THEME FOR GREAT CITIES

And We Said It Wouldn't Last: What I Once Told Anderson Cooper About Demi and Ashton

2012-01-31T04:11:00.000+07:00

It's good to know that I haven't always been so stupid in love.

Once upon a time, before I got caught up in the rapture of the charms of Argentine men, I had a healthy dose of skepticism and cynicism when it came to romance, and it served me incredibly well on the job. Of course, when you spend years covering celebrities for People magazine and Us Weekly, you learn a thing or two about Hollywood love lives.

Yesterday, while I was writing a post for my blog at The Faster Times on the "whip-it" shenanigans of Demi Moore, I came across a transcript of a CNN interview I did with Anderson Cooper on June 6, 2003, shortly after Demi began dating Ashton Kutcher.

Cooper and I began our chat discussing Bill and Hillary Clinton and who should play them in a TV movie. My choice: Barbra Streisand and James Brolin, "because Barbra is a very controlling woman, very demanding, sort of the perception of what Hillary's like -- and James Brolin, very dashing older gentleman. I think that's the way one perceives Bill."

Then we got down to the good stuff. I was a senior editor at Us Weekly at the time, so I'd seen countless celebrity unions come an go, sometimes in the space between two Monday-night closes. It took a bit longer for Ashton and Demi to flame out, but who didn't see that out of control raging fire coming from nearly a decade away?

COOPER: All right, let's move on to the really important information now, the really important coupling right here to talk about, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. I'm not even sure if I'm pronouncing... Am I pronouncing that name right?

HELLIGAR: De-MI Moore.

COOPER: De-MI Moore. All right. Whatever... Jeremy, is this relationship real? It is on the cover of Us Weekly, I think People has Demi Moore now on the cover. I've got to tell you, I'm skeptical, but tell us how, allegedly, this thing happened.

HELLIGAR: Well, first of all, it's not really clear when exactly they met. But it's pretty sure that they met probably in early May, late April, when Ashton was in New York City hosting Saturday Night Live.

COOPER: What's got so many people focused on this is, he's 25 years old. She's 40-some-odd years old.

HELLIGAR: Forty.

COOPER: To me, it just seems very coincidental. She's got a movie coming out, Charlie's Angels 2. It just seems like a publicist's dream, kind of a setup.... Jeremy, final thought? You think this thing is for real? Do you think it's going to last?

HELLIGAR: I definitely think that it's not going to last. I would not imagine them walking down the altar, wedding bells. Forget it. But you have to also remember, Charlie's Angels is a franchise. And it's going to do well, whether Demi has a public affair or not. So...

COOPER: Right. Well, every little bit helps.

The wedding bells did ring a couple of years later, but ultimately, the pair ended up exactly where they were supposed to be: Kutcher on Two and a Half Men, Moore at home inhaling "whip-its." Crazy love, Hollywood style.

5 Reasons Why SAG Award Winner Viola Davis Can't Lose the Best Actress Oscar

2012-01-30T12:49:00.001+07:00

There, I said it!

Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer have been virtual Oscar locks in their respective supporting categories for weeks now. I privately predicted a Jean Dujardin Best Actor win months ago, when The Artist was still a newbie in theaters, comparing him to Roberto Benigni, who triumphed for Life Is Beautiful in 1999, and my friend, a movie critic for a major national U.S. magazine, shot me down.

"The Artist is no Life Is Beautiful."

No, it's not, but it's beginning to look like something more, a Best Picture frontrunner. Life Is Beautiful may have had more zeitgeist momentum, but it never stood a chance against Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love, the eventual winner. Despite Dujardin's January 29 Screen Actors Guild win, I wouldn't be too quick to call it any more than a speed bump in Clooney's road to his second Oscar. But if there is an upset waiting to happen, it's here.

And what about Best Actress? Well, it's Viola Davis's world, and for now, Glenn Close, Rooney Mara, Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams only live in it. Sorry ladies! On February 26, Davis will not only make history as the second black woman to win the Best Actress Academy Award, but Oscar, after missing his chance with Precious and The Color Purple, will make history for honoring two black actresses -- both from the same film! -- in one year.

Here are five more reasons why Davis already has such a tight grip on the naked gold man.

1) Her colleagues adore her. Who said only legends get standing ovations? The crowd's reaction to Davis' SAG win was telling. Glenn Close deserves an Oscar more than anyone on the planet, and she never would have received such rapturous congratulations from her peers. Tilda Swinton, who didn't have a chance of winning anyway, clapped slowly and deliberately as if she didn't really mean it, and she still stood up. It took Michelle Williams a moment, but eventually, she got it. On your feet, girl!

2) A vote for her is a vote against racism in Hollywood. Boy, is Davis playing the race card. Not in a tacky way, but in a very obvious one. It makes sense that she would, since the film for which she is going to win the Oscar is about racism, but watching her accept award after award, walk red carpet after red carpet, and sit at roundtable after roundtable, I find myself wishing she'd table talk about racism in Hollywood and how it's prevented her from working more. The Help is her first leading film role. Even Halle Berry has trouble finding work. If I've heard it once, I've heard it a dozen times -- always coming straight from Davis's mouth. Okay, we get it. Now I'd like for her to move on to new business and let her great work in The Help speak for itself.

3) She knows her history, and she respects it. In her SAG acceptance speech, she gave props where they were due, and they are certainly due to Cicely Tyson, an icon among black actresses whom Berry didn't forget to include in her Oscar acceptance speech. And even though Meryl Streep will surely lose again (I think she'll finally win her third Oscar when she stops trying so hard to), we can be pretty certain that Davis won't forget to give a shout out to her friend and Doubt costar. So in a way, they both win.

4) It would continue Oscar's tradition of honoring beautiful women who aren't afraid to deglam on the job. What becomes an Oscar winner most? Telling the world that you are willing to suffer for your art, even if it means checking your vanity at the door. You'll always have the red carpet to say, "This is how I really look. Now do I get the award?"

5) She deserves it. Regardless of what you think about The Help and Davis's place in it (lead or supporting?), there is no denying the power of her performance. She made every gesture, every look, every moment of silence speak volumes. If Hally Berry's Best Actress-winning performance in Monster's Ball hasn't aged so well (Berry was good, but the effort showed), in 10 years, Viola Davis in The Help will still be a gold standard of acting at its finest. And maybe then SAG presenter Sir Ben Kingsley will be able to tell us whether it's Vee-OH-la or Vie-OH-la!

If Only Other Languages Came to Me (and Stayed with Me) As Easily As My Own

2012-01-30T03:43:00.000+07:00

A few weeks ago, I realized that one of my greatest fears since I left Buenos Aires 11 months ago is finally coming to pass: My Spanish is fading away. Whoever said, "Use it, or lose it," sure wasn't kidding.

I was writing an email to the woman who manages my apartment in BA when my lapse in language occurred. I couldn't bring myself to say, "I was wrong," which was strange because I've never had trouble saying it in English. I don't have a problem saying those three words (which are actually only two in Spanish, like "I love you," or "Te quiero," which I still think has a much nicer ring, though it's shamelessly overused in BA) because I seldom have to say them. But now that I did, I simply couldn't find the words.

It was worse than on Saturday night when my friend and I were talking about Juliette Binoche, and I couldn't recall the title of the movie she appeared in with Jude Law. I knew it was directed by the late Anthony Minghella, the man who'd helped her win an Oscar for The English Patient, and Robin Wright Penn was in it, too.

My friend pulled out his phone and started to consult Imdb. The pressure was on! I had to figure it out before Imdb did.

"It was two words. Two words. Two words. Something 'and' something. Two words... Breaking and Entering! Right under the buzzer. Imdb confirmed it for both of us.

Unfortunately, the other week, while composing my email in Spanish and trying to say, "I was wrong," my memory failed me completely. If it weren't for the Internet, I might still be staring at that half-unwritten email on my laptop screen, trying to come up with the two Spanish words for the three that I wanted so desperately to express.

Thanks to a translation website, I only spent several minutes in torture. Me equivoque! I know there is supposed to be an accent over the last "e," but bear with me. My Thai keyboard doesn't do accents, nor that special Spanish "n," nor umlauts, which are sometimes used over "u" when it follows "q" in Spanish, but not with "equivoque."

Me equivoque! Dead wrong. About what had led me to start typing that email in the first place, and to think that you can take the man away from the language, but you can't take the language away from the man. The other night I met a guy from Colombia, and I got in some good practice, but it's not quite the same as calling the place that was fixing my air conditioner every day for several weeks, which I was doing at this time last year, trying to find out when I could put that useless floor fan away for good, or taking Pilates classes twice a week in Spanish, or making pillow small talk with guys who didn't speak a word of English.

I tell myself that's why I never bothered to try to learn Thai. I knew I wasn't staying there forever, so what was the point? I'd only lose it within months of returning to Australia. But who was I kidding? It was the idea of learning a language with a completely different alphabet that terrified me. And if the regular words were anything like the street names (frequently 10 characters or more, or so it seemed, all over Thailand), I was truly f**ked. On the day I left, I knew how to say Soi 2 in Thai ("Soi song," or something like that), and I could write my first name, but only because I have a tattoo of it on my left forearm to guide me.

Yesterday I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Jill Hennessy. Why the Crossing Jordan actress even crossed my mind, I'm not sure? But I was surprised and impressed and not a little jealous to read that she is fluent in five languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian and German. How do people do that? I'm thankful for what I can do with English. It has served me well financially and creatively over the years, but how wonderful it must be to be truly multi-lingual. I wonder how much a UN interpreter makes in one year.

Part of the problem for me is that as a writer, I spend so much of my day immersed in English that there's very little room for other languages. And so many of the Aussies that I meet mangle English, sometimes to a degree that I don't even recognize my own language when I talk to them. I have to work hard not to fall into their syntactic traps.

If I end up returning to Bangkok for good, I'll make an exerted effort to learn Thai. As for Spanish, I'm going to have to spend more time talking to my non-English-speaking Argentine friends online, or maybe narrow my search for Mr. Perfect to "must love dogs and must speak Spanish as a first language." I've also set aside about 10 minutes a day, during my daily runs, where I think only in Spanish.

So far it's working out pretty well. And if nothing else, I'll never again have to say, "I was wrong," when I'm trying to write, "I was wrong."

No me equivoco nunca!

Was Southeast Asia Really All That It's Cracked Up to Be By My Memories? (Answer: Yes!)

2012-01-29T18:09:00.000+07:00

"The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be." -- Marcel Pagnol

Truer words have never been spoken -- or written -- and I read those ones for the first time several weeks ago. Where? In someone's Manhunt profile, of all places. (Who says online cruising never leads to anything good?) The guy who dared to put them there immediately topped my list of most likely to receive a reply because I appreciate a man who recognizes great insight when he reads it.

I especially like the last part because it alludes to hope and faith, two of the most crucial concepts in the lexicon of life. Things have a way of working out -- unless they don't. And even then, what's the worse thing that can happen. Death? In that worst-case scenario, nothing really matters. And if you die another day, at least you're still breathing.

So let it will be. (I promise that's the last Madonna song title I'm quoting.) Doing that brings us closer to a higher state of consciousness, being truly content in the here and now. I'm still trying to get there myself, but six months of Buddhist exposure, has brought me closer than ever.

As for the past, what a truly tricky thing it is. Lately I've been thinking a lot about mine, particularly those six months I spent in Southeast Asia last year. I thoroughly enjoyed my adventure while I was in the middle of it, but three and half weeks after my return to Australia, my memories of Asia continue to grow fonder by the day.

Last night I met a beautiful 29-year-old woman whose father is Malaysian and whose mother is of Irish descent. Although she's never even visited her dad's country, while I was talking to her, so many vivid memories of Kuala Lumpur and Penang began to crowd my mind.

And not an hour goes by when I don't lapse into a daydream, imagining that I'm walking through the streets of Bangkok, standing on my balcony looking out at the city from 14 stories up, or getting ready for a night out at DJ Station. A flaming B-52 shot, prepared by my favorite Bangkok bartender on the second floor, is just the twist in my sobriety that I could use right about now.

