Having to come up with clever segues linking unconnected items every week has veritably sucked the life out of me while giving me a serious case of Gay-D.D. So this time I’m going to just throw the random thoughts at your face without any transitions whatsoever. Everybody duck, because here comes a whole mess of unstructured spewing:
The weird news in gay land is that no one’s a bottom anymore (except for a certain downtown promoter with a flair for double penetration). Tragically enough, a whole generation of bottoms passed on some time ago, and then came a whole new generation that learned from day one that being a wide-end receiver is risky, so they’ve always been testy and squeamish about it. That’s perfectly understandable, but as a result, virtually every gay on the market today is a versatile top—or “vers top,” if you prefer—”though I’ll bottom for the right guy,” they always add with a noble flourish. So unless you happen to have pulled up in a golden coach and have 300 condoms rubber-banded to your crotch, no one’s gonna bottom for you and sex will undoubtedly consist of twiddling thumbs and bumping pussies and being more frustrated than if you’d stayed home alone with your fleshlight (the male sex toy whose site generously invites you to “select an orifice”). Somebody take it up the ass, please!
Downtown diva CANDIS CAYNE plays BILLY BALDWIN‘s trannie mistress in ABC’s upcoming series Dirty Sexy Money. For once they didn’t get FAMKE JANSSEN, FELICITY HUFFMAN, or REBECCA ROMIJN.
RIHANNA‘s video makes it pretty clear what she’s talking about when she refers to her umbrella: her vagina!
MICHAEL MOORE‘s Sicko deals with the refusal of care to people by insurance companies, but the opposite scenario would also make a good movie—the overmedication of patients by hospitals and doctors, seemingly done to bilk the insurance companies out of every possible penny. Anyone who’s had parents kept in a hospital long after they need to be there knows about this annoying situation. They’re generally let out the second the insurance payments finish up—and what’s more, they’re given a mountainous parting stack of prescriptions that helps grease the pharmaceutical industry while keeping the patient captive to the machinery of the biz. But don’t get me started.
If I can move on to an Iraq documentary without any obvious segues, CHARLES FERGUSON glided onstage after a Film Forum screening of his No End in Sight, which intelligently picks apart the shameful mismanagement of the war. Ferguson spoke softly while wearing a gray tweed jacket, but he was pretty harsh about the administration, saying he learned a lot about their “sheer asinine incompetence” and some of the “incredibly, unbelievably, psychotically stupid things” they did. Still, he’s against impeachment, which he feels would cause an even greater mess. Like I said, he’s nice.
Last week was a terrible one for high culture. Cinema visionary Ingmar Bergman finally played chess with Death, then Michelangelo Antonioni joined him in the big revival house in the sky, then The Simple Life was canceled. These things always happen in threes.
JOHN TRAVOLTA has boasted that in the generally delightful Hairspray, he’s playing a woman rather than having approached the role as just a drag queen. But ironically enough, with his overdone prosthetics and weird accent (not to mention his personal history), Travolta’s way freakier than Divine was in the original movie (which shockingly just turned up on ABC Family channel. What next—The Brown Bunny on the Hallmark channel?). Divine eased into the role with very little external help. He was so organic—and funny—as Edna that you never questioned it or thought “But that’s a man!” But with Travolta, you barely think of him as even human! (Though he does radiate a certain sweetness. Maybe his endlessly beaming wife KELLY PRESTON gave him pointers.)
LINDSAY, BRITNEY, and PARIS are the modern equivalent of the central threesome in that tawdry classic Valley of the Dolls. When you think about it—and I do—Lindsay is the feisty, sweaty Neely O’Hara; Britney is basically the top-heavy, doomed Jennifer North; and Paris is the cucumber-cool, trying-to-be-hard-working Anne Welles. And who’s the cranky old battle-ax Helen Lawson? PAULA ABDUL! (Or maybe
Judi Giuliani. She can go after Paris’s dogs with a staple gun.)
As I recently said on MONICA CROWLEY‘s radio show, whisper campaigns are claiming that HILLARY CLINTON is GAYLE KING–ing her aide de camp, the glamorous HUMA ABEDIN, an Indian/Pakistani goddess from Kalamazoo, Michigan. In other words, Hillary may be putting Huma out there in the press and purposely making her more visible as a pre-emptive strike that amounts to her hiding in plain sight. This way, no Republican can later say, “Who is this gorgeous babe who spends so much intimate time with Hillary that the Observer called her Hill’s ‘body person’? Was GENNIFER FLOWERS‘s book right about Hillary’s sexual taste?” And does either of this couple have the balls to bottom?
Of course that whole scenario can’t possibly be true, since Bill and Hill have been so lovey-dovey lately for the cameras, and besides, whenever he’s been serviced by an intern—or by anyone—he’s clearly been thinking of his wife. (They’re that close.) But suddenly, Huma—a sort of Muslim SALMA HAYEK—has that spread in Vogue and the accompanying write-up notes that she “oversees every minute of Senator Clinton’s day.” Every single minute? Even Gayle King takes a break now and then! (PS: If I called for comment, Hillary’s camp would surely say, “Just because two powerful women are closer than sardines doesn’t make them dykes.” And that’s so true. Look at MATT and BEN. But now that Crowley has dubbed me the head of Huma Resources, I’m going to pursue this story with every
cojone I’ve got.)
A straight Democrat—sorry, that’s a segue—DNC head HOWARD DEAN, guest-starred at a “Democrats and Donuts with Dean” event in Fire Island, where there was no worry that he might outscream the screaming queens. But I was told that press attendees couldn’t write up the event, so I’ll shut up here and only say that at another point in the weekend, I told one Pines Democrat the Hillary/Huma scenario and he deadpanned, “That’s a step up from DONNA SHALALA.”
At the premiere party for El Cantante, Hector Lavoe’s daughter told me she liked the movie, but they never showed the wonderful way her dad interacted with his fans. Just then, MARC ANTHONY interacted with his fans by barreling onstage with a big band and performing just for us. “I was only supposed to do two songs,” said Marc Anthony. He did three!
No wonder AL GORE feels cars are a menace to our environment. His son has been arrested four times for reckless driving.
Marrakesh, the Wednesday gay night at Azza, hosted by the lovely ALEXANDRIA et al., brings some cuties to midtown as well as the chance to legally puff away—on a hookah. The problem is, whenever anyone exclaims, “Look at that hookah!” all the sluts turn around and say, “Who, me?”
On the same night—sorry, that’s segue-ish— WILL CLARK hosts the casually amusing Porn Bingo at 9th Avenue Bistro, where grandma’s game has become a newfangled way for vers tops to win lube and dirty videos (if not fleshlights).
BRAD PITT and GWYNETH PALTROW are reuniting in the intriguingly named Dirty Sexy Money—I mean
Dirty Tricks—and I’m certain it will be the biggest gossip gold mine since Gigli. Let’s not forget that Gwynnie once admitted she screwed up her relationship with Pitt, a tidbit she sounded a tad regretful about. And Brad must be long over Angelina’s transition from the hot, tawdry other woman to a Mother Teresa type who circles the globe looking for high-cheekboned babies to pluck out of garbage cans. She will surely be watching Brad on the set like a hawk with big lips.
Next week, it’s back to the segues. They put some threading into this crazy quilt and help me select an orifice.