Newman, Oldman, Deadman

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

How can that GOD of the cinema, Paul Newman, be dead? He is a Screen Immortal! Does that count for nothing anymore? (This is an important question, as I am a Screen Immortal myself. What's the point of my being an immortal if I can die just like ordinary nonentities, you know, like you?)

We were told that he was suffering from cancer for many months now, so we who loved him (Isn't that everyone?) must be glad he is out of the terrible pain he was in. They say he was gaunt. How is that possible? When did Paul Newman ever have a spare ounce on him? For a man who peddled popcorn and salad dressing, he was awfully damn skinny. I've seen fatter skeletons. He made Skinny hot. (Only on men. All you bony girls out there: eat something. You are not Paul Newman!)

Mmmmmmmmmmm.

What? Oh, I'm sorry.I got lost in a private fantasy for a moment. You see, fifty years ago, Paul Newman and Marlon Brando were It! They were The Top of the Line for sexy Hollywood hunks. Plus, they were also respected actors! How did that happen?

Just below them (Paul and Marlon were such tops!) were the second tier hot '50's boy toys, James Dean, Tab Hunter, and my darling little Sal Mineo.

Of the five of them, Tab may have been the least-highly regarded for his acting, but Tab has had the last laugh, because they're all dead, and Tab is still alive and well, and for a man in his mid-70s, still surprisingly hot, which is more than you can say for Tony Curtis.

(Why, I wonder, in bathing suit shots, does Tony always hide his crotch? Too much resemblance to a Ken doll perhaps? Not that I should be surprised to see Tony holding two bitches to his groin.)

Now I understand Tony's success working as a drag queen. He didn't need to tuck!

Robert Wagner is another handsome boy from the 1950s who is still drawing breath, and he was famously married to supremely sexy Natalie Wood, but he was always too bony when he took his shirt off. And of course, in his early career, he was Clifton Webb's "protegé".

And wasn't he the the fellow Marilyn Monroe once accidentally interrupted in flagranté, and said of him: "He'll be a star. He's fucking the editor." Well, maybe not, especially if he reads this. But please, what the hell is Robert and Tony and Rock Hudson and these other 1950s male starlets doing in this photo anyway? Playing poker? Playing Poke Him?

Wasn't I talking about Paul Newman? Well, when you have a topic as dispiriting as the death of Paul Newman, one tends to keep changing the subject. It's called "Avoidance."

Speaking of avoidance, I spent over 50 years trying to get into Paul's pants, but he kept giving me the brush-off. In fact, at times it was more like a hurl-off-and-flee-away. And what a flimsy, silly excuse he kept giving me. Get this; he kept claiming he was practising something called "Marital Fidelity." What the hell is that? A bizarre religious cult, like Shakers or Mormons? (Actually, while Mormons are big on Marital Fidelity, they allow men an unlimited amount of wives to be faithful to. Little Dougie's Mormon bishop great-great-grandfather, William Haney Hickenlooper, was faithful to all three of Dougie's great-great-grandmothers at the same time!) Paul Newman's bizarre insistence on only having sex with his wife seems to me like being Sexually Amish.

Paul would say to me of Joanne Woodward, while giving me the slip, "Why would I eat a hamburger on the road when I have steak at home?" Frankly, if you're feeling peckish while you're out and dinner is hours away, don't you hit McDonald's for a Big Mac or stop off for some pizza, no matter what is on ice in your freezer at the house? I usually have a fine wine waiting at Morehead Heights, but it's never stopped me from hitting a bar or 12 en route for a vodka martini to sustain me until I get there, even when I'm merely a block away.

And really, I'm willing to share. It's not like they were above some creative play. Look at this photo of a hot Newman Family three-way. Frankly, that extra bitch looks like a real dog to me!

And of course, in his memoir Palimpsest, Gore Vidal told of how, for a while in the 1950s, Paul, Joanne, and Gore all three lived together! Even The Mormons would have glanced at that askew. And Gore has remained close friends, "Family" if you will, with The Newmans ever since. How did they menagé that household? What was their "Design for Living"? Am I supposed to believe that Gore Vidal shared a home with one of The Sexiest Men Alive at that time, and never got up to bat? Or that Joanne was always included? She won an Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve; what about The Three Roommates of Malibu? Don't believe me? Check out this picture of Paul and Gore actually handling some impressively hung Italian hunk's balls! Those are some mighty impressive basket-balls!

Oh well, I guess if that's the way Paul swung away from Joanne (He did after all, only swear off hamburgers. He never said he was above a juicy hotdog slipped between fresh, hot buns.), I suppose I should be grateful I didn't end up married to him. But then, what woman wouldn't want to be married to Paul Newman? Well, one woman: Nancy Reagan. Lucky escape there --- for Paul!

Aside from being incredibly beautiful, Paul was also a really fine actor, who left behind an enormous list of great performances in fine films. The man had superb taste in scripts, and can't be blamed for The Silver Chalice, a particularly weird Biblical epic (I mean even weirder than most Biblical epics.) that he never stopped apologising for. He really could have let it go. Hollywood forgave him.

Anyway, Paul left us a tremendous film legacy. Like all movie lovers, his death has left me bluer than Paul's eyes, and they were the bluest ever. When I think of "Old Blue Eyes," I think first "Jack Benny," and then Paul. (Sorry. Sinatra to me was always "Chairman of the Bored.")

But Paul was only 83, barely out of diapers, or at least, not yet back into them. I'm 111, so 83 seems still boyish to me. What could possibly have given Paul a fatal cancer so young?

Puff, puff, puff.

Paul Newman is dead. My ex-husband Ernest Borgnine is still alive. Does anyone need further proof that there is no God?

Paul, you were what being a Movie Star was all about. Some did it as well, but nobody did it better. And that's The Verdict on Paul Newman.

Cheers darlings, if possible.

(The Newman Family suggests donations in his name to the Assn. of Hole in the Wall Camps. Information:http://holeinthewallcamps.org/)

The Emmys Blow!

If Ken Ehrlich ever tries to produce the Emmy Awards show again, tell Sarah Palin that he's a rogue moose who is teaching birth control and evolution to teenagers, and give her a helicopter and a rifle, because the Emmy Awards show he produced last night has got to be the worst Emmy show ever, and there is a lot of competition for that title.

Right off, hiring five "Reality Show" hosts to host this broadcast was the worst idea in the history of terrible award show ideas. If Allen Carr was still alive, he'd be saying, "Ha! My Snow White sings with Rob Lowe Oscarcast doesn't look so crappy now, does it?" Did you see that opening?

The Horror! The Horror!

Honestly, how smart do you have to be to know better than to hire Howie Mandell --- for anything?

(Full disclosure. Well over a quarter of a century ago, Little Dougie was friends with Howie Mandell. This was back before St. Elsewhere, when Howie was just a struggling stand up comic with a ghastly act. Dougie repents of this association now.)

The show opened with current TV personalities (Or, like Howie, anti-personalities) speaking classic TV catchphrases. Kelsey Grammar did Jack Benny's "Now cut that out." which is just what I said when I learned that Kelsey is giving money to the Republicans, I assume to help make the current economy even worse, prolong the war, and end gay marriage.

(Kelsey has a horrible new movie, called An American Carol, opening next week. It's a conservative screed made entirely by Republicans, and is being sold as a madcap satirical comedy, when it's really just dishonoring Charles Dickens, pissing on all that that notorious social reformer stood for. Avoid it like the plague. If you have a choice between seeing it or The Love Guru, see The Love Guru.)

Oprah Winfrey opened the show, looking disappointed that the Popess of TV wasn't accorded a standing ovation. When she said that TV could get people to buy books, she flashed a look so smug, I wanted to slap her. She ignored the tiresome fact that people are also supposed to read the books they buy. When her joke about the show not running more than a few hours failed to get a laugh from even one person in the massive audience, she laughed at it herself, to let us know it was a joke. It was the only way to tell. Oprah can do many things well. Comedy is not one of them.

