Gentle reader,
It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to indulge in new TV shows because Scott and I have been busy building our anti-aging skincare business and it takes up the little time I don’t spend on fashion, polo or sleeping. Now, I know you’re going to wonder why I’m involved in anti-aging products and tell me that I don’t look a day over 24 and you’re right, I don’t. But you do,
There was a moment after the first ten minutes of Anna Karenina when I thought director Joe Wright had somehow confused Tolstoy with Tchaikovsky—it would be understandable, what with both names having that Russian thing going on, and beginning with Ts and ending with Ys—and I was looking at a filmed version of The Nutcracker Suite. Then the drama settled over the dancy-pransy stuff like thick ice on a Siberian lake, and the characters lapsed into something resembling normal film dialogue, although the balletic quality remained as the dominant conceit for the remainder of the film.
In that respect, Anna Karenina is a satisfying holiday piece, especially if you’re sitting, as I was, next to your mother in a theater on the Upper East Side of wintery New York, an area of our own imperial city that would be the modern equivalent of the locales in St. Petersburg where the film’s action takes place. The fact I was wearing a short shearling jacket that makes me look like a hussar—a middle-aged Count Vronsky, perhaps, none of whose lovers ended under trains, but some of whom have definitely been emotional train wrecks—added to the meta quality of this particular movie-going experience.
Anna Karenina isn’t just a ballet confettied with words that are spoken more like sequences of musical notes than sentences that have a meaning to which one can attach real emotion. It is a feature-length fashion film, which explains why so many spreads in the glossy women’s magazines, indeed entire collections from designers, have been inspired by this. In that respect, it is supremely successful. I do not want to go to a black-tie event ever again in my life unless everyone there is styled the way they are in Anna Karenina. And if Marc Jacobs shows up in a see-through lace frock, throw him under a train. (Please. Finally. Thank you.)
THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES
by James Killough
“I used to think I had narcissistic personality disorder,” James Tuttle once commented to a post of mine on the subject. “Then I discovered I just enjoyed being good-looking.” Tuttle is not just good-looking. In online parlance he is “VGL,” or Very Good-Looking, which from the early years of hooking up online I have been calling “viggle.” This is because invariably some total tool who would refer to himself as VGL in his profile is not that at all, and is therefore worthy of ridicule.
If you ever need a dose of viggle, ohlalamag.com is the place to go. This detail is from a recent Dolce & Gabbana campaign, a.k.a. Me and My Boys (I wish).
Indeed, one of the first rules of online dating is that a guy is rarely the adjectives he uses to describe himself. “Hot,” “sexy,” “hung” are common enough delusions/mendacious cacas, but my alarm bells sound loudest when some dude describes himself as “sane,” “normal,” “fun,” “smart,” or, worst of all, “cool.”
TUTTLE MODE
by James Tuttle
Gentle reader,
In deference to our non-gay readers, I shall attempt to tread rather lightly here. Too much gay can be a frightening thing, especially in the wrong hands. If you don’t believe me, just read Perez Hilton.
Here’s where I’m going with this. We’re all fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race, right? I mean, what could be more stimulating than a weekly talent competition in which a six-foot-four vision of black cross-dressing glamour purrs “Con-drag-ulations, you are the winner of this week’s challenge” and “Now it is time for you to lip-sync for your LIFE!” before kicking a failed drag queen back into the gutter? What’s not to love?
If you think getting dressed is a chore, imagine waking up a tall, bald, skinny man and turning yourself into this every day.
The producers really have kicked it up a notch this season with the quality of the contestants and the production itself. After the mostly fat “performance art” queens got booted off in the early stages, the remaining queens are mostly quite beautiful, and they’re pretty damned skilled at padding those hips, tucking that junk, and making those racks look squeezable.
The guest judges are pretty sensational this season, as well. This week, they included Sharon Osborne and comedienne Margaret Cho. The absence of my friend, fashion journalist Merle Ginsberg, does leave quite a gaping hole on this season’s panel, though. There’s still a jar of Vaseline smeared on the lens every time RuPaul is in the shot but that’s part of the charm. All divas need to manage their on-camera image. A friend who worked with Faye Dunaway told me that she would put cans of Sterno beneath the lens so the fumes blur the shot.
I will admit it, I have become something of a dashboard junkie, as they say on Wordpress.com, home to close to 700,000 blogs, most of which are more popular than mine. Well, maybe I'm not a complete junkie. Making that claim would diminish the pain and suffering of those who...