Team Gay: Glam God edition

Another day, another reality competition, right? Well, this one at least is stocked with gay contestants for us to scrutinize. This Thursday VH1 premieres Glam God with Vivica A. Fox, in which 12 aspiring stylists compete for $100,000, a celebrity spread gig in US Weekly, and representation with a major stlyist agency. I would also say that it earns them the title of "Glam God", but I have a feeling that most of the people competing probably call themselves that already.

Being that styling is a gay-friendly field, it's no surprise that there are three gay men in the group. We don't know too much about the fellas yet, but here are Handry, Bo, and Joachim. Have at 'em.

Stylist Phillip Bloch

The show also features noted out stylist/favorite talking-head Phillip Bloch as one of the judges. As much as he kind of drives me nuts, he can be incredibly funny, so it should make for some fun eliminations.

Side note: Between this (a reality show clearly in the Bravo mold) and The Cho Show (aka Kathy Griffin 2.0), is VH1 finally moving toward more legitimate reality programming and away from Has-beens, Drunks and Pay-Per-View Porn Actors Eating Pig Vaginas in a Rented Mansion? Let's hope so.

Bigger pics of the guys are after the break. Get out your fine-toothed combs and click on through! 

  
Our new favorite bundle of crazy, Deon

Chock-filled with globetrotting, bad advertising, and transgendered drama queens, this episode of the Sean John™ Marketing Hour has everything that you could want from your summer reality fix, including a nice little introduction to our thus-far largely ignored Resident of the Earth Deon. 

After the untimely departure of a certain directionally-challenged cast member, our resident Frat Pack on the uptown team, Mike and Boris, seem to have a lot of time on their hands, ruining our Resident of the Earth’s afternoon nap by making the brilliant decision to stick a pretzel stick in his open mouth.  That’s “comedy“, for those of you not keeping track. 

Hilarity didn’t ensue, but a lot of cursing did, as Deon informed us all via confessional that he was ready to “f****** kill somebody” and leaving us to assume that the “works well with others” box on his application for the assistant position was left unchecked.    

Words of wisdom from Diddy

Soon after, the the assistant wannabes are given notification via their Verizon Wireless™ Blackberry phones that two members from each team are to pack a bag and leave the loft for an unknown destination. 

Kim and Suzanne are paired on the uptown team, Boris and our very own fierce transgender woman Laverne Cox for the downtown team.  The team soon finds out they’re going to Paris, leaving Ms. Cox to compare herself to one Carrie Bradshaw, except, you know, Black and transsexual.  The Verizon Wireless™ graphic tells us that the assignment is to find a model in Paris and convince her to come back to NYC to be featured in an advertisement for Sean John™ Eyewear.

Read more after the break!

This is like a gift from the summer Friday gods! We've gotten a hold of the entire first episode of The Cho Show, the new Margaret Cho reality show premiering next week on VH1. (Having the same birth-parents has its benefits, even though Best Week Ever totally won't talk to us at family reunions.)

I've been leery of getting too excited about The Cho Show, because I adore Margaret (seen her five times) and was worried that a reality show wouldn't be able to capture her magic. But from the looks of the first episode, it's actually a great fit.

In the first ep, Margaret debates whether or not to accept a "Korean of the Year" award, and goes on a star-studded personal journey as she weighs her options. Of course, Margaret's parents, her gays, her hilarious (and little!) assistant, Selene, and her fellow Korean comics all weigh in, providing all the off-color humor and inappropriate fake accents that we've come to expect from Cho.

All I can say is, Kathy Griffin better watch her back. There's a new sheriff in town!

Check it all out (commercial-free, yo!) after the break!

Laverne busts a move

Last night’s episode of Product Integration Thea … er, I Want to Work for Diddy was a doozy, so let’s just get right into it, shall we?

