This past Thanksgiving 2009, I couldn’t get over how familiar the guy sitting next to me at the dinner table looked. My open inquiries to such received a number of repressed giggles from the rest of the dinner guests.

Perhaps I had seen him spinning at Sound Bar, the familiar stranger at my side suggested, and going by the name “DJ Veritas?”

“No, it couldn’t have been Sound Bar,” I said. “I’m not that hip.”

It was later brought to my attention that said stranger, Jason Andrews, aka DJ Veritas, aka Addison on seancody.com, had recently made several appearances on the popular internet porn web site—that’s how I recognized him! The sexy straight guy at my side was known to go gay for pay, and I will openly admit how, at the time, I wished for wealth.

However on July 15, eight months later, Veritas Andrews Addison was arrested with his porn-actress girlfriend Amanda Logue (both pictured above left to center) for the felony, first-degree premeditated murder of a Florida Tattoo artist; the appalling text-message plotting that took place between the two was published in recent reports, in every despicable and diabolical detail. And I hope to never dine with someone so ugly and unattractive ever again.

Arrivederci Veritas! May the rest of your days be spent in dirt and darkness.

***

And in other recent, life-taking news, openly gay, former Chicago Department of Public Health official Michael Jackson (pictured right) is slated for an early parole. After being convicted of killing his cab driver in 2006—by running over the driver with his own stolen cab, twice—and being sentenced to 15 years, Jackson has apparently earned enough “social-reform program” credits that may potentially afford him a release date sometime before September 2011.

I also have a number of colorfully unfavorable thoughts on this subject as well. However, with concerns for community care, as well as media objectivity, I think I will keep those to myself—for now.

Frankly, I’m more apt to appreciate, as opposed to judge, a good celebrity train wreck. Compared to the glossy portraits of Hollywood fame and fortune, my minor league and discount store-Midwestern world would paint a pretty unaccomplished, underfunded and depressingly boring picture if there weren’t major silver-screen sensations screwing up at every turn. That’s why I’ve been a member of Lindsay Lohan’s fan club ever since she got her first DUI. With a few felonies, some misdemeanors, three runs through rehab, two turbulent affairs with a high-powered man and club-circuit girl, while crashing her luxury car into a curb high on cocaine before  blowing off several court orders, all under her 24-year-old belt, the disgraced Disney diva is a tumultuous testament to how the “good life” may be likely to beget more burden than benefit. And I love her for that. She makes my life fulfilling.

But this trashy business with her latest single somehow, accidentally, completely unintentionally getting “leaked” to Perez Hilton, on the cusp of all her recent legal drama, gives me huge pause. It’s not the song’s leak that’s so concerning (timely self-exploitation is a sure way to secure CD sales), but to whom the song was leaked. Blogs, while virally effective, are a little low brow when it comes to favorable promotion. So why didn’t Lohan leak her song to a more accredited media outlet? Or did she, and they just didn’t care? It wouldn’t have made much of a difference anyway. It’s a really bad song.

It can’t be said that LiLo isn’t a talented actress and singer. Meryl Streep sang her praises on the set of A Prairie Home Companion, and music critics have ranked her among the pop princesses. But famous compliments won’t carry your career if you’re too cracked out to a keep a job—so much so that you get fired from movies already in production and you can’t acquire the rights to a decent song or music producer because no one wants your name attached to theirs.

If Lohan doesn’t balance the bad with the good in her “good life” soon, I fear the bulb in her spotlight will quickly burn out, which would seriously suck for me. The joy people like me get from people like her comes from watching her fall, not from being constantly reassured that she has already fallen. The world already has plenty of antisocial, substance-abusing screw-ups; so what makes LiLo so special if not professionally in the public eye? If she’s not out there making good movies and music, while at the same time getting arrested and going girl-on-girl, there’s really no reason for the tabloids, or me or anyone else to give her the time of day. And that would be terribly unfortunate because she falls so well.

So, come on, Lindsay!  You’re letting us minor league, discount store-Midwesterners down. Get it together, Girl!

(just not that much)

Imagine the above-pictured scene filled with Chicago’s most celebrated scenesters, media mavens, established entrepreneurs, movers and shakers as well as Illinois’ most accredited social/political advocates. Such will be the case Thursday, August 5, 2010.

