The Malcontent

And My Dear, She's Still Here

The Malcontent apologizes profusely for helping feed speculation about the impending death of Dame Elizabeth Taylor.

Instead, the 74-year-old screen legend turned up last night on Larry King, looking about as chipper as possible and certainly more lucid than she was at the 2001 Golden Globes.

The very much alive Taylor refuted rumors of her demise and partially dismissed reports of having "Alts-heimer's," although there were moments to make one wonder about the line between fact and fiction.

Normally I am impervious to Larry's sycophantic coddling of his guests, but I admit to a soft spot in my cold, brackish heart for the old broad.  Six days before the 25th anniversary of the CDC report that is generally regarded as the start of the AIDS pandemic, she is still a driving force behind eradication of the disease.  She was red ribbon before red ribbon was cool.

Taylor waxed nostaligic about many of her costars including Rock Hudson, whom she said would be out of the closet if he were alive today.  Oh, and she peddled her jewelry.  It's ugly as sin, but I might buy some anyway.

[Watch video – 7:50, WMV format, high bandwidth]

[Watch video – 7:50, WMV format, low bandwidth]

A Taylor Made Freak Show

I don't want to talk about it. When the fire came cascading down and Great White's manager was nowhere in sight, I knew it was all over.

David Hasslehoff was crying. Crying. In German, no less. It sounds a lot like shizer dialogue to hear it. Which is to say nothing of the fisting America received when that . . . that . . . thing took home the trophy.

Still, let's lump this up in halves. How to fill a two hour show dependent on a five second announcement? Plenty of performances, but also plenty of painful, cringe-inducing bits like extended dining lessons between Kellie Pickler and Wolfgang Puck that left us praying for a future mobile home accident on a treacherous mountain road. "Caleeemaaareeee?!" Die.

I've sorted through the fluff for my favorite moments, including the "surprise" appearance by the Gayken. His jittery, squealing, orgasming look-alike made the entire bit. I'd like to take this opportunity to chastise our readers as well. How is it that there was footage of Ace Young and Chris Daughtry in a crushing, grappling man-hug, and no one alerted us?! For shame. That is hours of fantasy we'll never get back. Also included in this clip is the winner's announcement. It was the fluffiest thing of all.

[Watch video – 9:50, WMV format, high bandwidth]

[Watch video – 9:50, WMV format, low bandwidth]

Before I get to the performances, let me just say this - If Katharine had sang half as well during the competition as she did in last night's finale show, she would have won hands down. Now more than ever, I'm convinced song choice was her ultimate undoing. Not that I'm excruciatingly bitter or anything. Not at all. Moving swiftly on.

There were far too many performances to capture, so these highlights are by no means comprehensive. Chris Daughtry appeared with the band Live. Their album, Throwing Copper, came out back in the 19th century when I earned my driver's license, so I'm partial to them. Does Meatloaf have Parkinson's? The man schooled Hicks in the trembling performance department. Still, Kat shined and decided to, you know, emote. Now that it doesn't mean anything. (ed. Robbie, you're bitter!) I'm not.

I'm not ready to see Taylor Hicks freak dancing with Toni Braxton. I don't think anyone is.

One last parting shot of the Manateesa (hate!). Kevin Covais singing What's New Pussycat is the stuff of recurring nightmares. Dionne Warwick showcases what happens when you smoke five packs of ultra strength Marlboros a day for fifty years. Then again, she knew who the winner was all along, right? The blood-drinking seems to have paid off for Prince. I'm sorry, whenever I hear his music I think of the Joker mucking up an art museum. The purple doesn't help. And finally, Kat does a little stand-in-place jog-dancing/dress-foofing a la Jennifer Grey at the end of Dirty Dancing.

[Watch video – 15:37, WMV format, high bandwidth]

[Watch video – 15:37, WMV format, low bandwidth]

It's The Circle of Awful, Simba

After 43 posts consisting of 61 video files that account for a whopping 731.65 MB of our server space, we've come a long way from the January 17th premiere of American Idol. A water cooler show that began with a focus on some of the most horrifying "entertainers" this great nation of ours had to offer, it has been a long, spiritual, nuanced journey to May where we're about to crown . . . one of the most horrifying "entertainers" America has to offer.

