV’s Mike Hammer, dies at 85.

ADVOCATE: Doug Jones lost his Alabama gubernatorial bid, but his gay son’s got his back.

OUT.COM: Tom Francis, who was the star of Sunset Boulevard on Broadway, will be Benito Skinner’s Overcompensating love interest.

CNN: Gay-sex ban overturned in Trinidad and Tobago.

ATTITUDE: Season 2 of Benito Skinner’s Overcompensating is coming to Prime February 17.

Meanwhile, he’s in Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid, which is in select theaters now and in theaters nationwide at Thanksgiving.

THE BULWARK: Christopher Pohlhaus, a neo-Nazi streamer, accidentally stayed live when he went from election reporting to whacking off with a female pal. Then, he seemed to overlook all the frantic messages from people helpfully trying to warn him of his very public mistake.

SIMON & SCHUSTER: Pete Buttigieg sure seems like a presidential candidate — he is laying out his vision for the country in the new book Next, available for pre-orders now.

LGBTQ NATION: French First Lady Brigitte Macron has sued Candace Owens again over claims she is trans and raped her now-husband when he was underage.

REUTERS: Appropriately, the new crop of Democratic senators posed for a photo with Sen. Chuck Schumer. Minority Leader Schumer is most likely going to become Majority Leader soon. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is a lock for Speaker of the House. Both men have naysayers, but it feels like the votes are there? (If not, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, seems to be the most realistic alternative.)

JOE.MY.GOD.: Reports suggest Hegseth used Google searches to ferret out Black and women officers in the armed services in order to shit-can them.

NEW YORK TIMES: Right-wing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) is leading the charge to impeach Hegseth, basing it on a violation of the constitution.

LEGACY: RIP Rochelle Fleming, 72. She was the lead singer of First Choice, whose “Armed and Extremely Dangerous” was an early (1973) and enduring disco classic.

NEW YORK TIMES: Michael Ward Stout, a lawyer who ran the Mapplethorpe Foundation, has died.

METRO WEEKLY: “Gay Brothers, Bad Habits.”

THE STRANGER: There is a new 4K restoration of The Devils (1971) by Ken Russell.

VINCENNES SUN-COMMERCIAL: A gay man recounts enduring conversion therapy for 10 years, winding up suicidal.

OFFSCREEN: A book that is a list — I wonder how many of the 50 I’ve seen?

CBS NEWS: A cop was caught on video interacting with a teen and calling the kid an anti-gay slur.

VARIETY: Jonathan Bailey and Bill Nighy will star in the gay romantic drama Insomniac City by Dominic Cooke. Cooke directed On Chesil Beach (2017) and The Courier (2020) and was, at one point, supposed to direct a feature film of Follies.

EXTRATV: Russell Brand will spend the better part of 10 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole. The judge pointed out that several of his crimes were perpetrated in public, suggesting a particularly depraved indifference to his victims’ humiliation.

THE GUARDIAN: Kerr Smith remembers having to do like TEN takes of his famous Dawson’s Creek kiss.

TIMES UNION: A “Big Gay Market” that’s a big deal for helping LGBTQ+ youth.

US WEEKLY: Matt Gaetz’s wife actually lets him fuck her.

CBS SUNDAY MORNING: Julia Garner was tapped — by Madonna — years ago to play Madonna. Will that long-simmering biopic ever really happen? Maybe not, but she seems to have made a lifelong friend.

INSTAGRAM: Is it okay for a straight guy to walk up and touch another guy’s ass at the gym out of (checks notes) respect and admiration?

I made a joke that all I need to do is find a girlfriend to take with me, but luckily Leo seems to be taking it all in stride.

NOTICE TO MY READERS: Hey, so you may or may not realize I am a collector and archivist.

Yes, I collect very unusual Madonna items (my list is narrow, but I’m after very old items mostly, like I’ve always wanted an original ad from the Florida David 1983), but as far as gay stuff, please reach out if any of this rings a bell:

If any of you has, or knows older gay men with, vintage photography (1980s and older, especially), sometimes vintage gay magazines (I love vintage physique but also weekly mags I’m obsessed with include Parlée, Michael’s Thing, Where It’s At and others), bar invitations, original art (especially illustrations, I’d kill for a Harry Bush), gay catalogues (Ah Men), gay personal photography (like photos from Pride celebrations, from inside gay bars, Polaroids), gay advertising (like posters from bars), gay photo albums and drag items.

Hit me up if you have things and want to downsize — I’m growing my archive daily and will at some point be in a position to share: matthewrettenmund@gmail.com

The worst that can happen is we don’t come to an agreement/it isn’t up my alley.

I am also interested in talking to people with unique queer histories — if you worked in porn, as a physique model, in film/film/theater or have some other unique angle, perhaps we can chat for my podcast.

SALT LAKE CITY TRIBUNE: Utah’s first gay bar is getting a permanent historical marker.

INSTAGRAM: One of my fave allies who encourages ogling.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Fabulous ‘70s fashion icon Toukie Smith has died at 74.

TWITTER: Insanely, Jack Schlossberg has randomly accused anyone who opposed Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker (he’s almost a lock anyway) of racism. Oof.

INSTAGRAM: Lorenzo Salgado, who was murdered by ICE, was honored by Senator-elect James Talarico (D-Texas).

SNL: Talarico wowed on SNL, too!

CNN: CNN has finally called the race — and it appears Lauren Boebert has gone down in public again, in spite of having absconded to a theoretically safe red seat.

KXAN: In last week’s blue wave, lesbian jurist Maggie Ellis was elected Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court — first woman to lead the Court, first out LGBTQ+ person to win election to any statewide office, first out LGBTQ+ person elected to the Court.

VIRGINIA MERCURY: The election also brought to Virginians the enshrining of marriage equality, voting rights and reproductive rights in their constitution.

TWITTER: “How does it feel being a loser, Mr. President?”

HUFFINGTON POST: Hakeem Jeffries is going to be the Speaker of the House — he’s got AOC, he’s got the votes. (Schumer might be a little wobbly.) In the meantime, Jeffries is described as a “hard yes” on impeaching Pete Hegseth.

INSTAGRAM: Neil Patrick Harris made a surprise appearance at Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody this weekend.

KENNETH IN THE (212): A weekend tennis roundup to die for.

KVELLER: The story of Wilfrid Israel, the gay Jewish Socialist who “saved 10,000 Jews during WWII.”

DALLAS VOICE: NYC-based out author David Finkle is publishing the novel Dorothea Through My Eyes November 15:

“Finkle’s novel examines how ambition, identity and emotional distress can reshape relationships, raising questions about mental health, assumptions people make about others and the challenges of helping someone in crisis.”

BLEECKER STREET MEDIA: I went to a screening of The Liberation, a new drama starring Carrie Coon as Rita Cooper, a woman who’d survived the Holocaust as a child and who, in mid-life, walked away from her family in order to spend the rest of her life in a cult.

That this is a true story is already a gut-punch. That it was written and directed by Rita’s own grandson — Academy Award winner Guy Nattiv — soaks each minute of it with dread.

The film starts like a slasher, with two young women (The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey and Odessa Young) arriving at the remote compound run by the spookily sensuous Ricki (an appropriately mesmerizing Lily James) seeking to reconnect with their mom, who has been absent from their lives for a couple of years. It quickly unravels into psychological thriller territory as it jumps back and forth between Rita’s hum-drum life with her kids and her husband (Coon’s real-life husband Tracy Letts) and her terrifying new life as Naia.

One thing The Liberation does well is portray Rita’s spiral in a way that feels absolutely credible — even relatable. As Coon said afterward in a spirited Q&A:

“I’m a wife and I’m a mother, and I’m a working person. The cognitive load of motherhood is very, very high, and I absolutely understood her as completely radical. Here she is, women have had credit cards for 10 years, they can’t really get a divorce, and this woman — improbably — leaves. A radical impulse! We forget sometimes that the rules we’re living by are completely made up … The idea that you would walk away from that? We could all do it, and we don’t do it.”

I was also left pondering what Rita’s Jewishness, her status as a survivor who saw members of her family dragged away from her, might have had to do with how susceptible she was to Ricki’s charm and coercion. Nattiv seemed to be hinting at this, and the Israeli Center for Cult Victims was thanked in the credits, suggesting there may be a special vulnerability. Nattiv also expertly depicted aspects of the off-grid life Rita sought as Naia and a concentration camp, as if she were returning to the sick comfort of the defining trauma of her childhood. She was held against her will, her hair was cropped short, she was (at first) forced to do work, she was stripped of her worldly goods and money and the film’s gripping final scenes hammer the point home even further.

There is also a lesbian vibe from Ricki — the camp is all women — who seems to be above nothing when it comes to seducing her supplicants.

It’s particularly harrowing when one of Rita’s own daughters starts to get caught up in Ricki as well, a twist and a twist of the knife that gives the film a thriller tone — yet another genre kissed.

Coon’s performance as a mouse who self-destructively roars is impressively tiny and internal and towering. When I saw her after, I couldn’t help but tell her, “That’s an Oscar [nomination],” to which she laughed and thanked me, but it’s clear why she was drawn to this tragedy.

Nattiv should be proud of creating a film that engrosses and provokes, and that adds new dimension to how cults have been portrayed on the screen.

The Liberation opens officially in select theaters January 8.

EXTRATV: How lucky was Jamie Lloyd-Smith? Hudson Williams was shooting right outside her apartment window this week.

OMG.BLOG!: Arman Kashani shows off his furry behind.

DEARDATAA: An interesting perspective — what if only Independents voted? Or only white women? Or only Black men?

It’s crazy how Trump Gen X remains. (In spite of the warning, it appears to be quite accurate.)

PEOPLE: Little Rascals actor Bug Hall is asking people to help him afford his sixth kid. Oh, while he is now a “radical Catholic extremist” (gulp), he is the same one who posted pierced-dick pics a (long) while back.

NEW YORK TIMES: Rob Sand, Iowa’s new Democratic governor — and one of the people whose emails have most frequently appeared in my inbox for months! — was once a legit high-fashion model.

DAILY KOS: Trump insanely offered the press secretary job to UFC CEO Dana White.

TV WEEK: Fine-as-hell Ben Ahlers is comfy with the “Clock Twink” nickname. Also, the below makes me want to dress in Gilded Age gear and head to a disco:

ATTITUDE: Jude Bellingham for CK:

OUT.COM: Alex Ukkelberg, a volleyball pro, comes out:

“Thankful that I’m gay.”

