Have you ever had a nightmare that was just so terrible that it woke you up, and your first thought was, "Thank Oprah that was just a dream!"?

Well, yesterday I was watching TV with Handsome Mister Goats and enjoying a delicious cocktail I invented called "Miss Sofia's Blues" [vodka, pureed blueberries, and Splenda; over ice or strained into a martini glass], and we turned on Larry King, whereupon I really, really wished that I could wake up.  Tammy Faye Baker was on, in a preview of an interview they're airing tonight,  and she just looked so close to death that I had to ask HMG to turn the channel.  I don't know if you've seen her recently, but she looks like a Spitting Image version of her former self (or if you were born after 1980 and don't get that reference, like a sort of half-melted version of a Madame Tussaud's sculpture. )

I felt so bad for her, she's always seemed to be such a sweet lady.  She told Larry, when asked, that she's in constant pain in her "back and [her] tummy."  It's really remarkable to hear an adult so chaste she doesn't directly refer to her own stomach as her stomach.  Poor thing.  I'd really be thrilled if she was miraculously cured, because that would mean that God exists.  At least she's got the comfort of being able to think that there's a heaven after she dies.

Whenver the subject of death comes up, Handsome Mister Goats gets sad and cuddly, but I was in such a state of shock after seeing Tammy Faye that I was just trying to hold back tears.  If you think I'm overreacting, they're airing the full interview tonight - if you watch it, I think you'll see what I mean.  I'd rather remember Tammy as the perky lady in the above picture, myself.

So I'd like to talk instead about someone who I can legitimately make fun of, and that would be Whoopi Goldberg on The View.  For some unknown reason, recently they were having Perez Hilton on as a guest, and prior to his coming out...onto the set, the ladies were discussing why they didn't like him.  Whoopi confessed she didn't have a computer - I could talk about that for hours, but let's just say it's got to be strange living in a world where you don't interact with the internets, right?  I mean, even to look up a phone number or check out the menu of a restaurant you're going to go to?  I guess Whoopi has an assistant for that.

Okay, anyway, so Shari Shepherd (my favorite of the rotating guest ladies who are semi-replacing Rosie and Star) was saying that she does read Perez Hilton, but she didn't like when he outed people.  Whoopi interrupted to say - rather forcefully - something like "unless you're in that person's bedroom, you don't know what's going on."  She accompanied this with a hand gesture, punching her fist into the palm of her other hand repeatedly. 

It was just so odd to have these two ladies talk circuitously around outing and so forth, when obviously the elephant in the room was Whoopi.  Theoretically she might not be a lesbian, but why is she pretending that there haven't been rumors about her?  And really, I may not know for certain what's going on in her bedroom, but on the other hand, I can make a few guesses, can't I? 

Then when Perez actually came onto the show, they talked about Clay Aiken, and speculated whether he should have been outed:  it was okay, they felt, to out the hypocritical "pro-family" Republican senator types who are consistently voting against gay marriage in congress before hiring a male escort to do them up the butt, but Clay, on the other hand, supposedly didn't deserve it. 

I have to say the opposite, though, and not just because he had the audacity to make a record called The Measure of a Man. [Please, gurl! I bet all the men he's boned get a laugh out of that.] It's because part of Clay's act is that he's some sort of heterosexual, in order to pander to his audience of heterosexual women who mysteriously think that he's either handsome or cute.  Clay was on the Tyra show recently and for me, as a gay person, it was downright creepy to have Tyra Banks touch, coo, and otherwise engage in flirtatious heterosexual behavior with Clay.  He's just - hypocritically, if you ask me - pandering to a sad, lovesick, and lonely group of women, the sort of people who "defend" Clay against the gay rumors.  Guess what, ladies?  You don't need to "defend" anyone against gay rumors unless you think being gay is a bad thing.   

It's just retarded that they're afraid that they are not going to be able to appreciate his voice - if that's what they like - if he was a gay person.  I mean, *I* am fully able to appreciate Brad Pitt even though A) I'm really fairly certain that he's sticking it to Angelina Jolie and B) even if he was gay, he still wouldn't sleep with me.  I'm able to like The Killers even though I'm pretty sure Brandon Flowers is probably just putting on the eyeliner to be flirtatious and metrosexual, not because he's secretly gay.  I'm able to appreciate nude photographs of Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz [NSFW] even though I know that Pete is sticking that penis of his into an idiot girl. Why can't these ladies, who supposedly like Clay's VOICE, accept that he likes to sleep with other men?  Or even if that's not confirmed, why can't they ponder that possibility without going into hysterics?

While looking up links for this post, I came across one person's defense of Clay regarding the Clay Aiken webcam pictures: that Clay was not in the city his fellow Manhunter was, and she knows that because "there isn't a Clay Aiken fan you can't talk to who can't give you details on where Clay is at any given time."  It took me a few minutes to parse those double-negatives, but I think she's essentially saying ""We know Clay isn't gay because we're a bunch of nutjob stalkers who follow him everywhere."  The strange part is that they admit to that - I guess because at this point they must think their behavior is normal. 

But it gets even more sad and creepy:

There is a unique event that occurs on the Clay Aiken message boards at every single concert he does and it is called a "cellcert" where fans at the concert call a friend on their cellphone and they post the events on the message boards through the entire concert.

I thought this was funny because Handsome Mister Goats always likes to "watch" tennis games live on the internet even if they are not on the TV, or are being broadcast later on, and that consists of watching the live-update internet scoreboard, so he's essentially sitting and watching a series of numbers change, which I always thought was pretty boring, but if it amuses him I don't mind.  This "cellcert" sounds three times more boring: who is it that's "watching" a Clay Aiken concert by reading about it on a message board as it's phoned in from a cell phone that's at the concert you aren't attending? 

This has been pretty rambling, but to bring it all back, I've got this:  I'm pretty sure Clay Aiken is gay, I'm not sure about Whoopi Goldberg, but she clearly was saying "It's not your business, but I'd like to imply as much as possible that I'm not a lesbian."  And that makes the score GAY: 15 HETERO: Love

Things have progressed so far nowadays that now one way an actor can dispel gay rumors is to star in a gay movie, the implication being, "If I was closeted I would never be doing this really, really gay thing that I'm doing so well." Except now that I mention it, the one unfunny thing about Hairspray seems to be John Travolta.  And how come no one is mentioning that Queen Latifah is also in drag?

That is all.