October 31, 2005
Early Sitings
• This is not the most genius thing you'll ever see and hear; in fact, it's pretty stupid. But it's worth five minutes of your time. It's a Lost version of "Bohemian Rhapsody." Curious? (via b3ta)
• This, on the other hand, is totally awesome. Coverpop has a mind-bendingly giant pile of every Mad magazine ever. Just click to enlarge. (via boingboing)
• It's Halloween. This cool glow-in-the-dark ghost T-shirt is good to go all year round. Ghosts haunt 24/7, after all. And check out the shirt's designer Drew Heffron's senior project. (t/y Fenton via yesbutnobutyes)
• Not only pretty, stylish, and designer-adjacent, but handy as well. The condom dress. (t/y Eduardo)
Party Monsters
THE PARTY Steven & James' Saturday Night Halloween Costume Party.
THE PLACE WOW Executive Assistant Steven Corfe's house.
THE PEOPLE Oh, you know. Gene Simmons in Mouseketeer drag. Lesbians from outer space. A vampire bunny, a terrorist panda, and Mary-Kate Olsen. Your typical Hollywood crowd.
CELEBRITIES ATTENDING Pamela Anderson. JOKING! It was a costume party after all. Tippi Hedren from The Birds. JOKING! That was ME! Marsha Thomason from NBC's Las Vegas. No! She really came! Now you think I'm crying wolf.
HIGHLIGHTS The Lesbians from outer space impromptu make-out session ("That's hot!" cried Randy). WOW's Chris McKim catching fire ("That's hot," cried Chris). James St. James sporting a full head of hair (child molester chic), complete with kiddy-fiddling props and phrases ("Want to come play with my puppies?"). In short, a devilish time was had by all.
– Steven Corfe
(Photos: top left, host Steven Corfe is Tippi Hedren, fresh from 1963; top right, Chris McKim is a very very bad rabbit; above, James St. James is Creepy Pedophile Man No One Wants to Talk To, fresh from the '70s.)
The St. James Version: Spooky Halloween Edition
Evil, evil. I have seen true evil, yes. I have touched it, smelled it, sucked from its rotted teat. It's always all around me. Yes, yes. Have I ever told you about the time I was bitten by a ghost? Have I showed the scars? There? On my right hand? What about the time I went all Amityville? Have I told you about that? How I went total nutty-crackers? When I lived in the VERY SAME storefront apartment where David Rakowitz murdered and chopped up his girlfriend, then made her into stew to give to the homeless in Tompkins Square Park? And how I grew slovenly and foul-tempered during my tenancy? How I lay upon my futon, surrounded by garbage, and thought about doing brutal things to my friends? Chopping off their little blue noses and shoving forks up their little exposed butts? Have I told those stories? No? Well, someday, when we're traveling down a dark and lonely country road together, I'll tell them and scare the crap out of you.
This Halloween, though, I'm going to tell you about the time I met Satan at the Spotlight bar over on Cahuenga. TRUE STORY. And, no, this wasn't a hallucination, and it's not some sort of metaphor. It was really him. Lord of the Flies. Beezlebub. At the bar, drinking a Corona, with lime. It makes perfect sense, you know, that the Spotlight would be a battleground for the souls of the hustlers and lowlifes who frequent it. And that Satan would drop in from time to time to see what new sins are in fashion. But here, listen to my story and make up your own mind:
More...Grey Area
If you watched Grey's Anatomy last night and wondered what exactly was in that ingenious "banana bag" that Meredith injected to rapidly recover from her tequila hangover and why it's called that, so did we. Our research proved that products like this are useless. So we went to a different network (kind of a second opinion) and checked out the ER medical glossary.
BANANA BAGS: IV fluid with vitamins, thiamine, and dextrose that is given to chronic alcoholics, which looks yellow from the vitamins.
Madonna On Madonna
Jim Farber has an interesting chat with Madonna in today's New York Daily News. Interesting, that is, if you enjoy reading opinions on politics and religion from a nouveau riche pop singer. Actually, worse (for us anyway) would be reading opinions on Madonna voiced by the shrill hag called Sharon Osbourne. Oh, wait, there are some.
