House Tattoos?

An Ogden Nash poem from my childhood goes like this-- "I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Unless, of course, the billboards fall...I'll never see a tree at all"

When I saw this story on CNN about a company that will help you from house foreclosure in trade for covering your home with an advertisement, I couldn't fucking believe it. Everybody's got an angle. Can you imagine how many of these might pop up in the U.S. if the economy doesn't improve soon? It will be like living in a huge aisle in the grocery store, with towering shiny people selling us tampons or dog food on the neighbor's garage door. Nowhere to look, nowhere to go to escape the Madison Avenue cranksters who thought this up.

Not everything bad is bad for everybody. This is a painful lesson to learn in life--someone profits from war, corporations make millions from mistakes, and ad agencies will cover your house with a douche ad for a few mortgage payments. Yuck.

America is quickly becoming a sad place, but I never thought I'd see it come to this. I have a couple of friends that have lost their houses to foreclosure--I wonder if this had been available to them if they would have done it. Will anyone do it? This should just be called "Dignity for Sale". There is no help without a catch, no compassion without compounded interest, and certainly no free lunch.

Am I the only one outraged by this? I live in New York City where everything is already a billboard...I guess the suburbs can't be far behind. We have wrapped cars, wrapped busses, projections on the sides of buildings...what's next? I loved the advertisement covered world of "Blade Runner".

I just don't want to live in it.

Seeya soon, Chris

Why I Heart Tabatha Coffey

Well, if you don't know by now, here's the big news: I got my own show on Bravo. Yes. Really. My OWN show. I can't really beleive it either.

Here is a press thingy that makes it seem more real.

It is going to be called "Mad Fashion" and it will premiere at the beginning of July. That's all I know about it, except for the fact that it has dominated my life for the last nine or ten months (hence the drying up of my blog). We started filming in late January, and hopefully we will be wrapped (Ooooh, I just love using TV talk now, like I have been doing this my entire life!) by the end of May. And yes, I have been working my guts out. One of the things that has come with this wild ride is the fact that I am now, or soon will become, one of those "Bravolebrities". Don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining. It pays better than being no kind of "-lebritiy". Being in this select group brought me to one fabulous night last week when I got to meet HER. Yes, her, Tabatha Coffey.

Now, on the set of my show we are all big Bravo fans, but we really love Tabatha and love to do her Aussie accent and quote her all day long and laugh our asses off while doing so. Our favorite line? In response to an ungrateful client whose salon she just completely renovated after the woman complained that she didn't get the full sized refrigerator she was after, Tabatha says:

"Here's your full size refrigerator--Fuck Off."

I wet my pants a little every time I think of it. I got to meet and work with the fabulous Tab at a Bravo promo shoot (that lasted 12 hours) and she is everything you would hope she would be--funny, warm, bitchy, cold, evil, stand-offish, fabulous, nasty, chain-smoking, vain, gorgeous, acerbic, and marvelous to be around. Don't get me wrong--I mean all these things as compliments. She is just...so...her. That's why I love Tabatha. She is just herself. For better or for worse she doesn't care what you think and she's not going to edit herself for anyone. That's why I laugh so hard at that quote--that she had the sheer balls to say it. She is also a fabulous example of gay people on TV; you either you know it or you don't. She doesn't care and it doesn't matter. Case closed. How refreshing.

So, as I venture off into TV land, I can only hope that I am perceived the same way. I try to be just who I am and not change that for anybody. To be any other way would be hiding, untruthful, and just plain tiring. And just not any fun. We have fun on our show, and I hope you come along with us for the ride.

One last parting shot from the blonde goddess:

"I'm the only woman who gets away with saying 'Pussy' on National Television."

Gotta love her.


Seeya soon, Chris

More Mad Men: I Didn't Like It (Don't Hurt Me!)

Am I the only person on earth who thought this episode bordered on disaster? I thought a lot of the acting looked like they were shooting a rehearsal. There are visual anachronisms all over the place, in dress, hairstyle (Peggy's hairdo is still a couple of years away from popularity, and her "boy toy" young Brad Pitt look-alike co-worker has a ridiculously modern haircut! ), set design and art direction. Roger really has a space-age office from the 70's? Yes, these things were entering the mainstream no too soon after the 1964 World's Fair, but I found it out of place and off-putting.