Backdropped by Chicago’s internationally renowned, 450,000-plus attending, annual Market Days Street Fair, PINK will open the succeeding weekend’s festivities with a prestigious VIP PINK Fundraising Affair taking place on The Center’s Richard M. Daley Rooftop Garden, Thursday, August 5, from 6:00-9:30 p.m. Expected among the event’s 300-plus invited guests will be Chicago’s LGBT elite—some of which, like State Representative Sara Feigenholtz and lifetime LGBT advocate Vernita Gray, will be recognized in a tribute venerating their longstanding dedication to LGBT concerns—all of which enjoying the evening’s live classical music, open bar, catered delicacies and the refined fare found in PINK’s famous “swag-less” gift bags. The ultimate objective of this goodwill gala is to benefit The Center with upwards of $10,000 in party proceeds, by way of suggested door donations, a live auction, raffle sales and corporate sponsorships, in what will most likely be the summer’s most benevolent first-class bash.

“The Center on Halsted is the structured base of the entire gay Chicago umbrella…” says PINK Magazine founder/publisher David Cohen of the periodical’s philanthropic party planning, citing a moral obligation to aid in the acquisition of funding for The Center’s services. “…and to overlook the challenges it faces during these difficult times is to ignore the suffering and slight of the entire LGBT community.”

PINK is currently in the initial stages of the VIP PINK PARTY planning, inviting advertising associates and other a affiliates to partner with PINK as party while also laboring to close the magazine’s 2010 summer issue—and edition that will somewhat correlate to the evening’s events on August 5.

Please field any feedback or inquires regarding PINK Magazine, PINKmag.com or the VIP PINK Party at the Center on Halsted on August 5, 2010 to Jason P. Freeman, Editor in Chief at jfreeman[at]pinkmag.com.

Last night, Thursday, July 1, 2010, I had the pleasure of representing PINK Magazine at the 4^th annual Esteem Awards, where PINK was honored as being “Outstanding.” I may be a bit biased, but I can’t help but feel that maybe the EAs are right on.

“I wanted to recognize people in the community,” says Philip Esteem, founder of the EAs, a program facilitated by Esteem’s online resource guide serving members of the African American LGBT community, www.prideindex.com. “I wanted to do a sort of local GLAAD Awards or Lambda Literary Awards to recognize people who don’t usually get recognized.”

In addition to the annual EAs, held in celebratory conjunction with Black Pride Weekend, Prideindex.com also hosts the annual Holiday Heart event, a Black Pride celebration for youth traditionally held every December on the first day of Kwanza.

Recipients of the 2010 Esteem Awards include lifetime Chicago-based LGBT activist Vernita Gray, Equality Illinois, The MOCHA Center, the fiercely fabulous local fashionista Jermikko and PINK Magazine.

Pictured above, left to right: Can you guess which of the 2010 EA recipients pictured here is from PINK Mag?;  Yours truly asks random guy standing next to him to pose for an award-presentation pic and guy standing next to him curiously obliges.

You’d think a two-day long, all-day long Pride Fest Friday and Saturday, June 25-26—featuring two live music stages both of which showcase the likes of Sixteen Candles, Tiffany, Amber and Taylor Dayne—a DJ stage, a drag race, an eclectic lineup of arts and crafts, food and other vendors, and even a mini Pride Parade for pets, all preceding the 41^st Annual Chicago Pride Parade on Sunday, June 27—involving a seemingly never-ending processional of poofs made up of 250 floats, decorated vehicles, performance groups, a marching band and walking contingents with ~450,000 attending spectators—would be all the Pride we little Midwestern ‘mos could handle. But you’d think wrong.

Here in Chicago, the big shouldered LGBTS of the Windy City don’t mess around. As the Second City never does anything second rate, Pride for us starts Memorial Day with International Mister Leather, seriously rocks out all month long (starting with Andersonville Midsommarfest) until the last Sunday in June for the Parade, which lingers on afterwards until Market Days in August, followed by the TPAN gala in September, then all the winter/holiday parties like Champagne Wrapture and The Justice for All Gala, and then comes spring with Chicago Takes Off, and, of course, the Chicago House Spring Fashion Show (which I never actually got a press pass for, even though I’ve worked with the press pass person for five years—JEREMY) and then it’s IML again. Seriously, the Pride never stops. However, all the mega-frenzy started this week.

