Saturday, June 20, 2009

Dustin Lanced on his Back.


No, that is not Little Oscar-winning (by which I mean the winner of an Oscar, not being awarded custody of former Munchkin hot-dog pitchman Little Oscar) screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. It's someone else. Just whom I'll get to in a moment.


The Internet has been buzzing all week about professional scuzzbucket Perez Hilton posting pictures of Little Dustin Lance Black having gay sex, coupled with a hypocritical lecture to Black about how celebrities should not take nude pictures of themselves because they'll end up on the Internet. His excuse for being the sleazeball posting them was that someone would so he was posting them, to teach Lance a lesson.

Yes that's right, a lesson in morals from a man with none. First off, Perez could take nude photos of himself getting gang-banged by the Los Angeles Lakers, and no one would post them, because no one would ever want to see him naked. It's bad enough seeing him clothed.


And of course, he really posted them to increase traffic on his webpage. I am not reposting them here because I am not a sleazebag, not matter what you've heard.


But what I really want to address is the insane idea that there was something wrong with the pictures themselves, that Lance's career will be harmed by the posting of them, and that he is "humiliated" by them.


Lance is a screenwriter, with an Oscar for writing a really wonderful movie, Milk, which is, after all, about gay men and Gay Liberation. What? A gay man actually has gay sex? I'm reeling from the shock. Can anyone possibly believe that a producer would ever say, "I'm sorry, Mr. Oscar-Winning Screenwriter, but I can not produce your brilliant script because you have had sex!"? Insane. Dustin Lance Black having gay sex is just practising what he preaches.


And as for his being a celebrity, well, even if you accept the idea that a writer can be a celebrity (Ridiculous notion!), the photos were taken before he became famous. Hey all you nobodies out there, never take nude pictures of yourself. You might become famous some day. Idiotic.


And as for Black being embarrassed by the pictures, I've seen them (Elsewhere. I did not click on Hilton's sewage-page), and believe me, Dustin has nothing to be embarrassed about! The man looks beautiful being ravaged, and also displays, well, let's just say that if my dresser drawers had knobs so big and beautifully sculpted, I'd be yanking on my drawers all night long.


I've seen Perez and others sanctimoniously saying it was a mistake for him ever to allow himself to be photographed naked at all. Why? What is wrong with naked pictures of beautiful people? It's 2009. Why are we clucking about like a bunch of scandalized Victorians? There's nothing wrong with nude pictures, especially of the young and gorgeous. You'll want them when you're no longer either.


The lovely young man in the altogether in the photo above is none other than my amanuensis, Little Dougie himself. Oh Little Dougie doesn't look like that anymore. He's 11 months away from turning 60. Nobody wants to see him naked nowadays. That picture was taken in April, 1972, when he was 21 years old. And he is glad it was taken, because now, it pleases him that his youthful beauty has been preserved. As for it being posted online, he's all for it. He begged me to post it. And it was published at the time it was taken.


So Not-So-Little Dustin, be not ashamed. Be proud. Let the hypocrites and finger-pointers blather. No one wants to see them nude.


Here's another lad whom any sane person would want to see naked, Little Ryan Reynolds, who is sharing his sadly-only-partial nudity on the cover of this week's Entertainment Weekly. Lovely.


My reason for mentioning Little Ryan, apart from being an excuse to post this gorgeous picture, is the way he has shamelessly begged my favor within the magazine. On page 41, they published Ryan's Ultimate Must List, and on that list we find: "Must Website: The Huffington Post." Now although he doesn't mention my name (very subtle, Ryan darling), there can be only one reason for Little Ryan to list The Huffington Post as The Must Website at this time: my presence as a Huffington entertainment blogger.

My proof? Prior to this year, Reynolds never listed Huffington as a "Must Website" in
Entertainment Weekly. He waited to do it this year. What is different about The Huffington Post now? I am writing for them. Therefore, The Only Possible Reason Ryan Reynolds could have for recommending The Huffington Post as a Must in 2009 is because of ME! Ryan darling, drop by Morehead Heights anytime. A "Thank You" shag is waiting for you in my bed.



