New Now Next!

Ah limbo! Yes, the Catholic Church abolished it years ago but that doesn’t mean it no longer exists in the world of celebrity. If anything, it is thriving there. Tonight we did a live broadcast from backstage at the New Now Next awards, which will air on LOGO on June 7th. It was a perfect limbo opportunity for us, not really press per se nor celebrity, we got to exist in the nether regions of the media room shuttled off in a dark corner of the MTV studios. We weren’t the only ones in limbo. As I pointed out with my previous GLAAD adventure, there are tiers of celebrity, and once again, we were on the bottom rung.

This is not uncommon for us and it is a fair trade off for the life we get to lead. On the one hand, we are reasonably well known in the rest of America (I was just named Grand Marshall of Indy Pride 2008!), but in New York City, we aren’t even a blip. The upside of this is that we can walk the streets of Manhattan unmolested by fans. The downside of course is that all of the glamorous trappings that would normally come with celebrity (namely invites to fun parties filled with free liquor and other celebrities) constantly elude us. However, in this case, we were able to be reasonably unknown and hang out with celebrities and drink free booze.

The awards themselves I will leave largely shrouded in mystery, lest I give away any winners accidentally. Suffice it to say, it was eerily reminiscent of past MTV events, such as the MTV Movie Awards, which should add a level of familiarity and comfort to viewers even if many of the presenters and winners are as yet unknown to them. This I think is the idea though. It is called New Now Next, with the emphasis on introducing new talent as opposed to rehashing past stars and straight allies, a cornerstone of the high end GLAAD awards for years. I applaud the effort even as I worry the outcome.

Many of my favorite people were there, including the lovely Andy Towle, whose blog I am hopelessly devoted to. We even got him to spend a few minutes on our show, which is a little bit like get later years Howard Hughes to trim his fingernails. Jack Mackenroth was there, along with Kevin Christiana and Christian Siriano from Project Runway. Jack is a ray of bitchy sunshine and pound for muscular pound the best cocktail chatter partner money can buy. I only wish any sliver of our conversation could be repeated in print, but rest assured if Disney’s Lady and the Tramp ever comes to Broadway we could play the Siamese cats, only drunk and real cunty.

Things really moved into high gear once we hit the after party. This is where the other bank of celebrities existed, the bank we would have been with if we hadn’t been live on the radio. LOGO invited two sets of guests: those who would be on the TV show and do that press line and those who would watch from the after party room and do a different press line. Here we found lovely friends like Josh Zuckerman and Keo Nozari, patiently waiting out the evening for everyone else to join them. They spent three hours with the who’s that of New York gay society swilling cocktails and eating pigs in a blanket and mini grilled cheese sandwiches (the hot Hollywood hors d‘oeuvre du jour ten years ago). Later after the on-air celebrities appeared, sushi was thrown into the mix to remind everyone that better people had arrived. There were even two sets of gift bags. Segregation may have been outlawed in the public sphere fifty years ago but it is beloved in entertainment circles.

As the other stars drifted upstairs I finally got some alone time with the fabulous God-des and She, who looked great and were sad that they missed my cinco de mayo party. Michael Carbonaro was there, auditioning for a comic relief role on Mad Men while Peter Stickles stood by, serene and beautiful. His skin was so perfect I wanted to scrape off a sample and send it to a lab to be cloned and then grafted onto my own face. Caroline Rhea who earlier had done the show, still couldn’t get over how much I looked like her gay high school boyfriend. She kept touching me wistfully and then running away.

I thought that would be the weirdest part of the evening until Junior Vasquez’s mega Madonna mix sent a set of avant-garde performers into a frenzy of spontaneous nudity on the stage. At this point, I was standing with Jensen Atwood, who did the show while I was out in Los Angeles two years ago when our mutual friend Ben Patrick Johnson was co-hosting with me. “This is too arty for me.” I said, conscious of my eyes rolling back in my head. “I guess it’s what the kids like.” In my mind, I was already at coat check picking up my bag and backpack.

Security seemed to have the same idea as they sauntered up onto the stage to encourage them to put their clothes back on. But by then it was one a.m., the lights were coming up anyway and the bar was closed. The minute the clothes had come off, the party was definitely over. This may have been LOGO’s hot new edgy award show, a big gay coming out party filled with the gritty vim and verve of downtown Manhattan (aka Amanda Lepore’s fully functioning vagina), but the powers that be didn’t want us to forget for a moment that mama MTV is actively chaperoning this gay adolescent who still has a little more growing up to do.