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Texannie
| Monday, November 24, 2003 - 2:42 pm
GMTA!!! LOL I wasn't sure exactly where to post it either! ;)
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Texannie
| Tuesday, November 25, 2003 - 7:31 am
http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39256 PIER 1 DROPS KIRSTIE ALLEY FOR 'QUEER EYE' STAR Retailer Wanted a Spokesperson Closer to 'Lifestyle' Issues November 24, 2003 QwikFIND ID: AAP18G By Claire Atkinson and T.L. Stanley NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Queer Eye design guru Thom Filicia will succeed actress Kirstie Alley as the spokesperson for retailer Pier 1 Imports. Photo: AP Kirstie Alley wasn't quite 'lifestyle' enough for Pier 1 and will be replaced by Thom Filicia. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Related Story: QUEER EYE FOR THE RICH GUYS Marketers Waving Money Chase Fab Five -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Executives close to the negotiations confirmed that the home decor retailer is winding down its relationship with Ms. Alley and is finalizing details of a new contract with Mr. Filicia, who is one of the "Fab Five" from the hit Bravo cable show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Mr. Filicia's manager, Michael Flutie, declined to comment. Connected to the category The retailer apparently wanted someone more connected to the lifestyle category to front its marketing. Pier 1 views Mr. Filicia as having credibility in the lifestyle arena, said an executive involved in negotiations. Mr. Filicia was named one of the top 100 American designers by House Beautiful and has his own New York firm called Thom Filicia Inc. He likes Pier 1's broad appeal and "exotic flair," this executive added. Pier 1 Imports initial agreement with Mr. Filicia is for on-air endorsements and a new advertising campaign. Pier 1's agency of record, Campbell-Ewald, Detroit, which is part of Interpublic Group of Cos., is brainstorming creative ideas for a potential second-quarter 2004 campaign, those close to the negotiations said. The agency declined to comment. Pier 1 did not return calls for comment. His own products line Mr. Filicia, who renewed a deal for new episodes of the hit makeover series with NBC/Bravo at the end of October, is also in talks about a separate deal that would have him launch his own branded line of products with the company further down the line. However, it is not clear whether Pier 1 will be featured in any of the 40 new episodes of Queer Eyethat started this week. In the show's first season, Mr. Filicia took one of the makeover candidates to Pier 1. Part of the new NBC deal gives the five experts freedom to pursue their own outside agreements so long as they don't reference the "Fab Five" or the reality series' name, which is trademarked by its maker, Scout Productions. Consumer recall Ms. Alley's contract has run for the past three years and has been hugely successful in terms of consumers recalling Pier 1 ads. Intermedia Advertising Group, New York, which measures advertising and brand recall against all other new advertising, ranked the Pier 1 spots featuring Ms. Alley No. 6 and 14 in a top 20 spots of the year in December 2002. This year, spots ranked No. 20 in the first quarter and No. 3 in the second quarter. Jason Weinberg, the actress' manager, said Ms. Alley "loves the company and thoroughly enjoys working with them and will continue to be a frequent shopper." "While Kristie has enjoyed her spokesperson responsibilities, her long-range goal is expanding her spokesperson status to also include her own personal line of products," Mr. Weinberg said. "Although she is being pursued by other companies to accomplish this long-range goal, she doesn't feel comfortable commenting on any specifics at this time." "She can't get into that while she is fronting the holiday campaign for Pier 1," said an executive close to talks, who declined to say whether Ms. Alley was talking to Pier 1 about the new line. Earnings improvement On Nov. 6, Pier 1 released revised its earnings guidance upward for its third quarter, saying that October sales had exceeded expectations. The retailer said sales were up 9.3% from $131 million to $143 million. The company also plans to open 54 new stores by the pre-Christmas period. Third quarter results are due Dec. 16. While the results beat analysts' estimates, some showed concerns about long-term prospects for growth in an increasingly competitive home furnishings sector. Morgan Keegan & Co. retail analyst Laura Champine questioned the company's ability to drive store traffic over the holidays after posting flat traffic in October and admitting to a soft start to November. "We continue to remain concerned with the company's decision to use Kirstie Alley for the crucial holiday season promotion, as we believe customers might perceive the campaign as stale," she told investors in a report. Pier 1 spent $52 million on measured media in 2002, and $31 million for the first eight months of this year, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR.
