Sometime in the late 1990s or very very early 2000s I was sitting at my drawing desk knocking out whatever my latest project was and my phone rang— it was my good friend, then current Worcester Magazine Editor and later a Boston Globe Editor Michael Warshaw.
“Hey.” He said in his usual upbeat but somewhat cutting manner. “You ever hear of this show ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’?”
Amazingly, for a guy who barely owned a television, I had. More than that I watched more than a handful of episodes. For those of you that may not know the show had a simple format; 4-5 gay guys would come to the home of a straight guy who dressed and lived like a schlub and they gave him a makeover. It was a fun show at least the ones I saw.
“Yeah…..” I replied, my mind racing as to where this was going— I assumed they needed a cover done featuring those guys or something. Mike would call me on occasion to chat— but we’d talk about how many times Bela Lugosi actually played Dracula (it’s two on screen) or how the Worcester City Government bought a bunch of surplus flame throwing trucks after WWII with the idea of using them for snow removal and then proceeded to light cars on Shrewsbury Street on fire. We never chatted about pop culture.
“Well, we’re doing a take on it and we want to get some Z-Grade local celebrities to be the ones getting made over. We’ve come to the bottom of the barrel so I’m asking you.”
I laughed— he was completely right I was a Z-Grade local celebrity. Interestingly enough I’d been flown to Berlin to judge an art contest once, and I’ve juried other events in New York City but locally I was grade Z. One time when I was shaving my phone rang and for some reason I answered it and it was my good friend and radio host Hank Stolz who asked me, live on the air, what I thought of Steve Rogers dying. It took me a few minutes to realize Stever Rogers was the alter ego of Captain America and Marvel Comics latest stunt was to kill him off.
“No, I think I’m pretty well put together already, I’ll pass.” Also true- I’ve always dressed well, I get an expensive haircut every 10 days— I don’t dress or live like a schlump now and I didn’t then. Before I could hang up— Mike closed the deal.
“I know. It’s the only thing about you I like!” he laughed. “The marketing company is paying for everything, we’re going to do it in about three weeks, you let your hair grow, show up in some schlubby clothes and they’ll end up putting you in an Armani Suit!”
THIS was a genius plan. On the show if they were meeting with a Wall Street Banker they’d end up making him look like a rodeo clown, but if they had a surfer dude in front of them they’d walk away in a $2k suit.
“I’m in.” The wheels started rolling.
How did it turn out? Tune in tomorrow.