Listen: Boy Butter creator Eyal Feldman's Interview on SiriusXM gay biz show, The Focus Group

Listen to in-depth interview on SiriusXM's The Focus Group of entrepreneur Eyal Feldman who began Boy Butter at the age of 24 with a small financial investment and a lot of energy. Ten years later, he has released over 30 different products which are sold all over the world. A dedicated athlete and passionate marathon swimming philanthropist, Eyal swims two miles a day, and organizes annual marathon swims across various bodies of water around the world to raise money for organizations that serve the elderly. Click player to listen:

Listen: Dan Savage reads Boy Butter ads on Savage Love Cast

Please listen to my latest Boy Butter advertisements on the hugely popular podcast Savage Love Cast by Dan Savage. Dan has a large loyal, and playful audience who love to listen to his fun, smart sex and love advice show. I wrote these two funny ads myself and I am pretty proud of them. Check out the show as Shoplube.com, the official Boy Butter web store is this week's official and proud sponsor. 

My ads appear as follows: The first is a 15 sec ad at time  11 min : 08 sec, and the other is a thirty second ad at 19 min :11 sec Click here to listen

Upstart Israeli News Channel i24 Takes Aim at CNN, the BBC—and Al Jazeera

CEO Frank Melloul speaks to the i24 staff just before the station’s launch. (Lauren Toulila)

       The headquarters of i24news, Israel’s first international news channel, is still unfinished. Outside, the glass building in Tel Aviv’s newly redeveloped Jaffa port sparkles, but inside the cavernous blue-lit newsroom, where broadcasts launched in mid-July, wires and beams are still exposed. But the ongoing construction doesn’t seem to bother the 150 journalists working around the clock to produce simultaneous newscasts in English, French, and Arabic. 


        It’s a mix that, by leaving out Hebrew, immediately signals i24’s ambition to speak to viewers beyond Israel’s borders. While English and French were obvious choices, the network’s founders say the decision to broadcast in Arabic was taken consciously to build an audience in parts of the world most hostile to Israel. “People will watch us because they hate us, and they will watch us through curiosity,” said Frank Melloul, the network’s Swiss-born 39-year-old CEO, who says he believes he can eventually compete with CNN, the BBC and Al Jazeera for viewers. “They will see how we cover the 70 percent of international news, and if they can trust that, then they will also trust how we cover Israeli news.”


       The goal, Melloul says, is not so much to promote Israel’s interests, but to shift the media narrative by adding to the mix of stories available on television. “I want to change the story a bit,” Melloul said. Last week, when 26 prisoners were sent back to the West Bank and Gaza in the first stage of that release, the i24 website carried a detailed list of their exact names and crimes, as well as the names of their victims, many of whom were murdered civilians. “When we are talking about an incursion in Gaza, all channels start broadcasting when the IDF is going into Gaza,” Melloul said. “Nobody starts broadcasting when Israel is under attack and getting rockets. There is always a fact before an invasion in Gaza.”


       Melloul has played this game before, at France24, where he was head of strategy before moving to Israel to join i24 last January. What sets i24 apart from its competitors is that it isn’t a government project: licensed in Luxembourg and so far lacking any commercial advertisers, it is chiefly bankrolled by Patrick Drahi, the media tycoon who also owns Israel’s HOT network. The new channel is privately held; its budget has been reported in the French press to run about 50 million euros, about half of what France24 cost annually and a mere drop in the bucket compared to the $1 billion launch budget for the Qatari-backed Al Jazeera. 


       But i24 is clearly following the path blazed by those broadcasters. “In some ways the BBC was the original, and Al Jazeera is the most prominent. But I look at France24 and at Russia Today, at CCTV in China and in America, and I think to myself that maybe every big country is going to have its own channel,” said Brian Stelter, a media reporter for The New York Times and author of Top of the Morning. “I assume that the real unique trait about this channel is the notion of them balancing out al Jazeera,” he added. “But it makes a lot of sense for this to happen because it seems like we’re going to see a lot of countries doing this.”