On Monday June 21, The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s (GLAAD.org) Chicago Leadership Council started off Gay-is-Great Gaiety Week with a Pride-people Appreciation party at MillerCoors’ downtown headquarters. What better way to celebrate the successes of LGBT anti-defamation than with a hosted bar of over 30 select beers? The highlight of the evening was running into Reeling’s seasonal PR rep Angelique Smith, where Smith and I reminisced about an interview I facilitated with one of the 2008 Chicago LGBT film festival’s featured actresses: On a beer buzz, much like the one I was having Monday, When Smith asked to me kindly wrap things up, as other interviewers were waiting their turn, I yelled back at her, “I waited a f***ing hour!” At least, that’s how I remember it.

Tuesday found the entire PINK staff in attendance for the Mayor’s Pride Reception at the Chicago Cultural Center. It was invitation only, so we all felt kind of special. The catering by Star of Siam was superb (go shrimp dumplings!), as was the free pinot grigio of which I had several glasses. Afterwards, the boss treated me to ice cream.

Wednesday, June 23, there was another government official party on the south side to which I had press passes for but declined as I had theater tickets with PINK’s performing arts editor Rhonda Walker.

Thursday, June 24, 2010, played host to a number of LGBT-themed events, much like the 13th annual Chicago House Birdhouse Auction where “Chicago’s leading artists, designers, and architects create[d] whimsical and wonderful birdhouses to be auctioned off at a swanky cocktail reception.” I didn’t make that one either. (Thanks again, JEREMY.)

But who needs birdhouses when I’ve got PRIDE FEST!

Friday and Saturday, June 25-26, PINK sponsors it’s very own PRIDE Fest booth where yours truly will be in attendance giving away goodies, like a trip to Toronto, and being visited by some music duo band that plays soft rock prior to their Chicago concert. So be sure to stop by and say “Hey!” because, even amidst ~450,000 gay pride revelers, I tend to get lonely.

Pictured above, left to right: Doug Birkenheur volunteers for GLAAD; yours truly and Angelique Smith at MillerCoors; Civil Rights Agenda board members Anthony Martinez and Lawrence Perea at the Mayor’s Pride Reception; Mayor Richard M. Daley praises pride; and cute guys from some unheard-of band set to visit PINK booth at PRIDE Fest, Friday, June 25.

It wasn’t that long ago when Levi Kreis was just your average, spiritually humble, openly gay independent musician. His modest music career had him a transient, performing all across the country, with reticent acclaim, never in one place for too long, just trying to make it in the world and relatively unknown to the mainstream. But I knew him.

Last spring in Lincoln Park, we met at a Starbucks. It was an early afternoon, kind of rainy. I had a latte (completely caffeinated, of course) he had a green tea, caffeine free. At that time in 2009, Kreis was playing Jerry Lee Lewis in the Chicago Apollo Theater’s production of Million Dollar Quartet, in the role that he originated and would later make mega-famous on Broadway. Ours was a lighthearted interview for a small, local lifestyle publication. Kries was friendly, open and affording, and adorably boyish. Flipping his curly Jerry-Lee locks away from his eyes, he smiled at me. Yet, as a professional and objective interviewer, first and foremost, I didn’t swoon. I never had any intention to swoon and I wasn’t going to swoon. But I wanted to swoon. And a few nights later, while sharing tapas, and after we finished off a pitcher of Sangria, I might have swooned a little.

It was late, we were a tiny bit tipsy, and the conversation had become extremely casual and somewhat “private.” Kreis had just mentioned his worry of accidentally acquiring a communicative social disease when I leaned in, looked into his eyes, and told him of my recent trip to my primary care physician where it was confirmed that I did not have a communicative social disease for him to acquire. To this, Kreis also leaned in a little closer, looked back into my eyes and said, “Is that right?” But alas, he was gay married to some guy in California, somewhere—I don’t know (I don’t care)—and our inappropriate and unprofessional pairing simply wasn’t possible.

I caught up with Kries again about a year later, when he was cast for the Broadway debut of MDQ in New York, and he was still friendly and affording but, then living in NYC, he was also far away. Out of sight and out of mind, I forgot to swoon. I didn’t even want to swoon. Then the NYC show debuted and everybody swooned.