Dead and Buried – in Piles of Cash
Forbes magazine has again published its list of the 13 celebrities who, though dead, manage to earn circles around us hard-working living. Elvis, no stranger to the number-one spot on the list, kings everyone again, raking in $45 million between October 2003 and October 2004, and all he had to do was lie there. Or not – there are theories. He's followed closely by the Peanuts guy ($35 mill), John Lennon ($22 mill), and Andy Warhol ($16 mill). The three newcomers to the list this year, thanks in part to movie bios and an estate auction, are Ray Charles ($6 mill), Johnny Cash ($7 mill), and Marlon Brando ($9 mill). JRR Tolkien returns, and Forbes thinks he has the makings of a scary Halloween mask.
Word of Wonder
Exasperanto: What the other person starts to speak when the cellphone connection breaks up.
Glibberish: The language of TV pundits, news anchors, and Camille Paglia.
Fakespeare
Pictures of Willy, Part 2. Forget everything you think you know. These two paintings, forever burned into our consciousnesses as likenesses of William Shakespeare, are in fact not. The one on the left, of Will at 24, called the Grafton Portrait and reproduced on many a Bard book cover, has been proven by experts at the National Portrait Gallery in London to be a fake, since, among other factors, the young actor and writer would not have been able to afford such expensive clothing at that age. (It's probably Christopher Marlowe.) On the right, an older Shakespeare stares out from the so-called Flower Portrait, now known to have been painted in the 19th century. (Incidentally, the estate of Shakespeare, whose works have been translated into 118 languages, including Klingon, would today be worth $15 million annually, experts reckon, if his copyrights hadn't run out long ago and if he had an estate.)
Halloween Round-Up
Here in the home of Halloween, Britain is gearing up better than we usually do for this evening's apple-bobbing and restricted donut-reaching celebrations. The weekend started with a survey being released – to the shock of the church – that claimed more people here believe in ghosts than in God. Another survey quickly followed, this time to the shock of the Prime Minister. It turns out that his face is the number-one mask of choice at Halloween parties. The papers also reported someone spending over $140,000 on wax models of the Beatles' heads, although it's unclear whether he plans on scaring the neighbour's toddlers with them.
– Tim Hancock
October 28, 2005
Sitings
• Please study these choice Halloween costumes carefully over the weekend. And your choice should be no to all of them. They're scary in all the wrong ways, but Buzz's terse descriptions are hilarious. It's CampBlood's annual roundup of the worst available costumes. We can only hope they're flammable. Check out 2003 and 2004 while you're there.
The Podcast of Our Lives
Well, Jim's gone but, somehow, the podcast goes on without him. Yes, perhaps it's best not to mention him at all. People deal in different ways. Anyway, chat starts with Mariah Carey and her Emancipation of Me Me Me Me, then Randy can't talk enough about Martha Stewart and Halloween and pumpkins, the orange, white, and Cinderella types. Did Martha really rub up against Randy when he and Fenton visited her at Turkey Hill? Madonna comes up, what are the odds. Madonna, of course, her video and her documentary and how the doc is scene for scene just like.... Oh, and Janet's baby? Shopgirl, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Val Kilmer's career, Madonna on Letterman, Tom's admitted obsession with dolls and massive dollhouses, and the startup of benefit season and the price of tables. Galasso would have loved it.
Celebrities at Large and in Costume
Remember, James saw Paris Hilton loading up with Halloween fixin's at Hollywood Toys & Costumes the other day. Then practically the next day Thairin Smothers runs into Johnny Knoxville at the same place. Right now, today, Hollywood is, as the gays say, "a nightmare for days." And most of it's on the Toys & Costumes block, where the police and firemen are dividing it rather arbitrarily, we think, into sections with yellow crime-scene tape. It's "a nightmare" to try to shop along that tired boulevard of stars. Thairin says Knoxville and his daughter were shopping for angel wings, among other stuff. A young boy went up to him at the counter and asked him to sign a toy plastic knife. Knoxville wrote, Go stab somebody, Johnny Knoxville. "He's very cute in person," Thairin said.
Update: Turned out the fuss with the tape and the police was caused by a terrorist scare inside Hollywood Toys & Costumes, wouldn't you know, packed with stars as it is this holiday season. A suspicious box, apparently. Whatever. What we didn't know was that the real danger has been lurking the whole time just up the block at the corner Starbucks, nestled among the Scientology buildings and the Hollywood Sex Museum. According to Fenton, a report on Prime Time last night revealed that this very Starbucks, where we get our coffee, is an "isolated and unfortunate" franchise that serves decaf containing 95 parts of caffein, more than in a shot of espresso. So forget mysterious packages, the real terror is Osama bin laden with caffeine.
