Blogging Bravo executive extraordinaire Andy Cohen reports today that he was blindsided by the whole "Elizabeth Berkley hosting a show at his own network" thing. Isn't that, like, his job? Or is he kidding? Was he also kidding about having "lice and crabs?" Do you agree with him that, "LA sucks. It SUCKS!" Discuss. [Andy's Blog]
We enjoy nothing more on the day after the Emmys than to check in with Bravo executive Andy Cohen, on whom we can invariably rely for an uncensored, eyewitness take on the proceedings. Sadly, there is none of the ebullient, "Wowza!!!!!!" -chanting Andy of nomination day in today's post, as much of the air appears to have been taken out of his sails by the roughly 80 people who accepted last night in his category for The Amazing Race. It was a bitter defeat that brought out an ugly side to the blogging bon vivant, who manages in a matter of just a few sentences to disparage such universally beloved figures as America Ferrera, Helen Mirren, and the show's sexually ambiguous, label-divining host:
The New York cover story about former Bravo contestants contained a great many shocking revelations about life after reality TV—for example, that Project Runway's first winner Jay McCarroll is currently homeless* (we blame his McDonald's Archcards dress for Kelis), that the mystery of "Where's Andrae?" has finally been solved (he wound up back at Disney Hall, waiting tables), and that Runway Season 3 standout crackpot Vincent Libretti was last seen wandering naked near a Santa Monica laundromat, holding a placard warning passers-by to the impending "Blogspots Armageddon."
Our visits to BravoTV.com are usually spent reading about the latest in over-the-counter European pharmaceutical trends from executive raconteur and confidante to the stars, Andy Cohen. Today, however, Andy redirected us to a bold new initiative undertaken by the cable network's online presence: There, nestled between a Padma Lakshmi post about what foods go best with dumping your fatwa'd spouse, and a terrifying slideshow tour of Paula Abdul's subconscious, is the Bravo Interns' Blog. Finally, the hard-working, fresh-faced kids who spend their summers thanklessly tracking down Xanadu: On Broadway house seats for a sock-eschewing overlord have a voice. Let's check in with intern Rich, who is still grappling with the sometimes awkward mechanics of workplace culture:
While it's always nice to read Emmy nominee reactions, attempts at not coming across as too boastful can sometimes make for colorless quotes. Luckily, blogging Bravo executive Andy Cohen is never one to dampen his enthusiasm for anything him-related, and so we take you now to his report from the Bravo offices, where staffers are so ebullient over their nine nominations, they are offering free hand-jobs to all takers:
Andy Cohen, blogger, bon vivant, and high-ranking Bravo network pencil-pusher, is back from vacation, his batteries fully recharged after a whirlwind European adventure that saw him whisked from one glamorous society event to another, as befits a man of his stature. After yesterday's post—an Andy's-eye view of fashion designer Valentino 45th anniversary celebration in Rome—comes today's intriguingly titled meditation, "Things I Learned On My Vacation," which included this valuable life-lesson on the importance of capitalizing on lax international food and drug standards:
No superhero—not even the everyday variety that manages to juggle bionic blogging abilities with extraordinary TV executive powers—comes out of the box fully formed. We therefore turn once again to Andy's Blog, the cheery corner of the internet where Bravo's Andy Cohen lets his thoughts out for air, for what might very well be the origin myth of the world's most spotlight-friendly Super-Exec:
Bravo's Andy Cohen—by far our favorite of all TV programming executives who also happen to maintain a dishy, deeply personal daily journal on their company's website—minces no words whenever airing out his show business grievances on his blog. (We're reminded of the time he issued a Gay Fatwa against songbird Jessica Simpson, about whom he wrote, "I can't stand the sight of her stupid blank face.") Today, Cohen has equally harsh words for a C-list celebrity duo gearing up to dazzle Broadway audiences with some precision jazz-hand choreography:
We feel it is our duty to pay semi-regular visits to Andy Cohen—cutthroat Bravo TV executive by day, blogger extraordinaire by night—but after a year of following his name-droppy exploits, we reluctantly have to admit that we're still not entirely sure what his job entails. (It's almost definitely something reality-TV-related.) In today's installment, Andy practically does backflips over Top Chef Day in New York City ("Literally. We have a certificate from the Mayor or Deputy Mayor or someone saying it is so!"), conjuring nightmarish images of a sparsely attended Top Chef parade down Fifth Avenue, featuring Godzilla-sized Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio floats terrorizing children as far away as New Jersey. It's not long, however, before Andy shifts gears to topics far closer to his heart—dermatology and the gym:
Instead of merely regurgitating this weekend's escalating war of words between First Widow Candy Spelling—who has found a late-in-life calling penning epistolary diatribes directed squarely at Hollywood's high profile, reckless youth—and fallen flashcore mogul Joe Francis (quick recap: Candy: "You're a boy gone wild!" Joe: "You're a crazy cat lady!"), we thought we'd turn to one of the web's leading opinion-havers on celebrity matters of little-to-no import—Bravo's blogging executive wunderkind, Andy Cohen:
Bravo's Andy Cohen detailed his weekend activities in today's post, which included a screening of Sony's box office behemoth, Spider-Man 3. And while there should have been plenty there to please the blogging executive wunderkind (James Franco, grown men in Spandex...that about covers it), apparently the movie left his stinker senses tingling:
When even Rich Little has to admit this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner could have used a marquee act with some edge ("It's a little bit of a hard room. Next year, they may go back to someone a little more biting," the cuddly, Carson-era impressionist said shortly after bombing to a packed D.C. Hilton ballroom), it fell, as we predicted, to People magazine's guest of honor Sanjaya Malakar to inject the proceedings with a little watercooler-worthy pizzazz. Looking dashing in a blue pinstriped suit and chunky highlights Valerie Plame would kill for, Malakar greeted his throngs of admirers (including a gushing Governor Eliot Spitzer), as lesser celebrity entities at the People table—Valerie Bertinelli, Zac Efron (ask your teenage daughter or new AOL chat room friend), Eddie Izzard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Project Runway's Tim Gunn—simply looked on in astonishment. Gunn describes the scene to his blogging boss Andy Cohen, in a post discomfortingly titled, "Sir Tim Does DC and Sanjaya!":
We hate to so soon dip back into the bottomless, celebrity-contaminated well that is Bravo executive Andy Cohen's blog, but when every post reads like the conspiratorial oversharing of your almost inconceivably better-connected best friend over a lunch of chopped Cobb, can you really blame us? The appeal isn't in his mere relentless name-dropping; rather, it's the utter randomness of the combination of those names, placed into the gayest environments known to Man, that makes for riveting reading. Take, for example, today's post, in which rainbow beams practically explode from Andy's fingertips as he recounts his experience attending a Diana Ross concert as the guest of unlikely member of the Bravo star stable, Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton:
Forgive us if you detect a slight quiver as we emotionally deliver the news that Andy Cohen, Bravo's dishy blogging executive and now breakout webcast star of BravoTV.com's Watch What Happens, has achieved a gigantic milestone in the life of any frustrated TV suit with a burning hunger for the limelight: Not just a Page Six item, but a Page Six item where his boldfaced name sits alongside the column's honorary cougar and a Hollywood A+-lister:
The GLAAD media awards, presented tonight in New York, have come under fire this year for a controversial policy that excludes gay media outlets, such as gay-targeted cable networks like Logo and Here, in favor of "mainstream" ones—amazingly, even networks with a majority of gay-themed programming, like Bravo and ESPN. Their reasoning is that those general interest networks go further towards furthering the gay agenda recognizing positive portrayals of gays and lesbians in the media. Never at a shortage of an opinion on anything, blogging Bravo exec Andy Cohen—whose network, purely coincidentally, is up for three awards—sees no problem with the policy:
We realize we left many of you hanging Friday, with news that BravoTV.com executive blogutante Andy Cohen had just swept into town for a few days of aerobic famewhoring. Well, the follow-up report is now live, and we wouldn't dream of not passing along the details of Andy's Oscar-weekend whereabouts. The show itself gets low marks, though Andy remains frustratingly tight-lipped about where he actually saw it. (Perhaps anything less than having experienced the ceremony from atop Leonardo DiCaprio's shoulders might not have been deemed worthy of a mention.) The very act of shaking Oprah's hand, meanwhile, gets three solemn paragraphs, after which we get some fly-on-the-wall observations about the temporary L.A. branch of Soho House:
Bravo's Andy Cohen—by day, the network's mild-mannered Senior Vice President of Production and Programming, by night, dishy bloggeur extraordinaire—walks among us, as his latest entry provides a detailed seating chart of a recent New York-L.A. flight, chock full of B-list stars hitting town for some Oscar-weekend magic:
Blogging Bravo executive Andy Cohen's new web-based kaffeeklatsch, Watch What Happens, premiered last night after a particularly dramatic episode of Top Chef, in which misunderstood foam-making genius Marcel Vigneron was [spoiler!] overpowered by unfortunately named fellow contestant Cliff Crooks in a forced-head-shaving prank gone horribly wrong (in that Marcel's Wolverine do emerged relatively intact). Instantly, Cohen—until now a notoriously reclusive, outspoken voice of the blogowaves—was catapulted into the upper echelons of video podcast notoriety, thusly bringing him one step closer to his goal of mainstream celebrity, and possibly even becoming the new face of Lancôme.
All that talk earlier about NBC Universal cable chief and Bravo Queerifier Jeff Gaspin's possible ascendancy to the top of the NBC TV food chain—where his first order of business will be changing the Nightly News theme to "All Things (Just Keep Getting Better)" whilst ensuring Brian Williams' blazer sleeves are always properly zhuzhed—has turned our minds to one of the trusty officers in Gaspin's Army of Gay, Bravo executive Andy Cohen. A visit to Cohen's BravoTV.com blog sees Cohen hurling some grave accusations at anyone who dares criticize the sexy wardrobe choices of Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi:
