I've always liked Ellen—I even sat through her sitcom, which was brilliant in fits and unfit for television in bits. I liked her more than I ever could have thought possible when she came out, was disappointed when I saw her in person and she did not radiate warmth (to be fair, I was with a camera crew and she probably thought we were after her, which we weren't) and have enjoyed her talk show to an extent. The extent to which I don't enjoy it is that every once in a while, it bugs me that the smart, hip, 50-year-old lesbian has to dance to engage her adult audience. I don't despise the dance, and I see it as a smart branding thing that she probably tripped into, but it comes off as phony. For me.
The rest of her show isn't phony; her bubbliness—unlike when Rosie had her talk show, whose fake persona I loathed—seems to be genuine. And while I sometimes wish she were more political (I hate when people say they're not political...we all should be since politics affects every facet of our lives), I have to give her credit for being openly, unapologetically gay. That is really enough.
I think Ellen, with her visibility and her appeal to citizens from eight to 80, is probably the most important, directly impactful (even if it's not a word) figure in the gay-rights movement. And for that, I can overlook her cloying dance routine. In fact, her stealthy success at making a difference helps me understand what all that dancing could be about in the first place.
Kathie Lee Gifford allegedly introduced Hoda Kotb to Eduardo Verastegui...as a romantic possible. YEAH, RIGHT! What is National Enquirer (May 12 2008) smoking?
The National Enquirer and Globe are both owned by American Media, and since the American media have been so dead-set on creating conflict regarding every minute detail of anything Hillary or Barack do (while ignoring McCain's many gaffes and controversies), this week's (May 5, 2008) cover stories should come as no surprise.
Seems Hillary's lezzing out with her aide Huma Abedin (this is an old rumor, yet Globe trumpets it as a "WORLD EXCLUSIVE"). Cleverly attempting to undermine Hillary as much as possible—knowing that stories of her lesbianism have already been around and have not decapitated her politically—Globe goes for the throat with, "Secrets Of Muslim Beauty Who Won Hillary's Heart." I suppose Obama's camp should have him say, "My dad may have been a Muslim, but I'm not—and I've never had sex with one."
Enquirer continues attacking the Obamas with a story that their marriage has "exploded" (like a suicide bomber?) that amounts to nothing more than a rumor that Michelle Obama has asked Barack to 'fess up right now to any infidelities from his past. This is what passes for a cover story at check-out.
People wonder why I read 'bloids, but this shit hits home with a lot of people—a lot of them. The same people who make their voting decisions based on who they'd rather have a beer with or who bowls better.
Gay dads Brent and Joe Taravella "represent the new breed of gay breeders."
Edward Lewine writes "The Gay Baby Boom" for Details (May 2008), a piece that explores the relatively new trend of gay parenting. It starts on a cynical note, quoting one gay dad as saying of his surrogate's own children:
"They're all gorgeous, which was important to Jay and me. We're vain."
Yikes...I guess gay parents are as stupid as straight ones. Or as human. (For the record, the fathers are pictured in the magazine—not above—and both are nice-looking. Hopefully, they won't worry so much about the physical perfection of the children they sire once they're born. There are no returns! Possibly the quote was an unfortunate utterance that in no way reflects their true attitudes.) The rest of the article is interesting and not too snarky, which I'd expected of Details in publishing an openly gay piece.
When I was a kid, I spent way too much time drawing naked people. I was sexualized from an early age thanks to clandestine research conducted on the (heterosexual) pornographic magazine collection of my older cousin Vance, access to which was facilitated by his little brother—my dream brother—Wally. I would spend more time examining the men in Penthouse than the women, though Hustler was my favorite because it was the filthiest and was more likely to show couples having sex. I always thought it was weird that "softcore" existed...it struck me like wanting to eat chocolate chip cookies with less chips instead of just buying the ones with more.