Today as I was going through some of the photos from my trip -- which I've really got to post on Facebook ASAP -- I came actress a video from the day I spent touring the temples of Angkor (see below). The Cambodian tourist mecca just outside of Siem Reap was one of the most magical parts of the six months I spent in Asia because it was like all of these images I remembered staring at in Encyclopedia Britannica when I was a kid were coming to life. Not that I'll ever forget any of it, but I'm glad to have photographs and videos to remind me of the life-changing experience that was my half-year adventure.

Southeast Asia, I don't think I'm through with you yet.

How Lowbrow Can I Go?: Why 'Hot in Cleveland' Is One of My Favorite TV Comedies

2012-01-28T04:51:00.000+07:00

I confess.

I'm a television junkie. And I won't even pretend to like the supposedly "quality" stuff. I live for boob-tube fluff. The more mindless, the funnier (sometimes).

Which is certainly not the case when it comes to cinema and music. With movies, I'm never in my element until Oscar season, when sequel fever cools, the action slows down, and Hollywood starts putting out films for adults. And with music, I'm a little bit country, and I'm a little bit rock & roll, the majority of Billboard's Hot 100 be damned. Bruno Mars, LMFAO and David Guetta can score hit after hit, but I'll listen to Katy Perry's entire Teenage Dream album before I sit through "Sexy and I Know It" from beginning to end.

When it comes to TV, though, for some reason, my brain goes soft. My favorite shows of all time -- The Jeffersons, Three's Company, The Golden Girls -- were all LMFAO hilarious, but they'll never be in the TV critics' pantheon of sitcom greats, home to the likes of All in the Family, M*A*S*H and, in the future, 30 Rock and Modern Family, two programs whose appeal flies right over my head.

Though I occasionally roll with the "good" stuff, too -- I could spend an entire day watching marathons of How I Met Your Mother and Family Guy, and I won't turn the channel when Glee is on -- I'm still one of those people who actually finds Two and a Half Man funny, and I've spent the last year or so warming up to The Big Bang Theory. So just shoot me (speaking of shows I used to love).

Notice the absence of hour-long drama in this discussion so far. The occasional police procedural and legal drama aside -- in Bangkok, the TV options were so limited that I learned to appreciate Criminal Minds and the plethora of courtroom series, of which Drop Dead Diva is the only one I truly love -- most hour-long dramas test my attention span. I love my 60-minute daytime soap operas, though, and I'll never understand why people carp about their implausibilities while getting lost (pun intended) in the unreality of Lost and all the vampires and bad acting in True Blood.

The other night I watched Dexter for the first time. And although there was no denying that it's a well-made, well-acted drama, the serial-killer stuff gave me nightmares. That's entertainment? I can live with the violence in a movie like Drive because I know I don't have to see it week after week, but when it comes to my regularly scheduled TV viewing, I don't want to have to watch between my fingers.

Which brings me to my latest prime-time poison: TV Land's Hot in Cleveland -- and not just because it's got Betty White. Last night I watched the ninth episode of the third season (the one in which Melanie's son and Victoria's daughter were engaged, and Joy was dating a blind 22 year old), and I actually laughed out loud five times. Yes, five. I counted. And although I was by myself, each time I guffawed, I looked around to make sure no one was looking. Home alone, I was actually embarrassed.

But this is my official coming-out day. I love Hot in Cleveland. With the exception of Absolutely Fabulous and Family Guy, it's the only TV show that I've ever actually downloaded on my computer. Here are five reasons why.

1. It's not all about Betty White. Not that I don't love her, but she's not the only draw here. Wendie Malick (Victoria), Jane Leeves (Joy) and Valerie Bertinelli (Melanie) are all comedy vets, and the each pulls her weight here, though Malick probably gets a slightly higher number of laughs per episode. But how can she not, playing an aging soap-opera diva whose biggest rival is Erica Kane herself, Susan Lucci, who has appeared on several episodes of the show?

2. The ladies seem to genuinely dig each other. Unlike those desperate housewives, whom I love, there's no bitching and casual back-stabbing here (or behind-the-scenes rumors of it). As quartet-of-female-friends programming goes, most people would compare Hot in Cleveland to The Golden Girls, and not just because Betty White appeared on both shows. But these golden girls have an altogether different dynamic. Yes, Elka (White) has a sharp tongue, tossing barbs at whomever happens to be in her line of vision, but the relationship between the others is less love-hate than the bond was between Dorothy, Blanche and Rose. There's real I'd-do-anything-for-you-camaraderie here that makes this more like Sex and the City -- only in another city.

3. They're no dummies, but they can be delightfully shallow. Neither the show nor the ladies try to sell Cleveland as anything other than a place where, unlike in L.A., they can be the eye candy everybody wants. I was shocked when Melanie and Joy admitted to being freshly Botoxed in one episode, and last night when Joy reveled in the joys of dating a 22-year-old blind guy because there's no way he'd know that she's not really 26 ("in five weeks"), I thought to myself, I'd do that. When Blanche on The Golden Girls dated a blind guy, she was worried that he could never appreciate her for her beauty, something that never even crossed Joy's mind. It's not exactly progress, but it's a glass-half-full approach that totally works for me.

4. Dead or Alive? Get your answers here. Another great thing about having 90-year-old Betty White in the cast is that they have to come up with age-appropriate love interests for her. It's nice to know that Carl Reiner, Buck Henry and Don Rickles are alive and well, comic timing still in tact. (P.S. It's also nice to see so many stars from earlier eras -- Gregory Harrison, John Schneider, Bonnie Franklin, Laura San Giacomo, Hal Linden, and Huey Lewis, as well as John Mahoney, Wayne Knight, Doris Roberts, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sean Hayes -- back in action in guest appearances.)

5. The ladies date young -- and hot. And if you look like Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick when you're over 50 (and in Malick's case, 60!), why the hell not?

Sexual Preference: Nature, Nurture Or Both?

2012-01-27T11:49:00.001+07:00

Same person, different bodies?

To be or not to be... gay.

That is the question. And according to one of my friends, one whose opinion I not only value but usually agree with, it's a question whose answer -- along with everything that we are, beyond the physical -- is determined solely by our environment. In other words, just as the language(s) with which we are raised determines the one(s) we end up speaking, the environment in which we grow up determines the gender we end up wanting to sleep with.

It was a scintillating debate, during which the beer I was sipping affected the clarity of my dissenting opinion, but I couldn't believe the hardline stance my friend was taking, unwilling to accept any exceptions, much less an alternative point of view.

So the environment in which we are raised determines everything about us then?

"Everything."

I wonder what it was, then, that caused that strange, unexpected stirring that I acknowledged for the first time in the fourth grade. Why do some people first feel it on the playground, while for others, it sneaks up on them in their 20s and later? I don't have any solid answers, but I do believe that this might be where our environment plays a role -- it can factor into when we first notice an attraction to the same sex. Everyone is different, but for reasons that only include the environment in which we are brought up.

Consider this: From birth, two babies spend their first two years in the same room, receiving identical care and nurturing. At the end of two years, would they have the same personalities? Would they cry at the same times, and for the same reasons? Crawl, walk and talk at the same time? React to others in the same way? Have the same capacity for learning? The same inclination to excel, or fail, in academics? The same mood swings?

Of course not. We are all born with unique temperaments. But if what my friend says is correct, there is no such thing as temperament. Everything we are on the inside, not physiologically speaking, is decided after birth.

As huge of an influence as our environment does have on us, the way we process its stimuli and react to it is largely built-in. That's why, for no apparent reason, some kids find clowns terrifying, while others are amused by them. Why some girls are tomboys and others are hyper-feminine. Why some boys like sports and others prefer books. Why some people tend to be doom-and-gloomy while for others, the cup is usually half full. Children who are raised in the same home end up having common characteristics, and wildly divergent ones, too. We say it's our nature to be certain things. Our mothers, who were there from the beginning, would attest to that.

The argument for environment determining everything about our personalities simplifies what we are by suggesting that we are born blank slates. That's not only erroneous; it's dangerous, too. If we are where we live, then out goes the argument that people are born gay, straight, or as Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon suggested last year in The Advocate, bisexual. Or perhaps we are all born as one and "turn" into the others? Does that mean we can "turn" back, too, that the young lady who tried to pick me up last month at DJ Station actually had a chance with me?

Nixon recently made the controversial statement that she chose to be gay. While I won't even pretend to know what goes on inside of the mind of the woman who played my favorite SATC character, I interpret her comment not as being a declaration that our sexuality is something we choose. If it were, I think most of us (not me, but certainly most of my exes) would choose to desire the opposite sex because that would make life so much easier.

I think she was referring to what we do with our sexual preference, which is undoubtedly a choice. That said, I suspect she might be likely to take my friend's side of the nature vs. nurture debate in regards to sexuality. She said that she had never been attracted to a woman before she met her girlfriend. She also described her girlfriend as "a short man with boobs," which I think says a lot about her sexual preference. (I wonder if director Oren Moverman took this into consideration when he cast Nixon and Anne Heche as sisters in Rampart.)

For Nixon, being "gay" seems less about who she is than who she decided to be. Perhaps she'd simply had enough of men and was open to trying something new (without relinquishing her attraction to that which is masculine), which would have nothing to do with who she was born to be. But to suggest that for most gay people it is not who they are, at the core of their very identity, would be to do them a huge disservice while giving homophobes a lot of ammunition.

If you think of being gay, or even straight, as being not about our desires but strictly about the lives we lead, whom we sleep with, then it is inarguably a choice. But I prefer not to get too bogged down in politics, or semantics, or putting a label on myself and others. I'm gay. You are whatever you want me to call you. But there's no hiding from sexual preference. It follows you everywhere, regardless of whom you actually sleep with, or how old you are when you acknowledge it, or act on it.

In a nutshell, sexual preference, is not something we choose, nor is it something that is determined by the environment in which we are raised. That is not to deny the influence of environment on who we are. I think it has its place. I just don't buy that it has the final say, the only say, or any say at all in which gender we are attracted to.

We'll never be sure what, exactly, makes us what we are, until we discover a way to track a baby's thoughts from birth to the point where they can start expressing what they're thinking. Until we reach that scientific breakthrough, though, I think it's pretty safe to say that we don't spend those first weeks, during which we mostly eat, sleep and cry, as the same person, only in different bodies.

As for the idea that our environment makes us gay, or straight, peddling such a notion is tantamount to saying that since gay people learn to be attracted to people of the same sex, they can unlearn it, too. It's not like people haven't been trying to do just that for centuries -- via therapy, via religion, via Scientology -- and failing miserably.

10 Things I Loved About Australian Day

2012-01-26T18:41:00.001+07:00

My first Australian Day has come and nearly gone, and I'm still not 100 percent sure what it is. But then, neither are most of my Australian friends. At first, it was described to me as the Aussie version of the U.S.'s Independence Day, but after Devarni did a mobile-phone Internet search, we decided it had more in common with Columbus Day. January 26 is the anniversary of the day in 1788 when Great Britain populated its island territory in the Southern Hemisphere with convicts.

I'm not sure that's quite it, and I'm a little too exhausted to do in-depth Wikipedia research, but the establishing of a settlement of criminals sounds like as good a reason to celebrate Australian Day as any I can think of at the moment. Here are 10 other reasons why I'm looking forward to the next one.

1. It's a holiday that's just a glorified excuse to get drunk in the sun. You'd think something known as Australian Day would inspire a bit more reverence, or even a touch of patriotism, but the only Australian flag I saw all day was tattooed on a young guy's cheek.

2. Blackcurrant cider Five percent alcohol might not sound like too much, but after three rounds of what tastes like berry-flavoured sparkling water, the sky turned a brighter shade of blue, the music rocked harder, and that over-dressed woman wearing the electric-blue platform shoes started to look, well, not quite so ridiculous.

3. St. Kilda's Bowling Club I'm not sure how I feel about Aussie bowling, which is meant to be played on the outdoor grass courts by old men in white suits rather than all those singlet-wearing whippersnappers, but I can't think of a better place to spend a lazy, tipsy holiday afternoon.

4. Foster the People The guys who gave us "Pumped Up Kicks" may be destined to be one-hit wonders in the U.S., but it's nice to hear their music still playing almost everywhere I drink in Melbourne.

5. Good sports Not the bowling, which looks about as exciting as its U.S. counterpart, but all the people cheerfully getting doused by spilled beer, cider and wine without giving so much as a cross look.

6. Only a few more days until the end of the Australian Open Not that I've been paying attention to it on TV, but when it's over, I won't have to hear another word about it. Not that I've been listening either.

