| From This Week In Texas Celebrity
First, I have to say that Carson Kressley is on the verge of becoming a brand in and of himself. It’s as if he’s creating an entire institution dedicated to making us oh-so-pretty and getting us to emote more and more every day. We chuckled at his saucy but smart wit on Bravo’s Queer Eye (which, I should add, hit the airwaves for the first time five years ago today). We’ve been inspired by his empathic ways on Lifetime’s How to Look Good Naked (which will kick off its second season this fall). Now, hold onto your gorgeous strappy slingbacks: Lifetime will add to the pink one’s entertainment cache—not to mention his bank account—by giving him a daytime talk show that will focus on “real” people (like you, or me!). Merv Griffin has got to be rolling over in his grave, as we speak—not to mention wishing he’d thought of it first. For the network, Carson was a no-brainer. A publicist told The Hollywood Reporter, “To dive into the talk show world, which is a difficult thing to launch in cable, you need a personality attached that is known. He is perfect for our demo.”
As Lifetime makes a clear shift from mama-drama-of-the-week—missing you already, Markie Post and Gail O’Grady—to more reality-based programming, we can see that it will remain the network for women and, of course, gay men. With Carson at the helm of two shows—and the announcement in April that gaytastic Project Runway will shift to Lifetime after a five-year stint on Bravo—the queer quotient goes through the roof. Bravo should be quaking in its pumps! Elsewhere on the more costly end of the TV dial, HBO is touting a new drama called True Blood, which depicts a world in which vampires (shades of late, lamented Moonlight?) live out in the open among mere mortals, but are eclipsed by the stigma of being different. Hmmm … that feels somehow familiar. "I really don't look at the vampire as a metaphor for gays," said series creator Alan "Six Feet Under" Ball when asked about a parallel with LGBT identity struggles. "For me, part of the fun of this whole series is that it's about vampires, so it's not that serious. However, they do work as a metaphor for gays... for anyone that's misunderstood. At the same time it's not a metaphor at all." So it’s unintentional symbolism. Gotcha, Alan. Hey, regardless of intent, we’ll watch anyway, if only to catch the series’ star, Brit babe Stephen Moyer. He can nibble at our necks anytime.
And in case you haven’t heard, HBO is “absolutely interested” in bringing a second Sex and the City movie to the big screen. That’s music to the ears of so many fashion-forward New York women and gay men. Unless, of course, you’re among the throngs who found the smooch between Anthony and Stanford inexplicable, or just plain gross. Oh, wait—that’s pretty much everyone. The other near and dear news out of the TCA was the release of details regarding our beloved Margaret Cho’s new project for VH1. Remember her 1994 series All-American Girl, for which execs demonized her as both fat (puh-leeze) and inauthentic (read: not enough of a Asian stereotype)? Well, she’s returning to the tube with The Cho Show, which she describes as an all-Asian “cross between Madonna’s Truth or Dare, The Joy Club Club and Little People Big World.”
In their face, Margaret! She’s also expanding her horizons in another direction: Ms. Cho was recently deputized to perform marriages for same-sex couples in San Francisco, according to E!’s Marc Malkin. She already married two couples at the city’s recent pride festivities! "It's a very empowering thing to be able to preside over these ceremonies," she told Malkin. "We've been working on this for such a long time." Yes, and we’re glad to have you on our winning side. And in other wedding news, boy, do we have a doozy. According to out Entertainment Weekly television columnist Michael Ausiello, the next season of The New Adventures of Old Christine will bring some new gay-ventures to the sitcom. He reports that the show will embrace the California marriage ruling and marry off series star Julia Louis Dreyfuss to her no-holds-barred friend Barb, played by our uproarious friend-to-the-gays Wanda Sykes. No idea just yet why this plot twist will happen. But we’re sure looking forward to seeing who takes the awkward lead when they hear those six golden words, “You may now kiss the bride.” Smooches! Last Wednesday, Live with Regis & Kelly staged an oddly-inspired High Heel-A-Thon (minimum heel height: three inches, and no wedges) to raise money for the March of Dimes. Kelly may not feel the love for Clay Aiken, but she was certainly amused by the dozen or so well-heeled guys who trotted the 150 yards for the cause.
