We're Here! We're Queer! We're Settling!

there exists in life certain balances that the universe needs to maintain in order to prevent reality from crumbling into the metaphysical ether:

life and death.
near and far.
agony and ecstasy.
light and darkness.
good and evil.
mickey and donald.

sort of like a gift-with-purchase, you cant have one of these without also having the other to balance the scales.

occasionally though, the universe throws us a curveball; a singularly unique experience which has no opposite number; no dark side (or bright side, as it were). take for instance Gay/Lesbian Television. it's all inherently awful. sadly there exists no good gay television...no sweet and shining Samantha to balance out the dark and malicious Serena...to balance out the crap.

take, for instance, the latest in addition to the crap heap, the Here! network's the Lair. would you believe it's a spin-off of Dante's Cove? I came across it in Netflix's archives the other day and thought "eh...what the hell; it can't be as bad as the Cove, right"? wrong. it's actually worse, if you can believe it. set mainly the Cove's local sex-club (doesn't every small town have one?), the Lair, the proscuitto-thin plot is built on the premise that the underground hangout for the Cove's S & M set is frequented by vampires. The ringleader of this merryband of cock/blood suckers is a Dorian Grey-esque character with a wonky eye and a tattoo of a seahorse. there's quite a bit more plot advancement than in the Cove, which is based on incredibly repetative dialogue (ie. "I think he's dead", "yes, he looks like he's dead", "that's how the dead look") delivered by actors who look attractive only if you blur your eyes a little while watching . i found out later, thanks to IMDB, that the entire cast is made up of porn stars, including (wait for it...wait for it...) Colton Ford. don't laugh...he's the best actor in the entire show...probably on the whole damn network. thankfully, unlike Dante's Cove, it's only 25 minutes an episode (10 of which are dedicated to the same Red Shoe Diaries sex scenes that it's parent show was known for). We're four episodes in and i'm not quite sure what the whole point is, but i know it's awful.

yes, gay television seems to be in dire straits. the more of these crappy shows we watch on DVD the more glad i am that we don't subscribe. i'd really be kicking myself if we shelled out more money to sit through such dreck. it's a pretty sad state of affairs when these shows make you miss the halcyon days of such awful gay stereotypes like Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, Billy Crystal on Soap and Men on Film from In Living Colour. at least with those shows the straight networks were pandering to us.

for now, all we have are the black-holes of the Here! and Logo networks, creating a disharmonious reality in the gay community.