The Gay Porn Boxer And "Journalism"

When these stories first appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News a few weeks ago, I said I had to discuss them here. Well, I procrastinated again, so here we go now.

I laughed at the first one and cringed (and laughed) at the second. The first one reported a tale told by a one-time local boxer, Yusaf Mack, who said he was offered money via a Facebook message to do a porn scene in New York. Desperate for money, he accepted the offer and showed up at an address in the Bronx during the summer. He claimed there were naked women walking around. When the time came to start the scene, he said he needed a drink and someone gave him a shot of vodka and a pill. He claimed the next thing he could remember, he was on a train at 30th Street Station being awakened. He didn't remember getting on a train but did find $4,500.00 in a pocket.

Cut to October, when he says people were acting strangely around him, and finally someone told him about a clip online in which he was in a threesome with two men -- no women in sight. He denied it until he got a look at it. He said he had no memory of anything between the time he downed the shot and pill and when he woke up on the train. He aggressively said he was straight: "My whole life, I've been what they call a whoremonger. I love females...the only time I touch a man is when I'm in the ring fighting." He has ten kids and was engaged to a woman.

A week later, after the story went viral, the porn company denied drugging him and reports began to surface about there being possibly more than one scene with Mack and other men, he admitted he lied. He's gay, or bi, or something (his story changed a time or two just in the course of the followup interview), he admitted doing the scene because he was unemployed and need the money to help his ten kids and three grandkids. His fiancee reacted by leaving him. But hey, he got some assistance from one Anthony Cherry, who contacted Mack via Instagram and offered to represent him for free.

The article says Cherry is "a Los Angeles-based hairstylist/crisis public-relations manager" -- so hey, when he's done with Yusaf's PR he can work on the do!

Okay, it seemed fairly likely from the beginning that he wasn't telling the truth. That turned out to be the case. But what is more sad is the tone of the original article. The writer, Jenice Armstrong, seemed to go out of her way to help make the story seem plausible, using a gee-whiz tone that, I believe, belies her own experience as a writer. This portion, in particular, got to me:

But bizarre things can happen when you mix drugs, alcohol and illicit sex. I did some poking around online yesterday and someone pointed me in the direction of GHB (gamma-Hydroxybutyrate), a/k/a Liquid Ecstasy or Georgia Home Boy, a colorless and tasteless so-called party drug that has been known to lower users' inhibitions and also leave them with severe memory loss.

Could someone have slipped it or something similar into Mack's drink? I asked an expert if it was at all possible for him to do something out of character sexually and then forget it.

Of course, the expert said it was certainly possible. But we knew that already, didn't we? How many stories have we heard in the media about date rape? About sexual assaults where drugs and alcohol were involved? How many stories have we heard about women at parties or in bars having their drinks "roofied" by men they met? How many articles has Armstrong herself written about such stories? Hell, just in the last year she's written about Bill Cosby's attacks on women, hasn't she?

Her website says she has over two decades of journalism experience! And here she says she had to go online after hearing Mack's tale to learn about GHB? Come on.

I don't know what her agenda was in writing the story, but she ended up getting burned. Of course, a good portion of what she writes about is celebrity fluff, stories about clothes and hairstyles, local and national celebs, women's issues, African-American culture, and of course, she basically curates the annual Daily News Sexy Singles promotion. (Go search for my posts about that, why don't you?)

Journalism is so loosely defined nowadays.

Daily News Unveils 2015 Sexy Singles. YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT!

(HAHAHAHAHA! Clickbait headline, suckers!)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I failed to write about the annual Sexy Singles feature in the Philadelphia Daily News for the last two years, but I did save the information from both the 2013 and 2014 editions. So let's run though the numbers before we get to 2015, where something interesting finally happened. (YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT...never mind.)

2013: 26 singles. A slight increase in...no, wait, wait...I'm sorry, it's actually 25 singles. For the second straight year they included someone who stated she was in a "committed relationship." I'm sorry, Daily News, but what part of "committed relationship" don't you understand? If you're "committed" you aren't available, which means YOU. ARE NOT. SINGLE. Anyway, of their 26: four came from local TV/radio, three worked at least part-time in the fitness industry, three people appeared in movies, TV shows and an off-Broadway production of "Dreamgirls," a Playboy centerfold, and three "pro" athletes: a member of the Philadelphia Union, someone from an "Ultimate Frisbee" team and a woman from...the Lingerie Football League. When you want to watch serious football as much as I do, you head to the LFL, right? So, 14 of 26 non-"regular people." But we had, apparently, after a four-year drought, LGBT representation. It's not blatantly stated but the woman in question "organizes women-oriented Stimulus Production parties for the LGBTQ community." So I counted her.

