Towleroad Guide to the Tube #624

AL FRANKEN: Cornered by gay-hating Republican Jason Mattera about health care.

CONTRACORRIENTE: New gay film from Peruvian filmmaker Javier Fuentes León.

TROLOLO: The feline version.

SWARM: Palo Alto man attacked, carried away by butterflies. Obviously a very real threat.

For recent Guides to the Tube, click HERE.

Watch: Man Surfs with His Domesticated Alpaca

Alpacas were not meant to be doused with gnarly seawater, much less hang ten. 

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

News: Santa Barbara, Outrage, Sacha Baron Cohen, Prop 8

Prop 8 boycott target Doug Manchester trying to make amends with LGBT community: "His plan – which his people warned this newspaper against publishing, even after a Hyatt representative discussed it – is to give $25,000 to a national organization that promotes civil unions and domestic partnerships. Manchester also is considering offering $100,000 in hotel credit to local gay and lesbian organizations so they can use the Grand Hyatt for events such as fundraisers. The $125,000 total matches what he gave to Proposition 8."

Sacha Baron Cohen bleached his nether regions for Bruno, but things went terribly wrong.

Towleroad's Corey Johnson profiled in Bay Windows, 10 years after making headlines by coming out to his high school football team.

McDonald's settles Louisville "faggots" case: "McDonald’s restaurant has agreed to pay $2,000 each to two Indianapolis men who complained they were subjected to anti-gay slurs and discrimination when they visited a McDonald’s restaurant on East Market Street last year."

NYT: Outrage review. LAT: Kirby Dick interview.

Grand jury indicts inmate for 2002 hate crime killing in Cincinnati: "A man already behind bars is now facing charges for allegedly killing a gay man in a hate crime six years ago. Gregory Beauchamp was shot and killed in Over-the-Rhine on New Year's Eve 2002 at the intersection of Vine Street and West Liberty. According to witnesses, a man yelled anti-gay slurs at three men wearing women's clothing, then opened fire. Beauchamp was 21-years-old when he was killed. Until now, the identity of the shooter has remained a mystery."

Robert Downey Jr.  is in a hole.

Dudes surf as Santa Barbara burns. Pool party!

ABC picks up sitcom featuring gay family: "Twentieth Century Fox TV is behind the show, which follows the lives of three American families, as seen through the eyes of a filmmaker. One home centers on a traditional nuclear family, another is a gay couple with a newly adopted Vietnamese child; and the third consists of an older man who has just married a younger Latina wife.

Hugh Jackman on Ellen.

Mario Cantone on NY Governor David Paterson: "You know, a lot of people don’t like him, but I think he’s a little tough bitch. I think he’s tough. I think he’s like, ‘I don’t care if you don’t like me, I’m going to do what I want."

Undersea volcano near Guam has massive cone.

Randy Blue actor appeals suspension from Christian college.

RuPaul's Drag Race 2 casting...

Gosling gets a shiner.

John Cameron Mitchell chats with Tilda Swinton.

Texas city council candidate admits using gay slur against opponent's supporters outside polling place.

Meet Millionaire Matchmaker's gay millionaire, Kevin Grainger.

ABC News: Gay advocates eye Supreme Court. Victory Fund's Dennis Dison: "There have been 110 Supreme Court judges and 106 of them have been straight, white men. So it's high time to look outside those institutions that produced Supreme Court justices in the past and find someone with different life experiences and different perspectives."

Police academy cadet in Peru fights dismissal over gay rumors.

Same-sex couples find difficulties in getting health insurance: " Even if the relationship is formalized with the state in a marriage or union, that does not always obligate the employer to cover a same-sex spouse. For one thing, self-insured employers are not regulated by the states. And other benefit-providing employers that choose not to offer such coverage can sometimes use the Defense of Marriage Act — a law that forbids the federal government to recognize same-sex marriage — to trump state laws, said Ilse de Veer, a principal with Mercer"

News: Adam Lambert, Utah, Tony Kushner, Peru, Microsoft

Utah largest consumer of porn in the nation: "Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama."

American Idol finalist Adam Lambert's "flamboyant" past, in pictures.

Mayor Dean Grose of Los Alamitos, California, who sent out an email with a photo I posted last week saying that this year's White House Easter Egg roll would instead be a Watermelon Hunt, is resigning: "Grose says he accepts that the e-mail was in poor taste and has affected his ability to lead the city. Grose said he didn't mean to offend anyone and claimed he was unaware of the racial stereotype linking black people with eating watermelons."

Israel debates civil marriages.

International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission demands Peru government investigate attack on trans woman posted to YouTube.

Readings from Bobby Jindal's Exorcism: "The paper is a first person account of how Jindal, a new Catholic convert at the time, helped get the devil out of his poor, possessed friend Susan."

Marge Simpson has her first same-sex smooch.