And then Oprah destroyed forever whatever trace of respect her judgement has ever accrued, by saying, "And now I leave you in the good hands of your hosts for the evening." Remember, she was referring to Howie Mandell, Tom Bergeron, Jeff Probst, Ryan Seachrest, and Heidi Klum. I'll never trust a word from her mouth again.

All five of these unentertaining idiots came out and said how they had no material, and took a looooonnnnng time to do so. In the past, a funny host would do an amusing comedy monologue here, but these five boobs took an original approach. The guys babbled pointlessly about how they had nothing to say while Heidi, who was in drag (To blend in the with the guys, who were a drag.), stood there silently, thus coming across as the only person on stage you didn't want to shoot - yet. I soon realized that I did not have near enough vodka to get through this ordeal. Then, in a great moment for feminism, William Shatner and Tom Bergeron harassed, attacked, and stripped Heidi. Fortunately, they were running long, so they had to cut the rape. (It had run way too long in rehearsal, while they waited for the 300 year old Shatner to get it up.) Then they introduced Tina Fey and Amy Pohler.

I'm sorry, but Tina Fey and Amy Pohler are comedy goddesses. These five "Hosts" aren't worthy to park their cars or breathe their air. Their intro should have been, "And now, two people who SHOULD be hosting this show instead of us."

Thanks to YouTube and other such Internet entertainment rip-off services, everyone on earth has now seen Tina play Sarah Palin on last week's Saturday Night Live. They are identical twins, only Tina is brilliant, smart and funny, while Palin - ah - isn't. If only Sarah was doing a TV show, and Tina was running for vice president. but then, Tina can't run; she actually knows what the duties of the VP are, and believes in evolution. She's too qualified. Fey and Pohler would be America's Dream Team, and it's not their fault that they had to give Rainn Wilson's Emmy to Jeremy Piven. (Piven needs another Emmy like I need another husband.)

When they returned from commercial, just to class things up, they ran a lengthy Seinfeld clip about masturbation. Of course, the opening segment had clearly shown that the hosts considered masturbation to be entertainment. It can be, but not when it's them doing it.

Apparently Little Dougie has had a sex change he knows nothing of at some point in his life and must have been a little girl as a teenager, because Jeff Probst, who hosts the game show version of LOST, said of Farrah Spigot-Majors: "Including the very sexy poster of Farrah Spigot that every boy had." Little Dougie thought he'd been a little boy, but this is the poster he had in his bedroom:

Well, he admired Brando's acting. (I can't imagine why. I met, rehearsed, and insisted on being raped by Marlon back when I almost played Blanche Dubois in the long-forgotten movie this photo comes from. I'm the one who ripped his shirt off in the first place. But knowing Marlon as I did, Biblically, I can say that that mush-mouthed mumbler was no actor, which is why his career never went anywhere. You can read all about it in my memoirs, My Lush Life.)

Classical Shakespearean actress Teri Hatcher mispronounced the name of Zeljko Ivanek when awarding him an Emmy. In her defense, no one can pronounce Zeljkxo's name. His own mother can not pronounce Zeqlkjox's name. Apparently, when little Mr. Ivanghklzo was born, his mother was obsessed with giving her kid a name that, when placed on a red triple word square in Scrabble, would score in the high four digits. And Teri Hatcher doesn't always pronounce her own name correctly. Saying Zxqejlkome's Ivxadnaotch's name should have been handled by Howie Mandell. After all, on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Howie played Mr.Mxyztplk, so he has experience with pronouncing the unpronounceable.

And then came Ricky Gervais. All hail Ricky Gervais. The man is hilarious. For five minutes, the show was suddenly funny and entertaining. I thought I'd accidentally changed the channel when I fell off my chaise reaching for the gin, and landed on the remote control. The man is Tina Fey with a penis, and 30 extra pounds.

Ricky ran a clip of his win last year, when they gave his award to Steve Carell who, on The Office, is the American Ricky Gervais. Then, to my lasting embarrassment, he freeze-framed on a giant screen behind him the unforgettable moment last year when I was gang-hugged by Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and Jon Stewart (Stephen King was unavailable.), and Ricky's Emmy was put to an unspeakable use. (That damned angel's wings are sharp!)

Ricky and Steve were the comedy highlight of the whole evening. Please, TV Academy, next year, have Ricky and Steve host, and send all the banter writers home.

Actually, they might just as well have sent the banter writers home anyway, as presenter after presenter complained that their bits got cut (I hate having my bits cut. Especially my naughty bits! Please, just take the chrome studded black leather straps off before passing through my Heavenly doughnut.) because the five hosts ran too long saying nothing. When my new BFF Kathryn Joosten (Another naturally hilarious person.) had her bit cut, I was ready to kill, but settled for a straight-up triple scotch. I would rather watch Kathryn Joosten nap, than listen to anything Howie or Heidi ever has to say.

Conan O'Brian, bless his silly hair and heart, also brought some genuine comedy chops that shamed the hosts. Oh hell, Lauren Conrad of The Hills has comedy chops that shame the hosts, and she hasn't yet mastered walking upright or breathing.

The indestructible cheerleader from Heroes, and some other faceless bimbo, presented Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music, Circus, or Comedy Program, which went to The Colbert Report, for show #4501, beating out The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, for show #13050. Well of course it did. What was The Daily Show thinking submitting show #13050? That episode was a total lox. I tell you, if The Colbert Report had submitted show #1805, and The Daily Show had submitted show #17830, things would have been very different indeed. Maybe next year, they'll wise up.

Why did they cut so many presenters's bits? So Howie and Jeff could do a "Funny" piece on "The Accountants"? Even if you were an accountant, it wasn't funny.

Who was funny was Steve Martin. Actually, anyone named Steve was funny. But it turned out that Steve wasn't on this show. As you know, these shows tend to run long, and as it happened, the 1968 Emmy Awards Show wasn't over yet, entering it's 40th year, and Steve was out there to give Tommy Smothers his 1968 Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy, Variety, Scholastic Sex Education Film, or Pageant award.



Tommy then gave a wonderful, if a bit too halting, speech, that stood out from the evening's other speeches, by being interesting, and actually being about something important. So naturally they tried to stop him before he could make his final point. Apparently, when Tommy said, "There's nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action," although the thought is certainly true, somebody in the control booth thought perhaps he was referencing President Dubya (How could they get that idea?), and if there's one thing NBC can not have during a speech on the importance of Freedom of Speech, it's someone actually exercising Freedom of Speech, so they started sending people out to hurry him up and get him off the stage, to silence the truth (Actually he was making a point about the very nature of "Truth" itself, Talk about irony!) once again, and Tommy found himself in a familiar position, being censored on Sunday Night TV, this time on a different network. Well, old habits are hard to break. For that matter, old dogs are hard to housebreak.

You perhaps think it was just Tommy running long, and I'm being paranoid? Well I notice the band never played over Howie or Tom or Ryan or Jeff or Heidi, and with them, just saying "Hello." is "Running Long" in my book. (My Lush Life)

Another highlight was Josh Grobin singing a medley of that beloved endangered species: TV show theme songs, and proving himself an impressive mimic in the process, while astonishing America with the unknown fact that The Andy Griffth Show theme song has lyrics. (Did he really sing "Here's a story of a man named Brady, was busy with three boys of his own"? Given what the term "Gettin' busy" means nowadays, and that we now know Robert Reed was gay, this ill-chosen lyric certainly put a whole different spin on that cluster-comedy.)



But please Josh, I know he's available (He's always available!), but never trot out that grotesque old bore Ed McMahan. The only good thing about Johnny Carson's retiring was that we were supposed to be rid of Ed! Anyway, it's always nice to see a row of pretty chorus girls doing high kicks to Suicide is Painless. (Were you listening to those lyrics, Ed and Howie?)

This was followed by Alec Baldwin presenting the award for Hottest Actress in a Miniseries, Movie, Infomercial, or YouTube Clip, which meant that Sir Judy Dench didn't have a prayer. Laura Linney won as usual, and she should really hire a writer for her acceptance speeches. Right after she insulted someone named Mark Shower (He used to terrify Janet Leigh, which is the other reason Janet didn't show up.) by saying to him, "Mark Shower, you are my ballast..." (Ballast is what you drop on your way up.), she added, "I will look at this for the rest of my life and think of the great experience I had making John Adams." How indiscreet! In Revolutionary War Days, we never humped and told. Ben Franklin's reputation would have been in tatters if we had. Although, as I recall, Johnny Adams was a terrific lay.

