Now I’m kicking myself for coming back from Mexico – as if I had a choice. I’m not sure if I’m ready to deal with this record cold winter after so many years of mild temperatures. On the plus side, we may actually get snow on the ground on Christmas for once.

Wow, small-talking about the weather. I have to admit my writing faculties are a little maxed out this month, especially after having to hash out a large and thorough article last minute (mentioned below). This month I’m going to keep my publisher’s column reasonably brief, but direct you to the multitude of other stories that should be read.

Mercedes’ Trans column and the Porn Reviews will resume as usual next month. Mercedes was undergoing her move from Edmonton to High River, and couldn’t submit anything, while we just couldn’t fit the Porn Reviews. It’s a packed issue.

Last Month

We were invited by the SHARP Foundation to attend a special event outside of the gay community: National Philanthropy Day. We showed up with Camera in hand, not realizing that we were being invited as their guests. Ironically Steve and I had heard the word Philanthropy used before, but were not of aware of it’s meaning – the closest thing in my head was Lycanthropy, but that’s the technical term for werewolfism. As explained at the event, Philanthropy refers to the practice of helping people without expecting anything in return – in essence, altruism. Traditionally it has been used to describe corporate millionaires who donate their money to charity, but the presentations emphasized that people at any age, at any tier of society can apply their creativity to make a difference in the world. It was very enlightening.

A lot of people are asking me if Steve is living in Edmonton these days. It doesn’t help that for the past several months, busy Calgary and Edmonton weekends have coincided, so I’m starting to sound like a broken record every time someone asks me where he is. The not-so-busy weekends when we are both in town, we tend to spend the daytime running about town to do our daily errands, and the evenings at home working, or taking a break to watch our favourite TV programs together. On rare occasions we go out to the bars just to hang out, but keep a much lower profile than when the camera is in our hand.

This Month

There is a huge multitude of events happening in Calgary and Edmonton this month during the holiday season, so we have written a special event guide entitled “Homo for the Holidays” (page 36). It covers special events leading up to Christmas, but not quite as far as New Years, which is pretty obvious anyway.

What’s with all the Twisted Bashing?

Yes, no doubt that’s going to be a term we’ll be hearing a lot over the course of this month. I can understand how it looks, but it didn’t happen the way you might expect – born from some grudge or need for revenge. In fact, Steve and I had no intention of this issue turning into such a lightning-rod for the issues at hand.

It all started back in August, prior to our article explaining that our magazines had been banned from the premises of Twisted Element. Our writer Allison approached us, wanting to do an article about the club’s door policy after a group of her friends were split down the centre at the door, some being charged cover, others not. We mulled over the idea for about a month before giving her the go ahead, but making sure she did due diligence to check out how other night clubs (be them straight) in the city handled entry. The article was originally planned for November, but in good taste we didn’t want to publish them the month of their (and our) anniversary. This turned out well because Allison was able to give the owners many more opportunities to answer her questions, which they refused and ignored. (See page 47) And incidentally, we did send them a large bouquet of flowers for their anniversary, (to the chagrin of some) as we have done for all of the bar’s anniversaries.

In October we received two letters to the publisher (see page 26) complaining about the club’s door policy. In light of the Le Stud incident in Montreal, we wondered what legal recourse people had, and so forwarded the two letters to Darryl Aarbo for a legal advice column. By now we realized this December issue was going to sting a little, but that was to be the end of it…until the day before our press deadline when the owners of Twisted attempted something very ugly at Pride Calgary’s AGM. (See page 40)

Though we haven’t talked much about the drama that has plagued the Pride Calgary Boards for several years now, we had made a resolution earlier this year that we were doing the organization no favours by turning a blind eye to it – in fact, we talked about the AGMs of Apollo, ARGRA, and Calgary Outlink before this, as part of that resolution. I’m happy to say most went smoothly this year, as we reported. We were partially to blame for stirring things up at previous AGMs, but things have changed and we have mellowed – still it was nothing compared to Pride. I was going to talk about it just in the publisher’s column, but it turned into a full length article.

Then, the Secretary of the Pride AGM wrote us a third letter to the publisher about her disgust over the conduct of the club owners and their groupies at said meeting.

So now, we’re left clutching 4 articles that could be considered “Twisted bashing” and wondering how on earth we’re going to live this one down. In the end we opted to get them over all at once, rather than spreading them over future months – quick and painful - kindof like removing a band-aid.

I do want to assure our readers that we have done our due diligence to collect evidence to back up everything stated in Allison’s and our articles, especially because we are sticking our necks out a little farther than previous articles. I spent many hours as editor making sure we were iron clad, with the help of our lawyers. So although you may hear the term “slander” thrown around a lot, one has to remember that statements must be proven false, purposely malicious, and to cause direct harm (all three at once) before they qualify for the term. Otherwise it’s just another word used incorrectly to intimidate people, or rile them up.

The GayCalgary.com Website

Maybe this is why I feel like I haven’t been getting out as much as usual – I’ve been locked away slaving over the new website. It’s in much better condition from how I left it when I went on holidays. Surprisingly we received a Proud Out Loud award from GayVancouver.net for the site, even though it’s still under construction!

I have made a number of updates in the Directory area, bringing back our business images that show recent magazine advertisements amongst listing information – as well as interfacing with Microsoft Virtual Earth to display location maps for any listing with a valid address.

But the biggest change has been the completion of the Events Calendar, and the addition of all the events we could find from last month’s magazine. I was in awe to see the sheer volume of community events visualized in the calendar for the first time – November had not a single day without something to do, and December looks about the same. When I revisit this feature later, I will have to devise a strategy for users to filter out events they are not interested in. This is already somewhat possible if you have a user account on the site. When you bring up the detailed event information for any event, you can click the “Remind Me” link to add it to your personal events list. Your personal events list is shown on the main page (only when logged in) as well as on your MyGayCalgary page (reached by clicking your username in the upper right corner of the site).

Though the photo sorting is coming along well, unfortunately the photo publishing is not. I discovered a bug in my sorting software that is hampering our ability to properly upload the photos to the website – you’ll see some days that only have 1 photo, and there are obviously supposed to be a whole slough more. I’m looking at this in tandem with everything else.

My sights are set on finishing sorting through the inactive Directory listings so that we can finally provide the form for visitors to add their own listings. After that, a similar form to add events, and then finally the site search feature. It’s a good thing I enjoy coding!

Happy Holidays

Steve and I would like to extend our best wishes to our readers and advertisers; to the organizations and businesses we work with each month, our tireless writers and contributors, and the people who work hard to make good things happen. We appreciate your support and friendship, your kind words and helpful criticisms, your patience and understanding, and your wisdom and guidance.

We want to hear what YOU have to say about the topics in this article, and any other articles in our magazine. Visit the chat forums at www.gaycalgary.com and write your heart out! Or write us a letter to the publisher by E-mailing publisher@gaycalgary.com, and we may respond to it in the magazine!