Priscilla, McQueen of the Metropolitan

TUTTLE MODE | REVIEW

Gentle reader,

Scott and I just got back from New York and, holy shit, it was hot out there!  When you add the humidity to the record-breaking high temperatures, it could have made for some pretty sticky fashion moments.  Luckily, one of our New York polo gays had tipped me off about the impending heat wave in time for me to switch out the Balmain rocker look I’d planned to pack for a cooler, crisper Hamptons-style wardrobe.   Skinny jeans and lace-up boots at 103 degrees?  I don’t fucking think so.

What I really should have been wearing in NYC

Now, I know that we usually share some good times over a quality television show or two but there was no time this last week for watching anything except a couple of late night episodes of Chelsea Lately and, after the kinds of late nights I was having, I don’t really remember too much about those.  We have other eye-opening stuff to chat about, though, so not to worry.

It’s Curtains For You, Michele

BAKER STREET

by Eric J Baker

Have you heard about The Pledge?

I’m not talking about the Jack Nicholson movie from 2001 that ends with him turning into a rambling lunatic. I mean the “marriage” pledge currently making the rounds amongst GOP presidential hopefuls. This one, presented by the Christian conservative group The Family Leader, starts out rambling and lunatic… and then it gets weird. Already signed by Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann (note to Republicans: Your party is being hijacked by bat-shit crazy mental patients), the pledge contains the usual gay bashing and hypocrisy about preserving the Constitution while simultaneously demanding that it be changed. But what I find most curious is a passage calling for women and children to be “protected” from “all forms of pornography.”

Cover of Catherine Breillat's "Pornocracy." We're not there yet, Michele.

Since current laws already protect children from pornography, one assumes this means that women won’t be allowed to participate in adult films anymore and that only gay porn will remain legal (sounds like those ultra-conservative, Christo-fascist men won’t have to change their viewing habits after all).

I’m Too Sexy For My Car

BAKER STREET

 by Eric J Baker

Welcome to Pure Film Creative or, as I like to think of it, Tiger Beat for intellectuals (and perverts; you know which one you are).

Regular readers of these pages will often find us opining on who is sexy (Ashton Kutcher, Duran Duran, Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and who is not (Killough’s former landlady Susan Blais, Russell Crowe, pre-Raphaelite painters). It’s easy to do when you’re talking about movie stars and fashionable pop bands, since good looks are a prerequisite for such roles in society. With political figures, the distinction is murkier. Much like the sewage most of them crawled from.

What's not sexy about an Aussie thug in a tub with a stogie, a brew and phone he's about to brain the hotel maid with?

I don’t find ugly liars attractive, but I seem to be in the minority. Last week, before the shocking truth exploded, I wrote on PFC that Anthony Weiner couldn’t have e-mailed his cock-bulge photo to a 22-year-old woman because he’s not that dumb. What I thought, but didn’t write was, “Who the fuck wants to see Anthony Weiner’s dick, anyway?”

Mass Delusion

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

This is a NSFRF post, or Not Safe For Religious Folk.  If you love your God, and particularly love him in Mass with a tasty wafer and a wine chaser, read no further.

I will spare you more kindly than the auto da fé treated heretics like me only a relatively few generations ago.  The Church’s torture racks, her burning stakes, her sticks and stones did indeed break our bones, but these words won’t actually harm you.

"Dear God, what if they find out I'm a fraud?"

This riff is inspired by a discussion the other day in the comment section of my Sarah Palin post.  I sort of feel that I am coming off as being anti-American and blinkeredly pro-European in these posts, but that isn’t the case.  Despite growing up in Europe and the years I have spent living in various countries there as an adult, I have as many issues with them as I do with us.  It’s just I’m not a European citizen; as a Ghey, I can say whatever I want about homos, but I can’t about blacks because I’m not black.  Europeans are also far more self-aware and critical of themselves, sometimes too much.  Americans think they’re the shit, and anyone who doesn’t agree can leave.  So they need to be taken down a peg or two, have the tires of our Sarah Palin Bus Tour deflated every once in a while.

Tu Vuo’ Fa’ L’Italiano

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

I’m not a big reality TV person.  In fact, that’s Tuttle’s purview, so I won’t encroach on his turf too much other than to say that I caught a couple of episodes of Jerseylicious the other night.  At one point I realized I was sitting on the edge of my seat with my mouth hanging open in awe, as if I were witnessing some spectacular natural disaster, or a dramatization of Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

An apparent spin-off of Jersey Shore, this particular reality show focuses on a clutch of “glamour” cosmetologists from a hair and makeup salon called Gatsby’s in Green Brook, New Jersey.  This is very much Reality TV 2.0: most of the show is set up and staged.  There are too many over-the-shoulder reaction shots with no second camera behind the person being spoken to for it to be completely impromptu, and there always seems to be a camera on the other end of the phone to record the person being called in an “unexpected” emergency.  However, just in terms of the styling and the lifestyle, there is little doubt that this is slice-of-life; in other words, these caricatures really do dress and talk like a version of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean set in Jersey starring Fran Drescher in all of the roles.

Olivia and Tracey from "Jerseylicious" don't just redefine glamour, they take it out back and beat it to a pulp with a spiked club.

Even though I’m a native New Yorker, and Green Brook is near the City, I’ve had very little contact with these outlandish creatures.  They must be all at least fourth generation Italo-Americans, but like almost everyone from that ethnic group they identify as Italians, as if they’re all here on extended work visas and plan to return once they’ve saved enough money to fix up the old farm in Reggio Calabria.  Every so often they use some word that sounds Italianate, which is probably some mash up between southern dialect and English, but I can’t make out what it is.