Recently in Blog Related Category

Yes ladies and gentlemen, from this day forward my blog will take on a new moniker. Adam's Web Log - The Official Blog Of Adam Benjamin Irby will also be known as "Turkey Chili For The Gay Soul".

I know it sounds crazy but, I had a conversation with Someone a few minutes ago via IM that inspired this new nickname. Here it goes:

Someone: ur a great writer sir, well actually a cut above decent.

Me: thanks

Someone: lol ur welcome

Me: what did u read?

Someone: i read alot. i read really fast. i can dig ya views on things and some shit is like (***squints eyes***" now adam"****)

Me: opinions are like assholes... lol

Someone: true, but its all entertaining and chicken soup for the black gay soul. shit that people don't want to hear that everyone knows is tru, so on that note i commend u

Me: it's more like chili for the black gay soul. i like chili better, more protein, turkey chili to be exact. it's low in fat too.

Someone: wat about the vegans

Me: fuck em

So there it is people, "Turkey Chili For The Black Gay Soul". I'm not changing the name or anything, it's just a pseudonym, a nickname if you will.

By the way, I actually enjoy that Hormel Turkey Chili pictured above. It's a staple in my pantry. It's great for those of us out there watching what we eat. It's meaty, satisfying and will warm you up inside, kinda like my... blog. But anyway, like I was saying. It's really low in fat, really high in protein and although a can is two servings I usually eat the whole thing as a meal. It's an especially good meal for those of us who are trying to work out and build muscle. The best thing about it is that you can eat it and not be hungry afterwards like most of the other stuff out here that's good for you and it's a quick meal. Just empty the can into a bowl and microwave it for two minutes.

Here's the nutritional breakdown courtesy of FakeOutTakeOut.com, a really good blog for those of us looking for healthier ways to enjoy our favorite foods. Check it out, they have great recipes there.

Hormel Turkey Chili:
Serving size: 1 cup (serves 2)
Calories: 210
Fat: 3g
Fiber: 6g
Protein 17g
Cholesterol 45mg
Weight Watchers Points: 3

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Playing In The Background...
"Keeps Gettin' Better"
by Christina Aguilera
from the album "Keeps Gettin' Better: A Decade Of Hits"
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Doing what it is I do here I get a good amount of correspondence from you all, letters, emails, comments and such. Although it can be overwhelming at times, I do read EVERYTHING, and I appreciate it so much, even if I don't always get a chance to respond.

I'm such an email pack rat that I don't even delete anything. I just let all the letters sit in my email box and let the server figure out what to do with them. The most touching letters though I save though. Looking through my letters last night I stumbled upon what has to be my new absolute favorite. This letter I received a little over three weeks ago. Here it is:

Dear Adam,

I certainly enjoy reading your blog. You are a scrupulously honest person and also an amazingly gifted writer. I am a 63 year old black gay male. I have lead a full life and identify with much that you write.

I enjoy the connection to my youth that having a window into yours provides me. The most salient fact that I have garnered from your writings is that when it comes to interpersonal relationships little has changed. Many of your battles have been my battles. The one enormous game changer has been HIV. Since its first appearance over 2 decades ago, I've lost more friends and acquaintances that were very dear to me.
Keep on writing and believing in yourself. You have a very special talent and your great personal charisma leaps of the pages of your blog. You are also one sexy little dude. forty years ago I could have taken you on. I was a hot number back then. LOL

Son, treasure every moment of your SWEET, young life. It goes by very fast. Carefully store and hone your memories. The day will come when they will be not only your best possessions but a major coping mechanism when your "Old and Gay". Don't fear the aging process. Do prepare for it.

I wish you the best in your precious life Keep on titillating and stimulating my ancient sensibilities.
-MH

I'm always honored to receive letters from older people, people who have already been where I am and have gone through what I'm going through. I try my best to be receptive to any precious kernels of advice they can offer. Like the Bible says "there's nothing new under the sun" and as I talk to more and more older gay people I realize that the interpersonal struggles that we go through today and the ones they went through are basically the same, except that we go through ours with BlackBerries and iPods.

Thanks so much MH, and everyone else for your letters. Keep 'em comin'.

If you ever wanna send me a letter or a message, ask me a question or just wanna say "Hi" click here.

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Playing In The Background...
"Beautiful, Dirty, Rich"
by Lady GaGa
from the album "The Fame"
==========

Remember that interview I did with my friend Carlos King and the Hot Boyz a while back about a new reality show that Carlos has put together, chronicling the Boyz, a group of black gay men and a woman (don't worry, if you didn't see you can it watch it here). Well a sneak preview of the show has hit the internet.

