From the ‘Built-In-Cruising’ file, the Chicago Tribune (April 22) reports that photo technology called ‘heat maps’ has found that men—gay and straight—look at two areas on other men: their faces and crotches. (Women tend to look mostly at faces.) One can use weasel words and say these men, if straight, are just checking out the competition, but one also wonders what these men would say if proof of their gaze were presented to them.

Speaking of weasel words, how about ghost words? Parade magazine (April 15) leaves out a few words when recommending two films set in schools that are now out on DVD: Notes on a Scandal and The History Boys. Not mentioned was that each has a major gay element in its plot.

The New York Times (April 24) reviews a new documentary, Black White + Gray, by James Crump that details the life of photograph collector Sam Wagstaff. Wagstaff was the mentor, career impressario and lover of Robert Mapplethorpe (known for his erotic photos of nude men). The movie features interviews with people who knew the two, and rock star/poet Patti Smith is particularly effective. Wagstaff, 25 years older than Mapplethorpe, was unhappy only about his closeted years in the ’50s and the film indicates his later life was a reaction to that time. Both men died of AIDS in the ’80s.

Greg Kot, the Chicago Trib’s music critic, tells us (April 6) of Beth Ditto and her band, The Gossip, who are ‘proudly loudly gay and on a major label.’ After some years of touring in the punk underworld, they have just been signed by Columbia Records, which has set up a Music With a Twist subsidiary advertised as ‘ the music industry’s pioneering first LGBT record label.’ Ditto says she’s happy to wear the label of gay artist: ‘We’ve been pigeonholed into being a queer band for eight years and it’s only gotten bigger and better.’ The band’s album for Twist will be released later this year.

Gay novelist Ethan Mordden is also a serious historian of Broadway musicals, operas and dramas. Interviewed in The New York Times (April 8), he talks of his new book, All That Glittered, which is about the golden age of Broadway drama. The interview pegs him as both erudite and snarky: ‘Sometimes you have to slap the reader’s face to get his attention.’ His assessment of why theater is dead? Because ‘cool’ is in, which kills morality and glamour [and it’s no longer] ‘about sophisticated gay people helping the heteros understand they’re stupid and boring.’