2014: Still at 26, but none in relationships, and not only did we have another lesbian, unlike the previous year, it's definite! Mostly. She was quoted as saying, "I'm 90 percent into women, but I'll take a Viking boy with a beard and some tattoos any day." Ooooookay, then. Moving on: three from local TV/radio, two members of the Philadelphia Wings (again, a team that's no longer around), five part- or full-time fitness/model types (including one who is a model/actress -- but aren't they all?), a manager/agent for athletes and performers (close enough for me), someone who is (or was) known as "America's Foot Doctor" and makes TV and radio appearances, a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and rapper Schooly D. 14 of 26 non-"regulars."

After the jump: 2015 -- and my nomination for a Sexy Single!

Daily News Sexy Singles: My 2008-2012 Comments

ex-Eagle Curtis Marsh
Sexy Single 2012

Before I get to 2015, I think I should summarize the last few years' posts on this subject. So I'm writing this first, and the second part will arrive later.

The first time I ever wrote about the Philadelphia Daily News' annual "Sexy Singles" feature was in 2008, their 6th year. It was for the Outsports.com blog. The tie-in was that one of their choices was a Philadelphia Eagle, Todd Herremans. He's no longer an Eagle, and he's also no longer single. But I got to expound on the feature itself, pointing out that the 30 selected singles (over 500 names were submitted by readers that year) included a proliferation of people in the fitness industry (personal trainers, gym managers) as well as six employees for local TV and radio stations -- a full 20 percent. As I wrote then, this was "undoubtedly providing lots of free promotion for the paper on their stations. (Or does it really mean that a full 20 percent of beautiful single people work for TV and radio?)" That made for a total of seven local celebrities out of 30, or 23.3 percent.

I did note that there was a gay man among the 30. I also noted: "On a 'favorite single' poll at Philly.com Herremans is currently in 7th place among the men. The gay guy is in last place with just 9 votes. Ouch."

The following year, I wrote on the Outsports blog that for the second consecutive year the list included an Eagle, Stewart Bradley. But I saved my criticism for this very blog, which was a little over a month old at the time. In 2009 there were 37 singles, and 10 were working for TV and radio stations, up seven percent from 2008. They also selected Davy Jones of the Monkees, who lived part-time on a horse farm far, far away from Philadelphia. I wrote: "The paper promotes it as a 'diverse group from all walks of life' and adds, 'Who knows? This could be the year you meet that special someone. And you'll have the Daily News to thank.' As if 99 percent of us would ever have a chance with these celebrities, pseudo-celebrities, pro athletes, models, etc." 12 of 37 celeb types, just a shade under one of three.

My 2010 post was titled "No Gays, No Eagles." The two pro athletes this year were lacrosse players (from the Philadelphia Wings, no longer in Philly). Still, of the 35 singles, 5 worked in local TV/radio and there was a "reality" TV competition show contestant. 8 of 35, just about 23 percent celeb. However, there were another 14 who were trying to become celebrities -- including shopping a TV pilot, graduating from broadcasting school and trying out for "The Amazing Race." And with no LGBT representation (at least openly -- often there's no specific mention of the type of mate a Sexy Single is looking for) for the second year in a row, I referred to the 9-vote polling result I mentioned above: "Maybe that scared them off. That, or I guess everyone in the local LGBT community is either in a relationship or not very pretty."

HELP WANTED: Copy Editor. Apply Phila Daily News

Unless they're tied (which they weren't) only one team can be leading the NL Central at a time, unless they're tied.

I've written about these errors often in the last year or two. I haven't been pointing them out lately, but they're still going on. The other day a headline said someone was a "targed" of a lawsuit instead of a target.

And I haven't even gotten to my annual critique of their Sexy Singles promotion. Don't worry. It will arrive shortly.

Swedish?

Google Chrome's got some 'splainin' to do...