Check it out below:

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Playing In The Background....
"Hot Boy" feat. Dre
by Christina Milian
from the album "So Amazin'"
==========

Someone alerted me to this a few minutes ago. I totally forgot about this.

I did a second appearance on Nathan "Seven" Scott's "Vantage Point" show way back in June.

Check it out:

For more of Nathan's projects check out his YouTube channel.

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Playing In The Background...
"Hot N Cold"
by Katy Perry
from the album "One Of The Boys"
==========

Yes, I'm another one of those people all into their MySpace and FaceBook pages, checking messages and collecting friends along the way. So many of you have added me and message me on both sites I appreciate it. What I like the most about the whole thing is that I get to learn more about you for a change.

So here are my page links. If you haven't already, be sure to add me.


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Playing In The Background...
"Radio"
by Girlicious
from the album "Girlicious"
==========

A few days ago I put a call out to all the straight male readers of my gay ass blog to email me and let me know how they found my blog, why they continue to read it and what they get from it. I selected three of those letters and posted them here.

Here's the first one:

I came across your blog a long time ago when I was googleling something about police brutality and I came across [your] story. I read your blog because it lets me know how at least a few gay black people think or view certain things in society. I don't like being ignorant. So many times people form opinions about something before they get all the facts about it. I just really like getting things from all perspectives.
- Bran745


Yeah, last year I was unjustly arrested coming home from the gym, simply minding my African-American business. I told the story on the blog. Click here to read that post.


Here's the second letter:


Hey Adam,
I'm a straight guy who reads your blog. Your blog is just entertaining my brother. I honestly don't come from reading it with a very positive opinion on you most times, but its just entertaining always. My wife actually has you favorited on her computer and she turned me on to your blog, been reading ever since. I liked the post about 'heterophobia', it was very interesting. As was the one about men being 'more attractive' than women, I even commented on that one. And for what its worth, I'll mention that I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters: ALL of whom are gay. Keep up the good work my brother,
- Hammer


Even the straight kids are trying to read now, go figure. (LOL) Who knew that husbands and wives come together to read my blog? It's great. A while back, after being declining an invite to a gay friend's straight birthday party I realized that I may be "heterophobic" and wrote a blog post about it. Click here to read that blog post.


And the last letter:


Wattup Adam?
I'm a straight dude and i've been an avid reader of your blog for a few months now. I first came across your blog by way of a youtube video i saw...you and some guy named derrick acting like clowns...lol...anyway...I'm a music lover (I never leave home without my ipod..it's my baby...lol) and we have similar music tastes..but i can't get with that "Girls Aloud"..I can't give you cool points for them...lol...I'm also a homebody much like yourself and that's probably why i like reading your blog...our personalities are similar (from what i can tell)...plus I enjoy hearing people's point of views and like people who are real...and your story is one that I just find interesting...I enjoy good and honest writing...that's probably why I'm a fan of so many tv shows (i'm a tv whore btw..lol) ...I'm an observer..the proverbial "fly on the all" type of dude...atleast in my opinion anyway...lol...that's all I can conjure up right now..if I think of something else! I'll be sure to let u kno...so continue to write and live and I'll remain the fly on the wall.
- Molden1320

You're a straight male. If you were that into Girls Aloud, I'd worry. (LOL) Check out my post about my favorite UK girl pop group Girls Aloud here.

Thanks so much guys for responding. The fact that there are so many many straight dudes out there who are so evolved and secure in their sexuality is definitely an encouragement to me. The motto of this blog and one of my life mantras is "We're all more alike than we are different. It's all about seeing ourselves through each other." The fact that people of all walks of life can apply what they read here to their lives or at least just be open enough to be entertained by it is great and gives me more hope for the future of gay-straight relations in the US and around the world. Because at the end of the day, it won't be the politicians who will broker tolerance and understanding between straights and gays. It's up to each of us, as individuals in our daily lives, opening up, listening, getting to know, befriending and trusting each other.

Now it's your turn straight ladies. I wanna hear from you. Send me a message letting me know how you found my blog, why you continue to read it and what you get from it. Then I will select a few of those letters to post here on the blog. Click here to send me a message.

I can't wait to hear from you.