So, well done there.

What is there to say? Poor Katharine McPhee suffered an ambushing of the highest order with a tripey, overwrought ballad called "My Destiny" when a more accurate title might have been, "Kat Really Wishes She Had Testicles Right About Now." Way to set the key in the Marianas Trench! Not even a still-touching rendition of "Over the Rainbow" could save her against the most treacly, masturbatory excesses of producers and a music industry hell bent on selling their audience aural sominex.

Taylor Hicks. *sighs* What more can be said for this seizing ball of shimmering purple velvet? For the first time in Idol history, the gay male vote will not prevail against this touring Vegas lounge act. Tom Jones is spinning in his grave. Or women's underwear. Spot the difference, eh? Personally, I blame pre-teen girls for this atrocity. Lazy, good for nothing kids today. Can't even be assed to vote en masse. Bring back corporal punishment!

Here are the six performances from last night's finale. Observe that jacket and weep. America picked that jacket. America likes that jacket. America will buy tickets to see that jacket. America is dead to me.

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[Watch video – 14:48, WMV format, low bandwidth]

Our Malcovision American Idol Finale Extravaganza continues with these clips from this weekend's Saturday Night Live. Kevin Spacey knows all the right moves to win the hearts of Americans and wandering strangers in parks at 3 AM. Not to be outdone, "Taylor Hicks" appears on Weekend Update, if only to prove the man is beyond parody.

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[Watch video – 6:54, WMV format, low bandwidth]

And finally. We laughed with her, cried with her, attempted to match her shot for shot during every show. Paula Abdul stumbled onto the set of Larry King Live after over-hearing rumors the man will marry anything. She discusses her fellow judges and addresses all those rumors about dominant bitch-top, the Gayken. Could it be we are mere hours away from a world without this simpering psychiatric patient?

As they announce the winner tonight, I will sprinkle a martini laced with vicodin onto a curb in her honor.

[Watch video – 5:44, WMV format, high bandwidth]

[Watch video – 5:44, WMV format, low bandwidth]

"Ex-Gays" Say the Darndest Things

Our friends at Ex-Gay Watch (I need a nifty logo like theirs) alerted us to a piece that aired last night on CNN featuring Richard Cohen – not the WaPo columnist – one of the most controversial, and unlicensed, practitioners of so-called "reparative therapy" for gays.

I'll leave the heavy lifting to the experts at EGW, but the piece – whether unintentional or not – was hi-frickin'-larious.  We are treated to therapy sessions between Cohen and 42-year-old "Rob," a gay man who thinks that Cohen can help him become un-gay.

We see Cohen practicing "touch therapy" to recreate a "healthy father-son bond."  Call me crazy, but it appeared to be a cunning way for Cohen for be able to get his jollies cuddling up with other men while still claiming that he is now straight.

We then see Cohen engaging in an interesting form of quackery that he calls "bioenergetics," whaling on a pillow with a tennis racket in lieu of his overbearing mother.  Frightening stuff.  Norman-Bates freaky.

I suggest if you find yourself in a session with Cohen that you dial 9-1 on your cell phone, just to save time in case you need to hit that last 1.

We are treated to more of the same tripe that we have seen from the ex-gay movement, this happy-crappy talk about how "there's nothing wrong with being gay," but somehow one can choose to be straight, even though we don't exactly see hordes of heterosexual men stampeding the opposite direction into ex-straight therapy.

What I got out of the piece is that it is a sign of progress that the gay guy aspiring to be straight was the one hiding his identity, while the gay guy who long ago gave up on reparative-therapy nonsense was proudly public.

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[Watch video – 6:42, WMV format, low bandwidth]

I'm Moving to Canada

Taylor is going to fucking win.  In a walk.

America, I weep for you.

Shot Through the Minge, and I'm Too Late

124 of you have voted, but only five of you have guessed that the cranky celebrity of the day is ... OPRAH!:

Her lawyer's email and my response after the jump – and I will update as warranted.