The St. James Version: This 'n' That Edition
#1 My first reaction upon seeing this: Why is PAT BENETAR on the cover of W magazine? My second reaction: LAY OFF THE BLOW, SISTA SLEDGE, YOU'RE LOOKING A BIT SKANKY.
#2 Who wore it better: Gwyneth or Charlize ?
#3 Oh REALLY, Sam Branson (son of billionaire Richard Branson)? A rainbow feathered hat? To the Cartier International Polo event at London's Windsor Park? A RAINBOW FEATHERED HAT, you say? Is there something you want to tell us?
#4 Hate, hate, HATE this family, but love, love LOVE the way the little boy is smiling for the photographer. That's how I'm going to start smiling on the red carpet from now on.
#5 MOST FABULOUS DRESS OF THE SEASON (by Christian Dior, bien sur). Hands down. Bar none. Insert my face over Charlize's, and you got one fierce muthafucking drag queen. Looks like Jared Gold was right on the button: Lithuanian peasant girl IS all the rage.
#6 OK, when did Macy Gray turn into Oprah?
#7 And when did Sharon Stone turn into Gloria Swanson? Don't get me wrong –I love her for this outfit. In fact, this is the hottest she's looked in 15 years. But has she snapped? What's going on here? Is she naked underneath there?
#8 This is just WRONG. Who let her become famous? Such rick-rack. I just want to bury my head in shame. THIS IS WHAT THE CLUB KIDS HATH WROUGHT. THIS IS OUR LEGACY. KIMBERLY FREAKIN' STEWART.
– James St. James
Sunrise and Shine
Is there a Vivid Girl who's NOT from Texas? Doesn't seem like it. Hot blonde, Sunrise Adams, one of the buxom beauties in WOW's Vivid Valley series airing Saturdays at 7:30PM on Playboy TV, says that she's always been promiscuous and sexually curious – even when she was a little girl. She left home at 14 to seek an exciting life and at 18, her aunt, Sunset Thomas, who was already in the adult industry (perhaps you've heard of her?), took Sunrise under her sizable wing. "Being a Vivid Girl means being a star, being a princess," says Sunrise, "being completely spoiled in every way possible." Click here to see just how spoiled a girl can be.
Compact or Hand?
Johnny Depp has given old flame Kate Moss a mirror to celebrate completing her stint in rehab after her very public cocaine snortathon. Mirrors, of course, are the ideal surface for chopping, arranging, and inhaling coke. So the gift seems a bit droll. But Depp says it's Cherokee symbolism for facing yourself without fear. But Moss is going to have enough trouble facing herself without blow. (Wasn't Depp in Blow?) At the clinic, she discovered writing poetry helps. In fact, she now puts all her thoughts into verse and then reads them to her current boyfriend, Pete Doherty, over the phone. Which must be so rewarding. A friend of hers has said that Moss finds it "very calming." We can only hope she puts those poems in a book.
(Photo by Dafydd Jones: Moss and Depp at a book party in New York, 1995)
Hallowiener
Two charming stills from Hellbent, the first gay splatter pic ("splatter pic" not to be confused with "splash shot"). The movie may still be playing in some areas. Gays traditionally like to give head, but here the heads have been removed. So, hmm, this could be the first thinking gay's splatter pic. The poster boasts that the film is from the co-creator of Halloween and the executive producer of A Nightmare on Elm Street, but fails to mention that it also had the sound mixer from Wilderness Survival Girls and the gaffer from Black Gulch.
Putting the I in Plot
That sitcom Elton John wants to do in America, the one we wrote about a year ago, that John and business manager Bob Halley cooked up while on tour, has at last come to some kind of fruition. Well, there will be a pilot at least. And ABC has plans to air it. A year ago, the main character was to be "based not only on John himself, but also the lives of Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, and John's other 'male diva' cronies." Now called Him and Us, the plot still revolves around an over-the-hill rock star, his manager, and entourage. Sex and the City's exec producer, Cindy Chupack, is writing the script and John's written a song for it.