The Same Old New Daily News

Yeah, I'm talking about the newspaper again. This week the Daily News debuted its latest redesign: new logo, some rearranging, a few new features. (And the size of the pages is smaller. The last redesign resulted in a little extra blank space at the top and bottom of each page. That space is now gone. Maybe soon it'll be the size of a paperback.) Honestly, to me it wasn't as big a deal as they made it out to be, although obviously the hype was done to get attention and sell papers.

So what am I complaining about now? First, this was in the paper all week:

Not the car ad, the part about the beta version of their app. (Should have cropped this first.) I went to that site multiple times during the week to try and download it, only to get a message that the page didn't exist. I sent an email to the address shown in the paper and didn't get a reply. Finally on Thursday the page actually existed, but this time I got the message that the Android version is only available for 10-inch tablets. For now, my 7-inch Baby Tablet is being discriminated against.

It only bothered me a little. It wasn't enough to inspire this post. Then I saw this sentence in this weekend's Sportsweek edition in an article about the Eagles, in which various writers gave their advice for what the Birds should do for the rest of this downtrodden season: "Give Foles the reigns." As in, Nick Foles should start at quarterback even if Michael Vick is cleared to play when he recovers from his concussion.

Of course, this makes no sense. The proper spelling in this case would be "reins" as in "Use the reins when riding a horse," not "reigns" as in "Prince Harry reigns over naked debauchery in Vegas."

These kinds of errors happen often enough that I still wonder whether the Daily News employs copy editors to correct spelling errors by its writers, or if the writers spelled it correctly and the copy editors are just not competent. They're minor annoyances, but annoyances nonetheless.

But if the one misspelling that I hate the most, "definately," ever appears in the paper, I will go postal.

Phila. Daily News Update

I previously outlined some problems I had with my newspaper, which were enough to make me consider not renewing my subscription. I ended up renewing it, so I'm still a Daily News subscriber.

Although (and sorry in advance for this digression), every time I see the right-wing garbage from one of their editorial board members, Christine Flowers, I want to vomit. I don't even read it. I just see her name and wonder why she's allowed to spew her filth. I mean, there was an editorial in the paper regarding the teenage girl who wore her Mitt Romney t-shirt to school and was harrassed by her teacher, leading to all kinds of stupidity, media whoring, etc. The editorial says, in part:

The T-shirt flap and the resulting hostility that had a high-school student afraid to return to school because of obscenities hurled at her parents and rumors that students were going to attack her is a sickening indictment of an uncivilized society that has become increasingly intolerant of differences of opinions, political outlooks, religious beliefs and beyond.

Whether it takes the form of blatant questioning of, say, the current president's love of God, country, or his supposed lack of a birth certificate, or nasty commentaries on non-Christians, or distorted political ads with both sides accusing the other of lies and worse, or even Rush Limabugh calling a Georgetown legal student a slut and a whore for speaking out about birth control, the rise of the political echo chamber that has replaced useful and thoughtful debate that is grounded in respect is the real culprit.

Quite the thing, except these words are a near-perfect description of Christine Flowers. The only area where she has anything but an extreme right-wing view is on immigration. She has stated that, as a practicing attorney, she represents immigrants trying to stay in the USA. I can't help but wonder how she'd feel about it if she weren't making money off these people. I also can't help but wonder, considering the stance taken in the editorial, why the paper continues to employ her, thereby contributing to this "uncivilized society."

Anyway, that's not why I'm writing this post. Regarding one of my post's criticisms, there's good news: starting in January, home subscribers of the Daily News and Inquirer will get the digital version of the paper for free. I'm very happy about this because if I'm out of town I'll be able to read the paper on my tablet. I don't know why it can't start right away, but that's a minor quibble.

Speaking of minor quibbles, this centerspread appeared in last weekend's Sportsweek edition. There was a feature story on the Eagles' time at the Vet as this season marks the 10th anniversary of their last season before moving to the Linc. This photo begs the question...

...why did they use a picture taken during baseball season?

DN Sexy Singles '12: More Eagles, Less Single, No LGBT (Again)

I said last year that I think the annual Daily News Sexy Singles feature had jumped the shark. Well, two weeks ago this year's collection arrived, and my mind hasn't changed.