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Hippyt
| Tuesday, November 25, 2003 - 6:16 pm
'Queer Eye' food guru talks straight about his new TV fame By STEVE JOHNSON Chicago Tribune CHICAGO -- Six months ago, it would have been just a sandwich between two Chicago journalists. KRT Ted Allen, magazine writer now famous as a Queer Eye host, is shown in his North Side home in Chicago, Illinois, on one of his rare weekends home. But now, almost overnight, it's a sandwich created by Ted Allen, nationally known food expert, taste guru, man over whom the golden wand of television has passed. And it's a whole lot heavier than the usual ham-and-turkey assemblage. There is reputation on the loaf, an image between the slices. And smoke in the kitchen. Suddenly, as the conversation about the new season of Allen's surprise TV hit, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, distracts him from his lunchtime creation, the faintest hint of smoke curls up from over by the toaster oven. Allen rushes over to rescue the focaccia. "Do not say I burned the bread. Do not," he mock-commands, his voice as booming and authoritative in his North Side home as it is on the show, where, most people are aware by now, he's the "food and wine expert," part of a "Fab Five" of gay men who spend a TV hour each week turning a straight fellow from plain apple pie, at best, into pie a la mode. "'Cause what happened was cheese dribbled down onto the thing. I did not burn the bread." He is careful to serve the can of sparkling water with a glass, and, as a magazine writer of some renown before he became a star of cable and even network prime time, careful to highlight the care he has taken. "We can't let them see the can," he says, only half joking. "I'll be crucified in the media." Allen apologizes for the sandwich not being what it might have been had the interview not been scheduled so hastily, on one of his rare free weekends home from New York, where the show is now taping a 40-episode second season, which airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. And before taking a picture of the sandwich, he and his partner, Columbia College journalism professor Barry Rice, scramble to make it over, selecting just the right place mat and napkin, adding silverware, fretting about how "tragic" the potato chips look on the plate. This is what sudden celebrity will do to you, the appearance of a public reputation to maintain where before there was none. Not long ago, Allen was known in Chicago journalism circles for having made the jump from Chicago magazine to Esquire, but perhaps more so for trying mightily -- and ultimately, nobly, failing -- to organize the city's clan of writing and editing loners into a kind of regular after-hours journalists' drinking salon. He wrote some restaurant criticism here and longer, reported pieces as well (a William Kennedy Smith profile, e.g.), but readers would probably best remember his 1995 Chicago piece chronicling his comic misadventures trying to cook out of super-high-end chef Charlie Trotter's new and complicated cookbook. The group eventually ordered pizza. The 38-year-old is casual and ironic about the leap from being known a little bit, by a few people, to being stopped in airports by strangers, but he also recognizes what comes with that. "One false move and you're in Sneed `cause you were mean to a little kid," he says, referring to the Sun-Times columnist. Just to be able to get things done, such as go to the store to buy garbage bags or the sour-cream-and-onion potato chips he admits are his "food weakness," he'll often wear a baseball cap in public now. And because his aggressive glasses are as much a trademark as the voice, "I went and got contact lenses on purpose, which I hadn't worn in years," he says. "Barry jokes about me dressing like a straight guy so as not to be recognized. "The weirdest thing is just the intensity of feeling which some people seem to have about famous people -- which I have to, I still kind of stumble over the word, acknowledging that I've become ... whatever." Whatever, indeed. Since the show exploded from an oddly and, to some, offensively named cable curiosity into the talk of summertime television, he has appeared, with the gang, on Today and Oprah and Tonight. He has had his new salary, a reported $8,000 an episode, printed in the trades, a figure Allen doesn't deny. He has been to a dinner thrown by Will & Grace executive producer Max Mutchnick at the home Mutchnick was renting from photographer Herb Ritts. He has seen lunch with him and his four TV partners auctioned off for more than $20,000 for charity. He has heard Sarah Jessica Parker at the Emmys gush to them about how much she likes the show for what Allen, too, identifies as its best quality, its "heart," the way the makeover team is rooting for their its subject and the charming and even greedy way the subject tends to soak up their advice. And he has witnessed a neighborhood kid, maybe 12, trick-or-treating at his house with his dad, quote back at him one of his lines from the show: "Fat-free cheese is the Polyester of food." Allen's now got representation by the William Morris Agency, a manager who boasts that his new fame is worth "millions" and two book deals, one for a kind of style how-to with the Fab Five due out in February and one on his own (to create a food book for 2005, details still under discussion) with the high-end publisher Clarkson Potter (Mario Batali, The Barefoot Contessais this a book title? -- names of cookbook authors). There is only a little evidence of financial reward: new landscaping in the back yard of his and Rice's Chicago home and a costly new apartment in Greenwich Village, only partly subsidized by the show, to make spending most of next year in New York more tolerable. But more than any of that, he says, the Queer Eye experience has helped his family, "a fairly conservative Republican operation" from the Indianapolis suburbs, come to terms with who he is and how it fits into society. "They were, to put it mildly, not