7. Crazy people wearing crazier things See left. Enough said?

8. Friends who take photos when you've forgotten your camera at home Thanks, Devarni, for providing the visuals for this post!

9. Greasy Joe's Despite the skewiff wooden tables that were perfect for causing wine glasses to topple over, this beach-side burger joint wasn't just any burger joint, thanks to Andrew, our adorable 20-year-old waiter who incorrectly guessed my age to be 29. For me, the "Greasy" was the draw, but according to Andrew, remodeling soon will be underway, and the "Greasy" dropped, making it, simply, and generically, Joe's. May its culinary decadence remain in tact.

10. Miami Horror Another reason to love Greasy Joe's. The perfect soundtrack to end a near-perfect first Australian Day.

Adventures in Celibacy (Tim Gunn's and Mine)

2012-01-26T03:09:00.001+07:00

Who cares if Tim Gunn hasn't had sex in 29 years?

Well, I guess I do. Sort of.

But not for the reason you're thinking. In general, I couldn't care less about the sex lives of celebrities, or semi-celebrities, like Tim Gunn. And I'm not even sure what Tim Gunn does.

I've never seen anything he's been on. The only reason I know who he is at all is because in 2006, I was at an Entertainment Weekly party, and a friend of mine started to hyperventilate at the very sight of the prim, snow-haired guy who was striking the "Yes, I'm so important" pose that semi-celebrities tend to assume at such events.

"Oh my God, there's Tim Gunn! I'm obsessed with him!"

"Who's that?" I sort of liked his name, although I would have liked it more had his first name been Peter.

I'm not quite so clueless today, but I'm still not 100 percent sure why he's famous, or almost famous. I know it has something to do with Project Runway, but I've never seen that show, and I probably couldn't pick Heidi Klum out of a red-carpet line-up unless she had Seal on her arm. (And since they're splitting up, she'll be even more anonymous to me in the future.)

So why do I care (sort of) that Gunn has been celibate for 29 years, an announcement he made the other day on his new daytime talk show The Revolution?

Because if he can do it, maybe I can, too. About two weeks ago, I embarked on my own experiment in celibacy. Why? It's nothing like the reason why Gunn supposedly cut all hanky panky out of his life. (I'm assuming that's the case, and he's not applying the Bill Clinton definition of "sexual relations.")

I didn't have an ex who made me feel like I was terrible in bed. And I'm not resorting to sensationalism to boost ratings for my new afternoon chatfest, the one that booted One Life to Live, my favorite soap opera, from ABC's daytime line-up. Yes, I'm still bitter about One Life to Live, but I'm no fool. I suspect that Gunn had an ulterior motive, a reason for his full disclosure, which had everything to do with putting The Revolution on the map.

When celebrities, um, semi-celebrities, start divulging the intimate details of their love lives, or lack thereof, there's always something in it for them. Either they're trying to promote themselves or their latest project, or they're trying to prove something (generally, their heterosexuality -- but Gunn is gay, so it's not that).

Didn't Tom Cruise on Oprah Winfrey's couch teach us anything?

Although I don't know if Gunn's declaration of celibacy will work in his favor, or his show's, I've never read so much about either as I have in the last 24 hours. But I'll see Tim Gunn in hell -- or at the sex club, which is kind of the same thing -- before I watch The Revolution!

Getting back to me and my experiment in celibacy, it came about due to a conversation I had a little under two weeks ago with a friend who told me that she's been abstaining for the last two years. There's no spectacular story involved. It just kind of happened. The choice has been hers completely, but it's not one that she consciously made or even carried out.

I wondered if I could ever do something so drastic. I'm not sure. Two years is a long time, and nobody ever said that time flies when you're not having fun. But I'm always looking for a new challenge, so I made an announcement that Saturday afternoon at Windsor Castle in Melbourne: "I'm going to be celibate for six months." It's not like I'm not already on my way there. I haven't done a thing in 2012 so far.

Big deal, the year just began, said my skeptical friends, who have given me a lot of leeway, saying that the state of celibacy allows everything that doesn't fall under the Clintonian definition of "sexual relations." I'm not sure if I'll actually go for the full six months, even under those cushy conditions. This is only a test, and for now, one that's working in my favor.

When sex is off the table, it makes life so much easier. You can go out to bars and actually enjoy the company of your friends without having one eye on the door to see who's coming and going. You can accept last-minute invitations because plucking and trimming and looking your absolute best under your clothes is no longer so important because no one is going to see what's there anyway.

I can now receive text messages like the one that arrived at 3am this morning -- "What's doing? Miss that hot body of urs" -- and roll over and go back to sleep. And if I do happen to meet someone decent, at least I'll know he's in it for more than sex. We'll have to be friends first, which I hear is the strongest foundation for any relationship. But I'm not expecting Mr. Perfect, a guy who's all talk no action, to walk through that door that I'm no longer paying so much attention to.

Of course, my hygiene, oral and otherwise, remains up to the same high standards, but it's liberating to be able to ease up on everything else. If this means I don't have to shave every other day, and I can let the gray come out without having to worry that I might start to look my age, why stop at six months?

Perhaps in the year 2041 when I have my own daytime talk show to promote, I can stand up and proudly repeat after Gunn: "I haven't haven't had sex in 29 years." Of course, by then, it might no longer be by choice.

Burning Questions: 2012 Oscar Nominations Edition

2012-01-25T04:21:00.000+07:00

After making nary a peep all Oscar season, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (whose title I still can't seem to get right) snags a Best Picture Oscar nomination. Young Adult and its star, Charlize Theron, are left out in the cold. And no Bridesmaids or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in a Best Picture category with nine (?) nominees. Those aren't the only unexpected developments that have me scratching my head after the January 24 announcement of the 2012 Oscar nominees (for 2011 films)!

Who is Demian Bichir, and what did he do with Ryan Gosling's nomination? Every year the Academy likes to throw us at least one WTF nomination, and this year, Bichir's Best Actor nod is it. I've read the Mexican star of A Better Life's name on several prediction websites, and he did score a Screen Actors Guild nod, so it's not a total surprise, but it's the first time in years that I can recall two performers no one knew about one year ago -- and both of them foreign-born! -- being contenders in the Best Actor category.

Is Ryan Gosling destined to be a one-nominee wonder? Snubbed yet again. The Academy must hate him. Or perhaps with three big films this year -- Crazy Stupid Love, The Ides of March and Drive -- he simply may have spread himself too thin. So did Jessica Chastain and Michael Fassbender, but it's easier to triumph over overexposure when you're gunning for a supporting nod (like Chastain, who really should have gotten hers for The Tree of Life), and look what happened to Fassbender (shut out, too).

Did the Academy despise Drive that much? It just goes to show you, when it comes to the Oscars, there's no such thing as a sure thing. After showing up in all of the precursors and hogging the critics prizes, Drive's Albert Brooks wasn't invited to Best Supporting Actor. Drive's shutout in the major categories is more surprising after its excellent showing in the BAFTA nominations, where it made the Best Film and Best Director shortlists, tellingly, without nominations for any of the cast. I guess the film's extreme violence went over better on the British side of the pond.

Was The Descendants really that good? Sorry, but no. I knew George Clooney was a lock (though, as pointed out above, there's really no such thing as one), but Best Picture and Best Director, too? I adore Alexander Payne, and he's been making me take long hard looks at my life for years, but, like Terrence Malick, he's so beloved, and he works so infrequently, that he's on his way to becoming a sort-of default contender. If another director's name had been attached to The Descendants, filmed as is, I probably wouldn't be writing about it right now.

Whom Does Tilda Swinton have to sleep with to get a Best Actress nomination? Since winning a surprise Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Michael Clayton in 2008, Swinton has been overlooked for leading roles in Julia, I Am Love and now We Need to Talk About Kevin. She made it into all of the precursor contests (including the BAFTA nominations, where the film and the director also received citations), but I suspect that the movie's dark subject matter may have scared off the Academy. I know mothers who refuse to see the movie because the idea of a mom unknowingly raising a mass murderer-to-be hits too close to home. So out with Swinton, in with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Rooney Mara.

Speaking of Mara, why so glum? Much has been said of Mara's gloomy appearance on the red carpet all Oscar season. Either she's still in character, or she's simply overwhelmed by all of the sudden attention. I haven't walked a meter in her shoes (not that my feet could fit into them, with my bunion and all), but I imagine that I might be the same way if fame were suddenly thrust on me. She's an excellent actress (one of the best things in The Social Network), so I suspect this is only the beginning for her. She'll grow into it.

Can we go back to five Best Picture nominees, please? Having 10 the previous two years took some getting used to (and I didn't), but nine contenders is just plain weird, especially when one of them isn't The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which means only one Best Actress contender, The Help's Viola Davis, appeared in a Best Picture contender. (Does that immediately make her, and not The Iron Lady's Meryl Streep, the frontrunner?) Inviting so many nominees takes away from the prestige of a Best Picture nomination and dilutes the category of its impact, especially since it almost always comes down to two contenders anyway. This year's: Hugo vs. The Artist.

Is a two-song race much of a race? The other day, a friend of mine suggested that the Academy do away with Best Original Song completely. It's been going downhill since the Disney-dominated '90s, and for most of this century, it's been populated by tunes that hardly anyone knows. I'd be okay with keeping the category if the Academy would revamp the confusing rules that kept Madonna out of the running. But even with W.E.'s "Masterpiece" on the sidelines, there was still plenty of nominations fodder, thanks to Elton John, Mary J. Blige, Glenn Close and others. So how did it come down to songs from Rio and and The Muppets? At least now Elton John and his husband have someone new to bitch over. Look out, Marshall and Sheldon!

10 Great Songs with Famous People in Their Titles

2012-01-24T23:37:00.000+07:00

"Has anyone ever written anything for you?" Stevie Nicks asked on a 1989 B-side.

As far as I know, the answer would be no. Who even "writes" anymore? If not face to face, most communication these days is done by tapping a keypad with your fingers. And texts, instant messages and Facebook wall posts will never count. My ex-boyfriend said he bought me a card for my last birthday, and I presume that he wrote something in it, but he forgot it at home when he came over to my place to prepare my birthday feast, and to this day, I haven't seen it.

Anyway, writing something to me (regardless of the mode of communication) is different than writing something for or about me. Maybe over the course of two decades of dating, there was a poem that I never got to read, but I doubt it, seriously. My first boyfriend did once tell me, shortly after we'd broken up, that he'd written a short story in which we were brothers, but I try not to think about that for obvious reasons that still make me cringe a little if I spend too much time dwelling on it.

I can say with 100 percent certainty, though, that nobody has ever written a hit song for or about me. A lot of my friends call me Jeremiah, but the late Hoyt Axton definitely didn't have me in mind when he wrote, "Jeremiah was a bullfrog," the opening line to Three Dog Night's 1971 hit "Joy to the World." And this Jeremy's never had a gun, so Pearl Jam's 1992 single with which I share a name definitely has nothing to do with me.

But when you are a celebrity, one of the perks of fame is that if you're big enough, you might eventually get a hit song written all for you -- or at the very least, with your name in the title. Some are luckier than others: Barbra Streisand, who deserves a song as beautiful as her voice, had to make do with the execrable 2010 UK dance hit "Barbra Streisand" by Duck Sauce. But what becomes a legend most is a great song befitting an icon. Here are 10 of them.

"Hank Williams You Wrote My Life" Moe Bandy Sometimes when I'm down on love and about to go under, I listen to Bandy's 1975 No. 2 country hit to boost my spirits. It's always good to know that someone knows exactly how you feel.

"Biko" Peter Gabriel Hear the former Genesis frontman name-dropping for a worthy cause, musically and politically speaking, and unlike so many songs named for non-fictional people that are related to them in title only, this 1980 classic beautifully and hauntingly eulogizes murdered South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.

"Bette Davis Eyes" Kim Carnes Bette Davis apparently loved it (the No. 1 1981 version by Carnes -- I'm not sure if she was even aware of Jackie DeShannon's 1974 original), and didn't she seem like the kind of diva who hated everything?

"Faron Young" Prefab Sprout If you're going to name drop a vintage Nashville singer, you might as well take your elegant pop sound for a ride in the country. The result, which, incidentally, appeared on Prefab Sprout's 1985 album called Steve McQueen, sounds like nothing I ever heard its late namesake '50s-to-early '70s country star do, but it was still one of the band's best songs.