DEADLINE: Heated Rivalry is filming not just Season 2 but also Season 3! And then in December, a stand-alone theatrical film is going to be shot (sans Hudson and Connor) for release in a year.

ANF: The Atlanta-area Virginia-Highland home in which a man was arrested for sodomy, which led to a vile Supreme Court decision holding that gay people did NOT have a right to privacy in their own homes, is going to be demolished. The current homeowners are crying mold, so they’ve now been approved to tear it down, fucking history in the ass. (I’m not sure, in all seriousness, if I feel deeply about this site. What say you?)

BTW, that SCOTUS ruling stood for 17 years. Michael Hardwick, who pursued justice in the case, died in 1991 — many years too soon to see that awful decision overturned.

POLITICS & POLL TRACKER: According to an NBC News exit poll, about 86% of the LGBTQ+ vote in 2026 was for Dems. I believe the only demo with a more reliably Democratic vote is Black women.

CNN: Scott Colom is winning this thing:

HUFFINGTON POST: Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has a warning for Elon Musk. Isn’t it delish he moved to Texas, only for the entire fucking state to go blue?!

JOE.MY.GOD.: NYC Mayor Mamdani’s five ballot measures all passed easily.

VARIETY: “Is This the Gayest Oscar Season Ever?”

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: RIP to David Del Valle, 77. He was a one-of-a-kind fan and film historian. I was so honored to have been his Facebook friend, and to receive his praise for Boy Culture.

INSTAGRAM: Dragtivist Pattie Gonia promised to pose nude if there were a blue wave in the U.S. on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON POST: Rosie O’Donnell is considering a move back to the U.S. as the Trump Reign of Terror winds down.

CNBC: Having learned ZERO, Trump fires Susie Wiles in favor of odious Stephen Miller — whose wife didn’t even vote.

NEW YORK TIMES: The same publication that tried hard to derail Mary Peltola in Alaska believes she is on track to win that close Senate race. There are supposedly enough votes outstanding for her to build her lead, possibly avoiding a ranked-choice situation. Even with ranked choice, The New York Times believes she would win.

KRQE: Scott Colom has expanded his minuscule lead over do-nothing Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi (the silly cow declared victory but is gonna lose), so much so that the Mississippi Republican Party is admitting they will accept it “if” he wins.

INSTAGRAM: Cindy is not going to win:

JOE.MY.GOD.: Sen. Chuck Grassley is, at 93, the nation’s oldest senator … but he refuses to resign, as some in the Republican Party want, so that the current governor of Iowa (a Republican until January) can choose a replacement. He wants to stay in place until 2028 — when he will (possibly) be 95.

TWITTER: Elon Musk appears to have removed Mayor Mamdani’s blue checkmark on Twitter, and there is anecdotal evidence he has removed some followers, too.

KENNETH IN THE (212): Eating out with James Talarico.

INSTAGRAM: Gaming out who Gov. Klobuchar will choose to fill her own vacated Senate seat:

POLITICO: Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed ran behind Gov.-elect Joyce Benson, a fellow Dem, in Michigan by just about 2%. But when we’re talking Jewish voters, he ran up to 15% behind. The relatively small number of voting-age Jews in the state seemingly meant he lost maybe 15K votes due to things that were perceived as anti-Semitic or due to being a Muslim when it came to the Jewish vote. That wouldn’t make up the entire 2% he lost statewide, so a bunch would be from Dems who seemingly bought the bullcrap that he’s extreme, etc. He still won by a commanding 7% over Rogers. Interestingly, though the voting environment was entirely different in 2024, it’s worth noting that the more centrist Elissa Slotkin, who is Jewish, BARELY beat Rogers.

INSTINCT: EKG by Q. Allan Brocka is among the films in the first queer film fest the app is holding.

NEW YORK TIMES: RIP Harriet Hancock, who has died at 89. She was an indomitable ally who spent 40 years fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in South Carolina.

HUFFINGTON POST: A judge has temporarily blocked the construction of Trump’s huge arch.

EXTRATV: Kerr Smith talks about his trail-blazing same-sex smooch on Dawson’s Creek:

YOUTUBE: Random, but an interesting interview by Barbara Walters of Truman Capote in 1967:

EROTICCO: Brazil has been shipping Mau Mau and Felipe on Quem Ama Cuida, a massively popular telenovela available on Globo. Well, on October 30, they shared their first kiss.

Not the mirror, too!!!

TMZ: Morgan Fairchild is joining OnlyFans at 76. That’s the ticket!

VULTURE: My pal went to the Difficult People table read and says it was hilarious. Maybe Kevin Spacey should cameo?

MR. MAN: Yes, Jonathan Lipnicki really and truly did go full-frontal in the new film Primetime. (Link here, and if you sub to Mr. Man, Boy Culture gets a small bump.)

By the way, Jonathan, most famous for Jerry Maguire, is now THIRTY-SIX YEARS OF AGE, and this is not his first nudity rodeo.

MAN ABOUT TOWN: Mercy, this magazine cover has got it covered. Morgan Spector of The Gilded Age flashes a bit of cum-gutter, but otherwise demonstrates how you can be mostly covered and still red-hot in both of these images. In the piece, he continues to display his progressivism:

“I think there’s just a pervasive sense that no one is taking care of you. If you become ill in America, you could lose everything. When you look at the experience of the ordinary person and contrast it with the idea that a single individual can be worth a trillion dollars, it’s obviously obscene. As much as our show is escapism, I think what makes it juicy escapism is that it does bring us back to the reality we’re living in now in a certain way.”

Buy the mag here.

HULU: Insane that anyone would be swayed by a guy named Dr. Tony Huge who was pushing penis enlargement and extreme bodybuilding via drugs. But men are weak! We are! We have the same insecurities as women, but many men pretend it isn’t vanity but gender affirmation. Hulu’s Get Huge: Looksmaxxing to Death promises to explore that.

INSTAGRAM: Mood, post-election. Why can’t we move forward right over their faces?

DW.COM: The voting demographics for 2026 are illuminating. Black women and Black men voted overwhelmingly Democratic. The Latino and Latina votes swung much bluer (21% shift) than even 2024. Asian-Americans shifted by the identical percentage — 21%.

White Lady Susan Collins Still Doesn’t Get It

And notably, white women — for the first time I can remember offhand — voted (in a bare majority — 51/47) for Democrats. In 2024, those numbers were exactly reversed — 47/51). White women have only TWICE voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in 62 years: Johnson (1964) and Clinton (1996 — not 1992). So, white women, who make up a much large slice of the pie overall, shifting bluer as they did, made a huge difference.

The youth vote change was seismic — though a much smaller % of the overall vote, they swung 34% more Democratic this year than just two years ago. All that TikTok vibe noise evaporated in the face of rising prices, nastiness on the daily, trashing of norms and the Iran War, which the GOP swore to God was what Democrats wanted.

White men are still overwhelmingly Republican, but not as overwhelmingly. And men overall voted Democratic by 2%. That is incredible — the first time men have voted Democratic since 2008 (hello, Obama!) and only the third time Dems have won guys since 1992, when Clinton won men by 3% (only because Ross Perot existed).

WDAM: It’s looking more and more like Scott Colom is going to clinch victory in Mississippi. In fact, he flipped ruby-red Forrest County. That county’s namesake is Nathan Bedford Forres, who founded the KKK. No Democrat has won a Senate race in Mississippi since 1982.

POST AND COURIER: Nancy Lacore, the vice admiral who was unceremoniously fired by Pete Hegseth for being a woman, ambitiously mounted a campaign to win the South Carolina 1st Congressional District seat. It was a total longshot, but thanks to the blue supernova that also swept Dr. Annie Andrews into her state’s Senate seat, she won!

Asked about Hegseth being impeached, she had the right answer:

“I’ll certainly look at that if that’s what comes up. But my focus, again, is on delivering what I promised to the people who are putting me into this office.”

We need Democrats who strike this exact tone — emphasizing the affordability issues, but able to walk and chew gum at the same time. I don’t want to hear Dems brushing off the concept of justice willy-nilly.

NEWSWEEK: Rep. Ilhan Omar won reelection bigger than ever after that politically motivated raid of her home.

ADVOCATE: Allison Montgomery, a software engineer, will be the first-ever trans state lawmaker elected in Alabama. She defeated a sitting Republican congressman 53-47. She did so by emphasizing affordability, divesting from corporate interests and by pointing out that “what about the kids?” in relation to trans people makes no sense when an Alabama lawmaker who is a straight male was recently charged with (checks notes) human trafficking. (By the way, a fellow Republican sailed into the seat vacated by the accused human trafficker she was referencing.)

THEM: Elsewhere in Alabama, there’s a new out gay sheriff in town via former Navy SEAL Brett Jones, who triumphed (53-47) over a two-term Republican.

LGBTQ: Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Delaware) became the first trans person ever to be reelected to Congress. She won 64-36.

MICHIGAN ADVANCE: Jeremy Moss (D-Michigan) is going to be his state’s first out LGBTQ+ state senator. He won the seat (61-37) vacated by hapless Haley Stevens — wowsie, wowsie, woo-woo. (BTW, this was an improvement over Haley’s performance. She took the seat in 2024 by 58-40.)

BAY AREA REPORTER: Gay California State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) won his bruising battle (55-45) to succeed Nancy Pelosi, who is exiting the House for the first time since a lot of folks have been alive come January. Embarrassingly, at least politically, she’d endorsed the more progressive Connie Chan, the loser, on her way out. Wiener has taken lots of hits for not despising Israel enough. I think too many hits. It feels like there should be space for people in public life whose views lie between “Israel comes to me in my dreams” and “Israel should cease to exist.”

At any rate, he weirdly makes history as the first out LGBTQ+ rep from the Bay Area. How has that never happened?!

HRC’s Kelley Robinson says of Wiener’s win:

“Almost 50 years after Harvey Milk’s election made history in San Francisco, the city is sending its first LGBTQ+ representative to Congress. Scott Wiener has spent his career proving that when LGBTQ+ people have a seat at the table, we can deliver meaningful change for everyone. At a moment when our rights are under relentless attack, Congress needs more leaders like Scott Wiener. The Human Rights Campaign is proud to have stood with Scott from the start, and we couldn't be prouder to celebrate this historic victory.”

