Paul Reubens is doing one of the things he does best: obsessing. “I am constantly hoping that, like, I’m still relevant at all,” he says in a voice—higher than most men’s, slightly nasal—that’s still familiar, even after all these years. Wandering around the Hollywood Museum, just a few blocks from his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he has lingered over the red-and-white vintage bicycle that he rode in his 1985 movie Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. He has appraised the display containing the skinny gray suit (with red bow tie) that was his uniform on his Saturday-morning TV show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which aired on CBS from 1986 to 1991. But it’s not the Pee-wee Herman memorabilia, which sits near W.C. Fields’ top hat and Brendan Fraser’s George of the Jungle loincloth, that sets off Reubens OCD. Instead, the trigger is Bob Hope’s honorary Oscar. “When I was a kid, I’d always watch Bob Hope and go, like, ‘I know he must’ve been funny, but is he past his prime?’” Reubens says. “What I’m trying to prove now is that I still have it, I’m still around—I still am Pee-wee Herman, and Pee-wee Herman is still funny. So I’m feeling very Bob Hope—hoping I don’t see a parallel.” Yes, that’s right: The 57-year-old actor, best known for embodying the oddball man-child with the puppet friends (and also for two tawdry scrapes with the law), is about to don the skinny suit again to perform as Pee-wee for the first time in 19 years. Starting in early January in Los Angeles, Reubens will star in an elaborate live show in which Pee-wee yearns to fly, gets his wish, and then gives it away. For anyone who likes allegories, as Reubens does, this one is a doozy … In July 1991 Reubens was arrested for indecent exposure in an adult theater in Sarasota, Florida. He pleaded no contest while maintaining his innocence, but the resulting media feeding frenzy derailed all things Pee-wee. With his alter ego sidelined, Reubens spent several years out of the public eye, writing and collecting—obsessively. He fervently hoards everything from sunglasses to foot-measuring devices, fake food to yearbooks (he has amassed 8,000 of them). He played the occasional bit part before finally landing a career-resurrecting role: as a hairdresser turned drug dealer in Ted Demme’s 2001 drama Blow. Then, just when things were looking up, police raided Reubens’ house and, in 2002, arrested him for having what authorities called a collection of child pornography. In fact, the offending “collection” comprised a VHS tape of Rob Lowe’s sex romp and turn-of-the-century erotica images featuring men and women—but no children. Friends vouched for Reubens, saying he was an insatiable collector who often bought in bulk, books and magazines in particular, and that there was no way he could know everything he’d amassed. It didn’t matter. Even though his child-porn charges were ultimately reduced, 16 months later, to a misdemeanor possession-of-obscenity rap, the damage was done. To most people, Pee-wee was a kiddie-porn-purveying perv. “All this stuff that happened—the quote-unquote treatment I received—was not an inducement to come back to work,” Reubens says now. He looks good—clean-shaven and pale, with a closely shorn Pee-wee ‘do, trim blue jeans, a black-and-green retro short-sleeved button-down, and black Cole Haans. “To wait for somebody to give me permission to have a career wasn’t going to happen, you know?” … “I don’t want anyone for one second to think that I am titillated by images of children,” Reubens said on Dateline NBC. “The public may think I’m weird. They may think I’m crazy. . . . That’s all fine. As long as one of the things you’re not thinking about me is that I’m a pedophile. Because that’s not true.” But Reubens’ fondness for Pee-wee never went away. “I always loved being that character,” he tells me, his eyes tearing up as he recounts his previous evening’s activity: introducing the annual outdoor screening of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. ‘There were 3,000 people there,’ he says. “I could feel the love.” Pee-wee never seems to have been far from his mind … The new stage show—which will have about a dozen cast members, including puppeteers (and will feature familiar memes like “today’s secret word”)—will be true to that spirit. Out of respect for his slain friend Phil Hartman, who played Captain Carl, that character has been retired; Cowboy Curtis, the part Fishburne played, will get a larger role in his place. Reubens has also struck a first-of-its-kind pact with Ticketmaster to reach out to diverse audiences. When e-mail alerts appeared to be sent to mostly white consumers, one of the show’s producers complained to the booking company; the employee he reached revealed she was African-American and that she had grown up watching Pee-wee. “She said, ‘It was not lost on me that the King of Cartoons was a black man, and that had a big meaning for me.’ It doesn’t cost anything to be nice to somebody versus being ugly,” Reubens says, turning introspective. “This is where Pee-wee and me may not be relevant anymore, seriously.” I posit that kindness, pluralism, and fun with tape might be just the balm for what ails us today. Pee-wee won’t be our savior, Reubens says. “I can’t be that, because that doesn’t work for comedy.” But isn’t the resuscitation of this eighties-era Peter Pan itself a quixotic rescue mission? The question prompts a duh-Dottie-don’t-you-know rejoinder that sounds more like Pee-wee than Paul Reubens: “You can’t save the world.”

This article fails to mention that Reubens booked and sold tickets for a string of shows to take place here in LA in November at The Henry Fonda Theater (David and I had tickets) but he canceled all those shows and postponed his performances until January. It’s unclear if Reubens just wasn’t ready to the perform live or if the fast sale of all available tickets at the smaller theater inspired him to move the shows to a bigger venue (and therefore more money) but there is interest to see him perform live again. David and I haven’t decided if we’re going to try and buy tickets for the new shows just yet … we were intrigued when it was just a tiny show for fans. I fear it’s now become a bigger spectacle for money and I’m not sure I’m all that interested any more.