"Monty Got a Raw Deal" R.E.M. Some icons, like the late four-time Oscar nominee and star of A Place in the Sun and From Here to Eternity, need no last name. For those still not in the know, three of the loveliest minutes on 1992's Automatic for the People, R.E.M.'s creative zenith, were all about Montgomery Clift.

"Cleopatra, Queen of Denial" Pam Tillis Why not throw in some clever wordplay while paying homage? (FYI, Tillis, like Carnes, had a big hit with a Jackie DeShannon cover, but "When You Walk in the Room," which went to No. 2 on Billboard's country singles chart in 1994, the year after "Cleopatra" peaked at No. 11, did so without any celebrity assistance.)

"Brian Wilson Said" Tears for Fears If you can't be him, write a song about him that totally does both the man and his musical genius justice.

"Clint Eastwood" Gorillaz The perfect marriage of cool star and cool song, even if one doesn't really have anything to do with the other. If anyone ever gets around to writing a song for me, I hope it's Damon Albarn.

"Marcus Garvey" Burning Spear/Sinead O'Connor More name-dropping for a worthy cause. The reggae band Burning Spear paid tribute to the titular Jamaican hero on its 1975 album of the same name, but it was O'Connor's version on Throw Down Your Arms, her excellent 2005 album of reggae covers, that introduced me to both the song and the man.

"Grace Kelly" Mika Melodramatic and campy in honor of a screen icon who was neither.

Is George Clooney a Good Actor? (Or Is He Just Brilliant At Playing Himself Onscreen and Off?)

2012-01-24T03:19:00.000+07:00

The other day, a film-critic friend and I had dissenting opinions -- several of them -- and our healthy debates, naturally, turned to the subject of George Clooney, one of my favorite actors. The other guy's take on the soon-to-be-quadruple Oscar nominee for acting (and likely two-time winner come February 26) was one I've heard countless times: "Doesn't George Clooney always play himself?"

Wait, that guy he was playing in Syriana was George Clooney? I do not think so, and if he was, then he gained 30 pounds and f**ked up his back on the set for nothing (if you consider a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nothing). My friend concurred (which didn't make up for all the terrible things he'd said about the music in Drive), but still...

I considered three of my favorite Clooney performances -- in Intolerable Cruelty, in Michael Clayton and in Up in the Air -- and I had to admit that there's a common thread stitched into all of them. The characters may have had different names, occupations and crosses to bear, but they were all blessed with The Clooney Charm, that undefinable and undeniable thing we've all seen on the red carpet, in interviews and at the winner's podium at so many award shows. But let's not forget, what you see is not necessarily what you get: The off-screen Clooney, the public persona, could very well be his greatest performance of all, and if it is, it trumps anything Daniel Day-Lewis has ever done.

It's the charisma and suave likability of the Clooney character (in real life and in reel life) that made his kitchen staredown with Ryan Gosling in The Ides of March, or the fact that he looked a little bit old in The Descendants (the one that should bring Academy Award No. 2 any week now) so unsettling this Oscar season. That said, even when he veers slightly off his usual course, there's still no mistaking The Clooney Charm (yes, capitalized because it's an almost-human force of George's nature and demands proper-noun treatment).

But here's the thing you need to know about George Clooney: He's not Meryl Streep. He doesn't specialize in every accent under the sun or mimicking historical figures and pop-cultural icons. He doesn't play the bad guy, he doesn't time travel, and he doesn't go gay just because it's one of the easiest ways to catch Oscar's attention while screaming, "Look, I'm playing against type."

That doesn't mean he can't pull off all of the above, and some day he might. For now, his key career roles are normal men in difficult or unusual situations, real people. It's no wonder that many of his characters resemble the actor himself. But he's not the first highly regarded screen performer to play variations on a theme that is himself. Katharine Hepburn did the same thing for much of her career -- Wasn't her character in Summertime (left) basically her character in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, 10 years younger, unmarried without children, and vacationing in Venice? -- and she was awarded four Oscars for what appeared to be a lack of effort.

And that's where actors like Clooney, and Hepburn, mislead us, mess with our minds. It's often been said that actors like them are so good because they makes it look so easy. It's a little cliche but not untrue. As great as Daniel Day-Lewis is, I wonder if he could play an average Joe onscreen and impress anyone. Not playing himself (and taking Method acting to unbelievable extremes) is his hook, and that comes with its own set of potential mood killers. When you watch him onscreen, you are always fully aware that you are experiencing great acting. But it rarely looks like anything you'd see in the real world.

He would have turned a movie like The Descendants into a one-man show: Portrait of a Lawyer Falling Apart Spectacularly. Cue Oscar buzz! With Clooney taking the lead as Matt King, I felt like I was eavesdropping on conversations between real people while watching The Descendants -- which is the best thing I can say about a somewhat overrated film and my least favorite of director Alexander Payne's last four efforts for reasons that had everything to do with the fact that he made Hawaii look like a drab place that I never want to visit, the annoying voice over that vanished about 30 minutes in, and a punch in the forehead that led to a bruise under the left eye.

Which is not to say that the performances were uniformly great: The best friend of Matt's wife, awkwardly portrayed by Mary Birdsong, went so over the top in her grief over the news of her BFF's certain death that she didn't seem sad at all, just histrionic for the sake of making a mark. She could have learned something from Judy Greer, an actress previously best known by me for being one of Charlie Sheen's many scores on Two and a Half Men, who aced her breakdown scene later in the film.

I do understand Birdsong's situation: Actors in smallish roles have to work hard to stand out, while the star can underplay and make his or her mark over the course of the entire film. In The Descendants, as in most of the Clooney films I've seen, even when the scene calls for heavier emoting than usual -- the one in which Matt bids his unfaithful wife a tearful adieu as she lies dying in a hospital bed -- Clooney does it the way a real person would, without snacking on the scenery.

So maybe he's not as daring as his good friend Brad Pitt when it comes to choosing roles, or he doesn't possess the range of Johnny Depp, to name two of his contemporaries. But as a singer, neither did Frank Sinatra, who is still considered to be one of the greatest of all time. Unlike Nat King Cole, he didn't tackle a lot of stylistic ground, but I've never heard anyone fault him for that. You don't have to hit high notes, low notes and everything in between to be a standout singer. You just have to master your own possibly-limited range.

And so it goes with Clooney. If you want to watch chameleons in action, I can tell you where to find them. But there's an art to playing the regular guy, too, even if he looks a lot like the actor playing him. If you're going to be yourself over and over onscreen, or variations on a character type that strongly resembles you -- or rather, the public's perception of you -- you have to be entertaining while you're at it, and like Clooney, you have to do it better than anybody else.

Five Songs That Were Ahead of Their Time

2012-01-23T04:55:00.001+07:00

Sunday was a day of rediscovery for me. It had been years since I listened to Doolittle, the 1989 breakthrough album by Pixies, in its entirety. So many that I'd nearly forgotten what a fantastic album it is. Then yesterday, on the way home from my morning run, my iPod shuffle landed on "Debaser," the opening track, and it all came flooding back to me.

What was it about Doolittle that made it such a perfect album, so much so that when I started to listen to it for the first time in years, my love for it picked up right where it left off? Is it that the record reminds me so much of one of the best times of my life (my college years at the University of Florida, when I was living on my own for the first time), or is it really that good?

It's probably a mixture of both. Though the songs on Doolittle will always bring me back to a specific period in my life, they still hold up today. Which got me to thinking about timeless music, songs from the last century that could easily be coming out today and not seem at all out of place. Not only were they completely of their time, but before it, too. They could belong to 2012 -- or 10 years from now. Here are five that will be on my Monday playlist.

Donna Summer "I Feel Love" (1977) Sexy without even trying to be, which, come to think of it, is the very definition of "sexy" -- in any decade.

David Bowie "Sound and Vision" (1977) No monster of rock produced more classic songs that are still standing the test of any time than Bowie. This particular one just happens to be my personal favorite.

Tom Tom Club "Genius of Love" (1981) This track, as ageless as anything Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth did with Talking Heads, was a decent-sized hit when it was released but perhaps a bit too arty to be the blockbuster it surely would have been 24 years later, around the time Mariah Carey sampled it for the hook of her massive No. 1 single "Fantasy."

Talk Talk "Life's What You Make It" (1985) Close your eyes, or simply ignore Paul Webb's dated layered ensemble in the video (yes, there was a time when I would have killed for that fringe leather jacket!), and you could be in '85, '95, '05, or 2015.

Elastica "Connection" (1994) It's nearly 20 years old, but it can still cold rock a party (to borrow a not-so-timeless phrase from the timeless rapper MC Lyte) from Buenos Aires to Sydney. Believe me, I've seen it happen with my very own eyes.

The Truth About Being Gay

2012-01-22T05:21:00.002+07:00

Several hours ago, my brother Alexi sent me a link to a Gawker article titled "The Secrets Gay Men Don't Want Straight People to Know." Even if the guy in the photo that accompanied the link hadn't been so adorable, how could I resist a hook like that?

It was an interesting read. Not because it was particularly insightful, or even completely accurate, but because as I read it, I couldn't figure out whether the title was supposed to be ironic. Take this "secret": "Not All Gay Couples Are Monogamous." Um, duh! Don't the holy rollers always trot that one out when they're sharing their laundry list of why gay men don't deserve the right to legally marry?

Not only is it old news, but it also ignores the important point that if women weren't generally inclined to demand marital monogamy, denying their men the right to pursue their manifest sexual destiny (though I should also point out that women cheat, too), straight couples would be equally non-monogamous.

What I'm trying to say is this: The inclination to not be monogamous isn't a gay condition. It's a human one. Whether we choose monogamy or not (and I do believe it's up to individual couples to decide if it's right for them), human beings are not meant to be monogamous. Gay men are just more honest about it.

I won't delve too deeply (pun intended) into what the article claims about "bottoming" and amyl nitrate, or the link between the two (one I only recently found out existed), except to say that you really can't believe everything you read on Gawker. Overall, though, the list was a bit too focused on sex, as if that's all there is to the lives of gay men. It also assumes that straight people are totally clueless about what goes on inside the minds of gay men -- or at least what's rumored to be going on. We want to f**k all the hot straight boys? Who doesn't know that?

But the Gawker piece did save the best for last. The one revelation that made me sit up and cheer on the inside was the final one: "We Don't Love Drag Queens As Much As You Do." Yes! I've actually expressed my distaste for drag on this very blog, and it wasn't until last year when I saw several first-rate drag shows in Thailand that I started to warm up to it.

Alas, it was a short-lived thaw. A couple of weeks into Bangkok, I was back to avoiding the drag shows like the plague, showing up at DJ Station no earlier than midnight, just to be sure that the drag queens were safely tucked away offstage.

In general, I find drag queens to be totally tiresome, and I don't have a single gay friend who doesn't agree, in general. But I think many straight people feel more comfortable with that over-the-top sexless gay persona. It's the same reason why they laughed the hardest at Jack on Will & Grace, while all the gays were gaga for Karen.

If I can draw that uncomfortable gay/straight-black/white parallel, it's kind of like the way white people seem to prefer their black male superstars to be somewhat asexual. (Usher is a rare exception, and Prince always got by on a sort of androgynous sex appeal.) That's why the biggest ones usually make us laugh, or they play the avuncular/grandfatherly figure, dispensing sage advice.

One could make a similar case for actresses not named Halle Berry or, for a very brief window in the '90s, Angela Bassett. Aside from Berry's performance in Monster's Ball, when was the last time a black actress was Oscar-nominated for playing a sexy character, the bombshell? We've had a decade of black female Academy Award nominees playing maternal figures, damaged goods and the help. Now I want to see Viola Davis as the sexy femme fatale. I mean, have you seen her legs? She could totally pull it off!

Then there's Will Smith, who, incidentally, played gay but didn't kiss the guy onscreen in his first major film, Six Degrees of Separation. He hasn't been gay for pay since, but in a way, that performance set the stage for a career that would be largely sex-free. Smith is a handsome guy, but could you imagine him ever being named People's Sexiest Man Alive? He's black, he's beautiful, and he's covered pretty much every Hollywood base except romantic lead. One wonders where his career would be today if he'd gone all the way in his first big-screen gig and followed a more challenging path.