First, we started off in the loft, where we were treated to a mini-performance from our resident transgender woman Laverne Cox, who showed us her dancing skills and gave the housemates a little Trans -101 tutorial.  This aroused the ire of Boris, who later commented that Laverne “doesn’t respect her body”, thus leaving us all to marvel at the utter irony of that statement coming from someone with a body shape roughly resembling that of a pear. 

As for yours truly, after being asked about a girlfriend, I promptly revealed that I’m gay, and shifted a little uncomfortably as Kendra and Brianna participated in the time-honored straight-girl squeal that generally comes directly after correctly identifying a homosexual.  On a personal note, it was very important for me to come into this situation and be as open as possible, because it is very important for us to be visible, and, besides, I’m already out in my personal life, so I figured that coming out on national television was the next logical step. 

Riiiiight.

Later on that night, myself and the housemates were woken up by the beefy Bad Boy Bodyguards, and although getting the covers ripped off of you by them may be the start of a good time in other circumstances, it most certainly wasn’t here, as we were whisked into a van and taken to a heli-pad in downtown NYC.  Thanks to post-production editing trickery, a 5-hour wait time is magically cut down to a 45-second transition, and there we were at Fort Dix, a military base in New Jersey. 

Wait a minute … we’re on Fort Dix and I’m an ex-military man, so my team has got this one in the bag, right?  Um, hold that thought.  Super-fierce Sean John marketing director Capricorn and Diddy’s personal stylist Derek come out of a military vehicle and give us the rules:  We are to participate in land navigation.  Given a compass, protractor, and map, we are to find three different points on land, each marked by a trivia question about Diddy himself.  A correct answer leads us to the next point, but an incorrect answer leads us on a detour.  We are given our materials and sent out, thus starting a chain of events that play like something out of a Final Destination movie. 

Kim coughs it up

Over on the uptown side, everyone’s favorite ball of sunshine Kim walks a good 30 feet before being sidelined with asthma problems and is forced to sit out the competition.  Yours truly decides that the best idea is to take a shortcut, proceeding to get the team absurdly lost and off-course in the woods of Fort Dix.  It’s looking a little Blair Witch Project at this point and it ain’t good, especially when the leader has 4 ½ years of military experience.  However, the downtown team isn’t faring much better.  Boris’s body has apparently not been getting the respect it deserves, as he trails far behind his team during the walk in the woods, breathing heavily, slowing them down, and inspiring the ire of de-facto team leader Mike. 

Decisions, decisions...

Back at uptown, I make mistake #2,347 when we finally get to the first point and answer the question thinking that Diddy, the man who this is all about, the man who is worth north of $300 million dollars, the man who has produced countless records, has only received 1 Grammy award.  Where’s a gong when you need one, right?  So after a little more arguing, sweating, and misdirection, both teams are stopped when the light is lost, and we’re all notified that Downtown has won the mission by default, sending the Uptown team to elimination once again.

Rob Smith and Laverne Cox want to work for Diddy

If I were to tell you that when one of the biggest hip-hop stars in the world conducted an exhaustive search to find 13 candidates to be his next assistant, the final candidates included a gay man and a transgender woman, what would you say?

On one hand, you may be surprised that the somewhat homophobic hip-hop world was so inclusive of LGBT contenders for the position, but if you were the gay in question, you’d probably start jumping up and down and screaming!

That is exactly what I did when I found out I was one of 13 finalists picked to compete in the new reality show I Want to Work for Diddy, premiering on Monday, August 4 at 9PM on VH1.  Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), the show leads into the mess that is New York Goes to Hollywood, so my Mondays will be pretty full from now on.

My name is Rob Smith, and I’m a freelance writer, blogger, and media industry professional based in New York City. The experience on the show was one of the most challenging and amazing experiences I’ve ever had, and I’m thrilled to be giving AfterElton.com readers an exclusive weekly recap and lowdown on my experience with the show and everything that went on behind the scenes during taping.

Like they say here, visibility matters, and for both myself and my transgender competitor Laverne Cox, I know that it was very important that we represented who we were openly from the very beginning. But let’s not get too serious. We‘re all aware of how absurd reality television is, and I plan on both injecting a little humor into these recaps and taking every opportunity available to laugh with and at everyone onscreen, not least of all myself.