We'll Be the Judge of That
Last night, not really paying attention to the TV news, we heard Harriet Miers, who had withdrawn herself from that nomination, described by Bush (again) as "a pit bull in size-six shoes." And we were confounded by what that could mean exactly. Is it to imply she's like a fish out of water, since pit bulls don't wear shoes? Is it that her shoes are too big for her to fill, since shoes made for people would be huge on a dog? Is it that she "behaves in a markedly aggressive or ruthless manner," the definition of pit bull? If so, what's with the shoes? Is the size relevant? Is it to imply she's a dog, and therefore ugly? Is it that she's tenacious, even though her shoes don't fit? Or fit perfectly. Whatever. Frankly, we think the analogy is lazy. Bottom line, we'd have gone with "pit bull in high heels."
Celebrities at Large
Celebrities, they're just like you and me. Take Tori Spelling for example. Two nights ago, she was holding up the line in front of me at the 3rd & La Brea Trader Joe's while she tore through her purse trying to find a credit card that wasn't maxed out. She kept pulling out different cards, and kept getting the same result – and then giggling and loudly wondering why she kept getting declined. I do the same exact thing when my card gets turned down, but I'm not heir to a ginormous pile of money, so it's a little more pathetic and a lot less cutesy.
On the plus side, the former miss Donna Martin looked way better than I expected her to – but by "better" I mean "like a skeleton wrapped in moldy grey canvas, with a nose that would make Michael Jackson cringe." Oh, and she was carrying something called a "Balenciaga" that made my girlfriend
start talking about Christmas presents. Apparently those things cost like a grand, so I guess that's where all the food money went.
– Chris May
More Boo Hoo Than Boo
Early Wednesday morning, a woman hanged herself from a tree on a busy street across from some houses in a Frederica, Delaware, neighborhood. Obviously – literally – she'd come to the end of her rope. The 42-year-old dangled 15 feet above the ground and could be seen clearly by drivers who sped past. Residents of the houses could also see her as they ate breakfast. Seems everyone thought it was a macabre Halloween decoration, and police weren't called for hours. "That is so sad," says our Moye Ishimoto. Indeed. Charles Rocket slashed his throat in a field, this lady hung unnoticed from a tree. People, get a prescription.
The Sweet Smell of Duress
Residents of Manhattan became alarmed yesterday when the air began to smell pleasant. From Battery Park to the Upper West Side, the normally, um, untoward ambient odor of the city leaned toward maple syrup. "With Eggos or pancakes," one Manhattanite said. Others, typically in a high state of bristle, had the telephones at the Office of Emergency Management ringing off their hooks, reporting that the smell was reminiscent of vanillia coffee or freshly baked cake. The situation became dire and Emergency Management eventually had to rally the police and fire departments, the Coast Guard, and Environmental Protection to sniff out the culprit. To no avail. God, we miss New York.
"We are continuing to sample the air throughout the affected area to make sure there's nothing hazardous," said Jarrod Bernstein, an emergency management spokesman. "What the actual cause of the smell is, we really don't know."
Excuse Me Sir, Are You Talking to Me?
It may seem like an odd pairing, but we can officially confirm that British
actor/director/screenwriter Julian Fellowes will be penning the next Martin
Scorsese movie.
In town to talk about his new film Separate Lies, the posh boy from
Oxford (his wife is Lady-in-waiting to Princess Michael of Kent) who won an
Oscar for arisitocratic film Gosford Park, confirmed last night at a
London Film Festival event that the ink is barely dry on a contract between
the two that will see him writing "an original screenplay based on true
events" for the godfather of American cinema. He was unable to elaborate
but our breath is bated.
- Sophie Morgan
October 27, 2005
Snap! Cap
The new human clock chimed "3 o'clock."
OR
Yeah, you're right guys, that new lotion is amazing – his legs feel really smooth! How are his hands?
(both by Seth)
Let Your Fingers Do the Talking
Text addicts everywhere, unite! Artist Stefhan Caddick, as part of the UK's Cardiff Festival of Creative Technology, is hoping that people from all over the world will text message their thoughts to a recommissioned construction sign on Hayes Island that usually hosts PSAs. It's his and programmer Chris Evans' Storyboard project. Just SMS to 07929 461727, keeping the message under 144 characters. The messages will be queued up and run first-come-first-served for three days, from October 28 to 30. In December, they'll be displayed at a proper gallery. Don't be put off by the way Stefhan spells his name.