Drawings were throughout these magazines, perhaps most memorably in the form of Hustler's "Chester the Molester" (its illustrator was later convicted of molesting his 13-year-old daughter and spent 23 months in prison, from which he continued the strip) and those racy illustrations in Playboy that were at once sophisticated and sleazy. I don't know if that's what inspired me, but I used to express my sexual urges or, considering my age, my sexual questions/fears/nightmares in the form of elaborately drawn nudes or women with pronounced cleavage represented by a "V."
I remember my mom catching me once—though I didn't know if she'd found a rudimentary penis sketch or a busty naked lady. She just told me, "Don't draw those things anymore," without referring to what exactly she'd found. Maybe that's why I have to few of them to this day—I drew, felt relief, then discarded the evidence.
I also at that time drew bosomy superheroines and elaborate fake movie posters featuring made-up starlets showing too much leg and bearing a beauty mark or two. The films were always tawdry serials at first, then gradually segued into respectable hits and finally Oscar-bait as the leading ladies became less cheap but remained unbelievably ripe, their breasts barely restrained behind tight, Lana-Turner-eat-your-heart-out sweaters.
These, too, were expressions of sexuality, or a trying-out of sexual norms. They became a way to develop a personal sexual history without actually having had one. I was a knowing nine-year-old, to be sure.
Bush's Aames was true.
Somehow, I missed the November 2007 release of Hard Boys (Green Candy Press), a quality paperback with almost 200 pages of drawings by Harry Bush (yes, that was his birth name), a pre- and post-Stonewall illustrator who worked with gay publications like Physique Pictorial and Drummer. Bush, who died in 1994, had an effortless-seeming understanding of the male form, and imbued many of his sketches with an unabashedly perverse, taboo sense of humor.
As far as Bush's work was concerned, separating the men from the boys was most likely to be accomplished with a garden hose.
The "Pubes Bikini" was one of Bush's most enduring themes.
I find his work amazing and insightful and uncomfortably familiar—not all of his obsessions (pubic hair, teenage boys, exhibitionism, prostitution, famous men) mirror those of every gay man, but many are universal at their root even if his expression of them was scandalously frank.
Bush wasn't a happy man—he feared being outed and even destroyed much of his work. He almost didn't leave his creations in the care of anyone. I would argue that would have been a tragic loss, like the one "this big!" that got away.
More than a few of Bush's pieces seemed to be inspired by gay pornstar Lance.
Several more Bush creations after the jump, including a Maxwell Caulfield nude...
Back to the idea of illustrating fabulous women, I'd like to recommend MemoraBEALEia (March, AuthorHouse) by Walter Newkirk. This "private scrapbook" to Little Edie Beale of Grey Gardens fame was compiled by Rutgers student Newkirk, who in the '70s interviewed the Beales for his school's paper after that famous film was released and quickly became a favorite correspondent. He paints a respectful picture of Little Edie, defending her as more of a larger-than-life eccentric than a flat-out kook, and sharing with other fans a wealth of her original notes and many private photos.
The cover drawing, by Bruce Lennon, resembles a fantastic creature from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, and reminded me of the kind of passionate gay-drawing I referred to as this post began. The rest of the book has a number of other artistic representations of Edie, but it's Newkirk's recollections that draw the sharpest portrait of this one-of-a-kind personality.
Gay men always know how to nail down an obsession, whether it involves what's going on in the pants of a persuadable piece of ass or what's going on in the mind of a woman too fabulous for her own good.
The latest Attitude I've got is March 2008...decades in gay pop-culture months. It was worth the wait thanks to French actor Arthur DuPont, star of the erotic thriller One Two Another. His experience kissing another man was no big whoop:
"It was just kissing another guy—I didn't have any difficulty with it at all. The other actor was a friend—for a week before filming we had all lived in a house together. We were looking into each other's eyes and because we were already friends we kept seeing the funny side of the situation—that we were naked on the bed together and had to look at each other as if we were in love. We had to get a lot of laughter out of the way first before we could get to the kissing!"
