Last night David and I were invited to the Louis Vuitton store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, CA to attend a GQ magazine party celebrating LA Men of Style. The store was shut down and converted into a party space for invited quests to mix, mingle, drink and do a bit of afterhours shopping. The whole place was all done up in bright colorful lights:

There were a few celebs in attendance last night, including party host Neil Patrick Harris … who I finally got to meet last night :) After the jump, check out my pic with NPH and find out who else was at the shindig last night …

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Taylor Lautner, the hottie, hunky, heartthrob of The Twilight Saga movie franchise, is featured in the pages of the new issue of GQ magazine. Mr. Lautner has been chosen to model a series of fitted dress shirts … like this one:

Chances are you never saw Twilight, because chances are you’re not a 15-year-old girl (or her mom). But here’s the thing about the blockbuster and its sequel, New Moon—and for that matter, all the yet-to-come films in the teen-vampire series: They feature Taylor Lautner, a 17-year-old kid who is one of the luckiest actors in Hollywood. Two years ago, he was an unknown with credits in flicks like Cheaper by the Dozen 2. But then he landed a small part in Twilight, a movie based on a book he’d never heard of. He had four scenes, a few lines in each, and looked like a scrawny kid in a big movie. Then something happened that Lautner didn’t see coming. He nearly lost his job. The studio didn’t believe he had the stones (or the bulk) to play a convincing boy-turned-werewolf-turned-romantic-lead in the sequel. “They needed to understand he had that aggression,” says director Chris Weitz (who, by the way, made a film you did see, About a Boy). So Lautner hit the gym, hard, eating every two hours, packing on thirty pounds. “I tried to stay focused on the things I could control,” he says. Well done. Lautner kept his job, and the film’s entire marketing campaign was built around his new abs. “When a man transforms into a wolf,” Lautner clarifies, “all of his clothes get shredded. When he comes back to human form, he’s wearing ripped jeans, and that’s about it. It’s the way it was written. The great thing about this series is we stay true to the books.” Ah, to be 17.

HMMM … isn’t it cute that Taylor’s Twilight character, Jacob Black, has prolly never worn a fitted dress shirt in his entire fictional life and, yet, Taylor was chosen to model these shirts for a major men’s fashion magazine. I wonder why that is. Oh yes, prolly because the young guy is überhawt. After the jump, check out 8 more photos of Taylor in the new issue of GQ — including one photo where he is showing off what he’s got going on under these shirts …

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True Blood hottie Ryan Kwanten is featured inside the new issue of GQ magazine, the one with Michael Jackson on the cover, modeling some pieces from various Fall/Winter 09/10 collections and lookin’ YUM all the while. Here is a photo from Ryan’s GQ photospread and the blurby little accompanying interview piece:

In season one of HBO’s True Blood, actor Ryan Kwanten had sex by a Dumpster, suffered a drug-induced perma-erection, was accused of murdering four women, and got swept up by a religious cult. Oh, and he was naked (at least partially) in eleven of twelve episodes. “I led the way in the sexual-shenanigans department in the first season,” says the 32-year-old Australian native, who first made a name for himself playing a lifeguard on an Aussie soap. Kwanten may play a dim womanizer on-screen, but offscreen he’s smart enough to suffer the indignities of his nude scenes with a smile. While other TV networks are struggling to keep the lights on, True Blood’s viewership has doubled, easing HBO out of its post-Sopranos slump and assuring Kwanten that he’ll remain taken care of through the global meltdown. Besides, Kwanten says, “This season, Anna Paquin is far more naked than I am.”

