Archive for July, 2007

Star finally sings for her supper

Published by Rob on July 31, 2007 in Gunts and Star Jones Reynolds. 2 Comments

446242de-0018f-01b69-400cb8e1.jpgIn the most shocking celebrity revelation since Richard Chamberlain came out of the closet, unemployed faghag Star Jones Reynolds has finally admitted that her drastic weight loss was due to gastric bypass surgery. And not just, I dunno, the cardiovascular benefits that come from chasing down a bargain.

Explaining her decision (in an essay for Glamour) to lie about the weight loss, Star evasively admits that she was “intentionally evasive.” She laments that she had gone “from full-figured to morbidly obese,” and claims that, in 2005, hubby Big Gay Al urged her to go into therapy.

And perhaps. She thought. That undergoing the surgery. Would make her. More desirable. To him. You know, sexually. Cough.

Anyway, Star’s decision to “come clean” at this juncture surely has something to do with the public’s embrace of a legitimate fattie, Rosie O’Donnell, following her own firing from The View. And the recent news that Barbara is likely to add the proudly zaftig Sherri Shepherd to the panel has likely made Star’s blood boil - like chicken gravy left too long on the stove on a hot Alabama summer day.

Don’t worry, Star. No matter how obscure and irrelevant you become, you’ll always be our favorite ambulance-chasing, shoe-shilling, product-placing, fur-wearing, fag-marrying fat girl.

Star Jones admits gastric-bypass surgery [ABC News]

‘View’ commits harakiri

Published by Rob on July 27, 2007 in Bitches, Celebs, Star Jones Reynolds and TV. 2 Comments

070727_whoppi_vsmall.jpgSo The View has settled on two new hosts to fill the wide swath of couch vacated by Star and Rosie, and - surprise! - it’s the two most obvious suspects, Sherri Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg.

The estrofest’s ratings have taken a predictable slide since Rosie’s, uh, unanticipated departure, and if ABC’s hope is that this slate will turn the tide, I think they’re out of luck. Goldberg has failed on television again and again, from her talk show to her sitcom, and both she and Shepherd are too benign to create the cutthroat controversy that The View needs to thrive. I can’t see either bringing anything like Rosie’s obstinate honesty or Star’s epic self-absorption to the panel.

Since the show needed at least one African-American panelist, Mo’Nique or Wanda Sykes would have been edgier, funnier choices. And I still think Kathy Griffin would ultimately have been the best option to keep the show both live-wire funny and potentially controversial.

Oh, well. I guess it’s just one less reason to stay home on weekdays.

Whoopi, Sherri Shepherd to join ‘The View’ [MSNBC]

AfterElton tells us who we think is hot

Published by Rob on July 24, 2007 in Celebs. 2 Comments

jakehot100_0.jpgAnd of course, they’re mostly right. In compiling its list of the hottest 100 guys according to guys, AfterElton.com (or, rather, its readers) chose Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Evans and Daniel Craig as their top three - the gay equivalent to strawberry, vanilla and chocolate. From then, the list vacillates from the sublimely inspired (Paul Rudd at 21! Boo-yah!), to the ridiculously outdated (Gale Harold in fourth? MARY!), with plenty of obligatory We Had to Include Them ‘Cause They’re Out (Chad Allen, Wilson Cruz, Neil Patrick Harris, Jake Shears) and We Felt Like We Should Include Them Because They’re Nice Enough to Play Gay (Matthew Rhys, Billy Campbell).

The list is helpfully accompanied by mostly shirtless shots of said stars (most of which are quite old and familiar). There are some surprising appearances by people we had sort of forgotten existed (Taye Diggs, Jesse Bradford) and guys we didn’t think other gay guys liked (John Krasinski, Peter Sarsgaard). There are also some completely heinous choices that prove that some gay men overly emphasize bodies over faces (Channing Tatum, Brady Quinn) or simply have no taste at all (Adam Levine, Zach Braff).

I’m sad that I missed the chance to vote on this list. Had I known, I woulda been on it like Blow-han on Samantha Ronson’s ham wallet, trying to insure that Matt Damon’s ass received its own listing. Oh well. There’s always next year.

Hot 100 List [AfterElton]

Obligatory Emmy reaction post

Published by Rob on July 19, 2007 in Club News and TV. 2 Comments

betty.jpgI’m excited about reacting to this morning’s Emmy nominations in this post, in part because it harks back to the very first PEN15 post, which was also about the Emmys. This means that the PEN15 Club has celebrated its two-year anniversary, and I didn’t even realize it. So good for us.