Arthur, he does as he pleases.
Also eye-catching, these works by Dean Sameshima, an artist known for memorializing gay sexual exploits and obsessions. Yes, they're just giant silk screens of 1950s beefcake shots in pink. But still cool:
Young Men At Play 11 (2004) & Young Men At Play 4 (2004)
MÄNNER (04/08) has the gayest (in the literal, not pejorative, sense) cover ever, offering huge schlongs, Madonna, Bette Davis, Gus Van Sant and the Men At Play guys. Pornstar Tim (someone will supply me with his surname) Kruger illustrates the cover as well as the cover story, "Size Matters." He's a good choice, with his thick prerequisite. (You can see it uncensored and, well, uncut, after the jump.)
Also of interest is the shoot "Dynamite Hosts" by Joseph Sinclair, featuring models Anthony Lowther, Garry McManus, Max Rogers, Parris Taylor and Sam Hollins of Dynamite Hosts, which is a six-packs-for-rent service. These hot guys will come to your "hen" party (and, presumably, wouldn't turn down a cock party for the right fee), which has led to patronage from David Furnish and...Lenny Kravitz? Are you gonna go my way, Lenny?
The models look like failed boyband members, the "failed" relating only to musical aspirations as they're quite successful as professional eye candy:
More Dynamite Hosts after the jump...
I couldn't resist the business proposition that is "Executive Pleasures," a layout of the pornstars from the Men At Play series—I'm not a suit fetishist, which is to say I'm no more a suit fetishist than the next gay guy, which is to say we're all suit fetishists:
More Men At Play after the jump...
My friend Dian Hanson edited The Big Penis Book for Taschen, and if the huge excerpt in this magazine is any indickation, she has a massive hit on her hands. The penises are incredible...makes you wonder if they were all crate-trained or free-range or what. I've got one fairly well-known whopper after the jump, chosen to satisfy the size queens and the face men in us all...
Last Friday, José and I went to Las Vegas to do some girl-watching; specifically, we had tickets for Miss USA.
I'm not a pageant person at heart. When I was young, pageants did fit nicely in my fantasy-world outlook—they had glamour for its own sake, they turned women into sex objects (just like I did with my drawings, though for different reasons) and they were usually billed as "special events" on TV, back when there were only a handful of channels and deviations from their lineups were indeed rare.
At some point, I began listening to the girls' answers to The Final Question and was turned off—they always spoke in ways that seemed to me to be in opposition to all that had just preceded that moment. They trumpeted family, the military, Christian values. They struck me as huge phonies—why couldn't anyone see they were sizzling, sexual monsters, not future homemakers of America? It was like how nobody noticed Michael Jackson was a flamboyant queen. In both cases, maybe sequins acted as a protective force field...?
I was wrong, of course—those values did not contradict conservative values. There is a sexual side to conservatism, too, it's just that the male/female sex roles are much more rigidly defined. It's okay for women to be sexy beasts, to flaunt their assets, as long as it's clear they are aimed at pleasing men. Young, hot girls can avoid being liberal sluts if they use their cleavage to attract old, not-so-hot, established men or use their anatomical gifts to satisfy husbands who did things like playing football or fighting our enemies foreign and domestic.
Bombshells are as American as cherry pie; if she talks the talk of the right ("My platform is saving sick children through Bible study!"), the swath of her hips can successfully pass over both the left and right sides of the catwalk.
Of course, some pageant girls in recent years have seemed to break the mold, to not wear their Christianity like a crusading shield, choosing apolitical answers, floating in an irreligious aura, caring about HIV/AIDS. Perhaps we'll have one soon who's against "bullying," a code for queer tolerance.