[Source]

They started throwing bras in Tacoma. That was the second night of the American Idol Live Tour. More flew in San Diego, Kansas City and DC. They were lacy, flowery bras and perky, polka-dotted bras, and the one that’s currently dangling directly over Adam Lambert’s head – a spongy E-cup on which some ardent fan has scrawled the initials A.L. over each giant boob. As a friendly prank, crew members have strung the bras up in the bowels beneath the stage at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois, just outside Chicago, among an abundance of other offerings – some of them X-rated. The groupies also hurles riding crops, feather boas, handcuffs, panties; it looks a little bit like a grenade went off in Frederick’s of Hollywood. “I’ve heard about Tom Jones and panties,” says Adam Lambert, who has come down to survey the haul. “But me and panties, that’s just a little bit freaky.” He points to a jockstrap on which someone has written in sequins JOCKS LOVE ADAM. “Oh,” he says wryly. “They do?” To the showman in Lambert, a six-foot-one Pan of a man with deep-set blue eyes and a shock of jet-black-and-blue emo-style hair, it’s all part of the spectacle. “A lot of times I’ll pick up a bra and play with it during a song,” he says “It’s a way to connect. It’s like, ‘I threw my bra up on stage and you’re spinning it around. Cool. Yay.’” Still, he says, ” I think it’s weird that I’m having this effect on women. It’s flattering. I’ve never had underwear thrown at me before. Clearly there’s something significant about it, because there aren’t a lot of openly gay men in the entertainment industry.” It’s a testament to the sheer mainstream appeal of American Idol that a gay man with an unabashed affection for eyeliner and nailpoilish has emerged from this years competition as a new American sex symbol. “I think it’s beautiful, ” Lambert says. “That’s the way it should be. It shouldn’t matter what a person’s sexual preference is – it doesn’t change their appeal.” In the end, Americans of every persuasion proved themselves defenseless against Lambert’s vigorous pelvic exertions. “When I’m onstage,” he says, “there’s definitely a sexual energy that goes into it.” Indeed, he gyrated his way through performances like Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love with a libidinous abandon that’s rarely seen on primetime network television. Moral majorities found his style scandalous, but Lambert offers no apologies. I have no problem telling people, “‘You know what? I’m not your babysitter and I’m not your church’, ” he says. “They go ‘Jesus loves you, too.’ One time I just blurted out ‘I’m Jewish, okay? I don’t need another crucifix! That’s not an appropriate gift for me!’” He laughs. “I know people are coming from a good place, but it can be offensive. Like, ‘Thank you, I’m not Christian! I don’t read that book.’” Nor does he beg forgiveness for his outrageous costumes, which often look like cast-offs from a Vegas production of Mad Max. “There’s a certain level of pageantry with Idol and in order to work the show, you kind of have to feed into it,” he says. Some say the 27-year-old even upstaged KISS during their Idol visit, outshining them with his soaring rock-tenor vocals and Bowie-lite stage presence. Undeniably, it was his voice – which has been compared favorably to those of Robert Plant and Freddie Mercury – that got him a shot on Idol, but it was his savvy that helped him stay there and eventually steal the show. The gay speculation that surrounded him, shich he never shied away from, probably didn’t hurt, either. Although he didn’t win the competition – “It doesn’t fucking matter who won it,” says Lambert, the runner-up – it got him what he wanted: a platform of which to launch a singing career. And fame. When the season ended, he was awarded a six-figure recording contract with 19 Entertainment, the company that owns Idol and puts out the Albums of headliners, like Clay Aiken and Kelly Clarkson. Simon Fuller, the Great Oz behind the show and one of the most successful producers in history (Idol sales alone have generated close to $100 million), explains Lambert’s appeal as a matter of genuinely unique talent and natural charisma … Lambert’s groupies on the Idol Live Tour follow him across the country, offering him clothes and books and jewelery . And they’ve tried to give him other things. “There was one woman in Jersey who was actually gorgeous,” says Lambert. “She had obviously had a couple of cocktails, and during an after-show meet-and-greet, she just slithered up next to me and started kissing my neck. I was cool with it. But then it started to get a little weird because she was, like, moaning. She gave me a note that said, ‘I want to make out with you, here’s my number,’ and I was like, wow, this is crazy. But again, it’s cool. Because yeah, I’m gay, but I like kissing women sometimes. Women are pretty. It doesn’t mean im necessarily sleeping with them. Of course, had I been the one drinking cocktails,” he adds, “I probably would’ve made out with her.” He says it wouldn’t matter to his 24-year-old boyfriend, whom he won’t discuss except to say that he’s “Cajun” and has “swagger” (”I like ‘em smaller and younger,” Lambert says mischievously.) He smiles. “I don’t see how all of this is different than – let’s take a modern sex-symbol like Brad Pitt. How many of the women who fantasize about him actually sleep with him?” he asks. “It’s all fantasy – that’s what entertainment is. I’m here to entertain you, and if my sexuality is apparent and you respond to it, and you’re attracted to it, then great, I’m doing my job. It ain’t happening anyway!” His road manager arrives to hustle him off to get ready for the show. “It takes him a little longer because he’s totally on girl-time,” she says affably. “I like to get real pretty, ” Lambert says. Lambert grew up in an affluent suburb of San Diego, his parents were laid back baby-boomers – his mother was a dental hygienist and his father a supervisor at a telecommunications company – who didn’t freak out when their little boy exhibited a fondness for singing show tunes and gamboling around in capes. Which might explain why, two decades later, Lambert could sit up in front of a somber Chris Conelly on 20/20 and tell him how comfortable he is with his sexuality. “Get into it bitches!” he says now, laughing. “I’m not hiding anything. At least I can say that I’m honest.”