For the second year in a row, the count of singles was down to 20, although this year they did have a Sexy Singles party. The list is dominated, as usual, by models and people who are at least slightly well-known. Four people work in local TV or radio. One is best known for a stint on a "reality" TV show called "Bad Girls Club." There are four models, one of whom is the daughter of Kathy Sledge of "Sister Sledge" fame. (Two others, to be fair, are only part-time models.)

Also on the list is the woman whose ex-husband recently sued her for a share of her ginormous shoe collection and two people who have jobs in government that I'm guessing aren't civil service jobs (chief of staff for a state representative and a manager in a division of the Parking Authority -- heh heh heh, bet that makes her really popular).

And hey, the Eagles are back! And with a former NFL player also in the group, last year's NFL representation is tripled! The Eagles on the Sexy Singles team are both cornerbacks: Trevard Lindley and Curtis Marsh. Marsh is pictured here, in one of the pics from the newspaper. Very fine, I must say. The ex-NFL player didn't play for the Eagles -- and oddly enough, the profile says: "Don't email him just yet, though, ladies," because he's in a relationship. In other words: he's not really single.

That leaves five people that I classified as "regular" people, and even some of

Hashtag NBCFAIL

I have so much to write about that I'm backlogged again. Let's see: two movies, my recent trip to New York (seeing Ricky Martin in Evita, seeing the new Yankee Stadium, etc.), I bought some comic books that aren't Simpsons or Futurama, posting my photos and videos from Bastille Day at Eastern State, not to mention the latest crop of Daily News Sexy Singles.

So why am I writing about NBC?

First, they've made me lose interest in the Summer Olympics. Between the chopped-up tape-delayed events, the near-constant athlete profiles and inane features, the mere presence of Ryan Seacrest, the butchering of the Opening Ceremony, their massive hype about having so many events live online (some of the biggest events weren't actually available online and there have been quite a few complaints about screens freezing and lots of buffering -- and besides, I personally don't want to watch sports on a computer, I WANT TO WATCH THEM ON MY HIGH-DEFINITION TELEVISION), and above all, their arrogant insistence that critics of their coverage must be wrong because the TV ratings are so high, when I actually do have the Olympics on, it's mostly just in the background with me barely paying attention.

(By the way, Blogger doesn't let me put a pound sign in a post title, which is why this post isn't called  #NBCFAIL. I think that's a #BloggerFAIL, to be honest. Or a #GoogleFAIL, since they own it.)

But that's not all.

One More Daily News Post

I don't really want to go on about the Daily News, especially after I had a nice talk with one of their reporters after my previous post. Mainly I just wanted to share this from Monday. Poor Robert Klein...

...and this gives me an excuse to add a few items that I forgot about when I wrote the other post.

One thing that bothered me when ex-Philadelphia Magazine editor Larry Platt took over the Daily News was what you might call stunt-casting. He added Buzz Bissinger and Ed Rendell as columnists. The first "column" from Bissinger was a collection of his Twitter posts and was such utter garbage that, on the rare occasions his column appeared, I never even gave it a glance. And Rendell's sports commentary (which still exists, now relegated to the "Sportsweek" weekend paper) is so dull the column is guaranteed to put an insomniac to sleep. Hell, I could write a column that's as good as anything by Rendell and they could pay me less, if they want to save some money.

Another thing that changed was

My Issues With The Daily News

A number of things have me wondering whether I want to continue my subscription to the Philadelphia Daily News after it expires in September. Most recently there was this...

Bavel Pure?

and there was this...

...and this (to the left and right of the "NEWS" banner)...

...and these others...

Short Sports Musing

The NCAA men's basketball tournament just ended. I'm sort of amazed at how little of the tournament I watched this year. And I only completed one online bracket (as usual, my picks were well off the mark). I'm not sure what's up with my sports love. I still read the Daily News sports section before the rest of the paper, but I just don't watch as much of it on TV. I watched a little less of the Eagles and NFL this year, and I've watched less of the Flyers and NHL, but those were influenced a bit by the DeSean Jackson and Wayne Simmonds verbal anti-gay incidents.

It makes me wonder a little how much of the Phillies I'll watch this year. At least in the case of the Phils, I'll be going to a game in person now and then, starting with April 11, the second home game (and first night game) of the new season. And despite the general awesomeness of the Stanley Cup playoffs, which start in a little more than a week, baseball is still my favorite sport. So we shall see, I guess.