TIME: Sadly, Democratic centrist Chris Gallant lost on Long Island. You’ll recall he was the hottie whose extremely explicit nudes and porn pics were leaked at the height of his campaign to unseat Nick LaLota. He handled it well, and he only lost 51-49, hardly a smackdown, and a good reason to look ahead to 2028.

ADVOCATE: An exhaustive list of other LGBTQ+ winners in 2026.

JOE.MY.GOD.: One of the hottest dudes to win office on the Democratic side has gotta be Sam Forstag, a firejumper (! already hot !) who flipped Montana’s 1st Congressional District, unseating GOPer Aaron Flint. You can check out Forstag in a sauna here.

FACEBOOK: I remember Sebastian Bach for the “AIDS KILLS FAGS DEAD” T-shirt controversy. I am pleasantly surprised to see he is now a progressive.

TMZ: The writing was already on the wall, but Nithya Raman, a Democratic Socialist, has officially unseated Democratic Mayor Karen Bass in L.A. (52-48) after just one term, a term plagued by the wildfires and often unfair criticisms of how Bass handled them. I’m hoping for L.A. Raman is up to the task, and while I think Bass was better than she was given credit for, I do think she stank at pushing back on attacks. Sometimes a reset works wonders. Congrats to her and let’s hope Dustin Lance Black never needs a zoning permit.

NBC NEWS: Speaking of Democratic Socialists, Janeese Lewis George cruised (84-10-3.5, no Republicans running) into a D.C. mayoral win. So now L.A., D.C. and NYC will be governed by Democratic Socialists.

TWITTER: Bruce Harrison, newly reelected (54-46) congressman from Texas, thinks Gina Hinojosa winning the governorship is a four-alarm fire for the state. After all, she will have the powers of a dictator. Oh, wait, she will “inherit” the powers of a dictator; so, he was cool with Greg Abbott having them for a dozen years.

HUFFINGTON POST: “Trump’s MAGA Makeover of the Courts Is Over.”

KENNETH IN THE (212): LGBTQ+ (and -adjacent) mags of the moment.

TICKETS: Coming soon to NYC is Divine: Beyond the Flamingos!, written and directed by Donnie … and starring Eureka O’Hara. Pretty spot-on casting.

INSTINCT: Bi actor Dahveed notes that his full-frontal in The Bay was alllll natty, baby.

NPR: Club Kid’s Jordan Firstman explains that the gist of his buzzy film is that it’s a “delayed coming-of-age” movie, one that he can relate to as a recovering club kid himself.

PEOPLE: The Met Gala really shit the Egyptian cotton sheets with this one! After the epic blunder of deciding it was okay to honor John Galliano, out of all deserving people, they’re now announcing the theme is extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday. So, they want to hype up T-shirts, jeans, raincoats, sweatshirts and puffer jackets. I can’t wait to see Rihanna in a parka. Oh. The. Glamour.

CLAMP: Opening tomorrow, November 6, at CLAMP in NYC (through December 23) is Studio Nudes, a show featuring works by Amos Badertscher, Bruce of Los Angeles, Christopher Makos, Curtice Taylor, Daniel Handal, Francisco De la Barra, George Platt Lynes, Jack Balas, James Bidgood, Jim French, John Button, Lissa Rivera, Mark Beard, Paul Cadmus, Paul Solberg, Peter Berlin, Robert Calafiore, Roberto Bocci and Victor Carnuccio.

VARIETY: It’s official — right-wing firebrand and loud-mouthed Trumper Russell Brand is a rapist.

ERIN IN THE MORNING: How the barely-passing anti-trans measures might be de-fanged.

NBC: I’m not big on remakes (I am in the minority in thinking the new Carrie is pig entrails warmed over) but promoting the rebrand of The Rockford Files with an awkward fake TV ad by Jim (David Boreanaz) is pretty cute.

INSTAGRAM: When the coach is a team player:

GQ: Andrew Garfield is covering GQ’s Men of the Year issue, looking like this:

Inside, he opens up about his Oscar nomination-tipped performance as gay douchebag Sam Altman in the new film Artificial. He says he is nervous about what Altman can do:

“I feel afraid now. But it’s outweighed by a faith in humanity, but also a faith in the mystery of life. It’s the artist’s responsibility to reflect the times we’re in, and I think it’s getting harder and harder to do that without fear of consequences from those in power who you are rocking the boat for. I am afraid, but I’m still willing to put it on the line, but we’ll see.”

PRE-ORDER HERE: Musk, the acclaimed and savage doc about — who else? — is becoming available on VOD November 6, early!

DAILY KOS: As expected, Democrats easily won the House and easily won the Senate in a massive repudiation of Trump. Incoming oversight chairman Robert Garcia has a two-word message to Republicans:

“Lawyer up.”

HUFFINGTON POST: In the most pleasant surprise of Election 2026, solid candidate Annie Andrews handily beat the late Lindsey Graham’s incompetent and, frankly, dumb sister Darline Graham to deliver the Dems a Senate seat in red South Carolina.

Darline got railed, but at least didn’t have to pay for it like her dead brother.

ELECTION TRACKER: Well, actually, the MOST pleasant surprise — if it holds — is that Scott Colom, whose fundraising emails breathlessly assured me he was gonna win, is 43 votes (out of like 925,000 counted so far) ahead of Trumper Cindy Hyde-Smith, a universally derided candidate … in MISSISSIPPI. This is very similar to South Carolina, the lesson for the GOP being that if you are excited to have a fucking moron as a placeholder because you think they’ll do Trump’s bidding, you just may shake loose a sleeping giant, even in the Deep South.

That shitheaded “Independent” more than decided this race.

DAILY KOS: Kansas is another of the night’s shockers — while it was a race the Democrats felt was on the outskirts of winnable, it is pretty amazing that Dem Adam Hamilton has decisively defeated sitting Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.

TWITTER: It’s not a total shocker, but considering how long this lizard woman has hung on in Maine — including inexplicably winning her last election, which she’d been forecast to lose — it is amazingly satisfying to see Susan Collins (R) lose in Maine to Troy Jackson (D).

THE HILL: Less unexpected, but when the thing you want actually happens … it’s sweet: James Talarico has become the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Texas since 1988. (And the first to serve since 1993, when one was briefly appointed by Gov. Ann Richards.)

TEXAS TRIBUNE: Democrat Gina Hinojosa has beaten despicable Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), a total Trump lackey. She will be the state’s first Latina governor, the first person of Latin descent in the position at all and the first Democratic governor of the state since the late, great Ann Richards departed 31 years ago.

VOX: “The Christian Left Is Here.”

TWITTER: Gov. Greg Abbott (R) of Texas conceded early to Gina Hinjosa (D).

TWITTER: Talarico & Hinojosa had coattails — the Texas Supreme Court was 9R 0D and is now 5R 4D, and COVID-denying racist homophobe Dan Patrick also LOST there.

NEW YORK TIMES: Mary Peltola is looking okay in Alaska, but it’s a nail-biter — the polls there were almost exactly spot-on. She is barely behind Osborne (one of ‘em). The outstanding vote is projected to somewhat favor her, but it’s anyone’s guess. If she does not get to 50%, though, or if Osborne does not, it’s ranked-choice voting, which adds another dimension to things, making it a days-long nailbed-biter. If she loses, I appreciate the irony that I’m linking The New York Times, which tried to sink her in the campaign’s 11th hour.

NEW YORK TIMES: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat who was slimed as anti-Semitic and a jihadist, has handily won the Michigan Senate seat, defeating Trump scum Mike Rogers. Someone check on Haley Stevens! Actually, never mind. Dr. El-Sayed becomes the first Muslim senator in U.S. history.

DETROIT NEWS: Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, also won the governorship in Michigan. The top office in Michigan is now heading into at least 12 years in Dem hands.

NBC NEWS: Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) easily won re-election to the Senate. His was the first major call of the night.

THEM: Chris Pappas has won a Senate seat in New Hampshire. The Dem is now the first out gay man elected to the Senate.

ADVOCATE: In ruby-red Indiana, J.D. Ford — a longshot Democratic contender — has ousted GOP incumbent Victoria Spartz, the Ukrainian who turned on Ukraine to appease Trump.

NBC NEWS: Keisha Lance Bottoms has won the Georgia governorship — and it wasn’t even close. She becomes the nation’s first Black woman elected governor in our 250-year history. (The first Black man to be elected governor won in 1989.)

DAILY KOS: Democrat Josh Turek has beaten Republican Ashley Hinson to become the next senator from Iowa. The “prairie populist” is probbbbbably going to be a pain in our ass, considering he pandered to anti-trans sentiments and on Election Day casually noted he voted for some Republicans today. But a (D) is a (D)!

THE HILL: Rob Sand is the first Democrat elected governor in Iowa since 2006.

NEW YORK TIMES: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) has stomped Trumper Bruce Blakeman, who had desperately attached himself at the very wide hip to Nicki Minaj in the closing days of that race.

NBC NEWS: Former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) has won the Senate race in North Carolina. Handily.

NBC NEWS: Florida State Sen. Ashley Moody (R) narrowly defeated Democratic candidate Angie Nixon — whose chances had been seen as nil. It’s a sad loss, but the closeness is an indication of how blue the wave was going to be.

HUFFINGTON POST: All four Dems whose seats were gerrymandered in Florida look likely to win: Moskowitz (won), Frankel (won), Soto (narrowly leading with 96% in) & Castor (won).

INQUIRER: Democratic Navy pilot Rebecca Bennett handed Republican incumbent Tom Kean Jr. his ass in a key New Jersey House race.

FLORIDA TRIBUNE: Lucia Báez-Geller has defeated accused rapist, adjudicated sexual abuser Fabian Basabe in a Miami-Dade House race. Their district had been reliably red.

HUFFINGTON POST: Former Sen. Sherrod Brown has returned to the Senate in Ohio, defeating Jon Husted.

NBC NEWS: Even better, Amy Acton sent villainous Vivek Ramaswarmy packing to become the firstwoman elected governor of the state. (And the second to serve, after a woman served for 12 days in the late ‘90s due to a resignation.)

NEW YORK TIMES: Wife-abusing prick Max Miller lost by a whopping 10 points in Ohio.

PIX11: Odious Mike Lawler (R-New York) lost to Cait Conley, conceding before the race was even called.

