Did you stop by the City Weekly booth during the Pride Day(s) festival last weekend? We actually bothered to staff ours, as opposed to a certain weak-ass publication that claimed to be the fest’s Big Print Sponsor but then only set up a tent and dropped some papers. Of course, when you do deign to be present at the state’s largest gay-pride festival, you meet all kinds—like the young dude who walked by the City Weekly booth and sniffed, “I don’t like you guys … I just don’t like free media.” Uh, OK. Or the bears who want to meet D.P. Sorensen (whom we tell “Sorry, he’s fictional—we use advanced column-generating software, entering the keywords ‘Mitt’ and ‘Mormon’”) and/or John Saltas (“He’s on yet another Greek vacation—but here’s his cell-phone number”). Musically, all-female AC/DC tribute act Hell’s Belles tore it up loud ‘n’ proud Saturday afternoon (you could hear “Back in Black” echoing all through the downtown area), but it was Sheena Easton who had the best lines Friday night: “The big hair only lasts a couple of songs, so take your pictures now—the big hair offsets the big ass.”
• If Utah’s ever-expanding annual gay Pride Festival isn’t a sign of the End Times, then Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign must be: According to old Mormon prophecy/legend/myth/rumor, when the U.S. Constitution is hanging by a thread during the last days, a Mormon will ride in on a white horse and save us all. Sure, this came up years before with papa George Romney’s and ferret-lipped pinhead Orrin Hatch’s respective presidential runs, but Mitt actually has almost a smidgen of a chance in hell (metaphorically speaking) of maybe coming close to the Republican nomination! Start brushing Trigger!
• Back to the gay stuff: Catch former Utah Jazz player/Utah Pride grand marshal/author/tall gay man John Amaechi on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report a couple of weeks ago? He was promoting his coming-out-story book, Man in the Middle, and Colbert asked Amaechi when he chose to be gay, while mentioning that he didn’t choose to be that tall and, while the Bible says homosexuality is wrong, there’s nothing in the good book about basketball and “taking the rock to the hole.” The British Amaechi also denied that it was difficult to be in a locker room with other men who “don’t know how to play cricket.”
• In unrelated but still gay-as-in-joyful news, Salt Lake City rock band Royal Bliss, after nearly 10 years of recording and touring independently, signed with international major Capitol Records (home to Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Radiohead and Utah’s Ryan Shupe & The RubberBand, among many others) last week. Says singer Neal Middleton, the president of Capitol himself came to SLC to ink the band, and they now have 90 days to record their label debut, which should see a late ’07 or early ’08 release. Fun factoid: Then-rookies Royal Bliss lost City Weekly’s Showdown to South by Southwest in 1999 to … Ryan Shupe & The RubberBand.