The Mysterious Box On The Pole

So this...

...has been like this for about two weeks or so, completely exposed to the air, the rain, etc. It's at the bus stop near my house. It seems important, seeing as it seems to be electronic or communications equipment. So a couple of days after I first noticed it, I tweeted it to the city's 311 Twitter feed...

...and got no reply.

I took a couple more pictures last week. They aren't as large when viewed at full size than I thought. I need to re-check the camera settings on my phone. This is another view of it:

The black box (more clearly seen in the top photo) says "XM" on it, which leads me to think it possibly is related to satellite radio. I know that Sirius/XM uses repeaters in and around cities for its signal. I also thought perhaps it has something to do with police radio communications.

The silver box hanging outside the big container, with what appears to be a phone cord attached, says, from what I can tell from the ground, "Electroline Transponder." And there's some sort of bar code.

This is the door of the big box, sitting on the ground.

It seems to have nothing to do with the traffic lights at the corner (the pole itself is slightly away from the intersection) as they've been working just fine.

The Philadelphia Daily News is interested in this. Can anyone shed some light on what this is?

Today's Daily News: A Page Full Of FAIL

It's nice that, because I am a Philadelphia Daily News subscriber, each day the newspaper is on my doorstep when I leave the house. (Especially now that I'm actually awake every morning to go to work.) It irks me, however, that in order to have it on my doorstep so early in the morning they seem to have a printing deadline of midnight, or earlier. What this means is, stories about any night games played on the West Coast are guaranteed to not be in my paper. Worse, there have been times when games played in the Eastern or Central time zones were not covered or, at best, a very short, bare-bones wire service article was published. There was one time when a two-paragraph AP story was all that appeared in the paper for a 76ers game that didn't go to multiple overtimes (or even one, if I recall correctly) -- and was played in Philadelphia.

Modern technology doesn't help them put together a newspaper more quickly, it seems. Until recent years, it wasn't quite so bad. Now it seems more and more prevalent. It also leads to errors. And one page in today's paper was a doozy.  First, note the date of the paper and check out the photo and caption in the first two photographs (click on them for larger versions).

Somehow a photo from the Raiders-Chargers Thursday night NFL game from last week ran in this spot (along with the caption correctly identifying Carson Palmer) instead of one from last night's Jets-Broncos game. This is typical, by the way: run a photo from early in the game and tell the reader to go visit philly.com for the result.

2011 Daily News Sexy Singles: Shrinking

I'm still in a bit of a catchup mode after my California trip, which is why I'm writing about this subject just minutes before the Phillies take the field for their first playoff game.

I got home late on September 20th, so I had my subcription to the Daily News on hold until the 21st. When I got the paper on the 21st, I found that they were in the second day of their annual Sexy Singles event. I've written about it the last two years here: about how so many of their selections either work for local media outlets or the number of models/actors/athletes on the list, not to mention its inclusion (or lack thereof) of the LGBT community.

With the Daily News under new ownership and trying desperately to stay alive, you'd think that Sexy Singles would be a major deal, as it has been in the past. But it's been downsized. This year the feature ran for only two days, and with just 20 Sexy Singles. However, the more things change, the more they stay the same: by my count, 15 of the 20 fall into one or more of these categories: model, fitness instructor, was/is employed by local media outlets, or performer of some kind (including a ballet dancer, the current Miss Pennsylvania and "Top Chef" Jennifer Carroll).

The NFL is again represented, but not by an Eagle.

Time For DeSean Discipline, Eagles And NFL.

Memo to the National Football League and the Philadelphia Eagles: I haven't forgotten.

Last month, when NightlifeGay.com took the Eagles and the NFL to task for not responding after DeSean Jackson's "gay-ass faggot" radio interview, I pointed out that the league was still in a lockout and that neither the team nor the Eagles could do a thing until the labor situation was resolved.

As you know, shortly after that the lockout ended. There is labor peace in the NFL. Players have reported to training camps.

DeSean Jackson, however, was a no-show at first.

