After all, life doesn’t end at forty.

On today’s show we’re talking to Dr. Frank Spinelli, your gay doctor about his brand new book “The Advocate Guide to Gay Men’s Health and Wellness.”

Dr. Frank joins us to talk about why some gay men abuse drugs, transmit sexual diseases and how to keep romance hot well into your golden years.

Dr. Frank says one of the most important things you can do with your doctor is to come out as a gay man. Simply say “Doctor, I’m gay.” But for many of us, we shy away from doing that because we fear being judged or worse, being looked at as a freak because we don’t necessarily share the same sexual orientation as our doctor.

Thankfully, Dr. Frank is gay and fabulous! You can check out his MySpace page here.

Listen up folks, this podcast just might save your life!

The Advocate Guide to Gay Men’s Health and Wellness is a fabulous book that covers all the questions you may want to ask your doctor. It makes a great beside or bathroom book.

I believe that the single most important thing to improve the sexual health of all people in America is for the next President to push in congress a Universal Health Care plan for all people. The reality is that too many people living in the U.S. wait to the last minute to see a doctor because they simply cannot afford it.

I can only imagine the lives that would be saved and the improvement in transmission rates of all sexually transmitted diseases if we all had the same access to health care that almost all western nations enjoy.

For many of Americans, access to adequate health care is sketchy at best and I urge you to get Dr. Frank’s book (it’s $22 on Amazon) to educate yourself about the perils we face as gay men and also about some of the rewards and pleasures we’ve worked so hard to enjoy.

That being said, I urge you to save up and go see a doctor. There are many clinics in most urban areas that offer services on a sliding scale.

Your Dr. Feelgood for your podcasting regimen- Feast of Fools.

[Originally posted on 02.26.08]

Featured Book:
The Advocate Guide to Gay Men’s Health and Wellness
by Frank, M.D. Spinelli: Amazon

Featured Music:
Eric Himan - Everywhere All at Once: iTunes | Amazon | CD Baby
Eric Himan - There’s Gotta Be Something: CD Baby | MySpace

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Most people look insane wearing tiaras. Even still, gay men and women all across the world compete in pageants that cost a ton of money to participate in and for what? The competition is often so stacked against you and it’s more about who you know rather than how fierce a queen you are. And even if you do win, the titles don’t necessarily advance your career.

So why do these ladies do it? Because it’s fun. Just like thousands of young people line up to be rejected on American Idol television show, some gay men just think it’s a blast to go through all the trouble and sacrifice to put on a show.

Drag ties us to something powerful and we enjoy the temporary illusion we create when lip syncing and instead of being just another gay guy, we’re Diana Ross! A little hair and make-up and the right outfit and attitude we’ve become royalty. Queen for a night.

On today’s show one of our local drag queens and behind-the-scenes pageant diva Richard Biasis, better known as Regina Upright, joins us to talk about what inspires drag queens to entertain others and themselves.

Why are these gay men spending so much time and effort to imitate strong powerful women? What makes Cher such an icon?

Listen as Marc Felion, Richard Biasis and me, Fausto Fernós talk about the British man dying from eating too many “fairy cakes” and the 39 year old Japanese man who got caught trying to show up at a high school trying to pass as a teenage schoolgirl wearing a uniform, makeup and long wig.

Oh, and yes, we unveil the DIRT on most drag queens in Chicago. What are Sal-E and Jo-jo really like? Who poured a pint of beer into my suitcase? Who stole my makeup?

Giving you the dirt you love- Feast of Fools.
[Originally posted on 02.27.08]

Featured Music:
Brian Kent - Breathe Life: CD Baby | Site

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How do you get off and have a good time on the internet superhighway without a fender bender?

On today’s show we have the recording of the live forum that Marc Felion and I, Fausto Fernós, moderated at the Center on Halsted last month. The forum was developed and sponsored by our friends at Lifelube to figure out how to have fun and be safe while looking for sex or love online. This forum featured three great experts on how the internet is changing our sexuality.