Bucket in the Clouds
"We Are One" is the first single off of Buckethead's album Enter the Chicken, featuring vocals by Serj Tankian (System of a Down) and is a featured track on the Masters of Horror soundtrack. The video, shot by Syd Garon and former WOW colleague Rodney Ascher on location in a deserted mountain cabin, finds Buckethead terrorized by an unholy horror of his own creation. Serj plays an unethical Crime Scene Cleanup (and Roadkill Removal) technician who accepts tips.
Video will go online at rodneyascher.com Sunday, October 30.
A Change Is Gonna Come
And speaking of Arquette, Patricia's brother Alexis definitely will be having his sex-change surgery in front of TV cameras. The 36-year-old actor, who goes by the name Eva Destruction when he's in drag on LA's nightclub circuit (and is how most Angelinos know him) will be the subject of an A&E documentary (once thought to be called Alexis Are-cut) following all stages of the gender-reassignment procedure, from counseling to cutting, says local rag Hollywood Independent. Arquette's decision to go through with the op was announced last week in Hollywood, but friends, family, and anyone who's ever talked to him have known about it for ages and thought, "Finally." Meanwhile, he'll be a roommate in the next The Surreal Life house.
Peace Bisquit's Hi-Five: Special 'Hung Up' Edition
MAD ABOUT ESTHER
See the new video! See the new artwork and track listing! See Madonna leaving Pilates class! Read interviews with her producer and band leader Stuart Price (aka Jaques Lu Cont)! See a clip from her "unannounced" appearance this past weekend at Roxy in NYC. This one's strictly for the fans.
1) Go to http://www.madonna.nu/.
If you want the video specifically:
2) Click on "click here to download Madonna's sexy new video for Hung Up!"
3) Scroll all the way to the bottom of the next page and click FREE DOWNLOAD.
4) Scroll all the way to the bottom of the next page and wait for the countdown of your video ticket. When it finishes, download the video – it's a WMV file.
– Bill Coleman
[Ed note: Or, for the video, you could just click here.]
Of Interest
Kirsten Dunst and Patricia Arquette. It's the teeth. The fang-like canines that Cher used to have before the onset of makeoveritis. Dunst and Arquette are keeping theirs. "That's one of the things I like about me," Dunst says. "Messed-up teeth are so sexy." And that's not all that connects these two. According to Ananova, the Dunster has a crush on the medium. "I have a girl crush on her," she says. "She's a real woman – she's not anorexic or perfectly tanned. She's not trying to be anything but what she is, and that's the most sexy thing."
Cheeky Trick
Rumor has it that Prince Harry has the name of his girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, tattooed on his ass. Of course, if that were true, surely the royal tat man ("by appointment to Her Majesty, etc") would have sold the story of Harry's twin globes of pleasure to the tabs. Harry has denied it, but still the rumor remains.
The other day, according to The Sun, while Harry stood in rank at the royal military academy Sandhurst, he was called front and center by the sergeant and ordered to drop trou and expose his bum so the controversy could be put to rest. "Cadet Wales, drop your pants and show me your backside!" the sergeant barked. "Just get them off, I want to see if it's true." The prince had his pants around his knees before the officer told him it was OK, he'd take his word for it.
An unnamed member of Harry's platoon said: "It was the funniest thing any of us have seen for ages. Everyone had heard the rumour but no one wanted to ask Harry if it was true.... You should have seen Harry's face. We all fell about laughing. Harry blushed, then he also laughed."
Oprah's On!
Can you think of anything more frightening than being hunted by Oprah Winfrey? Seriously. Think about it. More terrifying than the FBI or Interpol. Oprah flashes your face during her show and says, "I'll pay $100,000 to anyone who finds this person." The next thing you know, you have every pre-menopausal woman and gay man over 40 hunting for your ass. Apparently, Oprah, in her continuing efforts to take over the world, has started a Child Predator Watch List to hunt down and capture child molesters. It has been extremely successful so far. Her efforts have caused the capture of two offenders! YOU GO, OPRAH! Magazine, Broadway, and now this. Sounds like she's got herself another cottage industry. Word on the street is, after she puts every sexual offender in the slammer, she's moving on to hurricanes.
– Ray Cochran
Pictures of Willy
You know how brief the fun can be when you're a flasher. It's cold running about in fall and winter in next to nothing and without your knickers. And once you've opened your coat to an unsuspecting lady, you have to make yourself scarce and you can't really stick around to savor the moment, so that's pretty much it for a while. You're a one-hit wonder with a whole albumful of joy to spread. Bummer.
