It’s getting a might scary looking in Peckerwood, hey, Dolly?

Dolly Parton, who has been out of the public eye for awhile, appeared last night to pick up a beribboned award, that was placed around her neck by the President, as one of five recipients of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.

The Kennedy Center Honors are considered to be the premier event in America’s cultural life: an award for very famous artists who are chosen by a a panel of very famous artists, and usually presided over by the President. (Barbra Streisand has repeatedly refused the award because she didn’t want to receive one — and you gotta love the sheer Babsyness of this — “while a Republican was in office.”) (more…)

Serene and telepathic, the fair lady of the wood, the Elf Queen who keeps her innermost thoughts hidden, Galadriel stares at the ring of ultimate power that Frodo offers her.

She has long wanted it, and now here it is, being offered freely by a guileless hobbit, an accidental ringbearer, who wearies of its weight, fears its pull.

In an instant Galadriel sees how the ring would overpower her — even her, with all her forest sorceries. The grove where she is standing takes on an eerie green glow, positive and negative light switch. “In place of a Dark Lord,” she warns the hobbit, “you will have a Queen! Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Dawn. Treacherous as the Sea.” She grows immense before his eyes. “Stronger than the foundations of the earth.” Her voice thunders with a multitude of shrill over-voices:

“All shall love me and despair!”

And then, in one of the most fateful turns in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, she rejects the offer, as she is destined to. “I pass the test,” she gasps in relief. “I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.” (more…)

Which American painting, do you think, is the most famous? Not the best. Simply the best known.

This was the question buzzing around Datalounge — our favorite all-gay message forum. The candidates put forth included Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, even — a real blast from the past — Whistler’s Mother (more properly known as Arrangement in Grey and Black), a sentimental favorite of the sanctimonious Fifties.

We, however, have to cast our lot with Andy Warhol’s Marilyn – there are hundreds of them, some in large squares that dwarf the viewer, others — the more troubling and profound “assembly line” versions — in slyly ugly diptychs of 50 Marilyn’s back-to-back.

Just on the face of it — if most famous can be measured by most reproduced — our contention is supported by the rough measure of Google’s image search:

Both Nighthawks and American Gothic rate 20 pages each. Warhol’s Marilyn comes in at 28. (Whistler’s Mother doesn’t even signify, poor dear — on life support with a feeble 8 pages worth of acclaim.)

We would also argue, however, that Warhol’s silkscreen is more than a lucky child of Fortune; it is, in fact, a great painting. We wonder if it might not one day rank as the most famous painting of all, edging out the longtime heavyweight, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

In many ways, Warhol’s Marilyn is the hardboiled 20th Century answer to the Mona Lisa.
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Admit it. More than having sex with movie stars, you’d rather be the movie star everybody wanted to have sex with.

Better: you’d want to be an out gay movie star so you wouldn’t have to waste time dating Hollywood princesses and could zero in on all the beefcake on the hoof.

Plus, you’d be on the A-list, so you could — just for laughs — brazen up to all the Colins and Brads and Tobeys, the Vins and Tommy boys with even the strayest ambiguous twinkle in their eyes.

Talk about charmed lives! You’d soon never be surprised again by what could pop up (and so quickly) in even the most unlikely swimming pool or cabana hut.

You’d want, in short, to be Rupert Everett (at left).

Most people remember Everett as Julia Robert’s real best friend in My Best Friend’s Wedding. There he was her gay man-pal who shows up to lend Julia support at the wedding of her ex-boyfriend. Though the boyfriend was played by Dermot Mulroney — a dark-eyed, dagger-jawed humdinger in his own right — the real romance was between Julia and Rupert. (Everett, in real life, had long been an out gay man.) (more…)

Yes, she’s been dead a million years — a million plus 10, actually, as she was strictly on autopilot in her last movies, Myra Breckinridge and Sextette, where her lines were radioed in through a teeny-tiny earpiece.

But Mae West lives, children!– as long as Nightcharm and YouTube have anything to say about it (more on that later).

At right, Salvador Dali’s famous take on the star: The Face of Mae West Which Can Be Used as an Apartment. The Mae West lip couch was actually built by Dali, and later copied by a slew of Las Vegas brothels.

Fittingly. In her movies, West always played a brothel madame, in style if not in name. She was forever on the vamp, with a keen eye for male horseflesh. Among her many trademarks — the hourglass figure, the salacious delivery — was a retinue of musclemen, usually half dressed, which would escort her about Hollywood and, in later years, co-star with her in a Las Vegas revue. (more…)

In the great battle of good and evil that makes our tiny, rapidly warming world go round, there have been a handful of truly remarkable rivalries:

Moses vs. Pharaoh, Bette vs. Joan. Me vs. a restraining order from Jason Statham’s lawyer …

But my favorite battle royal at the moment is the one quietly taking place between Julia Roberts and Parker Posey.

Of course, you know who Parker Posey is: She’s that off-beat chick you always fall in love with for her dizzy, faux-vapid comic delivery in such fave films as Best in Show, Hell on Heels: the Battle of Mary Kay, and, of course, House of Yes — where she plays a Jackie Kennedy wannabe in Grassy Knoll pink skirt and pillbox hat.

And if that doesn’t ring a bell (you are a gay man, right, with all your dues paid up?), she’s appearing on multiplex’s everywhere as the caped one’s Stoli-addled nemesis in Superman Returns (above). (more…)

Booze, dope and showbiz. How can we resist?

The Valley of the Dolls is finally out on a deluxe 2-disc DVD — just in time for Gay Pride Day. And what a celebration it is! From its shocking-pink plastic case to its tons of queer-centric extras, we have never seen a DVD cater so hard — or so lovingly — to a certain kind of fabuloso gay mania.

Here you will find extras that include: Karaoke versions of the film’s dumbly worded songs where you follow the bouncing Rx bottle. Commentary by a camp-savvy but earnest Barbara Parkins (who hated her boxy, beige good-girl suits when all the other actresses got to wear sparkly Travilla gowns.) Remarks from Patty Duke (who hated the director and was accused of beating up too hard on Susan Hayward in the the film’s campfest finale, the ladies room cat fight.) And comments from a supporting player, who noted that it was a movie where all the actresses hated each other, upstaged each other, and saw their roles as pivotal career-changing opportunities. (more…)

Now, fresh from 2-disc DVD rehab, David K and editor John Calendo discuss the magic, the myth, and the madness of Valley of the Dolls.

David K: For years I’ve been smitten with the publicity still of the three girls on the bed. It’s the most famous image associated with the film.

John Calendo: It’s too bad the three actresses never appear in the same scene together. As to what they might all be doing on a big ‘ol Hollywood bed except trying on each other’s falls, I will leave to the girl-on-girl aficionados.

DK: That image symbolizes the heart of what I love most about Dolls: It’s a movie about glamorous, beautiful women … with big hair. But for all its pinky glamor the photo is also disturbing. The way the trio is juxtaposed on the bed, but not relating to each other — that signals complications. Goodie! A movie about Gals in Trouble! That fact shoots the film into the queer stratosphere. Beauty and chaos intermingling — it’s an addictive combo. (more…)