All My Friends Are Whores

These days the majority of my friends are gay men. And they’re all whores. Every last one of them. How they manage to not keep it in their pants amazes me. In fact, pants are arbitrary. Why have them if you’re not going to use them? Why?

Before the divorce, my friend group consisted of couples, some straight and some gay. Everyone was nice, and I mean nice. They threw dinner parties and talked about their pets and plans for the future. Board game nights were popular as were group outings, like trips to the cinema. It was like being old while still being young. And there was something comforting about that, something dreadfully comforting.

Then shit hit the fan, and I found myself single. And I found myself relating less to the couples and drawn to other people in my situation. Enter the whores. It’s not that my newfound friends are special. They’re single gay men in the big city, specifically Chicago, one of the gayest cities ever. Don’t believe me? Feast your doubting eyes on this:

Chicago: The city of big shoulders...you know what they say about big shoulders...

That’s right. This city is full of rainbow things. Garage doors…pillars…rainbows. It’s pretty gay, and I loves it! But anyway, it’s pretty predictable that a single gay man in this city is going to be a whore, at least to some extent. And I don’t mean to be pointing fingers at my friends (lord knows many fingers should be pointed at me), but it’s just funny that there is a rather high frequency of times two of my friends who don’t know each other sleep with each other and then tell me about it only for me to tell them that their hook up is a friend of mine (and likely a former hook up as well). Such a small world this gay one is. Such large libidos though.

Oh, and I took a picture of my friends. See below:

The gang's all here!

I Forgot

So I completley lost track of time and forgot to update my blog yesterday. So sorry! I was busy filming my new video short, “The Elegant Couple,” which should be finished within the next two weeks. I don’t want to tell you too much about it. All I’ll say is, you’ll love it.

But now it is Saturday morning, a little after 11 am, and I’m still in bed. I’m taking this opportunity to chat with guys online and be a complete bitch to them. What? I have a bit of a headache and I’m bored, so what else am I going to do? And no, I’m not cruising for sex. I’m literally just chatting and being a general nuisance. Like this one guy who describes himself as “straight acting,” a term I oh so very much abhor. I asked him if he enjoys having sex with girls, you know, because he’s straight acting. He didn’t get it, but he played along. To provoke him more, I told him I’m masculine but I’m very gay acting, you know, because I have sex with men. I still don’t think he got it. Anyway, point of this nugget is I hate when guys say they’re “straight acting.” Are you so self-hating that you would want to characterize yourself as someone who is straight? And how is that supposed to attract other gay men? I might want a masculine gay guy since masculinity and homosexuality aren’t mutually exclusive, dumb ass.

Anywho, forgive me for not writing yesterday. I will post a vlog either today or tomorrow. So be on the lookout for that. It should be a doozy.

Tell Me A Joke

99% of the time I tell someone I’m a comedian, the first thing they say in response is, “Tell me a joke.”

99% of the people on this planet deserve a slap in the face.

In the words of my friend Zach Childers, “I’m not a jukebox” (and guess what Zach, when people Google your name, my blog will come up, and they’ll associate you with this trash. You got served! or Punked! or something!). But it’s true. I’m not a jukebox. I do not have a slot for which to stick quarters. True, you can stick quarters up there technically, but that’s not what it’s made for. It’s made for love…and poop…but I like to think more about the love part. And I don’t glow and whirl nor do I have shiny lights and a collection of CDs stored inside my person.

Let me repeat: I am not a jukebox.

But on a more figurative leve (yes, let’s get heavy here), I do not regurgitate “jokes.” I don’t do much stand-up in the first place, though I am getting re-involved in the art form once more. But even when I do stand-up, it isn’t one liners. Why do so many people think that comedians just tell one liners, when they know full well, having seen comedy, that that simply is not true. For me to “tell you a joke” means to go into an entire routine, one that could last as long as 10 minutes. My jokes are carefully calculated stories with set-ups and tags and turns and punchlines and other such comedy jargon (we have a secret handshake too!).

Also, when someone responds with, “Tell me a joke,” it’s as if they’re asking you to prove that you’re a comedian. Like you’re just saying that to get laid. As if being a comedian helps you get laid (it kind of does actually). Listen people, I need to prove nothing to you…NOTHING!. If you work at the GAP, do I ask you to fold clothes to prove it? If you work as an insurance adjuster, do I ask you to tell me when I’m going to die (actually yes, on this one, but that’s just because it’s such a cool party trick)?

The point is, I am not here to amuse you, unless I’m here to amuse you. And when I’m in your apartment, and we’re having a casual conversation before casual sex, there is no reason for me to be telling jokes. Got it? Comedy is serious stuff.

Now I’m off to dress like a woman, video tape it, and put it on the Internet.

Make Me A Star

Logo, the LGBTQ cable network, is doing a casting contest for its show The Big Gay Sketch Show. And I’ve decided to throw my hat into the ring.

I have to upload some videos and pictures of myself (no problem there) and write some sort of a blog entry or something. I’m not sure. I need to keep reading the rules and requirements. But the winners of round 1 are contingent on whomever gets the most votes. So talent is really only a minor factor at this point. It’s friends, connections and payola that will get you to phase 2.