But this one guy got it figured out: He'd do all his flashing at once in the comfort of his home. Jeffrey John Hein (the name has serial killer potential) made multiple copies of his penis and then, fully dressed, distributed them in parking lots in four Wisconsin towns, putting them on the windshields of women's cars, dropping them into open windows, and sliding them through sunroofs. Then, from a safe distance, he could watch the ladies react. Imagine his delight when he saw one WalMart shopper, instead of crumpling the image in disgust, placing it on a neighboring car. An accomplice!
But most of the women, of course, reported him to the police, who must have been familiar with his penis because he got arrested and is charged with 30 counts of lewd and lacivious behavior. Get this: He "disseminated his private business" in those towns and "violated their penal codes."
Two of the criminal complaints say Hein got his artistic inspiration from a Web site called "I Shot Myself," which advises readers to "pickle yourself in the adrenaline rush of public nudity," the Journal Sentinel said.
Ways of Making You Walk
Why does this Japanese lady look so happy? It's because she no longer needs to worry about controlling her physical actions. They're all done for her – using new technology that makes remote-controlled people a reality. Think of the possibilities.
Well, when I say all her actions, so far people can only be forced to walk "in the shape of a giant pretzel," but even so, officials are aready getting worried about their use in non-lethal weaponry. It works by transmitting electrical pulses to your ears, making you think you're off balance, and so you veer round to correct it. See this video for a demonstration.
– Tim Hancock
October 26, 2005
The St. James Version
Celebrity spotting! Celebrity spotting! Yesterday I saw Paris Hilton at Hollywood Toy and Costume on Hollywood Boulevard! It was very exciting. She had a shopping cart FILLED with wigs and fairy wings and magic wands and plastic spiders. And even though she was dressed very demurely in a "please-don't-notice-me" shrieking violet tracksuit and big bug glasses, everybody knew it was her and all throughout the store you could hear children chanting, "Paris is here! Paris is here!" Then, of course, the grifters and homeless people started surging in off the street to get a good look-see, and before you knew it, she had caused full-scale pandemonium at the toy store, which is her goal everywhere she goes, of course. So she was very pleased.
Other than that, it's been rather dull lately, It's a good thing I was working so hard last week, since I was invited to only one fashion show during LA Fashion Week. ONE SHOW. It was the Jared Gold show last Saturday night, and I suppose if I could go to only one show, it was a good show to go to. Who was there? Um, Constantine Mouralis. From American Idol. Who has lost major buzz as far as I'm concerned. He's no Bo Bice, that's for damn sure. And he's getting a little thick around the middle.
(Photo: Thistle, Jared Gold, Anorexia, courtesy Thistle's MySpace)More...
Mercedez Rules
Vivid girl Mercedez, one of the stars of WOW's Vivid Valley series, airing Saturday nights at 7:30 on Playboy TV, talks to producer Thairin Smothers about her life in and out of the bizness. She likes the missionary position with her boyfriend, believe it, and doggie style with her costars. And if given the choice, God forbid, between enjoying the best sex she's ever had and dying immediately afterward, or never having sex again, this Texan would choose death, bless her. (Listen here)
Why We Haven't Seen Barbie With Ken Lately
John Trobaugh, an artist who teaches in the Office of Diversity and Equity at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has a most interesting website. On it, one finds a series of photos of Mattel dolls that Trobaugh has altered to fit a certain alternative lifestyle. "His most recent series, called Double Duty, are photographs using the 12" dolls to make social commentary," the text says. "Trobaugh's photographs uncannily portray human likeness and gesture." True. In fact, for a second, we thought someone had found and posted photos we took in the '70s. Just for a second. (More after the jump)
KKK Not OK in Gay Say
The Ku Klux Klan intends to meet in Austin, Texas, on November 5 to rally in support of the amendment that would ban gay marriage once and for all. The Klan will kick up a fuss prior to the November 8 vote on proposition 2. However, as much as the church is all for the ban, it's feeling a bit uneasy having the KKK in its corner (though we'll bet there are not a few church members who wear the peaked sheets). Ryan Rush, pastor of the Bannockburn Baptist Church, has made it clear that hateful bigots are not needed or welcome in the city. Gee, if a Baptist church in Texas doesn't like the Klan, who does?
