The Island of Misfit Boys

May 29, 2007

So last weekend, my friend Guy celebrated his birthday by getting a group of friends together to spend a day on Catalina Island. Now, I’ve lived in L.A. for twenty years and I had never been to Catalina. The closest I’ve come is watching films put out by Catalina Home Video -- like The Best Little Warehouse in L.A. for example -- but that’s not the same as going to Catalina. For starters, no one has a boat in Warehouse. They just have box cutters and big, big bulges.

On the ferry ride over we played the home game of "Family Feud" that my friend Jack brought. One question was "name a Michael Jackson song?" Shockingly, “Dirty Diana” made the top 10 yet “P.Y.T.” and “Smooth Criminal” were nowhere to be found. That’s surprising, right? I can’t even think of how “Dirty Diana” goes. I was pleased to note, however, that none of MJ’s shamelessly gimmicky duets from the 80’s like “The Girl is Mine,” “Say Say Say” and “State of Shock,” made the cut. Yes, they were huge hits but they sucked and we all knew it at the time. It’s as if the second those songs ended their chart runs they evaporated into thin air.

On a related note, I heard a rumor recently that Michael Jackson was reaching out to Paula Abdul with an eye toward collaborating. To that I say, 'Oh, if only.' I think he should write a song for her called, “Pro-Tools, Take the Wheel.” I think Paula 2007 is more afraid of singing than she is terrorism.

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Gay Bingo: A Survivor's Guide

May 24, 2007

If you’re ever in L.A. and want to do something fun, casual and charitable on a Wednesday night, head on over to Hamburger Mary’s in West Hollywood for Legendary Bingo. Now, I’ve always called it Gay Bingo but apparently the official name is Legendary Bingo. Maybe it’s an easier sell if they ever want to go to TV. According to the night’s founder, Jeffrey Bowman, the events have raised over $1.5 million for local charities over the last decade. That’s a lot of dawbing.

I was among the guest callers this week and it was a total flashback to the early 90’s when I worked on cruise ships as a dancer/assistant cruise director. Back then I called Bingo like twice a day, literally. I did it so much that I can’t fool around with someone now without looking for numbers on their balls. See, even just talking about Bingo makes me tell hacky jokes.

Legendary Bingo is more fun than cruise ship Bingo because you get to be dirty and make oral sex jokes like “Under the O, 68 …you do me and I’ll owe you one.” Another fresh twist is the Legendary Bingo pelting ritual. It’s straight out of that story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. The losers wad up their losing cards and throw them at the winner while the winner runs around the restaurant and everybody chants, “Pelt him, Pelt him, all the way down and all the way up.” It reminds me of the scene in Carrie where the girls throw tampons at poor Carrie White. We never did the pelting thing on the cruise ship. I might have stayed with the job longer if we did.

Among the other callers this last week were my friends, Tony Tripoli ("My Life on the D List: Season One") and Jack Plotnick (Lovespring International), along with a drag queen named Holly who was filling in for the regular Bingo queen Belle Aire, and Jerri Manthey, the cunning little vixen from "Survivor: Season 2" in the Australian outback.

Jerri was very friendly but more than that she’s a super Gay Bingo pro. She’s done it a million times and knows all her gay callbacks like the back of Mark Burnett’s hand.

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Race Relations

May 11, 2007

So The Amazing Race: All-Stars Edition wrapped up this week and Eric and Danielle won it all. For those of you who don’t watch the show, when Eric and Danielle were on the Race previously, they were on different teams but they hooked up romantically at some pit stop along the way and showed up for All-Stars as a couple. I wonder how long they’ll stay together. There were a few tense moments on the new Race where Danielle was melting down and Eric had this look on his face that said, ‘Her hooters aren’t that nice.’ I dug Eric’s lime green Puma sweatpants and I have tried to find them on-line to no avail.

E & D were my least favorite team of the final three but they did the best at the final match-the-combination challenge so they deserved it, I guess. It was also fun to see the beauty queens rip into each other in Hawaii because up until that point everything in their world had been perfect, blonde and “awesome, awesome.”

I’m proud to say that I understand Race tensions better today than I used to because I recently took part in an Amazing Race-type here in LA event called The Go Game. I was invited to take part by my reality TV junkie pal Myles Nye who works for the Go Game company and helps design the competitions.

The company usually does games for corporate team building retreats, but since they’re new to LA, Myles and his colleagues invited their local friends to take part in a Go Game. So after ten or so seasons of watching the Race and criticizing players dumb decisions and behavior, here was my chance to see how I would do under that kind of pressure—and still be home by supper as it only lasted a few hours.

So we got a team of Race-obsessed pals together, dubbed ourselves Team Molly (named after the life-affirming Elisabeth Shue comedy of the same name) and showed up at the designated metro station in Los Feliz ready for action. Here’s who’s on Team Molly: me, my boyfriend John Michael, my roommate Tony, and our fun, friends Rebecca and Danny.

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Take Five: "Waitress" Stars Kerri Russell and Jeremy Sisto

May 08, 2007

While covering this year’s Sundance Film Festival for Hollywood Life magazine, I caught up with two of the stars of the quirky new Southern-fried comedy Waitress, Kerri Russell and Jeremy Sisto. The film has just been released nationwide.

Kerri, you play the title character. Why doesn’t the film’s advertising say, “Kerri Russell is Waitress”?

KR: (Laughs) I don’t know. I’ll take that note to Fox Searchlight.

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Take Five! Edward Boyd and Liane Bonin

May 07, 2007

Sometimes I come across fun, smart, sometimes gay -- sometimes not -- people who do interesting jobs in the world of entertainment. I’d like to introduce you to a couple of them now in a new feature I’m calling Take 5 because they each get five questions. See how that works?

First up is Edward Boyd, a fellow pop culture junkie I met in step-aerobics class in the 90’s. (Geez, remember step?) He’s worked that the E! Channel as long as I’ve known him but now, he’s running the show at “The Soup” as Executive Producer. “I’m really proud of our staff for making “The Soup” a show people are talking about again,” he tells me. “The best part of my job is we get free bagels on Thursdays. The toughest part is I’m trying not to eat carbs.”

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