This week's rag 'n' mag roundup features Benjamin Verbeck, Brunette Leo, Jaidus, Henry Moodie, Flavio Cobolli, Hollywood's new class of leading men and more BELOW.
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Remains of the Day (11/19)
Queerty: From showstopper to rock bottom: John Whaite says steroid addiction killed his sex drive and destroyed his body ... but at least he once looked like THIS
Wrestle Wednesday: When you're a dom top on the mat
The Caftan Chronicles: Javier Muñoz replaced Lin-Manuel Miranda in "Hamilton" -- then he had a shocking recollection about his past
Attitude: Spanish soccer player Nacho Ruiz addresses homophobic abuse from fans: "Let’s not normalise this"
Greg in Hollywood: Feast your eyes on Tom Daley in his knitted Budgy Smuggler
The Atlantic: The locker room, once a place for casual and normative nudity, had quietly become a place where modesty was expected. (I posted about this a couple years ago on my Facebook account and it got more comments than anything I've ever written!)
Attitude: U.S. State Department reverses plan to invalidate trans passports after "X" gender marker confusion
Bammer: The age gap in my relationship is right on par with the gays Mike Balaban informally surveyed!
CBS8: Three women injured in pellet gun attacks at San Diego LGBTQ bars ... in 2025
Hot Cat of the Day: How was your day?
Simply the Best?
I’m not sure what a “British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio programme schedules,” as Radio Times is described, knows about tennis. But I do know that lists like this exist solely to stir up discontent. Case in point: If you’re going to mix eras -- including Rod Laver -- then John McEnroe absolutely deserves to be above Andy Murray, as would Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker, Mats Wilander and even six-time major winner Carlos Alcaraz. Ivan Lendl probably deserves to be above Andre Agassi, who trails in majors, total titles, year-end championship wins, year-end No. 1 finishes and overall weeks at No. 1. And as much as I respect and adore Bjorn Borg -- whose ability to win the French and Wimbledon back-to-back is unparalleled -- he surely belongs under Pete Sampras. Yes, he retired much sooner. But the list should be based on what a player accomplished, not what they might have, and Pete has three more majors and more than double the number of weeks at No. 1.
And this is the Radio Times women’s list, which I don’t have any strong quibbles with:
But along the Bjorn lines, Monica Seles should probably also be placed based on what she accomplished -- putting her after Billie Jean King and Margaret Court -- rather than on what we assume she would have achieved had she not been stabbed. (Talk to Little Mo about "would haves.") And calendar Slam winner Margaret belongs ahead of Billie Jean, who has half her majors in singles and trails by six in their head-to-head. (Even if you erase all of Margaret's Aussie Open crowns, she still has more majors than BJK.) And a case could be made for any of the top three to sit at No. 1 -- Serena Williams with the most majors (23), Steffi Graf with just one fewer (having retired a decade younger than Serena) and the only one of the three to win the calendar Grand Slam (with the corresponding Olympic gold medal), most weeks at No. 1 and most year-end No. 1 finishes, and Martina Navratilova for the most combined majors (59), including 18 singles titles despite playing in an era when two of the four Slams weren't routinely contested, plus the most WTA titles (167 to Serena's 73), the most match wins (1,661 to Serena's 858), and more weeks at world No. 1 than Serena. But even as an ardent Steffi/Chrissie Evert fan, this feels about right.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
TV Party Tonight!
In case you need recommendations or want to exchange notes, here are a few things off the top of my head that we’ve been watching lately ...
“The Couple Next Door”: Season 2 is every bit as juicy as the first, and new man Sam Palladio somehow manages to fill Sam Heughan's gigantic shoes.
“I’m Sorry”: We discovered Andrea Savage on the brilliant “Episodes,” and her move to center stage might be one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever witnessed … we had to constantly rewind because we were laughing so hard we kept missing half the thing! (And Tom Everett Scott is sublime as her straight-man hubby.)
“Platonic”: Season 2 is just as awkwardly hilarious as the first.
“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”: Why didn’t anyone tell me 20 year ago that this is the best show of all time? It’s like a funnier version of "Seinfeld" if the gang had even less character.
“I Love L.A.”: A smart and witty send-up of influencer culture.
“Nobody Wants This”: My solo show that Damian cannot stop eavesdropping on.
“Malice”: Just started, but Jack Whitehall is deliciously evil.