Of the major pageants, Miss Universe is the cool one despite being owned by Donald Trump, the one less likely to produce Ann Coulters in swimsuits—the girls are from outside the USA (except for Miss USA, who this year is from Texas...which might as well be a foreign country to some other citizens). José is my "Mr. Universe" not because of his Schwarzeneggerdly muscle mass, but because as a Puerto Rican, Miss Universe has been an unending fascination for him for 38 years, ever since they won their first crown. (Check out how different Miss Universe 1970—PR's first—and Miss America 1970 looked, at right.) Now, 56 years after the first contest, Puerto Rico is second only to the U.S. with five crowns, and there is every reason to believe they'll snatch their sixth this year with Trump favorite Ingrid Marie Rivera. (Yes, she really was pepper-sprayed...there was proof!!!)
The winner of Miss USA goes on to Miss Universe, explaining why we were arriving at the show at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino on April 11.
The universal beauty of Planet Hollywood.
The second we arrived, we got out of the cab and saw Chace Crawford of Gossip Girl—his sister, Candice, was Miss Missouri—checked in, saw Donny Osmond (another Republican childhood diversion and, with his sister, the show’s co-host) and then went to the adjacent upscale mall to eat.
The place we wanted was closed and we only had a few hours before showtime. As we walked to our second choice, I spotted a beauty in pink seated at a Brazilian restaurant. “Isn’t that her?” I asked José. I’ll never forget his face as his blank expression was colored with shock—it was her, it was Miss Puerto Rico. She was eating dinner with an entourage that included some cute guys, her trainer (Miss Universe guru Magali Febles) and her frenemy Miss Dominican Republic. She looked lovely, with flawless hair and giant eyes—every inch una ganadora.
Reinas: José with (L-R), Miss Venezuela Dayana Mendoza, Miss Puerto Rico Ingrid Marie Rivera and Miss Washington (who is part Puerto Rican) Michelle Font.
I’m sometimes reticent to ask for photos in a situation like that, but this was an emergency situation—it’s not just, “Oh, there is Famous Person A, I should get my pic with her,” it’s, “There is the embodiment of a hobby I’ve had for 38 years. I’m getting the picture if I have to hold her down.”
Ingrid saw José’s reaction and quickly finished a bite (of salad), washed it down with water and stood to greet us and pose for pictures. She was gracious and composed. “Likewise,” she said when I told her I was pleased to meet her, just like a pageant queen would have said back in the early days of the contest.
When they walked past our restaurant later, José had the video on them and they gave him the sweetest video ever, one that overcame any redness-of-face I experienced as our fellow diners stared at us like we were paparazzi storm troopers.
The Chace is on.
The show itself was lightning fast. I was more interested in pageant-people-watching than anything else—I hadn’t seen so many boobies since What Would You Say To A Naked Lady?—and the moms, whether surprisingly disheveled or preserved like lamb fetuses in embalming fluid, were as fascinating to look at as their too-perfect daughters. Our seats were four rows from the stage (you can see us on the telecast), way ahead of Chace Crawford’s clan. Emboldened by José’s earlier maneuver, I was able to get my pic with Chace, who was as gracious as Miss Puerto Rico and is now my choice for Mr. Missouri.
Candice Crawford emerged, after losing, in a spectacular short-shorts outfit.
We had an excellent view of all the judges—yes, Heather Mills was booed by a couple of people, not shocking from a crowd for whom legs are everything—allowing us to see how Rob Schneider and Christian Siriano had to sprint to the restroom at commercial breaks:
The most noteworthy things during the show: How Donny and Marie Osmond would go from “on” to “off” at breaks, huddling with serious faces when the cameras were not on. Professional to the nth degree. Marie at one point mouthed, “I’m too old for this!” of her dress and laughed, clearly to undercut anyone who might think she was, because she didn’t think she was, and she wasn’t. Donny also went over to chat with Miss South Carolina Teen USA Lauren Caitlin Upton, she of the infamous “maps” answer, after teasing her mildly from the stage. I later got a pic with her. I asked, "Could I trouble you for a photo?" and, living up to her rep, she cooed, "No, not at all!" meaning yes. My head's giant in our shot, but she has a Marilyn-in-All-About-Eve quality.
