CELEBRITY

Good morning Upper East Siders! Although Gossip Girl may be off the air vis-à-vis the writers’ strike it’s refreshing to know that somebody is still snapping photos of the show’s cast for gossip blogs, keeping rabid obsessives such as ourselves at bay. In what may be the gayest curiosity of Oscar-night, purported friends Chace Crawford and former *NSYNC closet-case JC Chasez were spotted getting very cozy at Elton John’s annual Academy Awards bash. Sources claim that the two spent the evening virtually joined at the hip, making us wonder if we should begin playing around with acronyms for a new IT-couple. “Chace Chasez”? “Chacez”? Hit the jump for the photos while we ponder who’s on top and whether or not JC will feel inspired to jump on the “man-bangs” bandwagon for which Chace is (evidently) the lovely and talented spokesmodel.

It’s no secret that Zac Efron is maybe, potentially, definitely, seriously, and/or actually a homosexual. Ever since he began serving gayface to a whole new generation of closeted tweens and the babysitting fag hags that love them in productions like High School Musical, Hairspray, and High School Musical 2 (need we highlight his genre-of-choice?) we’ve been furrowing our brows in his general direction with a “this oughta be good” choral refrain that would put any cast of Disney child slaves to shame. Hell, even the kid himself acknowledged how obvious it is in his interview with Details.

When a photo emerged on the web this very A.M. with startling composition of a shirtless Efron butterfly-kissing (and slurping his mouth all over) the face of another shirtless twink, self-congratulatory smirks stretched across gay faces like ours all over America. While it’s worth pointing out that the trucker-hat-wearing gay youth in question could very well, possibly be somebody else, we think anything that keeps this dialogue alive and fresh before Zac takes any further steps toward becoming Jared Leto is worth posting and scrutinizing until the Queen Latifahs come home. Without further ado… THE BIG GAY PHOTO!

Paris Hilton’s hard-partying younger brother was released from jail today after landing in the drunk tank on charges of suspicion of driving while intoxicated. His parents refused to post bail in favor of “tough love” despite the fact that they have, in the past, publicly held their daughter Paris’ skeletal, bronze-streaked hand through her own more publicized stints behind bars. Could it be that the Hilton family is turning the cold shoulder to their son because he’s gay? Author and former club kid James St. James posted the following allegation on The WOW Report yesterday, raising our eyebrows and our hopes (’cause if Barron is following in his sister’s drunk footsteps, might we have a gay sex tape in our future?):

“When I was in Vegas over New Year’s I met a guy who SWORE to me that he had just been partying with Paris Hilton and her little brother Barron, and that Barron was a BIG LADY! YES! In fact, the two of them had “fooled around,” and the next morning, my friend woke up wearing Barron’s clothes, whatever that implies. I just thought I would throw that little story out there in light of today’s news of his arrest. Plus, he’s awfully cute, so I HOPE it’s true.”

That makes all of us. After the jump, check out some other recent “are they or aren’t they” headlines that have had us guessing and instant-messaging.

…Or so we’d think after hearing the news that every fag’s favorite country singer and living cartoon Dolly Parton was forced to cancel her upcoming tour due to back-related health problems. We imagined sweet Dolly might be holed up in Dollywood with a thermometer in her mouth, being tended to by plaid-clad farmhands in straw hats and serenaded by bluebirds, while Disney flora and fauna from around her windowsill weep with worry, until her press release reminded us that not even lugging around two triple-H cups with a back-brace can get our good old girl down!

While the promised threesome of Marc Jacobs, Jason Preston and Erik Rhodes didn’t materialize until later in the night, when the three celebrated Rhodes’ birthday, the boys were all together at the show to celebrate the end of Fashion Week. Marc Jacobs’ show this past
Friday in New York City, along with a who’s who of fashion luminaries (Anna
Wintour, Heidi Klum), indie rock gods (M.I.A., Sonic Youth, Debbie Harry) and two rappers who we really can’t fit in the same category (K-Fed and Li’l Kim). According to the Daily News:

“All three of them got dirty on the dance floor and in a banquette. It was Jason touching Erik and Erik touching Jason and both of them touching Marc all night long.”    

We told you!   

God bless the internet. A random teenage girl, obsessed enough with
John Mayer to go on a Mayer-themed cruise (the Mayercraft Carrier, natch) with her mom, happened to
catch some fun on her camera.  We’re
suspicious of the teen blogger’s overt shock and awe when she sees
Mayer vamping for the camera and oiling up his male friend “in a very
sexual manner,” especially since she was so intent on capturing the shower-nozzle masturbation material.  John, you rogue! Frankly, to us the shot looks like a bunch of drunk straight
boys clowning around on a private deck prior to banging the baby fat off of some teenyboppers. Why didn’t she get us pictures of that? More pics after the jump.

