Posts Tagged ‘Perez Hilton’

CD Review: Sliimy, “Paint Your Face”

61l4xyGRW1L._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]Perez Hilton may not know his ass from a hole in the ground, and his unwelcome attempt to go from gossip hound to media mogul might be going down in doughy Day-Glo flames, but even a broken clock is right twice a day, and for the first signing to his Warner Bros. vanity imprint, Hilton hasn’t done too badly for himself.

The artist in question, Sliimy, comes across at first as Hilton’s similarly annoying, equally doodle-obsessed cousin, but there are dark, tender depths to his first album, Paint Your Face. With his androgynous voice, melancholy lyrical streak, and gift for sweet pop melodies, Sliimy is almost a cross between Mika and a young Joan Armatrading. It pains me to say it, but at least in this case, Hilton might not be totally worthless; even if he didn’t quite “discover” Sliimy — he was a MySpace phenom before Perez came calling — this is far from the sort of obnoxious musical nightmare you’d expect from a Hilton-approved artist. (more…)

Sugar Water: Running Scared From Progress

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I didn’t accomplish much in April. Now it’s May.

Oh yeah, I did ask my long-term, short-tempered girlfriend, Aimiee, to marry me, as threatened in my last Sugar Water column. And the answer was no, but don’t start crying for us just yet.

See, she wants to marry me, but as she put it, “If gay couples can’t legally marry in Illinois, why should straight people like us have that right? Plus you abandoned Xing, our seven-year-old adopted Chinese son who’s actually our daughter, in Nebraska right before that safe-haven law was changed last November, which brings up a wide range of trust issues.” (The Cornhusker State’s Some Children Are Inevitably Going to Be Left Behind Act, as you’ve probably heard, was a failure. Or a success, depending on how you feel about children.)

See, all I have to do is convince the Illinois Supreme Court that gay marriage isn’t a threat to the moral fiber of our state — or Chicago’s chances of hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics — and Aimiee will be my wife. Of course, at the beginning of April I was pretty crushed since there seemed to be no way Illinois would legalize gay marriage, but suddenly its corn-fed neighbor Iowa was down with hot man-on-man lifelong commitment and kinky girl-on-girl sacred vows.

Yes, Iowa and Vermont accomplished something much more important in April than writing a new Sugar Water column, though they’re welcome to sub for me at any time while I watch syndicated reruns of the so-bad-it’s-good TV show Boston Legal to prepare for my Supreme Court appearance. Unfortunately, the recently canceled “dramedy” hasn’t taught me a thing about how the law actually works. William Shatner doesn’t play a starship captain on this spin-off of The Practice, but it might as well be another self-punched notch on his science-fiction belt since it’s so far removed from reality. The attorneys at Boston Legal’s fictional firm are constantly being arrested or sued, and that’s when they’re not suing each other just to kill some time. In real life you’d take your business elsewhere if it weren’t for the fact that they win 99 percent of their cases, thanks to sanctimonious courtroom speeches delivered by James Spader that employ zany one-liners and statistics from the latest issue of Newsweek in equal measure. In the final episode, which aired last December, Shatner and Spader’s characters went before the U.S. Supreme Court to defend their right to marry each other even though they’re not gay.

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Political Culture: Beauty Queens, Bigotry … and Ambivalence

It may be that only an event like this could have propped up that downward-spiraling phenomenon, the beauty pageant: An out-and-proud celebrity gossip-monger asking a comely Californian how she feels about gay marriage, and her answer (perhaps) costing her the competition.

Since Prop 8 passed in California last November, there’s been much debate about the repercussions that are being visited upon prominent supporters of the gay-marriage ban. Boycotts of restaurants, car dealerships and other businesses have targeted wealthy individuals who coughed up big bucks to deny their fellow citizens a basic civil right. But in the process, those boycotts have threatened the livelihoods of their employees – untold numbers of illegal-immigrant dishwashers, down-on-their-luck actors, and guys in shiny suits selling cars nobody wants. On top of the conflicting values of religious certainty and civic equality, we’re now dealing with the ethics of remedies that set out to punish one person but end up hurting others.

And now we’re boycotting beauty-pageant contestants! Are we truly expected to judge that hottie we just saw strutting the catwalk in a swimsuit and heels – excuse me, I meant to say “that potential Miss USA” – not merely on her physique and tap-dancing ability, but on her positions on the hot-button issues of the day?

Poor Carrie Prejean is convinced that it was her “biblically correct,” not politically correct answer that cost her the crown. And she has received plenty of public criticism for stating her anti-gay beliefs during that pressure-packed moment – though, even as he attacked her vehemently in a post-pageant video blog, judge/provocateur Perez Hilton tried to fudge the issue in substance-vs.-style terms: (more…)