And yes, the threat came from an actual lawyer, not from a minge, although the two terms are virtually synonymous anyway, right?:

Say Good-Night, Gracie — UPDATE

If you didn't watch last night's series finale of "Will & Grace," and you actually care to find out how things transpired on your own, then this post will be filled with spoilers aplenty.  But I will bury all of those after the jump.

It seems a little hard to find more than a handful of gays who are genuinely mourning the passing of W&G.  Many of the older ones feel, as I do, that its best years were long behind it; many of the younger ones simply ask, "Will and who?"

But even if we concede that W&G reinforced stereotypes or consigned gays to sexless, "nonthreatening" roles, it was still a groundbreaking series that brought needed messages to people who might not otherwise have heard them.  And for that, we should be thankful that Will, Grace, Karen and Jack came into our lives at all.

Rub a Dub Doc

As part of ABC's Fall Schedule presentation, the actors on Grey's Anatomy reworked an infamous scene from earlier in the season. In the original, George dreams of taking a shower with the three attractive female interns he is living with at the time. In this parody clip, the tables are turned as Bailey walks in on a bastion of homoerotic soapiness.

h/t Pop Culture Junkies

And Then There Were Two

Buh-bye, Elliott.  Tough call, but there are clearly a lot of palsy fans in the nation.

So who will win?  Who should win?  Take our two-question poll.

Or just view the results.

Judy and Eva Conquer All

I am ever so barely resisting the impulse to gush for paragraphs on end about the transcendent Kat moment on last night's American Idol. Slaves that we are to shrine building when a Judy song - and that Judy song in particular - is done so exquisitely, we'll wait for the proper time and place. It will be difficult.

Elliott, poor Elliott. Rather bland renditions of perfectly neutral songs. The selection may have sunk him. While a Yamin/Hicks finale seemed destined, he faded to an elevator top 40 in the face of his competition. With a vibrato to make steel girders tremble ominously, I look forward to spending hours in the produce section of the local grocery while being serenaded by his inevitable album.

Taylor Hicks was forced to stand there and sing . . . and failed utterly. Despite the drug-addled praise of judges, our resident marionette on acid warbled off-key through "You Are So Beautiful." Sensing danger as an army of housewives came to the slow realization that albums don't come with the freak dancing, Taylor quickly set to work to work repairing the damage via over-laden hypnotic limb jerking.

Katharine. My Katharine. My acapella, Eva Cassidy channeling Katharine. More than politics, more than marriage, more than partisanship. If the gay masses do not lift Katharine McPhee on a golden divan and carry her through the streets to victory, I will hunt you all down with an efficiency to make Fred Phelps blush. Yes, the execrable Clive Davis made her shriek her way through that wretched R. Kelly song. It wasn't her fault. It was sabotage! Come now, my pink hordes. Unleash your powers of fabulousness and bring down the Hicks abomination. He's who straight people want to win. We'll not stand for that sort of thing as a people, will we?

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[Watch video – 10:50, WMV format, low bandwidth]

Speaking of the strange and bizarre, the judges were once again tonsil deep in the Jesus juice. We've seen 28 Days Later. We know where Paula's behavior leads. By season's end, Simon will be discussing each contestant's personal journal and how shimmery-shiny their natural selves are. He will generously pepper sentences with "amazing" and "adore" and idly flip through a portfolio from Ace Young's recent photo shoot.

Mal has put together all the weirdest moments, including yet another reason to burn Taylor Hicks in effigy.

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[Watch video – 2:02, WMV format, low bandwidth]

Daytime Sight-Seeing

Admittedly, I'm feeling a little skint in the blogging area of late. This week I've learned that there seems to be some sort of national tiff developing over immigration, and gay activists really, really hate Mary Cheney. Check out these reviews. So, we gay folk are basically a writhing horde of petulant eight grade girls. Excellent. That being what it is, I've decided my only coherent contribution is to shamelessly ogle cute male celebrities. In that spirit . . .