at all happy about me doing the show," he says. "Now they're pissed off when we run reruns. They're fans. My mom e-mailed me an Andrew Sullivan column about gay marriage, in favor of. And she was sending it around to her friends. "It was a huge evolution. My mother was affected by the show in the same way that a lot of people seem to be." She was part of a spreading of the show's popularity that Allen noticed anecdotally, even as the Nielsen ratings were demonstrating it statistically. "First it was the gay guys in Chelsea," he says. At a restaurant, "people would stare or ask us to talk to someone on their cell phone. And right about the same time, it was the single women. Then we started hearing from ladies my mother's age, you know, around 60. "Now we're starting to get high school boys and college guys, straight guys, in airports coming up to us and saying, `Dude, thanks for that shaving tip, man.' `Dude, 6 ounces, 10 minutes, 400 degrees, to make a filet of fish. I did it on this date.' And they're just like the straight guys on the show. They're proud of it, and they want to tell it. "And it's just so -- God, the power of television compared to the power of magazines." When he decided to audition for the show, Allen had been writing some about 13 years and was looking to add something. The casting notice, brought to his attention by a New York friend, mentioned Will & Grace, makeovers and an Esquire magazine sensibility. "It's probably the most ridiculously specific TV show that I could ever have a prayer of being right for," he says, but he pursued it as aggressively as he did the Esquire job. And the executive producers, David Collins and David Metzler, liked him from the start, they say. "The first time we met him we got really excited," Metzler says. "We loved his intelligence and how that translated into a really smart humor." They also loved Carson Kressley, a New York fashion stylist and lightning wit who delivers most of the show's killer one-liners. Allen and Kressley are the only two Fab Five members who made it from a test episode that was shot into the final cast, partly because they balance each other so well, Kressley as an embodiment of flamboyance and Allen with a more down-to-earth and conventionally masculine demeanor. "He's been the professor, and I've been Mary Ann," says Kressley, before amending the playful dig at the show's oldest cast member: "I'm much more of a goofball, but he's got an amazing, dry sense of humor, and it's always great working with the elderly." During auditions, Collins says, "We knew that Carson and Ted were kind of absolute opposites, so we stuck them on the ends and figured out who was going to fit in the middle of them." As this was going on during the spring, Allen's partner was a touch skeptical, he says. "It was one of those concepts that was all in the execution," Rice says. "It could be funny. It could be horrible. I was wary about it until I saw the pilot." The show turned out to be sweeter in tone than the use of the edgy "queer" in the title would imply. And while it certainly exploits stereotypes of both gays and straights, it also undercuts them, Allen says. "People concerned about the stereotype question totally miss the subversive, accidental, best aspect of the show, I think, which is that we're taking those stereotypes they've made fun of all these years and teaching them to them in order to help them get the girl, which I think is kind of hilarious," Allen says. It's also, straight up, a service. "We all want to know how to dress cool," for instance, he says. "Everybody does. And it was not acceptable for us to ask about it. You couldn't go into a men's shop and ask another guy, `Do these pants look good on me?' It was just way too `gay.'" A hit TV show is far from the Lafayette, Ind., Journal and Courier, where Allen got his first journalism job, copy editing, after graduating Purdue graduating from Purdue University with a psychology degree. A journalism master's degree at from NYU followed, and he tried larger papers but found a job at the small Lerner Newspapers in Chicago, starting here as a reporter in 1990, making in a year what he's now getting he now gets in two weeks. "I'm pretty sure it was $17,700 something," he recalls, but it grew. "This is really sad," Allen says. "I got a raise at Lerner because I was able to tell them the (legendarily cheap) City News Bureau had offered me job." Freelancing for Chicago magazine and editor Richard Babcock led to a full-time job there, where he has kept close contacts, even after moving to Esquire. He is on the masthead at both. "To my mind, one of the unfortunate aspects of this great success he's had is it completely overshadows his real talent, which is he's a wonderful, wonderful writer," Babcock says. Indeed, while much of Allen's writing career has focused on shorter, "front-of-the-book" service journalism -- a nuts-and-bolts approach he says he tries to bring to the show -- he has been a finalist for the prestigious National Magazine Award, for an Esquire piece on male breast cancer. All of that is, by necessity, on hold for now. Yes, Allen has been keeping a fairly detailed journal, he says, with an eye toward writing about the experience some day. But the shooting schedule, expected to continue through the next year, has the gang taping Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and then having meetings most of Mondays and Fridays. It is, he says, grueling, but too unlikely a break to do anything but try to enjoy the ride, even the gossip that comes with it. In one, apparently prevalent whispering, Allen says, there is said to be a non-gay man in the cast and as the "sensible, Midwestern" guy, "of course, I'm the straight one, which is a great rumor that I love to perpetuate." He does, he says, "or did" like to chop wood, paint his own fences. And the sandwich he makes is more hearty than overly refined: focaccia, turkey, ham, tomato, greens, mayo and mustard, and, a key, fresh mozzarella. It gets the straight guy stamp of approval.