And then came George Romero's horror masterpiece: Comedy of the Living Dead. No wait. It was just a Laugh-In cast reunion. Was this still the 1968 Emmys? Since Rowan and Martin are both dead now, they didn't bother to call it Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, although that was the actual show title. You could hear the excitement in the room, as everyone there under the age of 45 collectively said "Huh?"

They trotted out the reanimated remains of Gary Owens, Ruth Buzzi, Joanne Worley, Lily Tomlin, and the non-reanimated remains of the late Alan Sues. Sweet Dick Whittington was snubbed once again, and clearly Goldie Hawn had better things to do. (And I guess George Schlatter wasn't considered worth honoring. Well, he merely invented the show, and ran it for every episode. Fuck him.)

Gary Owens, as per his usual habit, was wearing the painted plastic scalp of a life-size G.I. Joe doll, freshly lacquered, while some graffiti vandal had spray-painted a black mustache and goatee on him. Gary Owens is a friend and a darling man, the sole resident of his own goofy private universe, and I adore him, but really Gary, we all know you're 200 years old. Why have Tom Sawyer blackwash your head before public appearances? There's nothing wrong with some distinguished white hair on a man.

Joanne Worley's appearance was hard to judge hidden inside the wig/hat/Acacia bush that was eating her head. Her face was in there somewhere. She looked like Miss Havisham as played by a very elderly drag queen. Ruth Buzzi and Lily Tomlin both looked not a day older than in their Laugh-In days. I suspect they both have Dorian Gray portraits hidden away in their attics somewhere.

But it was Alan Sues who broke my heart. He looked and sounded like he'd clawed his way out of his grave to be there. Once upon a time, he looked like this:

He was never a sophisticated performer, but he had energy, and strength, and a genuine zany streak, as well as being the gayest sissy funnyman ever to invade every living room in America. Next to Alan Sues, Franklin Pangborn was John Wayne.

No more. Alan's force, his robust comic energy, even his crack timing, all were gone. He appeared frail, bewildered, and sad. Betty White was in better shape, and she's 100! Hell, I'm in better shape, and I'm 110! When he broke out his Uncle Al, The Kiddie's Pal character's catch phrase, "Kids, last night Uncle Al had a lot of medicine." for the very first time, you thought he actually meant real medicine. And he clearly needed more. I was too horrified to laugh. Little Dougie knew this man in his prime, and this fragile animated corpse was like a sick joke version of Alan Sues.

The award they were handing out was Outstanding Comedy, Variety, Music, Dog Show, or School Play, and it went to The Daily Show, who finally had had the sense to submit episode #17830. Jon Stewart's spontaneous display of affection for the cast of Laugh-In was doubtlessly genuine, and certainly classy, but when he began assaulting them, I was alarmed. I was afraid that if he grabbed Alan in a bear hug, that Alan's spine would just snap.


On the other hand, if given a choice, I'm sure that being hugged to death in the arms of a sexy young man like Jon Stewart (Jon, there's an orgasm with your name on it just waiting for you here at Morehead Heights anytime you want to stop by and collect it.) is exactly how Alan would like to go.

Okay, it was funny watching David Boneraz, whose career has been mostly playing extermely sexy vampires, try not to look insulted when co-presenting with The Hills's talent-free Lauren Conrad, who has a smaller brain than a microbe.

But David and that Conrad creature had the honor of presenting the first of three awards to The Woman of the Night, the magnificent Tina Fey. Frankly, Tina Fey and Lauren Conrad do not belong in the same cosmos, let alone on the same stage. Two more opposite pretty women do not exist, unless it's Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton.

Tina is a golden entity of true magic. I worship her. This event existed to honor her, and how fitting that was.

Martin Sheen showed up on tape for the sole purpose of saying,"Excuse me? Where was MY West Wing Emmy? Oh, and he also made a lame plea for all people to vote. (for him - for an Emmy.)


Sheen said "Our show was never in any way partisan..." which was one of the funniest lines of the night. West Wing was a weekly televised rebuke to The Bush Administration. It was a wishful-thinking fantasy for decent people to watch and fantasize "This is what it could be like, if we had a qualified and decent man in the White House, instead of the evil clown who's in there now."

In any event, Marty encouraged everyone to vote, which is wildly irresponsible. Not everyone should vote this year; only people voting for Obama. If you're going to vote for McCain/Palin, do the world a favor and stay home. Hey, there's a Matlock running in ION.

In a brief Dragnet parody, Jeff Probst made you wistful for the dynamic acting chops of Jack Webb. When you can be outacted by Jack Webb, you're dead.

The Outstanding TV Movie, Miniseries, or Street Mime Set nominee Recount won several awards, which ironically put its makers in the weird position of having to be grateful to the Republican crooks who stole the 2000 election and then got away with it scot free. "Ah, gee --- Thanks?"

When Kirk Ellis won for writing the Outstanding TV Movie, Miniseries, Fashion Show, or Disney Theme Park Parade, John Adams, he did something extraordinary and, in the context of this show, revolutionary. He spoke intelligently and articulately about speaking intelligently and articulately. He spoke of the joy of getting to "Talk about a period in our history when articulate men articulated complex thoughts in complete sentences. They used words...." and then he was shut off in mid-sentence as the show rudely cut to commercials.

Hmmm. Could it be that someone thought he was drawing a parallel between presidents like Adams and Jefferson, articulate men who articulated complex thoughts in complete sentences, and our sitting president, an inarticulate dolt who fumbles out simple psuedo-thoughts in rambling, inarticulate fragments, a man incapapble of ad libbing a complete, grammatical independant clause? Was he being censored? Or did they just need more time for Howie Mandell, who was the person on screen when they came back from commercial? Either way: SHAME!

Howie Mandell did a tribute to M*A*S*H, which, given who was delivering it, was more of an anti-tribute, or time-filler. You know, time Kirk Ellis could have used to finish his intelligent thought. Then they brought out the two people most synonymous with M*A*S*H, Sandra Oh and Patrick Dempsey. Was this show assembled, or just free-associated?



Then out of the M*A*S*H tent came two more of the mainstays of the old 4077th: Don Rickles and Kathy Griffin. At least it was two people who are actually funny. Griffin was sufficently inspired by the military setting to order the audience to their feet for a frail-looking Rickles. You know Kathy, a standing ovation doesn't mean anything if it isn't spontaneous.


If Rickles was walking weakly, his comic force was not abated, and he killed. Again, one pined for him to have hosted. (Oh please let Don host. No remote trace of pomposity would survive with Rickles at the podium.) Rickles and Griffin handed out the award for Outstanding Reality Competition Program. (This used to be called Best Game Show.) Don announced the winner as "Herbie Dickman." If only they had let it go at that, but no. To Herbie's disappointment, it went, as always, to The Amazing Race, (What a racist show title! I'm picketing!) so Scott Baio went home awardless once again. Tell the truth academy; this category is really, Least Unbearable Reality show.

Immediately after that, Sally Field gave her son an Emmy for John Adams for Outstanding Founding Father. Thomas Jefferson was screwed yet again. Jefferson is the Susan Lucci of the Founding Fathers. When last seen, Jefferson and Dickman were out drinking together, and looking for "Comely blackamoors."

The one funny host bit in the whole show was Tom Bergeron dropping Heidi Klum on the floor. What a shame she wasn't permanently damaged. She looks brittle enough to shatter.


Wayne Brady, who apparently isn't retired, just tired (He is so over.), and Kate Walsh, announced Outstanding Guest Actor and Actress Who Aren't Good Enough To Be Awarded on the Real Show. Glenn Turman (Who?) won the Actor award, though I was rooting for Robert Morse, because I adore that wonderful, kind, thoughtful, fabulous, funny man, and Cynthia Nixon won the Actress award. I have nothing against Cynthia Nixon, but hearing the words "Nixon Won" always makes me cringe.