First, Stephan Adelson, former general manager of Manhunt, a hook up site for men seeking sex with men. He was part of the team that introduced the idea of displaying one’s HIV status in online personal profiles.

Stephan currently works as the Executive Director of the nonprofit Internet Intervention Incorporated. He also works as an internet consultant on privacy issues and recently developed National Guidelines for Internet Interventions (PDF).

Second, Beau Gratzer, director of HIV and STD prevention at Howard Brown Health Center. Beau oversees many sexual health programs including those targeted to gay men online in Chicago.

Beau served on the National Coalition of STD Directors’ expert advisory committee that recently published the “Internet Interventions Guidelines” which provide guidance to health departments and community organizations providing HIV/STI related health information and programs online

And Third, Doctor Brian Mustanski, Assistant professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Brian is among the first to study how gay, lesbian and bisexual people interact online.

He developed one of the first online studies of gay lesbian and bisexual people. The majority of his work focuses on the development of “sexual minority” people and how the Internet affects us. He is also working on a study on the health and development of LGBT youth.

Listen as we talk about looking for sex and love online, the mysterious bug chasers, internet addiction and the the hunting instinct,

We also take questions from the fabulous people who attended this very fun and informative questions from the audience.

You can also read a blow by blow account of the forum at Michael Lehet’s blog, “What’s A Boy To Do.” Thank you Michael!

Check out today’s sponsor:

Gay, Sexy, Health- Lifelube.org
Your “big tent” guide to gay men’s health,
from sex and drugs to Faeries and Bears
Your friendly concierge for all that’s gay, sexy and healthy.

Featured Music:
Mystechs - Escape from Planet Love: iTunes | Site

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Chet was a rare sexy specimen at the parade, but apparently he’s straight. He won the High Heel race again this year. (more…)

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Tom was a star high-school wrestler and entered college on a wrestling scholarship. For lack of better direction, he studied to be a social studies teacher. He eventually decided to become a Catholic priest as a way to channel his desire for reconciliation and social justice.

Tom entered the seminary but became disillusioned by the institution in which he had placed his faith. He fell in love with a fellow seminarian but he didn’t leave the seminary until he was stalked by another fellow seminarian.

When the stalking escalated, Tom turned him in and he got him kicked out of the seminary. Tom left of his own accord at that time and says he is still stalked by this guy to this day.

Today he’s happy, in love and a rising star in the national gay music scene. He’s been touring the country with his pal Eric Himan and singing his songs about rebirth and renewal, of love and loss and what lies beyond.

We had such a great time hanging out with Tom! Check out the photos we took in our Tom Goss photo gallery. He’s really good looking, funny, charming and a great musician- his second album Rise is one of my personal favorites.

There’s not a bad song in the album. He may not be the priest in any church, but he’s the priest of rock and roll to me and I wouldn’t mind being his altar boy!

Listen as Tom talks about the hypocrisy of the Catholic church, losing his grandpa, following your own path and his passion for social justice.

A deeply moving interview, plus Tom plays live in the home studio just for you!

God spelled backwards is FOF.

Check out today’s sponsor:

Big Jones Restaurant
Contemporary Southern Cuisine
Located in the heart of Andersonville in Chicago, Illinois
Fresh homemade food made with local seasonal ingredients with contemporary coastal southern flair

Featured Music:
Tom Goss - Rise: iTunes | CD Baby | Site

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The popularity of the “Sex in the City Movie,” a film adaptation of the tv series that’s popular with gay men make us wonder what’s behind this love affair between gay men and movies made for straight women?

Where does the term “chick flick” come from and what does it really mean? Although it once was used to degrade films made about women, it’s now seen as a legit genre all on it’s own.

The inclusion of gay comedians like comic Mario Cantone show that filmmakers these days take into consideration their loyal gay audiences.

On today’s show San Francisco Drag Queen Peaches Christ joins us to talk about those wonderful chick flicks every gay man must see. Movies made for women, about women but somehow strike a chord in every gay man’s heart.