Now onto the Emmys. Here are my thoughts:

1. I’m glad that no dowager character actresses are nominated three times this year (Tina Fey has three nods, but she writes as well as acts, and runs the funniest show currently on TV).

2. It was a good year for newly out-of-the-closet gays, as both T.R. Knight and Neil Patrick Harris ended up with nods.

3. The death of the television comedy series continues unabated, as the Academy appropriately showers praise on The Office and 30 Rock, but then somehow expects us to believe that they honestly think Entourage, Ugly Betty and Two and a Half Men are funny. They’re not. (It would have killed them to nominate Extras?) Thank God Curb Your Enthusiasm returns this year.

4. New voting procedures (a popularity contest decided a top 10 for each category, which was then judged by a blue-ribbon panel of people who presumably were forced to actually watch an episode of each show) favored crap like Boston Legal in the drama series category over more complex, serialized fare such as Friday Night Lights, Battlestar Galactica, The Wire and Lost.

5. Kathy Griffin is back in the reality show category, so her faux-diva outburst at last year’s Creative Arts Emmys obviously wasn’t held against her. If she loses to that cokehead douchebag Ty Pennington again, she should burn the place down.

6. The drama series actress categories remain the Domain of the Fallen Film Actresses: Patricia Arquette, Minnie Driver, Sally Field, Rachel Griffiths, Lorraine Bracco, Kyra Sedgwick. In the mid-’90s this could conceivably have been an Oscar lineup.

7. Despite the popularity of The Office and 30 Rock, there was no love for either John Krasinski or Jane Krakowski. I wonder if voters got them confused.

Emmy nominations list [Variety]

PEN15 Drippings: “Enough with the fucking Beckhams!” edition

Published by Rob on July 16, 2007 in Bitches, Career Suicide, Celebs, Drippings and TV. 1 Comment

peoplevictorbeck.jpgIf I hear one more thing about David and Victoria motherfucking Beckham - the U.K.’s crassest, most ferret-faced nouveau riche exports - I will hunt them down and suffocate them with one of Posh’s Joan Collins-style wide-brimmed hats. And this fashion victim twat has the nerve to call out Americans on our shitty style. She’s not wrong, but people who live in glass Juicy Couture sweats shouldn’t throw stones. Or something. [TMZ]

Revolta “addresses” those longstanding gay “rumors,” just in time for his big-screen drag debut. [NY Times]

Frathouse dudebro slash New NBC Honcho Ben Silverman announces his douchebaggery by hiring Isaiah Washington. The good news is that it’s for no less doomed a project than that Bionic Woman remake. [Variety]

Out-aholism

Published by Rob on July 12, 2007 in Celebs, Famous PEN15s and Politics. 0 Comments

shemar.jpgIt’s been a good week for the (sometimes literal) denuding of public figures’ homosexuality. Just as we’ve gotten our pulses back to normal in the wake of Perez Hilton’s ongoing coverage of the Wentworth Miller/Luke McFarlane* relationship, we have those yummy (NSFW) Shemar Moore** nude beach photos and the hilarious men’s room shenanigans of Rep. Bob Allen (from the appropriately wang-shaped state of Florida), a McCain campaign co-chair.

I love how Presidential elections always seem to precipitate the outing of sweaty Republican closet cases. More to come in ‘08, please!

*Would anyone know who Luke was if it weren’t for his high-profile boyfriends? He’s like the gay Angie Everhart.

**How gay is the picture of Shemar above? He looks like he’s about to guest star on a very special episode of Noah’s Arc.

Who wants to see Shemar Moore naked? [Perez Hilton]
Florida Rep. Bob Allen to discuss men’s room activities [Towleroad]

I love “Big Love”

Published by Rob on July 10, 2007 in TV. 0 Comments

hbo_big_love_polygamy.jpgCouch potatoes like me are always whining about how bored they are with summer television. Not me. Right now my DVR menu is pretty full (or would be if I had DVR; I’m stone-aged, I know). Basically it consists of whatever’s on Bravo in the 10 pm slot on any given weeknight and Big Love.

