Qr Magazine

Erm…

Cough!

My favorite picture is of the gorgeous seaside training facility for the Croatian national water polo team near the end of the gallery there.

Via Towleroad

Also the Oscar nominees were announced.

Crap… Crap… Crap… Martin Scorsese…Crap…

Isaiah Washington of Grey’s Anatomy fame did recently meet with several gay activists to make amends for his vicious anti-gay shrapnel-like insult of one of his gay co-stars.

Being an honorable gay youth activist, of course, I was in the room when Isaiah met with GLAAD.

Ok that’s not true, I was actually at a McDonalds this morning when an insane homeless person ranted at me while I listened to my iPod. I unglued the headphones from my ears briefly enough to hear the word “faggot” escape from his lips.

Now, while I do appreciate “No Name Calling Week” and Isaiah’s heartfelt realization that namecalling is “painful and wrong,” I feel that this is just pussy-footing around the issue.

I believe Isaiah should have been dealt with the same way that I dealt with the crazy man in McDonalds, and that is to stand there as he receives an entire cup’s worth of scalding hot McDonalds coffee to the face.

I’m not advocating violence here! Just throwing this out as one strategy that quickly silenced a misguided soul.

Granted the man recovered alarmingly fast and tried to push me down some stairs with crazy strength.

Maybe GLAAD and I are going on about it the wrong way though.

Beyond hot scalding coffee to the face, my more realistic idea for dealing with Isaiah has nothing to do with public service announcements (after all this hubbub, I would suspect Isaiah hates gays even more).

If GLAAD and Isaiah want to stop bullies across the nation, then just send him to various campuses across America naked and wearing a sign reading “I’m a big fat idiot.” That way he can distract all the bullies at least for one day.

Far more effective than “the more you know” commercials.

Anyway, perv on Merlin Santa and let’s forget this ever happened:

Jesus, he’s dead now! Now I’m really bummed out. DAMN YOU ISAIAH!
___________________________________

Qr Notes

Thanks to MOC Blog for the write up (and compliments). I believe this magazine will survive declining print readership because of high demand, passion from our readers/submitters, and the general interest issues we deal with….and if it doesn’t then we’ll just turn into a porn site. How’s that for honesty?

I can’t believe people are still having the GSA discussion, what type of yuppie scum is at the helm of these schools that don’t want to let them form their clubs?

___________________________________

Why do musicians get away with displaying skinny white models but magazines don’t?

Isn’t that just as body confusing?

On an related note - This is exactly how I walk back home after going to a bar

On Shawn Hornbeck who was abducted and found in some 300 lb dude’s home:

When asked if they thought their son had been sexually abused, Pam Akers said, “I don’t want everybody to think that he had this perfect life with this guy. There’s no way he had a perfect life with this guy.”

I don’t think anyone in their right mind would think that an 11 year old could have the mental capacity to judge that a situation he’s in is something he could or should walk away from…

Oh wait its Bill O Reilly for the block!

“The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents… There was an element here that this kid liked about his circumstance.”

It’s sort of how female coworkers are asking for it by listening to you talk about vibrators and threesomes

…allegedly…

The ultra-conservative mind is starting to make some sort of sense to me though. If two gay guys can get married, then that will lead to pedophilia because children can sort-of consent, and if that’s true, then there’s obviously something dogs and sheep enjoy about sex with humans otherwise they’d make the decision to run away or bite you.

In such a freely concenting world, I still don’t think anyone would consent to sleeping with Bill O Reilly. Nice try though.

Mary from the Agenda suggested a magazine for young lesbians.

…And why the hell not? Last time I checked lesbians read too!

I seem to remember someone telling me that a lesbian youth magazine had been started once and had subsequently failed, though no concrete reason was given to me as to why it had failed.

Its a topic I’d love to further delve into. Imagine it, a Qr for lezzies. With hot content for lesbian girls that wouldn’t devolve too badly into straight boy fantasy (but hey, we can accept straight boy readers, Publishers GOTTA EAT!)