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Texannie
| Wednesday, December 03, 2003 - 7:22 am
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/01/1070127356242.html Insider tip: lifestyle TV doesn't pay December 2, 2003 Print this article Email to a friend John Attridge slices up the Queer Eye angle on 'lifestyle TV'. Has anyone noticed that grooming expert Kyan on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has no actual expertise? His accumulated wisdom seems to represent about 15 minutes' research on skin-care products' instructions - and, unless it's an advantage to bring a neutral observer with you to the hairdressers, I don't find his standing around skills very useful either. Not that any of the Fab Five is exactly indispensable. Queer Eye is the reality TV version of Seinfeld. In both cases, the drama depends on characters whose greatest challenge is living in New York. Jerry Seinfeld was basically the queer eye: well-groomed, fastidiously clean, expert in the etiquette of day-to-day life. George was every plaid-wearing slob that ever lied about being a marine biologist. The difference is that now it's supposed to be real. But I'm a bit worried when my TV starts flashing tips. Dried parsley, the Fab Five gourmand told me once, is useless. But does anyone watching this show really use dried parsley? Does it even exist? What's next? Insider warnings against Kraft singles in the nine-cheese risotto? And he's potentially the least useless member of the team. For example, things I have learnt from culture guy: tickets to a cool show are useful for dating. Oh, and body language: when entering a room, avoid crouching and skulking like Quasimodo. Yet many important questions are left unanswered. What is the word less naff than girl- or boy-friend, less clinical than partner and less tantric than lover for the one you're with? How do I keep that scabby crust off my lip when I drink red wine? These and other pressing problems need the resources of a major network thrown at them as soon as possible. What they are good at on Queer Eye is obsessively classifying people as either gay or straight. Seldom does the word man appear in their dialogue unprefaced by a sexual orientation. The frisson mined from hilarious gay-straight culture barriers is seemingly inexhaustible. There is a word for this stuff that you don't even know you know (because not knowing it would make no difference). It's called trivia. Television is now hell-bent on teaching us about it, for real. If it's not Queer Eye rescuing helpless yuppies from their unfashionable beards, it's the other lifestyle shows, or dating primers like The Bachelor, or reality TV shows like Big Brother that reward people for being eminently normal. The premise there is, essentially, we dare you to live in a sharehouse: cook, clean, chat, shower, fight and have clandestine sex with your flatmates. Only, instead of having to clean out five years of junk alone, the last person in residence gets a pile of cash. I'm not saying I don't need help; it's just that no TV show seems to be meeting my precise needs. I'm still waiting for Queer Eye to give someone a Just Jeans style-infusion or a crash course in taco kits. And what I really need help with is my income style. Can you help me, Fab Five? Readers are invited to apply wit to anything that makes the blood boil. Send 550 words, with contact details, to heckler@smh.com.au. Submissions may be edited and published on the internet.
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Texannie
| Wednesday, December 03, 2003 - 7:24 am
Thought last night's show was hystercial, especially the way they hammered the "goth girl" at the end. I saw the straight guy on either Inside Edition or Extra and he was talking bout how it's like getting 5 new best friends...anyone notice that phrase seems to come up alot?
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Tishala
| Wednesday, December 03, 2003 - 2:53 pm
I MISSED last night! I just forgot it was on! I'm sure there will be reruns though.
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Tishala
| Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 2:07 am
Tonight's episode was SOOOOOO good! We got to see that hottie John again (the one who proposed to his girlfriend) and he looked even HOTTER with somewhat longer hair and wearing a Ralph Lauren suit. Butch looked OK. His hair wasn't great, but it was fine. Georgie, the Greek guy with the great mother, looked exactly the same as he did when the Fab Five left him...and he had a girlfriend. But the best was Adam, the schlumpy guy whose house was filled with toys--he gave his wife a pair of earrings at the end of the original episode, IIRC. ANyhow, Adam has lost about 20 pounds and he looks good, god bless him. He still looks like he needs a closer shave, but he didn't have a unibrow AND he had reasonable looking hair. I am forgetting another guy who was there--sorry--but you will be happy to know that the actor/mortgage guy/comedian wasn't there. It was really good to see that the guys maintained the work from the show and, in BUtch's and Adam's case, added onto the improvements. They rewarded Adam with a gift basket at the end because he was the "most improved" straight guy. Oprah also had the Fab Five on her show (and Oprah after the show) today. If someone who saw it wants to recap it, that's cool. I only half paid attention to Oprah's show, but Oprah After the Show was really great.
