Tantrums and Tiaras

December 29, 2006

Okay, how delicious was the Tara Conner / Donald Trump tarnished Miss USA press conference? I think that’s my favorite holiday TV special of the year. I think it’s great that Tara’s getting a second chance but I fear she’s really going to owe Trump if you know what I mean.

Tara’s checking into rehab. Maybe she really has addiction problems but I doubt it. I think she’s going to rehab because that’s what public people do after the screw up royally. My question is this, if you go to rehab and you don’t truly have a substance abuse problem, what do you do when the rest of the patients are working on their addiction issues, needlepoint? Sodoku? Their nails?

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MisMatched in Maui

December 20, 2006

Aloha Outzoners! I’m writing this from a Starbucks in beautiful Maui! I know some people like to bitch that Starbucks is taking over the world. I’m not one of those people. I find Starbucks’ ubiquity comforting. No matter what dicey neighborhood or foreign land I spot one in, I think, ‘Serve me a venti non-fat vanilla latte and I’ll feel right at home.’

I’m here because my pal Nora Burns (from the hilarious Nellie Ollsens comedy group) invited me, my boyfriend John-Michael and my roommate Tony over to do two shows. The four of us took part in a Hawaiian version of the game show parody I produce regularly in LA, The MisMatch Game. Tony does a great version of the delightfully droll Charles Nelson Reilly and here is one of my favorite exchanges from the show:

DENNIS: Charles, I heard you went to a gay luau last night.
CHARLES: Yes, I did. It was marvelous.
DENNIS: Did you eat any poi?
CHARLES: I didn’t get his name, but yes.

One of the locals who took part on the panel played Jesus, which I really got a kick out of. He was seated between Charo and Paris Hilton and seemed to be having a really good time, even though this is a very busy time of year for him.

Then last night, John-Michael performed the one-man show The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center. The Maui-ans ate it up like poi at a gay luau. If you happen to live in San Francisco, he’ll be performing it there at the Off Market Theater from December 22 to December 31.

While here, our gang took part in a thrilling zipline adventure that I had seen twice on TV; once on a Learning Channel special about little people and once on Oprah when she treated all her Harpo staff to a getaway on Maui. The Oprah episode was edited to make it look like Oprah took part in the zipline outing herself but our super-fun guides told us otherwise. They just shot someone who looks like Oprah from the back zipping through the jungle and let the home audience draw their own conclusions.

Today, we took a morning stroll down a hillside road in front of some property that Nora told us was purchased by Oprah herself not long ago. Nora pointed to a quaint gray and white cottage and said that the tabloids had referred to said dwelling as “Oprah and Gayle’s love nest.” I saw no love-nesting going on, but there was a lot of construction happening and it was being done by really hunky construction workers who had their shirts off. I swear, it was like Oprah brought in the guys from the Vegas review Thunder from Down Under to do drill and hammer and so forth.

I tried to snap a couple of what I like to call “Stolen Moments,” a style of photography I first started doing a few years back while on the beach in Rio. You put your camera down by your waist and try to snap pictures of hot, Speedo-clad people without them noticing. As Tyra would say on Top Model, “Here’s your best shot.”

Now, if you read this blog regularly, you’re probably sick of me writing about Oprah but I thought the public had a right to know. If you ever make it to Maui, make a point of zipping. Oprah don’t know what she’s missing. And thanks again to Nora and her family for showing us mainlanders an awesome time.

Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now!

December 11, 2006

Has anyone noticed that "The View" has gone giveaway crazy?

If I showed up in the audience of that show and didn’t at least get a Jet-ski, I would be super pissed. I think it was Rosie who brought the give-away fever to the show. Rosie loves giving stuff away. When she had the Kentucky coal mining couple David and Mary from "The Amazing Race" on, she gave them trips so their sheltered kids could see the world and a car. But wait, there’s more. She also gave them a new house! Now, we all adored David and Mary on "The Race" and thought they were good salt-of-the-earth types, but a new house?

The Cho brothers were just as good-hearted as David and Mary but because they weren’t hillbillies, they didn’t get shit. Watching Rosie give David and Mary all that stuff while simultaneously having to get the plugs in for the various companies who donated it all was really surreal and a little exhausting. It just kept going on and on and poor David and Mary looked as befuddled as the rest of us. I wonder if Oprah saw that and thought, ‘Oh fuck. I’m going to have to give one of the chicks from "Top Model" a kidney just to keep up.’

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Season's Bleatings: My 18-Year Xmas Card Oddysey

December 11, 2006

When the folks at Outzone asked me to document a favorite holiday tradition, several came to mind: my childhood Light Bright triumphs, my yearly pilgrimages to see the holiday lights on Candy Cane Lane with friends Brett and Danny, taking “dirty pictures” with an unsuspecting, stuffed Christmas camel on board the Royal Princess cruise ship back in ’88 …

But I decided to write about my holiday card ritual, because this is the gift that keeps on giving.

Back in 1988, while trekking through Egypt as an entertainer for Princess Cruises, I thought it might be fun to shoot a photo by the pyramids for my Christmas card. I grabbed a Santa hat, struck some “Walk Like an Egyptian” poses, scrawled “Merry Xmas from BFE” on the corner of each photo and voila! It was an international holiday well-wishing triumph.

Little did I know, however, that I was planting the seeds for a ritual that would come to rule my life: the yearly quest to pull a clever holiday card out of my ass.

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Sweeps Without Shame

December 05, 2006

As we all know, November is a sweeps period in the cutthroat world of TV ratings. To my mind, no one goes sweeps-nutty quite like folks at "Entertainment Tonight" and "The Insider." This November, they realy outdid themselves.

First there were the anorexic twins. Getting one chatty, telegenic anorexic is money in the bank for ET, as much a staple of the show as Mary Hart’s shapely legs. But two is a gift from on high. They doubled their pleasure, doubled their fun and did very well in key demo of women 18 to 49.

You know when the exec producer got the Post-It on her desk that said, “We found anorexic twins,” she danced a jig right there in her office then called The Coffee Bean to have Ice-Blendeds delivered for the entire staff. Melissa, the original ET anorexic from a few years back, must have been livid when she got the news she was being, well, downsized, but sorry honey, out with old in with the new, particularly if there’s two of them and they’re willing to cry.

Sweeps also meant viewers got to see footage of a baby being yanked from the womb of troubled Trim-Spa queen Anna-Nicole Smith. How’s that for Thanksgiving fun? Someone pass the stuffing.

But my favorite sweeps stunt of all was Ugly Vanessa. This feature was inspired by the TV hit "Ugly Betty," a show whose spirited message of character over looks, is totally lost on ET. They don’t even give lip service to it. Instead, they stick their cute and perky correspondent, Vanessa Manilo, in a fat suit, glasses and braces and send her into public while Janis Ian’s poignant outsider ode “At Seventeen” plays in the background.

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