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Access Atlanta > Blog > Archives > 2007 > October > 17
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Duluth man leading in baseball playoffs’ ‘sexiest fan’ contest
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Another drawback to the Atlanta Braves not snagging a spot in the playoffs? Duluth residents like Chris Piela think it’s actually OK to root for the Boston Red Sox. Not only that, as of Wednesday afternoon Piela was the top vote-getter on People magazine’s and Major League Baseball’s “Sexest Fan Alive” contest online.
Piela has a comfortable lead in the contest with 20,203 votes.
As his wife, who nominated Piela, explains: “He is amazingly good-looking, extremely fit, a wonderful husband, and even more importantly, the best father.”
There are currently eight other finalists in the competition. The winner will score a pair of tickets to the World Series and be featured in an ad in People’s annual “Sexiest Man Alive” issue. The voting continues through Oct. 26 at: sexyfan.people.com.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]A Rush in donations
Each year, before the city’s annual AIDS Walk, Senior Citizen Services of Metro Atlanta’s Steven Hargrove and Positive Impact supporter Craig Pigg engage in a friendly wager about which will haul in the most money for Atlanta’s AIDS service organizations. Hargrove phoned Buzz on Wednesday to say that — due to an unlikely benefactor — Pigg is well ahead of him this year. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has pledged a $10,000 donation to Pigg and the AIDS Walk. We’re told that Pigg met the radio personality through his friend and former Limbaugh gal pal, ex-CNN anchor Daryn Kagan.
“I’ve actually used Rush’s donation as an incentive with my friends,” Hargrove told us. “I basically tell them, ‘Look, if Rush Limbaugh can donate $10,000, you can come up with some cash.”
For info on this Sunday’s walk: www.aidswalkatlanta.org.
On tour: Carter and Thomas the Tank Engine
His grandson Hugo Wentzel’s opinion not withstanding, former President Jimmy Carter was the undisputed star this week as he arrived in Cordele to read to more than 100 children as the city celebrated the fifth anniversary of the tourist-friendly SAM Shortline Excursion Train. Second on the bill? Kiddie fave Thomas the Tank Engine was waiting to take the small fry on a ride. Travels with Thomas will continue this weekend and next. For schedules, go to www.samshortline.com. Organizers tell Buzz that Carter read a “Thomas & Friends” storybook to the wee ones. And since 150 hate-spewing e-mails weren’t waiting for us at Buzz Central Wednesday (as when we wrote about Carter reading from his 2006 controversial tome, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”), we’re inclined to believe them. …
HIGH FIVE
Top downloaded TV shows this week:
1. “Let the Truth Sting,” Grey’s Anatomy, ABC
2. “Bad News Blair,” “Gossip Girl,” CW
3. “Believe it or Not,” “Family Guy, Fox
4. “Le Petit Tourette,” “South Park,” Comedy Central
5. “The Game,” “Desperate Housewives,” ABC
— iTunes
CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS
Singer-guitarist Chuck Berry is 81. Actress Erin Moran (“Happy Days”) is 47. Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis is 46. Country singer and “American Idol” contestant Josh Gracin is 27. Actor Zac Efron (“High School Musical,” “Hairspray”) is 20. Actress Joy Lauren (“Desperate Housewives”) is 18.
Contributing: Rodney Ho and news services
If you have a tip, call 404-526-2749. Or fax 404-526-5509. Or e-mail: buzz@ajc.com.
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RuPaul returns to ATL with film remake
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The fabulous crossdresser RuPaul is coming back to Atlanta to show off the remake of a film he did for virtually no budget 20 years ago, a spoof called “Starrbooty.” The new version is being screened Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema for the “Out on Film 2007” festival. This time, he self-financed a jazzier version. The plot: Starrbooty (played by RuPaul) is an undercover cop who plays a prostitute in order to rescue a kidnapped niece. On the way, he finds out secrets about his family along the way.
RuPaul will be at the screening to take Q&A and sell copies of the film. “I’ll be dressed as Starrbooty,” he promised Buzz recently in a phone interview from his home in Manhattan.
Check out the trailer here..
The first version, RuPaul said in a recent interview, was shot in Atlanta when he was still living here in the mid-1980s. “The original was an homage to John Waters and everything that was subversive in Atlanta at the time,” he said. “Midtown was really a lot of wild childs from all over the Southeast.”
Back then, it was an art project in which he borrowed his brother-in-law’s video camera and had his friends pitch in as actors. (The original is not readily available on videotape.)
So why remake “Starrbooty” two decades later? “I thought it was time in a world that is so sterile and blue liquid correct. It had never left my mind. There were clips of the original on YouTube. It was very raw, very homemade. The difference now is I’ve made a bunch fo Hollywood films and I have more experience. We actually had a script this time. We had craft services and a crew. We had actual dressing rooms. The early one, it was all in my head. We just shot it like that.”
He wouldn’t reveal the budget of the remake but said “it looks like a million bucks on screen. It’s campy. It’s sensual. It’s sexy. It’s also completely irreverent and wrong.”
RuPaul, who has lived mostly in New York City (with a stint in L.A.) since he left Atlanta in November 1987, said he filmed “Starrbooty” in 2005 has been showing it at film festivals this year.
He said he left Atlanta because “it’s important not to stay in the same place.”
Whenever he visits about once a year, he said, “it’s like seeing a friend you used to grow up with and was best of friends. But that friend has had extensive head-to-toe plastic surgery. You know it’s your friend and you still laugh at the same things. But you can barely recognize him.”
Although RuPaul is now in his 40s, he said “I still feel 25. I keep my body fit. And I keep an influx of new ideas. Hopefully, that will keep me in a place to continue being excited about living.”
Since his “Supermodel” success in the early 1990s, he said he’s “chosen to do things that excite me rather than sell out for money.” That means mostly doing his nightclub act before friendly audiences rather than give in to the temptation of doing VH1-type celebreality shows. “I don’t want to be in a position where people laugh at me and not get on board with me,” he said. “It’s part of our cultural obsession with putting other people down to make themselves feel good.”
If you have a tip, call 404-526-2749. Or fax 404-526-5509. Or e-mail: buzz@ajc.com.
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