Desperately Seeking Relevance

THE WEEK FROM MY VIEW

by James Killough

As an aspiring narcissist, I’m not one for watching sports unless it’s something I’ve practiced myself, which limits me to swimming and boxing.  I am glued to the TV when the Olympics roll around for the former, and will watch the latter on the rare occasions I’m in a sports bar and it happens to be on.  The third sport I’ve participated in from time to time and play reasonably well is a good ol’ film industry smackdown, and none was more amusing to watch than the epistolary dustup between Mel Gibson and writer Joe Eszterhas this week.

It's not just because he works out at our gym, or because he bowed out of Tarantino's "Django Unchained." Gordon-Levitt stars in "Loopers," which from the trailer looks badass.

What happened is the highly overrated, long-standing joke Eszterhas—the screenwriter behind Basic Instinct, Flashdance and, most notoriously, Showgirls—mouthed off in a nine-page tell-all email to Gibson after Eszterhas’ script for The Untitled Maccabee Project was rejected by Warner Brothers.  Of course, he leaked the email to the press, most notably to The Wrap, an industry website that appears to have taken his side, presumably in the hope of getting all of those “exclusives” from Eszterhas, which kept popping up as alerts on my BlackBerry as the whole silly saga unfolded.

A Fashion Fairy’s Film Festival

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

Yes, overly alliterative titles are cheesy and fatty, but nonetheless delicious.

Since the beginning of this blog we have had tremendous support from Diane Pernet and her A Shaded View on Fashion blog.  I began a fiction piece for her, then stopped when I couldn’t figure out where I was going with it, and I have a massive rewrite on another novel to finish, so I can’t wrap my head around… oh, whatever.  They’re all just the usual writer’s excuses for underperforming.

Diane Pernet doesn't just have a view, she has a vision.

Diane has been developing her fashion film festival for a few years now, and it really seems to be hitting its stride, or strut, which would be more more apropos of fashion.  ASVOFFF will be held this year at the Pompidou Center during Paris fashion week, from October 7 to 9.  Check out the awesome trailer:

Celebutards and Other Monsters

TUTTLE MODE

 by James Tuttle

Gentle reader,

Join me as we scrape the bottom of the barrel that is reality television.  Yes, I’m talking about the festival of talentless reality show rejects known as VH1’s Famous Food and don’t pretend you’ve been watching it, either!  No one has.  The ratings were so low after only a couple of weeks that it’s getting bumped out of its Sunday slot in favor of Behind the Music.  Yeah, ouch.

Don’t worry, though.  I’m here to catch you up on the whole fabulous train wreck!

Enough with the reality crap. Just give Jake Pavleka his own game show, already.

The idea of the show is pretty straightforward.  A group of seven “celebrities” get thirty days or so to open a restaurant and the one who contributes the most gets a share in the place.  One of their first ideas these dumb bitches had was to “call the restaurant ‘Fame,’ because we’re all famous!” but I don’t know who half these people are.  

Omnia Vincit Phallus

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

I’m trying to make this follow-up post about massive cock a little classier with a title in Latin, which means “phallus conquers all,” a twist on the popular, hopeful gay armband tattoo “omnia vincit amor,” or love conquers all.

Given what has happened in the past few days with hits to our site since the Big Penis Book post, as a content company we have to comment on the effect salacious text and images have on internet traffic.  This is also an excellent opportunity for us to post more images from the Taschen books.  Out of consideration for our token Str8, the beleaguered Eric Baker, whom I imagine is sitting there in Jersey with his head in his hands regretting his association with the feral, smut-minded Gheys of PFC, we are including images from the Big Book of Breasts as well:

There's no point provoking the good burghers of WordPress with naked erections as the lead image. Plenty of room for that later. Well, as much room as all of this flesh can leave.

Just a quick tangent: I have been asked by a few readers why I sometimes use “Ghey” and other times “gay.”  Ghey is the noun, gay is the adjective; e.g., I am a Ghey who makes outrageously gay statements.  And henceforth, “Str8” is the noun, “straight” the adjective.  There is no rhyme or reason for this; this is my sandbox, my content, I make the rules.