Lambert’s Details coverstory goes on to talk about his younger, less confident days pre-stardom and paints a very well-rounded account of the young crooner. It’s deffo an interview that Glambert fans will want to read when the magazine hits newsstands in a few weeks. After the jump, check out the photos from his Details photospread but be warned, as I mentioned above, there is a full on nekkid chick posed with him so it might be NSFW for some of y’all …

I don’t know that I fully understand the need for Adam to be posed with a nekkid woman when much of his coverstory is about how happily out and gay he is. That being said, these photos are sure to garner a lot of attention and … I guess now I guess I understand the why. I’m not personally a fan of Lambert’s vocal style but I’m curious to hear what his debut album will sound like. He seems to have the talent and the gumption to enjoy a successful music career … I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Make sure you pick up this copy of Details when it becomes available.

[Source via Source]

On modeling being harder than playing football: “When I’m out on the football field, I have so much confidence in what I’m doing. With [the modeling], I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m at the whim of the photographer and the crew.”

On being set-up on a blind date with Gisele: “This friend told me he knew a girl version of me.” Gisele chimes in, “And he said to me he’d found a boy version of me.”

It’s kinda difficult to not be a bit jealous of this man’s amazing life. He’s a star in his profession, he’s married to one of the world’s most beautiful women and he is the proud father of an adorable baby boy … with another on the way. It really does seem like he’s got it all. And, hello, he’s ridiculously good-looking to boot! After the jump, check out a few photos from Tom’s Details magazine photospread from this new issue …

Even with all of the great things he’s got going for him, he still strikes me as a pretty normal dude … which is very rare, considering some of his peers. I’m not a big football fan but I can appreciate Tom’s talent. I wish him nothing but the best … and mebbe a bit less clothing in his next magazine photospread. For those interested, you can read Tom’s full Details magazine coverstory interview HERE.

[Source]

AS HAYDEN PANETTIERE WALKS a deserted strip in Hollywood, the 19-year-old star of NBC’s Heroes glances around nervously, occasionally spinning her head to check behind her. Wearing short denim shorts and brown UGGs and toting a big bag, the diminutive actress looks like an elfin princess on the run. “Hello,” she says, walking into a little vegan restaurant, greeting me as she shrugs off her load. She orders a bowl of brothy vegetable soup and twirls her little gold whale-tail necklace, a symbol, she explains, of her devotion to the cetacean cause. The petite, bronzed blonde keeps looking out the window, over her shoulder. Not surprisingly she’s afraid she’s been followed—Panettiere has become the ultimate tabloid chum. She has lived her whole life in the public eye. “I started doing this, and I know it sounds absurd, but 11 months old, I did my first commercial.” The daughter of an actress and a New York City firefighter, Panettiere spent her childhood bouncing between 30-second spots and roles on One Life to Live and Guiding Light. “I remember hearing in first grade, ‘Oh, why does she get to skip school?’” she says. “It wasn’t like I suddenly started feeling different. I always knew that I was. I never felt I missed out—in fact, it was like, ‘Oh, thank God I’m not that.’” Namely, she means, a regular kid. It’s not easy being beautiful and special and talented, and Panettiere lived through her share of Mean Girls shit. Mostly homeschooled, she occasionally returned from acting gigs to her public school in Rockland County, New York, and her classmates’ wrath. In middle school, she was punched in the face by “a very angry, very sad girl,” she says, as if echoing the words her mom used to comfort her at the time. “I was tortured, emotionally tortured by these girls. Every time I came back from filming, it would be me trying to find my way back into the clique. And they weren’t having it.” Panettiere seems to have emerged victorious from her teen trials. After a series of minor TV and movie roles, she was cast at age 16 as Heroes’ invincible cheerleader, Claire, and quickly blossomed into the queen of high-school geeks of all ages. (Her new teen comedy, I Love You, Beth Cooper, is about a nerd who falls for the hottest, most popular girl in school—notice a trend?) … There have been times when the media scrutiny was more than she could take. “It’s turned my life upside down and shaken it,” Panettiere says, referring to the incident in August 2008 in which her father was accused of hitting her mother and later charged with misdemeanor battery. Her father called it a misunderstanding, saying, “Nothing actually happened,” then pleaded no contest. “It was very tough, especially since it’s my family,” Panettiere says. “It’s one thing if you do it to me. I get frustrated, but I can handle it. But when it involves my family, my friends, forget it—I lose my . . . ” Panettiere pauses—then regains control. “I learned the game. The more I react, the angrier I get, the more satisfaction they get. That’s exactly what they want.” As Panettiere drains her bowl of soup, two young Orthodox Jewish men who have been circling in front of the restaurant finally come inside, holding cameras. “Excuse me. I’m sorry, I know this is extremely rude, but we’re from the East Coast and you’re the first famous person we’ve met. Is there any way I would be able to get a picture of you?” “You don’t want to meet famous people.” “If it’s possible, please,” the guy says. Panettiere puts down her spoon, and as they awkwardly drape their arms around her, she gives the camera a practiced look. “Thank you so much. Thank you. I’m sorry,” they say as they back out of the restaurant, already reviewing the images on the camera. “I gave them a half-smile,” she says matter-of-factly. “It’s a survival skill.”

On the one hand, I think it’s totally inappropriate to bother someone for a photo or autograph while they are eating … that should go without saying. But for Panettiere to feel she needs to employ “survival skills” when she is recognized by fans then she prolly should seek a different career. I can totally understand how the constant crush of fame can get tiresome but I also know that celebs really love the money and cache that comes from being famous. It is absolutely a double-edged sword … you take the good with the bad. In my personal experience, Hayden has been nothing but totally sweet to me. I’ve met her a few times … we chatted for a bit at the Star Trek premiere a couple of months ago. BUT, one of my very good friends suffered an unpleasant encounter with her when he tried to say hello to her at a public event (not while she was eating, not while she was talking to anyone else … at a promo event that she was paid to attend). I mean … I get it but when fame starts getting too much to bear, mebbe it’s time to try something else? I do enjoy her work and I will prolly see Beth Cooper when it opens (tho, I doubt the friend who she was mean to will want to come with me) but I’d rather the girl keep her sanity and get out of the limelight rather than become a bitter person.