I love Big Love. I can’t get enough. It was pretty good in its first season, but this year it’s blowing up, making me laugh and cry every week. Jumping off from its weird, where-are-they-going-with-this premise - is it a wholesome blended-family drama or a psychosexual Lynchian mindfuck, or both? - the show makes its LDS polygamists shockingly relatable (having the central family be the Reform version of a more dogmatic sect was a smart move), then finds endlessly creative ways for the characters to interact with each other, and bump up against the outside world.

Take last night’s episode, in which scheming daddy’s girl Nicki (Chloe Sevigny), recently disowned by her Evil Prophet father (Harry Dean Stanton), freaks out about the “indoctrination” her son is receiving in his Catholic school. Nicki’s horror at Catholic rituals (”Why don’t they just wear electric chairs around their necks?”) was hilarious, and a prime example of the way this show is able to get you to empathize with its world. And then, at the end, when Nicki re-enrolls the kid in the school because it’s the only place that Bill (Bill Paxton) can publicly acknowledge that he’s the boy’s father - I totally lost it.

Big Love is like The Brady Bunch meets The Addams Family set in Twin Peaks, and yet you totally believe every minute of it. The entire cast is terrific (what potion, exactly, does one have to take to look like Paxton at the age of 50?), and I can’t think of another show that’s used so many previously underemployed great actresses so brilliantly: Jeanne Tripplehorn never had a movie role this good; Ginnifer Goodwin is adorable; Mary Kay Place, Grace Zabriskie, Daveigh Chase and Magnolia’s amazing Melora Walters are hilarious and terrifying; and there are even great roles for two Veronica Mars alums, Tina Majorino and Amanda Seyfried. And Sevigny, for reasons outlined here, is basically giving the most fascinating performance in television right now.

Everyone seems to be worried about HBO in the wake of The Sopranos’ end. There’s no need to worry - Big Love should be its flagship drama series for another few years. Watch it if you don’t already, bitches!

The watcher [Boston Globe]

Sputum if you got ‘em: The PEN15 banned word list

Published by Rob on July 8, 2007 in Bitches and Club News. 2 Comments

2006_06_katie-thumb.jpgIn the wake of the Katie Couric “sputum slap” incident, we’re instituting a banned word list for the PEN15 Club. These are terms that really have no place on this site. They’re cutesy and inane and generally unpleasant, and they seem to have pervaded all corners of the media. They make our skin crawl, and if we ever hire an intern, we won’t be afraid to deliver a vicious face-slapping in the event he or she slips one into a post.

1. Baby bump: We don’t like kids in real life, so we really don’t get all that excited when, say, Naomi Watts is about to have one. And if we were, we’d refer to her distended midsection as just that.
2. Canoodle: This insipid term almost always refers to straight couples who can’t keep their hands off each other and, in the words of Aunt Sassy, we don’t need to see that.
3. Claire Danes: “Dishwater” contains fewer characters, and you only have to press the return key once.
4. Bling: Or any other formerly-ghetto slang that Ryan Seacrest can deliver with a straight face.
5. Belly fat or “unwanted belly fat”: See “baby bump.”
6. Any gay-related compound noun beginning with “tea:” We’re under 60.

Mag: Couric ’slapped’ staffer [Drudge Report]

Punning soon to a theater near you

Published by Rob on July 5, 2007 in Bitches, Celebs, Films and TV. 4 Comments

sexandthecity.jpgWell this is the worst Nonoriginal Female-Focused Ensemble Comedy film development news I’ve heard since the Women remake: Apparently HBO’s long-threatened Sex and the City movie is now a go, with deals in place for the lead actresses and a fall start date.

What, on earth, is left to say about these characters? Remember how shrill and one-note they had grown by the (completely idiotic) series finale? Remember how much you wanted to ring Carrie by the cameltoe and send her flying off that building after Kristen Johnston?

Sex and the City did a lot of damage to the straight-woman generation that came of age in the late nineties and early oughts. It’s the adult equivalent of Disney Princess birthday parties for seven-year-olds. Often playing as a propaganda tool for the Guilianification of New York, its reign of terror could be tied to the rise of the muffin top, celebutantes, faghaggery-as-status-symbol, the designer cupcake craze and various other crimes against humanity.

So unless Carrie’s brain rots from syphilis, Samantha struggles with bone loss, and Charlotte and Miranda start screwing each other (maybe the film’s release could be serendipitously tied in with Kristin Davis’ coming out of the closet), I’ll be seeing this movie sometime after I catch License to Wed 2.

Sex and the City heads to theaters [Variety]