Californians Against Hate drops boycott of Utah car dealer Ken Garff: "Californians Against Hate had called for a boycott of Ken Garff Automotive Group's 53 dealerships in six states in retaliation for a $100,000 donation made by Garff family matriarch Katharine Garff in support of Proposition 8, California's same-sex marriage ban, part of a total of $3.8 million donated for and against Prop 8 by Utahns...Fred Karger, director of Californians Against Hate, said Friday the two-week boycott of Ken Garff Automotive Group was being called off immediately, following a series of meetings that included face-to-face discussions between company principals John and Robert Garff and Utah philanthropist Bruce Bastian, a leading gay-rights advocate."

Kathleen Chalfant and Stephen Spinella to star in Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, to premiere this spring at the Guthrie in Minneapolis.

CIA under Bush/Cheney destroyed hundreds of videotaped terror interrogations.

Jesus and Madonna step out in New York snowstorm.

Liberty Counsel files lawsuit demanding Florida Bar remain neutral in same-sex adoption case.

Rihanna and Chris Brown reunite in Miami.

Microsoft apologizes for policies after outrage over suspension of lesbian gamer on Xbox Live: "The company's policy was to disallow any statement of relationship preference in their profile or Gamertags, heterosexual, homosexual, or otherwise. However, as Stephen Toulouse, program manager for policy and enforcement on Xbox Live, told Totilo, after seeing issues arise like in the cases of Teresa and Mr. Gaywood, the company was 'looking into that policy.'" 

Academy of Friends holds 29th annual Oscar Party AIDS benefit in San Francisco.

UK teachers face disciplinary action after calling 16-year-old student "gay" and "retard" in the classroom: "He said he felt 'bullied' by the pair during workshops, eventually filing seven official complaints against them. He now has to travel all the way to Cornwall College Saltash after enrolling on a construction course focused on bricklaying, plumbing and electrical installation."

Wilson And Harrelson Prove Nature and Boxer Shorts Good for Soul

Woody Harrelson is trying to help cleanse Owen Wilson of his recent depression troubles at the Hanaq Pacha Retreat Center, in the Sacred Valley of the Incas in the Peruvian Andes. The two also reportedly visited a local orphanage.

Page Six reported: "Local celebrity gossip program 'Magaly TeVe' aired video Wednesday night of the two actors deep in Peru's Andes bathing in an irrigation ditch wearing nothing but their boxer shorts. It showed the pair pouring handfuls of water over themselves under the highland sun."

Hopefully they didn't follow it up by beating cooked chickens with a hammer but apparently that gets the bad stuff out.

And where was McConaughey during all this? Does it not seem right up his alley?

News: Sputnik, Brokeback Opera, MacArthur Grants, Peru

2007 MacArthur Genius Grants awarded: $500K each.

No more Oprah, Beyonce, Whitney, Donatella, Nuni Showner or Bronx Beat on Saturday Night Live: Maya Rudolph is not returning. UPDATE: Maya changes her mind.

Infectious bacteria sent to space found to be more dangerous upon return: " The salmonella sample that travelled millions of kilometers (miles) in orbit changed their pattern of certain genes compared to identical bacteria back on Earth, said the study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Following the shuttle flight, studies using mice showed the salmonella bacteria aboard the shuttle were "almost three times as likely to cause disease when compared with control bacteria grown on the ground," said a university statement outlining the study."

British authorities seize Nan Goldin print owned by Elton John prior to gallery showing after being tipped off by employee concerned about child exploitation.

Remember that meteorite that hit a Peruvian village last week that made a whole bunch of villagers sick? Apparently it struck a location where there was arsenic in the groundwater: "The claim now is that the meteoroid was hot when it hit (or the impact itself generated the heat), creating a steam plume tainted with arsenic — everyone who complained of illness has recovered, the report says, by the way. Given that we know it’s a meteorite now, that sounds plausible. Given the size of the crater and the eyewitness accounts, the meteoroid may have been big enough to retain quite a bit of heat when it hit."

The NYT celebrates the 50th anniversary of Sputnik: "Fifty years ago, before most people living today were born, the beep-beep-beep of Sputnik was heard round the world. It was the sound of wonder and foreboding. Nothing would ever be quite the same again — in geopolitics, in science and technology, in everyday life and the capacity of the human species."

Let's talk trash with Jesse Metcalfe.

Brokeback Mountain to become opera. Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Wuorinen will compose it.

Seller of De la Hoya fishnet drag photos remorseful: "I can't believe we did this! For $70,000 you let them take advantage of me? What is going to happen to me? I've crushed a million hearts of kids . . . People look up to [de la Hoya.] . . . I'm really upset. I can't eat. I can't sleep."

Williamette University runner Stephen Millard comes out of the closet: "I am not out to anyone on the team, although I don’t mind if they know. I think that bad reactions will be very limited. The campus is supportive, the coaches are supportive and the team has a lot of special men and women on it. I think they will like me for who I am as a person, as they do for everyone else. And when it comes down to it, my sexuality has no affect on how I perform or how I interact with my teammates."

George H.W. Bush's Kennebunkport pool boy tells all: "What do you say? 'Thanks for School of the Americas, and Iran-Contra, and NAFTA, and shipping all those jobs overseas, and arming Saddam, and funding the Taliban?' What do you say -- 'You're a jerk?' There's nothing that can be put into a sentence that would capture the lives these people have taken, and the way of life that's been taken."