I have been haunted – too haunted to write about it — for the past few weeks by a spread that appears in the current issue of Vanity Fair.

It is a photo tribute in which present-day movie stars have been inserted into instantly recognizable stills from Alfred Hitchcock movies — movies I grew up on and whose hypnotic power still grabs hold of me today, even after a lifetime of multiple viewings.

This photo of Jodi Foster impersonating Tippi Hedren in The Birds, for instance, conveys the blasphemous charm of these recreated stills, disquieting, in their own way, as much for the things they get “wrong” as for the things they get “right.” (The entire spread, which is not on the Vanity Fair site, can be seen here.) (more…)

Square jawed and clear eyed, these beautiful men seem to have tumbled out of a time machine from exactly 100 years ago, the Gilded Age before World War I, looking all slick-haired and suited and ready for some modern man-on-man.

We might even think we had come upon a hidden stash of fabulous retro-porn if we didn’t know that the artist, Benoît Prévôt, is not only alive, he is a mere 38 years old!

A lifelong Parisian, whose day-job is designing cartoon characters for children’s television, sitting at a computer doing 3D backgrounds and images, Prévôt views the erotic drawings he does at night as his more important art.

In Prévôt’s swanky re-imaginings of the past, we get a glimpse of what the Arrow Collar Men were doing when the Gibson Girl was out on a motor trip.

We imagine the stately Gibson Girl coming home suddenly, unexpectedly, all leg-of-mutton sleeves and upswept hair behind motoring goggles, only to find husband and best friend slavering over each other in the drawing room. Solid patrician that she is, trained from childhood to be The Wife, she looks right on past the dog and pony show, gazing in her dreamy, heavy-lidded way out at the grounds, thinking ackh! men! (more…)

Fabulicious is the only word in our arsenal of demented gay superlatives to describe it.

And no, it’s not that Jodie Foster may or may not have just come out — stunned and shaken as we would be by such an announcement.

Nor is it the national confusion we’re all going through trying to keep the Petersons straight: Is it Stacy or Laci who is the current missing, presumed dead wife? Is it Drew or Scott — both stud-muffin names — who is the despicable, unlovable, unredeemable rascal in the windowless cell on death row that we’d love to fuck anyway?

Even the announcement of the Golden Globe nominations this morning — the most deeply meaningless trophies in show business – are not what’s making us crazy right now — though we are overjoyed to see that Keira Knightly is finally getting her due as the greatest actress of our time — a status once held in a long ago Hollywood by that delightful (but forgotten — why, why, why?) minx, Pia (with a Z) Zadora!

What has made us dig to the bottom of our dementia bag to come up with the rare gem fabulicious is the current collision between East and West that is gushing forth rivers of kitsch in the most nutso campaign video ( what!) ever. Put on your dazzle glasses, boys, because Christmas has come a little early this year: (more…)

Conservatives might want to start preparations for a collective book burning and/or DVD steam rolling ASAP:

Harry Potter’s mentor is gay!

Damn those elitist, ivory tower European sorcery academies with their secular liberal agendas!

Damn them all to Hell!

Author J.K. Rowling left fans stunned at a recent appearance at Carnegie Hall to promote the mega-popular book series’ final entry when she nonchalantly announced that beloved master magician and Hogwarts Academy Headmaster Albus Dumbledore is as gay as an East End belfry full of bats. (more…)

John Waters is one of the icons of these post-Andy Warhol times.

Once hailed as a “Master of Sleaze”, the man with the creepy pencil mustache and the look of a drained vampire shunning the sun behind big swoopy sunglasses, John Waters has, with his films and books, subtly shaped the atmosphere of hip taste and pop intellectualism. It now drapes around him as comfortably as a well-made suit.

As the picture at left quietly attests, he is the essence of courtliness and chic, reminiscent, oddly, of Zachary Scott, the silky, duplicitous playboy who so brings our Joan to grief in Mildred Pierce. Yes, the bard of Baltimore has become stylish — after all.

Stylish and one of our sharpest gay humorists.

More culture critic, than funny man, his refreshing — at times, startling — takes on recent cultural events such as Britney’s MTV debacle or his own surprising commercial success with the musical Hairspray were on offer in an interview he gave a North Carolina newspaper, The Independent, before his talk there at Duke University. (more…)

We always knew Angelina Jolie was a goddess but, Jesus, we had no idea!

Behold Our Lady of the Wal-Mart.

Patroness of the Checkout Counter, Mystic Rose of the Tabloids, Guardian of Children in Every Color of The Rainbow.

Pray for us.

Or adopt us.

Yes, Angelina is simply too impossibly beautiful for even committed and confessional dickhunters like us to resist!

The painting Blessed Art Thou has an asking price of $50,000 and was intended, says artist Kate Kretz, to address “the psychological ramifications of celebrity worship, particularly as they relate to class and consumerism.”

Though she has painted and exhibited for 20 year, none of Ms. Kretz’s previous work has ever garnered the attention she received when the painting appeared at a Miami art show in 2006. Predictably, a small but vocal group picketed the event.

“The title Blessed Art Thou,” she wrote on her blog at the time, “is taken from a line in the Catholic prayer Hail Mary: ‘…Blessed art thou among women.’ Our culture is deifying celebrities, but in the Bible, it is the meek who are blessed. (more…)

Many things fall out of closets – not least of which are skeletons and homophobic pastors. But in the case of Michael Jackson we are expecting a a piñata full of tightly wrapped craziness soon to hit the auction floor and explode.

The auction, set to be held on May 30 and 31, against the singer’s wishes, in — but how perfect — Las Vegas, will offer to the discerning connoisseur a lifetime’s accumulation of costumes, souvenirs and just plain shit. (more…)

Join us in our holy crusade to put the triple-X back into Xmas! Here is what we want — what we’ve only ever wanted — for Christmas.

And kids, it’s not peace on earth. (That’s the second thing on our list.)

It’s this fan-tastic coverboy on the 2007 Dieux Du Stade calendar, at left : Julien Arias.

Jesus — the face, the chest, the arms, the ass (unseen, but you can tell!) — and all he speaks is French!

Oxygen, please! The cabin is rapidly losing pressure!

Natch, he’s a French rugby player or something: the Dieux Du Stade series specializes in rough-and-tumble Euro sportsmen, all of whom have L’Uomo faces of the most florid, full-blown beauty, as well as those high-and-tight footballer arses and lovely half-concealed (but we’re sure, uncut) packages.

Oh, it’s a pricey little import, this calendar. Beautifully executed, of course — more like a high-end photobook, with the months divided in half, so you get double the boy for the buck. At about $37, we think it makes a great gift for that special someone. (Surely it’s too deliciously indulgent to give to yourself!)

Below the jump is a vid of the studly Julien from his maddeningly naked photo shoot featured on the Dieux du Stade: Making of the 2007 Calendar DVD. But we must warn you: Not since Kubrick’s 2001:A Space Odyssey, have we seen Johann Strauss’ magnificent Blue Danube Waltz so lushly, so unforgettably complemented. (more…)