Results. At least 59% of our targets have shown variability between SDSS DR2 and our observations by more than 0.1-0.27 mag depending on the telescope used. A host galaxy was detected in 36% of our targets. The host galaxy type and luminosities are consistent with earlier studies of BL Lac host galaxies. Simple fits to broad-band SEDs for 104 targets of our sample derived synchrotron peak frequencies between 13.5 <= log(10)(nu(peak)) <= 16 with a peak at log(10) similar to 14.5. Our new optical spectra do not reveal any new redshift for any of our objects. Thus the sample contains a large number of bona fide BL Lac objects and seems to contain a substantial fraction of intermediate-frequency peaked BL Lacs.