“Shameless”: Ancient, I know, but something I never considered watching until Damian finally gave it a look and now we're into it. Remains to be seen if we'll stick around for all 208 seasons.
“The Studio”: We’ve been slogging our way through this for months. One episode left ... not my fave, but usually just enough to keep it worthwhile-ish.
“New Girl”: We always joked that we’d probably have to watch the seven(!) seasons of this show if a second administration of you-know-who ever happened ... and sadly, it has. Unlike "Baby Daddy" -- Damian’s coping mechanism during the first term, which I later watched and he happily rewatched in full -- "New Girl" is much more uneven. But I like all the actors involved, and Jamie Lee Curtis and Rob Reiner popping up as Zooey Deschanel’s parents is always a treat.
Previously: My 2024 list is HERE.
Rediscovering 'The Drag Queens of New York' on the Bowery
Damian and I spent Saturday afternoon on the Bowery at HA/HA taking in "Then & Now," a gallery tour, discussion and video screening marking the 30th anniversary of "The Drag Queens of New York."
Julian Fleisher, who wrote the seminal book about the '90s NYC drag scene, guided the event and introduced the speakers, bringing the kind of insider affection that could only come from someone who lived and loved this history in real time.
This crowd was no drag
As he ushered us from room to room, Julian reminisced about the interviews he conducted with the reigning queens of the day -- all of which were prefaced with lengthy questionnaires ("Who did I think I was?") -- and steered us toward the eclectic collection of ephemera on display throughout (including the queens' handwritten responses) from the passion project that still clearly means a lot to him: First and foremost, Julian explained, he "was a fan," who used the project as an excuse to "hang out with people I admired."
'The Last Drag Supper,' as seen in Out magazine (photo by Joshua Kessler)
He then brought to the stage drag historian Joe E. Jeffreys, who gave a smart, engaging overview of the cultural landscape that shaped Fleisher’s book, with shoutouts to predecessors such as Carlton E. Winford's "Femme Mimics: A Pictorial Record of Female Impersonation" and Avery Willard's "Female Impersonation." His context underscored just how prescient the work was -- drag is strangely mainstream in a lot of ways now -- but also how much more there was to the art form beyond the late 20th century NYC time capsule Fleisher so brilliantly documented.
He was followed by the ever-hilarious, delightfully self-effacing Miss Guy, who shared that he never actually considered himself a drag queen -- androgynous is more like it -- but was offered a chance to be on stage so ran with it as a means to an end to kickstart his music ambitions. When forced to pick a drag moniker, he says he opted to keep his given name -- dolled up with a femme honorific -- so that decades later people wouldn't be screaming "Hey, Melinda" from across the room(!).
Guy then played a rarely seen 1995 interview with former go-go boy Mark Allen for the downtown cable show "Party Talk." The segment follows the two of them romping around Guy's memorabilia-packed apartment, eating cereal, getting prank calls and talking about “queer” rock 'n' roll in the early days of the Toilet Boys, Miss Guy's glamtastic band whom I saw open for Blondie back in '99. (There’s even early performance footage from Squeezebox, Guy's notorious party night at the erstwhile Don Hill's.)
Guy mentioned he still lives in the same place 30 years later, and that the clip contains the only footage of his late kitty, giving the moment an unexpectedly touching edge. Guy then screened additional videos from his career (Wigstock, Lollapalooza ‘95) -- providing a momentary mini–Miss Guy retrospective -- but adorably seemed to again shy away from the attention as he half-pleaded with the audio/visual guy to cut them short: "Events like this remind me how much I miss ... social distancing," he quipped.
As for Mark, it was so nice seeing him and meeting his handsome boyfriend, Will McLeod, whom I know from Instagram. Mark shocked me by revealing he hadn't been in the city in almost two years(!) -- and it was his first time with Will -- which is hard to imagine for a guy whose East Village apartment used to be live-streamed for the world to watch before that was even a thing.
If you haven’t stopped by yet, the full exhibition "The Drag Queens of New York" is on display at Howl! Happening through Nov. 30. It’s a lovingly assembled slice of LGBTQ New York history -- absolutely worth catching before it’s gone.
The silver lamé pants did things to me ...
Miss Guy's the limit!
The Watergate tapes have nothing on these
And now a word from our author ...
With Miss Guy
Julian Fleisher, Miss Guy and Mark Allen
Putting the meat in a Will and Mark sandwich
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