I Think I Cannes

TUTTLE MODE

by James Tuttle

Gentle reader,

I’m going to tell you about an HGTV show that I would love to like.  It’s called Secrets From a Stylist.  I know that I complained about HGTV’s programming a couple of weeks ago, when constant airings of House Hunters were beginning to erode my mental state.  I’ve since stopped automatically tuning to HGTV when I sit down after a long day of dressing my girls or playing my ponies but this show is already in our DVR queue.  It pops up every Saturday night like clockwork and I just watched the most recent episode.

The premise of the show is really quite good.  Perky stylist Emily Henderson analyses the style of each member of the homeowner couple with an interesting multiple choice test, designs their room for one person’s style, then layers on the other person’s style to create a perfect blend in which the inhabitants can live happily ever after.  What could go wrong?

The well-adjusted Dan Vickery adjusts himself (right).

In the beginning, I felt very close to this show.  I’d watched Emily win the Design Star competition over that very cute gay guy, Dan Vickery, whom I couldn’t watch without thinking whether or not he had a corrected cleft palate.  We need more cute, well-adjusted gays on TV to show America that we’re not always wearing leather halters or snorting cocaine on dance floors lit from below while listening to Gloria Gaynor or Cher but, in spite of all that, I actually rooted for Emily.

The Tired, Lame Religiosity Of Some Conservative Catholic Homo Bloggers (Who Are Also Bottom Bitches)

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

Before I start eviscerating my evil twitty twin Andrew Sullivan, I wanted to point out something I buried at the end of a previous post, thinking that everyone slogged through the overstuffed, slow-cooked Belgian meal that my posts are and devoured every word, clinked on every link.

Lest you think I have been slacking and leaving all the PFC blogging work to Tuttle and Baker, I have started a serialized fiction piece called Render The Savage on Diane Pernet’s site, A Shaded View on Fashion.  The first chapter is here, the second here.  I also post links to the left of this column.  I’m having great fun with Savage.  If it rings true in some places, I’m denying everything so you can make up your own mind.

My publisher Diane Pernet is some sort of fabulous, ain't she? And she has this raspy whisper voice that makes every conversation seem like it's in church.

And I always have great fun taking potshots at Sullivan.  The title of this post is a reworking of one of his, The Tired, Lame Bigotry of Some Homosexuals, in which he bemoans a Hunky Jesus contest held in San Francisco over Easter. I thought the contest was kinda funny, one of those things that are more enjoyable in real life than in video, like almost all stand-up comedy.  But what makes me chuckle most is this quote from Sullivan:

“You want to grow some balls? Hold a Hunky Mohammed Contest on Ramadan. And, by the way, thanks for doing your bit to empower every religious right prejudice about gays.”

Oh, Miss Thing! You got yourself into a lather of this one, haven’t you?  What sort of noodle-brained, banana split logic is that? 

Eat The Rich

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

The other day I received a highly unusual email from the alumni association of my alma mater, Trinity School in New York City:

Dear Alumni,

You may have read or heard about an article which appears on The Daily Beast as well as allegations which have been posted on a variety of social networking websites by a Trinity parent. We regret any confusion or discomfort these postings may have caused you. The School’s responsibility to maintain the privacy of individuals and the confidentiality which must surround our conversations with students and families, even now, precludes our giving you a full account of this matter. That said, we assure you that Trinity has acted appropriately in every respect and that any and all allegations and insinuations being made concerning Trinity’s trustees, the School’s endowment and finances, and our personnel are, each and every one, entirely baseless and utterly false.

Either Seema Kalia comes up with some hard evidence to back up her charges against Trinity, or she will end up another New York joke, like Leona Helmsley.

Of course, I dashed to the article in The Daily Beast, a site I read fairly religiously, normally with the hope of catching out my evil twin Andrew Sullivan on some silliness, but his personal daily beast seems to have been tamed since he merged his blog with that site.