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Fruitbat
| Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 9:07 am
One of my longest and dearest friends lives in NY and her grandchildren, who are raving fans, saw them doing an apt across the street from their school. They went that day and the next. Not only were the Fab 5 nice to them they were over the top chatty and extremely friendly. They all had their boyfriends with them on one of the days. Carson took a picture of their dog, who happened to have a Santa hat on, for his Christmas card. She hasnt sent me the pictures yet but when she does I will inturn email them to someone who can post them here.
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Fruitbat
| Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 9:27 am
Well, oldest friends, she is not all that long. < note to self, PROODREAD >
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Djgirl
| Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 10:40 am
Proo"D"read, dear mama?! Lol!
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Fruitbat
| Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 11:59 am
ROLF! I cant believe I did that. I would like to claim that was on purpose but alas, I am hopeless.
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Babyruth
| Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 12:33 pm
ROFLOL! (with you, not at you, of course) I'd be happy to post pics for you, btw.
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Madelane
| Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 1:12 pm
Did anybody watch the making of the video for the theme song afterward? Because I was confused - the two guys who were talking like producers, about choosing the Fab Five and everything, were later in the video as the band. Were they the producers, the band, or both??
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Mocha
| Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 1:37 pm
I loved last nights show. I still think John and George are very hot. I also loved how Adam and his wife had all of that junk in their shower, lol. I also love mama. This is such a great show and it was great to see that the straight guys were still sticking to the advice. And I fell out when Butch(I think it was him) showed Kyan all of his products. I love these guys. Also loved the music video too. Madelane, sorry but I didn't notice them in the video but I do remember the video director and some other guy talking but can't remember specifically who they were. I still think Kyan is hot.
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Fruitbat
| Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 1:58 pm
Adam's shower made me think they got some warning. Smacks of a quick clean up, if you ask me. Thanks Babyruth. I am still waiting for her to get that together. It has been a week now.
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Seamonkey
| Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 10:15 pm
I loved the re-visit show.. can you imagine the wedding with all 5 Fab Five as best men? What a contrast to see how the guys and their family members (the Fab Five all have a second Greek "Mom" now) love the guys and appreciate their caring help.. to, say, imagining Hildi showing up to visit the victims of feather walls, cardboard guest room or anyone who got "artwork" that included photocopied Hildi body parts? OMG, it will be so great to lose Kirstie Alley in those ads.. she definitely gets my attention and recognition but I have such a negative impression. MsBat.. for a minute there I thought your friend was an old dachschund, perhaps..
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Fruitbat
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 4:34 am
I assume the paid a visit to all the men and chose the ones who kept up with all the changes. I was perked to hear about next season. They mentioned that they chose very interesting and unique men.
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Marymc
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 1:02 pm
my fiancee's daughter sent a requst for them to redo her father. (i am NOT opposed...) i'll keep you all updated if he gets chosen. if for nothing else, i would LOVE for kyan to teach him how to shave slowly and thoroughly!
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Texannie
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 1:51 pm
Are they doing makeover's outside of New York now?
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Mocha
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 2:54 pm
Oh that's great Mary, I hope he gets picked. Wow.
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Madelane
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 4:57 pm
Thanks, Mocha, for trying to answer. I guess nobody else watched the video episode? Oh well, it's not like this information is life or death. And by the way, I thought the making of the video was much better than the actual video.
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Marymc
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 6:29 pm
my fiancee lives in NY...i'm in southern california. (arrrrghhhh....)
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Kappy
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 8:53 pm
I agree, the revisit show was great to watch! The men were all so happy with themselves and with what the guys had done for them and that was really touching. And then when John asked all five to be his best man ~ all I could think of is what a great wedding they would plan for them. You just know it will become an episode!
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Texannie
| Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 9:18 am
Madalane, I watched. Those were the producers of the show in the photo booth..they had lots of different people going in and out of it. Hope he gets on Mary!
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Tabbyking
| Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 11:50 am
did you all read the news where they said men are shopping together more 'the day after' a queer eye episode airs?! seems men shop with other men on wednesdays, more-so than any other day. it was 50% compared to 12% for other days, or something along those numbers. i'll see if i can find the article and post the link.
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