Denis Denis

I've been a fan of hugely underrated, vastly underappreciated Tony award winner Denis O'Hare since he killed an anchorman on live television as the psychotic, power hungry 2,800 year old vampire king of Mississippi Russell Edgington in True Blood before that show went completely off the rails with all that Lilith nonsense. For the past six seasons he's turned out some AMAZING performances in the American Horror Story anthology series, including Burned Guy, necrobutler Spaulding, the con dude with the huge dick that they turned into a chicken in Freak Show and my favorite, the bald, Cleopatra eyed Liz Taylor, queen-of-all-trades and provider of glamour and hotness in American Horror Story: Hotel, so I'm a little confused as to why we haven't seen more of him in the current season of dumb bitch characters doing stupid shit like returning to a house in the middle of nowhere that they barely escaped from alive the first time.

Cover Girl, Cover Up, and Duck for Cover!

Since today is Throwback Thursday, I thought we'd revisit a slow moving train wreck of a show from 1984 called Cover Up about a fashion photographer who learns her dead husband was a CIA agent and recruits a Special Forces Op, posing as a model, to help her find her husband's killers.  MESS!  With a theme song sung by Bonnie Tyler(!), the show starred former cover girl Jennifer O'Neill and the extremely hot Jon-Erik Hexum until he accidentally blew his brains out with a not-so-harmless prop gun, and get this, they didn't cancel the show!  They replaced him, dedicated one measly episode to his dead ass and finished out the season before getting cancelled.  Jennifer went on to marry nine times, accidentally shoot herself in the stomach, and find Jesus.  Hollywood!

How Lo(renzo) Can You Go?

Slap me silly because this isn't a fever dream, but yesterday I met the formerly luscious Lorenzo Lamas, who starred as playboy heir Lance Cumson in the epic '80s soap opera Falcon Crest, (the dude’s name was Lance CUMSON! If that isn’t hot, I don’t know what is.) and later as Reno Raines, the “outlaw hunting outlaws,” in the ’90s TV series Renegade before squandering his career in direct to DVD masterpieces shot in Canada like Snake Eater, Bounty Tracker and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (with Debbie Gibson!) while marrying and divorcing a series of playmates and gold diggers, including this gorgeous piece of silicone who also slept with his son (escandalo!).

If you're in NYC and don't want to sell a kidney on the black market for impossible to get Hamilton tickets, check out Lorenzo in the Off-Broadway production of The Fantasticks, at Theatre Centre through November 13th. 

She IS Music, And She Writes The Songs

If you've ever had a root canal or been stuck in an elevator you're familiar with songwriter Carole Bayer Sager, whose songs have been in your brain forever.  She's worked with everyone from Sinatra to Streisand, Bette, Dolly, Liza, Aretha, Diana Ross and Shirley Bassey, won an Academy Award for Arthur's Theme (The Best That You Can Do) and a Grammy for That's What Friends Are For, and co-wrote Hillary Clinton's campaign song Stronger Together.  If that's not enough, she wrote a Bond theme, was friends with Michael Jackson AND a bridesmaid at Elizabeth Taylor's last wedding, which means she's everything a gay boy growing up in western New York could ever aspire to be, and I took in every ounce of her season six Alexis Colby glamour as I thanked her for the soundtrack for my life.

Hello Angel (Finally!)

If you're gay or were alive in the late 70's, chances are you spent your Wednesday nights in front of the television glued to Charlie's Angels, the critically acclaimed female empowerment show about three little girls who went to the police academy until a mysterious guy with a speaker phone hired them based on their looks, gave them tight clothes and guns and called them detectives.  It seems like just yesterday that I was striking the Charlie's Angels pose in my Jill Munroe wig ("It was yesterday" - you) but here we are celebrating the show's fourtieth anniversary with Cheryl Ladd, which seems odd considering I'm only 35 (ahem!). 

Editor's note: This is the second time I've tried to take a photo with Cheryl Ladd.  The first time, a few months ago, she was swarmed by professional autograph sellers who scared the living shit out of her and her entourage, forcing them to exit Rockefeller Center through a side exit and request a chain of security to hold back the crowd at Fox studios.  Yesterday, my friend and I arrived in plenty of time for her arrival, only to be told that she would take pictures "on the way out".....two hours later, making it easier to solve the case of the week than to get this picture!

