Ever wonder what that traditional song played, post-ball drop, every year on NYE actually is? I do, every year. So I look it up on Wikipedia.org, every year, because I forget what I learned on Wikipedia.org the year before when last looking it up.

The song is Auld Lang Syne: “a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song,” according to the free encyclopedic website. “It is well known in many English-speaking (and other) countries and is often sung to celebrate the start of the New Year at the stroke of midnight. By extension, its use has also become common at funerals, graduations, and as a farewell or ending to other occasions.”

Loosely translated to English from the Old Scottish, the song’s title basically means “for old times’ sake.” The first stanza of which, “Should old acquaintance be forgot,” questions whether said old times are worthy of remembering on the cusp of progressing into a new period marked by change and/or difference—much like that of a new year. Yet the song seems to answer its own inquiry with a definitively conclusive “yes” in the final stanza, where it is suggested that the singer and the serenaded join hands for old times’ sake.

However in this online-era of the ever-evolving superhighway, I wonder if Auld Lang Syne is outdated or, more appropriately, obsolete. With the prominence and popularity of social-networking, news media and web-logging sites spinning the globe’s population into a powerfully connected world-wide web, it seems likely that old acquaintances can’t be forgot—especially considering the popularity of gay hook-up sites, like Manhunt, Grindr and Adam4Adam, which by extension probably plays into the prominence and prevalence of STDs. How can old times be forgot when they’re ever brought to mind by way of the daily wearing of a carpel-tunnel brace and/or application of a antibacterial cream?

Stew on that and Happy New Year.

Pictured above: The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards as depicted on their album, Auld Lang Syne.

In the interest of down-to-earth holiday togetherness, I’ve gone with a local, independent-talent theme in the signature features of PINK’s online exclusives this week.

In Chicago, check out the emo-exploits of Windy-City recording artist Troy Petty. Petty’s sensitive soul is evident in his Q&A interview answers, and even more so comes across in the music of his new indie band, The Last Dark Show.

On the west coast in L.A., PINK introduces the web-work of struggling actress Courtney Zito. Zito’s taken her fate in her own hands with the launch of her own web series, Hollywood Girl, a romantic comedy based on the antics of her own life.

I was so moved and entertained by these two artists that I opted to feature them through PINK’s web portal in light of the subject’ lacking LGBT relevance. However, this isn’t to say there isn’t LGBT relevance: The Last Dark Show’s drummer Jay Will is a gay, and the lead’s male love interest in Hollywood Girl appears sans shirt in Episode Two. Rumor has it he may show off a little bit more in Episode Three as well.

Happy Holidays!

About two weeks ago, I accidentally dug out my Christmas-decorations box from the bottom of the hall closet. Buried beneath 14 loose vacuum cleaner bags and hidden behind an air conditioner, I inadvertently unearthed the box while trying to find a quarter that fell from a hole in my coat pocket. My initial reaction was to just shove the Christmas box back where I found it, but ‘its the season. So I went out and got a Christmas tree for the first time in six years.

Oh, my Tanenbuam was trimmed with an eclectic assortment of holiday ornaments that I collected throughout my twenties: Most are cheap glass, a few are Lenox china, six are from an international holiday-themed ornament set purchased at Pottery Barn, some I made from key chains, all are sentimental. Streamed with white lights, I wrapped the tree in gold ribbon and topped it with a multi-pronged silver star from Crate & Barrel that I didn’t even know I owned. And then, I just couldn’t stop.

I draped a silver, velvet icicle-shaped table runner over the bookshelves, tossed reindeer throw pillows on the furniture, placed plush snowmen on all the side tables, put gold jingle-bell wreaths on every door knob, lined the living-room windowsill with pine-garland rope (also streamed with white lights) and accented every corner, in every room with dried, red Christmas berries—I literally decked the halls with boughs of holly.

And now, when I look at the evocation of my Christmas cheer, by way of glittery holiday home décor, artificial foliage and twinkling lights, a heavy weight fills inside my chest as I suddenly realize, and remember, that taking down all this crap in January will be such a pain in a**.

We were both college students at UIC when Joey Hollendoner first charmed me. As a personal appeal for my better health and wellness, he refused to hug me “hello” unless I extinguished my cigarette (It was the late nineties so smoking was still kind of cool—to everyone but him, of course). He distributed safer-sex information within the campus’ famed bathroom hook-up sites and he brought his parents to an LGBT community service-related scholarship ceremony. He was only 19-years-old at the time and I, then 23 and only partially out of the closet, still couldn’t conceive bringing one’s parents to an openly “gay” affair. I used to affectionately refer to him as “Joey-Joey-Joe-Joe.”