Okay: we totally understand how that little girl to the left feels right now. The incomparable, irresistable (and immortal?) Cher has announced that she will in fact inherit the echo chamber formerly occupied by Celine Dion’s vein-bulging howl at the Caesar’s Palace Colosseum in Las Vegas, NV. Beginning May 6th, she’ll perform four nights per week for one month, and then return in August, switching off engagements with Bette Midler in a contract that extends for three years.

Sitting down for two interviews with USA Today, the living legend discusses life, love, paparazzi (“They’re meaner now,” she says, invoking the wisdom that only comes with vampirical age), and yes, THE GAYS:

Following the release of Heath Ledger’s post-mortem toxicology report today (Wowza. Good show, Sir.), we thought we’d bring you a few other luminaries’ autopsy details, you know, for a little exercise in compare-and-contrast and a helpful reminder to us all what pills not to mix.  Case in point: Were you aware that, much like our favorite deceased fictional gay cowboy, Anna Nicole also had a cocktail of several benzos in her system when she croaked?  We loved her.  And what’s up with everybody “accidentally” croaking in the winter?  Appreciate our research, after the jump.

Barely a month after his tumultuous split from Road Rules alum Danny Dias, Erik Rhodes is off the market, having been snapped up by none other than Marc Jacobs, and ratcheting the designer’s mid-life crisis to code red. The source this time isn’t Rhodes’ blog but gossip ground-zero Page Six (it’s sort of like the old-fashioned version of Perez Hilton for all you young’uns out there). Like Perez, Page Six’s reporting is just as sloppy… they pull a quote from Rhodes’ “ManNet.com” profile (Uh, we think you guys mean ManHUNT.net.)

Rhodes responded to the story in an uncharacteristically brief post on his blog yesterday.

Before being nicknamed “The Package” and officially committed to UCLA Medical Center last night, Britney had exhibited some behavior denoting nothing short of a full-fledged short-circuiting, faithfully documented by the omnipresent TMZ.com video cameras. In this amusing yet terribly depressing clip, Britney affects her favorite new British accent while chewing bubblegum, asking one paparazzo, “Why don’t you go film your friend? Maybe you guys can make a lot of money together. Gay videos are in, y’know?”

Normally we find women who so openly embrace fag-hagdom either terrifying or morbidly depressing, but we just can’t help loving Kathy Griffin. Sure, the refreshing, brutal honesty and shameless love of gossip have been so played out in our direction that it at times feels like a condescending retread even from the best of them, but there are moments-shining perfect moments-when Kathy Griffin rises above every stereotype she wants to fulfill and really makes us proud to have her. We refer, of course, to the times when she actually manages to piss people off.

It’s now been two years since green beret-turned-porn star John Paulus claimed to have done some dirty deeds in a hotel room with singing robot-muppet Clay Aiken, and the singer now tells New York Magazine he has never had a relationship with anyone and simply has no time for romance or sex of any kind. 

“I just don’t have an interest in … any of that at all. I have got too
much on my plate,” he says. “I’d rather focus on one thing and do that
when I can devote time to it, and right now, I just don’t have any
desire.”

We, and just about every other news outlet on the planet, reported yesterday on the “tragic,” “shocking” and “devastating” death of Heath Ledger.  But, frankly, we’ve become as fascinated by the proliferation of the media’s over-wrought and bad-tasting mourning as we are the one-time gay cowboy’s convoluted demise.  Twenty-nine hours after the announcement, we present these five newsy low-lights of post-Ledger crepe-hanging.

Another young beauty has gone down for the Big Sleep.  Page Six reports that 28-year-old actor Heath Ledger was found dead today in a Broome Street apartment of an apparent drug overdose.  Ledger’s film career tended toward independent projects, and his final film appearance may turn out to be the Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight, in which he stars as The Joker (scary pic after the jump).

Contentious presidential candidate and drag performer Hedda Lettuce is once again vying for sensational headlines in the blogosphere, and we at The Sword are happy to oblige.  In consecutive blog posts yesterday and today, Ms. Lettuce suggested that teen heartthrob Efron was not in fact hospitalized for an appendectomy, as was publicized, but that “he went in and had his penis removed and replaced with a shiny new vagina. Or maybe they just freshened up his old vagina.”

In a shocking and sad bit of news, TMZ.com broke the story yesterday that 25-year-old actor Brad Renfro was found dead in his apartment after a night out drinking with friends. Known prominently for his breakout childhood performance in The Client, Renfro later went on to perform in movies like Apt Pupil, Larry Clark’s Bully, Ghost World, and also portrayed the role of Huck Finn in the 1995 Hollywood adaptation of the Mark Twain classic. Although Renfro had a known drug problem (he was arrested in 2006 for attempting to buy heroin), the cause of death remains unknown.