So what this means, loyal blog readers, is that I need YOU to vote or me. And your friends to vote for me. And their friends. And your parents and your parents’ friends. Get everyone in the universe to vote for me. If you do, you will be handsomely rewarded (read: I will buy you a handsome male escort). And in case the contest officials are reading this blog, that last part was a joke. Ha. Ha. I’m such a kidder. (wink wink)

To vote for me, go here: http://biggaycasting.com/people/keithecker

Pass this link around. I will be uploading videos fairly soon. But please. Vote for me. Please. For the love of God.

And as an incentive, here’s a picture of me dressed as a woman.

Gay Sex In The 21st Century

First, I want to thank Netflix for being kind enough to give me a free trial. Now I can waste time watching movies instead of just wasting time making them (see my video blog). Like yesterday, I was bored and decided to watch “Gay Sex in the 70s,” a documentary about what gay life was like in 1970s New York, from the dangerously sexy piers to coked out Studio 54 to the eventual AIDS epidemic.

The movie was composed of interviews with men who were there. The funny thing is, you don’t even need to watch the movie to know what they’re going to say. I can sum up the sentiments in a few paraphrases:

1. “We had sex everywhere.”

2. “Drug use was rampant.”

3. “Those sure were the days.”

I then began thinking about how gay sex has changed since then. What’s it like in the 21st century? Is it really all that different?

Honestly, no. True, us gays aren’t sequestered to seedy back alleys and truck stops. I mean, I go to a mostly gay gym, live in a gay neighborhood and frequent the gay bars (btw, lately I’ve been using the verb “haunt” to describe my gay bar outings, as in, “I’ve been haunting the Boystown bars.” It sounds melancholy, mysterious and classy). And we all use condoms now, right? You do use condoms don’t you? For shame, if you don’t.

But the general public would be surprised to find out that just how much the old cliche is true: You can give the gays recognition, but you can’t stop them from constantly fucking.

Hand gestures and trysts on the subway have been replaced by hook up sites. There’s a new language, but it’s all the same. Instead of rubbing your crotch at the guy on the corner on your way to work, you just send an instant message that says, “Looking?” Instead of getting busted by the cops, you get busted by your roommate.  Instead of free love, you have to pay a $5 cover (or an even steeper fee for a locker and a private room). And of course in some bars, not all mind you, there are still the nostalgic backrooms of yesteryear (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, read Torch Song Trilogy and consider yourself cultured).

I guess it is pretty different. I mean, we can now hold professional positions and still be out. Hell, in some places I can hold hands with a guy and not be given a second look (unless it’s to check out our cute butts). But really, if you know the scene, if you’re in it, you know us gays launched one successful PR campaign. True, we take more caution, drug use isn’t as cool as it once was, and monogomy is more prevelant (slightly). But the glory days of glory holes are long from gone. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I’ll leave to you to decide.

And although it sounds like it was a lot of fun, I just don’t dig mustaches. It never would have worked.

An Apology

For those that may have seen last night’s post, I must apologize. You may have noticed how I titled my post “FUCK YEAH!”, using all capitalized letters to signify yelling, punctuated rather redundantly with an exclamation mark. You may have also noticed my crass use of slang with the synonym for copulate followed by a common vernacular version of the affirmative.

If you had visited my blog in the wee hours of the morning, you probably would have noticed the picture I posted, the one with the words “Best movie ever!!!” underneath it. Once again, sorry for the excessive excitement conveyed through the overuse of punctuation. In addition, I should apologize for the blatant sentence fragment. And let us not forget the picture, the one depciting the poster from the 1981 cult classic “Heavy Metal.” I am sorry for posting such base and purient imagery. I am sympathetic to how tantalizing that drawing of a woman dressed in S&M gear and straddling an ostrich bat can be. And the names of some of those bands–Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Donald Fagen–are obviously offensive to decent tastes.

But most of all, I apologize for the idea my post conveys, the idea that Heavy Metal, a fully animated feature depicting generously proportioned women and nonsense, is the best movie ever. It clearly is not, that statement is false and was made under the duress of eating too much pizza (with breadsticks). To show a gesture of good will and to prove I am a man of character, credibility and decency, I offer you this:

Eat it, squares!

FUCK YEAH!

Holy shit!

Best movie ever!!!

Vlog #2 – Late Night With Keith Ecker

Danish In The Snow

I didn’t go to the gym yesterday. I really meant to. And frankly I had no good reason for not going other than I just got stupid lazy. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes watching paint dry seems like the reasonable thing to do. Sometimes you just zone the fuck out all day, and when you come to it’s 10 pm, and you have no fucking clue where the God damn day went!

But I digress. Out of guilt and an intense feeling of shame, I went to the gym today and had a wonderful workout. On my way, I came across this.

Now just how the heck did I get here?

That’s right. A danish. Of the cheese variety I believe (which we all know is the best because it’s the most gooey and fat-filled Danish of them all). It was like God was testing me. “Do you really want to go to the gym, my son? Or do you want to nibble on this delicious, abondend, frozen danish?” But like Jesus himself, I fought temptation and kept walking. I still think about that danish sometimes, wondering if it is weathering the wintery cold. Does it miss it’s family? Can it build a fire? Will it ever find it’s home? My guess is a dog will eat it. Such is the circle of life.