       So far, i24’s broadcasts suggest building a news channel from scratch will be an uphill battle. This week, i24 offered the same top stories as its competitors, leading its afternoon news breaks with the potential release of Hosni Mubarak from prison and the killing of scores of Egyptian policemen in the Sinai Peninsula, just as appeared on both CNN and Al Jazeera. But while the major international news networks all had reporters on the ground, i24, which employs a few freelance stringers abroad but has yet to put any non-Israeli staff on its payroll, resorted to showing stock footage with a heavily-accented voiceover. Anchors routinely trip over English-language pronunciation and news tickers often carry typos. English-language interviews and “Crossfire”-style debates between Israeli anchors and Israeli experts often have the forced feel of a language-class exchange, with both parties sometimes struggling to find the proper words and not revert back to Hebrew. 


       Still, less than six weeks after its launch, executives insist the station is making an impact. The channel is available on TVs in 350 million households around the world, with satellite and cable broadcasts beaming it across Europe, Asia and much of the Middle East. An expansion onto U.S. screens is slated for as early as January 2014. Meanwhile, it reaches an unlimited number of viewers worldwide via a livestream — which has attracted a handful of hits from Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Egypt, executives say, though i24’s website has already been blocked by at least one internet provider in Tunisia. 

       Its staff has been drawn from established Israeli outlets, and includes print and online journalists who are learning television as they go. “I’m telling the broader story, and I’m telling it the way I think it should be told,” said Tal Shalev, the channel’s 33-year-old diplomatic correspondent who left a gig at Walla!, one of the nation’s most popular Web portals, to join i24. A native Israeli, Shalev, like nearly everyone on the English desk, delivers the news in confident but accented English. “I do think we can compete, eventually, with the bigger guys. I think we will be very worthy competitors because we’re telling the story in an interesting and unique way.”


       Shalev and her colleagues insist that what they’re doing is straight news, not hasbara. “I’m not a government spokesperson, and I don’t want to be the one to provide those tools,” said Jeff Abramowitz, a pipe-smoking, straight-talking South African who serves as editor in chief of the English-language evening edition at i24. He joined the station after 15 years in Israel at the German press agency DPA. “We have no connection with the Israeli government at all,” he went on. “I have not been told by anyone how to present a story, what angle to take or how to do it.”


      Adar Primor, the editor in chief of Internet and multimedia for the channel, said he has been told in plain language that i24 is not a promotional tool for the state of Israel. “This is how it was presented to me, that we would not be a propaganda site,” said Primor, a 20-year veteran of Haaretz. “We will bring forward some aspects of Israel that are not brought in other media outlets. So for me it was important to understand that we are not bringing only one side of the conflict, or one side of everything.”


Click here to read full article By Debra Kamin from Tablet Magazine

I swoon for Jinkx Monsoon in The Vaudevillians

Last night Brendan and I went to see The Vaudevillians, a cabaret show starring Jinkx Monsoon, season 5 winner of Rupaul's Drag Race, and her musical partner, Major Scales. The show is about a Vaudeville duo Kitty Witles & Dr. Dan Von Dandy who were buried in an avalanche in the 1920's while touring in Antartica and frozen alive. Now global warming has thawed them out and they're back and hotter than ever! Singing live the whole time, dancing and bantering with the audience, Jinkx shows off tons of talent and is a true star onstage, while Major Scales, who plays the drag star's "husband," is the invaluable straight man and piano player during the non-stop two-hour stage spectacle. Belting out modern tunes in a twenties style, this show will have you laughing, hooting, and clapping for more.  

Even with the show being extended several times, now through October, "The Vaudevillians" has being selling out, so act fast to see "America's next drag superstar" in the flesh. Speaking of flesh, we got to meet Jinkx and Major after the show, chat, snap some photos and I left them with a couple samples of Boy Butter Lubes (my interactive business card).

