Steve Grand – All American Boy

For your mid-week hump day delight, here’s a hot music video from Steve Grand, “All-American Boy”. If you’ve ever had unrequited feelings for a straight man, especially a strapping all-American dude, then this song and video is for you. The video, which was released early July, has reached nearly 1.8 million hits on YouTube and features Steve pining for his all-American guy friend. While the guy friend is pretty hot, Steve is very gorgeous as well, with his puppy-dog eyes contrasting with his muscular physique that he shows off at around 3 minutes into the video.

While he is not the first openly gay country music singer in a genre that is quite conservative, Steve Grand has certainly made a big splash despite being unsigned to any major record label since this song is his debut single and is unabashedly a gay song at that. The song’s title is even a nice counterpoint to the numerous all-American girl country songs such as “American Girl”, which was the blind audition song of the second runner-up Swon Brothers in The Voice USA Season 4, as well as “All-American Girl” which was sung in the finale of the same show by Danielle Bradbery, the eventual winner. (If you’re curious, I was rooting for Michelle Chamuel.)

Discreetionary: Field report

field report [FEELD re·PORT] noun 1. A testimony of a client regarding the services provided by a male-for-hire or a masseur. abbreviation: FR. example: “Ano FR mo kay Paolo?” etymology: from the English phrase field report, which means a report of an experienced event or of a completed task.

If you are one who frequents massage parlors or gay bars, or someone who procures the services of guys featured on websites like Lalaking Palaban, I guess you already know about this term, “field report,” or “FR.” FRs are vital if you want to make sure you get the most bang for your buck. But FRs are also not fully reliable as they are subjective based on the reporter’s personal tastes, which may not match your own, and there may also be false or misleading reports because of competition and paninira.

I think currently the best site to read FRs is FRCentral, an online forum focused on field reports (as if that’s not obvious from the site’s name). There are dedicated threads for each “model” of various male-for-hire websites as well for each masseur of every massage parlor in Metro Manila. Aside from that, there are threads also for other places catering to the PLU sector. But the forum’s main and most active threads are those for FRs with more than 2,700 posts already submitted.

There are also blogs that feature FRs. I guess the most entertaining is Manila Spanatic. I’ve also featured a couple of other blogs such as (DM post) and Manila Gay Guide (DM post) that sometimes post FRs but they focus more on the establishment themselves rather than on particular boys.

BED reopens at Greenfield District

After closing its doors and leaving Malate for good last April, BED will now reopen to the public tonight, July 26, at Greenfield District in Mandaluyong. Will you be there?

(BED actually had a soft opening last Saturday, but only for invited friends and VIPs.)

In case you still don’t know where BED now is, shown below is a handy map provided by BED. Their address is at Unit 5 The Portal, Greenfield District, Mayflower Street, Mandaluyong. Although the street is listed as Mayflower, BED is actually closer to Sto. Cristo Street. But that doesn’t really matter as it is walkable anyway.

View BED Manila, Greenfield District in a larger map

The location is actually quite nice and is a lot safer than Malate. There’s plenty of parking for people who will bring cars (the fee is 30 pesos along Sto. Cristo) and Greenfield is a very short walk away from the Shaw MRT Station. There are also a few 24-hour fast food establishments around such as KFC and Chowking. And before in Malate you can hang around at Robinsons Place Manila. Now there’s Shangri-La Plaza Mall and SM Megamall for movies or dinner before dancing the night away. The place is a little less discreet though compared to Malate since there are other, straight, bars and clubs in the area, such as Coal and Uno.

I still haven’t formed an full opinion about this latest BED (version 4.0?). When BED expanded a second time (version 3.0), I said to my friend, “Right now, I prefer the old BED.” My sentiments are very much the same this time around.

Cheers to England and Wales!

With the Royal Assent given by Queen Elizabeth II yesterday, England and Wales have now joined a growing number of countries, states, and territories where same-sex marriage is legal.

This good news comes almost at the heels of developments in the United States where their Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of DOMA for being unconstitutional, paving the way for federal benefits for same-sex couples in the U.S. The same Supreme Court also dismissed an appeal against the overturning of Proposition 8 in California, making same-sex marriage again legal in the Golden State.

Going back to the United Kingdom, it’s not a yet a home run since Scotland has yet to follow suit (hopefully in 2014), and Northern Ireland, with its deeply religious population, is currently staunchly against same-sex marriage. Yet, I’m quite happy (and gay) as every bit of good news helps.

Now let’s see if the new Philippine Congress will be able to finally pass the full Anti-Discrimination Law, one that includes provisions against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. (I know it’s a bit sad that while other countries are already passing same-sex marriage laws, here in the Philippines, we have yet to criminalize LGBT discrimination. But baby steps....)

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis feat. Mary Lambert – Same Love

I’ve heard of the song “Same Love” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis back in May when a friend shared a YouTube video on Facebook. I though that it was a pretty great song that was unabashedly pro-LGBT rights.

So imagine my surprise when I heard the song playing on a local radio station last night. I guess some higher up decided to add it to the station’s playlist. However, I think that the song’s message was entirely lost on the two straight guy DJs that were on that night. I don’t think these two were homophobic but I didn’t think they really listened to the song. They didn’t go into a social commentary and instead focused on the final verses of the song that quoted 1 Corinthians 13:4, “Love is patient, love is kind.”

Still, it was a nice highlight of last night. It’s little things like these that put a smile to my face.