Bonus: We were also treated to the visual of in-studio guest Brendan Fraser gamely teetering in red come-fuck-me pumps. Now just imagine if he’d worn those in the nude scene (save for that darkly kinky gas mask) in Gods and Monsters! Another daytime standOUT, gay judge David Young, made an appearance on The Young and the Restless last Friday, playing a friend (without benefits, alas) of studly Brad Carlton (Don Diamont, below) who takes in a few hands of poker with Brad and some pals. We love you, David, we really do. But your acting was flatter than Brad’s taut tummy, and your appearance was devoid of purpose beyond mid-level stunt casting. Stick with the courtroom, darling David; you’re much better at judicial panache.
We’re totally dripping over gorgeous and dimpled Dallas cowboy Steven Daigle, the gay rodeo bull-rider who bunks in CBS’ Big Brother house this year. In preliminary interviews, our cuddly cowpoke revealed that he has a boyfriend, Jason—“I can’t stop thinking about him”—but indicated that he could still put his spurs in motion, at least to a point.
Pressing on, our randy ranch hand further confessed, “I have no problem with being naked.” And we’ll have no problem with that, too! Of course, he already seems to have a natural nemesis in either Ollie—a preacher’s son who recently lost his virginity and is becoming quite the horn dog—or Dan, the conservative Catholic school teacher who has no tolerance for liberals. One of them believes that gays are, shockingly, destined for hell (you’ll have to tune in to see which one). All I can say is: Don’t mess with Texas! Speaking of reality shows, we’re disappointed that we won’t catch Mike “I fucked Ted Haggard so you don’t have to” Jones on a future episode of Fox’s lie detector flinch fest, Moment of Truth. The former meth dealer/masseur/hustler-who-knows-butt-ugly-first-hand has turned down a sweet half-million to appear on the show. It’s sad, really. Jones has had a bit of a hard time since the Haggard debacle spilled into the media nearly two years ago. He told The New York Times last year that he feels “lonely” and that many LGBT folks “think I’m a bad example of the gay community.” Plus, his 2007 book I Had to Say Something didn’t exactly burn up the bestseller charts, and his recent play, Naked Before God: Exposing the Hypocrisy of Ted Haggard, only has so much longevity. So wouldn’t an appearance on Moment be worth his while? “It would be a ratings bonanza if I went on,” he told the Denver Post last week. Got that right! But he still has the jitters from a previous grilling. “I volunteered to take a polygraph test when my story first broke, and I flunked it, so those things can happen. I'm not going to humiliate myself on national TV.” Maybe they should book Haggard instead—we understand he’s still looking for work since returning to Colorado Springs last month—so we can see the lie detector suffer total system failure and implode in a dazzling display of pyrotechnics. Finally, our hopes were equally dashed last week when Swingtown’s much-anticipated (for us gay guys, anyway) two-man-one-woman threesome landed with an anticlimactic thud. Visiting town was Trina Decker’s ex-boyfriend Luke, a smoldering cross between James Van der Beek and James Dean. When Luke puts the moves on Trina, her husband Tom moves in himself: “My wife and I are a package deal.” And off to bed they go … for a fleeting, frustrating 60 seconds or so entirely devoid of man-on-man contact. Seriously, CBS: would it have been so awful to see a hairy thigh (or Grant Show’s hairy moustache) graze an equally hairy calf? Grow some balls! |
Frankly, we’re really not sure what that means, but her dear, oft-mocked mom will be one of the key players in the pseudo-reality series. So we’re just hoping she makes buckets of bucks for the effort. Even more than she has bitching onstage about the studio stooges who had it in for her 14 years ago. 
When asked about taking part in a hot tub orgy (shades of last season), he let on that he’s “a very sexual person… I have no fears or inhibitions. I could do anything.”