A guy named Greg Yaitanes won Outstanding Direction for a Type of Show Not Covered in Any of the Other Categories for directing an episode of House. I've never seen him before, and I've never watched House, but what a Hottie! Greg, when you decide to moonlight by performing in gay porn, let me know. Meanwhile, don't spend so much time waxing lovey-dovey about your wife. The last thing I want to hear about when watching such a hottie is his wife.

Matthew Weiner. who is not a hottie, nor even a lukewarmy, despite his having a gay porn name, when winning for Outstanding Writing of a Drama, Comedy, Musical, or Improv Revue, for an episode of Mad Men, which I believe is a spin-off of MADtv, could not remember the names of all of his mewling hellspawn, I mean children. --- DADDY!


Candice Bergan referred to her father as "a radio star," although I'm sure I saw him in a movie with WC Fields (Ah, darling Edgar. He could make me say anything when he stuck his hand in me.), and reminded us that her father invented the Emmys, chisling the first one out of stone. Alec Baldwin only accepted the Emmy she was handing out in order to hit on her.

They started getting really mean in the fifth hour. When Vanessa Williams and America Ferrera came out, they didn't even bother turning on their mikes.That gets my Emmy for Outstanding Technical Fuck-Up. They should have done it for Howie. Some ratty drag queen named "Glen" won Outstanding Actress in a Basic Cable Series, which showed that gender lines are really blurring in America, or at least in America Ferrera. (She's really a man too, isn't she?)

Then came the most suspenseful spot in any awards show, the In Memorium montage. I hang on pins and needles (Which is even more painful than it sounds. You have to be severely drunk!) waiting to see if I was in it. I wasn't. The crowd broke into spontaneous applause when it finished and they all realised that I am still alive. Thank you, Academy.

They did an odd thing with the In Memorium montage: They began it and ended it with George Carlin. Did he die twice? He was a devout atheist, so I doubt he had a resurrection. Is being dead twice the opposite of being "Born Again"? If so, then it was appropriate for George, who was virulently anti-religion. (It was nice that his second clip was part of one of his Religion-is-a-croc bits.)


In the In Memorium montage, Dick Martin's goofy line "Here's something you don't hear every day: Merry Christmas." made me laugh out loud, and then made me miss him all over again, and I started crying. Harvey Korman's clip made me laugh also. and George's of course. How bad are your hosts when the In Memorium montage gets more laughs than they do?

But given some of the folks in the In Memorium montage, they really need to follow my example on this flog, and institute two Dead Folks Lists, the We'll Always Miss You list, and The Good Riddance List. From this evening's group, I'd move William F. Buckley and Charleton Heston over to The Good Riddance List. They don't deserve to be in a memorial tribute with Alice Ghostly, Deborah Kerr, Abby Mann, and Mel Tolkin. (Tolkin was a wonderful writer, who never penned a word about hobbits.) Frankly, the thing that lived on top of Cheston's head pretending to be his hair should have been honored as well. It certainly upstaged Cheston in his clip from The Colbys.


By the way, both Hugh Hefner and Hilary Clinton appeared in the In Memorium montage. Neither is dead, although viewers of The Girls Next Door may dispute that, and it's Hilary's White House hopes that are deceased.

Eventually we came to the nadir of the evening, the awarding by Jimmy Kimmel of the Host Award for the five horrible hosts. Of course, I always expect the worst when Jimmy Kimmel comes out, and he did not disappoint. Speeches had been cut off, thoughtful intelligent remarks had been shut down, guest presenters had had their bits eliminated, all to make room for this ENDLESS, unfunny piece, just to give an award no one gave a rat's ass about, and they stretched it out over two segments!


Whoever was responsible for this, I hope that they are forced against their will to be stuck all next summer in the Big Brother house with an even sicker bunch of losers than the ratbags who were in there this past summer, and not be allowed to be voted out.

One of the five won it. I can't remotely care who it was, as long as it wasn't Howie.


Then out tottered Mary Tyler Moore, beloved by all who have never worked with her, dressed as though she were 30 years younger than she is. Mary's body however, hadn't gotten the memo. It was like seeing your grandmother in a bikini. Dear, wonderful Betty White, dressed far more appropriately, joined Mary in presenting this hour's award to Tina Fey, and Tina showed a genuine pleasure in being honored by these two icons, though in my own humble and always abject opinion, Tina towers over Mary.

Since they had been short on Republicans in the show (Not that you can ever have few enough Republicans) they trotted out Tom Selleck, wearing Cheston's old hair (Cheston left the thing that lived on his head to Selleck, and it gave birth to Tom's fake mustache. I swear the man was wearing a lip-rug! His head looked faker than Gary Owens's.You'd think Tom would just have some of his abundant chest fur transplanted upwards.) to present the final award, for Outstanding Drama Series or Street Theater. It went to a series no one watches, not even the people on it, but I hear it's good. It's heavily Tivo'd, just never watched.


Meanwhile, all the audience wanted was to kill the hosts, as painfully as possible.

As for me, I lifted a vodka martini in a toast to the comedic genius of Tina Fey. For all the boring crap in this 43 hour program, it was worth it to see her triumph. Let's hope her evil doppleganger has no similar evening of triumph any time soon.

Cheers darlings.

Kaputnam

Well it appears that the time has come to stop thinking of 9-11 as only a Day of Tragedy for America. Oh it is and always will be a Day of Tragedy, but now it also has acquired a fun side, for this year, something wonderful happened for America on 9-11: George Putnam joined The 2008 Good Riddance List, by finally, at long, long last, having the kindness to die.

No, I don't mean the famous George Putnam, the one who led two Arctic expeditions in the 1920s, and who was married to Amelia Earhart. He died in 1950. Nor am I referring to the George Putnam who founded the great publishing house G. P. Putnam & Sons. No, I'm referring to the wildly hammy, over-the-top, right wing Los Angeles "newsman" and nutjob: that George Putnam, the man who made Bill O'Reilly look like Walter Cronkite on sedatives.

Back when Little Dougie was a small homosexual growing up in Los Angeles, George was the biggest star in L.A. TV news, with his frightening, hyper-dramatic reading of his extremely-slanted "news reporting." This man was so far to the right, that next to him, Barry Goldwater was a bleeding heart liberal. His main broadcast was at 10 PM on KTTV each night, but he also did a 6:45 PM 15-minute "News"cast. Which means that, when Little Dougie tuned in each evening at 7 PM to see Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound, he first had to endure George hollering at him his signature sign-off: "And that’s the up-to-the-minute news; up to the minute, that’s all the news. Here’s to a better, stronger America. I'll see you at 10, see you then."

Fortunately for Little Dougie, his bedtime was 9.

Of course, not everyone loathed him. Richard Shithouse Nixon said of Putnam: "He won the admiration and respect of millions of people in Southern California due to the fact that everybody could count on him to say exactly what he believed, whether it was popular or not. Some people didn’t like what he said; some people liked what he said. But everybody listened to George Putnam." Here's a tip; anyone who got that kind of high praise from Richard Nixon had to be Evil.

But I'll give Sticky Dick this: he was right in saying, "Some people didn’t like what he said; some people liked what he said. But everybody listened to George Putnam." Dougie, myself, all intelligent people "didn't like what he said," morons, right-wing demagogues, flaming assholes, and Sam Yorty "Liked what he said," but indeed, "Everybody listened to George Putnam." They had no choice. His bombastic baritone delivery was so loud, you heard him even if you were tuned to a different station, or didn't own a TV, or were born without ears.


That's Orgy Georgie in a 1965 anti-pornography film he starred in titled Perversion for Profit. (And to think, I've been perverted all these years, gratis! Fool!) Frankly, having an anti-pornography film hosted by a walking obscenity strikes me as the height of hypocrisy, but then, different strokes for different folks. (No wait, George was against that too. He advocated the same strokes for all folks.). In Perversion for Profit, he rails against films, magazines, and left-wing newscasts containing nudity, sex, and/or "Deviants." (In 1965, "Deviants" meant "Fags!")