The show was a hit! The New York cast grooved with the night owls on Late Night with David Letterman, entertained on The Today Show and wooed middle-American housewives on The View. Kreis was nominated for a Tony Award, as best featured actor in a musical, and then he won the Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical—while hugging Kristen Chenoweth and high-five-ing Sean Hayes, not a single person seemed the slightest bit put off by his garish string tie/tuxedo ensemble Suddenly the spiritually humble, openly gay modest musican I met, who no more than 15 months ago was just trying to make it in the world, has made it, and now his publicist won’t return my calls.

And, incidentally, The “Jason” Kreis referenced as his “partner” in his post Tony-win, Broadwayworld.com interview, isn’t me.

Pictured top: Levi Kreis poses with 2010 Tony Award in photo by CBS photographer Jessica Derschowtiz

Wednesday, June 9, 2010—I had just gotten out of a David Sedaris reading at the Steppenwolf (where the best-selling gay satirist and memoir-ist had sold-out audiences shelling out $35/ticket to help him workshop his upcoming book), and it was a beautiful night. I decided to walk the two miles home to Lakeview from Lincoln Park, thinking I could use the exercise—PRIDE is coming up—and then hell broke loose.

Instantly from the unassuming quiet of the calm, late evening, hordes of loud, drunken straight people flooded the streets, many of them donned in jerseys and baseball caps that covered their Zac Efron-emulating hairdos. They hooted. They hollered. They ran into oncoming traffic, where the honking horns of every passing auto matched their riotous cheers with equally load and virulent vociferousness. The above-posted picture, taken by Examiner.com photographer Jamie Jorda, doesn’t give the insane scene justice. The hetero masses were overwhelmingly abounding, demanding high-fives at every possible turn, and I was trapped right in the mob’s middle.

From what I was able to piece together from the crowd’s varied and intellectually understated uproarious roaring, The hyper hoi polloi happened because a tribe of native American Indians were playing cricket with their pal Stanley, who hasn’t been able to play cricket since 1961 because he lost his cup. But wouldn’t you think that after 49 years Stanley would be too old to play cricket? I guess not.

And it wasn’t just in Lincoln Park. According to every Facebook status update I read on my android phone, they were amassing on Michigan Avenue. Police had to the shut down the streets in Wrigleyville. Uptown, Streeterville, Old Town, the Gold Coast, every neighborhood on the south side and Roscoe Village, great groups of gangs were taking over the entire town—all except for Boystown; gay enclaves don’t care much for cricket, apparently.

So, if I could hold out for another mile or so, trudge my way through the teams of tumultuous tirades and make it to Belmont, maybe even Diversey, I’d be free of the forays and safe in the in cricket-free quiescence of my hometown’s incorporated gay village. Or so I thought…

Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell protestors, like those pictured above, have cause to join IML daddies in joyous gay celebration this weekend. The nation’s largest organization of LGBT troops and veterans, Servicemembers United, reports that an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act has passed in the House of Representatives which would repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law.

“This second victory for repeal advocates today in the House of Representatives demonstrates real momentum in the battle to finally rid the United States Code of the outdated “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law,” said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United and a former U.S. Army interrogator who was discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” “All of us who have served under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and who have been impacted by this law will remember this day as the beginning of the end for ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

Now Nicholson, as well as the many others persecuted under DADT, can finally don their rainbow flags and their fatigues together with pride and patriotism.

Inaugurated this Saturday, May 22, 2010, on what would have been the iconic former San Francisco Supervisor’s 80^th birthday, the state of California has officially designated every May 22, as “Harvey Milk Day,” in observation and honor of the first openly gay elected official in the Golden State and his legacy of LGBT equality following his assignation in 1978. The bill that set this annual California holiday in motion was first introduced in February 2008, and later vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, before ultimately being passed and sanctioned in late 2009, Equality California reports.

However, regardless of local public certification, the nation’s 31^st state won’t be the only one celebrating Harvey Milk Day this year. Equality Across America lists over 15 other states, from Arizona to Maine, all with major rallies, marches and festivals set to take place in accordance with California’s first HMD.

In PINK’s home city of Chicago, a rally is set to take place at the park at Congress and Michigan Ave., following with a march along Michigan Ave.. More information can be found at the Chicago Milk Week of Action Web site, www.chicagomilkweek.wordpress.com.

Here’s looking forward to a Saturday of solidarity and celebration, and wishing you and yours a very Happy Harvey Milk Day.