[Photo credit: Matthias Vriens for DETAILS; Source]

“Is death or mortality something you think about or you’re fearful of?” Bradley Cooper, the star of The Hangover, asks as he crosses the parking lot of a Ralph’s supermarket in Venice, California, in April. Cooper, best known for playing “Sack” Lodge, the summer-house bully who body-slammed Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers, likes mixing in conversational drop shots like this. Last night, for instance, between his first and second order of steamed clams, he asked, “Do you like people? Do you have an interest in people?” It’s easy to fall for his big servings of brotherly love, equal parts laid-back L.A. and Philly Italian. According to his mother, this amiability made his schoolteachers so suspicious they used to ask her, “Is your son trying to pull something?” But the thing you forget—at least I did—is that the 34-year-old Actors Studio grad has arrived at the brink of superstardom thanks primarily to his dead-on comic timing. As I launch into a story about a talk I had with my dad on his deathbed a few years ago, Cooper stands by the door of his Mercedes truck listening, unwrapping his recent Ralph’s purchase, and flossing. Halfway through my story he starts moaning: “Oh . . . mmm . . . Wow, was that great!” … Hollywood careers can start in unexpected places—John Wayne’s first (uncredited) role was an Ivy Leaguer, George Clooney made his film debut opposite an animatronic bear—but Cooper is genuinely surprised that he’s coming in via the comedy entrance. “I’m not even funny at all,” he says. “That’s what’s so ironic.” He leans over the console in his truck. “I’m kidding. I have my reel. I’ll show you.” Then, after a beat, “I’m kidding.” He grew up idolizing Robert De Niro and Daniel Day-Lewis, not Bill Murray and Steve Martin. If anything, he says, he felt suited to “Harrison Fordish” real-guy action roles. But the instant he admits this, he sends himself up again. “Just because when I was a kid, I would fake-fight all the time. I was really good at the sound effects. That’s the reason why I thought I could be effective in this business.” The Hangover, which opens right in time for wedding season, is a departure from the man-boy comedies of recent vintage: Three guys at a Vegas bachelor party wake up on the floor of their Caesars Palace fantasy suite to learn that they’ve lost the groom, along with any memory of the night before. The unlikely trio of leads—Ed Helms (Andy from The Office), Zach Galifianakis (a veteran of the stand-up circuit who has played a bunch of homeless guys), and Cooper—are perfectly mismatched: Helms plays the flustered romantic, Galifianakis the tagalong misfit, and Cooper the instigator with buckets of bad advice. Or as Helms puts it, “the uptight nerd, the weirdo, and the alpha-male cool guy.” Warner Bros. feels so confident about the movie’s box-office prospects that, even before the opening, it signed on for a sequel. Not bad for a project that most people thought had no bankable star when it went into production. But director Todd Phillips knew better. He expects that after The Hangover people will start seeing Cooper as a leading man instead of just “the asshole boyfriend of the girl,” the sort of part he’s been getting so far. Phillips sees Cooper moving into the kind of territory inhabited by actors named Grant (Hugh, Cary). “The key with any comic actor is the willingness to fail and make a fool of yourself,” he says. “A lot of times, guys that look like Bradley think, ‘Ah, I don’t have to do that. I have this other thing.’ But Bradley doesn’t give a fuck.” For now, Cooper claims, he never gets recognized anywhere. “I don’t have to curtail my life at all,” he says the morning after our clam feast. “Zero. Zero. Zero.” To the extent that’s true, it’s probably thanks to his hair, which can be completely distracting. In person, his features, a grab bag of wicked good looks—the road-trip scruff, the sniper’s blue eyes, the thin and curling lips, the pointy Shakespearean chin—are pretty much what you see onscreen, but he keeps the hair so operatically disordered that you barely notice the movie star beneath it. One other reason he never gets spotted: He’s up before anyone else. So that we can burn off some of that seafood by hitting one of his favorite mountaintop runs, Cooper and his G 55 come by my hotel at 6:30 A.M. At that hour, you might bump into a few nature photographers, but not a paparazzo … “It’s an unusual situation,” Ed Helms says of his Hangover costar. “Bradley is a highly intelligent being wrapped in a hot, studly body.” Zach Galifianakis sees a different side. “He likes to nap,” he says. “He’d come over to my trailer and ask if he could nap near me. It was weird. The first time he did it, I was in my trailer, running my mouth about how my sneakers looked like something Paula Poundstone would wear. After 12 minutes of monologue I look over and I’d bored Bradley into the cutest nap face the world has ever seen. Twenty minutes later he woke up and we chewed tobacco.”

I’ve heard many good things about Bradley Cooper … I’m not surprised to read that he’s a pretty down-to-Earth guy. Every time I see a trailer for The Hangover in theaters, the whole audience erupts in laughter every single time. I’m pretty sure the movie is gonna be a big hit and it feels like Cooper’s time to shine. After the jump, check out a couple other photos from Bradley’s Details magazine shoot — you’ll see why his hawtness needs to be more famous …

I can’t figure out why but Bradley Cooper reminds me of someone … like, I know him from somewhere. I suspect that I’ve just seen him in enough things and paid no attention that he got into my subconscious. I’m really looking forward to see more from him … I will deffo be seeing The Hangover. I think that film will give us a pretty good feel of whether or not he’s got star quality.

