Solsticyclizen

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Evolve and Learn Before You Die

Spencer Cox, one of more eloquent, sassy and self-taught scholars of the AIDS activist community, died today. If you didn't know him, I feel sad for you. I feel sad, period.

Here is the ACT UP obituary.

Here is Treatment Action Group's In Memoriam.

Here is Spencer's eloquent essay in POZ Magazine, "I See Dead People."

Here is a Towleroad post about Spencer (replete with inane comments from a few total jerks whom Spencer could have withered with a single remark!)

An example: "So World AIDS Day is on Saturday -- has everyone finished their shopping?"
 
Here is a Pink News obituary. Excerpt:

Spencer Cox, one of the most significant AIDS activists in America has died aged 44 of AIDS related causes.

Fa la la la la...

...and buy my books. Rather fitting for the holidays, doncha think?

...and scene.

Bikes of New York

Why do you hate cyclists?

Slate explores the facts and figures of this antipathy towards cyclizens. You hate them when they disobey traffic laws. You hate them when they cut you off. But did you know that cyclist-caused accidents have dramatically decreased in the past several years?

A recent study by researchers at Rutgers and Virginia Tech supports that hypothesis. Data from nine major North American cities showed that, despite the total number of bike trips tripling between 1977 and 2009, fatalities per 10 million bike trips fell by 65 percent. While a number of factors contribute to lower accident rates, including increased helmet usage and more bike lanes, less aggressive bicyclists probably helped, too.

Vocality

My BARtab interview with Dead Can Dance vocalist Lisa Gerrard, HERE.

Booked

Oh, by the way, you may have noticed a dearth of posts here, if you check this blog. I've pretty much focused on the new one, jimprovenzano.blogspot.com, which includes posts about my Lambda Literary Award-winning novel (I love typing that), Every Time I Think of You.

Please go there for updates.

And please buy my books, on Amazon.com (paperback and Kindle), Barnes and Noble (paperback and Nook), and select independent bookstores.

Evolved

“Over the course of several years, as I talked to friends and family and neighbors. When I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I about those soldiers or airmen or Marines, sailors, who are out their fighting on my behalf yet feel constrained, even now that don’t ask don’t tell is gone, because they’re not able to commit themselves in a marriage; At a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”

- President Barack Obama

ABC News

Huffington Post

Revolution

MOSCOW — As a bloody skirmish between police and opposition activists in central Moscow was drawing to a close on Sunday a small boy on a tiny bicycle pedaled through the crowd and approached a line of hulking riot police.

He sat there for a moment, balancing on his training wheels, staring at the menacing troops who were decked out in blue camouflage uniforms and full riot gear, nightsticks at the ready.

A group of protesters who had been heckling the cops began jeering, “Here’s the guy that will storm the Kremlin. Be ready boys! Here he comes!”

Julia Ioffe, the Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker and Foreign Policy magazine, happened to be standing right behind him. She whipped out her iPhone and snapped a picture which she tweeted out to her over 6,000 followers with the caption “Russia’s Tianamen (sic) image.”

Read more on ABC News.

8

Watch the live taped staged reading of Lance dustin Black's "8," with Martin Sheen, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Jane Marsh, Kevin Bacon, Chris Colfer, Matt Bomer and many more stellar actors!

Life. Cycle.

Sh*t Cyclists Say

Shelved?

Lots of people are talking about who the online book shopping experience has hurt independent bookstores.

For example, Toronto's Glad Day Bookstore is facing its end after decades of service as a pioneering store.

The Toronto Star reports that John Scythes, who bought the store from founder Jearld Moldenhauer in 1991, has put a sign on the counter inviting anyone interested in buying it to contact him. According to a staff member, he began looking about a month ago, reaching out first to friends and customers first.

Glad Day first opened in 1970, operating out of Moldenhauer’s apartment in downtown Toronto, and was a hub for the city’s burgeoning queer community. (Giovanni’s Room, the oldest gay bookstore in the U.S., opened in 1973.)

So, it was with particular concern that I developed Every Time I Think of You and its marketing campaign, as well as its sales availability.

Well, now you can buy it from Giovanni's Room, the historic LGBT bookstore in Philadelphia. It's the oldest bookstore in the USA, and it holds a particular place in my heart. Giovanni's Room hosted the first reading of PINS, my first novel, and it snowed that day, most of Philly's gay wrestling team came by, plus it was my birthday.

Anyway, there won't be an East Coast reading tour this time around. So buy my books and others through their website and they get a share of the sale. (Sure, it's still the big conglomo I published it with, but you get the idea.)

Every Time I Think of You, now at Giovanni's Room's online store!