Another news story has caught my eye this week, one which may have terrified and panicked my ardent fans. Tomoji Tanabe, The Oldest Man in the World, has died at the tender age of 113. Poor darling. I told him to quit smoking! Well, at least now I have a good excuse for only shagging younger men. That's the only kind that exists anymore!


So now the title of The Oldest Living Man in the World passes to Queen Elizabeth II, that drab drag queen living in Buckingham Palace.



Now my fans all know that I turned 112 only last month, and they probably fear that I may be The Oldest Living Woman in the World, and and thus at the head of the line to pop off next. Well first of all, The Oldest Living Woman in the World is 115 year old Gertrude Baines (She doesn't look a day over 107. She's had work done.), who lives in hyper-healthy Los Angeles, as do I. The air here preserves you like salted pork.


Secondly, I am not even The Oldest Living Actress in the World. As long as Betty White is still breathing, you don't have to worry about me.


I've been reading this week about another old actress, beloved Cockney singer, dancer, and comedienne, adorable Barbara Windsor. Not a relation of Elizabeth Windsor of Windsor Castle, as I'm sure Babs wants made clear. Little Queen Liz changed her name from Saxe-Coburg to Windsor solely to capitalize on Babs Windsor's enduring popularity, trying to keep Babs from suing her by fobbing her off with an M.B.E. So transparent a ruse.


Anyway, Little Barbara discovered that I had written my autobiography, My Lush Life, and jumped on my bandwagon by writing her own. Hollywood is full of copycats, even the ones who live in London. No actress had ever written a book before me, nor ever read one either.

But Babs's book is delightful. Since, while she's an institution (a much-more shapely institution than The Smithsonian Institute if you ask me) in England, she's not as well known in America, I'll tell you a bit about her.



That's little Babs at Pinewood Studios back in the 1960s, with her trademark stand-out hair and her trademark stand-out boobs. Babs is a charming and funny woman. She's best known in America as one of the regular stars of the British Carry On movies, along with such other beloved English comedians as Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Joan Sims, Charles Hawtry, and Kenneth Conner.


In England, she was also well-known for having a rather public affair with her constant Carry On co-star, the late Sid James. Here she is with Sid. I assume she has extremely poor eyesight, or else they only did it in pitch dark rooms.


They have even made a movie about their affair, called Cor Blimey, which I just watched. It's great fun, and it's spooky how well the cast conjures up the mostly-dead Carry On stars. (Babs is almost the only major Carry On star still breathing, and brother, can she breathe! Jim Dale and Bernard Cribbins still draw the occasional breath, but never as impressively.) There is no more discreet way for two married people to conduct a secret backstage affair, than to make a movie about it. Barbara's real-life current husband (She's had a mere four. I call that just getting warmed up.) makes a cameo appearance in the film, and is he a doll! He's also about 70 years younger than Barbara. You go, girl!


The
Carry Ons are low-brow comedies, broad, bawdy, and utterly unpretentious. Just silly fun, pure burlesque, played by a stock company of uniquely British clowns. Barbara joined the series when it was well along, in Carry On Spying, and soon became synonymous with them.



Along with the Carry Ons, Barbara was in Ken Russell's movie of The Boy Friend, a regular on the London stage, and in recent years, a regular on the popular English TV soap opera Eastenders. She even appeared on a recent episode of Doctor Who, playing herself. Everyone loves her, some repeatedly.


Another Carry On regular was the fabulous, snooty poofter Kenneth Williams, a man whose voice box was apparently located in his nose.


Kenny Williams was the best friend of the brilliant comic playwright Joe Orton, one of Little Dougie's idols, a wildly talented writer who was murdered in his sleep by his gay lover in 1967. You can learn more about Joe Orton by reading John Lahr's great biography of him, or seeing the movie made from it starring Gary Oldman (who isn't all that old), both titled Prick Up Your Ears. (If you realize that "ears" is an anagram for "arse," you'll get the joke in the title.)


