As A Picnic Basket: June 2012

June 12, 2012

Taylor Lautner Tweeted This Frisky Lil' Underwear Photo

The Israeli Defense Forces Posted A Pride Photo On Facebook

With the following caption: "It's Pride Month. Did you know that the IDF treats all of its soldiers equally?"

It's not always puppies and rainbows, per se, as the Huffington Post noted:

"Israel was one of the first countries to abolish restrictions on openly gay soldiers serving in the military. In 1993 the country adopted a law that prohibits discrimination against gay forces, nearly 20 years ahead of the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" in the United States.

Yet despite the military's liberal policies, a 2011 study showed more than 40 percent of gay and lesbian soldiers in the IDF say they have been harassed because of their sexuality. According to Haaretz, 45 percent of respondents claimed homophobic remarks remained frequent, with soldiers in combat units reporting them more frequently."

Tom Daley And Matthew Mitcham Are Sexy Olympic Divers

And one of em's gay:

The other one's just really good-looking:

A Capella Alum Gets Proposed To In Front Of 700 People

June 10, 2012

For Wetpaint: My TV Shows Are DVDs I Watch On Repeat

It's funny the way that entertainment has evolved. You can be a devoted television-watcher just by having an internet connection, which I do. But if you don't have a luxury cable package and one of those fancy DVRs, it's hard to have the patience and dedication to keep up with the proverbial Kardashians. When televisions 'went digital,' meaning if you bought your television ten years ago and didn't get one of those FCC converter boxes, you were S.O.L. if you liked to watch network television through your bunny ears. I've got those now, too, digital ones, and used them for a while to watch the Today Show, the View, sporting events and some short-lived network shows that I got really into (why did The Playboy Club have to go away!?).

But now I have a ROKU, which is a little box that gets hooked up to my internet and to my television, and I can toggle through Netflix availabilities as if I'm channel surfing. This let me watch Parks and Recreation, Parenthood, Breaking Bad and RuPaul's Drag Race extensively. But really, what I mostly love, is my Project Runway DVD collection. Season 10 is coming this summer, and luckily, you can stream it all on MyLifetime.com, but I can also brush up on at least seven of the past seasons by watching them successively in long spells of DVD consumption. This is my favorite thing to watch that is television. Yes, I've got some other DVD collections that I will return to here and there (True Blood, Rachel Zoe, and Downton Abbey, namely). But it seems like a no-brainer that Project Runway is my favorite show on television.

Is it my love of fashion? Maybe, I like clothes and I like style. Is it the constant sense of queerness you get from it all? Probably. Tim Gunn doesn't hurt anything, either, even though I watched fifteen minutes of his daytime show at the gym on the treadmill, WITHOUT SOUND, and couldn't keep watching. There's just something about it: Heidi, the clothes, Tim, the gays, the language, the drama. It just does it for me.