As for Don's "well appointed" new "digs" in the West Village? I know the writers and creator are going for heavy symbolism here, with Don's private life being squalid and dark, but I don't buy it. That neighborhood in the 60's was hedonistic and somewhat dangerous. He brings his kids there? His old beatnik girlfriend had a nicer place. Old, dark, beat up decor that smacks of "furnished apartment"? Don has more money than ever, has been used to a fabulous lifestyle for quite some time, and I would think that when he asked Joan to find him an apartment that she would not ever find him that dump, no matter how hard they want to drive home Don's private tortured symbolism. He polishes his own shoes? Please, he gets them polished at the train station or at work like everyone else in that time period.

The new offices? Everyone keeps going on and on about how "new, open, and fabulous" they are. Really? They look to me like they were conceived to symbolize a rat's maze--all narrow corridors and right angles and walls, walls, walls. Even if they are made of glass. You'll notice we were shown the low ceilings over and over to close us in. We were also shown on at least two occasions that those walls are paper-thin; everyone can hear everyone else. As for the lack of a conference table? Roger can have an office full of the most cutting-edge expensively made furniture on earth but they can't afford a conference table? It just doesn't wash. Many things about the office are too modern: the yin-yang Miramekko peacock textile print behind Peggy's desk, Don's blue Italian Murano glass mod ashtray, Roger's mushroom desk and arc lamps. My guess is that they feel these things will fit in fine by the end of the season (late 1965) and were too cheap and/or lazy so they just plunked them there now.

I also don't buy the fact that Henry would spend one night in Don and Betty's old house. Not one. He convinced her at her attorney consultation about the divorce that he would provide her with everything--he didn't want Don owing her a thing. And now he's freeloading in their old house? Trying to screw Don's wife in their old bedroom? Has Matt Weiner ever been in a relationship? He magically erased Henry of his pride and Betty of her territorial nature as a woman.

Sorry to keep complaining, but the whole ham actresses-fighting-in-a-supermarket scenario rings false as well...if you've ever met or worked with an actor in NYC. Those two women would never have gone to the police. They are actresses hired by a big ad agency in New York--they would never jeopardize the possibility of being hired again. Never. The "ham" was the best symbolism of the night. I think a lot of the activity on this episode rang false because they propelled the action by what they wanted to show us quickly in one hour.

After watching this episode a few times, it still smacks of wrong in a lot of ways to me...like somebody putting ketchup on a doughnut. Am I the only one who feels this way?

"Happy Spanksgiving!" or...Mad Men Season 4 Premiere: Where the Hell is the Baby?

First things first--Don Draper's first date on tonight's premiere of Mad Men wears a beautiful white dress trimmed with...you guessed it...hair! Ha! Okay, now that that's out of the way, there are a lot of puzzles and sizzles in tonight's episode.

Number one--All I kept wondering about the whole episode (practically from the first sentence when the Ad Age interviewer refers to Don as being married with "two" children) is what happened to the baby? Betty and her new husband (yuck, the two of them actually doing it!) don't have it, she says Carla has it, and Don certainly doesn't have it with the other two kids for the weekend. At one point when arguing about moving, Betty says, "...haven't the kids been through enough change?" Uh-oh...the last time we saw little Gene he was in Mama's arms flying to Reno for a D-I-V-O-R-C-E . Did little Sally freak out and toss him out the window? Wrap him in a dry-cleaning bag? Put him in the washing machine? She is definitely turning out to be a "Bad Seed" knock off. Hmmmm.....the mystery promises to unfold, because the baby isn't in any preview material for next week's episode.