John Lahr also wrote an excellent book about Barry Humphires and Dame Edna,
Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization: Backstage with Barry Humphries. As someone who has been backstage with Barry Humphries only a few days ago, I can recommend it. Lahr is a pretty good writer for a man whose father was a world-famous pussy.


If you want even more information on Orton (you can never know enough about this tragic comic genuis), you can also read his sizzling published diaries, which I must warn you, are full of hot gay sex on page after page.
(And Joe Orton would have relished having nude pictures of himself having gay sex posted online, once you explained to him what "online" means.)


Here's a picture of Joe Orton and Kenneth Williams flanking fabulous British actress Geraldine McEwan, who keeps understandably denying the obvious fact that she is Little Dougie's long-lost cousin. Do you know how hard it is to be long-lost when you've spent 50 years starring in plays in London's West End? You have to work at it.


Kenneth Williams was snooty, snobby, and incredibly neurotic. He died a virgin because actually having sex with another person was just too icky, personal, and messy. Here's how weird he was: he wouldn't allow guests in his home to use his bathroom. If you needed to drain the anaconda, he made you go to the public restroom at the corner. This is true. He brags about it in his books.


That's right. He wrote some books, because he was also witty and funny. You can read his for-public-consumption version of his life by reading his autobiography (everyone rips me off, even people like Ken, who died years before I wrote mine.), called Just Williams.


I read it, but I found his diaries, not intended for the public, and published after his death, when he couldn't do a damn thing about it, to be an even better read. Pure bitchy fun.


Barbara Windsor's book is full of ribald stories of her adventures in English show business. She writes frankly of her sexual adventures. I haven't read a book in which an actress confesses to so much shagging since the last time I read my book!


Here she is at a backstage party in her dressing room with Rudolph Nureyev, Sir Noel Coward, and famous drag queen Danny LaRue. It's a puzzlement how Babs could have been getting poked as often as she was when all her friends were famous poofters. I think I may have married most of the men in that room at one time or another.


Here she is apparently getting the Chinese Finger-Cuffs treatment. (Heaven on earth) The guy in the/her rear is Trevor Bannister, whom you may recognize from the Britcom Are You Being Spit-Roasted?


Speaking of that long-running program, here she is with John Inman, who played the poofy Mr. Humphries for 87 years on that show. I adored the late Mr. Inman, (What perfect last name for a gay man!) even when he was dressed as bizarrely as he is here. (This was the last time I lent him one of my frocks. He returned my confirmation gown all stretched out of shape.)


Anyway, for pure fun, bawdy and sweet at the same time, you can't go wrong with watching or reading Barbara Windsor.


Speaking of men in dresses named Humphries, Barry Humphries has spent the last two weeks here in Los Angeles, sharing Dame Edna with all of us. Knowing that Edna is a shrinking violet who can not face a gigantic audience without the moral support of a huge movie star like myself, I selflessly (Screw you, Ayn Rand!) attended multiple performances of her show Dame Edna: The First Last Tour. Here I am onstage with her at The Ahmanson Theater, with Edna showing the sort of intense emotional response I always provoke in her. You can almost smell her adoration of me. No need to thank me, Los Angeles. God knows, Edna didn't.


Cheers darlings.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Bret's Purple Tony Heart (and nose).


Poor Bret Michaels has suffered for his art, and his inability to look where he's going. Look at what's left of his face after slamming into a piece of scenery at The Tony Awards, almost as though the stage of Radio City Music Hall was rejecting him like a faulty organ for having no business being there in the first place. Thank Heaven he was already homely, so it's not possible to harm his looks.


And now he has whined to the press that the Tonys haven't apologised to him for his clumsiness and inability to walk upright. "If I were Liza Minnelli, they'd have apologized." He's correct. In fact, I believe the Tonys have apologized to Liza for putting her in a show with Bret.