Naturally I wouldn’t head such a venture, I’d seek a capable Editor for that gig, preferably a really butch buzzed cut lesbian with a limp.

None of this lipstick lesbian editorial nonsense…

_____________________________

Qr Notes

This Isaiah thing is just a long line of Hollywood BS stories.

Someone says something bad, they deny it, apologize for it, blame booze (they skipped that one in this case), meet with ______ leaders, wash/repeat. Whole companies are built that deal with this sort of damage control.

Gimme a break, it isn’t a public breakthrough, its PR. Don’t forget to buy your Grey’s Anatomy T-Shirt on the way out of this fracas.
_____________________________

I don’t want anyone feeling left out, so this one goes out to all the older gays out there…

I’m very sympathetic to older guys, most of my friends are 30 HEYOOOO!!

For XM radio users, tune into the The Agenda around 6pm this Monday, I’ll be on the air talking about Qr and maybe some lesbian stuff too. Here’s hoping.

Towleroad was cool enough to give a shout-out to Qr Magazine (wow these blog things really might be hip!).

Overall reception has been awesome. It ranges from surprising approval to mastubatory. This wouldn’t be the internet wtihout detractors though, and so we’ve noticed a few people saying our magazine is TOO WHITE.

That’s fair enough, too white is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I believe you can never be TOO white as a quick scroll through a gallery of my exes would reveal all sorts of hideous shades of pale white and pale white-yellow. A close friend of mine, by turn, is fond of movies ending with the suffix -rican, so he won’t have ANY white really.

What bothers me is that after flipping through our sample issue a few people still maintain we are too white and that we will forever be too white, as if we somehow couldn’t get what it means to be non-white in the gay world.

One such comment, whose origin I won’t reveal, goes like this:

But after previewing your publication, I must stand by what I said. My eyes glazed over looking at White boy after White boy. I really don’t understand what your definition of diversity is. That you have a few Black (I counted 3), Asian (maybe 2?), & Latino (so white I could barely tell) faces scattered throughout 60 pages?

What offended me about this was the part after Latino, “so white I could barely tell,” as if a light-skinned latino was somehow “less latino” than someone mocha brown. I find this personally offensive because I wonder whether he counted me under Latino…you know…Mr. Editor-in-Chief Guatemalan here? The guy standing next to Condoleeza Rice (go on and try and find me!)

Did I make the Latino cut? And more importantly, should I be counting the number of boys that appear in the magazine by how closely they fall into racial paradigms? If I see “maybe 2?” Asians in the mag, should I go and find “definitely 2″ more Asians? How do I measure Asian? or Latino in that case?

Do we really still live in that world where we all think a race looks a specific set way? Where all light-skinned people are “white boys” and Latinos are only chocolate brown?

Ultimately Qr is MORE diverse than the mainstream gay mags and even MORE diverse than the ethnic gay mags. I could write you a list of all the different ethnicities in our sample issue and in our staff, but that would defeat the purpose of diversity.

However, I’m not one to shy away from controversy or disagreement, so you better believe I’ll be gathering material for our Militant Black Gay issue.

Arriba arriba! Andale! Andale!

Ed. in Chief.
Kevin J.

Qr Magazine—a new monthly magazine by and for young gay men.

NEW YORK, Jan. 11—Qr Magazine is the new national monthly magazine founded and operated by a dedicated staff of twenty-somethings for the post-high-school, pre-portfolio young gay guy.

From college parties to first relationships, big city life to forging friendships, Qr Magazine celebrates the wild lives of teens, students and young gay professionals living in post-civil rights/pre-gay marriage America, while also providing a unique avenue for advertisers to speak directly to a trendsetting audience.

“The current top U.S. gay publications [Out, Advocate, Genre, Instinct] are mostly aimed towards an older gay and lesbian readership, and lack the authenticity and punch that Qr delivers,” explains Eric Bogs, 29, Publisher of Qr Magazine.

