Europride 2006 Report

On Saturday I was on my first ever gay parade. It was hectic, busy, crowded and very very hot (weather and otherwise) and I loved every minute.

I got up fairly early (which means I had no porper weekend to recover from the jetlag since getting back from my vacation), took care of the doggies and headed to town to meet Jane. I was a bit late because of many London Underground closed routes and stations. We found the signing up point fairly easily as we just followed anything that looked gay.

All dressed up and nowhere to go (yet)

We signed up, ending up with a really weird Senior Steward who did not instill us with confidence. He sounded a bit crazy and kept leaving his radio with us when he went wandering about. We had to sit around and wait for a while in the park which wasn't too bad considering the lovely weather. I had three delicious chocolate muffins for breakfast and because they were sitting in the sun a little it made all the chocolate chips melty and yummy. But since this post is about Europride and not yummy chocolatey treats I'll leave it at that.

Eventually, after helping carry a box of condoms to a van, we finally started walking toward our spot in Trafalgar Square. The parade already started, but it was quite slow and we had plenty of time to get there. On the way we passed Christian Voice (or as I prefer to call them, Christian Void). We weren't fortunate enough to be working near then and get to see them screaming their heads off at the parade.

Christian Void

I assume since there weren't enough volunteers, our team was spread around very thinly and we could barely see each other. Still, the crowds were fairly well behaved and things moved smoothly. I hope I wasn't the only one annoyed to see Ken Livingstone marching at the head of the parade- You can't pretent to be a supported of the gay community while hosting visits from Mugabe and other hate mongers from around the world. Avoiding his speech was one of the reasons I gave the rally in Trafalgar Square a skip. There were a couple of really long breaks in the parade, leading people to think that it might have been finished and since I didn't have a radio and my Senior Steward was nowhere in sight I couldn't tell either. But it was eventually over.

Ken "Mugabe's Best Friend Forever" Livinstone

There were some clever costumes and floats and lots of average ones. Some clever and some just provocative.

Men (and women) in uniform! Niiice.

More niiice.

We signed up at the end and used the volunteer discount to eat in Balans, one of the best restuarants in Soho, with a 50% discount. Soho was also fun, busy and colorful. It was sunny and many nice bodies (and some not so nice) were exposed to the sun. We were too tired to volunteer for the afternoon events and we just went home, tired and happy.

It was nice to see Israeli representation.

My initial problem with gay parades was the celebration of cliches. That those people marching are giving gay people a bad name and enforcing cliches of gays being sexually obsessed freakshows. While those examples were on this parade, there were also many others: we had policemen and sailors, gay parents, family and friends, Muslim gays, Jewish gays, gay parents and so on. The parade was an interesting portrayal of the diversity within the gay community.



And yes, there were drag queens, S&M fetish lovers, half naked guys and outrageous costumes. So what? What's wrong with any of that? Since when did we become a fashion and moral police, telling consenting adults what to wear and how to have their sex?

It's all about freedom, isn't it?

--Mickey

And now: tons more pictures! Enjoy.

This girl was a complete nutter. Still pictures do her no justice.

Fruitcake anyone?

Gay muslims unvieled. Yay gay muslims!

This gal stopped every second to take pictures and without a doubt one of the main reasons for the gaps!

This is what I'd look like if I wasn't too lazy to work out in the gym. *sigh*

This frog was promoting the Rainforest Cafe restuarant. No idea if he's gay, but he's CUTE.

Puppy Love 2

Like I promised, the second Puppy Love strip is published. To keep it simple and tidy I created a new blog dedicated exclusively to the comics.

Jane's character, Halaleset, and her demon make their debut in the strip.


The Puppy Love blog is dedicated entirely to the strip. Check it out!

Spider-Man 3 Trailer

What can I say? It looks really good. The second Spider-Man movie was better than the first one and it seems the third might be the best one yet.

It might take getting used to the new design of Spider-Man alien costume (the one that later becomes Venom), but it does look nice and creepy. The trailer shows a lot, but at least in a way that doesn't really spoil the story and we don't get to see Venom at all (unless I missed that bit). There's almost a whole year of wait, so probably there will be a more spoiler-filled trailers later on which I will try my best to avoid...

--Mickey

Europride 2006

I've never been to a Gay Parade before. I always thought they were crude events meant for loud attention seekers who think being gay makes them special. I was feeling strongly against the concept of "gay community" as I always felt I have much more in common with gamers or horror movie fans than with people who are sexually and romantically attraced to members of their own sex.

