Are the ties that bind gay men to straight women beginning to fray?
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 18, 2009 - 99 comments

Children Full of Life - grade 4 students in Kanazawa, Japan learn deep life lessons from their incredible teacher and from each other. I strongly recommend this as awesome, but one caveat: keep tissues handy. (5 parts, 40 minutes total, English)
posted by madamjujujive on Jul 25, 2009 - 48 comments

How to talk to a friend with cancer, Time interview. Author of the excellent, Help Me Live: 20 Things People With Cancer Want You to Know [now a free, readable online Google book], Lori Hope, also lectures on compassionate communication and blogs for the practical and supportive CarePages.com, "free, personal websites that connect family and friends during illness and injury. Top 10 Dos and Don'ts.
posted by nickyskye on Dec 16, 2007 - 34 comments

Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. Examining the social rules and norms, as well as the pitfalls, of electronic "friending" (yes, it's a verb now - or is it a gerund?). Via.
posted by amyms on Sep 24, 2007 - 54 comments

Guy love (youtube) One hundred percent non gay, totally hetero, manly Guy Love. More examples here,here,here,and here. (all youtube) Turk and JD, not as gay as Ennis and Jack, but far far funnier.
posted by tylerfulltilt on Jan 24, 2007 - 29 comments

Are we getting lonelier?
posted by digaman on Jun 23, 2006 - 135 comments

The Lifelong Friendship Society produces some comfortably disjointed art/video/music/writing that is sometimes incredibly cheesy. (quicktime is pretty much required for all these links)
posted by bigmusic on Apr 14, 2006 - 10 comments

An Eye for Annai is a terrific little animation, suitable for all ages. (QuickTime).
posted by Scoo on Nov 2, 2005 - 17 comments

Going on a "Man Date" (NYT link, reg. required). Two (presumably) heterosexual guys who knew each other from college go to the museum and dinner without partners -- and apparently this qualifies as a "man date," although (again presumably) there's no kiss at the end of the night or promises to call the next day. Maybe I'm cranky, but back in my day, we simply called this "spending time with a friend" and didn't plaster a thin veneer of gay panic/defensive het rationalization on it. Is the social behavior of straight males now so circumscribed that a guy having one-on-one time with a male friend outside a bar or sporting merits an article in the NYT?
posted by jscalzi on Apr 9, 2005 - 178 comments

what do you call your circle of friends? Two years ago, Ethan Watters wrote an article in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, covering the current phenomenon amongst adults who are marrying late, waiting for the 'right one', and using an extended social circle to fill the need for intimacy and emotional support that has been traditionally provided by a marriage. He has expanded the topic into a book covering groups of friends that have the characteristics of 'an urban tribe' bound by a shared culture of inside jokes, origin myths and communal rituals. Does this apply to your social set? Do you have a Yahoogroup or a Friendster bulletin board that is used to plan movie nights, pubcrawls or group vacations? Does introducing a new romantic partner to your friends feel more stressful than introducing them to your family? Conversely, do you need a chart to track who has dated whom, who has slept with whom, and who has had more than their fair share of drunken hookups? Or is this all one man's conflated introspection of his extended bachelorship?
posted by bl1nk on Oct 9, 2003 - 24 comments