Well someone needed to apologize to Bret, so I have. You can read my apology, posted over at The HuffPo, by clicking on this: A Long-Overdue Apology to Bret Michaels.


I'd chat more, but I have to hop into a Lincoln Incontinental and get to the Ahmanson. Little Dougie and I have tickets to see Dame Edna onstage tonight. If we're not there, poor self-esteem-deficient Edna can't summon the courage to go on. So I'm going to see her out of selflessness, no matter how offensive that is to Rosa Klebb, I mean Ayn Rand. (It's a natural mistake.) How fortunate for all of us that Ayn is dead.

Cheers darlings.

Monday, June 8, 2009

The Antoinette Perry Mason Awards


Darlings, those of you who are so retro, entertainment-wise (Sorry, I watched Billy Wilder's The Apartment over the weekend, and now I'm stuck adding "wise" to every noun in sight), that you still go to live theater will want to read my review of The Tony Awards Show over on The HuffPo. Just click here:

If you'd like to read last year's Tony Awards review, click here:

See if you can spot the recycled gag in both reviews.

Cheers, darlings.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Going Down on the Titanic

You must have seen the headlines last week:

LAST SURVIVOR OF THE TITANIC DIES.

REVISED TITANIC DEATH TOLL: 100%

ICE BERG INTERVIEWED: "MY WORK IS DONE. I CAN MELT NOW. GO GLOBAL WARMING."

JAMES CAMERON: "TIME TO SINK ANOTHER ONE. SEQUEL!"

RUSH LIMBAUGH: "I'M GLAD THE TITANIC FAILED."

Well Gloria Stuart has a message for all of you:




Come the Fourth of July, Little Gloria turns 99, but she's not actually dead; just her career. I mean honestly, a mere 12 years ago she was nominated for an Oscar in the most phenomenally successful movie to that date, Titanic, and yet here she isn't. The woman hasn't made a movie in five years. My guess? She's just plain lazy. Being 99 is no excuse. Last Friday I turned 112 (and I'm still waiting for your presents, darlings. Snap it up. Vodka is always nice), and while I'm not acting anymore except in bed ("You're the best, Eduardo. You're the world's greatest stud." Talk about acting!), here I am dictating my brains out, while Little Dougie types up my thoughts.

Don't get me wrong; I adore Little Gloria. But she was always insecure about her drab looks. After all, the only reason to date an invisible man is because with him, you know you're the one everyone is looking at.


Poor little Claude Rains. Gloria broke his heart, and left him and his velvet voice so wounded emotionally, he couldn't even read without getting frightened.


Naturally, Gloria and I have known each other for ages. We met back in 1932, when she appeared with my fourth husband, Boris Karloff, in The Old Dark House. Unfortunately, once we got the lights turned back on and she could see Boris and I clearly, she let out one of her patented shrieks! "Save me Boris! She's so hideous!" Talk about rude! Her married name may have been Sheekman, but it should have been "Shriekwoman." If her husband hadn't been Arthur Sheekman, a divine comedy writer, and one of Groucho Marx's closest friends, I wouldn't have let the weird woman in my house. (Why do you think I kept my old house so dark in the first place?)


And for God's sake, never let her anywhere near your jewelry! She stayed overnight here at Morehead Heights once (Boris was sometimes a little too hospitable), and the next day all my diamonds were at the bottom of the swimming pool. Do you know how hard diamonds are to find under water? But what I really objected to was that I was still wearing some of them at the time. (I must remember to replace all that water in my pool with vodka. It would make drowning so much more fun.)

Why does the strange woman like to throw jewelry into bodies of water anyway? It's not a normal pastime, like drinking heavily, or shagging my gardener's son Eduardo. You know, normal behavior. On one of Little Gloria's trips to New York her whereabouts were unknown for one night, and the next morning, Tiffany's found their entire inventory at the bottom of the Central Park Lake. Gloria had struck again!


Maybe it was the iceberg that sank her ship that gave her the idea. After all, an ice berg looks like a huge diamond in he rough, and it was floating in the sea. And that diamond she tossed overboard looked big enough to sink another ship.