George sells the concept, which he apparently fully believed, that porn is the work of The International Communist Conspiracy. ("The International Communist Conspiracy is a non-profit organization, and an Equal-Opportunity Employer.") Why were the commies producing 8mm porn loops (In 1965 there was no home video, and Deep Throat was still just a leer in it's maker's eyes. It was The Porn Stone Age.), and publishing filth like Playboy Magazine? Well, in George's own words: "This moral decay weakens our resistance to the onslaught of the communist masters of deceit." You laugh, but George knew about Masters of Deceit, being a huge one himself. Here's a couple more juicy quotes from this masterpiece, which can be downloaded from The Prelinger Archives, as it's out of copyright:

"Now, you might ask yourself, why this sudden concern? Pornography and sex deviation [Again, by "sex deviation," he means "homos." What a lovely man. - T.] have always been with mankind. This is true. But now, consider another fact. Never in the history of the world have the merchants of obscenity, the teachers of unnatural sex acts, had available to them the modern facilities for disseminating this filth. High-speed presses, rapid transportation, mass distribution. All have combined to put the vilest obscenity within reach of every man, woman and child in the country." The odd thing about the above point I put in boldface is that he's against it for some reason. Sounds like "Progress is our most important product" to me.

"This same type of rot and decay caused sixteen of the nineteen major civilizations to vanish from the earth. Magnificent Egypt, classical Greece, imperial Rome, all crumbled away. Not because of the strength of the aggressor, but because of moral decay from within. [Egypt was destroyed by porn! Must have been those filthy hieroglyphics! Nothing puts the "Hard" in "Hardcore porn" like chisling it on stone tablets. - T.] But we are in a unique position to cure our own ills. Our Constitution was written by men who put their trust in God [No it wasn't. - T.], and founded a government based in His laws. [No they didn't. This is a secular country, and the 18th Century rationalists who wrote The Constitution based its principles on those of atheist Thomas Paine. I guess George skipped The First Amendment. - T.] These laws are on our side. We have a constitutional guarantee of protection against obscenity. [No we don't. And lucky for George too. If we had had a "Constitutional guarantee of protection against obscenity" George would have been unemployable. And he definitely skipped The First Amendment. - T.] And in this day especially we must seek to deliver ourselves from this twisting, torturing evil. We must save our nation from decay, and deliver our children from the horrors of perversion. [That would be the homos again. I wonder if legalizing Gay Marriage is what killed George. - T.] We must make our land, the land of the free, a safe home. Oh God, deliver us Americans from evil." Just Americans. The rest of the world can go fuck themselves. And why do right-wingers and aggressive prudes always cite God as their badge-of-authority? How does citing a made-up diety invalidate the First Amendment? I guess it's just hard for an atheist to be holier-than-thou.

George was certainly the one to lecture others on morals. He lived with a woman he was not married to for 52 years, while the wife he never divorced lived elsewhere. He neglected to mention this juicy tidbit on his "newscast," so busy was he throwing stones at others from his glass ranch. At least he wasn't a deviant. But if he really believed what he bellowed, he's have practiced Abstinence.

Anyway, here he is being a role model for Health. (Puff, puff, puff.)

Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show was based on a combination of George Putnam and Jerry Dunphy, but George wasn't clueless like Ted. (Jerry was!) George was a committed right-winger, who was instrumental in the election of Sam Yorty, possibly Los Angeles's worst-ever Mayor. George wrote his own editorials. (Some called "One Reporter's Opinion," others called "News".) Ted Baxter was a lovable idiot. Jerry Dunphy was a less-lovable idiot. George was smart and Evil.

Even if you never lived in or visited Los Angeles, you probably saw George riding his silver palomino on TV in the Rose Parade every year. From the rear, as the horse rode away from you again, it was impossible to tell which was George, and which was the horse. (I'm joking. George was the one dressed like a deviant cowboy; the horse was the one grumbling "Lose some weight, gasbag.")

I'm not advocating actually dancing on his grave, but it is a lovely place for a picnic, or on which to shoot a hardcore gay-commie sex scene.

And that's the up-to-the-minute good news, up-to-the-minute, that's all the good news. Here's to a better, stronger Hades. I'll see you in Hell. Now I'm gonna smell.

Want a better stronger America? Vote for O'Bama. George is too dead to choke on it.

Cheers darlings.

9-11, Day of Terror!

The last thing anybody needs today is another blog piece commemorating the terrible events of 9-11-01. So I'm going to tell you of a different 9-11, though a day of terror and loss it nonetheless was, for it was the day Little Dougie first met the King of Terror himself: Stephen King.

That's Little Dougie's autographed first edition of 'Salem's Lot, still one damn fine book. Let's look a little closer shall we? There's the date in King's own handwriting.

Yikes! On that day Little Dougie, a mere lad of 29, got to sit in a room, alone with his hero, Stephen King, and chat. King even read a comedy sketch Dougie had written, that his then-sketch comedy troupe later performed on Mike Hodel's Hour 25, and which was a parody of The Shining, called The Whining, in which it became the final episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. King laughed at several of the jokes, and read one aloud:

Rob Petrie (In an insane Jack Nickolson delivery): "Richie, you're annoying daddy. You don't want Daddy to have to get out his axe now, do you?"

Richie (Sulking): No daddy.

Doug was flying so high from making his idol laugh that he never even mentioned to him that they were sitting in the same green room, and King was about to do a live TV interview in the same studio, where 11 of Doug's 12 Seymour TV scripts had been shot. (It was also the room Engineer Bill's kid guests would wait in, before going on Engineer Bill's Cartoon Express. I'll bet even King was awed to be in Engineer Bill's Roundhouse.) At one point Carroll O'Conner came into the room, but Archie Bunker himself did not distract King and Dougie's chat. (To alleviate the terror, Curtis Sliwa, then unknown, was also present in the room, I assume for "Security," and was, frankly, somewhat scary.)

Along with 'Salem's Lot, Dougie's first editions of The Shining and The Stand (First editions were all there were of The Stand that long ago.) got signed that day as well.

The Stand hadn't sold all that well in it's original hardcover release. Little Dougie told King that morning that he thought it was King's best work (He still feels it is.), and that when it came out in paperback, it would quickly be realized to be a great fantasy classic. Those were the "kind words" referred to in King's inscription. They were also a prophecy that quickly proved very true indeed.

Dougie had brought a gift for The Great Man. He gave King a baseball shirt he'd brought, printed with the words "Overlook Hotel: Recreation Director" across the front. King claimed to be delighted with it. A year later, Dougie read an interview with King on the set of the movie Creepshow in Premiere Magazine, and the writer described King as wearing that shirt, including publishing Dougie's joke in the magazine. Dougie whooped with delight, scaring the cats.

9-11-79 was a very happy day in Little Dougie's life, but it's ending was still one of grief. When he arrived home that evening, his doggie, tremendously sweet 9 year old Lizzie, ill for a couple days though not seemingly seriously, had passed away while Dougie was with King. Dougie ended his day sitting out in the garage alone with Lizzie, stroking her cold body, thinking of the 9 years they had had together.

It was an emotional rollercoaster day.

The 29 years since have been kinder to King than Dougie.

On the other hand, while Googling about today, assembling images for this posting, Dougie found an autographed first edition of Carrie for sale on eBay, going for over $3,780. Little Dougie has a signed first edition of Carrie. He bought it unsigned in 1980 for $25, and got it signed when he met King again later on.

$3,780. Time has had fun with both of them.

Meanwhile, America faces a far greater threat than the one which levelled buildings, blew a big hole in the Pentagon, and brought out for one day, the finest of True American Heroism, followed by 5 years of worldwide American Hooliganism led by the Bush-Cheney Cabal of Evil.

Osama Bin Laden did it.

He's still st large.

Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with it, but we nailed him. That'll teach him to have nothing to do with an attack on America. Yeah! We threw a country into chaos, impoverishing ourselves for a nation that is itself nonetheless, operating at an obscene profit!

Gasoline is over $3.50 a gallon.

Why is anyone seriously considering John McCain for President?

And now along comes a prehistoric piece of moronic, superstitious Evil, named Sarah Palin, and some people seem actually pleased that this horrible, revolting woman could end up one-75-year-old (and counting) heartbeat away from running the United States of America, even though she's insane!