What is the legacy of Hollywood’s leading ladies like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe and the men behind these great women like directors George Cuckor, Russ Meyers and Roger Ebert!

Peaches Christ’s fabulous film series Midnight Mass starts it’s 2008 series kicks off on 4th of July weekend, Friday and Saturday night with the film Showgirls.

Peaches Christ is goddess, and this is Feast of Fools.

Featured Movies:
• The Women (1939)
• Rebecca (1940)
• Mildred Pierce (1945)
• All About Eve (1950)
• How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
• Valley of the Dolls (1967)
• 9 to 5 (1980)
• The Color Purple (1985)
• Aliens (1986)
• Beaches (1988)
• Steel Magnolias (1989)
• The Handmaid’s Tale (1990)
• Thelma and Louise (1991)
• Clueless (1995)
• Showgirls (1995)

Check out today’s sponsor:

Steamworks Gym, Sauna and Baths.
Visit Steamwork’s website and register to get a discount
on your next visit. Enter “Feast of Fools” on the promo
code field to get the special discount.

Featured Music:
Don Juan Dracula - Young Debutantes II: iTunes | Amazon | CD Baby| Site

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Gay Season reaches it’s apex this Sunday as cities across the U.S. and abroad celebrate the modern gay rights movement by holding a Pride Parade.

Some may not know that the Parades commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Riots, a series of violent conflicts between queer folks and New York City cops that began on June 28, 1969 and lasted several days after the police raid of the Stonewall Inn gay bar.

The riots are seen as a critical turning point in the modern gay rights movement and helped galvanize people all across the U.S. to organize, protest and shape the future of sexual acceptance.

On today’s show Sal-E joins us to talk about his Muppet themed float for Green Dolphin Street bar in Chicago and follow up on all the drag queen drama happening these days.

If you’re going to the Pride Parade in Chicago hang out with us on the West side of Broadway, just South of Belmont, in front of the chili place. It’s shady there and you cna arrive to the parade late as it ends nearby!

Here are some pics of the parade in 2005, where we were trolling some hunky gay yuppie who was really enjoying watching the parade of hunks and skunks rolling on by.

Connell O’Donovan joins us for a phone interview to discuss the Mormon Church’s plan to aid the passing of a proposed amendment to the California constitution that will define marriage as the the union of a man to a woman.

Connell is a member of the support group “Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons” and a Mormon historian. He has written many works on Mormon history, including a history of homosexuality and Mormonism from 1840-1980 which is an interesting read.

O’Connell also shares with us his personal experience of growing up Mormon and the various ways they tried to change his and other people’s behaviors through such torturous methods as electroshock, vomit aversion, and exorcisms. They actually wanted to show him gay male porn and and give him a drug that would make him vomit and then later show him straight porn and give him a drug to experience euphoria. Can you believe it?

Drink Responsibly? You always hear those words of concern by liquor companies in ads, but we’re not sure what they mean by that. For many GLBT folks, our role with alcohol is a complex one, where bars bring us together, but for some the consumption of alcohol can ruin their lives.

How can we all have a healthier relationship with alcohol? How can we talk about drinking without pointing fingers?

Join me Fausto Fernós and Marc Felion and LifeLube, Project CRYSP, and the Chicago Task Force on LGBT Substance Use and Abuse at Sidetrack as we ponder these important topics in an alcohol friendly environment. Did I mention they serve purple slushy drinks? Yum.

Seating is limited please RSVP by clicking here.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 - 6 p.m.
Sidetrack, 3349 North Halsted
Doors open at 6 p.m.
Taping begins at 7 p.m.

The podcast that loves you back, and in a totally cool and not creepy way- Feast of Fools.

Check out today’s sponsor:

Gay, Sexy, Health- Lifelube.org
Your “big tent” guide to gay men’s health,
from sex and drugs to Faeries and Bears
Your friendly concierge for all that’s gay, sexy and healthy.