As always, much love.
- Adam

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Playing In The Background...
"Spotlight"
by Jennifer Hudson
from the album "Jennifer Hudson"
==========

Hey Y'all,

Check out my interview with the Hot Boyz, not the New Orleans rappers Baby and Mannie Fresh, but the infamous crew of gay party throwing socialites based here in New York City. I was approached to do this interview a while back by one of my friends over at BET, TV producer Carlos King as an introduction to an independent project he's putting together. Basically, he followed the Hot Boyz, shooting footage over the past year to be pitched as a reality show on a TV network. These two videos posted below are an introduction of this project and an interview with two of the Boyz' founding members. I'm conducting the interview.

Check them out, part 1 and part 2.

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Playing In The Background....
"Hot Boy" feat. Dre
by Christina Milian
from the album "So Amazin'"
==========

There's another new blogger in town.

Check out my friend, fine artist and photographer Ricky Day's (aka Mr. Man's) blog, "Urban Pop Life" where he'll give insights on life and showcase some of his work.

Check it out at: URBANPOPLIFE.net

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Playing In The Background...
"Stepping Stone"
by Duffy
from the album "Rockferry"
=========

You know, being a blogger, putting out blog posts, is like being a musician or and actor putting out a new album or a new movie. Of course you hope that people are gonna like it, although you know some won't. Your greatest hope though is that whether people agree with, like or hate it or you that they at least understand where you're coming from. Unfortunately in the case of Sunday's post ""Oh Girl"/Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave... Especially When Ya A** Gets Caught In It Tryna Be Slick.../Lying 101" many of you just didn't understand my rationale.

I'll briefly summarize that post. It was the story of a guy I met late last Friday night. We met up, we chilled, we seemed to like each other and we made a tentative date for the next day. After confirming that date he contacted me soon after via a suspicious sounding text message to cancel the date. I became suspicious due to the language he used in the text that more than likely he was postponing on me for another date and tried to conceal it with a flimsy cover story because it's something I'd done many times before. Our subsequent text message exchanges that evening confirmed my suspicions so much so that I even caught him in the lie. He's a juggler, but I'm an even better one. For the purposes of this blog I republished and examined our exchange here to illustrate how I knew that he was lying and what steps he could have taken to make his lie better.

The blog post was a social experiment of sorts and was not meant to be an illustration of how deep my feelings were for him. What feelings? At that time we'd only met 36 hours ago. The post was a dissection of human behavior in general with the use of his words, his existence as a living, breathing person and possible life partner wasn't really important in the post. I wanted to show how someone who came to me saying that they wanted to settle down, giving the impression that they were tired of games, went and played a game less than 24 hours later. The post was meant to show that irony.

I thought that my intentions were in clear view but I quickly learned from the comments I received that they weren't. I received a litany of comments whose overall message was that I was over analyzing the situation, playing games, being overly emotional and that I shouldn't have put so much mental investment into him. Someone even questioned my maturity and went so far as to say that my writing of the post showed him my age. As the comments kept rolling in, all basically in the same vein, this deeply troubled me. I thought to myself 'Are they reading this whole thing? 'Cuz they are just not getting it.' I actually kinda felt bad for a second, my blog is my baby. It's like having a baby and everyone saying it's ugly. Okay, that was a little dramatic but you get the point, it bothered me.

This morning, my redemption finally came. The fourteenth and last commenter on that post before I started writing this one post got it. This is what that commenter said:

First of all, Adam, the first half of this was funny as hell.

I have a different view than most of the above commenters who may not get what you were attempting to do here.

In a nutshell, you have a lightening fast mind. You sized up the situation instantly and correctly - which is quite different from someone trying to figure out what the hell happened after the fact, then analyzing it to death to get the correct answer. The difference is seen in a math class: some kids catch on quick, while others are still stuck on Question #1.

What you did here, in this post, was take a snapshot of common situation and broke it down as a social scientist or attorney would. This was an excellent "teaching post" about lying, lying poorly, lying well, and spotting a lie.

This is what many of your readers failed to notice or appreciate. They're stuck on the event, not seeing the bigger picture of how it applies to numerous situations including politics.

You had a number of jewels sprinkled in the post, such as:

...you can't juggle a juggler. I invented that shit.

...I'ma have to teach this nigga how to lie. This shit is pitiful, almost painful to watch, yet funny.

Rookie lie mistake, too many details... The more details you put into a lie the more details you then have to be responsible for.

In order to make someone else believe a lie you have to believe it first. His mistake was that he didn't believe his own lie and that he needed to validate it in his own mind by reciting details to me.