Justin Chambers, the aforementioned Grey's Anatomy hottie, sat down with the harpies of the View this morning. While the character he plays, Alex, is a self-absorbed hard-ass, Justin seems quiet, unassuming, even shy. Then again, who wouldn't shrink in terror when faced with the withered plastic visage of Starr Jones Reynolds? I could quibble with the goatee and why on earth his hair is parted that way, but he still fills out a pair of jeans quite nicely.

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[Watch video – 6:06, WMV format, low bandwidth]

Nick Lachey visited everyone's favorite lesbian this afternoon for some mama bear treatment and to perform a badly off-key song, much to a backstage Chris Daughtry's eternal amusement. Chris, however, has no reason to snicker. He somehow came to the conclusion that singing that Bon Jovi song for the billionth time on his thousandth talk show appearance was a terrific way to not-at-all get us over him. I've spared the musical repeat from the clip.

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[Watch video – 10:50, WMV format, low bandwidth]

Lock Up the Hatch

The first "Sole Survivor" has been sentenced to more than four years in the pokey.

For being so "cunning," Richard Hatch sure was stupid.

His contention that he thought CBS was supposed to pay the taxes on his $1 million prize might have been even remotely believable – might – if he hadn't also evaded the taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars of other income.

Or did he think CBS was responsible for that too?

We'll see how long his sphincter can Outwit, Outplay and Outlast his fellow inmates.

On a related note, a crew member from "Survivor" told "The Howard Stern Show" that they were doing Hatch a big favor by pixelating the naked gay dude's genitals on TV.

The Dean of the Clueless Corps

DNC Chairman Howard Dean sauntered into the friendly confines of "The Daily Show" last night.  The audience dutifully applauded references to President Bush's low standing in the polls, as well as Dean's predictions of Democratic takeover of the House and/or Senate.

But then host Jon Stewart had the temerity to ask just exactly how the Democrats were going to manage not to blow the opportunity before them.

Dean's plan: Let's put, say, four people in every state who will knock on as many as 5 to 6 million doors over the next few years.

"So the Dems are now as powerful as the Jehovah's Witnesses," Stewart said.

No, no, no!  See, this is where the plan gets brilliant.  If they're not home, then you hang this nifty little door-hanger on the doorknob!

But Stewart was having none of it.  When he pressed Dean for an actual message, it was essentially, "We'll be less grafty than the other guy."

Then Dean actually angled the Democrats to the left of President Bush's centrist immigration policy.

Stewart neatly summed things up for Dean: "You are so not taking back the House and the Senate."

(Incidentally, no reference whatsoever was made to Dean's recent, humongous gaffes regarding gays.)

[Watch video – 7:38, WMV format, high bandwidth]

[Watch video – 7:38, WMV format, low bandwidth]

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In other "Daily Show" news, Stewart took a cold, hard look at the reports of NSA-related phone shenanigans.

Hot on the heels of Administration denials of surveillance of domestic phone calls came a USA Today story last week stating that the National Security Agency has indeed kept a massive database regarding billions of domestic phone calls.

The government explanation has been that the database analyzes only call patterns, and not the content of all the calls themselves, to spot potential terrorists.

As Stewart points out, it's probably cold comfort to those of us whose call patterns are suspicious for any number of other reasons.

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[Watch video – 6:22, WMV format, low bandwidth]

Writers with Scalpels

The writers of Grey's Anatomy are sadists. There is little other explanation for destroying their audience emotionally with not only the unexpected death of a love interest, but also including a scene where a beloved pet is euthanized. All things considered, I ought not have watched the season finale first thing in the morning.

My seething hatred for Meredith and Dr. McDick aside, last night's episode was by far the best in the series, capped by a softening Alex taking care of a devastated Izzie when no one else knows how to help her. Coupled with Alex's going in to save a baby in another a recent episode, the real hottie of show is rapidly becoming swoon-worthy.

On this morning's GMA, we were given a deleted scene from the finale. In it, Finn and Meredith discuss what to do with an ailing Doc. I wish they had kept it in, as it presents Finn as much less clueless than the audience is led to believe.

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Can't Take His Eyes Off of You

Most TV news anchors can't ad lib their way out of a crumpled up tissue.