There's only one Palin I would vote for to be President of the United States, and that's Michael Palin, and he's not even an American. He could be Governor of California (And a damn fine better one than the one we have now!), but can not be the President.

Here he is, signing a book that Sarah Palin would probably ban. (Did I mention she's a book banner? And not just in the school libraries; the town library, like someone who doesn't believe in evolution should get to choose what books I am allowed to read? Does she keep The First Amendment perforated on a roll beside her crapper?)

And given that Sarah Palin's experience in politics began after the Republicans first began complaining about O'Bama's "inexperience," Michael Palin actually has more executive experience being a woman running a government, than Sarah or O'Bama.

Is Michael Palin's experience running major world governments entirely fictional? Yes. But his claim to be an expert in foreign relations because he has played Queen Victoria on TV, and Pontius Pilate in a highly successful, highly silly movie, is just as impressive as - no - make that more impressive than, Sarah Palin's claim to understand Russia because Alaska is so close to Russia that you can see it on a clear day. She can actually overhear what they're saying in Putin's office from her backyard.

Insane as Sarah Palin is, which is very, she's one hell of an executive. She left the tiny town of less than 10,000 people she was mayor of $20,000,000 in debt by the end of her term! That takes some doing! She's an over-anti-achiever!

She worked her brain off (Switched off) to improve Alaska's school system with the teaching of "Creationism". Can't wait till she gets her hands on No Child Left Behind! It's a Bush program, and as this will be the Fourth Bush Administration (or "Reich"), it will continue as All Children Left Behind, in the 17th Century.

She advocates "Abstinence Only" being taught in our schools, as the only acceptable (Read "Legal" if she gets her executive way.) form of birth control, but she thinks her knocked-up, unmarried teenage daughter, the living example of exactly how well Abstinence Only works, should be "Off Limits".

Having seen the young baby-daddy who is now shell-shocked at being in a national spotlight for knocking up the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate's 17 year old daughter (In his widely shown photo, he has that: "Oh shit!" deer-in-the-headlights look), I can't blame the daughter. There's nothing to do up there. The nights are long and cold! And I would certainly do him. In fact, I did every version of him there was in Lillian Roth High School's classes of 1913, '14, '15, and '16, as well as several from our neighboring schools, plus foreign exchange students from Kenya and Luxemberg. Of course, I didn't get knocked-up. I was a slut; I wasn't stupid!

The shameful truth is, I had never been taught anything about Abstinence Only, neither in school, nor at home. In high school, I didn't even know what "Abstinence" meant. In fact, I had to look it up just to dictate this column. And when I learnt what it meant, I was horrified! That ghastly crazy bitch wants to inflict abstinence on innocent teenagers! Talk about perverted! Where is Chris Matthews when Alaska's kids need him?

Chris: "I'm Chris Matthews. You're Mr. HornyforPrePubes? What are you doing here, Horny?"

HornyforPrePubes (Trapped-looking guy in undershirt and overalls, carrying six-pack of beer into a dining room.): "Ah - I'm here to practice Abstinence Only with DaddysBadGirl."

Chris: In her emails, DaddysBadGirl says she's 13 years old. How old are you?

HornyforPrePubes: I'm 47.

Chris: Don't you think a 13 year old girl is a little too young to be Abstaining from sex with a 47 year old man?

HornyforPrePubes: Ah, no.

Chris: What if she doesn't get pregnant? She wouldn't be able to not make the right moral choice Governor Palin want to make for her and for all teenage girls everywhere, to have her baby no matter how many lives she ruins? Hasn't the lack of consequences even crossed your mind?

HornyforPrePubes: I just thought she'd be a cool chick to do nothing with.

Chris: You're under arrest, perv. We'll teach you to not have sex with teenage girls. Drag this scumbucket out of here! He disgusts me! [Spits on the man.]

To anyone out there reading this who actually plans to vote for Sarah Palin, and thus McCain, two points:

1. Are you reading this yourself, or having it read to you by a literate friend?

2. Please do the world a favor; vote for Michael Palin instead. It's a wasted vote, but it's better than putting that maniac next-in-line behind a crazy old man for the presidency. She declared war on Russia on ABC World News Tonight tonight. Do you want to put her where, when she does that, it actually happens?

Poor Tina Fay. This must be very humiliating for her. To be very famous, extremely smart, and wonderfully funny, and then to find you have a Stepford Twin, who is everything you know is Evil, and who, for a few weeks only we hope, threatens the existence of all life she doesn't believe evolved here, secure in her ignorant bliss that there's a Big Sky God up there, watching out for her. (Good idea, Sky God. Watch out for Sarah Palin!) Poor Tina. You know, Tina my darling, that's why Harvey Firestein stopped doing drag. He was starting to look like Barbara Bush. (If Barbara had ever been even remotely sexually appealing.) Their voices are already indistinguishable, though Harvey certainly sings better.

Michael Palin recently published a large book titled Michael Palin Diaries 1969 - 1979, The Python Years.

I have a copy of it here beside me. In it he chronicled, as it took place, the decade he spent co-creating The Best Comedy That Ever Was. I highly recommend it. I like to pick it up, read a year, and put it aside, to savor more years later on.

It's the best antidote for 9-11 depression. Or pick up a copy of 'Salem's Lot, which is out in a nice new edition that includes 50 pages of material cut from the original edition. King's little town of Jerusalem's Lot, where your neighbors are all turning into vicious, mindless vampires, seems like Heaven on Earth after 7 years in Bush's America.

Cheers darlings.

A Tale of Two Divers

It was the best of Olympics; it was the worst of Olympics. NBC was the network of wisdom; NBC was the network of foolishness. It was a week of belief; it was a week of incredulity. It was the mid-season of light; it was the mid-season of darkness. It was the convention of Hope; it will be the convention of Despair. We were shown everything; we were shown nothing. We were all going direct to Washington; we were all going direct the other way (China). In short, August 2008 was so far like a Dickens novel that some of it's drunkest authorities insisted that it be received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.


Strong piece of writing that. I loved Charlie Dickens. Dickens could put the dick in me anytime, and did. And before you say, "Oh Tallulah, you couldn't have had an affair with Charles Dickens. He was a Victorian. They hated sex." let me remind you that Charlie had 10 children by a woman he couldn't stand, and then had a passionate affair with an actress who was younger than him. Who do you suppose that was? Say what you will about me, I am slightly younger than Charles Dickens.



Where was I? Oh yes, China. I haven't posted much this month as I was in China on my honeymoon with Joshua Allen. When you're 111, and you're on your honeymoon with a virile 19 year old man, you have better things to do than flog, or floss for that matter!


But I was flattered to be asked to do some Olympic judging while I was in Beijing. It's not often anyone trusts my judgement. However, when it comes to judging hot young men, well darlings, I wrote the book. (My Lush Life)


My primary judging assignment was men's gymnastics, specifically, the Men's Synchronized Rhythmic Prancing About With Streamers event. But I also judged Best Versatile Gymnast. I judged them as tops, and gay porn legend Arpad Miklos judged them as bottoms. Here I am checking out the form of American gymnast Alexander Artemev, riding the Hung-Like-a-Pommel Horse.



By the way, didn't you miss listening to John Tesh at these Olympics? At the last Olympics, he incessantly referred to the pommel horse as "The Pee-Horse," and worse, the parallel bars as "Pee-Bars." Apparently he thought he was announcing water sports. I have one hard and fast rule (I mean besides, "If you're hard, I'll be fast."), when going to a Pee Bar, I always wear yellow.


Now here I'm judging overwhelmingly gorgeous French medal-winning gymnast Benoît Caranobe. Nothing is more exotic and erotic to me than a man whose name requires an accent mark I don't know the name of or need for. That's hot, or in the words of Paris Hilton: "Huh?"





Sometimes the gratuitous uniforms the athletes wear make judging their form difficult. Fortunately, Benoît had no compunctions about trying to escape from my room by scrambling up a rope like a rat up a rhododendron, while stark, staring naked. (He was stark, and I was staring.) I gave him a perfect 10, and he returned the favor, and then added two more for - well, "Luck" is three-quarters of the right word.