[Source]

The move Justin Gaston suddenly pulls could easily cause a 9-year-old girl’s head to explode from excitement. In the midst of talking about Scripture, he yanks up his shirt and tugs his pants down to reveal a toned left flank with a long tattoo that runs down to the top of his buttock. “It’s Psalm 7:8, ‘Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness,’” says the 20-year-old singer-songwriter-model, a kid you’re reading about, let’s be honest, because he’s Miley Cyrus’ boyfriend. As the sun sets, the rangy six-footer with bovine brown eyes capped by dogwood-thick eyebrows, gazes from a hotel suite overlooking Venice Beach. “I don’t want to be judged—so I put it on my body in an attempt to become that bold.” A little courage would certainly help him bear the scrutiny that comes with being the beau of Hannah Montana, as would heavenly protection from the near-Biblical plague of overweight men wielding cameras—Gaston admits to lately having had nightmares punctuated by paparazzi flashes. Gaston—unlike Cyrus, who was booking acting gigs at 10—has arrived in the world of celebrity with little time for preparation. After a modeling agent discovered him three years ago, the devout Christian from Pineville, Louisiana, spent three miserable months in New York before heading to L.A. to transform himself into the next John Mayer. His shaggy good looks landed him a spot on Nashville Star, on which he discovered an ally in host Billy Ray Cyrus—himself a churchgoer with former pro-ball aspirations—who summoned Gaston for frequent powwows in his tour bus. When Gaston was booted after only three episodes, Cyrus’ on-air farewell was lavish. “This guy’s gonna be a big, big movie star,” he said. “I’m calling it right now! Tom Cruise, look out!” “I kinda saw it coming just with the way Billy Ray was with him,” says Ruby Cantu, a Nashville Star producer who lived with the contestants. Soon, Billy Ray ushered Gaston onto the Hannah Montana set. “It’s like if you had a 16-year-old daughter who said, ‘Oh, Daddy, he’s so cute—I want to meet him,’” Cantu says. “That’s exactly what happened.” Cantu says it’s real affection: “puppy love . . . holding hands and being cute with each other.” Others wonder. “It seems like a de facto advertisement,” says Courtney Hazlett, MSNBC’s pop-culture columnist of the YouTube video of Cyrus dancing and swooning while Gaston sings. Is Gaston a girl’s first love or part of a stage dad’s cynical ploy to help his multi-million-dollar daughter forge a post-Disney career? In contrast to Cyrus’ ex, Nick Jonas, Gaston hasn’t spent his life hermetically sealed in a Magic Kingdom turret; take, for instance, the photo shoot Gaston did for the online underwear retailer International Jock, the mention of which makes him cringe. “It’s not something my mom would be proud of,” he says. He scoffs at the Internet chatter suggesting he’s been living in the Cyrus home—”No! I live in an apartment in North Hollywood with two guys!”—and seems at a loss when asked basic questions about his girlfriend. He won’t identify the person who repeatedly calls his iPhone during the interview. Finally he hurries off to take the call behind closed doors. Another mystery: the status of his music career. All he’ll disclose is that he’s involved with people who are tinkering with his image. It’s a surprising admission, perhaps, though somewhat less so when you consider what he says he’d choose to be if he weren’t Justin Gaston: “One of those little lapdogs that gets petted all day,” he says. “You know, they wake up, get fed, get attention. I like attention. I’d like to be one of those little dogs. Is that weird?”

I find it SO ODD that Billy Ray Cyrus took such a liking to this young man after he got kicked off a competitive reality TV show that he brought him home to live with him and his family AND has no problem with allowing the 20 year old to date his 16 year old daughter. It’s hard to determine which one of the Cyruses loves Justin Gaston more — Billy Ray or Destiny Hope Miley. The bit about wanting to be a lapdog that gets petted all day is just hilarious. It’s like he doesn’t realize that that is the life he’s already living. Lord have mercy, indeed. After the jump, check out a slew of photos of Justin that were snapped at Venice Beach for Details magazine — they’re worth checking out, he does interesting things with an ice cream cone …

If this isn’t enough Justin Gaston for ya, Details also offers a short video of the lad showing off his singing skills … behold:

Mandy Moore is wearing motorcycle boots. The detail certainly qualifies as strange. As she settles into a booth at a dimly lit Hollywood diner, the kind of greasy spoon where musicians nurse hangovers, it’s immediately apparent that Moore is not the preppy good girl you were expecting—nor the wholesome Neutrogena spokesperson, nor the milquetoast star of bland movie fare, nor the erstwhile nineties pop-tart who’s remained a professional cutie ever since. Her incongruous footwear is accompanied by a flowered vintage frock, a baggy cardigan, and black tights, and her short, layered hair is just-woke-up mussed. She orders a basket of fries and a chocolate shake, then says, “It’s okay to have a milk shake. . . . It is! Whatever! Who fucking cares?”—she’ll repeat that last phrase often. In Hollywood, where everyone is cleaning up his or her image, Mandy Moore seems to be set on giving hers a few rougher edges. To be sure, vestigial hints of her Girl Scout persona remain. Before eating her fries, Moore, who lives nearby in Los Feliz, daubs her hands with lavender-infused sanitizer. “I’m a germ-phobe when I meet a lot of people or shake a lot of hands. I always have hand sanitizer and alcohol swabs,” she says, “so I can sort of go back and forth between the two.” She explains that she added alcohol swabs to her handbag when her “best girlfriend,” a publicist for Coach (”you know, the handbag company”), informed her that “you can build up an immunity to the antibacterial stuff—and I was like, Oh, perfect.” In the process of disinfecting, Moore removes her conspicuous engagement ring, an enormous tear-shaped diamond—a gift, the world now knows, from Ryan Adams, whose indie cred can be measured in numerous reports of his substance abuse and onstage tantrums. It’s hard not to wonder, of course, what role Adams might have played in Moore’s alt-chick reinvention.