Brought to you by the former staff of XY Magazine, Qr looks to dominate the 18-28 gay audience with fresh content month after month, featuring:

• reader stories of dating disasters and wild nights out with friends
• opinionated views on current events, pushing the limits of political correctness
• sexy one-of-a-kind photo spreads, showing boys you won’t see elsewhere
• first-hand reviews of gay life on college campuses across America
• support info on dealing with debt, parents, and hangovers

…and tons of content that makes most magazines blush!

“We started Qr after being frustrated by ‘the norm’.” says Bogs. “How the media represents us, how our generation feels left out, how we’re not quite ‘Generation X’ and we’re so different from the generation of pioneering gays that came before us. Young gays aren’t defined by their sexuality, and Qr is a magazine that doesn’t tell them who to be, what to buy or what to wear. Instead, Qr is a soapbox to shout from and a community to share.”

Each issue of Qr is collectible, printed on thick stock with few advertisements. Every Qr issue is specially themed around one concept such as “outsider”, “discotech”, “lust”, “cheater”, “superstar”—hip topics that resonate with our readers’ young lives and sets the magazine stylistically apart from competitor’s noisy covers.

“What we’re doing with Qr is making it our reader’s magazine.” says Kevin Joffré, 24, Editor. “We feature reader stories, poems, photos and opinions alongside our columnists, editorials, and interviews. It’s a user-generated product for a user-focused era. The boys who read Qr are the same people who drive MySpace and YouTube—they know the value of producing their own content and enjoy seeing themselves in print. This is a magazine for gay youth because it is the only magazine that won’t talk down to you.”

“…and featuring the most inventive photo spreads with the cutest boys helps our explain our popularity.” adds Greg Frederick, 24, the Art Director/Photographer for Qr, referring in part to the monthly “Boys Kissing” section, filled with sexy, life-affirming photos of—you guessed it—boys kissing, which has already proven to be a fan favorite. “We speak to the pierced, the punks, the skaters, the geeks and clubaholics who feel ignored by gay media.”

Qr Magazine also provides resources for gay teens in need and support for young men struggling to make sense of post-college life. “We take a hard look at the political issues that directly affect us,” says Joffré, “but we’re not just a resource, and we’re certainly not a fluffy fashion mag—Qr is the nerve center for all things young and gay. Qr belongs to everyone who feels left out by the mainstream LGBT press.”

With an already strong presence on Myspace [http://myspace.com/qrmagazine] and on the blogosphere, this might very well be the year of Qr.

To read the first issue of Qr, or to learn more please visit http://qrmag.com.

Contact:
Eric Bogs, President
Qr Media Inc
press@qrmag.com
phone: 310-694-7341
fax: 866-242-9041

A new article in The Economist explains that all those boys you’re intimidated by when you head out to the local bar are, in fact, butt-ugly:

If you have ever sat alone in a bar, depressed by how good-looking everybody else seems to be, take comfort—it may be evolution playing a trick on you. A study just published in Evolution and Human Behavior by Sarah Hill, a psychologist at the University of Texas, Austin, shows that people of both sexes reckon the sexual competition they face is stronger than it really is. She thinks that is useful: it makes people try harder to attract or keep a mate.

Turns out that our minds are programmed by default to take the least risky (and therefore least adventurous) route. In the case of my Friday night, that would mean staying in and playing chinese checkers with Grandma.

Give thanks for these incredibly useful chat-up lines:

• why have turkey when you can have some chicken?

• i’ve got some gravy for those mashed potatoes!
• hope you’re hungry, it’s time for a harvest!
• on your knees, pilgrim boy!
• have you had your stuffing yet?
• you wanna piece of my pumpkin pie?
• i put the “top” in “stove top”.
• i’ll give you something to be thankful for!
• you want some white meat?
• my cock’s like a drumstick, take a bite!
• i wanna land on you like plymouth rock.
• i’m gonna break your bread.
• come taste my cornucopia of hot hot lovin’.
• i’ve got a centerpiece for your table!
• i got some rolls for ya!
• cover me in cranberries and call me pilgrim!
• come sit at my kiddie table.

and last but not least…

• on your knees it’s time to give thanks.