Since, Hollendoner’s been an active community leader, serving as an HIV Prevention Program Coordinator for Aunt Martha’s Youth Service Center and as a Program Coordinator for Chicago’s Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Most recently, Hollendoner received the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s 2010 Community Health Leader Award. Yet this was only one of several such awards Hollendoner’s been receiving since 1999.

So, needless to say, ten years later my old friend Joey—who now goes by “Joe”—is still charming me, this time as the Vice President and Chief Program Officer for the Howard Brown Health Center, as well as a managing founder of the Ho-Bro Broadway Youth Center.

In response to Howard Brown’s recent Lifeline Appeal, Hollendoner has taken on the added responsibility of producing the center’s “50 in 50” video campaign. In effort to raise immediately needed operational funding, the videos (posted to Hollendoner’s facebook profile as well as to the Howard Brown website and youtube account, feature the testimonials of those to which Howard Brown has been, and continues to be, of service.

Last week, the Health Center announced its need to raise upwards of $500,000 in fiduciary support by the end of 2010, lest it may close its doors. Recent reports have attested that Ho-Bro has amassed approximately over 30-percent of the needed funds, however much more is still required. Donations can be submitted directly to Ho-Bro’s fund-raising web page.

Independently-produced video testimonials for the “50 in 50” campaign can also be submitted to “Joey” at Howard Brown via mylifelinestory[at]gmail.com

Pictured above: Ho-Bro’s Joe Hollendoner flexes his muscles for the health center’s Lifeline Appeal (top); Howard Brown patients and employees share their pro-Ho-Bro stories (bottom).

I wasn’t actually planning to attend the second annual S.I.N. party on Thursday, October 28, 2010 after receiving the invitation in the mail last month. The Halloween-themed service industry night (S.I.N., get it?), hosted by the proprietor of Chicago’s Cupid’s Treasures, Ram Bookstore and Leather Sport, was again being thrown in appreciation for those working in the service of our city’s LGBT public—and it would take place in the Ram’s video “viewing” space—S.I.N. indeed!

Frankly, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of all my community colleagues collected together to “watch videos.” The fact many may already be privy to my personal video selection notwithstanding.

However, I bumped into the party organizer in passing last week, and he was so excited about being a S.I.N.-er, having put so much time, money, effort and goodwill into its preparation. He sincerely wanted me to attend and was so gracious while also assuring me it wasn’t going to be that kind of “movie” night. Plus, there’d be free booze. So, I figured I should at least make an appearance, albeit a very brief one, if only to show my gratitude for being included on the guest list.

I was one of the last people to leave.

Pictured above, top left, right and bottom: the invite for the LGBT service industry party touted S.I.N.-ing from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.; “I got this feeling, somebody’s watching me!”; yours truly, Yorick’s skull and Ram Proprietor Jeff reenact Hamlet, Scene V.

Last week, I asked readers their thoughts on the federal injunction declaring “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” unconstitutional, and whether or not they felt the U.S. Military would appeal the ruling. Not many had much to say about it. When asked, “do you think the military will execute their right to appeal?” of the few replies I did receive most, more or less, pretty much said “No.”

Well, regardless of whether or not the military will appeal the injunction, the continued fallback of DADT—continuing despite the suspension of DADT—and the grassroots efforts made in its opposition are still making the news.

Case in Point: Dr. Franklin Kameny, World War II U.S. Army veteran and lifelong civil rights activist with West Point grad and former U.S. Army infantryman Dan Choi made headlines last week as the two joined forces at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.. Both were present to witness the formal display of Dr. Kameny’s preserved picket sign declaring “Homosexual Citizens Want to Serve Their Country Too.”

The sign was carried in protest in Washington D.C. almost a half-century ago and, per a press release distributed by Witeck Combs Communications, “serves as a testament to the decades’ old struggle to grant gay men and lesbians the equal right to serve openly and honestly in military service—and to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

“The artifact from the Kameny Papers Project was given to the Smithsonian a few years ago,” the release continues, “and is now on permanent display in one of the Museum’s most popular and enduring exhibits, The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden. The Kameny picket is surrounded by other protest signs, images and buttons that characterize Americans’ First Amendment right to express their opinions freely and to petition their government for redress of wrongs.”

More information about the Kameny Papers Project can be found at  www.kamenypapers.org.

