International News
Sarah Main tackles tall poppys
High profile Australian house DJ Sarah Main chatted to Skrufff this week about her... [more]
New York chief Mayor Bloomberg flip-flopped on overturning the City’s infamous cabaret anti-dancing laws this week after briefly hinting he might take action. “I think the issues with the cabaret law tend to be not around dancing. It tends to be that, when you do have dancing, they tend to have more problems with abuse of alcohol and drugs and that sort of thing,” he told the New York Daily News on Monday, though two days later backtracked. ‘’I think it’s probably likely that we won’t get to it this year,” he told a conference in Washington. “I want to make sure we get it right.’’
Acclaimed US author/social affairs expert Barbara Ehrenreich also addressed the City’s zealously enforced dancing ban in a lengthy feature article in the New York Times highlighting the vital safety valve role free-spirited dancing has traditionally occupied throughout history. “Facing what he saw as an epidemic of melancholy, or what we would now call depression, the 17th-century English writer Robert Burton placed much of the blame on the Calvinist hostility to ‘dancing, singing, masking, mumming and stage plays,’ she noted in a New York Times blog. “In some cultures, ecstatic dance has been routinely employed as a cure for emotional disorders. Banning dancing may not cause depression, but it removes an ancient cure for it,” she added.
Gay party promoter Daniel Nardicio also got political this week, launching an ambitious campaign to politicise US gays via a ‘Gay Talk Express’ van sponsored by Playgirl magazine. Conceived in response to John McCain’s ‘Straight Talk Express’, the van will be touring various Pride events in America where passers-by will have the opportunity to debate with Daniel man-to-man, in the back of the van. “Our vehicle has one message, and it’s ‘Gay Talk’ – a language that speaks to many, many more Americans these days than ‘Straight Talk’. We talk sex,” Daniel explained. “If you see our van on the road, and you’re hot, unlike McCain’s, we’ll pick you up and take for a ride. And by ride, we mean RIDE”, he promised.
Chatting to Skrufff, Daniel admitted coming over ‘all patriotic’ and promised he’ll be targeting people (guys) of all sexual persuasions. “I’m going through a phase where I’m loving straight guys who do anything for money,” said Daniel. “I’m planning to drive through the south and pick up hot guys and shag ‘em in the back (of the, ahem, van, that is),” he joked. “I think gays could be a much stronger demographic if we could pull more than just a look together. Like band together, and act like a force to be reckoned with. But the only way we’d do that is if Madonna told us to,” he sighed.
“Gays are narcissists by nature, but we have to look at the bigger picture,” he urged. “We are going to be able to marry soon, it’s inevitable, but we can’t block candidates because they won’t support us on the issue – it’s not all about us. The environment, the war and poverty are much bigger issues than whether I can walk down the aisle.”
LukeIrwin says...
i dubai in the middle east they have made a law recently banning all dancing outside at bars and clubs. they even have signs up and bouncers enforce it!!!