Awww … I love it. Mandy has started wearing her husband’s clothes. Except for the fact that she’s a wee bit taller than he is, I bet Mandy and Ryan are pretty much the same size. It’s a shame that the mag doesn’t offer any photos of Mandy wearing her new “alt-chick” clothing — but they do offer a few more photos of Mandy in her undies from the magazine’s photospread. After the jump, check them out …

My, my Amanda Leigh … what a lovely young woman you have grown into. It seems curious to me that this Details interview makes no mention of the fact that her new album will be released on May 26 which seems odd since magazines usually feature celebs that have new projects in the works (earlier we learned that altho Eric Bana is featured on the cover of Details, his coverstory interview does not feature any promo for his new film Star Trek). Again, don’t get me wrong … I love the pics even if the interview tells me nothing new. I am very anxious to hear Mandy’s new album … as much as I’m charmed by the fact that new hubby Ryan Adams is influencing her clothing choices, I’m much more intrigued to hear if he is also influencing her music style.

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SOMETHING HAPPENED TO BANA when Hollywood called. He was a successful Australian comedian who’d spent five years doing stand-up before landing his own TV show, Eric. Then, in 2000, his searing performance as the blaring psycho Mark Read in Chopper demonstrated a raw talent at full tilt—and offered him a ticket to the movie major leagues. But no sooner had he burst through Hollywood’s gilded doors than he steadied himself and began a run of characters who were defined by their inability to emote: the hawkeyed hard case Hoot in Black Hawk Down; Avner the conscience-stricken assassin in Munich; the conflicted scientist in Ang Lee’s Hulk; Hector in Troy, the warrior trying to avoid war. In these roles Bana glowered, his eyes dark, wrestling with some inner dilemma. The old Bana does reveal himself occasionally: At Aussie Rules football games, for example, Bana screams himself hoarse. In his comedy-club days, he had to stop going to contests on the night before a gig, because he wouldn’t have a voice the next day. But now, for the most part, he’s thoughtful, earnest, and a little serious. And he’s sincere about wanting to show me around Melbourne. On finding out how far I’ve come, how limited my time is, and that this is my first visit to Australia, he chews pensively, calculating an itinerary … We stop at a park and watch some ducks being fed. It seems a little sedate for Hector of Troy. But the ducks aren’t the draw for Bana. “It’s a Formula One track. There’s a race in three weeks’ time.” He never planned on being Eric Bana the actor, or the comedian, for that matter. What he really wants is to be Mario Andretti. Between shooting movies, Bana can be found “fart-arsing around with my car, getting ready for a race.” Although he has more than one, his favorite car is a fire-engine-red ‘74 XB Falcon coupe that he calls the Beast. He’s had it since he was 15. “Three of my closest friends—our relationship has been maintained because we’ve always worked on this car,” he says. “The car has transcended itself. It has become a campfire.” But one day, during the Targa Tasmania rally in April 2007, he crashed into a tree. “I totaled it. After a two-year restoration, everything handmade. Oh, it hurt—yeah. Absolutely.” He falls silent for a moment, still mourning the Beast … [H]e drives to a small, nondescript brick building and we park outside the house he lived in when he first attempted to make people laugh for a living. He made the decision to give comedy a try after driving around the United States in a 1979 Mustang on his own for six months. He was all of 22. “It sounded like a great idea at the time, but after 10 days straight without talking to anybody, you start to think, What the fuck am I doing here?” he says. Still, he plowed on, from city to city, sleeping in his car because money was tight. And then he got lost in the wrong part of Washington, D.C. “I’d be pulling up to street corners, and there were gangs right there, and I’m in this little Mustang by myself. I thought, I am fucking dead. I was running red lights, hoping the cops would pull me over.” The experience prepared him for stand-up—the loneliness and fear had hardened him. So when he was working as a bartender in a comedy club back home a few months later, he says he thought, “These acts are all a bit shithouse—I can do that. I’ll be a bit uncomfortable up there, but after the trip I had, how bad can it be?” It was the right choice. He has a talent for impersonating people. On YouTube you’ll find Bana doing Arnold, Bana doing Tom Cruise. He went about as far as you can in Australia—from $60-a-night gigs to his own TV show. And then, after 10 years, he quit. “I got sick of listening to myself,” he says. “I had all the tools, but my act had stagnated and I felt dirty.” Comedy is not something Bana wishes to revisit. The closest he’s come to that is a part in the upcoming Judd Apatow movie Funny People, starring Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler. “All I miss about comedy is being producer, director, and writer. I miss the control,” he says. Like many comics, Bana is prone to dark moods … In a few weeks he’ll be racing again. Then there’s a heap of press to do for all the movies he’s got in the can—Star Trek, Funny People, the chick-flicky Time Traveler’s Wife. Beyond that, he’s just reading and deciding what comes next. The in-between is his favorite time, living his Melbourne life, sticking the bikes on the roof of the car and taking the kids to the beach. Today he’s happy just to be a tour guide. “If you’ve got time tomorrow, you should check out the Melbourne Cricket Ground—it’s one of the great sporting stadiums. I think they do tours,” he says before we part. He shakes my hand and heads into the balmy night in the city where he can fool himself into thinking that he’s still plain old Aussie Eric, the family man and race-car nut who remembers who he is just enough to forget what he does.

