Hunky professional boxer Oscar De La Hoya (left) insists dragalicious photos of him in yards of fishnet are fakes. San Francisco Chronicle sex columnist Violet Blue notes that locals consider the Power Exchange to be the Pier 39 of area sex clubs; she also highlights 50 places to fuck in Golden Gate Park. C'est Si Bon: Eartha Kitt, playing at New York's Cafe Carlyle, told a recent audience: "I may be 80, but I'm still burning!"
That's Zsa Zsa Gabor, now somewhere between 80 and 100 years old, with her husband, Prince Frédéric von Anhalt, in the crumbling Bel Air mansion she bought from crazy billionaire Howard Hughes. (Look carefully at that ottoman on the right; it's got a big hole in the upholstery.) This is the first time in years that Gabor has been photographed for public consumption, says Vanity Fair magazine, which published this fascinating story answering accusations that von Anhalt has been holding Gabor a virtual prisoner since she suffered a stroke two years ago.
Deliciously evil as matriarch Angela Channing in the Napa Valley-inspired 1980s soaper, Falcon Crest, Wyman was 93; she died today at her Palm Springs home. We are forever grateful to that show for bringing us Lorenzo Lamas as Channing's no-good playboy grandson, Lance Cumson. (Love, love, love that porno-sounding last name!)
From Latin America to Africa, the growing maturity of the gay-rights movement in the western world is now spreading to developing nations, Newsweek magazine says in a new cover story (left), "Sex and the Macho Man." In San Francisco, football coaching dreamboat Mike Nolan gets the best-dressed award when the 49ers face off in their season opener against the Arizona Cardinals Monday night, the San Francisco Chronicle says. Plus, Syliva Miles, fabulous as the kept woman boinking Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy, turns 75 today; more big birthdays here.
Yikes! We're all gonna lose our jobs because the economy's going into a total molto-meltdown. (Or not!) Answer: A gazillion. Question: "Just how many closeted, self-hating, violently repressed 'I-am-not-gay' totally gay hypocrites are there in the Republican Party?" Disco diva Gloria "I Will Survive" Gaynor (left) turns 58 today; more big birthdays here. Plus, Out There's dish, yesterday, on Tallulah Bankhead reminds me of a story from playwright Lillian Hellman's memoirs, Pentimento. While she was being considering for the role of Regina in the stage version of Hellman's The Little Foxes, Bankhead insisted on being interviewed in bed, with her husband, John Emery, by her side. "'Wait a minute, darling, just wait a minute. I have something to show you,''' Hellman quotes Bankhead saying. "She threw aside the sheets, pointed down at the naked, miserable Emery and said, 'Just tell me, darling, if you've ever seen a prick that big.''' Meanwhile, in other big-cock news, we have this debate. Mangia!
What I'm reading today our our little weekly: MOVE OVER, JUDGE JUDY. Judge David Young of Miami will deliver "justice with a snap" when his half-hour syndicated TV show debuts Monday. BURNING DEATH. A man who committed suicide at Burning Man last week died in one of the event's gay camps. OUT THERE. Tallulah Bankhead (left) paved the way for Sen. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig (last item). CRIME & PUNISHMENT. A mugging near Sparky's Diner on Church Street, a pit bull is stolen, and a crazy man runs naked.
More than 50,000 aging hippies gathered in Golden Gate Park on Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love. Bongs were suddenly joining hearing aids and cellphones as must-have devices. Two men who competed to be declared the father of Anna Nicole Smith's multi-millionaire child were once lovers, a new book says; Larry Birkhead (top), who was eventually named the father, and Howard Stern (bottom), disputed the claim. A South Texas police chief has been arrested for having sex with passed-out-drunk male employees during parties at his home. My kind of boss! Plus, the New York Times dishes dirt about Leona "only the rich people pay taxes" Helmsley's Maltese pooch, Trouble, who inherited a $12 million trust fund after the Queen of Mean died.
