NY Mirror

Comments (0) By Michael Musto Tuesday, Jun 11 2002

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I felt like an exposed dick with a regal technicality when trying out for a new Bravo reality show about five taste-drenched flamers who make over schlubby straights. I'm sure I fucked up, but the experience was exacerbated by a fellow auditioner who spouted windy monologues, ersatz politics, and patronizing remarks like "Hip-hop is the new McDonald's!" After trying in vain to get a word in, I just sulked, giving up on the idea of gracing a show the producer likened to everything from Reservoir Dogsto E!'s Fashion Emergency"with heart." Still, I got an e-mail the next day saying, "Congratulations! You are a finalist! Come in for a callback!" But, bizarrely enough, less than a half-hour later came a really sensitive call from the casting people saying I should ignore the e-mail—they didn't want me after all. This fucking showneeds a makeover.

And was it Mike Piazza's hairmakeover that had people saying he's gay? Whatever it was, all that unsourced brouhaha brought down the standards of outing, and even worse, it led to a rash of doofy defenses, like the one in the Post(which outed him in the first place) arguing that the jock's a "real man" who's well behaved, polite, and a homebody. By that standard, noone would be gay except Brian on Queer as Folk!

photo: Speedy

This is one of life's beautiful moments?: photographer Mick Rock, JT Leroy, and Third Eye Blind's Stephan Jenkins.

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Janis Joplin was bi, but that's not mentioned in the show Love, Janis. Still, the producers have now decided that queers are the new McDonald's, so on Wednesdays they've enlisted drag queens and downtown performers to lure 'em in!

Living diva Nancy Sinatra was fab at the Bottom Line, and I loved her crediting Roger Cormanwith her music career, "because I was so bad in The Wild Angels." Backstage, Peter Bogdanovichtold me about that '66 cult flick, "I rewrote the whole fucking script and gave Corman all the setups. It was his biggest hit!"

TV's biggest bomb, The Hamptons, came up at Paper's Indochine lunch last week when sunglassed socialite Anne Slaterpassed around a bad review from The Wall Street Journal that she happened to have on her. Slater's problem with the show? "Twenty-two-year-olds should be attractive, cute, and clean. I like clean!"

I like Xaviera Hollander, who was très jolieat a Fez event the other night, even when I asked why her Happy Hookerbook no longer includes the encounter with the German shepherd. Xaviera said her sister, whose dog it was, tastefully recommended removing the tidbit. Too bad—it could have spawned a dog-penis emblem of honor and even a Tony! I hate clean.

EXTRA ITEM: Just in time for Gay Pride—and Minority Report—Kyle Bradford, the porn star notoriously sued by Tom Cruise, is doing a stage play, and not at the Gaiety, either. Bradford co-stars in Billy Masters's Hollywood Uncovered, a satire by the wicked Filth2go.com gossip columnist that'll be performed at the Wings Theatre starting June 21. I bet Cruise tries to wrestle his way to some tickets.

musto@villagevoice.com