There are brief bios of both myself and Laverne as well as a clip of the show on the next page, but if you want to really get to know us and the other 11 competitors, check out the I Want to Work for Diddy casting special that will air on VH1 tonight at 9PM. And of course check back next week for the first recap!

I still remember the evening Margaret Cho's All American Girl debuted. My phone rang again and again to ask if I saw it and to discuss the show. Even my rooommate's conservative Republican friends were calling. We all, it turns out, had a friend like Margaret somewhere in our high school memories and we were so excited to see that experience mined for comedy on TV that we kinda missed that the show wasn't anywhere as funny as Cho's comedy.

It's been nearly fourteen years since that night and while Cho has been in a few pilots (most memorably, "Mommy", a Fox sitcom inspired by her life that cast Cho as a character based on her mother) nothing's become a series ... until now.

Today, VH-1 announced several new upcoming shows including The Cho Show, the latest Celebreality show. This one will follow Margaret around as she interacts with the people in her life, including her "colorful cast of friends and colleagues" as well as - and this is where we hit the jackpot - Margaret's parents.

Taking a simplified look at The Cho Show - which will follow an outspoken, independent-minded comedian who refuses to conform to Hollywood's demands of who she can be - has me thinking that this could be VH-1's My Life on the D-List. I hope they don't shy away from Margaret's political side, since her drive to advocate for minority groups - including LGBT people - drives some of Cho's most passionate comedy.

There's no debut date yet for The Cho Show but you can bet we'll be watching for it and we'll pass that information along.

I don't know if you folks have been checking out the new "baby pilot" show Acceptable TV on VH1, but it's an interesting concept that has thus far been pretty successful: basically they create miniature pilots for proposed television shows and then ask the audience to vote on which ones they like. They bring back the pilots that do well and lose the ones that don't.

High points thus far have been Kitten Calendar (an amusing parody of America's Next Top Model with kittens) and... well, that's about it. But a good start!

Tonight's episode features a pilot called Gayliens! that asks, "what if aliens landed, and they happened to be gay?" Could be a disastrous concept, sure (remember the awful Gays in Space skits on SNL?), but they're doing it right, with the emphasis being on how preposterously hung up on homosexuality our human societies are. Here's a preview:

I love that the gay aliens are completely unaffected guys, which would likely throw off the humans more than anything. I'll be tuning in to see -- and I may even exercise my gay human right to vote for it!

Acceptable TV airs on VH1 at 10:00PM EDT.

From the first episode of VH1's runaway success, I Love New York, there were suspicions that some of the boys vying for Tiffany "New York" Patterson's affections were perhaps, not exactly the straight men they were pretending to be.

New York's mom and co-star Sister Patterson, was the first to say she thought a few of the guys were gay. Dave "12-Pack" Amerman, named for his abs, was one of them.

In a recent episode, New York learned from 12 Pack's ex-girlfriend that he used to be a stripper in a gay bar. After being eliminated because New York felt he was on the show to benefit his own career (umm...didn't she use her appearances on Flavor of Love to get her own show?). So like every other reality show contestant who's booted off before winning, 12 Pack is making his press rounds. Like any typical straight man, is rushing to clear up the gay rumors. In an interview with Hip-Hop DX.com, he denied the gay rumors by pointing out how much he loves the ladies:

Man, I'll put it straight out there... ¦ I'm not gay. I'm not in one way possible gay. My last employment is nothing. My ex-girl came to the house! She was f*****' hot; blonde and I did her when I got home. People hated on me though.

He also happened to mention he is in negotiations with VH1 for a show of his own. When he was eliminated from the show, he said

"The reason I came out here is because I'm an actor. I wanted to be in front of the cameras, but I had a great time. I don't regret anything."

With so many "actors" in the world, it's a wonder television has anyone left to watch.