China is on the opposite side of the earth, where everyone walks around upside down. (I have flipped all these pictures over, so that they appear right side up to you. Don't be disoriented. Actually, having just returned from China, I am "dis-oriented." Or is the PC term now "Dis-Asiated"?) Australia is also upside down, and backwards as well. (And, like the island on LOST, China and Australia both exist one day in the future. It's wacky!) You see, in Australia, they have winter in the summer, and summer during the winter. Consequently, the Australian bobsledding team showed up in Beijing, expecting to compete. Since I have years of experience bobbing on good sports, and I love to be luged on, I was tapped to judge.

I love Australia, so I spent some future time in Sydney, visiting my dear old friend, Dame Edna Everage. Here's a picture I took of the world-famous Sydney Opera House. Isn't that a gorgeous, awe-inspiring sight?

Here's a shot my future ex-husband Joshua snapped of me in Sydney, shortly before Sydney was in me. I asked Joshua if it was for a souvenir, and he said, "Sort of. I'll call it 'Exhibit A' when we get to court." Oh well, my marriages have all tended to be short and sweat.

But in Australia I heard an Olympic tale you only heard part of on NBC. It's my tale of two divers.

No. not that diver. He's Canadian Olympic diver Alexander Despatie. He has nothing to do with my story, but he's so gorgeous, I couldn't resist showing a picture of him. No, my story is about these two men, Greg Louganis and Matthew Mitcham.

Once upon the best of times, it was the worst of times. In fact, it was 1988. In America, Ronald Reagan was in his last few months as president, and while that sounds good now, it actually meant that George Herbert Walker Bush was about to be an even worse president. (No easy accomplishment.) This year we have Hope; that year, we had Hype.


And in Asia, Korea to be exact (Which to my amazement, is not in the Malibu hills, like it was in M*A*S*H. Don't tell little Kent Levine. He thinks he was in Korea when he was writing M*A*S*H. Actually, he was in Century City.), they had an Olympics. And at this Olympics, there was a magnificent diver named Greg Louganis, who also was ridiculously beautiful.




It was Greg's third Olympics. Eight years before, when he was still just a teenager, he'd been on the American Olympic diving team, and won a silver medal. Still in high school, he had competed against the best divers in the world, and won a silver medal over all of them, while still too young to vote, drink, or have legal sex with an elderly movie star. So naturally, he came home feeling he was ...


...a LOSER! In the sick competitive mindset of sports, Second Place is Last Place. He had made an stunning achievement, so of course he told himself he had failed. Silver wasn't good enough. (Tell that to Phil Silvers, Greggie!)



So in Los Angeles in 1984, Greg achieved perfection, and won both of the men's diving gold medals. Every gay man in the world fell hopelessly in love with him. Except it wasn't as hopeless as they thought. Because Greg had a secret. He was a big old (well, actually, he was fairly young.) homo! But as an Olympic athlete in the 20th Century, he didn't dare come out. He'd read The Front Runner. He knew what happened to out gay Olympic athletes; they got shot on the finish line.


So in 1988, Greg went to the Olympics again, his goal this time to sweep the Olympic diving gold medals a second time! Could he do it?



And then a terrible thing happened during the springboard competition. Greg screwed up a dive, and hit the top of his head on the board, HARD! He ripped his head open and emerged from the pool bleeding.

Could he possibly still win that gold medal with his head freshly stitched up, barely holding his brain in? Yes! He could, and he did! He was amazing.

Between the springboard competition and the 10 meter platform competition, Greg returned to Los Angeles, to tape an appearance on a TV show called Evening at The Improv. As it happened, Little Dougie, who was besotted with adoration of Little Greggie, was at The Improv that night, for an Improv class he was taking there. He met Greg that night, and got his autograph on a photo, and somehow restrained himself from just offering Greg a blowjob on the spot. (It took every bit of self-control Dougie had, which isn't much, believe you me.)


At one point in the evening, Dougie looked out of an upstairs window when Greg Louganis was standing directly below him, and saw from above the terrible wound on Greg's cranium, a shaved rectangle with still-fresh stitches, like a sexy Frankenstein monster. The sight of it made Dougie weep. Dougie wanted to kiss it and make it better, or even lick it if that was what it took, or even if it wasn't.

And then Greg flew back to Korea. Could he do it? Could he sweep the diving gold medals twice, while wounded and jet-lagged? There was an obnoxious (By which I mean maddeningly polite) little teenaged Chinese diving prodigy there who was diving with uncanny perfection. On that final night of diving, Little Dougie, atheist though he be, was sticking a voodoo doll of the little Chinese boy full of poison-tipped pins to make him fail, so Greg could have his victory, but nothing worked. The kid was diving with heart-breaking perfection. No one could be more perfect than he. Language sticklers will note that "Perfection" is an absolute. It is impossible to be "More perfect".

Unless your name was Greg Louganis. At that last, last dive, with everything riding on it, the little Chinese boy already tasting the gold (Unsanitary!), Greg got up and did MAGIC! He was beyond perfection! 10s hardly seemed good enough. If Nigel Tufnel had been judging, he'd have gotten 11s. Instead, he won the gold, he swept the diving gold two Olympics in a row. He was a living refutation to the myth of heterosexual athletic superiority. And further, he had done it while suffering from AIDS! Almost no one on earth besides Greg and his doctors knew then that the blood he'd bled into that pool was swimming with AIDS. (HIV can not survive contact with chlorine. No other divers were endangered by his blood in the pool, but had they known, fear would have trumped knowledge, and he would have been a pariah.)

After those Olympics, Greg was an international hero, a celebrity, and also renowned for his incredible beauty, as more than one photographer noticed.





But he carried his secret still. He gave interviews in which he said idiotic stuff like, "I would never say if I was gay or straight. It's no one's business." which is, let's face it, a dead giveaway, because no straight man on earth has ever said that! Only closeted gay men ever make that dopey remark.

Meanwhile, Greg was taken advantage of by a "Lover," a louse who stole from him, abused him, cheated on him, lived off him, and even raped him. I'd name the bastard, but there's no need to sully this column with that shithole's name. He paid the full penalty. He died of AIDS, while Greg has survived into the era when the medications were found to save the lives of him and so many others.


And the day finally came when Greg found the courage to be the hero he'd been called for years, to realize that his achievement was his forever; that no bigot could take it from him, and that what he could do now was to inspire other frightened young people, and show that he was the living proof of the lie of heterosexual superiority. So Greg wrote a wonderful book, Breaking the Surface, and came out, for once making a big splash, instead of vanishing into the water with barely a ripple, as was his custom. Some people come out to their friends or family in private; Greg came out on Oprah. He showed the world that a gay man, a gay man with AIDS no less, had still been the diver that no one, literally no man on earth, could surpass! Dougie was only one of the thousands of gay men who stood in lines to shake his hand, get his book (And also Dougie's copy of Greg's Playgirl nude centerfold) signed, and thank him with tears in Dougie's normally cynical eyes.





I know that this picture looks like Greg living every gay man's dream, feeling up Mario Lopez's abs (Well someone has to!), but actually, Greg is coaching Mario here on diving form for when Mario played Greg in the TV movie of his life. Talk about full-circle; now a straight man was pretending to be gay to emulate Greg!






This lovely young man isn't reaching for the skies because he's being mugged. That's Australian diver Matthew Mitcham celebrating winning the gold medal for 10-meter platform diving in Beijing.


Matthew didn't see Greg's win in Korea, because he was only 7 months old when it happened. But Matthew more than anyone else, is living Greg's legacy. No one deserved to win one of Greg's medals more.


Because Matthew Mitcham is gay also. But he was able, thanks to Greg's pioneering trek 20 years before, to be an out and proud gay Olympic diver! We have still a long way to go. This year, Matthew was the only openly gay male athlete at the Beijing Olympics. The other 10 out Olympians there (out of 11,028 athletes. Statistics tell us that there were around 1,100 closet cases.) were all lesbians.


