Johnny Weir – the famously out skater turned NBC commentator – told us at WAG magazine that he would pull no punches in anti-gay Russia. But leave it to the flamboyant fashionisto to make a statement with gold pearls and a white ensemble and blush and lipstick. Perhaps that’s why he and gold medalist Tara Lipinski are relegated to commentating on NBCSN instead of on NBC itself. Maybe the Peacock Network thinks they’re not ready for conservative prime time – though there are many in the blogosphere who’d rather listen to the free-wheeling Weir and Lipinski than the more staid Scott Hamilton, Andrea Joyce and Sandra Bezic.

In other fashion news, The New York Times had a fun story on skiers’ pronounced derrières that readers took way too seriously. Read more

Recently, I was giving someone a pitch about my new, gay-themed novel, “Water Music,” which bowed last week – a pitch that I sometimes end defensively with, “Well, it’s not for everyone.” (I really must learn to stop demurring like that.)

Or maybe not, because when I say that, my listeners often respond as this man did: “I’m not so sure about that. I think it’s an idea whose time has come.”

This week seems to have confirmed that. HBO has a new series, “Looking,” about gay men searching for love in San Francisco. Unlike Showtime’s “Queer as Folk” (2000-05) – which was, let’s face it, all about hot guys (and women) having hot sex – “this show is at such a time when suddenly gay people can conform to heterosexual blueprints of how to live,” out actor and “Looking” star Russell Tovey told the Sunday New York Times (Jan. 19). “You can get married, you can have kids, you can have joint mortgages, you’re recognized as next of kin, which is all fresh.”

Tovey, who’s actually made a career of playing straight guys (the athlete Rudge in “The History Boys”), stars as a closeted footballer – soccer player to us in the U.S.– in John Donnelly’s play “The Pass” in London.

So is gay the new black – in more ways than one? Is Ellen DeGeneres, who’ll host the Oscars again (March 2), the new Oprah? Read more