NPR: Democrat David Crowley handily beat Republican Tom Tiffany and will be the next governor of Wisconsin. He will be his state’s first-ever Black governor.

THE GUARDIAN: Xavier Becerra easily won the governorship of California, humiliating Steve Hilton.

ADVOCATE: Trans, non-binary Bentley Hudgins won a Georgia Assembly seat — first in either category to win there, and also the first Japanese-American elected there.

ADVOCATE: Trans lawmaker Zooey Zephyr reelected in Montana.

NBC NEWS: The chair of the Republican financial team charged with helping keep the House lost his own race in North Carolina, a result that came out of … well, somewhere.

INSTAGRAM: Rep. Jeff Van Drew, elected as a Dem in the 2018 blue wave and who IMMEDIATELY defected to the Republicans, was finally stamped out in New Jersey.

THE TENNESSEAN: It isn’t all good news — idiot Marsha Blackburn BARELY won her race to become the governor of Tennessee. An Independent in the raise more than made up the difference. In fact, she won only about 45% of the vote, so 55% of the electorate did not want her.

TWITTER: Katie Fucking Miller DID NOT BOTHER TO VOTE.

JOE.MY.GOD.: Dem. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut remains hospitalized after suffering a stroke. His comms director says:

“He’s continuing to improve and heartened by the outpouring of well wishes. He early voted in Connecticut, and he encourages everyone to make their voices heard today by voting and sending a message in this defining election.”

DAILY KOS: AOC is looking ahead to 2028.

EBAY: Sammy Davis Jr. was on the cover of the gay-targeted, pre-International Male male catalog Ah Men in 1980 … and I have questions!

PEOPLE: Child sex-abuse materials are confirmed to have been found at Thomas Markle’s Philippines home. Authorities are now trying to ascertain whether Markle is in any of them — as in, created them himself.

I’m nervous about the tentpole races in Texas and Michigan, but with Dems doing well in unexpected places, too, like Kansas … we may even … overperform? (And remember, 2026 was always supposed to be a BRUTAL year for Dems, based on the seats open, so 2028 could be even more of a blue wave.)

INSTAGRAM: Remembering fine, fine Burt Lancaster, who was born 113 years ago November 2.

Burt posed nude way before most other Hollywood figures did, and his nudes are real — unlike the ones foisted on us that are supposed to be James Dean, etc.

He also went nude in 1968’s The Swimmer. When he filmed it, he was 52 and still in top shape. The Old Hollywood icon and liberal lion died at 80.

PEOPLE: Yep, that was Matt Damon and David Letterman in full period attire on the Season 4 premiere of The Gilded Age that aired Sunday. Good episode, no? My visit to the press conference is here.

INSTAGRAM: He’s funnnny. I like when peopel read their hate comments, though it must be annoying not to be able to name and shame the perps because social media companies are just as likely to block the victim as the bullies when you do that.

KENNETH IN THE (212): Weekend tennis update.

STATE AFFAIRS: According to former Michigan Gov. Blanchard, Haley Stevens’s creepy boyfriend Jason Turkish berated her at a dinner he was at. Also, she changed her mind about voting for El-Sayed within HOURS.

CNN: Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan) sounded mentally unwell in her Anderson Cooper interview, struggling to answer questions or to explain why she was urging people to vote for Abdul El-Sayed one day and in a Black church with Mike Rogers the next.

MEIDAS TOUCH: The Perfecting Church’s MAGAt pastor is doing damage control over embracing Rogers. (Pastor Winans —yes, related to that family — publicly scolded a woman for ONLY donating $1,235 to his church just last year.)

Haley got an earful from at least one of the Black parishioners.

NEWSNATION: On November 3, “political slut” Stevens was spotted by NewsNation heading to vote (for Rogers) with her mother. Her comments are unnervingly weird. This scatter-brained loon came very close to a Senate seat. Very, very close.

JUST JARED: I’m not sure that Dustin Lance Black switching from Raman to Bass over a no-show by Raman to his fund-raising event really plays the way he thinks it plays. I do think that his written explanation, calling out Raman for what he says is a pattern of flakiness, is more convincing than the headline — but won’t most people just read the headline and see him as a Hollywood Haley Stevens?

HUFFINGTON POST: Incredibly scary footage of a business jet crashing onto a Florida neighborhood looks more like a meteorite. All nine aboard — and nobody on the ground — died.

HUFFINGTON POST: It was delicious to see a confused and defiant Trump idiotically make an appearance at the Reflecting Pool, the site of his flop of a renovation. Like, why?! Why, sir?

But the icing on the cake was hearing a cogent and still-would-make-a-great-president Hillary Clinton, er, reflecting on the appearance.

On the same CNN segment, Hillary talked about the time Trump stalked her on the debate stage. I’ll never get over her losing to that bum.

TMZ: Sadly, entertainment writer Johnny Lopez, who used to work for TMZ and who was later a Queerty reporter, has died after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Marty Erlichman, Barbra Streisand’s forever manager, has died at 97.

PINK NEWS: Ben Wang may play gay Iceman in X-Men reboot.

PEOPLE: Ezra Sosa, Dancing with the Stars pro dancer, has asked to have a same-sex partner on the show.

TEXAS MONTHLY: A great piece on Glen Maxey, the first out gay legislator in Texas history.

WASHINGTON BLADE: Remembering gay Revolutionary War hero Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben.

EW.COM: I feel like Stephen Bishop’s manager wife Liz Kamlet is the reason, but celebs are going on the record about their actual pay more and more. When a Twitter user claimed Melanie Lynskey made $200,000-$300,000 per episode of Two and a Half Men, and therefore struck it rich, she clapped back (kindly), stating she made exactly 1/10 of that amount, which increased a bit throughout her run of 63 episodes. Based on her own reporting, she would have made $1.3M across her years on the show — minus about 50% for management, etc., fees. Not bad, not a fortune, NOT an I-never-have-to-work-again amount.

THE GUARDIAN: How Lorca became a gay icon (finally) in Spain.

REUTERS: Rocky Pride reception for Mayor of Taipei following gay-bar raid.

PLEASE LET THE OBSESSION END: The generative AI craze among people over 50 is like crack in the ‘80s. It’s exploding and seems impossible to curb. I feel it’s because a lot of people who previously had no skills have been gifted with a basically free skill to distort reality in pleasing and ever-increasingly dysmorphic ways, and the down side — the corruption of what is real and the depletion of natural resources — is not immediate and quantifiably graspable. So, we carry on, going further and further down this road.

My example — with apologies to the older gay man who posted it — is the above image (at right) of “my husband in the mid-’70s.” He posted it to proudly show how cute his man was as a 15-year-old. ALL the comments gushed. Nobody pointed anything out. Being the exhausted AI scold that I am, I could not resist saying it looks AIed to death (I wasn’t sure if it was fully made up or just a perversion of an original).

In all seriousness, he replied with the original, writing that it was pretty close.

If you look at those two images and think they share almost anything, you need therapy. The AI version takes a 15-year-old and makes him look 20, broadens his chest, hyper-shortens his shorts (adding feet, by the way), changes the entire shape of his head and drastically alters the character of his face. The hair is a more pleasing, fuller texture. This wouldn’t even be a good MISSING poster, it’s so different.

I will never understand why taking a fantastic original photo — so what if it isn’t in focus? It has character and it actually is a person! A person you love! — and just tossing it out and reimagining it and then presenting it as if it were, more or less, the same.

I’m gonna start losing friends over this, because as loud as I’ve been about this, people keep sending me AI slop with the proviso, “I know you hate this, but this one is actually so well done and creative.” It’s not.

No link, just a think.

TWITTER: Haley Stevens has shown herself to be the ULTIMATE asshole sore loser, endorsing vile MAGAt Mike Rogers for the Michigan Senate seat 48 hours before Election Day — and less than 24 hours after continuing to (meekly) endorse El-Sayed. Today, she appeared at a rally with Mike Rogers, of whom she VERY RECENTLY wrote:

She was, rightfully, forcefully condemned by the Michigan Democratic Party:

“We are dismayed that Congresswoman Haley Stevens has revealed herself to be a sellout who used Black Michiganders for a political stunt. Congresswoman Stevens has lost her way, and Michiganders know that Mike Rogers is a shill for Trump and has failed Michigan. We are ready to elect Abdul on Tuesday.”

Haley’s immediately ex-chief of staff says in a statement:

YOUTUBE: El-Sayed had the perfect response, as usual:

TWITTER: Mallory McMorrow is looking better and better in Michigan, and while she will not be the next senator of the state, she could be a senator one day. She handed the Stevens/El-Sayed rift with aplomb.

Now, he (Jewish, and that is material) husband Ray Wert is opening up about Stevens — and he has a lot to say:

“I’ve known Haley Stevens for a long time. Until now, she has always had staff to protect her, prop her up, and keep her safe from her own irrational behavior. What we’re seeing now? This is just raw, unfiltered Haley.

“The Haley who flip-flops and goes from thought to thought without rhyme or reason. The Haley that calls you at 3 AM to yell at you, and then calls you back at 5 AM oblivious to the fact that she even spoke with you at 3 AM. The Haley who bends to the last and loudest voice that tells her something.”

“More often than not that last voice is now her fiancé. And as you can see by what one of her former staff people posted earlier here on X, that appears to potentially be a really troubling relationship.”

He went on to say he tried to get Haley to sign a very reasonable condemnation of Rogers, an op-ed underscoring the anti-Semites on his team and his opposition to core liberal values.

“Initially she was very interested in it. Then she wasn’t. Then she was again. Then she wasn’t. She never signed it … This is just who Haley is.”

Here is the op-ed she never signed:

TWITTER: Charlotte Clymer is also coming clean about Haley’s nutty reversal, revealing that Stevens “promised” her YESTERDAY she was still on board with El-Sayed:

“Feeling a bit absurd in pointing out the obvious and being far kinder than I should have been, I reminded her that the outcome of this senate race will be viewed in the light of a future Supreme Court vacancy, and I expressed a hope that all of us understand the stakes.”

“She assured me she's supporting Dr. El-Sayed, sent me a video of a recent speech she gave blasting Mike Rogers and said this: ‘Still stands. I promise.’”

“She also said she's been sending this video to other folks to make it clear where she stands on this race.”

“Again: that was yesterday.”