Pictured above: Dr. Franklin Kameny and Dan Choi at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. standing before Dr. Kameny’s”Homosexual Citizens Want to Serve Their Country Too”  picket sign. Photo by Marvin Carter.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010, A federal judge posed a worldwide injunction ordering the U.S. Military to “immediately suspend and discontinue any investigation or discharge, separation or their proceeding, that may may been commenced under the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.” However, the military has 60 days since the ruling to appeal.

So, after 17 years of operating under the policy, and its proponents fighting to the death to keep it throughout that time, do you think the military will execute their right to appeal?

E-mail your thoughts to jfreeman[at]pinkmag.com.

National news of several gay-teen suicides taking place last month—acting in response to consistent bullying and harassment—can attest to how, even in today’s contemporary atmosphere, LGBT youth still stand as the brutal victims of prejudice, bias and hate.

In effort to pass hope onto gay teens affected by intolerant environments, national syndicated columnist and openly gay Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller launched a youtube video channel, dubbed the It Gets Better Project, on September 21, 2010. The campaign hosts video submissions featuring LGBT adults discussing the abuses they endured during adolescence and how, ultimately, their lives progressively and profoundly “got better.” The first video features Savage and Miller sharing intimate details of their rewarding lives together.

In less than two weeks, the It Gets Better Project had collected dozens of videos (featuring submissions by the cast of Wicked’s national tour, gender advocate Kate Bornstein, openly gay rapper Ari Gold and the student body of Smith College) and has amassed over 9200 subscribers and growing. [In fact, in the time it took to type this post, 75 new members joined the project page.]

A local project initiative—where a film crew will volunteer time and equipment to tape individual videos for LGBT Chicagoans interesting in submitting to It Gets Better at the Center on Halsted this coming Sunday—became over-booked the day it was initiated. The founding member of the local initiative expresses his hope to have the opportunity to schedule additional videotaping in the near future on his personal blog.

The Its Gets Better Project can be viewed in its entirety at www.youtube.com/user/itgetsbetterproject.

Vernacular initialisms are running relationships

It was January 1997: Instant messaging had yet to become all the rage as AIM was five months away from public release; so my girlfriend and I were consigned to talking back-and-forth on this wild, new innovative thing people were calling “e-mail.” It involved typing green-colored letters into a lighter green-colored message box and then sending the message, via a telephone-line linked computer, over the World Wide Web to a recipient’s computer someplace far away, like on the other side of the world, just down the street or wherever. Depending on how fast one could type, the whole process only took a few minutes which, to me, seemed considerably and unnecessarily longer than it would take  just talking on the phone. So, couldn’t we just do that? Better yet, why not meet for coffee someplace and talk face-to-face? But my tech-savvy girlfriend thought the notion ridiculous. Why go out of our way when we could just e-mail? To even suggest anything otherwise was humorous to her (She was so ahead of her time).

“LOL,” her succeeding e-mail said.

I thought it was a typo: Lot? Low? Or maybe I was supposed to read it phonetically. “Are you gargling?” I wrote back.

It took a few more e-mails for me to figure out that she was actually expressing her instant physical reaction to a thing she found funny. She was “laughing out loud” in real time, apparently.

And that was the day LOL happened.

But it wouldn’t—it couldn’t—stop there because what if something was really funny? You’d need ROFL—because people actually roll on the floor laughing. Then there would be those times when LMFAO would be more appropriate. Eventually this ever-evolving fast-paced world would no longer be able to spare the seconds that abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms took to type. We’d need to make the switch to emoticons. Just two keystrokes and we’re smiling before the whole world, even though no one will ever really see it or know how truly dead inside we actually are.

Now, thanks to the technological progressions of chat rooms, instant messaging, text messaging, online dating profiles and social networking sites, humanity is so far detached from emotive face-time that words no longer hold any meaning without the conclusive validation of a textual facial expression and/or the use inappropriately repetitive punctuation.

Point in fact: Text-messaging my three-time ex-boyfriend, “Lose my number and never call me again,” wasn’t enough to get my point across, as he drunk text-ed me six months later expressing his desire to get back together again. When I replied by expressing my lack of interest, he was totally surprised.

“I thought we were cool,” he text-ed. But of course he did; my final farewell to him simply wasn’t textually clear. It was my fault, really.

So, I replied as such: “LOSE my number and NEVER call me again!!!!! >:|”

To which my ex responded, “You don’t have to yell.”