I Got A Bargain!

It should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that Donald Trump and I have very little in common.  While we've both lived in Washington DC and New York City, have challenges with our hair, and enjoy a spray tan every now and then (to different degrees of success), when it comes to things like honesty, integrity, compassion, empathy, morals, and the ability to read a weather map we are WORLDS apart.  Tonight, I added one more similarity to the list, because I just spent the last two uncomfortable hours in a room full of badly tattooed, oddly pierced, esteem damaged porn stars, strippers, pole dancers and webcam performers, including one naked midget (she calls herself that, so I'm not being un-P.C.) that I can NEVER unsee at the EXXXOTICA convention in Miami, all for a picture and an autograph from Stormy Daniels. 

And I paid A HELL OF A LOT LESS than Trump did.

I'll Always Love You, But Not Like Him!

Aside from zero privacy and having every move documented by paparazzi and anyone with a cellphone these days, one of the ugly realities of celebrity life is that there are "fans" out there with only the slightest grip on reality.  And Taylor Dayne might want to watch the windows and pace the property line at her house, because she came face to face with hers last night.  It wasn't me.

Before her concert at the Miramar Cultural Center (There's culture in Miramar apparently.  Who knew?), Taylor did a meet and greet with fans, which is really just another way of gouging a few extra coins out of anyone willing or desperate enough to shell them out.  Turns out her "biggest fan" is a roller skating coach named Jay, who had a tattoo of her face on his chest, her name shaved into his hair, and nearly lost his shit when the managers almost didn't let his $50 five foot tall Publix balloon/flower arrangemess into the venue because of something to do with the air conditioning.  Thankfully, his adult diaper wearing wife was there to calm him down, even though they had to settle for seats in the back of the venue because they couldn't get four together in the front row.  (Don't ask me why I know all this.)  Suddenly the small stain on my pants that was making me neurotic all day seemed insignificant.

The Shit Is Bananas

Back in the summer of 1983 a little gay boy from a small town in upstate New York first saw the video for Robert DeNiro's Waiting on one of those half hour, low budget, not-MTV video shows that used to play in the summer when the kids were out of school, and before he even knew what an earworm was the song was stuck in his head and he was obsessed with Bananarama, the girl group who sang it.  He bought all their albums and learned all the lyrics, studied their videos and learned the choreography while the other kids were out riding bikes or climbing trees, and even roped his brother and a neighbor girl into performing a dance routine to Cruel Summer at the annual block party, mercifully before everyone had cellphones to videotape everything and embarrass the shit out of him as an adult.  He went through lineup changes, stood at the wrong stage door after a March 1989 DC concert, tracked down an elusive European album on a trip to Paris, waited patiently in line at a CD signing in Long Beach, and was one of a handful of queens in the half empty audience of their 2012 Pinktober show, so you bet your sweet ass he, I mean I, lost my shit when they announced the original lineup was reuniting for a tour, with a stop in New York City, and you KNOW my gay ass was stalking Ticketmaster in the hours before the tickets went on sale, and you can best be sure I bought the meet and greet package.  You guys, this picture is thirty five years in the making!  The shit is bananas!

Going Out On A High

Who better to close out my NYC celebrity experience than Amy Sedaris, the madcap actress/comedian responsible for Strangers With Candy's iconic Jerri Blank.  Mix a dose of kooky, two sprinkles of twisted sensibility and a side of depravity, and you've got Amy.  And the last seven years of my life in New York.  The perfect send off, if not the perfect picture.

V is for Vanna!

The Gods have smiled down on me and I don't have to go out on a Wilson Cruz low, because Pat Sajak and original beacon of gameshow glamour and premiere letter turner Vanna White were at The Paley Center for Media Wednesday night to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Wheel of Fortune! 


Let THAT sink in for a minute. 


Thirty-five years of Wheel of Fortune, going all the way back to the days when winners had to spend every damn cent they won on tacky shit like ceramic dalmation statues and silver-plated peanut bowls shaped like fish.


That's thirty-five years of me screaming at the TV every time some idiot wastes their money buying a goddamn vowel, but it's also thirty-five years of Vanna's exquisite Caché gowns that are the epitome of GLAMOUR, her luscious mane of ash brown hair that takes hair spray like nobody's business, and a job so easy even a Trump could do it.

Hey Gurl, Hey!

In case you haven't heard, I'm moving to Miami in a few weeks, forcing me into celebrity semi-retirement since I won't be stalking Telemundo studios or popping bottles in the club in South Beach, and I really wanted to go out on a high note with an A-list celebrity like Meryl Streep or Linda Evangelista or Jocelyn Wildenstein, and not this queen from that mid-90's TV show and a couple gay, indie films that I used to see shirtless and high as a kite on the dancefloor every weekend I'd go out in LA (and I mean EVERY weekend), but I took the photo anyway because Petra Nemcova was either very early or very late arriving at Good Day New York, but either way I never saw her and I didn't want the day to be a total waste of time, so here's Wilson Cruz.

Hey, How's Your News?

With all the fake news coming out of right field, ie Fox News, Breitbart, twitter and that potato head White House mouthpiece with the tragic makeup and Rose Nyland wardrobe, it's hard to tell who you can trust for information these days, but one thing I know for sure is that you can always rely on Dan Rather for the truth.  With roots going back to the Civil Rights Movement, Watergate and the war in Vietnam, he's a giant of broadcast journalism who has seen and reported on it all, and has proven to be a steady hand and voice of reason in these toxic times.  Giving voice to the marginalized and calling out hypocrisy through his website News and Guts and his weekly Sirius radio show Dan Rather's America, he also influenced one of R.E.M.'s best songs What's the Frequency, Kenneth? after being attacked by two assailants repeating the phrase "Kenneth, what's the frequency?", making him cooler than most grandpas out there.