Any gay who's anyone on Facebook seems to have been involved in Fab editor Matt Thomas' sudden war on 'murder music' artist Elephant Man, who was announced as a surprise artist at the Celebrity Ball at Circa this coming Sunday as part of the Caribana festival. Elephant Man is a Jamaican dance-hall artist known for several songs that advocate the murder, rape, and beating of gay men and women.

A note Matt published on Facebook alerting people to the imminent arrival of Elephant Man generated more than 100 comments in just under four hours, including from frenzied Circa staff trying to contain the mess. When initial contacts to Circa were dismissed, Matt encouraged people to contact friendly politicians at the municipal, provincial, and federal level, and says he also contacted Immigration Canada, presumably to block Elephant Man from entering Canada. Around four hours into the chaos, Circa announced via Facebook and Twitter that Elephant Man has been removed from the lineup.

But wait, there's more! Matt wants you to know that another artist, Maino, is performing at a Caribana party in Richmond Hill, and he's just as homophobic:

I have to say, some of the comments popping up in the facebook-o-sphere do seem to be countering homophobia with, well, with outright racism. Commenters on facebook and other places are making gross generalizations of Jamaican and Caribbean culture, talking about boycotting all of Jamaica, or writing as if homophobia is an exclusively Jamaican phenomenon that doesn't exist in Canada. Let's try to keep the debate about the music, ok? It's not like Xtra hasn't already covered this ground.

And it's not just the comment-o-sphere that's up to this. Stop Murder Music Canada, a coalition that arose in 2007 to organise a boycott and ban on homophobic dance-hall artists even got the support of Egale in its last major push to ban Elephant Man from the country. Which is bizarre, because when (white) Canadian pastors preach violence against gays, Egale is usually all "censorship of any kind is bad."

Xtra's usual stance on this topic is anti-censorship, by the way.

In other racially sensitive Facebook-related queer news, queer Toronto jock Josh Levy (whose sexy boxing pictures by Kinked Kenny are currently on display at gay Starbucks, btw) alleges that a Muslim fundamentalist has attacked the World Outgames in Copenhagen. Bizarrely, only the Copenhagen Post and The Advocate so far seem to have picked up the story, but while both acknowledge that this is the second hate-based attack at the Outgames this week, neither says that the attacker was a Muslim fundamentalist and neither gives the attacker's name.

UPDATE: Josh Levy now acknowledges that neither the identity nor the motives of the attackers has yet been revealed. Andrew Sullivan's blog, however, links the story to a book for sale on amazon.com about criticism of Islamic fundamentalism in the west and the Danish cartoon controversy, which appears to be the source of the confusion. Let's all wait 'til we find out the motives behind the attack before we jump to any further conclusions. Hey, Danish press corps, wanna get on that, please?

If the coming race war's got you down, then perhaps you should take a break with a night of comedy. Tomorrow night, local queer comic and aspiring celeb Ian "8-inch" Lynch hosts his monthly dirty comedy night at Fire on the East Side. 6 Gloucester. Doors at 8pm, show at 9pm. $5 cover. I'll be there. Laughing hysterically. And warning Ian that peanut butter only works with dogs.

6:21pm -- Sexy update! -- VIA Rail has extended it's discount ticket offer to end of day Friday!

The striking city workers have announced a tentative deal with the city, which apparently allows all sides to claim a victory on sick days -- workers can't bank any more sick days, but any already banked days will be maintained with the option to cash them out early. Sounds like a outright victory for Miller, to be honest. Torontoist does a roundup of the commentsphere's craziest rants on the strike over the last month. It actually has me a bit jealous. You know, you can post comments on this blog too!

In other strike news, VIA Rail announced 60% off all Canadian destinations through to Dec 14 if you book online before Wednesday at midnight, as an apology for the inconvenience of last weekend's strike. Just sayin' Montreal's DiversCite is on until Sunday, and it's a long weekend.

The AV Club has an interesting article on the theoretical outing of John Travolta. Seriously, if Travolta were to come out, would anyone care? Certainly we've hit outing fatigue, no?

No one can resist the temptation to kick America's favourite ex-governor. Even after her resignation, the one-time drag queen favourite Sarah "I'm from the real America, the one with the teen pregnancies" Palin is still inspiring late night talk show hosts and Bill Shatner.

Well, it's confirmed. VIA Rail is out on strike for the weekend, so your plan to get to DiversCite may be fubar-ed.

Of course, you could always join the good men and women biking to Montreal this coming week on the annual Friends for Life Bike Rally to raise money for the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation. They're having a send-off party Sunday morning at 9am, rain or shine, at Queen's Park.  Show them some love, or better yet, sponsor a rider. I sponsored my Xtra blogging buddy Scott Dagostino very easily online.

Otherwise, it's looking to be a very wet weekend here in Toronto, so you'll probably want to stay indoors for most of it. Luckily, The Toronto Star has provided this wonderful instructional video that makes me want to get an entirely different kind of wet. Enjoy!:

Well folks, I finally caved and joined the Twitter. Come follow me here! My earliest attempts to use the Twitter to get laid have not been successful. Apparently, no one has thought to label their posts with #bigcock. Although grammatically, I guess it makes more sense to #tightass.

However, my limited exposure to the Twitter (okay, I'll stop calling it that) has lead me to some interesting Toronto controversies. For example, who'd have thought that Caribana of all things would be ripping off Pride Toronto with its Can't Stop, Won't Stop advertising. Can't stop what, exactly? Caribana is a cultural fair that's never even had pretensions of being political.

Meanwhile, after announcing that Montreal Pride, and according to the Globe's article (although it's not sourced) Vancouver Pride do not qualify for Marquis Tourism Event Program funding, on the MTEP web site all mention of Toronto Pride is mysteriously absent even though it did receive funding. As if DiversCite needed any more federal government troubles, ViaRail's engineers have announced a strike deadline of this Friday at noon -- right before the festivities!

Ah well. More ass in Toronto this weekend.

Even the worst Pride hangovers are usually gone by Canada Day, so why are certain people still giving Canada headaches over our annual gay celebration/rights-march/no-wait-it's-just-a-completely-apolitical-party-*cough*-*cough*?

Small-brained 'Small-c' conservatives are still up in arms about the $400,000 grant that the federal government gave Toronto Pride this year, even after it's been revealed that the Harper Tories have given numerous grants to queer organisations over the past three years. Not that the National Post maintains a consistent temper on these sorts of things. On one hand, they argue that the parade is no longer political and it also shouldn't receive funding, while on the other, they argue that Harper really ought to do more to court the pink vote.

Meanwhile, the other Pride controversy that just won't die, sees The Toronto Star issue an embarassing apology for a comment by Star blogger Antonia Zerbisias that mockingly "outed" straight Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber, who marched in Toronto Pride wearing a t-shirt that read "Nobody Knows I'm Gay." Local activist Andrew Brett is annoyed that Farber was "appropriating" a queer identity and queer space to make a pro-Zionist point -- and at the risk of inviting an Xtra editorial apology, I'd like to point out to Brett that appropriating spaces is exactly what Zionism is about. (But hey, in fairness, the Queers Against Israeli Apartheid were appropriating the space too. So were the queers for the legalisation of marijuana. So was TD Bank...)

Ok, now that my bubbie and zadie have disowned me, what else is in the news? Well, Xtra's just published an article about mixed martial arts and put Robin Black on the cover. Black is now telling the National Post that he's questioning what other mixed martial artists will think about him appearing on the cover of a gay magazine, in an article about how "homoerotic" the sport is.

The Globe speculates that George Smitherman might be gunning for either the mayoralty or the premiership when he was spotted leading a litter clean-up crew in his Toronto Centre riding. The cheap shot would be that the mayor and premier specialise in making messes, not cleaning them up.

Finally, local queer comic and (reportedly) hung bartender Ian "8-Inch" Lynch is among the comedians vying at the Toronto Comedy Brawl tonight at the Groundhog Pub. Show starts at 8, and admission is $5. Come out and see some of the city's top comics in a full-out comedy throw-down!