After, all the judges filed past—I got footage of Days Of Our Lives queen Kristian Alfonso, an obsession of my friend Frank Anthony Pllito who is immortalized in his upcoming book Band Fags!—and José got still more footage of not only Miss Puerto Rico and Miss Dominican Republic, but also Miss Venezuela, Puerto Rico’s always-rival for the crown. Seeing those exotic beauties in the audience as America’s contestants duked it out could not have been comforting to the ladies on stage; I don’t see the impressive Miss Texas as a world-class contender, but we’ll find out July 13 at Miss Universe.
As Project Runway's Nick Verreos told us, "There's the Miss Universe Top 3 right there!"
I had a lot of fun with my Miss USA experience, even if I suspected I’d have little in common with most of its most hardcore devotees, mainly because I focused on the aspects that united us—a shamelessly visual appreciation of startling beauty, a kneejerk tendency to tear it apart, a voyeuristic love/hate with celebrity and a tribal worship of anything on the tee-vee.
Spent last night at Touch in Manhattan, where a benefit was held to help out Soulforce, billed as "a grassroots movement working for freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from religious and political oppression." Basically, this is that group that takes bus rides to colleges with anti-gay policies in an effort to interact with students and that winds up getting arrested for simply showing up. I think it's a great group, one I could never join—I'm more about if you can't beat 'em, beat 'em than I am about putting flowers in rifles, even if in my heart I think the Gandhi way works better over time—but one to which I was happy to give my $25 (+ $20 tip).
We milled around the semi-empty place for a bit until it filled up some and emcee Judy Gold regaled us with her charming stories of despising her children. She's that kind of comic, don't get too flustered. Judy, in-between incoherent, almost free-poetic rants against Bush and McCain, brought out Anthony Rapp of Rent fame. It's about time he became Anthony Rapp of something else fame, because he's really a wonderful singer.
Check out Anthony's mesmerizing take on Radiohead's "Creep":
Followed by a crowd-pleasing return to "Seasons Of Love":
Next, we heard from the sweet leaders of Soulforce, the actual arrestees. If their poverty-stricken cheer was not enough to shame us out of manicures and Prada shoes for life, Judy was back to explicitly state that the gay community needs to pull out of that guy's ass, let the meth wear off and donate our next week's bar bill to some people who are actually working their hearts out on our behalf.
Ari's call to arms.
Next, we got to hear a long, nervous (very cute) intro by Project Runway's Jack Mackenroth, who's as handsome in person as on TV and twice as girly—I say this in an affectionate, not insulting, way; everyone laughed as if at ourselves when he swooned over Ari during his speech.
I know Ari a bit because he contributed the affecting "The Things I Need To Hear" to the Boy Culture soundtrack, so I met him at a Barracuda promo. But I'd met him years earlier, standing in line at Tower Records for Girlie Show tickets. (See the aging Madonna queens above, left.) He was a kid 15 years ago, and very cute. He said his name Ari like "Howie" to my ear, and it was only his memorable face I recognized years later as his musical star began to rise. Now, three studio albums into his career, he's got a growing fanbase—his long-legged hit "Where The Music Takes You" from Transport Systems is actually going to radio, as in mainstream radio, as we speak—and has become an engaging live performer.
In Touch (April 28, 2008) reports that mediatakeout.com claims Vanessa Williams is dating...Tyler Perry. She's a former Miss America and he's quite a queen himself. I don't think so!
Even Vanessa is incredulous, exclaiming, "Are you kidding me?"
Here come the brides.
But beyond that, she spoke passionately about Lawrence King this year in a move that really blew me away. And now that the conservative-heavy (so much for "activist judges") California supreme court has ruled that gay marriage should be legal (possibly going into effect within 30 days), Ellen has not let us—or herself—down: She's announced on her show that she plans to marry Portia de Rossi.