Even Denzel Washington, who has been named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive and who was said to have dissuaded Smith from kissing a guy onscreen in Six Degrees, has spent most of his A-list years in action flicks. Mo Better Blues was one of the few times that he was allowed to -- or he allowed himself to -- let his sex appeal drive a film, or where he played a character who was defined by his sensuality, or his sexuality. What if he and Tom Hanks had switched roles in Philadelphia? Recent Golden Globe winner Idris Elba is every bit as good-looking as Smith, Washington and Ryan Gosling, and he's talented, too. It will be interesting to see if he can break through the glass ceiling that has trapped sexy black actors like Terrence Howard and Djimon Hounsou on the wrong side.

Getting back to the drag queens, like the asexual black superstars, they represent a dominant factor in a minority world that people from the majority world feel comfortable embracing. The campier they are, the better -- if you're straight. For this gay man (and if the Gawker article is correct, many others), the great irony of drag queens is that one of the quintessential elements of gay life is largely for the entertainment of straight people, sort of like Adam Lambert.

It's a twisted kind of acceptance, but we'll take what we can get.

And the 2012 Oscar Nominees Will Be...

2012-01-22T00:28:00.001+07:00

Time flies. But you already knew that. Every year around this time, though, I'm reminded of just how quickly. Doesn't it feel like just yesterday that it was The Social Network vs. The King's Speech in the horse race for the 2011 Best Picture Oscar?

It's been an entire year, though, and in just a couple of days (January 24, to be exact), the 2012 Academy Award nominees will be announced, which means it's time for my predictions. Having up to 10 Best Picture candidates takes much of the fun out of trying to predict them, so I'll leave that to other bloggers and just say that in 2012, it will be The Artist vs. Hugo, with The Artist likely to be this year's The King's Speech.

And since I'm more interested in the art of acting than that of directing, I'll only say that Best Director is a two-man contest between Martin Scorcese (Hugo) and Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist). I'm giving the edge to Scorcese because I couldn't bear to sit through another acceptance speech by Hazanavicius, whose European "charm" we'll already have to endure -- again! -- when The Artist takes Best Picture.

Which leaves the acting categories among the major Oscar races. Here's who I predict will be invited to the 84th Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles on February 26 as nominees.

BEST ACTRESS
Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs)
Viiola Davis (The Help)
Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)
Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn)

Let's discuss: Nods for Streep, Davis and Williams are as certain as death, taxes and Helen Mirren being the sexiest woman in the Kodak Theatre if she shows up as an Oscar presenter. Frankly, I think Streep gave half a great performance. If only her movie had focused strictly on the iron lady and left the old one out of it. Close made a valiant effort, but her performance just didn't make a convincing case for Albert Nobbs' manhood.

Meanwhile, Swinton's numb, grieving mom reminded me a lot of the one that earned Nicole Kidman a nomination last year for Rabbit Hole, but her stoicism never completely crossed over into the full-on rage that would have made her character seem like a real live woman and not just a sort of screen archetype, a martyr suffering for someone else's sins. I'm still rooting for her to make the shortlist, though, because the former Best Supporting Actress deserves to sit at the leading-ladies table for once.

In a perfectly fair world, Streep and Close would sit this one out (Streep will have other shots for her third Oscar, and Close could snag Best Original Song for the tune she co-wrote for her film and finally get the Oscar that has unfairly eluded her for nearly three decades), and Charlize Theron (Young Adult) and Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia), who should have been this year's Natalie Portman, would be in it to win it.

BEST ACTOR
Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
George Clooney (The Descendants)
Michael Fassbender (Shame)
Ryan Gosling (Drive)
Brad Pitt (Moneyball)

Let's discuss: Poor Leonardo DiCaprio. If it were 2010, the star of Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar would be a shoo-in, but I think Invictus may have marked the unofficial end of Eastwood's long run as an Oscar-bait director. As for Gosling, after snubbing him in 2011 for Blue Valentine, doing so again after he had such a great year as the star of three well-received films, would be like a vote of disapproval from Oscar, especially since his Blue Valentine costar is going to get her second nomination in a row. Wasn't losing People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive title to Bradley Cooper punishment enough?

If Fassbender gets in, it will be the most beautiful Best Actor line-up ever, but I wouldn't complain if a less conventional looker -- 50/50's Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Woody Harrelson, who owned Rampart's corrupt cop with a heart of tarnished gold -- takes his spot.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Berenice Bejo (The Artist)
Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life)
Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids)
Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs)
Octavia Spencer (The Help)

Let's discuss: Sorry ladies who are not named Octavia Spencer. You don't stand a chance against The Help's comic relief, who was equally affecting in her dramatic moments. The only thing that could make me care about this category would be the surprise inclusion of Melancholia's Charlotte Gainsbourg and/or Bridesmaids' Rose Bryne instead of McCarthy (no offense to McCarthy, an ace TV star whom I've been loving long time).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn)
Albert Brooks (Drive)
Jonah Hill (Moneyball)
Nick Nolte (Warrior)
Christopher Plummer (Beginners)

Let's discuss: It's Plummer vs. Brooks, but let's face it: It should be Plummer's to lose -- and it probably is. He played a gay man coming out of the closet in his twilight years without a hint of camp or cliche. If the avuncular Brooks hadn't been cast so wildly against type, would he even be in the running? His mob boss in Drive was menacing enough, but didn't Joe Pesci used to do that sort of thing in his sleep?

Take It Off? No Way!: Why I Just Can't Sleep Nude

2012-01-21T04:32:00.000+07:00

I don't know how some people do it.

At 11pm or midnight every evening, they slip into something more comfortable (or rather, they slip out of it), jump into bed (unaccompanied, or not), and proceed to sleep soundly for eight or so hours -- sometimes on their backs! Good God, what are they thinking?!

It's not so much the uninterrupted sleep that I don't get, although I'd kill for even four hours of it nightly, or sleeping in any position other than on one's side, which is least likely to induce nightmares, night terrors or sleep paralysis. (Doesn't sleeping with me sound like such a joy?) It's the part where they take off all of their clothes.

Now anyone who knows me knows that I'm not exactly a prude. Had it come out about a year later, I would have sworn Ke$ha had written "Take It Off" about me. I'll gladly doff my top, unprompted, jump onstage at G.O.D. in Bangkok with the go-go boys (which I've actually done), and proudly display to the 3am after-hours crowd what pilates gave me. But when it comes to sleeping in the nude, or even without a shirt, there's something about it that just seems so... so, immodest. And this is from someone who finds underwear totally encumbering!

Well, maybe I am a bit of a prude, after all. Or maybe just overly modest when I'm without the benefit of whiskey to tear down my walls and my inhibitions. I didn't even get undressed for that Thai massage that went too far!

I suppose sleeping in the buff would come easier to me if I were, um, buffer, and if I didn't generally sleep alone. I used to have a boyfriend who drove me crazy by insisting on taking a shower after we had sex. It would have been equally baffling if he'd concluded afterglow by getting out of bed, putting on his clothes, and getting back into bed.

Getting dressed after sex is the sort of thing you do if you don't plan on spending the night, or if you're sneaking out before the other person wakes up (which, come to think of it, I saw Charlize Theron do twice in Young Adult), or if you decide to stay for breakfast after morning sex. I'm sure some people do it, but I can't think of any circumstance under which eating in the nude would be appropriate.

I always dress for meals, and not just dinner. I may not make them black-tie occasions, but I always remember to cover at least 75 percent of my body. I generally do whenever I'm home alone. I often hear people talk about how they like to lounge around the house naked. But why? What purpose does that serve? Friends once dedicated an entire episode to it, and I still don't understand why Rachel couldn't sing Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby" in some cute Juicy couture and still feel like a natural, liberated woman.

I'll jog around the parks of Buenos Aires with nothing on but running pants and trainers (which is really so bad for the skin, and that's why I've never done it in Australia), but I refuse to run around the house naked, or even shirtless. I know it doesn't make much sense, but it's another one of my strange quirks. I just accept it and live with it. Besides, isn't a t-shirt and track pants (my normal at-home uniform) comfortable enough to watch TV, eat a sandwich and do housework in? Vacuuming in the nude just seems so unnecessary when I can do it in my track pants and a "Mr. Perfect" t-shirt.

And then, of course, there's the more morbid issue of unexpected visitors in the middle of the night, particularly the angel of death. I'm less concerned with leaving a beautiful corpse than I am with leaving a well-dressed one. Death will not become me if my junk is exposed for all the forensics team to see.

On a less gruesome note, I don't own a robe, or anything I can slip into quickly in case of an unexpected act of nature or arson, or unexpected visitors who are not the angel of death and who are not looking for a booty call. So if there should be an earthquake, a fire, or something equally catastrophic in the middle of the night, I'm always dressed for the occasion.

I could go on an on about all the reasons I prefer to sleep with something separating my skin from the sheets, but I just realized that I'm right now dressed for the stage at G.O.D., and I really need to put a shirt on. Now where is "Mr. Perfect"? If I can't wear the guy (who I'm pretty sure does not exist), I might as well wear the shirt!

Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: 5 Things I Loved About Charlize Theron in 'Young Adult'

2012-01-19T13:49:00.000+07:00

This afternoon as I was purchasing my ticket to see Young Adult (which opened today in Australia), I found myself thinking about the strange beast that the film's star Charlize Theron calls her career. Never solidly A-list and not exactly B-list, the actress has spent the last decade or so with one leg up and the other right below. Though she looks great straddling both sides of mid-celebrity, her filmography is clunky indeed.

Yes, she's famous, but she never quite became a marquee star, someone who can send bodies flocking to the cinema. (Quick! Name five of her movies.) And she's an Academy Award winner (for 2003's Monster), with one follow-up nomination (for 2005's North Country) and possibly another on the way for Young Adult (despite her nicely detailed work, though, I just don't see it happening, not with the movie's light touch and skimpy box office), but she's not exactly what you'd call Oscar bait.

Her Young Adult director Jason Reitman, who is becoming one of my favorites, has a similar problem. He collected several Oscar nominations, including two Best Director nods, for his last two films -- Juno and Up in the Air -- yet he's not in the pantheon of young directors that critics and moviegoers fawn over and call visionary, a circle that includes David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Thomas Anderson.

Maybe it's his deceptively simple film-making style. He relies on dialogue (this time, as with Juno, Diablo Cody's), mood and characterization rather than fancy technique and special effects. And his work is less sobering than that of Alexander Payne, who also makes human-interest movies that are more interested in humans and human behavior than plot. Nothing about Young Adult screams, "Important Film -- This way!"

But his movies say so much, and Young Adult is no different. I love the statement it makes about past, present and future and how the way we perceive the lives of others is often so much different from the reality of those lives. Watching it reminded me of my 10-year high-school reunion and how people assume that if you've moved to the big city and have a seemingly glamorous career, all is well in your world. It ain't necessarily so. And when Theron's Mavis Gary wondered about the people in small-town Minnesota who make being happy seem so easy (and she did so without judgement or envy, just bemused awe), I nodded in agreement. It's a puzzle that keeps me up at night.

I also love that despite her awkward career, Reitman cast Theron in the role of "young adult" fiction writer Mavis. A lesser, more commercially minded director probably would have gone with Cameron Diaz, who surely would have turned Mavis all sexy-cutesy and totally glossed over her lost wounded soul. Mavis is one tragically messed-up woman, but thanks to Theron, she's still one of my favorite screen characters of the last year.

Why am I so enamoured? Here are five good reasons.

1. Mavis is me, an insecure writer at a personal and professional crossroads. I can so relate. But don't worry. I'm not about to pack up and head to Kissimmee, Florida, on a whim, determined to reclaim the one that got away (he doesn't even exist), especially if it means breaking up his happy home.

2. She can say things like "Sometimes to heal, a few people have to get hurt," and I still root for her. Mavis is easily the most appealing rom-com anti-heroine since Julia Roberts plotted to steal Cameron Diaz's fiance in My Best Friend's Wedding. And like the prize in that film (one Dermot Mulroney), Patrick Wilson is easy on the eyes, and his Buddy character seems like great husband/father material. But if Mavis can't do better than him, at least she can do more interesting.