To buy tickets, click here.

Glamorous Jinkx and Major 

Jinkx looked gorgeous and sounded ever better

I swoon for Jinkx monsoon

Putting on an angry face

Russian Government Confirms: No One Is Safe From Its Homophobia During Olympics

Today, Russia’s Interior Ministry, which controls the police force, confirmed that the controversial anti-gay propaganda law will be enforced at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, but insisted that no one will be targeted simply for being gay.

Under Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law, citizens and foreigners can be arrested for up to 15 days and face deportation for spreading the gay gospel among the youth.

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge had demanded clarification on the law, after originally claiming that athletes and spectators visiting the country would not be affected by the discriminatory legislation.

The IOC’s statement was almost immediately contradicted by both the law’s co-sponsor and Russia’s Sports Minister, hence causing Rogge’s confusion. Well, that’s all been cleared up now with an official statement from the Interior Ministry:

The law enforcement agencies can have no qualms with people who harbor a nontraditional sexual orientation and do not commit such acts [to promote homosexuality to minors], do not conduct any kind of provocation and take part in the Olympics peacefully. [...]

Any discussion on violating the rights of representatives of nontraditional sexual orientations, stopping them from taking part in the Olympic Games or discrimination of athletes and guests of the Olympics according to their sexual orientation is totally unfounded and contrived.

Speaking with Ria Novosti, Alexander Zhukov, head of Russia’s National Olympic Committee, added that ”People of nontraditional sexual orientations can take part in the competitions and all other events at the Games unhindered, without any fear for their safety whatsoever” as long as they don’t “put across” their views ”in the presence of children.”

Well, that settles it. Attendees and athletes of the Sochi Olympics can be as gay as they want to, just no where near the vicinity of a child. And of course they’re nowhere to be found. Ever.

Full story here: http://www.queerty.com/russian-government-confirms-no-one-is-safe-from-its-homophobia-during-olympics-20130812/#ixzz2boCOZ6PT

Search is out for mystery writer of funny Boy Butter testimonials in Fire Island Pines

        Every time I hit the gay beach mecca of Fire Island Pines I always manage to put up some Boy Butter posters around town as a form of guerrilla marketing. This weekend a few of those posters were joined with "Totally True Testimonials" from a mystery writer named Earl. These notes are cute and humorous, for example it is praises Boy Butter as being "Super On Your Pooper," which is a hilarious tag line and I must find a way to use in my marketing in the future. This funny person must be discovered and given a Boy Butter marketing gig. So if anyone knows who wrote these testimonials please contact me, love to meet you Earl!

It's Super On Your Pooper

NYU safe sex study uses Boy Butter Fresca H20 for 600 men

Boy Butter Fresca H20, the mildly cooling water based formula is chosen as the personal lubricant to be used in a 600 person safe sex study for Center for Health, Identity, Behavior, and Prevention Studies (CHIBPS) at New York University. 

CHIBPS is nationally-recognized research center that studies sexual health among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men.  Currently we have two ongoing research studies.  Project 18 focuses on sexual risk-taking, substance use, and mental health burden among young men. Six hundred participants are enrolled in the study and they are to come into the NYC research center every six months over the course of three years.  In addition to completing surveys, each participant is also given a HIV test with comprehensive pre- and post-test counseling at each assessment.  Our other research study, Project Gold, assesses lifetime trauma as it relates to sexual health and substance use among HIV-positive men over fifty years old.  In addition, CHIBPS staff members are actively engaged in community outreach throughout the New York metropolitan area; we attend gay bars, pride events, parks, schools, and other venues in order to promote our work and the work of New York’s LGBT community.

In order to reduce the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections among men who have sex with men, we provide study participants and people we meet via outreach with condoms, lube (Boy Butter Fresca H20), and educational information on safe sex.  Therefore, we would be extremely grateful for a lube donation from your company.

To purchase your own Boy Butter Fresca H20, click here