First Person Queer, edited by Richard Labonte and Lawrence Schimel (and yes, the shameless part, featuring an essay by me) won a prestigious Lambda Literary Award for best LGBT anthology last night at the 20th annual awards in West Hollywood.

I wanted to take a moment to congratulate and thank all of the truly amazing contributors to the anthology, and of course Richard and Lawrence for all their amazing work and dedication. Also, many congrats to the fantastic (Canadian!) press Arsenal Pulp that put out this book, and for continuing to support queer and independent culture through publishing.

More about the (award-winning!) book after the jump.
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If you live in Halifax, and enjoy kicking it on two wheels, check out this awesome weekly event:

Every Tuesday from 6 until 8, there will be women/identified bike nights at the Bike Space at Bloomfield Centre. The idea is to have a casual, drop in style night where basic bicycle repair skills are accessible to women and trans folks. Bring your bike in and ask questions and we’ll move through some basic repair and maintenance info.

These nights are to bring folks together in a safe, non-competitive and friendly learning environment. The workshops are run by women/identified folks for women/identified folks because, many times, it’s just more comfortable learning that way.

Bloomfield Centre is at 2786 Agricola Street, at Almon.

A little short on time these days, so I’ll leave you with a no-brainer this time around.

The thing about Kate Bush is that she never really stopped being weird. She made it big as a teenager in the late 70s with her melodramatic, gothic, Bronte-inspired hit Wuthering Heights, but did she then fall into the banal pit of superstardom, letting managers and music execs craft her into a predictable and semi-clothed pop star? Oh hells no (though they did try). Dress up like a lion or a bat on your album cover? Sure. Make dog-barking noises in a song? No doubt. Reference Stanley Kubrick, James Joyce, or Wilhelm Reich in your lyrics? Bush has done it.

Here is the video for her 1980 track Army Dreamers, a song which, sadly, will probably never stop being relevant.

Fun fact: It was Bush, not Madonna, who pioneered the headset microphone for live performances, which she did in order to be able to execute full-on interpretive dances during her sets. An innovator after my own heart.

And oh heck, here’s the video for Wuthering Heights, after the cut. This video alone has inspired probably as many fan-imitations as The Numa Numa Dance, and you can see why. When I’m bored I like to watch the dozens of women (and some men) who don red dresses, head out to a field somewhere, and, you know, let their souls fly free.

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My taste in movies is a little eccentric – most of the time, I like documentaries better than “fiction film.” So a few days ago I was thrilled to stumble on Freedocumentaries.org, a website that streams hundreds of short and feature-length documentaries. Documentaries are divided by title, region or theme. There are a few weird ones thrown into the mix – 9/11 conspiracy videos and the like – but also a lot of big name documentaries, from Sicko to Shut Up & Sing. I was pleased to find Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, a great little film about Fox News. Maybe this means I will finally get around to watching The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a leftist favourite about Venezuela.

I have to say, though, that the legality of the site is a bit fuzzy. According to the frequently asked questions, they haven’t asked permission to host most docs, choosing instead to embed video from other, presumably sketchier, websites. That’s not to say that the site’s creators don’t have noble intentions – there are no ads, and they seem genuinely passionate about introducing their visitors to high-quality, educational films, and helping independent filmmakers get their work seen. But if copyright infringement really offends you, this won’t be your kind of site.

I’m very excited to announce that our own blogger Cate Simpson has taken over as web editor of the Shameless blog!

Last January, Cate left her native Edinburgh, philosophy degree in hand, to take over Toronto as a freelance journalist.

Now, in addition to blogging for us on everything from trends in queer rights cases in the U.S. to Grand Theft Auto, Cate writes for Xtra and Torontoist.

She’s completely shameless, and really, really nice. We are totally lucky to have her on the team.

Welcome, Cate!

Shameless writer Zahra Rasul just sent me a link to this article about Dunkin Donuts pulling a TV ad with Rachael Ray. The celebrity donut-hawker is wearing a scarf that looks “too Palestinian.”

Rachael Ray lectures us on the evils of American imperialism. Solution to this problem? Buy Dunkin Donuts!

And here I was worried that once Mary Kate Olsen wore one, the keffiyeh became a depoliticized and empty symbol of vapid celebrity! I guess it still has symbolic power when it is draped around the neck of someone whose doesn’t look quite as white as the Olsen twins.

Of course it all started with the conservative Michelle Malkin calling it “the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.”

But the question remains: is it, or isn’t it a keffiyeh? And what the heck does a keffiyeh really symbolize, America?

Stay tuned for the next print issue of Shameless to find out, where Zahra will take a look at the keffiyeh’s history. And of course, check out Thea’s blog post on keffiyeh too.

Toronto readers, this looks amazing. And it’s free.

The film is also showing in Vancouver, Halifax and Ottawa.
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The Good For Her Sexual Health, Education & Pleasure Project (SHEPP) is a new not-for-profit organization whose mission is to provide free pleasure based sexual health education workshops to youth and other marginalized communities. These workshops are available throughout the Greater Toronto Area.

We come to your organization or group to provide information on a wide spectrum of issues regarding sex, sexuality, health and pleasure. This includes topics such as healthy relationships, HIV/AIDS and other STI preventions, pregnancy, sexuality, communication and all kinds of different sex. Our focus is on inclusion and the promotion and respect for diversity.

We will be hosting a youth focus group on Thursday June 5 for all youth under 24 to assist us in developing relevant curriculum for the project. We want to hear the perspectives of youth on what pleasure based sexual education means to them, what they would like to learn about, and other opinions on sexual health and sexuality. This will ensure the creation of accurate materials and information for the efficacy of the project to empower youth.

Venue information and details:

Metro Hall
55 John Street
Room 302
(South-east corner of King and John, two blocks east of Spadina)
Toronto, ON M5V 3C6
Public Transit: subway to St. Andrew, then walk through “PATH” to Metro Hall or walk above ground 2 blocks west.

Time: 5:00pm to 7:00pm.

Dinner (including vegetarian options) and TTC tickets will be provided for participation. Door prizes will also be given away!

We ask that interested participants RSVP to Carlyle Jansen at carlyle@rogers.com

Should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Anne Applebaum in Slate this morning has a discussion of the pressure we put on high school seniors to get into the top universities, and whether that’s anything new.

American parents, she says, are caught between wanting to prepare their kids for a super-competitive world, and a misty-eyed nostalgia for the bike-riding and kegger parties of their own youth. She suggests that this nostalgia is a curiously American phenomenon, and that parents in Britain and Korea expect their kids to work their butts off without fretting over the vanishing notion of childhood. She also implies that today’s high school students aren’t, in fact, working any harder than their parents did.

But maybe the perception that each successive generation of high school students is working harder isn’t entirely based in a rose-tinted view of our own past. I left school six years ago (albeit in Britain) and there were only about two weeks of my four years at university where I worked as hard as I did for most of my big exam year at school.

Maybe we should start worrying a little bit about the pressure on teenagers to succeed. Is it so wrong to want to ride a bike?