3. She's a messy drunk who's even messier with a hangover. A few days ago, a hungover friend of mine was complaining because she never gets hangovers. I imagined her rising and shining -- literally! -- after a night of heavy drinking, smelling and looking like roses. Don't you just hate people like that?! I enjoyed each scene of Mavis waking up fully dressed and face down on her bed. To make matters worse -- but really, better -- she'd reach over for the liter of Coke in bed beside her and take several big gulps. Once, she even burped afterwards. This is how we (i.e., normal folks) do it.

4. She cleans up well. Yeah, we love a sloppy, realistic screen drunk, but who do we love more? Someone who can dust herself off, hit the shower and after some intense primping, look even better than she did the night before, before she started drinking.

5. She doesn't need a man. I knew where Mavis and Matt (Patton Oswalt) were heading from the moment he limped into the movie. (Actually, he was sitting down when we first saw him, but if you've seen the film, you get my drift.) I'm glad that in the end, though, Mavis figured out that there's no shame in driving into your next chapter with no one riding shotgun, without the benefit of a man -- or a game plan. That's my girl!

Elton John Vs. Madonna (Again!): And the Winner Is...

2012-01-17T11:23:00.001+07:00

May the best man win: He did!

Elton John is at it again. This time it's him against Madonna, and as usual, he started it.

On the red carpet at Sunday's Golden Globes, when Carson Daly asked him about the Best Original Song contest, which pitted him against Madonna, Mary J. Blige, Chris Cornell and Glenn Close, Elton, who once called Madonna's "Die Another Day" the worst James Bond song ever, said, "“Madonna hasn't got have a f**king chance of winning tonight”. Fighting words? "Accurate words."

Oops! Madonna won - twice. After the interview, Daly told Madonna that he'd just spoken to Elton. "Was he wearing a dress?" she asked. Check.

After her Globe win -- check mate! -- Elton's partner, David Furnish, launched an anti-Madonna tirade on, of all places, Facebook.

"Madonna. Best song???? F**k off!!!... Madonna winning Best Original Song truly shows how these awards have nothing to do with merit. Her acceptance speech was embarrassing in it's narcissism. And her criticism of Gaga shows how desperate she really is."

Come on, guys! The best song won. It's not like "Hello Hello" (from Gnomeo & Juliet) was a pop masterpiece, to borrow the title of Madonna's Globe-winning W.E. song. "Masterpiece" isn't either, but it's the only one of the two that I ever want to listen to again.

As for Madonna's acceptance speech, yes, the faux-British accent was distracting, but what she said was no more narcissistic than Elton's general attitude (though in this case, he did predict to Daly that Blige would win) and Furnish's ire over losing. Aren't award shows all about narcissism anyway? Madonna had better be proud of her film (W.E., her second directorial effort) because nobody else is. And besides, fake humility on celebrities is as outdated as Sally Field's curly, wispy bangs when she gave her "You like me, right now, you like me" Oscar acceptance speech back in 1985. It looks worse than ruffles and sequins.

I adore Elton John, but perhaps it's time for him to stop publicly dissing his fellow pop stars (George Michael, Kylie Minogue, Shania Twain) as if his shit doesn't occasionally stink.

Predictability Rules at the 2012 Golden Globes: Are the Oscar Winners Already a Done Deal?

2012-01-16T14:25:00.001+07:00

Can Oscar resist a Gallic beauty in a tux? I hope not.

It's beginning to look a lot like it will be yet another predictable year at the Oscars.

Although the nominations won't be announced until Tuesday, January 24, a clear pattern has already emerged. After the January 13 Broadcast Film Critics Association's Critics Choice Awards and the Hollywood Foreign Press's Golden Globe Awards two days later, the 2012 Oscar frontrunners are all but set in stone.

Sound familiar? It should. In recent years, there's been little variety among the picks made by the Critics Choice Awards, the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Oscars. Win one, win all -- at least for the most part. You'd have to go way back to 2003, when Adrien Brody, in a twist that I didn't see coming until they showed his Oscar clip, stole Best Actor right out from under the noses of Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt) and Daniel Day-Lewis (The Gangs of New York) for a true Oscar miracle.

Since then, Oscar has kept his surprises mostly to the odd bone -- an out-of-left-field nomination -- thrown to an actor or actress who hadn't figured much into the precursor contests (Laura Finney for The Savages, Tommy Lee Jones for In the Garden of Elah). This year looks to be pretty much the same. Best Picture and Best Director seem likely to go to The Artist and Martin Scorcese for Hugo, respectively, on February 26, and Globe winners George Clooney (Best Actor, Drama, for The Descendants), Octavia Spencer (Best Supporting Actress for The Help) and Christopher Plummer (Best Supporting Actor for Beginners) should start editing their Oscar acceptance speeches.

For Oscar's consideration!

Not that I have a problem with those choices -- Spencer and Plummer are more than deserving, and I'll see about Clooney this week when I finally see The Descendants, which just opened in Melbourne on January 14 -- but a bit more friendly competition would be nice. Will we ever again get to see Brad Pitt -- star of three Best Picture nominees since 2006, and this year, the likely star of two (Moneyball and The Tree of Life) -- walking onstage to accept anything? It's been 16 years since his Best Supporting Actor Globe win for 12 Monkeys! Always a nominee (well, this year's Moneyball nod, a foregone conclusion from the minute the film opened last September, will be only his third bridesmaid experience), never a winner. At least Bridesmaids' Melissa McCarthy's Oscar traction -- which I still think should have gone to co-star Rose Byrne -- apparently stops here.

Right now the only race that appears to be an actual race is Best Actress. Viola Davis (The Help) took the Critics Choice Award on Friday, and Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) and Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn) won the drama and comedy Best Actress Globes, respectively, but I'm still going to go not so far out on a limb and declare this the year of Streep. It's hers to lose.

Which means that the only remaining excitement left this Oscar season will likely come on January 24, when we find out who's in the running. I'm still hoping for a last-minute Best Actress surge for Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia) -- as much as it pains me to say it, she, not Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs), should take that fifth slot alongside Davis, Streep, Williams and Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin). Meanwhile, Dunst's co-star Charlotte Gainsbourg, like Byrne, would be a lovely addition to the Best Supporting Actress roster.

And if there's any justice in the Best Actor race, we've seen almost the last of Leonardo DiCaprio (J. Edgar), and Ryan Gosling (Drive), Woody Harrelson (Rampart) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (50/50) -- give or take Michael Fassbender (Shame) or Michael Shannon (Take Shelter), whom I predict to snag spots 4 and 5 if DiCaprio is left out -- will duke it out for the fourth and fifth Best Actor slots. They'd join Clooney, Pitt and Globe comedy winner Jean Dujardin (The Artist), who I'm secretly hoping will triumph with the Academy because he's so handsome, and it's about time that Oscar, who occasionally goes home with Gallic beauties, bestows that honor on a male one.

The movies, like life, are full of surprises. Shouldn't the Oscar race be, too?

Burning Questions: 'One Life to Live' Finale Edition

2012-01-15T02:20:00.000+07:00

WTF?! Oh my Victor Lord Jr.! He's alive!

Although I would give the Friday the 13th One Life to Live series finale an A for almost awesome (the final frame of Victor Lord Jr. was a truly WTF moment that I can't imagine anyone saw coming and the perfect cap to nearly 44 years of Friday cliffhangers), that doesn't mean there weren't enough gaping holes in the weeks leading up to it for me to fit my entire body through and some true head scratchers. Here are 10 of them.

1. If Todd Manning is smart enough to get Cole Thornhart out of jail free, why did he bungle his own cover-up? I'm still trying to figure out why we needed to spend so much time with Langston and Markko, two characters nobody missed or ever really cared about, on finale day, but more than that, how did Todd get Cole off of that hospital gurney and into the free world? And if Cole's showing up in L.A. as Starr's "bodyguard" (which was so ridiculous, though the Cole recast -- the magnificent Van Hughes -- looked cute in a suit) means that he's cleared of Eli Clarke's murder, how did Todd manage to beat someone else's murder rap? Had he applied the same expert cunning to his own situation, Tomas Delgado would have been toast the minute Todd decided to frame him for the "murder" of Victor Lord Jr.

2. Don't LaBoulaie and Llanfair have security? Kidnappers, murderers and crazy people (including, most recently, Allison Perkins) come and go in and out of two of Llanview's top three estates as they please because there's no security around to stop John McBain and his police force from interrupting Todd and Blair upstairs at LaBoulaie, mid-coitus. That said, the look on Blair's face when McBain told Manning that he was under arrest for the "murder" of Victor Lord Jr. was priceless. Undermined yet again by her horrible taste in men and her raging sex drive!

3. So Marty Saybrooke is a murderer then? Kudos to head writer Ron Carlivati for finally fixing Jessica's paternity, but couldn't he also have undone the botched exit of Marty, one of OLTL's heritage characters? Her portrayer, who is the only OLTL actress other than Erika Slezak to win more than one Daytime Emmy (please correct me if I'm wrong), deserved so much more.

4. Do guns cause only minor flesh wounds? Both Viki and Bo Buchanan were shot, on the brink of death, and out of the hospital in what appeared to be only a day or two. I understand that the show needed to wrap things up outside of their hospital rooms, but it's not like these characters, like the actors who portray them, aren't in their 60s! Also, a final scene between the Buchanan brothers -- Bo and Clint -- was in order, especially since they were both at the hospital making record-breaking recoveries at the same time. Maybe they caught up in heaven, off screen.

5. What happened to Troy and Lindsay? Perhaps these questions were to be answered in Prospect Park's online version of OLTL, but since that won't be happening, does that mean Troy McIver got away with the attempted murder of Bo (a crime for which Roxy's biological son Schuyler is rotting in Statesville) and the kidnapping of his wife Nora, Llanview's District Attorney? And after jumping through Bo's hoops to prove herself a changed woman, did Lindsay Rappaport really take the car and run? Not that she didn't have every reason to. If Cole can get sprung from prison after killing Eli, and Matthew doesn't get to rack up a behind-bars tab for murdering Eddie Ford in cold blood (maybe months in a coma is punishment enough?), she shouldn't have to serve another minute for offing Spencer Truman.

6. Speaking of comas, does Nigel lapse into one at night? He must, otherwise he would have heard all of the ruckus going on in the Llanfair living room the night Allison Perkins came for a visit and dropped the bombshell of Jessica's true paternity, shot Viki and nearly caused Clint's Stacy Morasco heart to stop beating.

7. Who "killed" Victor Lord Jr. ? Since he's undead, it certainly wasn't Todd. And since Allison Perkins was behind bars, it wasn't her either. I'm assuming she was either masterminding the duping of Llanview from Statesville (major eye roll!), or she uncovered the plot after her Llanfair shooting spree. I guess we'll find out when the Mannings and McBain cross over to General Hospital in February, but doesn't that show already have enough storyline problems and gaping plot holes of its own? Of course, I'd be willing to sit through it for Tea Delgado vs. Sonny Corinthos. Pretty please?

8. Dear Rex, Gigi and Shane: Leaving so soon? Do art schools in London really send out acceptance letters giving students all of one day to pack up and relocate to a new country? That's nearly as implausible as Christian Vega getting that job offer in Spain and having to accept and move there in one night, or direct flights from Llanview, Pennsylvania, to Rio de Janiero, or plastic surgery that can make you look exactly like someone else.

9. Is Judith Light OLTL's only heritage character? (And is that 1979 clip of her on the witness stand the only one remaining from her six-year stint on the show?) I know the actress formerly best known as housewife by day, hooker by night Karen Wolek declined the invitation to appear on OLTL in its final months, but she's hardly the only vet that we would have loved to see. What about Michael Storm as Larry Wolek, Ellen Holly as Carla Hall and Al Freeman Jr. as Ed Hall? They're all still alive (R.I.P. Jacqueline Courtney, aka Pat Ashley, one of my all-time favorite OLTL heroines) and much more worthy of finale screen time than Langston and Markko.

10. Are Kassie DePaiva (Blair) and James DePaiva (ex-Max) on the rocks? During their Friday appearance on The View, the couple, who met costarring on One Life to Live and have now been married 15 and a half years, couldn't have appeared more uncomfortable. After they sat down, James had to motion for Kassie to sit closer to him, and when one of the co-hosts asked how long they've been married and Kassie answered, she couldn't help but toss in a little aside: "Feels more like 30!" Isn't time supposed to fly when you're having fun?

