Ambush Grants Thirteen Rainbow Awards for February

Of 58 submissions from around the world, ambushmag.com's Rainbow Committee chose thirteen submissions to receive its coveted Rainbow Award.

The Rainbow Award is exclusively bestowed upon those gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered who have made a contribution to the GLBT Web community through excellence in content, design, creativity, presentation or overall concept of their personal web pages. The thirteen winners met all the above criteria and then some. See them for yourself at http://www.gayamerica.com/awards/

Ah, The Solace is Paul Hatton's personal web page that looks like a Hallmark greeting card. A music major at James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, this page is loaded with great music links and archives in a clean, easily navigable design.

Bearlife Women's Writing Advocate is a unique service for the budding, unpublished woman writer. This site, out of Kyle, Texas is an agency that helps women writers get published. As they say, "we'll go to almost any lengths to help a woman establish her place in the literary community." And all of this help is free! They specialize in poets.

Charm City, out of Baltimore is really two personal web pages, Tim's and Lou's, both lovers, one a recovering addict and computer specialist. Tim is into Melrose Place, Barbra Streisand and Star Trek. Lou concentrates on their lives together, especially their burgeoning menagerie: cats, dogs, fish, guinea pigs and ferrets. They have even digitized their favorite movie posters!

A student at UC, Berkeley, majoring in psychology and French, Derick's Home Page is full of music, fashion (links to Jean Paul Gaultier, Versace, Prada and others) with lots of male photos both artistic and lewd. His favorite color is blue and so is his page: beautiful.

Directions, is a webzine from York University in York, England (UK). A LGB Internet service, it is chockfull of news, horoscopes and great gay humor, plus loads of info concerning North England.

The Electronic Frontier of Grant E. Eaton is an excellently designed home page of a 20 year old computer expert, Eagle Scout, Mensa member and budding writer. He has purposely built his page to be "clean enough for my mother." It is.

Funky Diva, aka "Days Of Our Dykes" proves that good webpage design is not the exclusive domain of male geeks - there are womyn geeks too! This one not only has a wonderful sense of humor but a keen design eye as well. In fact, she has created her own web page award, the Funky Diva Award. Not only is she a web designer, but also a composer, and ex-post office employee, the director of an improv. theatre (in Oregon), but also a wannabe singer. She should stick to web design.

Gerbil - a Queer Culture zine for lesbian and gays published quarterly is an online source of "Queer Writing, Queer Arts, Queer Youth, Queer Expression, Queer Old Folx..." and is all these things and more. It is an excellent resource for gay teens.

Information About Homosexuality for Teenagers is just that. Although bereft of bells and whistles and graphics, this basic html page, thoughtfully created by an 18 year old English university student, is another excellent site for the gay, confused teenager with many links to other information about everything a young person craves to know but doesn't know where to go to get it. This is the place.

Noah's Page is by far the best designed page of the entire February collection. Designed in Java, this is a highly graphical site showcasing the incredible talents of its young creator. It is literally visual poetry in motion and will mesmerize you, especially is you have a fast connection.

Outta Space, created by another young webmaster out of Idaho is a "spiritual good news" site for spiritually (i.e. Christian) conflicted homosexuals. Using the sci-fi metaphor of "aliens" to describe gay people, the creator calls his sight a "brave new world." To visit this site is to experience a religious epiphany.

As is the site called Path From A Master, created by a middle-aged bisexual medical doctor now living in San Francisco. When he came out after 17 years of straight marriage, he married his male office nurse in a church wedding in 1983 in Austen, Texas, of all places. He is not only an inventor (for NASA) but a budding artist as well. His artwork studs his pages like jewels.

Rainbow Collections comes from a novice web designer from Australia and is nothing more than a collection of, or lists of gay musicians, actors, directors and producers, sports figures, writers, artists and ones who've "done it but aren't out" like Winston Churchill, Joan Baez, Tiny Tim, James Dean, etc. At the end of each list, you are invited to add to it. Clean and simply designed, this unique interactive element lends uniqueness to this page.

Gay Marriages

A Fifth Dynasty tomb of a same sex couple, Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, was discovered in 1964 in the necropols of Saqqara. A website detailing the find might be of interest to anyone collecting hard evidence to refute undocumented historical arguments to deny the existence of gay marriges in the past. The website is: http://www.sirius.com/~reeder/hiankh.html. [from Out In Maui]

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email:

From: The Lord and Savior

Organization: All that is just and good

Subject: BURN IN HELL SINNERS

Gay America? Do you think that sticking your penis up a [sic] asshole is really a thing that you should share with the world? Listen, you will soon all die of aids and be removed from the earth as I did to the gay greeks. you sinners must pay the world and myself back, I will take you worthless lives and ban every single one of you from crossing my pearly white gates. You queers will burn in hell forever. My son asked me to spare you gays because he said that you do not know what you do. Come on, should have I put a [sic] exit only sign on everyones lower back? I do not understand you queers. Rethink your lifestyles and please change. If you don't I promise you that you will burn in hell.

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From: Noah

Subject: Re: Bravo

First, of course ... wow! Thank you VERY much for the award.... I'm quite surprised to receive it. I know it takes a while to load ... that was a conscious decision I made, to "go all out" on the visual look/quality, somewhat at the expense of speed. I suppose I only expected my friends to pay attention to my site, anyway... :) Again, thank you for giving me the award ... I'm very delightedhappy surprised awe struck honored.

--Noah

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Subject: Page Gorgeous page!!

Congratulations on a wonderful work of art. We guys in Palo Alto (so close to Silicon Valley) should produce such works of wonder.

--Howard

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Subject: Note for Brad Benedict

I just returned to San Diego after another wonderful stay in New Orleans. While there I picked up a copy of the Ambush and saw a photo of someone on page 4 of the XXXpose section of the latest issue. The caption is "Lea & table buddy Tommy" I'm not sure who is who, but I find the big man, with glasses (Tommy?) holding the plate to be a real attractive man.

I make it to New Orleans 2 or 3 times a year and would enjoy meeting this gentleman for a coffee or a drink and getting to know him a bit. If there is a way to make contact, I would sincerely appreciate it. Thanks and hope to hear from you,

Dan Stricker in San Diego

GWM, 42, 6'2" 225, bearded, balding, blue eyes, athletic, professional and interested in meeting up with the table buddy . I'd be glad to send a photo along or to make direct contact with him if it's ok with him. Thanks for taking the time.

Dear Dan--

The guys at Ambush sent me your e-mail. I'm flattered, to say the least. Isn't the Internet wonderful?!? I'll be happy to exchange photos (no GIFyet) and correspond with you. I like your stats and hope to meet you soon, on your next trip out to New Orleans. Thanks for the message and hope to hear from you soon! Sincerely,

Terrible Tommy

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