Featured Music:
Kennidi Monroe - Voluptous Diva: MySpace

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Sorry, I can’t make this parody song go on much longer, but please do attend the tale of Tracy Tyler.

On today’s show Tracy’s cast mate James Nedrud and musical director Jack Cameron come to talk about Sweeney Todd the musical, now in it’s final weekend in Chicago. We ask them about what attracts them to this macabre musical and what they thought of Tracy auditioning as man.

Here’s one of Tracy’s handsome friends in the show, actor James Nedrud. Don’t you think he looks like a young version of Tracy?

Tracy stars in Sweeney Todd as Beetle Banford, a bad guy who helps the villain get away with his terrible deeds. But like most bad guys, he gets the ultimate shave from Sweeney Todd.

And for those of you who love to hate Tracy, be sure to buy a ticket and see Tracy gets brutally murdered by Sweeney Todd. In the show, the dead bodies get ground up into savory meat pies and with Tracy, that’s a lot of meat pies! Anybody want to buy a franchise?

Women with extremely long fingernails are complaining about the iPhone touch, saying the interface keeps them from using the popular phone. They say its sexist not to make it available for woman with long nails.

But if you have long, bedazzled fingernails, doesn’t it limit you from doing a ton of things, like play the piano or put on contact lenses? I’m sorry, but that argument seems pretty weak, considering they already sell styluses for the iPhone for those who prefer to use a stick instead of their fingertips.

Saudi Officials take a page out off of Sweeney Todd by declaring you can now marry a one year old, as long as you don’t have sex with her. So you can make a marriage contract for your one year old daughter and she isn’t going to have to put out until later, like Mohamed’s wife Aisha who he married at age six but had sex with her at nine.

Police in Australia are crying out - Scooby Doo, Where Are You? A man in a rented Scooby Doo costume invaded a track event. He has alluded police and he used a fake drivers license and credit card to hire the costume so chances are slim that he’ll return it. I bet he’s off in the Mystery Machine with Shaggy smoking weed and planning his next prank.

Kids in Salt lake are now protesting high gas prices because their mom had to cut “cabel” to pay for their gas bills. Hopefully, at least, they’ll learn to spell with all that time on their hands that they won’t be watching “cabel.” The kids might be better off setting up a lemonade stand or work in a Chinese sweatshop to pay for the cable bills themselves if they want it that bad.

The controversial British Gay Heinz Mayonnaise Ad has been pulled due to customer complaints. The ad featured a NYC deli man serving up sandwiches to his kids who call him “mom” and his husband who he kisses and calls “sweet cheeks.” The ad never aired during choldren’s viewing hours, not because of the gay kiss, but because of “new rules from Ofcom that restrict ads for products high in fat, salt and sugar.”

Here’s our idea for a fun night- go have dinner at Big Jones Restaurant, then check out Tracy in Sweeney Todd the Musical- playing Friday and Saturdays at 8pm, June 27th & 28th at the Actors Theater Company at 1125 W. Loyola Avenue in Chicago.

Attend the tale of the Feast of Fools.

Check out today’s sponsor:

Big Jones Restaurant
Contemporary Southern Cuisine
Located in the heart of Andersonville in Chicago, Illinois
Fresh homemade food made with local seasonal ingredients with contemporary coastal southern flair

Featured Music:
Tom Goss - Rise: iTunes | CD Baby | Site

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On today’s show, Scott Bradley and Jonny Stax, the real-life gay couple behind the Scooty and JoJo show, join us to talk about being one of Chicago’s trashiest, campiest and funniest entertainment companies around.

Listen as Johnny and Scott talk about creating the Carpenter’s Halloween Special, Tran the Atari Musical and Mollywood the Musical. We joke with the duo that they create their shows from 80s mad libs or mixed up piles of Trivial Pursuit.

We met Jonny Stax about four years ago at one of our last pre-podcast shows we did at Schubas, where he haggled with a woman for a purple Feast of Fools t-shirt that we gave away from the stage. The t-shirt didn’t even have the “.net” added to it to refer to the website.