What a strange interview … especially for a coverstory. There is no talk of his new film nor does he even really talk about his acting career … that said, I had no idea that Eric Bana used to be a comedian. Honestly, I can’t see it so I may have to look up some videos on You Tube to get a sense of his humor. While the interview feels a bit lacking to me, the accompanying photoshoot does not. After the jump, check out some photos from Eric’s Details magazine photospread which was shot by Steven Klein …

These photos seem entirely disjointed from Eric’s interview … but I don’t particularly care. Steven Klein has a way of capturing moments … his use of lighting is excellent. You always get the mood of a photo even if you’re not entirely sure what is going on. Any photo of Eric Bana taking off his shirt is a welcome one. Thumbs up on the photospread, thumbs down on the interview. What do y’all think?

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The night before his life changes forever, Alex Rodriguez calls from Miami with an urgent request. A-Rod is worried about something he said during our interview last night. I’ve been hearing mysterious warnings all afternoon: Alex needs to talk. Alex wants to clarify something. Can’t say what. Alex will call you from his car. “Listen,” Rodriguez says. “I was thinking about one thing that I spoke about—it’s something that’s kind of trivial but will give me a hard time for no reason.” He pauses. “The song.” Aha. Last night, he let slip his favorite Madonna song. The curious relationship between A-Rod and the pop icon makes for delicious gossip, of course. Is Rodriguez terrified that Madonna will resent the tongue-wagging? Or, better still, has he picked the wrong song as his favorite, and fears that an offended Madge might march her stilettos over his back? No: Rodriguez believes that revealing the song would lead to its being played every time he stepped to the plate during an away game. “The last thing I want to do is go to every stadium and have them play that song,” he says. Fine—to be honest, it’s not even a great Madonna song (if it had been something juicy like “Justify My Love,” forget it). Looking back, his preoccupation seems surreal. Just the day before, Selena Roberts, a reporter from Sports Illustrated, had confronted Rodriguez at a Miami gym, asking for his reaction to evidence that he’d tested positive for illegal steroids in 2003. And now here he was, sweating a Madonna song. It’s like worrying about the in-flight movie as your plane is belly flopping on the Hudson River. Maybe Rodriguez is in denial. He’s just spent the afternoon happily posing for the cover shoot for this story, showing off his strapping physique and loosening up with shots of Patrón. His pals talk of continuing the party nearby, at the remodeled Fontainebleu hotel. When he calls later there’s no panic in his voice, no foreshadowing of the humiliation that he, at least, knows is coming. It really is as though his biggest concern in the world is that Madonna song. That fear is misdirected anyhow: Like an opposing team’s ballpark needs any inspiration to crank up a Madonna song when A-Rod comes to the plate. Velvet-vested organists have been practicing the entire Ciccone oeuvre for months. You know what happens next. Just over 12 hours after we hang up, Sports Illustrated publishes its story. Two days after that, a tearful Alex Rodriguez carefully confirms to ESPN that he used a “banned substance.” Excoriated in the media, the best baseball player of his generation is in an unimaginable fight to get his good name back. He’d probably give anything to return to worrying about that damn song. “Alex,” he says, extending a hand. “Nice to meet you.” Rodriguez strides toward my table in a sleek Italian restaurant in Miami’s South Beach wearing a cappuccino-colored sweater, a white oxford shirt, jeans, and pristine white sneakers. Style-wise, he’s a little Fred Rogers, a little Jerry Seinfeld. His eyes are turquoise green, and his brown hair is cut and gelled impeccably (the frosted tips were excised a while ago). On his left wrist is a red string Kabbalah bracelet. He orders an iced tea and explains why he was delayed on his way to dinner. One of his daughters was taken to the hospital with a staph infection. She’s going to be fine, he says, sounding relieved. Spring training is less than two weeks away, and Rodriguez has been working out down the road in Coral Gables, at the University of Miami, “about six mornings a week.” He’s pleased with the three new hires the Yankees spent $423 million on—first baseman Mark Teixera, pitchers C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett—and his face brightens as he talks about playing in the new $1.6 billion Yankee Stadium. He tells me he grabbed a souvenir seat from the old ballpark before it was shuttered. “What I really wanted I couldn’t get,” Rodriguez says. “There was a scale in the training room that had been there for years. Very cool, rustic, gold. Babe Ruth weighed himself on that scale. Joe DiMaggio. Mickey Mantle. I would have paid a funny number for that.” A waiter interrupts to ask for our dinner order, and Rodriguez waves him off—no food, thanks—as we discuss other off-season dramas. He mentions that he voted for Obama. “I’m cheering hard for him,” he says. “But we have to give him time and be patient.” (Three days later, the new president will call revelations of A-Rod’s steroid use “depressing news.”) Rodriguez, whose baseball salary alone is $28 million this season, admits he lost a chunk of change in the economic meltdown. “Whoever says they didn’t is lying,” he says, leaning forward in his chair. He says he feels bad for Michael Phelps, who’s recently been photographed lip-locked to a bong. “We live in a world right now where everyone’s keeping score,” Rodriguez says of the hunger for scandal. “And it doesn’t stop when the games end. . . . They’ve crossed over. And you have the Internet stuff, and all these phones. . . . It’s very intense.” Of course, A-Rod’s own version of the bong photo—a far more damaging one—is ready to drop. Earlier in the day, Rodriguez had his encounter with Roberts, the Sports Illustrated reporter, at the University of Miami gym. “You’ll have to talk to the union,” he told her when she confronted him about the positive drug test. “I’m not saying anything.” But he never mentions it to me. There are no urgent calls to or from his handlers, no interruptions at all. If he’s distracted, he isn’t showing it. He’s polite, unrushed, engaged. This is not to suggest he is loquacious; to say Alex Rodriguez is a guarded person is to say NORAD’s headquarters is a garage with a Master Lock. He examines each question for trapdoors before answering. You can’t fault him for protecting himself, but you can practically hear a P.R. team rattling off talking points inside his head. Responses are wiped clean of anything raw, off-message, or authentic.