Bad Habits: 5 Things I Need to Stop Doing to Myself

2012-01-12T15:33:00.000+07:00

I recently received an email from my brother Alexi, who I believe had sent it to everyone in his address book, with a link to an article titled "30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself." In the 15 seconds it took me to read the title and save the email (which I'm glad I did), three thoughts ran through my head.

The first one: Thank God, Facebook has more or less done away with "forwards." Remember "forwards," those annoying emails that we all used to get from friends (always the same ones) who seemed to have nothing better to do than share unfunny jokes or cliched pearls of wisdom with their entire social network? Now they can just post that stuff on their Facebook walls, leaving us free to ignore it, or read/watch it and roll our eyes. Moving right along. (Props to Facebook, by the way, for allowing me to post links to my blog posts and not having to email them to everyone I know, which I would never do!)

My second thought: Here we go again. More often-repeated health advice like "stop skipping breakfast," "stop binge drinking," and "stop touching your face." Good luck!

Third: More advice for the mentally unsound. What do I need with that? I suffer from occasional bouts of depression, but doesn't everyone? I've been diagnosed with panic disorder, but hasn't everyone? My mind is safe and sound!

I must have been having a bad day. Normally, I'd have more faith in my brother, who would never share an article stating the obvious or the over-stated. Today as I was cleaning out my Hotmail inbox and going through old emails, I finally clicked on that link and what I found were 30 excellent life lessons, rules to live by. (Thanks for sharing, Alexi.)

At least five times, I felt like the author had been eavesdropping on my private thoughts, chiding me for tendencies that were harmful to my mental health. The highlights (i.e., the ones that seemed to be speaking directly to me):

No. 4) Stop putting your own needs on the backburner.

Several years ago, I spent a summer in therapy, and at the end of the first month, my shrink made his first diagnosis: I was a card-carrying people pleaser. Yes, it was very Oprah Winfrey of him, but after weeks of hearing myself go on and on about my toxic relationships, I realized he had a point. And many people probably still would have called me a selfish bastard. Which goes to show you, the old saying is right: You can't please everyone -- and that includes anyone!

No. 10) Stop exclusively looking to others for happiness.

"Why does our happiness always seem to depend on other people?" I recently asked my best friend Lori. "Why do we give them so much power?" As someone who has what some might consider to be an unhealthy independent streak and love of solitude, I have my weak moments, too, when I invest way too much in the opinions of others and how they see me. "I don't care what anyone thinks of me," we often hear people say, as if that were possible, or even healthy. I think some awareness and concern over how we come off in other people's eyes is a good thing (that "exclusively" in the No. 10 tip is key), but we should all strive to get to the point where no one's opinion of us, or treatment of us, will determine whether we get out of bed in the morning.

No. 15) Stop trying to compete against everyone else.

Years ago, when I was much more ambitious and competitive, I used to stack up my accomplishments against those of other people who were around my age. Did I measure up? I was usually comparing myself to celebrities, so I generally didn't, but somewhere around 30 I started to break the habit. Unfortunately, Facebook has brought it back in near-full force, only now I'm pitting myself against my non-famous "friends." Admit it, you do it, too. We read status updates -- the baby news, the job news, the romantic news, the travel news -- and our day (if we're lucky) or our lives (if we're not) starts/start to look a little drearier. A friend of mine recently closed his Facebook account because he just couldn't handle it anymore. I wouldn't go that far, mostly because I'm slowly but surely learning that you can't believe everything you read on Facebook.

No. 22) Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments.

Make life imitate art.

The other day as I was walking from the supermarket to my apartment, I actually stopped to admire some flowers. If that's not progress, I don't know what is. Alas, I still haven't mastered the art of not dwelling on the big picture. But even when what's on the oversize canvas is colorful and vibrant, isn't God still in the details? Think of life in terms of pointillism, or Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The painting, one of my favorites, is magnificent when viewed from a distance of several meters, but in the end, it's all about those glorious dots of color, each individual one.

No. 28) Stop worrying so much.

Easier said than done. I like to blame my panic disorder and my fitful sleep on my inclination to overthink pretty much everything and dwell on every possible outcome. It probably goes a little deeper than that, but I am trying to curb my enthusiasm for worrying and, as the old AA cliche goes, live one day at a time. Who knows? Maybe one of those days, I'll write a blog post with the Dr. Strangelove-inspired title "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" and actually mean it.

The Best Thing About 'Drive' That's Not Ryan Gosling

2012-01-11T20:12:00.000+07:00

"But he's been pretty much yellow
And I've been kinda blue
But all I can see is
Red, red, red, red, red now
What am I gonna do?"
-- "Red Red Red," Fiona Apple

The color red.

My God, there was so much of it in Drive! I've really got to learn how to stomach red red red, particularly when it's gushing forth from human bodies on movie and TV screens. For weeks, reviews that promised there'd be lots of that in Drive stopped me from putting my screener into the DVD player.

Thanks to the most recent rave review, courtesy of my friend Atzin, who just saw it on an airplane (hopefully, there was low turbulence), I decided to stop giving in to my fear. I'm glad I had that sudden burst of courage. While Drive was probably too unsettling an experience to put it in the upper reaches of my Top 10 of 2011 list (it was far more impressive than entertaining, or moving, and my favorite movies need to be all three in almost equal measure), I'm looking forward to watching it again.

Ryan Gosling as the driver was typically appealing. (I don't care what People magazine says, he's the sexiest man alive.) As Irene, Carey Mulligan didn't have so much to do, but she did it well, and I still think she'll be known as "Academy Award winner Carey Mulligan" by the time she hits 30. I liked Irene and her son's relationship with the driver, but I don't think it was detailed enough in the film to explain why the driver would go to such great lengths to protect her and her son. Perhaps a stronger focus on their relationship would have made his sacrifice -- and the film -- more moving for me.

As for Albert Brooks, well, he's scary indeed, but there's no real character arc, though his benevolent manner of slashing the wrist of the driver's boss Shannon (a standout Bryan Cranston) was duly noted. (There's his Oscar clip. The rest is stylized moustache twirling.) He just shows up every now and then to let you know that more red red red is on the way. I'm still rooting for Beginners' Christopher Plummer for Best Supporting Actor.

The film itself is a stunning cinematic fugue of sound and visuals. Sure those two slaps looked too fake (Why pull punches there and nowhere else?), and the violence was largely gratuitous, but would it be wrong to say that like pretty much every sequence, the gory bits were beautifully choreographed and filmed? I want whoever is responsible for Gosling's complimentary lighting to start following me around. That said, I'm not sure that the movie wouldn't have been just as impressive without all of that red red red.

That's a lot less than can be said about the music. The soundtrack, a combination of Cliff Martinez' score and '80s-style electro-pop songs that does not include the above-quoted Fiona Apple song, so perfectly enhanced the proceedings that I can't imagine the movie without it. Its MVP: "Under Your Spell," a 2009 track by Desire, an American/French/Canadian synth-pop act, that turned a semi-throwaway sequence -- a party for Irene's husband Standard's return home from prison -- into one of the most memorable parts of the movie. Boy, I've been there! I could watch an entire film with no dialogue, just "Under Your Spell" on a continuous loop (and preferably, with Gosling in the lead).

In Drive, I think the song was supposed to reflect how the driver felt about Irene, but I heard it more as a musical tribute to Gosling's massive appeal. So in the end, the best thing about Drive that wasn't Ryan Gosling was still all about him.

Five Great Songs By Five Great Male Singers That Should Have Gone to No. 1

2012-01-10T14:08:00.000+07:00

Today I've got men on my mind. Now get yours out of the gutter. All of them are fully clothed -- and singing. Nearly three months ago, I wrote a post titled "Five Great Songs By Five Great Female Singers That Should Have Gone to No. 1," and doesn't it figure? Musically speaking, I'm always dwelling on the creative and performing virtues of the fairer sex. I guess I'm gay like that. There must be some microchip hidden in the brains of gay men that makes us respond more readily to women -- female pop stars, actresses, style icons and divas -- when they're outside of the bedroom.

Today, though, let's hear it for the boys.

1) Stevie Wonder: "Gotta Have You" By the time Wonder got around to writing and recording the soundtrack for Spike Lee's 1991 film Jungle Fever, his days as a certified and guaranteed hit-maker were waning. But this single (a No. 3 R&B hit that only managed to limp to No. 92 on Billboard's Hot 100) not only laid the musical blueprint for much of early '90s R&B -- including Michael Jackson's Dangerous album, released in November of 1991 -- but "Skeletons" aside, it's better than anything Wonder did in the '80s, including the inexplicably popular 1984 soundtrack for The Woman in Red, which featured the inexplicably popular No. 1 song "I Just Called to Say I Love You."

2) New Order: "Fine Time" I know, New Order is a group, but vocalist Bernard Sumner is a man, so here they go. It's hard to believe that the U.S. Top 40 hit list of this iconic British band is only a party of two ("True Faith," No. 32 in 1987, and "Regret," No. 28 in 1993), one that does not include its signature song, "Blue Monday" (No. 68, 1988). My personal favorite (followed closely by "Confusion"), from the band's 1988 Technique album (which I can still remember buying in cassette form), went to No. 11 in the UK but didn't even bother charting stateside.

3) Jackson Browne: "Boulevard" I went through a Jackson Browne phase seven or eight months ago during which I seemed to be playing his greatest hits all day and all night. Yesterday he popped into my mind again, and I realized that only two of those hits -- "Doctor My Eyes" and "Somebody's Baby" -- ever made it into the Top 10 on the Hot 100 (Nos. 8 and 7, respectively). I first fell for Darryl Hannah's ex when I was 11 years old and staring at the cover of his 1980 Hold Out album, his only one to hit No. 1 on Billboard's Top 200 album chart. Three decades later, that record's biggest hit (No. 19) sounds even better than it did all those years ago.

4. Lindsey Buckingham "Holiday Road" If Stevie Nicks was the beauty of heyday Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham was its brains. Christine McVie sang on more of FM's big hits than either of her band mates ("Don' Stop," "You Make Loving Fun," "Hold Me," "Little Lies" and "Think About Me," my personal favorite -- all hers), but it was Buckingham's musical and production input that made them sing. It's hard to imagine that despite coming from the soundtrack of the hit movie National Lampoon's Vacation, this 1983 solo Buckingham single only made it to No. 82 on the Hot 100.

5. David Bowie "Day-In Day-Out" Bowie once told me that he felt disconnected to most of his big hits from the 1980s and basically coasted through much of the decade. He went into the studio, recorded the tracks, and then he left. From 1983's Let's Dance to the 1989 group effort Tin Machine, on which he claimed he got his creative groove back, he was really only in it for the money. Including this No. 21 single from 1987 whose video was my favorite at the time? Sadly, yes. I'm still a little in denial about that one.

Why I'm Just Not That Into Meryl Streep's 'Iron Lady'

2012-01-09T15:50:00.000+07:00

You'd better sit down, kids.

I'm about to make a declaration that's certain to leave my dear readers gasping or shouting "Blasphemy!" in unison at the computer screen.

Meryl Streep doesn't walk on water every time she reports to work.

There! That wasn't so hard. Now hold the sticks and stones, and hear me out.

Had Streep won her third Academy Award way back when she truly deserved to (for 2002's Adaptation, or 2006's The Devil Wears Prada), she might not even be in the Oscar discussion for The Iron Lady, the new biopic in which she steps into the heels and wears the bouffant hairdo of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She certainly wouldn't be the presumed frontrunner in a year during which Kirsten Dunst, Viola Davis and Kristen Wig all have brought vivid, memorable women to life, from scratch.

But of course, for years now, just about every time Streep shows up onscreen, the speculation begins: Will this be the film that finally snags America's greatest living actress her third Oscar? Streep was already considered a frontrunner -- or at the very least, a lock for a nomination -- months before anyone had even seen The Iron Lady, pretty much on the strength of the teaser poster.

Like Julie & Julia, her 2009 imitation-of-Julia Child Oscar bid, The Iron Lady actually seems to have been made as much for your entertainment as for the final fulfillment of Streep's Oscar triple. I secretly wish Oscar would just go home with her again, and get that inevitable third win out of the way, so she can stop cluttering the race every other year or so the way Judi Dench did in the late '90s and early to mid '00s with stuff like Mrs. Henderson Presents, which probably wouldn't even warrant a Golden Globe nomination in 2012!