POLITICO: People like Haley on the other side are also deranged. You can’t fucking campaign with RFK Jr. and then endorse 10 Democrats. I mean, you can, but what in the fuck do you stand for?! Whatever, we will win and blot out MAGA and MAHA.

HUFFINGTON POST: God damn, Dem. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has suffered a stroke. He is apparently doing well and expecting a full recovery. Only in his early 50s.

POLITICO: The Alaska Senate race is not gonna be ignored.

STILL WORKING 9 TO 5: Love that Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda ARE political. (From several years ago, but very relevant today.)

NEW YORK TIMES: This is a fascinating and much-needed history of Pizzagate. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the U.S. in particular and the world used to shamefully pretend child sexual abuse was almost nonexistent, and yet now frothy-mouthed lunatics see it everywhere. It is genuinely baffling to me that people who vote, work and pay taxes, who shop in supermarkets and own clothing, think — deeply believe — that Ellen DeGeneres eats children, that Tom Hanks ever met Jeffrey Epstein, that Hillary Clinton flew on his plane to Epstein Island, that celebrities who (let’s face it) don’t even look that young are staying youthful via adrenochrome and/or that demonic forces are a thing.

BBC: Nobody in Northern Ireland who was convicted of a now-abolished gay sex offense has received a pardon.

BBC: I remember when Entertainment Weekly used to assemble reunions of sometimes obscure and often iconic TV shows and movies.

I lived for it, and I fantasized about being able to direct them myself. So, I love all reunions, and I love this one between Fatal Attraction stars Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, especially because Glenn went right back into her crazed character while hilariously recounting the big fight she had to keep the original downer ending of the film. (Video is here, but not yet embeddable.)

EXTRATV: Fan of Heidi Klum? Talk to the hand.

BOY CULTURE: Don’t miss my Gilded Age write-up.

PEOPLE: Martha Stewart dressed up as a homeless woman for Halloween, people rightly looked sideways, she deleted the pic and is now claiming it was to raise awareness.

QUEERTY: It’s irritating I didn’t think of the title It Gets Worse first:

I attended a presser for The Gilded Age Season 4 last week at the Plaza, where members of the press were treated to a close-up encounter with most of the cast and then a High Society Tea with The Gilded Age.

First things first: If you get a shot before the hotel gets shut down (January 19 … for at least four years!), treat yourself to the tea. For $150, you get tea, delicious sandwiches and scrumptious sweets. The scones are incredible.

It was perfectly paired with this show, which itself is yummy. Unlike Downton Abbey, it’s a period piece that hasn’t slid into soap operadom, and it employs some of Broadway’s finest throughout its ranks.

Still, as marvelous as the acting is from everyone, it’s Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector as ruthless social climbers Bertha and George Russell who are the sun around which the galaxy of pure and impure characters revolve.

As Season 4 opens, George and Bertha are at odds. At the presser, Morgan noted, “I think without Bertha, George is lost, actually, and I think that’s what we see sort of play out over the whole season, is that without that central relationship sort of structuring his life and providing real meaning to everything he does, I mean I think all of his business is in service of this family and in service with that relationship. And even in service of her ambitions, right? I mean it’s about realizing together what they want to achieve as a couple. And if everything he’s doing is no longer in service of that, then I think he really is adrift. And I think that’s, filling that void is kind of what the rest of the season is about.”

Asked if Bertha is happy in Season 4, Coon couldn’t resist addressing it existentially, and comparing her 1880s mom to all the woman who’ve come since.

“I don't know that the question of happiness is one that some women, in particular, because that's the experience I can speak to, or have the luxury of asking,” she admitted. “So much of what it means to be a woman in the world is about survival. Of course, Bertha has every advantage in the world, as do I. I live a life of tremendous privilege. And yet, the dance I am doing as a mother and a working mom in a society where both of those things are somehow wrong is not an easy one.”

I should also point out that Coon, who is tremendously political, spoke up to say, “I feel that the erosion we are experiencing in our basic civil rights are going to hit outsider populations first and women also. I mean, the health care crisis in the United States. Like what’s happening, women are like bleeding out in parking lots and dying of sepsis. They’re trying to take our vote away. Like it’s survival every single day. And so, I don’t know that happiness is, it’s a luxurious question.”

The luxurious show is absorbed with power of the railroad robber baron variety, of the NYC high society variety and even of the sort that makes daughters run afoul of their controlling mothers.

There is also a scintillating development when Jack, a servant whose brilliant mind dreams up a timepiece that makes him wealthy overnight (hence, his nickname among fans = “Clock Twink”). The guy who plays him, Ben Ahlers (freshly delivered from brilliance on Broadway in Death of a Salesman), said of his character’s transformation, “This is a time in American history where you were really starting to see for the first time people being able to elevate beyond their class, really in global history, because we were such a caste sort of aristocratic system and we certainly suffer from that today in various ways. But that’s a massive leap, that’s, a massive shift, especially for a young man who, as we learned in season one, was an orphan when his mother died in the Peshtigo Fire, and was really living a steady, consistent life with a family of coworkers and stability and a purpose day-to-day. And what I appreciate so much about Jack is that he was never seeking the sort of inherited social desires of power and fame and money. He says, you know, ‘I saw a problem in front of me, and I tried to solve it.’ And I think that as an artist, and as, you know, anybody who’s pursuing something, that seems to be the truest way to try to pursue something is to find that specific calling on your heart and follow it to its furthest edge.”

Brilliantly, the show — unlike so many period pieces — does not pretend people of color do not exist, nor does it pretend they’re all sassy servants. Denée Benton’s storyline as aspiring journalist Peggy Scott is arguably the best of the bunch, and draws in characters played by everyone from THE Audra McDonald (as her mother, Dorothy) to THE Phylicia Rashad as discerning Elizabeth Kirkland.

“Dorothy keeps confronting with the Kirklands [that they] seem to be wanting to step away from their Blackness,” McDonald observed. “And try and get more proximity to whiteness, or certainly, I think Elizabeth Kirkland is doing that, whether she realizes it or not. And Dorothy is not necessarily trying to pull her down, but she keeps trying to remind her in ways to say, hold on. We’re still seen as a monolith, and we still can only really move on together, so we can’t cut off any one of our bits and pieces as a race, even though that’s a concept.”

Then there is the fact that the show includes a character after my own heart, a gay spendthrift called Oscar (Blake Ritson). This, in no small part, is why it has such a rabid queer following (though the divatastic women might be an even bigger pull).

Ritson says, “I suppose playing Oscar, who is a gay character, in a time when there were huge legal and social ramifications to being found out to be gay, you could say that this is kind of locked in its period-ness and that the stakes were much higher then, but I’ve been really overwhelmed by how people have reacted to the kind of effectively the coming-out scene in season three. I think it’s worth remembering that The Gilded Age is a show that comes out in, I think, over 60 countries, is it? And I think there are still many, many cultures, contexts, where coming out is not an easy thing. It is painful, it’s illegal in some countries, obviously, to this day. So, it really, you know, is pertinent. And it's lovely seeing it through this kind of refracted prism of The Gilded Age and knowing that there are kinds of legal repercussions.”

And the push and pull between tight-as-a-drum Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski, in yet another career peak) and her sister Ada Forte (Cynthia Nixon) provides familial drama in spades.

All of this is to say that this is a show that feels as compelling after three seasons as it did after three episodes. It continues to surprise (and sometimes shock — goodbye, Claybourne Elder!), and I can only hope that Season 4 is not its long goodbye.

Just in case, I’ll be savoring each episode.⚡️

Season 4 of The Gilded Age premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and streams on HBO Max. You can expect eight episodes.

NEW YORK TIMES: The New York Times published an October-surprise story alleging the Peltola campaign had recruited an opponent with a similar name to incumbent Dan Osborne to confuse voters and water down the incumbent’s support. Even though that is perfectly legal, Trump’s DOJ is desperately rushing to investigate. Here’s hoping Peltola’s popularity and the impending blue wave will be enough to overcome any misgiving over this nonstory.

POLITICO: Disgruntled piece of shit Haley Stevens waited until days before the election to try to peel off voters from El-Sayed, who beat her fair and square. Between her and Jasmine Crockett, it makes you wonder how many candidates in the party are in it for themselves totally. Thin-skinned people who are more concerned about their own egos than the all-important Senate race.

Future POTUS Pete Buttigieg says of Michigan:

“I’ve never met somebody who I agree with on 100 percent of everything. But when our health care is at stake, when a chance to have a more affordable everyday life is at stake, the choice is clear: Mike Rogers has disqualified himself.”

NEW YORK TIMES: Meanwhile, Haley’s POS fiancé, Gargamel, has inserted himself into the race with just days to go, dragging El-Sayed, pretending he speaks for all of Michigan’s Jewish voters and suggesting he and Haley want El-Sayed to lose so she can run again in a short SIX YEARS OF HELL.

BOY CULTURE: Check out my gallery of memorable Halloween costumes, 2026 edition!

VANITY FAIR: An oral history of Little Shop of Horrors.

OUT.COM: The amazing Dot-Marie Jones on falling in love with her Breeder villain character. Here, the kind of mixed review that makes me long to see a horror movie.

MODUS VIVENDI: Check out MV’s Lingerie Lace line.

VARIETY: The doc We Had a Plan — which follows a pair of Filipino boyfriends who worked for a decade as undocumented immigrants in the Netherlands before returning home — has been picked up for distribution. Watch the brand-new trailer:

ATTITUDE: A drag queen sold bricks from a demolished Miami Pride-rainbow crosswalk to raise — GASP! — $25K to support Pride celebrations in South Florida. Kudos to Miss Bouvèé! (My only note for her is that with that clever last name her brows should look like the accents on her Es.)

OUTSMART: Meet queer comic Jonah Nigh.

JOE.MY.GOD.: Mamdani banking on NYC raking in $500M from wealth tax.

PINK NEWS: Some LGBTQ+ personalities who People might’ve considered when naming Sexiest Man Alive.

OUTSPORTS: Gay Poodle Beach in Delaware is receiving a major historic honor.

TMZ: Tyler Perry is duking it out in court with his SA accuser.

INSTAGRAM: Bobby Wright, the last survivor of the rather large McHale’s Navy cast, has died at 84.

MR. MAN: The following text is via Mr. Man — if you subscribe to them, Boy Culture gets a little % and thanks you for your support:

“A daddy dick is one of those things in life that’s hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. Today we searched far and wide to bring you the five hottest daddy dicks from movies and television. Think beards, salt-and-pepper hair, muscles, swagger, and of course, big daddy dicks!”