When Matthew announced on Australian TV that he didn't have the money to bring his male lover, Lachlan Fletcher, with him to the games, Johnson & Johnson's Athlete Family Support Program gave him a grant to pay for Lachlan's trip. Bless Johnson & Johnson. (Wait a minute. "Johnson and Johnson"? No wonder. "Johnson and Johnson" is the very definition of gay male sex!) Buy their band-aids. Cut yourself daily. Shave recklessly, so you'll use more of them.


Matthew's last round was a nail biter. The Chinese (Possibly nice people, but let's face it, commies!) had won every diving gold medal in Beijing up to that point, and their completed sweep was expected as surely as Michael Phelps's future Wheaties box and trip to Disneyland. Matthew had trotted out most of his favorite, special dives, such as these:



But Zhou Luxin (Place that across a triple word square, and that name will win the Scrabble gold medal!) was in first place, 34 points ahead of Matthew. Matt's medal dreams seemed destined for The Bronze Age. But the gods of Louganis smiled that night. Of course, if they'd had my POV, they would have had to smile!

Luxin fouled up his last dive, and then Matthew came out and did magic, practically tying himself up like a pretzel in mid-air, like flying oragami, and doing it with such beauty, grace, and perfection, that he scored four 10s, for a total score of 112.1, the highest single-dive score in Olympic history! He stopped the Chinese sweep dead in the water, and won the gold for Australia! He cried. His lover cried. Little Dougie came.


Great story, isn't it? (Except for the last three words.) Over the course of The Olympics we heard many such stories. We saw every gold medalist's family members (I saw so much of Michael Phelps's mother, I'd know her on the streets, were I walking them again.), their wives, husbands, lovers, pets, agents, hunchbacked assistants, and even endured photos of their mewling hellspawn, I mean adorable babies. (When a hot gymnast wins a medal, the last thing I want to see is a picture of his child by some other woman! And that goes for a certain American gold medal triathelete too. You're just 30 years away from being Bruce Jenner on that aweful Khardashian show, my friend.) NBC told us some of those stories a billion times over, as I complained about in my previous posting, The China Thunderdrome.


But, although NBC let us see Mitcham's win, not one word of his story was told to America. Nothing about his being openly gay, nothng about Johnson & Johnson paying for his boy friend to accompany him just as they did for the spouses and squeezes of the straight athletes. Not one single shot of Lachlan in the stands watching, let alone hugging his lover in triumph. Nothing. Nothing at all. Maybe his was not the super achievement of Michael Phelps (Who, come to think of it, seems to be dating his Mom. Where's his girl friend? Cloud Cuckooland?), but Matt had a great moment, and is a fine young, mildly effeminate man of exceptional courage following in Greg Lougains's trail. And his tale is a damn sight more interesting than a lot of the boring blather and endlessly repeated cliches we were told ad nauseum.


SHAMEFUL, NBC, SHAMEFUL!


Now, to be fair (I hate being fair! What am I? The Fox News Channel? No. Because I'm fair and unbalanced.), NBC has since apologized for the "Unintentional" snub. "Unintentional" my latest liver. Even the Headless Indian Brave could see that it was a homophobic decision on NBC's part, and he doesn't even have eyes! They had all the info there, right along with the info they had on EVERY SINGLE ONE of the other 11,000 athletes! They CHOSE to ignore it. And then they apolgized in a magazine article statement. Not exactly reaching the mega-gigantic audience that was watching the meet on TV. That's like apologizing on Big Brother. No one sees it.


But Matthew has forgiven them, as we see here, as he apparently audtions for a Melbourne production of Jesus Christ, Superstar. Whether I ever forgive them is another matter altogether.



But Matthew's win, and his courage, and the shining, inspiring, heroic example he has set can never be taken from him. He is truely worthy of splashing in Greg Louganis's wake. It is a far, far better thing he's done than he has ever done before, and it is a far far better glory he has earned, than he ever earned before.


(Nice ring to that. You know Charlie's first draft of A Tale of Two Cities began "It was a good time; it was a bad time." and ended with "The thing I'm gonna do now is a whole lot better than all the stuff I've done previously.")


Before I head off to the wet bar, a word about John McCain's hilarious Vice Presidential pick. Two days ago, nobody but the 327 idiots who live in Alaska, I assume because they're wanted for crimes back in civilization, had ever heard of Sarah Palin. Now she's "Shattering the glass ceiling," although if you shatter a glass ceiling, you run the very high risk of being cut to ribbons by the rain of razor-sharp shards. Why, she's the first woman ever to be a major party's candidate for --- oh wait a minute. Geraldine Ferarro. Ah, but Sarah is the first wildly-unqualified female to be a major party's VP candidate. She's an inspiration for dunderheads and idiots everywhere.


I mean honestly; she admitted on TV a very short time ago that she has no idea what the Vice President even does! Sweet Bleeding Greg Louganis, even dopey Dan Quayle, a moron of the first-quality, knew better than to publically admit he didn't know what the job entailed! What a chowder brain. Sarah, I knew Dan Quayle (Though only Biblically), and you're no Dan Quayle. (Wait. That sounds like a compliment.)


John McCain, the man who thinks Iraq and Afghanistan share a border (It's a border so wide, they gave it its own name: Iran.), has been taking shots at Barry O'Bama (soon to be our first Black-Irish President), as being unqualified, and then he picks a person next to whom O'Bama's politcal career is longer than the late Strom Thurmond's? She's Governor of Alaska, for Dicken's sake! Is that even an elected position, or is it something that is passed around the citzenry in turns, like jury duty? Isn't that like being a park ranger, only with less responsibility? She'll be a big help with the igloo-mortgage crisis, and negotiating treaties with Inuits. She'll be calling for blubber to be an alternate source of fuel.




I'd prefer Michael Palin, and he's not even an American! The Republicans are obviously banking on her (Does she even use our currancy, or does she still trade with wampum?) to pull in disgruntled Hilary supporters. Yes, people who supported Hilary so vehemenetly that they're still pissed she lost will naturally ignore their leader's having made it abundantly clear that she is throwing the full weight of her support behind O'Bama, and instead rush to vote for a woman who is idealogically Hilary's opposite, the enemy of all Hilary stands for. Why do the Republicans think Hilary supporters wanted Hilary in the first place? (This is obviously an extremely mysterious concept for Republicans, who don't understand why everyone doesn't loathe her the way they do.) Do they think it's all about her vagina? Because clearly Hilary's vagina doesn't even do that much for Bill, and vaginas have no bigger fan than Bill Clinton. (Well, maybe bigger, God knows he's overcompensating for something, but none more enthusiastic.) And a womb is pretty much all that Sarah and Hilary have in common, if that.


They say that "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee." Did McCain get confused, and bring home the wrong Sarah? He looks like the kind of man who comes home from the store, only to have his wife say, "I wanted tulip bulbs, not light bulbs, you clothead!" The man doesn't even know how many houses he (his rich wife) owns.


McCain has been accusing O'Bama of being an "Elitist," out of touch with the common man. First off, what's wrong with wanting the best and the brightest for president? Isn't the president supposed to be smarter than everyone else? Who wants Joe Schmuck, who's never read a book for pleasure, running the country? (There's one big difference between McCain and O'Bama: O'Bama actually wrote his own books. McCain's books were written for him. There's some doubt he's even read them.)



But also, how many "common people" don't know how many houses they own? Ask any normal person on the street how many houses they own, and they won't even have to stop and think before they answer: "None! I did own one, but that was before 8 years of President Bush destroyed the housing market. Why do you think I'm on the street? I live in my car. It's like a house, because with the cost of gas what it is after 8 years of letting a couple of oil men run things, I can't afford a tank of gas either." And common people have to work for what little money they have, rather than simply marrying a rich woman, who inherited her money. That's how Republicans define "working for money." Waiting for a rich daddy to die and leave them a fortune is hard work. Just ask Dubya. He's still waiting for his obscenely wealthy daddy to die. (As are we all.) Which reminds me, McCain's economic plan boils down to "A tax cut for my wife."


McCain may like Sarah Palin, he may love his hot, rich wife, and perhaps even for more than just her father's money, but don't forget who his real True Love is:




Cheers darlings.