The interview does go on from there and actually offers some bit of personality … he confesses that he sometimes will ride the subway to baseball games (“I have a hoodie on, but all it takes is one person and then you’re done. But it’s great. The fans get a kick out of it, I get a kick out of it. We talk about who’s pitching tonight, and what we need to do. It’s like being on sports radio”) and, of course, does talk a bit about Madonna … tho, he never quite offers anything that might be construed as scandalous (“We’re friends. She’s an amazing entertainer. And it’s been amazing how she’s been able to stay on top for three decades. I have a lot of respect for her”). He also throws in bits about his now ex-wife saying that he and Cynthia have a “wonderful relationship”. The whole thing ends with A-Rod’s press conference admitting his use of banned substances and kinda throws a bucket of cold water over the entire interview. It’s an interesting read, I think. After the jump, check out one more photo of A-Rod from his Details magazine photoshoot — it’s not to be missed, he is actually kissing his #1 fan …

This guy is quite a character. Honestly, I doubt the steroid thing will have any lasting impact on his career … I bet he’ll end up keeping his head down for the next year or so and just soldier on successfully. The guy is slick but he’s also talented. With a combination like that, he’s bound to come out on top. Folks like that usually do.

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Kanye West is on another magazine cover (this time with a sure-to-be-appreciated gray-free beard) and as usual the rapper turned auto-tune singer turned fashion designer is full of Kanye-isms. To name a few:

What other new tales of grandeur might Kanye have added to his repertoire? Just that a sexual addiction at a young age has somehow fueled his drive for greatness… “People ask me a lot about my drive,” he says. “I think it comes from, like, having a sexual addiction at a really young age. Look at the drive that people have to get sex—to dress like this and get a haircut and be in the club in the freezing cold at 3 a.m., the places they go to pick up a girl. If you can focus the energy into something valuable, put that into work ethic…” That actually sounds more like normal behavior than a full-blown sexual addiction, but if Kanye says he was a sex addict then he was probably the greatest addict to have ever been addicted to sex in the history of sexual studies. He also notes that he was a highly advanced computer programmer of sexual addiction and produced his first Super Mario Bros.: The Penis Remix in the seventh grade: “My game was very sexual. The main character was, like, a giant penis. It was like Mario Brothers, but the ghosts were, like, vaginas. Mind you, I’m 12 years old, and this is stuff 30-year-olds are programming. You’d have to draw in and program every little step—it literally took me all night to do a step, ’cause the penis, y’know, had little feet and eyes.” Cute, right? However, it should be noted that Kanye is over music and penis games as he’s now turning his great sexual addiction nuclear energy exclusively to fashion. He plans on moving to Paris and being mentored by his fashion idol Marc Jacobs. In fact, Yeezy is so into M.J., he intentionally left the designer’s number on the table for his Details interviewer to see. After all, what’s the point in being subtle now?

LOL! Kanye West is just a really funny man to listen to when he’s spoutin’ off. I love the Cyclops comment … except, someone should prolly tell him that Cyclops‘ nuclear power comes from his eyes when he takes off his sunglasses, not puts them on. And, you gotta wonder why it is so important for him to talk about that sexual video game he came up with in the 7th grade … I mean, really. It sounds a lot like when Kenny Chesney started bragging about having sex with “over 100 women” to try and get people to believe that he isn’t gay. It just sounds too contrived.

And since we’re on the gay tip, Kanye also waxes on the state of Gaydom in this new Details magazine interview. Altho he’s never been to a gay bar (and would NEVER go to one), he does reveal that he’s got love for his gay brethren. After the jump, check out two more photos of Kanye from this issue of Details and read about his thoughts on gayness …

Move over Webster’s: Mr. West is the new authority on word play. Kanye West considers himself the final word on many topics, as the Details cover subject asserted in this month’s issue. He spoke of the origins of his drive (sex), his future in fashion (mentoring under Marc Jacobs) and further embraced his own special connotation of the term ‘gay’. Kanye West explained to the interviewer, “titles are very important. I like to embody titles, y’know, or words that have negative connotations, and explain why that’s good. Take the word gay — like, in hip-hop, that’s a negative thing, right? But in the past two, three years, all the gay people I’ve encountered have been, like, really, really, extremely dope. “Y’know, I haven’t, like, gone to a gay bar, nor do I ever plan to. But where I would talk to a gay person — the conversation would be mostly around, like, art or design — it’d be really dope. From a design standpoint, kids’ll say, ‘Dude, those pants are gay.’ But if it’s, like, good, good, good fashion-level, design-level stuff, where it’s on a higher level than the average commercial design stuff, it’s, like, gay people that do that. I think that should be said as a compliment. Like, ‘Dude, that’s so good it’s almost . . . gay.’” He provided further examples: “‘Dude, that’s so good it’s almost gay!’ ‘Dude, you pay real attention to detail—that’s almost, like, gay!’ ‘You had a whole conversation with that girl without bringing up sex? That was, like, gay!’”

Um, yeah. Let me just say this for the guy … I really believe his heart is in the right place. You’d be hard-pressed to find other Hip Hop artists that would be so open to talking about homosexuality in a positive way. On the one hand, his pompous posturing is really annoying but his commitment to trying to bridge the gap between Hip Hop and homosexuality by championing the positives … I can’t hate him for that fact alone. I have my suspicions about what is really going on with his love for “gay” things but … that’s a topic for another time. He may drive other folks crazy (me included, sometimes) but sometimes he redeems himself too. What do y’all think about this new interview with Kanye West? Are any of y’all feelin’ his sentiments?

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