Ask the Flying Monkey (September 9, 2008)

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on September 9, 2008

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Ask the Monkey!

Q: I find Seth Gilliam of The Wire to be incredibly sexy. I know that he has done gay roles before. What personal information can you find? -- Mark

A: You and the Monkey both! Gilliam is probably most well known for his role on the urban drama The Wire, but also made a strong impression on another HBO show Oz and in the movies Starship Troopers (1997) and Courage Under Fire (1996). Interestingly, he made headlines in July when he criticized the judges of Emmy Awards for ignoring The Wire yet again. "The show deals with inner city civil servants, and the Emmys would rather fantasize about lawyers and romance," he told BBC 5 Live. "We take a little pride in not being nominated."

Seth Gilliam

Photo credit: Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images

Gilliam has been setting gay hearts aflame ever since he appeared in Punks, a 2000 movie written and directed by Patrik-Ian Polk about three gay African American friends and their gay Latino friend — no doubt the precursor to Polk’s breakthrough Logo series (and soon-to-be-movie) Noah’s Arc (sadly, Punks still seems to be unavailable on DVD).

In fact, Gilliam has been setting gay hearts a little too aflame. That Punks role has led to Internet rumors that Gilliam is gay, which he definitely isn’t. He’s married to Leah Gardiner, and they have a 3-year-old boy, Jonah.

Q: I live in Sweden and I can't find a good gay magazine in English, so I'm going to subscribe print editions of some gay magazines from US. From what I've seen online, Out and The Advocate seem pretty good. What are your views on them? Or if you have other suggestions I'd love to hear them. -- Shan, Sweden

A: Like every gay person here in the U.S.,the Monkey has had a love/hate relationship with The Advocate all his life. The community desperately needs strong journalistic voices to ask pointed, gay-related questions of prominent newsmakers. But the Monkey has always cringed whenever the magazine has asked the latest gay-supportive straight male celebrity questions like, “So have you ever fantasized about having sex with a man?” Or, even worse, “Even though you’re straight, if you were gay, what guy would you want to have sex with?”

Please.

Anyway, it’s all probably moot now, because the Monkey thinks The Advocate is not long for this world. Their recent decision to stop being a biweekly gay newsmagazine and go monthly starting in January as a “lifestyle” magazine reminded the Monkey of the late Molly Ivins’ famous comments about newspapers: “People aren't stupid. They recognize when their local newspaper loses interest in them as anything but consumers of advertisements…What really pisses me off is this most remarkable business plan: Newspaper owners look at one another and say, 'Our rate of return is slipping a bit; let's solve that problem by making our product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.'"

Not to toot our own horn, but AfterElton.com, with our staff of three and three quarters, publishes more content in a week than The Advocate will publish in a month. But if you love the feel of holding an actual magazine in your hands, the Monkey would opt for Out, which seems to have more, you know, content (though now that Out and The Advocate are owned by the same entity, you’ll probably get both magazines no matter which you subscribe to, in an effort to boost those all-important ad circulation numbers).

As far as old media and “lifestyle” magazines go, the Monkey is a much bigger fan of Instinct, the cheeky gay upstart.