Our favorite media-blitzing entre-porn-eur Michael Lucas “graces the cover”* of Genre Magazine’s January/February 2008 issue, on newsstands currently. The issue marks the latest in a long line of publicity for the Lucas Entertainment CEO/star, whom inarguably loves the spotlight as much as he loves his suspiciously anonymous boyfriend. “My boyfriend is the hottest man I’ve ever had,” Lucas tells Genre. “He understands me totally, and I am 100% dedicated to him.”

In the wake of the writers’ strike, Cher and Chastity Bono have reportedly been shopping around a new reality television program in which they help closeted homos confront their friends and families. Critics have been quick to seize on the famously fractious relationship that followed Chastity’s own coming out, during which Cher kicked her daughter out of the house. The now sober Chastity was once reported to be drinking cooking sherry, before moving on to more sophisticated tastes like Oxycontin and cheeseburgers.  

When Britney Spears was rushed to Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Phil wasn’t the only ambulance-chaser in tow. Indeed, Bobby Trendy, the infamously tragic interior decorator that Anna Nicole Smith once fired (and whose coattails he’s still riding post-mortem), decided to take time out of his steady lipgloss application to hold a candlelight “visual” for the fallen idol outside of the L.A.-area medical center. For those who can’t decode that term, “candlelight visual” evidently refers to the act of holding a candlelight vigil, while physically holding a visual aid, all the while dressed in a belated holiday outfit that may hurt your vision.

All flouncy faggotry aside, Bobby does make a point when he compares Brit-Brit’s plight with the “Anna Nicole saga”. Could this bedazzled z-lister be some type of malapropistic prophet signifying Britney’s end of days?

Click over to TMZ.com for the video.

Semi-lebrity Spencer Pratt has refused Michael Lucas’s lecherous advances, telling In Touch magazine that he won’t leave the lucrative world of reality TV “until I am 100.”

While actual details are sketchy and smell vaguely of poppers and fever
dream sweat, Lucas had allegedly propositioned The Hills “star,”
suggesting that he’d be perfect for a gay porn blockbuster.

Erstwhile Project Runway contestant Jack Mackenroth seems like a real doll, and one with a head not only for PR, but PR as well. Whilst awaiting the airing of his appearance on and subsequent staph-infection-related departure from the show, Mackenroth not only posed for some nude-y “art” photographs that got “leaked” to the internet, shot a cameo in the Sex and the City movie and started dating fellow reality fag Dale Levitski, but he also uploaded a charming video spoof of himself lip syncing to Irene Cara’s 1983 classic “What a Feeling” while fagging out on the D train and
getting a bucket of water thrown on him (clip after the jump).

Porn director-turned- private investigator Paul Barresi
claims that he’s found no evidence of Tom Cruise’s rumored homosexuality, despite
the connection to Scientology, a gay vague haircut and a seemingly endless
stream of court-challenged claims by former lovers, according to In Touch Weekly. “Everything I’ve
found and everything I know points to Tom being heterosexual,” Paul told
the magazine.  Oddly, it was only a year ago that Barresi was in the
opposite situation – facing legal threats from Cruise’s celebrity legal
eagle, Bert Fields, to remove a claim by Barresi that he had found evidence of the star’s sexcapades with a West Hollywood escort.

OUT Magazine may have divorced itself corporately from its not-fit-for-the-gay-coffee-table Liberation Publications siblings (Men, Freshmen, Unzipped), but that doesn’t mean it’s given up the skin-mag ghost. In the November issue, celebrity chest-hair-sporter Tom Ford unbuttoned more than just his shirt, appearing buck naked in a photo shoot with two actual models.

Full ass shot after the jump…

Oh, Zac. Don’t be coy. We know there’s something you’re dying to come out and say – at least as soon as the current hype dies down and you’ve already done the rehab thing and maybe packed on a couple pounds and your agent’s desperate for a new angle. Is it such a stretch to suggest that someone starring in a High School Musical (or 2) could be a little, uh, bohemian?

After the jump, we molest a red carpet photo in search of evidence.

Marc Jacobs is showing a lot of skin these days, and not just on his runway models. Jezebel notes that in this month’s issue of Arena Homme Plus, the it-man designer traipses about his Paris flat without a shirt on discussing the fact that he is having a mid-life crisis, buying a lot of jewelry, and getting some asinine tattoos (“I had thought, what a dumb thing to have your own name put on your body. But I really wanted to have my initial, so it had to be in the context of something really stupid: the M&M.”).  Of course, now we want more than a walk-on in the next Lucas feature…

More embarassment (and skin) after the jump.