See the full daddy dick playlist here

“We can thank Jérôme Niel’s brand-new daddy dick scene in season one of Paolo for inspiring this list. Joining him are Leonardo Marques, who washes his dick in the sink in Love, Sex and Pandemic and Alan Bates and Oliver Reed, who compared their penis size before filming their famous naked wrestling scene in Women in Love. Plus, keep watching for Austin Stowell’s thick cock in Three Women and the ultimate French daddy Guillaume Labbé getting wild in Escort Boys. Forget daddy issues, these daddies will have you reaching for the tissues …”

“First up is Austin Stowell in Three Women. At age 40 during filming, he’s on the younger side of daddy dickism. Stowell’s character lays down some pipe for a very appreciative Betty Gilpin in a sex scene that includes a shot of Stowell’s actual daddy dick as well as his very convincing erect prosthetic.”

“Next it’s Guillaume Labbé in Escort Boys. This French daddy plays a male prostitute, and whatever he’s charging, it’s worth the cost of admission. Labbé flaunts everything the good Lord blessed him with in some casual nude scenes, plus gets wet and wild in a very hot calendar photo shoot.”

“The man who inspired this list, Jérôme Niel, kept the daddy train rolling into 2026 in Paolo. We clocked what he had stuffed into his undies in the premiere episode when he wakes up with a raging boner. In episode five, Jérôme leaves no doubt when he struts in front of the mirror fully naked!”

“Our runner-up daddy dick is Leonardo Marques. He’s the third Frenchman in a row on our list, and yes, I did just book my ticket to France. Bonjour boys! Except they’re not boys. They’re daddies. In Love, Sex and Pandemic, Leonardo pretty much does the unthinkable when he saddles up to the sink to wash off his cock. He checks all of the daddy boxes and has a huge dick to boot.”

“Finally, Alan Bates and Oliver Reed practically invented the daddy dick when they wrestled fully naked in 1969’s Women in Love. Both actors admitted to comparing their penis size prior to filming to help ease any tension. The fight scene is an explosion of testosterone so intense that I’m certain a professional cleanup crew was deployed afterward. What can I say? I have it baddie for daddy.”

See the full daddy dick playlist here

NEWFEST: NewFest38 is a wrap! All the winners:

Grand Jury Award for U.S. Narrative Feature: Test, directed by Sam McConnell and written by/starring Brock Yurich

“This film stood out for its quietly assured filmmaking and stunning performances. Thoughtful, understated direction and cinematography allow the actors room to breathe, creating an intimacy with characters navigating connection and alienation. Through the lens of an amateur bodybuilder, a familiar story of queer self-discovery finds specificity and emotional depth. Its portrayal of a working-class family is matter-of-fact and unsentimental, preserving complexity and dignity without turning hardship into spectacle. Never forced, saccharine, or didactic, this film does a lot with little. Test is a powerful testament to independent filmmaking.” — Jurors Andre Seward, Abigail Thorn, and Ingrid Jungermann.

Special Mention, U.S. Narrative Feature: Tangles, directed by Leah Nelson

“This film earns our special jury mention for its masterful animation and the care evident in every frame. Its vibrant, inventive visual language beautifully captures the spirit of queer San Francisco in the ‘90s. These are fully fleshed-out characters, difficult and endearing in turn. Affectionate and consistently funny, this film is both deeply personal and universal. Tangles is a remarkable exploration of how complicated it is to be human.” — Jurors Andre Seward, Abigail Thorn, and Ingrid Jungermann.

Grand Jury Award for International Narrative Feature: Elephants in the Fog, directed by Abinash Bikram Shah

“The Grand Jury Prize goes to Abinash Bikram Shah’s Elephants in the Fog, a film that fiercely embraces the Kinnar community of Nepal and deftly portrays the complexities of motherhood and the inextricable bond of found family. The film’s underlying strength is steered by lead actress Pushpa Thing Lama, who brings a stunning force to the story, and whose elegance uplifts the similarly brilliant ensemble. The film’s assured direction, immersive sound design, and potent script all make this an accomplished feature debut, one that the industry should take note of. We look forward to seeing what director Abinash Bikram Shah does next.” — Jurors Raymond Ang, Leonard Cortana, and Malkah Manouel.

Special Mention, International Narrative Feature: The Riverbank directed by Enock Carvalho and Matheus Farias

“For its immersive and poetic exploration of the queer subversive cruising landscapes of Northeastern Brazil’s mangroves, The Riverbank enriches global audiences’ understanding of Afro-Brazilian queer traditions through strong performances, striking cinematography, and a distinctive neo-noir aesthetic. Its compelling secondary characters explore chosen families and alternative forms of resistance while confronting a heteropatriarchal society where politics and religion threaten queer and labor rights, highlighting the urgency of these conversations in the region’s current political climate.” — Jurors Raymond Ang, Leonard Cortana, and Malkah Manouel.

Jury Acknowledgment, International Narrative Feature: Tiger directed by Anshul Chauhan

“In a remarkably strong year for NewFest’s International Narrative Feature category, the jury would also like to acknowledge the ensemble of Anshul Chauhan’s Tiger, a stylishly shot and boldly directed film that interrogates the realities and pressures that plague Japan’s gay community through the compellingly nuanced coming-of-middle-age story of a gay masseuse in Tokyo, played with great sensitivity by Takashi Kawaguchi, and the community around him, a stellar cast led by Maho Nonami and Yuya Endo.”

Grand Jury Award for Documentary/Nonfiction Feature: No Money No Honey, directed by Nicole Costa

“Rooted in the home videos of its radiant subject, Máxima, No Money No Honey is a deeply sensitive and intentional meditation on the life-saving role that chosen family can play for queer and trans sex workers struggling to make ends meet. It is challenging, in content and form, in ways that demand attention by centering the images and community members of Máxima’s world, allowing them to share their lives on their own terms – a perspective rarely encountered on screen with such intimacy and intentionality. No Money No Honey is a profoundly moving film, and we’re honored to select it for the NewFest Documentary Feature Grand Jury Award.” — Jurors Brydie O’Connor, Daniel Torres, Imran Siddiquee

Special Mention, Documentary/Nonfiction Feature: The Hidden Face of the Earth, directed by Arnaud Alain

“This is a film that forced us to slow down and look – and feel – more deeply. Interwoven with visual lyricism and atmospheric imagery, it intimately explores grief and connection when the sense your passion relies on slips away. The jury is proud to present this special mention to The Hidden Face of the Earth.” — Jurors Brydie O’Connor, Daniel Torres, Imran Siddiquee

Grand Jury Award for New York Short Film, presented in partnership with The Gotham Film & Media Institute: Wholesome, directed by Kimmy Campbell

“Wholesome is Kimmy Campbell’s debut short film. Written by Campbell and their talented co-star Olivia Lucy Phillip, Wholesome exuberantly taps into the importance of our relationships with people, places, and your local New York corner store. It follows two friends distraught over the closing of their second resident home. Rooted in queer black joy, and a celebration of diverse communities coexisting, the film’s confident yet distinctly dry and upbeat comedic energy set it apart. With sharp visual and audio storytelling sensibility, Campbell and Phillip quickly earn the hearts of audiences. — Jurors Charlie Barnett, Yoko Kohmoto, Chris Feil

Special Mention, New York Short Film, presented in partnership with The Gotham Film & Media Institute: Tuna Tartare, directed by Lena Greene

“Tuna Tartare follows Tuna, an expired can of tuna fish, and her journey through radical self-acceptance, despite quite literally being trash. Using bold imagery and some uniquely charming musical numbers, Tuna Tartare reminds us that ‘doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.’ Deeply clever, deliciously queer, and humorously deranged, its director, creator, and star Lena Greene is unafraid to root the story in very true realities of our current and potential future. With clear vision and sharp humor, Tuna Tartare makes even a moldy can of tuna shine. The Jury recognizes Tuna Tartare for NewFest’s Short Film special mention.” — Jurors Charlie Barnett, Yoko Kohmoto, Chris Feil

Excellence in Cinematography, New York Short Film, presented in partnership with The Gotham Film & Media Institute and ARRI Rentals: Sophia Feuer, director of photography of High Voltage

The Jury recognizes Sophia Feuer and their excellence in cinematography for the short film, High Voltage. Feuer builds on and illuminates the film’s feelings and themes through the lens. Utilizing intimate and deliberate space, lighting and movement Feuer leads the eye, and captures the stories elements of possibility, flirtation and even danger. Spanning over multiple locations, with unique natural elements, it succeeds in creating a cohesive and driven visual scope.

NEWFEST38 EMERGING BLACK LGBTQ+ FILMMAKER AWARD WINNERS:

Carlton Daniel Jr., director of Fly

“We were particularly touched by Carlton’s masterful storytelling, which we perceive as a heartfelt tribute to the black youth on screen. The film is brimming with captivating cinematic moments, physical performances, and scenes that linger in our minds, evoking a profound sense of connection. It leaves us feeling truly seen and understood. Crafting a short film of this caliber requires intention, skill, and a touch of finesse, so Carlton, girl you did that!!!! We celebrate Carlton, the writer, director, and producer of Fly, as both a skilled craftsman and an emerging storyteller.” — Jurors Trent Farrington, Daniella Carter, and Chester Algernal

DW McCrary, director of Searching 4 Saturn

“Searching 4 Saturn is an incredibly urgent film. We honor this short for its complex portrayal of black queer life, particularly in the south. Despite the pervasive presence of anti-blackness and afropessimism, especially in the deep south, the Black southern queer experience remains unwavering and brilliant, yet continuously overlooked. It pushes the aesthetic sensibilities of southern gothics into a new frontier. Joshua and DW remind us of the true essence of southern charm and the beauty inherent in the black and queer dualities. Thank you, Searching 4 Saturn, for this hybrid sermon and reminding us that our existence transcends the confines of spaces designed to contain it.” — Jurors Trent Farrington, Daniella Carter, and Chester Algernal