As Idaho Sen. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig would say: Jiminy God! Pop singer Enrique Iglesias (left) has reportedly been offered a $1 million gig modeling condoms for U.S. maker LifeStyles Condoms. He's been joking (right? He is joking isn't he?) that he has a very small cock, making it hard to find rubbers that fit. (Note: Regular Castro Confidential readers know I only use Trojan Magnums over my big willie.) Now-dead Leona "only the little people pay taxes" Helmsley left $12 million in her will to her white Maltese, named Trouble. And speaking of the senior senator from Idaho: He's now denied at a nationally televised press conference that he's gay. But did he deny he sucks dick a lot? And speaking of I-da-ho: Under these circumstances, could Craig represent a state with a more unfortunate-sounding name?
Phew! That was one drug-addled, sex-obsessed holiday! And I'm not even talking about my recent romp with Sparky in Provincetown, Ibiza and London. There we were Thursday night, wandering down London's way-gay Old Compton Street, not far from our Soho hotel, when I nearly ran into a tiny woman clutching another equally tiny woman as they crept down the sidewalk. Sparky, I said, that's one serious fan of Amy Winehouse (above): One of those women has tricked herself out to look just like the British pop singer.
I first saw the diminutive preacher's wife in 1985, after I moved to small-town Pine Bluff, Ark., to start my newspaper career. At noon, I'd drive home for lunch to watch Tammy Faye and her televangelist husband, Jim Bakker, on their Praise the Lord Network. It was as irresistible as rubbernecking past an eight-car pileup.
With her tragicomic life -- heavy mascara, on-screen crying, those big wigs! -- she was a ready-made reality TV star and gay diva, the new roles she adopted after Jim was convicted on federal fraud charges in 1989 and sent to prison. Indeed, Sparky and I saw her sing on stage at the Castro Theatre in a 2001 traveling show with her co-star, over-the-top film director John Waters. "I refuse to label people," she said in the 2000 documentary, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, the New York Times said today, reporting her death Friday night from cancer, at 65. "We’re all just people made out of the same old dirt, and God didn’t make any junk.""I don't have a diamond-encrusted vibrator."
-- Victoria "Posh Spice'' Beckham, the overly tanned and surly wife of our favorite footballer, disputing a story in the Los Angeles Times
People usually associate Vivien Leigh (above, in 1958) with Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche DuBois. But I gravitate to her gayest character, in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. Warren Beatty is downright silly (that terrible Italian accent!) as the gigolo who preys on Karen Stone, an aging American stage actress who flees to Rome after her career sputters and her new husband dies. (A 2003 remake starring Helen Mirren, Ann Bancroft and the smoking-hot Olivier Martinez, below, is a no-miss, too.)
Leigh, who suffered major bouts of manic-depression, is spot-on in that 1961 movie. The scene I always recall comes near the end, when her character succumbs to desperate loneliness. She's on the terrace of her Spanish Steps appartamento, tossing the keys below to another young n'er-do-well, despite a dark hint he may kill her. I thought about Leigh last night, when Sparky and I caught the tail end of A Streetcar Named Desire. Then I read her Wiki bio this morning and discovered she died exactly 40 years ago today, of tuberculosis. She was only 54.
Talk about so bad it's fabulous: I caught an episode of Vh1's Flavor of Love Girls Charm School, a reality show that tackles the question: Ever wonder what became of the girls so nasty, vicious and rough-around-the-edges that even badly aging rapper Flavor Flav didn't want them? Charm School is hosted by one of my favorite plus-sized comedians, Mo'Nique (left), who I loved in The Parkers. (My favorite TV shows are meant for black women. To wit: Girlfriends. Go figure!) In her new gig, Mo'Nique tries to infuse a little class in Flavor of Love breakout stars Buckwild, "the blackest white girl in America," and Pumkin, who'll be forever known as the spitter in her fight with the show's top star, New York. Charm School is worth watching if only to see these chicks in plaid-skirt uniforms! Want more? I've programmed Flavor of Love episodes in Flicks, in the sidebar, right. [Photo: Oxygen]
That's how the New York Times describes the former Belle Silverman, who died yesterday of lung cancer at 78. But I liked New York's take: The magazine says Sills was an "impossibly charming public figure who (one got the sense) could shout down an obnoxious cabbie if need be, then go straight to the stage and start trilling. In between stage performances, she was as much a presence on television as pop-music stars were, doing talk shows, variety shows -- even hosting The Muppet Show." Here she is in a Muppet episode on Italian TV (how else to explain why Kermit's voice is dubbed in Italian!).