Other things about this week's episode that I find disturbing: we have jumped to November of 1964, but the visual department of the show (not the costumes, though) seemed to have jumped to 1967 and beyond. I hate to say it, but for the first time the art direction rings false in several places, which makes me sad. Some random observances...Roger would NEVER have had a white vinyl and chrome chair with the white plastic signature mushroom mod lamp on his desk. It was like they walked through one of the doors in the office into 1968. Also, Don has an uncharacteristically mod Italian Murano glass ashtray on his coffee table. Again, 67-68. Peggy's hairdo is strictly 1966--the invention of Alexandre of Paris that appears originally in the 1967 movie "Valley of the Dolls" on Patty Duke. It was copied into the mainstream thereafter. Not that any of this is that big of a deal, it's just that the show is always leading the way in impeccable television. Tonight they showed some holes in their armor.

(While we're wondering about things)--will Sal ever come back? Everyone says "no", but I have a foolproof storyline that would work. Just hear me out: Sal has gotten another job doing something similar, but wishes desperately to come and be part of the new SCDP. But how can he, their main client is American Tobacco, headed by the closeted-homo Lee, who hit on Sal unsuccessfully in his last episode and had him fired. Somehow (there would be lots of fun ways to do this) Sal gets a piece of blackmail evidence against Lee (pics of him in bed with another man, etc.) and uses it to force Lee to get SCDP to hire him back as Art Director for the account. This would leave a fabulous power-play triangle between Don, Sal, and Lee. Think about it, Matt Weiner.....

And now, to the most erotic thing I believe I have ever seen on television--Don Draper having hot violent sex with a hooker on Thanksgiving. Not only did Don turn down every possible invitation for Thanksgiving, he turned them down to have a dirty-hot slutty red headed hooker come over (obviously, she's been there before) and ride his turkey leg. OMG! There he is, bare chested, on the botttom, screwing the daylights out of said hooker, when she slaps him! I almost made gravy in my pants. And then, to top it off, he says, "Harder!" Well sportsfans....I. Am. Speechless.

I need to go.....

See you next week for another episode,

Chris

Mad Men Jib-Jab Movie!! Starring Me and Meryl Streep!

Click HERE to watch!

MAD MEN Premiere July 25th in Times Square NYC

It's that time again! The world can rejoice that the best show on television returns for it's fourth season. And I don't mean "Keeping up with the Krackheads", either. It's Mad Men! Big Daddy Don Draper, along with Peggy, Betty, Trudy, Pete, Burt, Roger, and the ever-luscious Joan are beaming their way from 1964 into our living rooms for an exciting new season.

Yes, I will be making an appearance at the Times Square Premiere (yippee!) as a judge for the 1960's costume contest that takes place right before they play the first episode on the jumbo screen. So put on your finest garb and join us on the New Frontier...

Click here for details.

Did Freud Drink Gatorade?

Okay, so this morning I am laying in bed with my boyfriend, who happens to like drinking Gatorade after a night of making full man-love (more about that some other time), and I look up in a pre-coffee daze and see a large penis. Upon closer inspection, I realize I am not looking at my boyfriend, but an empty bottle of Gatorade on the nightstand. After all these years, how did it never dawn on me that this bottle is so blatantly phallic? I thought I was gayer than that (watch it!). The bottle looks exactly like a short, thick, squatty penis with a perfectly formed head (see pics above). And people got upset about Joe Camel? You actually put this thing up to your lips and drink from it. Delicious. Who could possibly have that shape of penis, you ask?

Well, in the gay community, this type of penis is referred to as:

a) Beer Can

b) Fire Hydrant

c) Jaw Breaker

In the straight community, I believe this type of penis is referred to as "Ryan Seacrest". I am suddenly so tickled by the idea of major athletes and young stud-muffin hetero boys guzzling greedily from their penis-substitute bottles. Didn't they ever notice? Or is that part of the subliminal ad campaign? Once they realize that they have been blowing their bottles of Gatorade, will they boycott it?

I know I see everything through my pair of Gay Goggles, but really--come on fellas. Take a look. And then try to put that big, fat, hard object up to your mouth without feeling at least a little gay. Freud would have had a field day with this thing--forget cigars and bananas, my manly thirst needs quenching...now! So if you're gay, straight, Tom Cruise or Ryan Seacrest, get out there and play the game. Remember--it's not whether you win or lose--it's if you swallow.

I've always said the straight world has it wrong--gays don't hate sports; we just don't want to leave the locker room.

Seeya soon, Chris