The Guy On The El

This is the story of a conversation I had today -- the type of conversation that, if you weren't there in person, you'd think it could only happen in a movie or TV show. (And anything I show in quotes may not be exact, but they're to the best of my recollection. Now that I think of it, I really wish I would've somehow secretly recorded it with the video camera on my phone.)

I was on the Market-Frankford El to make my way home from Center City a little after 5 pm. I had a seat open next to me for a while, until at one point a guy in a t-shirt and jeans got on and sat down next to me. Dark hair, masculine good looks, in good shape, not too old but not very young, maybe around 40 or so at most. A real blue-collar, macho guy. He immediately started to talk, and pretty much didn't let up the whole time.

He started by complaining about the rain, which he wasn't aware was in the forecast. (I don't know where he gets his weather from, but the reports I heard were calling for a chance of late-day showers and thunderstorms.) He's a roofer and you can't put the rubber coating on a wet surface, so not only did he have to stop work on the roof he was on, but he had to go check the roof on another job he had been doing. Then he asked if I was finished with my newspaper because he had a long bus ride to take after he got off the El at Frankford Terminal -- the route 58 to Neshaminy Mall, because he lives in Feasterville and normally doesn't take the bus. (I wasn't really done but I skimmed through the rest of it as we talked so he could take it. There were a couple of regular columns that I figured I could read online, and I skipped over the rest. That probably says as much about how much actual news is in the Daily News as anything else.)

The El train runs through the Kensington section as it makes its way to the terminal. Kensington is where I grew up, but it has really gone downhill over the years. There's a lot of poverty, crime and drugs. It was at one of the stations in that area where he got on, and he talked about the guys on the corners begging for money and having their girlfriends walk the streets. All drug addicts. He was a Marine and was in Iraq and Afghanistan for six years, and was amazed at how much worse it was out there since he came back. His attitude is that they're young and should "get a job!" but he said he realizes it's easier said than done.

He introduced himself as Anthony, and then asked if I was headed home from work. I told him I wasn't, just hanging with a friend downtown. And then it got interesting.

NFL Lockout Ends And I'm...Disappointed?

Saying goodbye to Stewart?

After months of posturing and disruption, the NFL owners and players finally figured out how to divide the billions and billions of dollars in revenue the league takes in. The lockout is over, and only one exhibition game had to be canceled -- the Hall of Fame Game in Canton, which is normally played in conjunction with the induction ceremonies each year. Now, because no league business (other than the draft) took place for months and months, there's this mad scramble by teams to decide which of their own free agents they might want back, which free agents from other teams they might want to try and sign, and so on, as teams rush to open their training camps.

There are reports that the Eagles have decided they don't want any of their free agents back, including linebacker/Daily News Sexy Single/would-be "Sex and the City" guest star Stewart Bradley. There's also speculation that DeSean Jackson might not report to training camp because he wants a contract extension. Considering what Jackson's been up to recently, I'm not sure I care if he disappears from the face of the earth.

Beyond that, though, I'm actually a little sad that the NFL is back. This is the most popular of the four major pro sports leagues, but also very unlikable in many ways.

If You Don't Know Sports...

Before I started this blog, I used to write a lot of blog posts for the gay sports website Outsports.com's Jock Talk Blog. I'm not sure my posts were all that popular with the site's readers because they more often focused on actual sports (with a particular slant towards Philly teams) rather than any gay angle. (To a great extent that's because Outsports co-founders Jim Buzinski and Cyd Zeigler Jr. are on top of any such stories very quickly and a post from me would be redundant.) But now and then I found something more Outsports-centric to write about.

Not long after I first began to blog for Outsports, I wrote a post titled "Should some gays not talk sports?" To summarize: as part of a special NFL section in the Philadelphia Daily News, locally and/or nationally famous people with Philly ties were asked whom they thought was the best Eagles quarterback ever. While many named names -- Donovan McNabb, Ron Jaworski -- Mark Segal, publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News, replied that "My favorite QB will be the first QB to publicly come out…that person will become a hero/role model to many when it happens. Till then any QB that gets the Eagles to the Super Bowl is my favorite." I was mildly critical because I felt that not every question or topic needs a "gay" reply, and besides, there's a big difference between one's favorite quarterback and the best quarterback.

Now I have to be critical again (but this time it's not about Mark Segal).

Royal Wedding...

This says how much I care...

 

That is all.