‘Tis true, Anna Paquin may be more nekkid overall but, to be honest, I don’t really pay much attetion … for obvs reasons. Ryan has that hot/dumb look that tends to suck people in immediately. He seems to get more interesting the less clothing that he’s wearing. After the jump, check out all the photos from Ryan’s GQ photospread — yes, he’s shirtless in at least one of the photos …

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GQ magazine has put a younger Michael Jackson on the cover of their new issue in tribute to the days, as they put it, when he was cool. Here is MJ on the cover of GQ along with a portion of the coverstory article titled Back in the Day:

Begin not with the miniseries childhood of father Joseph’s endless practice sessions but with the later and, it seems, just as formative Motown childhood, from, say, 11 to 14—years spent, when not on the road, most often alone, behind security walls, with private tutors and secret sketchbooks. A dreamy child, he collects exotic animals. He likes rainbows and reading. He starts collecting exotic animals now. His eldest brothers were at one time children who dreamed of child stardom. Michael never knows this sensation. By the time he achieves something like self-awareness, he is a child star. The child star dreams of being an artist. Alone, he puts on classical records, because he finds they soothe his mind. He also likes the old southern stuff his uncle Luther sings. His uncle looks back at him and thinks he seems sad for his age. This is in California, so poor, brown Gary, with its poisonous air you could smell from leagues away—a decade’s exposure to which may already have damaged his immune system in fateful ways—is the past. He thinks about things and sometimes talks them over with his friends Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross when they are hanging out. He listens to albums and compares. The albums he and his brothers make have a few nice tunes, to sell records, then a lot of consciously second-rate numbers, to satisfy the format. Whereas Tchaikovsky and people like that, they didn’t handle slack material. But you have to write your own songs. Michael has always made melodies in his head, little riffs and beats, but that isn’t the same. The way Motown deals with the Jackson 5, finished songs are delivered to the group, from songwriting teams in various cities. The brothers are brought in to sing and add accents. Michael wants access to the “anatomy” of the music. That’s the word he uses repeatedly. Anatomy. What’s inside its structure that makes it move? When he’s 17, he asks Stevie Wonder to let him spy while Songs in the Key of Life gets made. There’s Michael, self-consciously shy and deferential, flattening himself mothlike against the Motown studio wall. Somehow Stevie’s blindness becomes moving in this context. No doubt he is for long stretches unaware of Michael’s presence. Never asks him to play a shaker or anything. Never mentions Michael. But Michael hears him.

After the jump, read the rest of this excerpt …

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A little bit of housekeeping to tend to here on the blog … yesterday, I posted a few photos of Channing Tatum (along with a portion of his coverstory interview) from the new issue of GQ magazine but I failed to share Channing’s coverphoto! This oversight cannot be overlooked any further … behold:

Man … it should be a crime to not post all of the available photos of his man whenever he deigns to grace us with a new magazine photospread. In my haste to post the other hawt photos, I failed to share his coverphoto. All apologies … and I sincerely hope they’re aren’t any hard feelings. Tho, if there are a few hard feelings, I guess it’s understandable ;)

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Channing Tatum, who can be seen in a brief cameo as Pretty Boy Floyd in Public Enemies now and can be seen as Lt. Duke Hauser in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra next month, is featured in the new issue of GQ magazine. Tatum, who just wed his longtime girlfriend Jenna Dewan here in SoCal last weekend, was photographed by Mario Testino for the GQ spread. In his interview, he talks about he went from a perfume spritzer at Dillard’s to a Hollywood heartthrob:

I’m not expecting a cell-phone message from Channing Tatum when I land in Montgomery, Alabama, on a sweet day in June. The plan was to hook up at his uncle Bruce’s ranch, forty-five minutes from the airport, each of us arriving separately. But Chan (”Nobody calls me Channing”), being at that stage of celebrity when he doesn’t mind spending time with a reporter, has taken it upon himself to redo the plans his publicist made. Even if that means sitting in the Montgomery airport, where he has flown from L.A., an extra hour until my flight gets in from New York City. “I hope it’s okay that I canceled your car so you can ride with me,” he says. “There’s only one bar in the airport, so you should be able to find me.” That’s easy. He’s the only person there. Well, aside from the bartender and a lovely woman in her forties with one arm who, much to his embarrassment, has just paid for his fourth Coors Light. (It is close to five o’clock Alabama time.) “Aw, man, you shouldn’t have done that,” says Chan, going over to her table, where she is sitting alone with her Subway sandwich. “But, um, thanks.” It’s hard to tell whether she knows he’s somebody or just thinks he’s cute. He has her all shy and giggling, though. His driver, from Touch of Class limo service, is waiting by the door. “This is Thomas,” says Chan. Thomas, who’s decked out in a pressed black suit and cap befitting the royal guard, and who speaks with a proper Scottish accent, tips his hat. “He just moved here from Scotland,” says Chan, clearly impressed. “It’s quite…different,” says Thomas. Chan slouches down in the backseat of the black town car. He has an iPhone in his hand and a Kindle poking out of his bag. What are you reading? “I got two books on this thing,” he says, “about the start and finish of the Roman Empire. I don’t have to read this stuff, but I love it.” (It’s in preparation, he says, for a role.) He’s wearing the standard young-guy-in-Hollywood uniform—ripped jeans hanging off his butt, sideways baseball hat, cotton button-down shirt—which, oddly, also turns out to be pretty close to the standard young-guy-in-rural-Alabama uniform. “You ready to get all country?” he asks. We’re headed thirty-three miles northeast, to what Chan calls his “favorite place on the planet, by far”: his uncle Bruce’s ranch. Three hundred acres in the middle of nowhere. Wetumpka, to be precise. It’s where his mama was raised. And though his formative years were spent in Tampa, Wetumpka is what Channing Tatum calls home. He escapes here every chance he gets, and that’s not bullshit. ” ‘Cause it’s real, you know? You’ll see.” But first, he needs to “take a pee” and pick up a couple of six-packs for his uncle Bruce. Thomas steers the town car into a Citgo station with a minimart. While Chan is in the loo, a few truckers buying chew at the cash register size up his ride. “Good-lookin’ black car sittin’ there,” says one. “Is that there yer limo-zeen?” says the other. Not mine, I say. It’s Channing Tatum’s. “Hmmph. We don’t see a whole lotta those round here. Who’d you say that was?” Channing Tatum. He’s an actor. Blank stares. You ever see A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints? Or…Step Up? Blank stares. He’s gonna be in G.I. Joe this summer. Ah, okay, him they’ve heard of.

The pretty interesting interview can be read in full HERE. I love that Channing has a Kindle but I cannot FOR THE LIFE OF ME call him Chan. Sorry. After the jump, check out a few more photos from Channing’s GQ magazine photospread …

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Sacha Baron Cohen’s nekkid Brüno coverphoto is not the only reason to pick up the new issue of GQ magazine … Gossip Girl hottie Ed Westwick is also featured inside the mag, modeling some of the fashion “pieces that embrace timeless style and construction” that stylish men will be wearing this Fall/Winter. Here are Ed’s sexy GQ modeling pics along with the short article that accompanies his spread:

On the first-ever episode of the outrageously hyped television sensation Gossip Girl, Ed Westwick’s character, Chuck Bass, bookended a pair of date-rape scenes with a weed reference and the memorable zinger—delivered to the show’s principal, Serena—“Your life is over, slut!” “Villain is such a harsh word,” Westwick says from a hotel room in Washington, D.C., where he has just attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It’s hard to imagine what a recently minted 22-year-old television antagonist from England was doing pressing the flesh with Beltway muckrackers. But Westwick, who looks like Jude Law crossed with a pre-psychotropic-meltdown Joaquin Phoenix, assures us in his assured British way that “everyone who is anyone was there.” If that makes Westwick sound like a bit of a dick, surrender now—it’s part of his appeal. Just ask Gossip Girl’s freakishly wide-ranging demographic of religious watchers, many of whom are as entertained by the incestuous nature of the cast as by the show itself. Westwick dates co-star Jessica Szohr (they played kissy face at our shoot) and is roommates (cute!) with Chace Crawford. When pushed to dish, Westwick minimizes the thin line between work and play, and fair enough. You’d date a co-worker if she looked like Jessica Szohr. Still, is there a downside to all that Gossip glare? What happens when TV’s latest prep-school bad boy tours Arlington Cemetery with his real-life parents? “Every time the tram would stop, these girls would come up, giggle, then run off,” Westwick says. “You feel like the kid in school that everyone’s laughing at.”

Fully clothed AND hawt … these pics are great. You’ll forgive me if I prefer this GQ photospread over the one of Brüno. The hair, the clothes, the styling … Ed looks really fantastic in these photos. See folks, proof that sometimes folks look heaps better when they are fully clothed rather than when they are not.

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