I remember making this t-shirt with Marc and how good we thought the colors looked together. It looked like a little Mardi Gras. It’s so nice to see our baby come home for a visit! These t-shirts do hold up against time, so you know that they will hold up at least four years down the road.

Did you check out Will Smith and David Letterman’s same sex kiss? The hunky actor dazzled the late night talk show host Monday when we went on to promote his new film, when all of a sudden the two men found themselves kissing each other.

Will Smith must be making up for taking the bad advice of homophobe actor Denzel Washington to not do a gay kiss in the film “Six Degrees of Seperation” despite the gay kiss being crucial to the plot. And poor Paul Schaffer will just have to play the keyboards alone tonight.

Also- pink doggie poop, God the Florida black guy who just loves cocaine and bad internet domain names (in the comments section.)

We welcome our new advertiser Big Jones Restaurant into the fold, be sure to check them out for dinner or drinks, you won’t be disappointed. I especially love their strawberry lemonade cocktails made with fresh mint. Yum.

Today’s your lucky day- no matter how you roll the dice, you always get the Feast of Fools.

Check out today’s sponsor:

Big Jones Restaurant
Contemporary Southern Cuisine
Located in the heart of Andersonville in Chicago, Illinois
Fresh homemade food made with local seasonal ingredients with contemporary coastal southern flair

Featured Music:
Mike Myers - The Love Guru (Music from the Motion Picture): iTunes | Amazon | Site

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We’re still trying to figure out why Amanda Steinstein loves to donate blood so gosh darn much. She says it’s for a good cause, but deep down inside, Marc and I think she enjoys the process of EXSANGUINATION, or giving blood. In fact we think she has a bleeding fetish. And why not?

Despite the American Red Cross’ begging and pleading the USDA to lift the ban on gay’s donating blood, thanks to the current President G.W. Bush, blood supplies run low even though the science out there proves gay blood is no more risky than anyone else’s blood.

On today’s show Amanda fills us in on her blood-giving fetish and debreifs us all about her experience being caught in a brutal thunderstorm with us at Pridefest Milwaukee and the nasty note someone left on her car at the hotel. Also, our lovely listener from Norway, Jonas Åstrøm joins us once again to give us a little international flavor. Aren’t they cute?

The Interdiction symbol, also commonly called the “ghostbusters sign” is used to negate other symbols or ideas, like smoking or eating on the bus. We think Amanda might want to consider changing her name to the interdiction symbol, like the Artist No Longer Formerly Known As Prince did when he changed his name to arrow-plus-tranny-gender-sign. We definitely think Amanda could pull it off.

Please avoid getting the ultimate pedicure. Feet mysteriously continue to unsettlingly wash up on the shores of British Columbia, Canada. At the time of this recording we didn’t know that the sixth foot was actually a hoax. But who cares? What about the five feet that have already washed up on shore? What’s up with crazy foot fetish?

Chinese singing wolves are going to be new act at a zoo in China. A zoo attendant was singing a song while strumming the guitar and a wolf came over and started howling along to the tune. Now, the staff want to train the pack of wolves to sing and maybe even dance.

Obama’s Youtube gay accuser, Larry Sinclair got arrested on outstanding warrants. A group of bloggers investigated the story behind the man who claims to have smoked crack cocaine with Obama and then engaged in oral sex with him and discovered he was wanted by the law. They arranged with the police to have him arrested after he gave a press conference to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

HIV conversion parties- are they for real?

An enchilada short of a combo platter- Feast of Fools.

Check out today’s sponsor:

Steamworks Gym, Sauna and Baths.
Visit Steamwork’s website and register to get a discount
on your next visit. Enter “Feast of Fools” on the promo
code field to get the special discount.

Featured Music:
Avenue Q - Original Broadway Cast Album: iTunes | Site Katy Perry - One of the Boys: iTunes | Amazon | Site

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