...put more emphasis into engaging the person [you're] lying to than into explaining [yourself].

For someone to be a decent liar they must first understand the truth. The thing that people need to understand about the truth is that the truth just is. There's no need to explain the truth.

...he didn't lie to validate me, he lied to validate himself.

Now, Adam, my dear Adam, I ain't gonna get into whether you should or shouldn't see this guy again. That shit is off the radar in terms of what's important.

Waz that? You gotta helluva first class mind. I don't know if you're in school, got a degree, or what your career aspirations are, but baby boy, you could make a mint off of brilliance.

If you ever become a criminal attorney, other attorneys would fear your fucking name if they had to go up against you in court.

Hell, if you got a business, marketing or finance degree, oh shit, you'd be rich. You figure out scams quick and I think you'd be able to follow the mind and find the cheese.

This country is changing by the hour. When the smoke clears in about ten years, if you've been working your God-given talents, yo black azz could run for a public office and win.

Whatevah you do, I hope you can mobilize yourself to put your genius where it's gonna pay off big time.

There's always gonna be a Rufus; they're a dime a dozen and fun to pass the time with. BTW, I don't think he insulted your intelligence by lying, he just wasn't sharp enough to know you were sharper. When you look back over life, who the fuck was?

If you can count 'em on one or two hands, you in the wrong neighborhood and playing the wrong game. That suggests that it's time to leave the pond, dive in ocean and play with the big boyz on the university and pro level.

You'll find mentors, too, who will nurture and help you cuz you got some talents that can't be bought nor taught. I hope you can seize the moment while you're young. I think you can, if you want it bad enough.

Good luck, my friend. I'm rooting for you.

Kit (Keep It Trill)
http://keepittrill.blogspot.com

She (yes she, she's a woman) summed up my intentions beautifully. Upon further inspection of her blog I learned that she has a master's degree in social work and currently works as a social worker and mental health therapist, no wonder she broke it down so keenly. Granted, her comment was filled with compliments to me (Thanks, I'm a Leo, flattery gets you everywhere with us) I appreciate it most because reading her comment felt as though she walked into my brain and started posting things on a blackboard for all to see. She was the first commenter to understand my intent.

You guys can check out her blog at http://keepittrill.blogspot.com

So do y'all understand now what I was getting at? This shit ain't about Rufus' lying ass. He is what he is. I'll deal with him later, if I choose to do so. The original post was an illustration of irony and a lesson on lying. The most rewarding thing about it all though was that it fostered thought and discussion and that's the overall point of my blog is anyway. And far as me being analytical, that's what I'm here for. I'm a writer, a blogger, an artist if you will. I analyze things. I'll tell you all what I told someone else regarding this post and my overall purpose:

"If I didn't pay stuff like this any mind then I'd have nothing to write about. Although this [and a lot of things about dating and meeting people] isn't the biggest deal in the world. Taking stuff like this, breaking it down and making it cerebral makes for a good read. Art is achieved when you can take everyday things and pull from them something deeper. Andy Warhol made a whole career of it."

-Adam Benjamin Irby

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Playing In The Background...
"In Person"
by the Pussycat Dolls
from the album "Doll Domination"
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Addendum: This post is not to say that the first commenters to the original post are wrong and that I'm right. There are no rights or wrongs here, there never have been. I just wanted to make sure that my intent was fully understood.

millie.jpgadam_throne_2.jpg
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Pictures:
- Millie Jackson in the iconic photo from her "Back To The Shit" album cover
- My photo homage to her taken in February 2007 (before the skincare).
==========

I want to thank all of you who nominated and voted for me for the Black Weblog Awards, unfortunately we didn't win... again. I would like to congratulate the winners Pam's House Blend and Darian Aaron, who's a friend of the blog. After seeing this play out twice I've decided that I'm not gonna pester y'all with this whole thing next year as I've noticed that the awards seem to have an affinity toward more newsy and less controversial gay blogs. When we didn't win last year I compared myself to soul singer Millie Jackson in that she was controversial and always put herself out there, but that never won her many awards either.

Please know that my biggest award is the love, the emails, the messages and all the support I get from you all and that's all the encouragement I need to keep on doing what I do and because you, the people are the one's who nominated me it is truly just an honor to be nominated.

Thanks
-Adam

For more info on Millie Jackson check out my homage post to her here.

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Playing In The Background...
"Hello Heartbreak"
by Michelle Williams
from the album "Unexpected"
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