Learning The Facts of Life

Remember that "very special" episode of The Facts of Life where Natalie lost her virginity to her boyfriend Snake (who was the same guy that knocked up Jennifer Jason Leigh's character and ditched her in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which is some disturbing typecasting if you ask me) because Lisa Whelchel (Blair) found Jesus and refused to play that story even though the girls were all in their twenties by season nine and it's a stretch to believe they were all still virgins even if they did share a bedroom basically forever, and Jo pointed out the pros and cons of sexuality while eating a bowl of Grape Nuts?  Well I'm not Snake (or Blair) and I didn't fuck Natalie (or Blair), but here I am with Mindy Cohn, who played that hussy Natalie AND was the voice of hot nerd Velma on Scooby-Doo.

And I Am Telling You

I can't help it, I'm a cliched queen who lives for fabulous fashion, a Broadway show, and a glittery diva.  I'm not talking about these "little heifers" (@ Patti LaBelle) who can't sing and need forty backup dancers to make them look good, I'm talking about that strong sassy girl with a fierce wardrobe who can SANG!  Today those loves collided in the form of Jennifer Holliday, the iconic creator of Effie White in the original Broadway production of one of my all time favorites Dreamgirls, and she was anything but a diva as I gushed about how much I enjoyed the 35th anniversary celebration in Los Angeles in July.  And then I looked down at my CD, where she'd signed right through Loretta Devine's autograph.

That's One Hell Of A Block Party!

Anyone who knows me or reads this blog regularly knows I'm a sucker for a soap opera.  At one time or another I've been a fan of Santa Barbara, The Young and the Restless, All My Children, General Hospital, and The Bold and the Beautiful.  I've seen every sequin, shoulderpad and catfight in every episode of Dynasty (twice!), spent every Friday night of my childhood with the Ewings of Dallas, and wanted to be Ana Alicia running her fingers through Lorenzo Lamas' chest hair on Falcon Crest, but nothing engrossed me more than the backstabbing, betrayals, affairs, addictions and baby snatchings of Seaview Circle on Knots Landing.  I actually sought out the real life cul-de-sac (really Crystalaire Place in Granada Hills, and nowhere near the ocean) the last time I was in LA, so if you think I'd pass up the opportunity to meet the fabulous Michele Lee, aka Karen Cooper Fairgate MacKenzie, you're crazier than the storyline where Jill gaslit her rival Valene with doctored recordings of her missing and presumed dead husband Ben then forced her to swallow sleeping pills at gunpoint, hoping it would look like a suicide so Jill could marry Gary, and THAT'S crazy!

Disco Remix

One of the great things about living in NYC is that celebrities are everywhere, and so you often get multiple opportunities to meet them and get photos or autographs, which is a good thing because the last time I met Nile Rogers there was nobody who could take our picture and I'm terrible at selfies and ended up looking like Shrek.  So here's me looking slightly better and him looking like the smooth disco legend that he is even though he was extremely late for his segment thanks to traffic on the way into the city from Connecticut and don't ask me why I know that.  I just do.

We've Known Each Other For So Long

In "What year is this?" news, Rick Astley is enjoying something of a comeback.  Better known in recent years for rickrolling (a bait and switch involving a website hyperlink secretly swapped out with Astley’s so-cheesy-that-it’s-awesome music video for 1987’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”), Melania Trump plagiarized quoted his lyrics in her convention speech, and now he's releasing a new album, his first in eleven years, and he's in NYC this week to promote it.  I'm pleased to say the magnificent pompadour is still in place.


Fun fact: to this day my brother and I still refer to Never Gonna Give You Up as "the gay disco song", (before either of us knew we were gay or stepped foot in a disco) and he was the first person I told about this photo.

What the Fuck is a Luftballon?

Remember "99 Luftballons", the bouncy new wave nugget about balloons floating over the Berlin wall, triggering defense systems that lead to nuclear apocalypse?  Just in time for our political holocaust, Nena has dusted off this chestnut for a three city US tour of small clubs, block parties and bar mitzvahs with a show in NYC tonight, so I went to the source to answer the question that's bothered us all for 33 years:  What the fuck is a luftballon?  Turns out the translation is not exact: "luftballon" means air balloon, with no color specified, so it could be blue or green or yellow.  Or orange.  In 2016 it's definitely orange.

Coming Out Of The Dark

I think we can all agree that if you weren't a fan of Dawson's Creek in the '90s, the most interesting thing Katie Holmes has ever done was agree to be Tom Cruise's robotic dead-eyed Stepford wife and give birth to the heir to the throne of Xenu before squeezing out of a third story bathroom window at the Scientology Celebrity Centre, falling into a bunch of bushes and running for her life ala Sleeping with the Enemy, but she'll have you know that she has a lot more to offer than just being the Bride of Scientology.  Like being a spokesperson for Quaker's Oatober campaign, which is what she was promoting this morning in NYC while Scientology spy drones circled overhead.