I never wanted to be defined by my sexuality and just live my life as a normal human being.

I got it all wrong, it didn't matter how I viewed myself as much as how others viewed me. There are many people in this world who believe I should die and eternally burn in hell because of who I am and many more who fight to prevent me from having equal rights. Even in the UK. A Jewish man can marry a Christian woman so there's no real "religious" reason for preventing gays from marrying. Calling it "Civil Union" is another way to remind gays that they are second class citizens, not much different than walking around with a little pink triangle. It's a lot like the joke in South Park where married gay couples would have exactly the same rights, but will be refered to as "Butt Buddies".

There are many people who do fight for gay rights and I should help when I can. I'm not going to become the new Peter Tatchell, but I'll do what I can. I'm starting small by volunteering to be a Steward at the parade this Saturday. My friend Jane is joining me and I explained to her that, no, she doesn't have to pretend to be Lesbian to help!

I went to the briefing last Saturday and they covered most of the issues we will have to deal with. I'm sure it's going to be a very interesting and very tiring day.

In conclusion, the more I think about, the more I realize that gay parades piss off all the right people. So yay!

--Mickey

Puppy Love

I got back from my great trip last week, but didn't have much energy to write since I was still jetlagged. Over the weekend I'll try to write a mini-report and put some pictures.

I don't write much, mostly because I can't write about the really interesting things that going on in my life - for the following reasons:

1. It might jinx good stuff that might happen.
2. It's unproffesional to discuss projects at such early stages
3. Signed NDAs.
4. It's just stupid, OK?

But I found a way to inject life into my blog. Depending on how popular it will turn out to be, I'm starting a weekly comicstrip called Puppy Love. It's the adventures of my character from World of Warcraft, Puppy the Rogue.

If you play on the European server Venture Co and you want your character to have a cameo, please let me know.


--Mickey

Oh Canada!

I know I've been writing less and less, but at least now for the next couple of weeks I have a great excuse. We went on a trip that includes a few days in Vancouver, Canada, a cruise around Alaska, a bit more Canada afterwards and finishing with a few days in the sun in LA.

We'll be boarding the boat today and I won't have Internet access (or to be more accurate, it'll be too expensive), so I wanted to quickly post this picture. Vancouver is littered with these colourful bears and this one is one of the best.

Laters,

--Mickey

Save Invasion!

Yes, quiet times. Didn't have much to write about recently and next week I'm going on a vacation for two and a half weeks so I'll probably write even less (though I might pop up with a mini Vacation Diary).

The only thing worth writing about is Invasion. The first series just finished in the UK and ABC decided not to pick it up for a second series. So there's a fan campaign to make them change their minds or find someone else to pick it up. Invasion was the best Sci-Fi series I've watched in a long time and it ended on a great cliffhanger. If you're a fan too please visit the website and sign the petition.

--Mickey

E3 2006

Another year, another E3. Lots of good games, but to be honest I'm a bit jaded with most of them. Seems like it's a new FPS or 3rd person shooter about a futuristic soldier for hire who fights terrorists or rebels or whatnot. And he's usually called Jake Drake, Sam Richards or Dave Flint. Same old games with HD graphics. I'm sure they'll be decent games, but it's nothing to get me excited about.

At the risk of sounding like a Nintendo fanboy, the Nintendo games did excite me and made me want to get a Wii console right now. Heck, make it yesterday! The new Mario, Super Mario Galaxy looks great, Super Smash Bros Brawl looks fantastic with Solid Snake as a playable character. Looks like lots of fun. And there's a delightful DS surprise in the form of Yoshi's Island 2, one of my favourite games ever.

So yay. All in all, it was a good E3. I'm not bothered about not going. Sure, I'd like to go once just for the sake of it, but I actually prefer sitting at home/work and watch the trailers on the computer than actually que up for ages to play the game for only five minutes. It's like taking just a tiny little bite out of delicious food when you're starving.

--Mickey

Birthday report

Still alive. Not much has changed since I made the move to my 28th year.

It was a very nice party with a lot of people. In fact, I don't think we ever entertained more people at once in that house. There were snacks, pizzas, drinks (a lot of Champaign) and videogames (Singstar dominated).

My partner got me Guitar Hero and it really is that good. I don't know if the novelty will be as short lived as Donkey Konga's, only time will tell.

Oh, and there was cake. A FANTASTIC cake. Got a about two slices left - makes a very good breakfast!

Two years to go to 30. Yikes.

--Mickey