The long-running off-Broadway musical Naked Boys Singing is to hit the big screen, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film is set to be completed this week in Los Angeles as is a behind-the-scenes documentary which will be released on DVD. Robert Schrock, the original production’s director, is helming the restaged version of the play with new arrangements of the songs.

[via Out.com’s Daily Gossip]

Naked Boys Singing made national news last year when performances of the musical at the Milwaukee Gay Arts Center were shut down by the city of Milwaukee. The musical re-opened at the Center two months later when the city admitted closing the show down was a mistake. The Milwaukee Gay Arts Center filed a claim against the city, asserting its action was a civil rights violation, but the lawsuit was dismissed earlier this month.

Happy Birthday, Lobal Warming!

From one of the many bloggers thrilled to have you in the 20%.

In what seems like a reaction to the anti-gay climate that made a gay marriage ban a certainty for Kansas, more and more gay, lesbian, and bisexual Kansans are deciding to come out of the closet in a state that got its first statewide gay rights organization only two years ago.

Nowhere is this change more obvious than in a new analysis of census data by Gary J. Gates, a demographer at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, a think tank at the University of California, Los Angeles. He found a 68 percent jump in Kansas households headed by same-sex partners between 2000 and 2005. In 2005, 11 out of every 1,000 couples living together in Kansas reported themselves as same-sex, according to Mr. Gates’s review of the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey data, a figure closer than one might expect to those recorded in New Jersey and New York, where 12 and 14 out of every 1,000 couples, respectively, are same-sex.

What the increase suggests, Mr. Gates said, is not so much that gay Americans are flocking to the state, but that the ones who live there have been galvanized to declare themselves to their neighbors and communities.

The premier edition of the Carnival of Shoes and Bags will be hosted here at DDOQ on January 1st. Submissions are now closed for this edition; anything you send now will be part of the January 15th edition that will be hosted at MartiAbernathey.com.

Submissions are not, however, closed for the January edition of the Carnival of Bent Attractions. So please keep sending them in!

I didn’t know of JasmyneCannick.com until I read “The cyber mafia” in January’s Advocate. And I almost missed the mention — I did have to read past Perez Hilton calling himself “a new phenomenon, a new thing, a new creature, this rogue renegade character” and taking credit for the Bass People cover story. But, I’m glad I kept going (to the very, very end, where the Advocate decided they’d put that part about the lesbians).

I no longer have cable. I’m not going to know how horrible of a train wreck this will be, which says nothing about how addicted I could have become to it.

Evaluations published in the Public Library of Science’s PLoS Medicine strongly suggest that Healthy Penis, a campaign using cartoons to urge men to get tested for syphilis, “was effective in augmenting syphilis testing and increasing syphilis awareness and knowledge in the San Francisco gay and bisexual community.”

Seven-layer cookies, anyone?

You may know MeetGayCouples.com as a place to meet gay and lesbian couples. The site has now expanded and offers new features, including The Gay Love Coach, Ask Angelo, and Get The Nurse, in addition to its social networking tools.

Since many of you are still shopping, and we all prefer to spend our dollars at businesses that listen to our needs, I have to take this opportunity to rave about WaterField Designs. And, no, I’m not getting paid for this.

I ordered a laptop sleeve from WaterField on a Saturday. What seemed like five minutes after my order had been placed, I received an email from Gary, the company’s founder, with my order tracking information in it, letting me know that the sleeve would ship that night. My order arrived that Monday morning (I did not pay for express delivery service).

This week, almost a month after I placed my order, I emailed WaterField because the sleeve I ordered was a very tight fit for my computer. I thought it might loosen up with some use, but no luck. A WaterField employee responded to my email, asking an additional question about my computer to help her select a better-fitting sleeve for me, within ten minutes. They mailed me a larger size sleeve that day, before I shipped the one I had back to them. It has already gotten to me and is the exact size I needed.

I’m not the only one who’s more than satisfied with the service I received. So, while you’re spending, stop by WaterField and take a look around!

You can find Maria on MySpace here and read her current call for essays on femme identity here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.