Have a question about gay male entertainment? Ask the Monkey!

Q: Who’s your favorite angel? -- InsanityBoy, Key West, FL

A: This is like asking which snowflake is the most unique! Which rose petal is the softest! Which flavor of Altoids is the most curiously strong!

First, let’s pretend that the God-awful Charlie’s Angels movies don’t exist, shall we? Does anyone even remember the names of any of the “new” angels?

So of the remaining six angels — Kelly, Jill, Sabrina, Kris, Tiffany, and Julie — who is my favorite? Well, back before I had accepted the screamingly obvious fact that I’m gay as a goose, my future-wife-in-my-mind looked exactly like Jaclyn Smith. Revealingly, the plan was for us to live in separate cities, even after we got married.

But here’s the thing. The Flying Monkey has always had a thing for the underdog — the sensitive, forgotten younger brother, or the boy who gets chosen fourth to last in P.E. class. I can’t think why.

That means, I immediately gravitate to the angels who were overshadowed by Jill’s unstoppable hair and Kelly’s god-like porcelain beauty: Sabrina, who favored turtlenecks and pantsuits to bustiers and bikinis, and Tiffany, who, quite frankly, couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag.

Ultimately, though, I have to go with Sabrina, played by Kate Jackson. What does she have that the others don’t? Brains, a take-no-prisoners aggressiveness with Charlie, a sense of humor, openly feminist views, and the ability to act her way out of a paper bag. What doesn’t she have? Well, glamour or sex appeal. (Sometimes I’d watch an episode and think, “Kate! You’re not even trying! Would it kill you to unbutton another button?”)

Kate did try to babe out, most notably in the third season opener Angels in Vegas, but by then it was too little, too late.

Q: How did Instinct magazine know that J.P. Calderon (Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency) is gay, back before the show's second season when Instinct offered J.P. Calderon to be on the cover? – Safir, Indonesia

A: A publicist probably tipped the magazine off or at least confirmed what the magazine had heard second-hand. One of the weirdest aspects of the Flying Monkey’s job has been dealing with publicists for various TV shows and stars. There is a delicate dance we journalists and publicists do, wherein the publicists give the journalists spoilers about and advance screeners for upcoming shows and movies, thereby making us writers look like we know what the hell we’re talking about. And we reward the publicists by giving their shows a little extra publicity.

A good journalist — as opposed to a disgusting bottom-feeder like Perez Hilton — only writes what he or she absolutely knows is true. But it’s in the interest of most publicists to reveal quite a lot. After all, that Instinct cover started a gossip hurricane — which no doubt resulted in lots of gay viewers tuning into the show, and being pleasantly surprised by Calderon’s subsequent coming out.

Q: Was John Lennon gay? – J.T., Montpelier, VT

A: This is the rumor that just won’t die, but just because there’s smoke doesn’t mean there’s fire. Much of the talk is the result of Albert Goldman’s withering 1988 biography, The Lives of John Lennon, which portrayed him as a deeply neurotic man who had affairs with gay Beatles manager Brian Epstein and other men (and, allegedly, under-age male prostitutes in Thailand).

Those who knew Lennon reacted strongly to Goldman’s book, vociferously denying these and other charges. “What I spotted was the opposite,” Paul McCartney said in 2007 regarding the gay rumors about Lennon. “It was just chicks, chicks, chicks.”

And there were, in fact, many factual errors in the book.

But as chance would have it, the Monkey went through a Beatles obsession as a teenager, and read just about everything you can possibly read about them. For years, the Monkey and his brother tried to stump each other with obscure Beatles trivia (What is that strange word that John sings at the end of the song “Rain”? It’s the word “rain” sung backwards. What’s with the weird reverb on the bass line of “Long, Long, Long”? There was a wine bottle sitting on top of the amp).

The point is, while Lennon was a musical genius and a fascinating media personality, the Monkey thinks (as much as it pains him to say it) he may have been a bit of an ass. He pretty much abandoned his first son, Julian, and “How Do you Sleep?,” his 1971 musical attack on Paul McCartney, seems like the work of a petty, chronically insecure person (even if Paul had insulted John first, on Ram).

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