The movie got it all wrong anyway. Who do you think Gloria was playing in that movie? Little Kate? Hardly. She was playing me of course! Yes, I went down on the Titanic. You may find that hard to swallow, but I didn't.


I remember setting sail from London, with Queen Elizabeth herself bidding us Bon Voyage as we sailed over Buckingham Palace. Even then, 97 years ago, that woman was a frump. Charles has been waiting a long time to become queen.


You want proof? Well here's the lovely portrait Leonardo DiCaprio drew of me, as I lay there, wishing Hugh Jackman had gotten his role. I mean Leo is okay looking, but he's 34 and he still looks like he's 12. And skinny! During sex, I don't like to fear being impaled on one of his other bones! Get some pecs boy. You can buy them, you know. And Leo, maybe some hair plugs - on your pecs! If only Hugh had played Jack, that movie might have been a success!


Incidentally, the reason my pecs aren't dangling down and falling off the side of the bed in that rather permissive sketch is that, well, this
was 97 years ago. They were still "Perky" and "Insolent." (Perky is the right one. Insolent is the left one. What are yours named?)


I didn't actually realize at first that the ship was sinking. Darlings, I get that sinking feeling all the time. And when your walk is as wobbly as mine, a little thing like a catastrophic collision between a ship and an ice berg is hard to even notice. I had just been doing butthole shots with Bruce Ismay (Ismay was such a huge butthole, that it took an entire fifth to fill the shot.), and I just thought it was the vodka hitting. I had ordered mine "neat," so the ice was just an intrusion.

And when the Titanic bar began flooding, how was I supposed to know it wasn't just me getting - ah - moist? My body has always had a strong involuntary glandular erotic response, although God knows I will usually volunteer. The first time I saw Hugh Jackman shirtless onscreen, 32 people seated in the rows below me drowned.



If Leo hadn't come along and lured me onto a lifeboat with a vodka stinger, I might be at the bottom of the ocean, still skin diving through the Titanic bar. Everything is on the house now. By the way, seconds after this next picture was taken, I got hit in the head by a large diamond drifting down from a ship overhead. Damn you Gloria!


They called me "The Unbearable Tallulah Morehead" in the lifeboat, but it gave me experiences to fall back on when I shot the sea-going thriller Life Preserver for Alfred Hitchcock, and believe you me, I do a lot of falling back.



Meanwhile, in the next life boat, Kathy Bates and Debbie Reynolds got in a fist fight over which of them was really Molly Brown. (Molly herself wisely kept out of it. Kathy had her trusty sledgehammer with her, and Debbie is a trained dancer who can kick your teeth in while singing "Good Morning.")




It was a night to remember, and how I wish I could. So as long as Gloria Stuart, Kathy Bates, Debbie Reynolds, and I are still alive, there are still survivors of the Titanic, although Robert Wagner is the only still-living survivor of the 1953 20th Century Fox movie Titanic, the one where we're supposed to believe that Clifton Webb is married to Barbara Stanwyck and that they have two children. Puh-leaze. They hadn't perfected artificial insemination in 1912. And I saw Clifton Webb in my sauna once (He was - ah - "inhaling" Rock Hudson), and he had no stretch marks, so I knew he'd never been pregnant. Clearly that movie is a bigger fantasy than Star Trek.


(Speaking of Star Trek, is it just me, or did JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof put into Star Trek so much of the time-travel/time-paradox stuff they've been using on LOST this past season that they turned it into Lost in Space? Hmmm. Catchy title.)


Well darlings, I'm off. The delivery boy from The Liquor Barn is here with my vodka, and I need to strap myself into this Okinawan twirl-basket so he can have his tip, or better yet, his whole shaft. (Thank Heavens I'm not allergic to wicker. My affair with The Wicker Man was blazing hot!)

One last note: come next Monday, look for my review of The Tony Awards Show over on
The Huffington Post. Be sure to check it out.

Cheers darlings.