Celebrities’ Advice for the PopeWhat Tom Wolfe, Evan Rachel Wood, Amy Sacco, and Carson Kressley think the Big B should do with his time in the city.
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Carson Kressley Was Working It Even Before ‘Queer Eye’Woody Allen’s new film Cassandra’s Dream is about a pair of brothers who do something dreadful and are plagued with guilt. So naturally, we asked guests at the Cinema Society’s celeb-studded screening of the flick on Tuesday what was the worst thing they’d done for money. Colin Farrell admitted that he once line-danced, and Rosie Perez said she did an ABC movie, but our favorite answer was Carson Kressley’s. Because it was so, well, not fake. “When I was a young struggling stylist, I had a credit card that my parents would help me pay for, and when I would run out of money for food, I would go to Bloomingdale’s and buy something and I’d put it on my charge card and I’d ask for a gift box,” the former Queer Eye style guru told us. “And then I would take it back to Bloomingdale’s and say I’d received it as a present. Then I would ask for the money back, and if they wouldn’t do that, I would buy popcorn or Mrs. Prindable’s Apples or whatever food they sold at Bloomingdale’s, and that way I could eat. But now they have much stricter return policies, it totally doesn’t work.” We’ve never tried this tactic, but we did run out of money during college and use our parents’ credit card to pay for group dinners so our friends would give us cash. So we really feel him on this one. —Fiona Byrne
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The Fug Girls: A New TV Diet for Spring!With Hollywood’s warring writers and producers seemingly spending more time on PR statements than negotiations, it’s going to be a long, wretched winter for television fans. To patch scheduling holes, networks are rushing out “mid-season replacements” (everything from game shows to reality hours) — essentially, shows that are handy in a pinch, but weren’t good enough to debut in the fall. It’s the idea that if there’s no water at the oasis, we’ll just drink the sand; too bad for them we’re not so easily satisfied. However, we ARE easily bored without our stories, so if our holiday wish for a speedy, fair strike resolution is impossible, then it’ll take some crafty TV-diet substitutions to get us through the drought.
Here are a few simple swaps:
American Gladiators. The show that brought us such spandex-wrapped warriors as “Turbo” and “Zap” obviously occupies its own vital place in TV history. But it also ably replaces the absent 24. Think about it: Jack Bauer runs a lot. He sweats. He does things to America, for America. And he likes to hit people with blunt objects. If he’d had the wherewithal to do it all with a Speedo and a tennis-ball cannon, you’d never even know the difference.
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At ‘Queen Mary’ Party, the Ship Is the Star
Must-see TV might be gone for the summer, but last night’s Britannia Ball aboard the Queen Mary 2 was 20,000 leagues headier and more surreal than any Scrubs rerun. A New York City Opera–BAM benefit on the world’s biggest, most magnificent cruise ship, the gala was attended by stars — okay, admittedly sort of B-list stars — like Chevy Chase, Cynthia Nixon, Jill Hennessy, Carson Kressley, Lost’s Michael Emerson, and Patti LuPone, who performed torch songs in between cocktails and dinner in the ship’s Off Broadway–size theater. But the biggest star was the ship: almost incomprehensibly tall, long, and fancy, with dozens of restaurants and bar, six pools, a Canyon Ranch Spa, a planetarium (a planetarium!), and a mini-mall of luxe stores like Hermès, Chopard, and H. Stern. “I think I could shop my way through QM2,” Carson Kressley said over a cocktail.
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Skating With Mariska, Carson, Johnny, and the Kids
At last, an upside to this inconveniently truthy weather: an outdoor ice-skating party in April that felt as frigid as an ice-skating party ought to. “Skating With the Stars Under the Stars,” held at Central Park’s Wollman Rink last night, wasn’t a competition; it was a free-skate night benefiting Figure Skating in Harlem, a skating and educational program for girls, many of whom were on hand in snazzy ensembles to skate and get celeb autographs. The celeb contingent included lots of skaters — plus, of course, Mariska Hargitay. But the quotes of the night belonged to Carson Kressley and Johnny Weir; they’re after the jump.