Olivia de Havilland, famously estranged from rival actress and sister Joan Fontaine, turns 91 today; she's been living in Paris for years. De Havilland's most famous role was as Melanie Wilkes (left) in Gone with the Wind. But her gayest, campiest best was in Hush . . . Hush Sweet Charlotte, opposite Bette Davis. Also adding another ring to her trunk: bosomy actress Karen "There's no one left to fly the plane!" Black. Deliciously bad as a stewardess in Airport 1975, she went on to play a transsexual in Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Black is 68 today.
H.R.H. Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor has an e-mail address! But she doesn't exactly hit the keyboard herself; she dictates messages to some sort of lady in waiting, who then types and hits the send button. But, really, the 81-year-old sovereign is no technophobe, very lesbian gossip-puss Liz Smith says today. "The queen is surprisingly agile when it comes to the 21st century,'' lezzie Liz (as opposed to Royal Liz) says. "She is known to use a mobile phone given to her by Prince Andrew, and she also has an iPod." [Photo: The Official Web Site of the British Monarchy]
No longer content to be mere ladies who lunch, the new young dames with dough are workin'-it girls: Vanessa Getty (above) and Alexis Traina of San Francisco, Tinsley Mortimer of New York, Paris Hilton of the Los Angeles County jail (ha!) -- and, Gotham magazine says, Fabiola Bercasa (I heart that name!). New York's Fabiola is the "socialite extraordinaire and creative director of Circa, the exclusive and uberdiscreet jewelry dealer." Translation: Circa's a pawn shop for the monied set; Fabiola reels them in. From a 7:45 a.m. personal trainer session to a 7:15 p.m. Valentino rooftop dinner, Gotham chronicles a day in the fabulous life of Fabiola. [Photo: That's a Judith Leiber jewelry ad featuring Getty]
Scary TV talking head Kimberly Guilfoyle and hubby Eric Villency, the furniture heir and former Calvin Klein model, on the runway at the Dressed to Kilt fashion show in New York this spring. I was reminded of that photo while watching Mayor Gavin Newsom's ex-wife discussing -- what else? -- the Perils of Paris on TV tonight. I'm going to second SFist's P.S.: "Is it just us, or is Eric starting to look prettier than Kim? Work that kilt, girlfriend!" [Photo: Style]
Ocean's Thirteen, opening tonight, is this summer's cinematic Man Crush event. The movie -- starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt (left), Al Pacino, Matt Damon and Elliot Gould -- isn't half-bad, either, even though woman Ellen Barkin was, oddly, included in the manly cast. Excessively plastic-surgeried Joan Rivers (not a man!) turns 74; Nancy "These Boots are Made for Walking'' Sinatra, also not a man, is 67. More famous births here. Domestic arts diva Martha Stewart freaks out after discovering her just-arrested driver -- a man! -- is Egyptian. Very mean man Isaiah Washington is fired from ABC hit Grey's Anatomy. And kinda girly-man George Michael avoids the slammer for DUI. [Photo: Warner Brothers]
Sparky and I watched Sweet Bird of Youth last night, the 1962 version staring Paul Newman (woof!) and Geraldine Page. Along with The Women, the Wizard of Oz and perhaps a dozen others, it's one of those way-gay movies that everyone's got to see at least once. And this was Sparky's first time. I agree with him: The acting -- even Page's -- pretty much sucks. And the plot feels like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: The Sequel. But I love those scenes showing a shirtless Newman. And how gay is Page character Alexandra del Lago's name? There must be hundreds of drag queens who've adopted it. Now, the movie is well know. But I never expected to find this mashup of Sweet Bird scenes on YouTube:
