Premiere

Okay, first of all, no more Queer as Folk screening parties for me. I forget how extremely embarrassed I get watching, uh, "sexually-oriented" material with large groups of people, and spent half the ep hiding in the kitchen, and the other half braced to go flee to the kitchen. Thank God for VCRs. And the only reason I'm telling you is because RedDev said that if I didn't, she would. Stop laughing, RD. Knock it off, I have to do the recap.

So, Showtime opens with this, like,thousand-word disclaimer which basically translated to: "ATTENTION EVERYONE ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET EVERYWHERE: In no way, shape or manner are all the Naked Gay Men meant to offend you!" For half a minute there, I thought I was going to have to sign a waiver. And yes, in my world, "Naked Gay Men" is capitalized. Get used to it.

The opening credits are an onslaught of pastel neon colors, against which muscle-bound men wearing various types of not much and the occasional cowboy hat -- they show up a lot in QaF so we'll just call them the Hot Dancing Gay Boys -- writhe frenetically to a pumping techno beat.

And now we're in Babylon, a gay club in Pittsburgh. And what did I tell you, it's Hot Gay Dancing Boy Central! Sweaty, gorgeous, half-naked men as far as the camera can pan. Man, I gotta tell you -- I love my life. Over a disco mix of "Can you Feel It?" originally by the Jackson Five, Hal Sparks voice-overs, "It's all about sex...they say that men think about sex every twenty-eight seconds. Of course with gay men, it's every nine...and that's why we're here at one in the morning, instead of home in bed."

Cut to a blank-looking demi-god standing at the bar. "That's me," Michael says, "...I wish." The camera jets down the bar to Hal Sparks. "This is me. Michael Novotny, the cute boy-next-door type. Twenty-nine, 5'10", 140, 9 and a half, cut -- all right, so I exaggerate." The sly eyebrow-raise at the end gets a chuckle. I'm not made of stone, here. If you amuse me, I laugh.