Think Pink Radio

Davey Ball is a nerdy website designer living in Chicago.  Check out his site (and great collection of videos of Elizabeth Tashjian aka “the nut lady”) at www.raygun.org.

There is a real rift in my friend circle.  Half of them have no idea what the hell Team Werewolf or Team Vampire even means, while the other half totally agree when I say that Andy Cohen is a television genius — the gay version of Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock, except the mastermind behind Bravo instead of NBC.  But let’s all remember when we converged over tragedy scouring TMZ when they first broke the story of Michael Jackson’s death.  I’d like to remind everyone that in 2009, gossip reporting trumped the professionals, when TMZ beat the New York Times to the punch.  Of course, I’m also not forgetting how awful Balloon Boy was either.

Okay, so MAYBE you don’t really care about The Black Eyed Peas.  But would you care if their latest hit single was broken down and explained as a quest for spiritual enlightenment, based on esoteric teachings complete with video stills as proof?  This is like a fun game of “How many All-Seeing Evil Eyes of Fatima references can we find in a Lady GaGa video?”. The more you read this website, the more creeped out you are by the startling amount of media evidence suggesting that the Illuminati and Occult rule the pop industry and are infiltrating the minds of millions.  It’s evidentiary deception at it’s finest.

These two sassy gay men do a LOT more than write about Project Runway on “America’s #1 Project Runway Blog”.  If you watch Mad Men, this site will really open up your mind, when they break each episode by theme and really dig deep into the subtle genius of the show.  It’s also a really great way to keep up to date on some of the former designers featured on Runway.  I’m pretty sure these guys will also be doing reviews of each episode of RuPaul’s next drag race season in 2010 too!

I can’t bring up Mad Men, and not talk about it some more (sorry, non-fans!). Mad Men Footnotes, a blog that’s soon going to be turned into a book (every bloggers dream, right?), is a true homage to the 60′s.  Want to see the REAL ad they reference in a Mad Men episode?  Chances are, it’s been posted and discussed with historical accuracy here.

I’m a nerd and I LOVE a map!  Infosthetics is a blog all about innovative graphical representations of data.  Sound boring?  Wait until you see this website link to a map (http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map) of New York City organized by neighborhood income averages.  When you select the question ‘Who can afford to live here?’ you can explore detailed rent price information. (By the way, Housing is ‘affordable’ if one spends 30% or less of income on rent or mortgage payments.)

This new blog publishes correspondence of all kinds, ranging from David Bowie responding to a fan letter, to Abraham Lincoln talking about his opinions on slavery.  Famous, political, and mundane folks alike, every one of these letters, notes, and doodles are endlessly fascinating.

What happens when a fairly innocent 24-year-old artsy filmmaker from Nebraska moves to San Francisco and contacts gay porn’s MOST controversial company (Treasure Island Media) to work on making a documentary about the porn industry?  You get a blog like this one.  Surprising and oftentimes a little too “real” for comfort, I just can’t stop watching the short clips posted here.  When Ryan’s estranged brother who no longer speaks to him suddenly turns up for an audition, blindfolded and not knowing Ryan is filming a scene of his, things start to get really crazy.  It’s not a TMI fan-fest, that’s for sure!  And thank goodness.

Launched this year, The Queerist is a pretty rad site for promoting your events.  Unlike Facebook, this makes your event available to the masses and not just your select group.  Made by my favorite design firm in Chicago (Firebelly Design – http://www.firebellydesign.com), it’s a breeze to browse and use.  This is also great if you’re traveling and want to find something fun, underground and gay to go to.

Sometimes I find myself staring at YouTube wondering what I should watch.  Released last week by the popular url-shortening service bit.ly, this new website helps.  Through some super secret algorithm it shows you what people are watching online and you can find some REAL gems here.  It covers Vimeo and some other video sites too.

How can I bring up a top 10 websites list, without talking about the “one website to rule them all”.  I’m always taken aback when my less nerdy savvy friends don’t utilize Google Reader.  Think of it like a newspaper of all the websites you love to read that you get to create yourself!  Just look for RSS feed links or icons on your favorite websites and blogs, copy the URL into Google Reader, and see all the updates go there when they’re published.  Stop living in 1995!  This is about as revolutionary as e-mail.