And by the way, I think “Danish In The Snow” would make a good Weird Al parody of The Doors’ “Riders On The Storm.”

Stay tuned for an amazing second installment of my vlog tomorrow! Yippee!

5 Things You Might Not Know About Me

I’m not normal. I don’t know what normal is. And the cliche says that nobody is “normal.” But I’m really not normal. In fact, I’m pretty fucking bizarre, which is why I have a terrible, terrible time meeting men. Sigh.

Anywho! There are some things that definitely separate me from the pack of humanity. Below are 5 of these things.

1. I love cutting coupons!

Oh joy!

Ever since I was a little, limp-wristed homo in training, I have been calmed by the soothing act of slicing scissors across dotted lines to reap incremental savings off of products such as bath tissue, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Bacon Bits. Every Sunday I would run outside to snatch up the paper, throw the departments on the ground and tear into the Sunday Savings. With my mom standing in the kitchen either doing the dishes or washing her hair in the sink (for some reason she viewed the kitchen sink as a catchall for cleanliness), I would crack open the insert and clip all the products I saw regularly in the kitchen. If there was an item that was questionable, I’d yell out to my mom, “Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!” (mind you her head was often under a gushing faucet). When she finally gave me the attention I deserved, I’d ask her, “Do we use Colgate toothpaste or AIM?”, to which she would roll her eyes and say, “Just clip them out and put them in a pile I’ll sort through them later!” At the end, I always felt a wonderful sense of accomplishment. Did I mention I had very few friends?

2. I love Ziggy!

Hahahahahahaha! Duct tape! Genious!

Another remnant from my past, growing up I was obsessed with Ziggy, the fat, short bald man who starred in his own comic strip about how the world hates him. True, in later years he started talking about love and rainbows. But classic Ziggy was all about getting shit on. And I ate it up. I had dozens of Ziggy dolls, including a gigantic plush Ziggy that I slept with everynight. My sheets were Ziggy sheets, and my favorite book was a Ziggy anthology that I read so many times it became tattered. Looking back on it, I see all this as the early signs of my gayness. I mean, here I am, an 8-year-old boy sleeping with a middle-aged troll of a man. Twenty years later, the same thing still happens on occasion.

3. I love fast food Web sites!

There's more grease in this picture than on the faces of a dozen high schoolers.

Only on the rarest occassions do I actually eat fast food. I live in Chicago. I can get amazing cuisine blocks away from my apartment. Why would I want to trudge through slush and snow just to chow down on a burger that resembles a piece of painted styrophoam. And the shits. Don’t get me started! But I have a strange obsession with fast food Web sites. I love visiting them, seeing what is new on the menu and reading up on nutritional information. I want to see what the rest of America is eating, even if I myself frown upon the so-called “Happy Meal.” My favorite thing to do is to see what the absolute least healthy item on the menu is. Hardee’s is the best for that. That restaurant notoriously serves up hamburgers that contain three times the daily alottment for fat and calories. Maybe it’s because I don’t have cable anymore, and the sites give me my food porn fix. Or maybe I’m a closeted fast food lover secretly getting my fix on the net, like so many married men who delete their cache files so their wives won’t find their “special stash.”

4. I hate when people whisper the word “Popcorn.”

You better not be saying popcorn, so help me God!!!

One day in elementary school a young girl in my class was trying to slyly get a boys attention from across the room. She had a bag of popcorn, but for some reason didn’t want to say in a normal, audible tone the word “popcorn.” So instead this 4th grade harpee decides to stage whisper the word “popcorn.” Meanwhile I was caught between the two, sitting a couple desks beside her. As she repeatedly tried to explain that she wanted to give him popcorn by stage whispering the word “popcorn,” I became increasingly full of rage. It got to a point where I wanted to take my pencil and either jab it in her eye or jab it in mine, if only to make a scene to interrupt the ping pong match of popcorn whispers. Ever since then, I can’t bare to hear the word “popcorn” whispered. I can’t quite explain why it irritates me so much. Try it yourself. “Popcorn.” “Popcorn.” Isn’t that irritating as all fuck?

5. I fear technology!

Keep that satanic chunk of metal out of my face!

Funny thing. I write about technology for a living. And I’m using my beloved Mac right now (Mac’s are one of the good one’s, fyi). But overall, technology scares me. I have never purchased a DVD player. I didn’t get a cell phone until I was a junior in college. I’d probably fear the Internet if it didn’t solidfy my trust with its promises of pornography. I think it is the unnecessary complexity that technology puts on our lives that makes me suspicious. I’d much rather play a board game or interact with real human beings than fiddle with a Wii over some gigabyte cockatils with my robot friends. Because that’s what the future is going to look like. Gigabyte cocktails. Robot friends. That’s why I’m planning on building an underground world for all of us technophobes. We’ll live down there and talk about an uprising, only to be crushed by digging robots with drills for hands called DrillBots. Then we’ll all be slaughtered by SlaughterTrons and eulogized by EuloBorgs.