Walk This Way
The WOW Report editor's friend, designer Abbijane, is showing her spring collection tomorrow evening in New York City. Her clothes rule, as per this example, photographed in an artfully human way by the artfully human Stephanie Kaye. Our lifestyle choice precludes wearing dresses, but if it didn't, well, this little number would be hanging in our closet in all its color ways.
Swoopes! There It Is
Sheryl Swoopes, a forward with the Houston Comets and a three-time Olympic gold-medalist, is the most recent and currently most recognizable athlete in a team sport to come out as gay. In an article in the current issue of ESPN magazine, she says she'd been miserable in the closet. She was at the point in her life where she was "tired of having to pretend to be somebody I'm not. I'm tired of having to hide my feelings about the person I care about. About the person I love." Hmm, and in this photo it looks like there are a couple of others who need to step forward.
Former WNBA player Michele Van Gorp, who played for the Minnesota Lynx, publicly acknowledged she is a lesbian in July 2004. Before Van Gorp, former Liberty player Sue Wicks had been the only member of a female professional team to publicly come out while still playing. Previously, Swoopes has said she plans to continue her career.
Gibson Girl
Randy Barbato writes:
Deborah Gibson is the new president of Logo. For 24 hours, that is. She's paying $2,850 for the privilege. She outbid others, including Mel Chernen, the co-owner of legendary West End Records, at an auction that was part of a Lifebeat fundraiser honoring MTV Network's Brian Graden.
"I won't sleep for 24 hours" she told me. I had been watching her for the past half-hour, perched right next to the bidding table, determined to win. She looked stunning in a little black dress with her hair up in an "electric poof" – very Breakfast at Tiffany's. She was the brightest star in the room (and Pamela Lee and Kid Rock were there!).
More...
Recently Dead
Elmer "Len" Dresslar Jr, the booming voice of the Jolly Green Giant, now sleeps permanently in the valley; the 80-year-old baritone died in Palm Springs on October 16 of cancer. Dresslar sang in nightclubs and on TV in the '50s and '60s and recorded 15 jazz albums with the Singers Unlimited. But his career seemed to consist mostly of recording ad jingles, including Marlboro, Rice Krispies, Dinty Moore, and Amoco. "He never got tired of it," said his daughter. "If nothing else, it put my sister and I through college." Apparently, quite easy being green after all.
Snap!
Two readers, Justin and Barry, separately have sent in this picture, so perhaps you've seen it too. Question is, What's she eating here? And why was she photographed eating it?
Nu-Wavo York
Surfers ride the mucky waves kicked up by hurricane Wilma yesterday at a New York City beach. (via Yahoo)
Humble Pie
Last night's National Television Awards had a few big surprises, though nothing quite as sensational as Judy Finnegan inadvertently exposing herself during the 2000 awards (lord luv 'er). The best bit though – and one that managed to inspire tables of even the most jaded TV execs – was a video message from Prime Minister Tony Blair telling TV chef Jamie Oliver that he'd "used the power of television to change things for the better in the homes and schools in our country" following the series that forced the government to spend £280 million on tackling the school-meal crisis in England. Not bad for a TV show.
– Sophie Morgan
October 25, 2005
Sitings
• This almost makes us wanna go evangelical – the iBelieve snap-in crucifix for the iPod Shuffle. Divine. (t/y Eduardo)
• The Association of International Glaucoma Societies presents Melanie Greve singing the hymn to glaucoma, meant to restore clarity and calmness to those afflicted. Too bad sufferers can't read the words. (t/y Clancy)
• Looking to sell your soul? Look no further. Whether it's $5, the highest bidder, or an even trade you have in mind, demonical.com can broker for you. (t/y Eduardo)
• It's boohbah – delightful, colorful, noisy, clickable, unexplainable boohbah. More fun than you've had all day. Probably. (t/y Nick)
• A virtual arcade of Halloween games. (t/y Eduardo)
Separate Loads
In episode six of TransGeneration tonight (9PM, Sundance), T.J. and some of his friends visit the parents of his girlfriend; Raci attends a campus meeting for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students; Gabbie's behavior when her close friend undergoes surgery prompts a frank discussion; and Lucas and Kasey celebrate another turning point. In this webisode, Gabbie's friend Kate takes her clothes out of the dryer (subtle symbolic airing-of-laundry) and explains the difference between her and Gabbie's approach to transition. (Watch the clip)