Mariah Norman, co-director of And Again I Dream

“This documentary, co-directed by Mariah Norman, sheds light on a crucial topic that is often overlooked. It is a legacy that we owe to ourselves and future generations. Throughout [Ivy Young’s] career, she dedicated herself to writing and journalism, covering the underrepresented communities across the country, particularly the Native Americans, Jews, and Palestinians. Her work serves as a valuable lesson for all of us. Beyond her professional achievements, she is a queer elder, role model, and icon. This documentary not only honors her remarkable legacy but also demonstrates how we can transform an archive into something beautiful. One final lesson from her life is: ‘If you attempt to fight your oppressors without singing, you will remain unseen even if you eventually succeed. Singing empowers activists to venture into the battlefield.’ And we will sing and dance to that in the road to freedom.” — Jurors Trent Farrington, Daniella Carter, and Chester Algernal

NEWFEST38 AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS:

Audience Award for Narrative Feature

Winner: Before I Do directed by Gary Jaffe

Runner-Up: Test directed by Sam McConnell

Audience Award for Documentary/Nonfiction Feature

Winner: Gays Against Guns directed by Paul Rowley

Runner-Up: Uncle Roy directed by Keri Pickett

Audience Award for Narrative Short

Winner: Daddy Has Me Detransitioning directed by Yoyo Rita

Runner-Up: The Last Vaginoplasty in the United States of America directed by Drew Burnett Gregory

Audience Award for Documentary/Nonfiction Short

Winner: Road Runner directed by Yaz Josiah

Runner-Up: The Doll Walk directed by Qween Amor and Ashley Ryan

Teen Choice Audience Award for Best Teen Short Film

Winner: Crush.exe directed by Victor Torres

Runner-Up: Eyeliner directed by Aisha Boudjillouli

My annual collection of some of the best Halloween costumes of the year! (And in case you’re confused, “I hate gay Halloween, what do you mean you’re dressed as …” is an affectionate meme.)

Cindy Sherman (Nora Burns & Jennifer Coolidge):

Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street:

Star Whores:

The Great Pumpkin:

Angela Bower of Who’s the Boss? (Danny Pintauro):

Teenage Mutant-Ass Ninja Turtle:

9 to 5:

Dueling Little Edie Bouviers (Kelly Ripa & Jacob John Bressers):

Teresa Giudice’s Table Flip:

What’s Left of the White House:

Michigan Dem:

Barbarella (J.Lo):

Aunt Viv:

He-Man:

VPL Elvis (Harry Styles):

XXX-Men Baddie:

Silver Daddy (Jeff Brackett):

The “I So Pale” Girls:

Susan Dell & Sen. Mitch McConnell:

Lady in the Radiator from Eraserhead:

Dog Walker (Literally):

Ms. Rachel (Hasan Piker):

Jason Bait:

Danny Zuko:

Rapunzel with Runaway Toenail on SNL U.K. (Cynthia Erivo):

Kelly Clarkson, Molly the Bird & the Art of Play Manager:

The White Chicks (Bob the Drag Queen & Monét X Change):

The “Danceteria” Lyric About Debi Mazar:

Madonna vs. Courtney Love x Kurt Loder:

Blond Ambition-Era Madonna:

Blond Ambition-Era Donna De Lory (Donna De Lory):

NYC Mayor Mamdani (with Cameo by NYC Mayor Mamdani):

Payphone (with Cameo by NYC Mayor Mamdani):

Michael & Jan at That Awkward The Office Dinner Party:

Mary Katherine Gallagher (Joey Pollari):

Stuart & Doreen:

Robbie & Rex Powers from Nickelodeon’s Victorious:

Kristi & Bryan Noem:

“Come on Eileen”/Cum … on Eileen:

Chic Demon (Adam Lambert):

Amelia Earhart & the Crab That Ate Her:

Austin Powers & Fembot:

Mademoiselle Butterfly (Jennifer Hudson):

The Parent Trap (Lindsay Lohan Version):

The Son of Man by René Magritte x Charli xcx:

Lady Elaine Fairchilde:

Brock Yurich’s Film Test (Zane Phillips):

Schitt’s Creek Cast (Cheyenne Jackson):

Miss Piggy:

Ghost:

Cowpoke:

Peg Bundy:

Sexy Little Monster:

Miss J Alexander & Jay Manuel from America’s Next Top Model:

Sexy Avatar:

The Tainted Taco Bell Lettuce:

Sexy Scarecrow:

Cujo Cast (Dee Wallace’s Family):

Velma:

Work That Ass-tronaut (Meg Stalter):

Brownstone (NYC’s Brad Lander):

Elon Musk Riding Rep. Mike Lawler:

Incredibly Snatched Mr. Incredible:

Spectacular Sub:

Cyndi Lauper:

James Talarico:

Sex and the City (the Old Gays):

Carrie Bradshaw & Pete from Sex and the City:

Dakota Johnson & Ellen DeGeneres (Mary Beth Barone & Benito Skinner):

Cautionary Tail:

The Twilight Apple:

Opinions-Based TikTok Anglophile:

Dishonorable Mention: JFK & Jackie on Assassination Day (McCall DaPron & Family):

KENNETH IN THE (212): The queer and queer-adjacent mags of the week.

HUFFINGTON POST: Trump, sweating like a pig, was told to his fat face that he might be unwell. It really pissed him off.

INSTAGRAM: If Cabinet positions were handed out based on cum-gutters, André Janones would be set for life in Brazil:

NEW YORK TIMES: Right after her fiancé openly said he would vote against El-Sayed (why does he even need to go public with his vote?), losing Democrat Rep. Haley Stevens will campaign in person with El-Sayed in Michigan to help him in that tight race “A house divided.”

INSTAGRAM: See above. I’m with her!

YOUTUBE: Another brilliant response to GOPism.

JOLT: Forty years of gay rights in Olympia, Washington.

ORLANDO WEEKLY: Queer-owned businesses systematically wiped from Instagram.

AMC+: Yaga, the first Hudson Williams project since Heated Rivalry, is streaming now.

INSTAGRAM: Ian McKellen is remembering his close pal Patrick Stewart with a touching tribute:

“Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end. You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.”

“We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions. My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in Star Trek. ‘But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk—getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?’. Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did for not just his devoted Trekkies but film and theatre audiences, who marvelled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes (X-Men of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.”

“America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin. But he never forsook his origins: and the proudest achievement of the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic, was his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire.

“His farewell performance in Avengers: Doomsday is yet to be seen.”

GR8ERDAYS: RIP Elke Sommer, the German sex kitten of the ’60s who won a defamation lawsuit vs. Zsa Zsa Gabor in 1993.

KENNETH IN THE (212): Tennis eye-poppers.

THE GUARDIAN: Netanyahu isn’t going anywhere, necessarily, even though his party lost ground.

INSTAGRAM: Gay MAGAt influencer Michael Doherty — yes, he is a right-winger, full-stop — is quitting OnlyFans after raking in the dough because far too many people will forgive anything if the guy is cute. He says being on OnlyFans gave him money and comfort, but distracted him from becoming a pilot.

METRO WEEKLY: A teen has been charged with luring a gay man and attacking him. And I will give you money if someone along the way did not put this kid’s image through a filter. The original looked a bit blurry, but I think when it comes to a mug shot, it needs to be presented in its original form, no?

GR8ERDAYS: RIP Patrick Stewart, 86.

ADVOCATE: Trump’s ICE is glibly underscoring an immigrant’s alleged claim to be gay, just in time for him to be “welcomed” home to … Mali.

NEW YORK TIMES: Another in a long time of amazing people who didn’t get to outlive Trump — labor icon Dolores Huerta, who has died at 96. At least she lived long enough to set the record straight on Cesar Chavez.

GR8ERDAYS: RIP Barbara Barrie, who has died at 95. She chose medically assisted suicide in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis 30+ years after she beat cancer the first time. She was a joy of an actor who originated the role of Sarah in Company on Broadway, received an Oscar nomination for Breaking Away and was on the TV shows Barney Miller, Double Trouble and Suddenly Susan.

SWARTHMORE PHOENIX: Andrew Scott is amazing in the 45-minute Seawall, which I had previously seen with Tom Sturridge in 2019. It’s a gut-punch of a monologue. I had him sign my Out (the magazine they send to all gay men until we die, and probably after, without having to pay) and told him between this and Elsinore, he is killing me. “Sorry, yeah, with the emotional ones,” he teased.

The stage door scene was lively, with 50 diehards and some professional graffers. He signed for everyone and the two people who ignored the employee’s demand that nobody ask for selfies … got selfies.

Sadly, this closes today.

BOY CULTURE: In case you missed my last post, here is your second crack at Bammer’s fine ass and fine art.

THE RANDY REPORT: A new doc explores the penis-enlargement industry. It’s called — of course — Manhood.

MR. MAN: All the following text is courtesy of Mr. Man:

“The hottest new gay coming-of-age movie comes to us courtesy of Mexican filmmaker Rafael Ruiz Espejo. In The Last First Time, Alejandro Quintana stars as a gay teen named Eduardo who escapes his small-minded hometown for the big city. Eduardo wants to carve out a life as a gay man, and do some serious exploration along the way. In order to convey the breaking point of horniness that Eduardo has reached prior to seeking out other men in Guadalajara, the flick opens with Eduardo jerking off to a dick pic on his phone!”

See the explicit full scenes here

“Once in Guadalajara, Eduardo meets up with Mario (Carlos E. López Cervantes), who gets jerked off by Eduardo before laying down some serious pipe.”

“But that’s not why we’re talking about The Last First Time. In an explosive threesome, Mario and Eduardo meet up with Nico (Pabel Castañeda) in the shower. We get some close-ups of crochets and some longing grabbing before the three guys share an intense three-way make-out that has to be seen to be believed. Trust us, this will not be the last first time that we check out this movie!”

BAMMER.CO: Mike Balaban has been regaling readers with stories about recent gay history for years. Best of all, he likes to tell fully illustrated stories, and always seemed to have his camera handy. That led to a wealth — an archive, truly — of sexy and touching images showing men at play in the ‘70s and ‘80s and beyond.

The beauty of his images — aside from the beauty! — is that he was self-taught, so his eye is unique and naive, but I must say that what for most people might have ended up as a stash of snapshots instead look like what they are: art.

He’s got 35,000 Instagram followers and has been featured in exhibitions in Palm Springs and San Diego. He’s one of the friendliest guys you’d ever want to meet.

Now, Mike is selling his beautiful photography right here. Best of all, it’s uncensored — Meta be damned!

Check it out and tell him Matthew sent you.

THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL: The New York Historical has on view (through June 20, 2027) Queer Joy, Gay Power, which shows off some of the outstanding items from the recently acquired Fred W. McDarrah archive. There are also pieces from the Frank Kameny archive donated by furniture designer Mitchell Gold. Generous gift! The Kameny materials represent 154 containers, 150 linear feet.

PHILADEPHIA GAY NEWS: The legacy of queer activist Bill Way will be explored at an upcoming forum:

“The forum coincides with the 50th anniversary of William Way LGBT Community Center — which was named after Way beginning in 1997. It will feature short talks, a presentation on redevelopment by University of Delaware professor Dr. Davy Knittle, a film by artist Rami George and an opportunity to view 10 scrapbooks Way assembled during his lifetime.”

PHOENIX NEW TIMES: Ugh. Kelli Anderson is a school board candidate in Arizona whose son, 18-year-old Shane Anderson, has come forth to accuse her of abandoning him when he came out as gay, calling him a “faggot” and “pedophile.” And she wants to continue overseeing other people’s children.

PEOPLE: Gay actor and playwright Michael Kearns’s cause of death has been confirmed as cardiopulmonary arrest.

THE TELEGRAPH: The Season 6 finale of Slow Horses opted for a gay joke.

GRINDR: Grindr hosted its annual Halloween bash in NYC, this one hosted by ballroom legend Dashaun Wesley.

The Pleasure Ball’s theme “FUTURE LOVERS” attracted Adam Lambert, Christian Siriano, Susanne Bartsch and more, and included a performance by Meg Stalter.

The evening was in support of Grindr for Equality, a social-impact initiative that aims to connect 10M+ LGBTQ+ people with HIV prevention by 2028.

AARON RUPAR: Old Man Trump, losing his marbles by the minute, tells a rally crowd they’re invited to Mar-a-Lago … only to immediately realize it’s way out of their price range. And he tells them that!

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Gay immigrant sitcom One Baby, Please! is coming to OUTtv in November.

PEOPLE: Noah Wyle has been crowned People’s Sexiest Man Alive.

HUFFINGTON POST: Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has just endorsed Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins for governor of her state.

FACEBOOK: Model Jonas Kautenberger works out in his Intense Power Motion Boxer Briefs by Calvin Klein.

PAGE SIX: MAGAt Savannah Chrisley just gushingly announced she’s pregnant and engaged without IDing the dad, just saying he’s way older. Turns out the guy is Jason Galanis, a convicted fraudster who served prison time alongside her father, is around his age (27 years her senior) and was pardoned by Trump. So much to unpack. By the way, she said she’d rather have 20 good years with the love of her life than 50 meh years, so she expects her 57-year-old husband to be dead by 77.

BOY CULTURE: Andrew Scott sat for a Q&A with Andrew Rannells after a special screening of his (flawless) film Elsinore at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation Robin Williams Center in NYC held on Monday in NYC.

NEWFEST: Director Lukas Dhont stayed for a Q&A following a NewFest38 screening of his film Coward that took place at SVA in NYC on October 24.

Above, in case you missed it yesterday, my own footage of his October 26 Q&A. Review of the film is to come!

CBC: The magazine BASTE is said to be “undressing the idea of content masquerading as art.” Also, it can easily pass for smut.

THE CAFTAN CHRONICLES: John Cameron Mitchell opens up about sex, family and art.

ROBB REPORT: Montgomery Clift’s Manhattan townhouse, where he lived for the last six years of his short life (he died at 45 in 1966), is on the market for a cool $8M:

“Completed in 1875 by architects A. & S. Bussell, the property holds a pedigreed past. President Theodore Roosevelt gave the brownstone and brick dwelling to his daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, as a wedding present in 1906. Clift later purchased it from exiled Russian Prince Serge Obolensky, occupying the property from 1960 to 1966 and frequently entertaining his famous friends like Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe around a custom teak bar that remains intact. The Landmarks Preservation Commission granted landmark status to the structure and its surrounding neighborhood in 1967.”

GR8ERDAYS: Fabulous Susan Saint James has died at 80 after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

THE NEW REPUBLIC: Beatrice Keul, former Miss Switzerland, told the House Judiciary Committee that Donald Trump violently raped her in a hotel room at his Atlantic City Plaza Hotel in 1993. She was 24 at the time. Previously, she had described their encounter as being him forcing himself on her and her rebuffing him. She says after she was raped, Trump said, “The show must go on.” When it comes to Trump, the show’s gone on far too long, don’t you think?

Here is Keul talking about Trump — and Epstein.

FACEBOOK: Yikes — Justin Cade, the great Al Parker’s surviving partner and a fairly well-known porn star in his own right — is one of those Florida MAGA gays. Check out a couple of his posts above. He has also said he believes Tom Hanks was on Epstein Island, which is fucking idiotic.

GCN: In related news … The rise of so-called straight-acting brotherhoods in the gay community.

HULU: Coming November 10 to Hulu is Get Huge: Looksmaxxing to Death, a series that explores the latest, not-so-greatest trend in male beauty, which has been spurred on by people like Clavicular. It promises to expose extreme biohacking and the deaths it has caused in the (sigh) manosphere.

YOUTUBE: Legendary film producer Christine Vachon — whose hard work has touched such films as Poison, Far from Heaven, Boys Don’t Cry, Safe, Go Fish and Carol — moderated a Q&A with Coward director Lukas Dhont. Dhont, who was rightfully nominated for the Oscar for his film Close, has crafted another achingly well-observed piece, this time focusing on a gay romance taking place during WWI. He was inspired by an image he saw that seemed to show Belgian soldiers enjoying a drag show on the frontlines, which led to research and this eventual passion project.

Check out the full Q&A, and look for the film — I feel certain you’ll like it.

NEW YORKER: Above: Love, Sex, and Existential Dread for a Gay Vampire in Time to Go.”

BOYBEACH.COM: The first Christmas album I’m promoting this year is Heated Holiday by Boy Beach aka couple Michael Sottile and Billy Mecca — a creative and seasonally satisfying pop album in two acts.

HYPE EDIT: Make sure to check out queer artist Brian Falduto’s “Run Wild.” Don’t we all have pics like the above in our family albums?!

INSTAGRAM: I don’t know much about art, but I know what I lick.

YOUTUBE: Parker Posey and Craig Melvin had a fun lesson in morning enunciation.

GR8ERDAYS: RIP Walter Koenig. The original Star Trek cast member died October 25 at 90.

EXTRATV: Vincent Paterson gets choked up talking about Madonna and Michael Jackson at his Vanguard Award presentation:

NEW YORK: How to win Gay Halloween.

MR. MAN: The following text is all courtesy of Mr. Man. If you wind up subbing, Boy Culture gets a li’l bump:

“There are tons of close-up shots of dicks in movies and television shows, but not enough people making big-dick close-up compilations. That’s where we come in. Below you can find the best-ever close-up male nude scenes that let us fully enjoy every inch of what the actors really have to offer. Put away your magnifying glass, and bring out the lube!

See the huge close-up manhood gallery

Juan Manuel Martino in Taekwondo

“This Russian-born hottie was raised in Argentina, which is where he filmed his risqué movies. One of them is the gay movie Taekwondo, about a group of men who cross some boundaries while on vacation together. Juan’s buds get a great look at his uncut cock when he casually sits on the counter bottomless!

Adam Shefta in Naked Attraction

“The most explicit reality show ever made, Naked Attraction, doesn’t skimp on graphic male nudity. Adam Shefta is our pick for the series’ sexiest contestant, especially when you factor in this incredible close-up shot of his thick penis. He’s naked, and I’m attracted.

Justin Ivan Brown in Goodbye Seventies

“Justin used a body double for his porn shoots in the retro movie Goodbye Seventies. It’s a great flick for anyone looking to experience the golden age of porn. In the hottest scene, Justin whips off his towel to lay down some pipe with his lucky costar, Chris Rehmann.

Karl Glusman in Love 3D

“No list of close-up penis scenes in movies and TV would be complete without mainstream actor Karl Glusman in Love 3D. In the film’s climactic shot, Glusman actually cums directly into the camera, and audiences lucky enough to catch the movie in theaters got their load in 3D. You’re in the splash zone now.

Francesco Casale in The Voyeur

“Italy’s softcore auteur Tinto Brass is known for bringing naked women to the screen, but people are sleeping on the men featured in his naughty flicks. Francesco Casale dares to show his rock-hard cock in The Voyeur after thinking about women and jerking off in the bathroom.”

See the huge close-up manhood gallery

DNA: DNA #322 is here, and Josh Moore grabs the cover.

HUFFINGTON POST: LULA WINS HISTORIC FOURTH TERM IN BRAZIL. Major victory for the left in this hemisphere.

POLITICO: Serbia’s hard-liner was ousted after two years of student protests.

GR8ERDAYS: Eric Bauza, the modern voice of many Looney Tunes characters — including Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck — has died suddenly at 46 of hypertensive cardiovascular disease.

ROTTEN TOMATOES: I had a lovely, if melancholy, time watching the new Ira Sachs film, The Man I Love at NewFest38. The elegiac film stars Rami Malek as mercurial downtown celebrity Jimmy George dying of AIDS in the ‘80s, cared for by his deeply suffering partner (Tom Sturridge). A new neighbor (Luther Ford) arrives, ready to fall in love — caution be damned — as Malek’s magnetic character attempts to get through a play in which he’s starring, make sense of dying and position himself within his family before running out of time.

The film is unquestionably a nuanced work of art, at times uplifting but often troubling, and it tells its story with the help of a soundtrack so assertive I felt that at times it could have been a silent film with just the music, including beautiful singing by Malek and Rebecca Hall, who plays his sister.

It would make a very interesting companion piece with the 1986 film Parting Glances, and I also couldn’t help noticing that an important scene at the end was reminiscent in a way of Longtime Companion — the first film Sachs worked on when he moved to NYC, and another film about AIDS.

The Man I Love world-premiered at Cannes and will be in theaters shortly.

INSESSION FILM: Described as “extremely fun and extremely gay,” Jim Queen sounds like the animation I need.

THEM: Meta seems to have a hard-on for the accounts of gay bars.

USA TODAY: Chris Pappas is almost certainly about to become the Senate’s first out gay male senator.

BOY CULTURE: That time Danny Nucci had the stones to talk about AIDS in 1987 to, of all outlets, Tiger Beat.

CRUSH HOUSE: Crush House Episode 6 is here: