Andy organized a get-together last night in honor of Keith visit from L.A. Also representing the left coast was the adorable Jessie. There were lots of attractive and smart boys there — no girls at all even though some were invited.

I finally got a chance to talk with Dan. He’s a charming and smart guy — we talked about everything from ex-pat job opportunities in Europe to Benjamin Britten. Note to Dan: we should get together and listen to some CDs. I also listened to a discussion of font-geekitude between him and Chad.

The always squeezable Dan’l introduced me to a cool guy named John who runs the Streetwork project of Safe Horizon. The group was the beneficiary of Dan’l’s recent blogathon. John just happened to be there to meet a friend, and isn’t one of the blog-children, at least not yet. We talked for quite a while. He’s sexy and reminds me of a classical musician I once met in South Beach at Warsaw. Top that boys! No circuit queens for me.

I also ran into Trick/Patrick of Morplay. I met him once before through Joe Ovelman, so we talked about Joe’s art for a while. I’m a huge fan, and I think James and I are among Joe’s most enthusiastic collectors. There is a Nerve gallery of Joe’s work that’s worth the hassle of registering.

Who else was there? I said hello to Sam and Scott, but we didn’t really talk. I met Brian, who was wearing a t-shirt reminiscent of the playing-with-logo works of Daniel Pflumm.

James has a few photos on his site of the evening.

For those that are interested, someone just told me about the gaytheatre mailing list. There seem to be a number of NYers on the list.

Schroeder Romero, one of my favorite Williamsburg Galleries, has launched its new web site. Check it out!

Talk about defining deviancy down! Palestinian suicide bombers have nail bombs, Israel has dart bombs.

Palestinian officials have condemned Israel’s reported use of tank shells which are said to have sprayed thousands of metal darts at a target in Gaza, killing four Palestinian civilians.

Israeli media said the Israeli army confirmed it used flechettes in an operation near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, south of Gaza City, on Thursday.

Palestinian medical officials said the victims were cut to shreds after being hit by the tiny metal darts, which are dispersed by a tank shell.

Is he insane? I can’t imagine why any British PM would tie his fortunes so closely to the most ignorant man ever to be President of the USA.

For him to argue this:

The world cannot stand by while Iraq is in “flagrant breach” of United Nations resolutions, the UK prime minister has said.

seems dangerous to me, given that one of the key “allies” of the US and UK in the Middle East is Israel, which is certainly in violation of a number of UN resolutions. It only makes the two countries look like hypocrites.

I’m not arguing that Iraq is country of peace and enlightenment, but I also don’t see it as a country that threatens us enough to spend $50+ billion (more than the federal government’s annual spending on primary and secondary education plus medical research) and risk thousands of American lives, to say nothing of de-stablizing much of the Middle East.

Supposedly we’re at war to “protect our culture”. I’m fascinated by a country that gives us a Food and Beverage Category in the Staples catalog. When I worked at a dot-com, we knew things were headed downhill when the free food and drinks stopped. My favorite excuse from the evil CFO was that “people might just eat junk here rather than go out and buy lunch.” The idea that people working 12-18 hour days might save time by eating bad junkfood inside seemed horrible to him. Maybe he just cared about my health.

I thought about posting the picture of Britney and Jacko at the MTV awards as another example of American culture, but that’s too easy.

I know some people think it’s pretentious to care about the shape of one’s wine glass, but New Scientist has an article telling us that the shape of a glass really does affect a wine’s chemistry.

Flak Magazine has announced the end of the Why They Hate Us Blog.

“There’s no cave deep enough for America, or dark enough to hide.”
—Oklahoma City, Okla., Aug. 29, 2002

Courtesy of Slate.

The Times has a front page picture and inside article about one of the doubles teams at the U.S. Open: Amir Hadad of Israel and Aisam ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan — yes, a Jewish/Muslim doubles team. There’s a video on the CNN/SI site also — they’re adorable. A photo from the U.S. Open site of them is here.