But it can be fun to watch them try, because sometimes the unscripted banter will reveal the deepest thoughts of local news personalities.

Take WNBC's "Today in New York" co-anchor Rob Morrison.  He was at his tinfoil hat-wearing best this morning, convinced that his TV talks to him as he introduced a piece on today's Tony nominations.

Sure, his bio says he has a wife.  But it sounds like he might also be willing to carve out some conjugal space for "Jersey Boys" star John Lloyd Young.

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[Watch video – 0:50, WMV format, low bandwidth]

Howard Dean on "The Daily Show" Tonight

Let's hope Jon Stewart gives him the grilling he deserves.

I'll Never Let Go, Jack Chris

Come tomorrow night, we'll be marinating in alcohol as we attempt to suffer through the tepid trio that yet twitches before us. For now, one last highlight as our week of mourning over the premature axing of Chris Daughtry from American Idol comes to a close.

Chris, making guest host Jeff Probst look positively scrawny, stopped by Regis and Kelly this morning to perform Bon Jovi's "Wanted." In a post-performance interview, he addresses fans, rumors, and what lay ahead with his after Idol career. He also invites those who love him to feel him up, if not outright hump him, should they spot him on the street.

Ok, that may not be precisely what he said, but it's what I heard, our lawyers be damned.

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[Watch video – 5:18, WMV format, low bandwidth]

SNL Hits It Out of the Park

With just one episode remaining in the season, "Saturday Night Live" is finishing strong.

Maybe it was the remaining Vlada vodka in my system as I watched it yesterday morning, but I laughed uproariously at several of the sketches.  Hosted by SNL and "Seinfeld" alum Julia Louis-Dreyfus, there was very little to criticize from start to finish.

I've included several of the sketches in a meaty highlight reel:

First, during the cold open, we are asked to imagine an alternate universe in which (the real) Al Gore was elected President in 2000 and re-elected in 2004, leading to a comically utopian America.  But President Gore is troubled by a host of new "problems" that he has helped create.  It's a great prelude to the real President's address to the nation tonight.

This sketch was priceless, and Gore's delivery was perfect.

Next, Kristin Wiig and Horatio Sanz are hosts of what looks like the worst TV morning show in history.  Everything that can go wrong, does, including Sanz's accidental grab of Julia Louis-Dreyfus's boobs.  It hearkened back to Elaine's own unintentional grope of Teri Hatcher on "Seinfeld."  ("They're real, and they're spectacular!")

I have watched that sketch three times, and I belly-laugh every time.

Third, Andy Samberg plays a Learning Annex teacher of a class to teach people how to set up their own MySpace page.  Except that the class is filled almost entirely with pervy older men with ulterior motives.

I keep getting distressed when I watch something that proves that pedophilia – or at least the suggestion of it – can be funny.  But in this case, it's true.  Sanz again shines in this sketch.

And finally, while probably the weakest of the four (mainly because it dragged on a bit too long) was a '70s-era gameshow spoof called "Charades," with Chris Parnell as host Bert Convy and a panel of D-list celebrities.  Darrell Hammond was especially great as Rich Little, who incessantly interrupted with daft but hilarious non sequitur impressions.

The joke here was that all the charades Louis-Dreyfus's character had to act out were all part of a cruel, common theme.

The period costumes and wigs were terrific, as was Parnell's oversized microphone.

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[Watch video – 23:24, WMV format, low bandwidth]

A Saturday 'Mo-saic

Reader Ken sends us this appealing set of imagery of soap hottie Adrian Bellani, giving me yet another reason to quit my job and stay home watching daytime television:

Enjoy your weekend, everyone.  It was supposed to be rainy and miserable here in NYC.  Instead, it is brilliantly sunny and 65.  Kinda puts a crimp in my indoor cleaning plans.

"Stand"ing in Good Stead

OMG, there is almost too much prettiness to behold in X-Men: The Last Stand.

See for yourself.

I'm sure the extended trailer that aired on Fox on Thursday night has already made the rounds, but in case not, we aim to serve your every homoerotic superhero whim.

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[Watch video – 7:05, WMV format, low bandwidth]