As impersonations go, Streep's Thatcher is pretty spot on. She nails the accent, the carriage, the haughty demeanor. But a biopic should not strictly be about impersonation, and Oscars should not be awarded for skilled imitation. The re-creation of an actual person, living or dead, should be revelatory. Alas, Streep's Thatcher falls somewhat short in that regard. I don't know much about Margaret Thatcher other than the images I remember seeing on the nightly news in the '80s, and I feel like I didn't know her much better when the end credits rolled than I did before the film's opening frame.

Interestingly, before the movie, there was a coming-attractions preview of My Week with Marilyn, and in the bits and pieces of Michelle Williams' performance that it showed, I saw everything that makes for a satisfying biopic. (We'll see whether the trailer is misleading when the movie opens in Australia.) It's not about impersonation or imitation. For the star, it's about creating a character who happens to be a real person, getting under his or her skin as well as inside of it, but not necessarily trying to become him, or her. In the end, the character must be able to work as both the icon and, for those unfamiliar with the real-life persona, as an original entity.

I'm certainly not saying that Williams is a better actress than Streep (now that would be blasphemy, considering that Streep has rocked playing real people before, particularly in Silkwood and A Cry in the Dark), but Williams may have ended up in the better film. Plus Williams doesn't have all that pressure to just hurry up and win an Oscar already, so we can enjoy her performances without Oscar hanging over her head, without every sudden gesture and emphatic line reading feeling like Oscar-baiting. It's hard not to wonder if Streep didn't overdo the imitation, hamming it up with such wild abandon, because she wants to snag that third Oscar just as badly as we want her to.

And no, the movie itself doesn't do her any favors. Like too many films this Oscar season, it relies on the old flashback set-up, going back and forth in time. But The Iron Lady spends too much of its running time in the present when it should have stayed in the past. There's too much old-lady Thatcher, and Streep, 62, is less convincing as a woman in her eighties than Leonardo DiCaprio, 37, was as the elderly title character in J. Edgar, and the contemporary sequences, which are saved by the dry wit of Jim Broadbent, an Oscar winner who deserves so much more than constantly being cast as the devoted spouse, are too dreary to be interesting. Meanwhile, the portrait of Thatcher as a young woman that the old lady occasionally flashes back to is too generically sketched.

The movie would have benefited greatly had it stuck to Thatcher's key political years. That would have allowed Streep to flesh out the character in her prime. As is, the transition from stubborn but surprisingly rootable politician with misguided convictions into a cold-hearted witch not unlike Miranda Priestly (during the cabinet meeting, the movie's most electric scene) is too abrupt. After the Falkland triumph there is no real sense of what led to the personality transplant that resulted in her inner circle's rapid abandonment. Had her ego tripled in size? If so, it's a growth spurt that shouldn't have happened off screen.

Also, how did her position affect her relationship with her family? Thatcher's daughter figures prominently into the present-day scenes, and her husband Denis appears mostly as a ghost. Showing more of what Thatcher in power was like off the clock might have given the film and the character the extra dimension that they so sorely lacked. It also would have helped make the film seem less like a series of disjointed historical incidents with Streep, at center stage, blowing us away with her gift of mimicry.

And therein lies the main problem with The Iron Lady. It's all about Streep's gift of mimicry. The filmmakers (specifically, director Phyllida Lloyd and writer Abi Morgan) must have been so focused on winning their star the grand Hollywood prize, that they didn't bother telling a coherent, fully realized story with a multi-dimensional centerpiece character. At the end, I found myself wishing I'd been able to spend a week with Marilyn instead of an hour and 45 minutes with Maggie.

Home Is Where The Mind Is: What Six Months in Southeast Asia Taught Me

2012-01-08T18:52:00.002+07:00

Where do you see yourself in five years?

If ever there was a contender for the world's most annoying question, that would have to be it. It's one of those cliche job-interview questions, that, thankfully, I've never been asked. In the past, if I had been, I probably would have come up with some canned response that would have made me look confident yet humble, ambitious but not ruthless. You know, the sort of answer that would have gotten me the job.

That's not to say I was living without a game plan. For many years, it revolved around climbing the rungs of the ladder of success in magazine journalism, though I wasn't quite sure where that ladder would lead. There were also a few other goals scribbled on the side: I wanted to buy an apartment in New York City (check), travel to fascinating places and meet equally fascinating people (check, check), live abroad (check), and, eventually, win an Oscar, write a book and adopt a baby with the perfect guy (all pending).

The last one was supposed to happen before I turned 45, which means I have a few years left, but I'm not currently on the baby/boyfriend track and don't see myself getting back on it in time to meet my deadline.

I was 37 when I moved to Buenos Aires and put my game plan on hold. I figured I would return to it later. Five and a half years on, if someone were to ask me where I see myself in five years, when I'm 47, I'd have nothing. I haven't planned for beyond February 1, and I only went that far because the company from which I'm renting my Melbourne apartment -- which is in the same hotel complex where I was living before -- has a 28-day minimum rental period. I have no idea where I'll be on February 2. Maybe in Sydney, maybe back in Bangkok, maybe back in Buenos Aires, maybe still in Melbourne, or maybe somewhere that is not even on my radar at the moment. So much can happen in 24 days!

Everyone around me must sense that something is up, that I'm not necessarily here for the long haul. I keep getting the same old question: "So how long are you here for?" Few people ever asked me that the last time I was in Melbourne. Though then, as now, I was here on a holiday visa, with no full-time job, people just assumed that I wasn't going anywhere. I'm not really sure what about me has changed in their eyes. I'm no longer romantically attached, but is it that obvious to the naked eye?

There are a number of factors that will determine where I will be after February 1, and employment options would top that list. But I'm sick of talking about that, and those details are really nobody's business but my own, so I've begun to reply, simply, "Well, I'm here right now. That's all that really matters."

Seven months ago, my having such a calm, relaxed attitude about the future was unthinkable. I feel like Kirsten Dunst in the final scene of Melancholia, which, come to think of it, might be why the movie moved me so much. But mine is a serenity born of a kind of enlightenment rather than depression. Or maybe it's the influence of the Buddhist culture in which I spent so much of the last six months.

If there is anything that I learned during the last half-year of my ongoing spiritual journey, it's how to travel through life without a map. It was the first time that I ever allowed myself to live free of an agenda, to make game-time decisions, to be ready to pick up and leave at a moment's notice, or to stay longer than intended. If I made any plans during my time in Asia, I always wrote them down in pencil.

Last night, my friend Dov asked me if Melbourne feels like home to me again, and I surprised myself when I responded that it never really did. From March 3 to July 5 of last year, there were moments when it felt like home, but I never had that feeling of "This is it." I wanted to, and I may have tried too hard to make it feel like home, and that might be why I ended up spending so much time in Asia when I only intended to spend one month there. I needed to free myself -- and Melbourne -- of all the expectations.

The distance and time away helped me put so much into perspective. Although it would be nice to be settled long-term in a physical place -- a house, a country, a continent -- home for me is no longer a physical place. It's become a state of mind. It's accepting where I am and being open to whatever might be ahead of me. In that sense, I do feel at home in Melbourne, but it has nothing to do with being in Melbourne. I felt the same way in Bangkok. I'm not sure when it happened (I think it may have been around when, by chance, I ended up in Penang, Malaysia), but somewhere along the way on the Southeast Asia leg of my spiritual tour, I found my way home.

Now I'm unpacking and decorating in that minimalist style I love so much. A clear mind equals clear vision, though not in the sense of what I can actually see. I have no idea what lies ahead on the road I'm currently traveling -- I guess you could say I'm dancing in the dark -- and I tossed my map out the window a long time ago. I can't see what's in front of me, but I've never experienced the passing scenery, the view from the side windows, with such clarity.

The other day, I literally stopped and smelled the roses. Well, they weren't actually roses. They were beautiful lavender flowers for which I have no name. That I noticed them at all, or that I turned back to spend some time admiring them, might be one of my biggest breakthroughs yet.

The Art of Delivering a Memorable Quote: The Second-Best Thing I've Ever Read

2012-01-07T14:24:00.000+07:00

Anyone who has known me for more than a hot second, or who has read the "Info" page of my Facebook profile, is probably aware that, like Oprah Winfrey, my all-time favorite quote by someone else is from the iconic American writer Maya Angelou: "The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them."

I've also seen it written, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them," but the gist is still the same: Stop! Look, listen and learn. I also like "People don't change, they just get older," words of wisdom, courtesy of Luke Spencer on General Hospital, but that wouldn't even be in the running for my second-favorite quote.

For the longest time, I thought No. 2 must be something Oscar Wilde said -- or wrote.

Perhaps this bon mot:"Popularity is the crown laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong." Ninety-five percent of the time, it is true. Nothing against the mainstream, which occasionally embraces some excellent stuff, but try as hard as I might, I'll never understand the popularity of LMFAO.

Or maybe this one:"I can resist anything but temptation." I've been in love with this little aphorism since my mother bought me a sweat shirt with those very words printed across the front when I was a kid, long before I'd ever heard of Oscar Wilde or Lady Windermere's Fan, the play from which it came. It was fitting then and remains so today. I don't know if my mother knew what she was getting into back then: She was raising a future Wilde disciple with a love of words, a lust for life, a flair for melodrama, and a weakness for soulful eyes and a killer smile.

Then, of course, there are famous last words of dying U.S. Presidents.

1. "The nourishment was palatable." -- Millard Fillmore One's last supper should be an unforgettable one.

2. "I have a terrific headache." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt As a life-long sufferer of tense nervous headaches, I've always imagined that my final utterance will go something along those lines.

3. "Thomas Jefferson still survives." -- John Adams Even on his deathbed, the second U.S. President couldn't banish from his head thoughts of his Presidential successor and longtime political rival, who, unbeknownst to him, had died earlier that same day, July 4, 1826. Why hasn't a film been made about this particular rivalry, one of the most colorful in the history of U.S. politics, which puts the various tussles of the snooze-worthy 2012 U.S. Presidential election to shame?

Sometimes I imagine it must be from a song. Maybe something from Morrissey, the man responsible for turning me on to Oscar Wilde in the mid-'80s. But a full appreciation of Morrissey deserves its own post. More than likely it would be something like"What makes you grow old is replacing hope with regret" from "Too Many Memories" by Patty Loveless, which has been in heavy rotation in my head for years. So true!

But when you get right down to it, my second favorite quote is probably something Tilda Swinton, in a moment of absolute clarity and stunning insight, once said. I first read it years ago, probably around the time she was collecting Oscar buzz (which, sadly, would lead to naught, for 2001's The Deep End). I'm grateful to The Film Experience, my favorite movie blog, for recently refreshing my memory of it.

"You can never ever know what someone else is really thinking. What they're going to tell you or what they're going to show you may not be everything, you know? There's always a reason to go looking. "

She was discussing her craft, her inspiration, but I think it applies to everyday life as well. We never know what's really going on in the dark recesses of another person's mind. A smile can hide so many things, none of them worth smiling about. And a show of indifference can be just that, a show. Maybe it's my suspicious nature talking out of turn again, but I've always felt that most people have something to hide, a secret they don't want anyone else to know. (Interestingly, Marlena Evans said the same thing on Days of Our Lives last week.)

Cryptic as that pronouncement might sound, it need not be negative. People don't always put all of their cards on the table. What you see isn't always what you get, despite what Tina Turner and Britney Spears have both sung. What people show you might not be who they are at all. Just because you haven't heard from the one you love, doesn't mean he, or she, isn't thinking about you. Someone once told me that if you are thinking about someone, they're probably thinking about you, too. Just because an ex-lover, or ex-spouse, appears to have moved on, doesn't mean he, or she, has gotten any farther than you have.

I love Maya Angelou's quote because it cautions against playing the fool, and it does so in the most eloquent, straightforward way. But in life, there are no certainties, no complete reality that is visible to the naked eye, which is the idea at the root of what Swinton said. So yes, when people show you who they are, believe them. But always remember, there's usually more to the story. Living is at least 50 percent acting, and people, like life, are mysteries. When dealing with both, there's always a reason, as Swinton suggested, "to go looking," a purpose for digging deeper and deeper.

What's at the bottom may not be pretty, but in life, as in acting, traveling and writing, the journey matters as much as the final destination.