Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: Brave Newark: Tony and Tom Go to Ibiza After Their New Jersey Civil Partnership Ceremony

Possums, remember that Looney Toons episode featuring Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, and a planeload of hats?

The point was to show that the hat could make the man. In this case, however, it has unmade him.

Tom, Tom, Tom, tsk, tsk, tsk. There's a reason La Cage aux folles wasn't set in New Jersey.

En plus, the hat makes Tom Colicchio, of all people, look like a bottom. If we squint, we can practically make out the speech bubble over Tom's head: "Honey, whaddya mean you didn't pack the suntan lotion?"

Amuse-Biatch Now Pronounces Them Howie & Joey

It seems to us, possums, that rarely has one of Bravo's cross-promotional ideas worked out so well.

All night long, Bravo has been showing film clips and Jessica Biel's rack to promote the new flick I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, which--would you believe it?!--is being released by Universal, as in NBC Universal, corporate parent of wayward, gay corporate child Bravo. That's putting the sin in synergy.

In the film, Kevin James (finally living up to his billing as the King of Queens) and Adam Sandler play two rough-and-tumble, average-Joe firefighters who pretend to be domestic partners in order to get benefits, so right away you know this is a fairy tale, in more ways than one, because, naturally, everywhere in this great nation of ours the Gays in their domestic partnerships get more benefits than straight married couples.

And what do we have tonight? Why, it's another couple of rough-and-tumble, average-Joe guys with thick accents coming together in a loving partnership. In true telenovela fashion, Joey Pickles and Howie Kleinberg, the two characters who started out bickering, ended up sharing love over a bottle of wine.

But it's more than a marriage of regional accents for the girth & mirth set. Indeed, despite their earlier clashes and savage animal exhortations to "be a fucking man," a cri de coeur and cri de cul that Jean Genet and Andrew Sullivan would have understood all too well, Joey Pickles ("Or is it Joey Gherkins?" Miss XaXa had wondered earlier) and Howie have everything it takes to make it as a successful gay couple: versatility.

First Joey was on top, with an "orgasm in your mouth" (hey, it's ok to do that if you're domestic partners), and then Howie was on top, doing what he likes to do best: pork. If that ain't beautiful versatility, we don't know what is. As Harold Dieterle put it on his blog (and Harold knows from loud, burly gays, having roomed with Big Gay Dave during Season One): "There was huge love and a lot of man-hugging going on."

Mazel tov, you two!

Exclusive! Amuse-Biatch In-House Paparazzo Uncovers the Truth Behind the "Top Chef" Finale

Reader, aspiring Eve Harrington, and new Amuse-Biatch in-house paparazzo Laz is not, unlike Miss Elia Aboumrad, a man to give up easily.

After witnessing Ilan Hall playing "In Your Eyes" for Marcel Vigneron on a boombox in Las Vegas, he knew something was up. He'd watched Double Indemnity plenty of times, and though he looks nothing like Edward G. Robinson, he had a gut feeling about this one. The weekend of Cointreau and go-go boys could wait. He sat in his convertible, cowboy hat pulled low over his aviator shades, and chewed on a toothpick while pondering the saffron strands of this mystery.

And then the targets were on the move. Laz followed discreetly as they drove north in Ilan Hall's rented convertible. "So they're pulling a Thelma and Louise," Laz gruffly thought to himself, taking swigs of Pepto-Bismol à la Cliff Crooks.

By the time the rental crossed the state line into Montana, Laz had figured it all out. Of course! The signs had been there all along. The attraction between the two had been instantaneous, electric, Kenmore Pro. As Laz was later to hear Ilan huskily whisper to Marcel, "You had me at, 'Do you wanna see my knives?'"

So the two met in the bathroom, unheard by anyone save Frank Terzoli's toothbrush, and planned it all out. They would just pretend to hate each other, displaying such camera-ready animosity and dramatic confrontations that the producers would have no choice but to ensure that they ended up in the finale together.

It was risky, but well worth it. After all, once they were in the finale, it wouldn't matter who won the title and the money. No matter where it came from, $100,000 would buy a sweet little gastropub in Helena, Montana, where they could serve dishes featuring Ilan's chorizo and Marcel's foam.

Laz followed them to the outskirts of Helena, where, using his telephoto lens, he took the photograph you see above. Once they were inside the cottage, Laz approached and peered through the window.

"I wish I knew how to queet you," Ilan said breathily to Marcel.

"Just ask Elia," replied Marcel, as they laughed, and began to kiss.

And what happened next was so ineffably tender that neither we nor Laz have the words for it, and so we turn to former New Jersey governor and "gay American" (Gaymerican?) Jim McGreevey and a charged passage from his memoir, The Confession:

"We undressed and he kissed me. It was the first time in my life that a kiss meant what it was supposed to mean -- it sent me through the roof. I was like a man emerging from...a cave to taste pure air for the first time, feel direct sunlight on pallid skin, warmth where there had only ever been a bone-chilling numbness....I pulled him to the bed and we made love like I'd always dreamed: a boastful, passionate, whispering, masculine kind of love."

How's that for a Wednesday morning? Well, it was just like that, Laz assured us. As for who really earned the title of "top" chef, well, we'll leave that to your imagination.

First Reaction: Knight of the Long Knives

Oh, noodge, what a show that was.

Little did we know, when we first set out to pontificate on this, how the "Project Runway"-fication of "Top Chef" would proceed by leaps and bounds.

We now have cheating scandalets in every episode and no one got sent home (will we also have a final four this time around?). And anyone who expected Spice Rack to fall on her limited edition Kyocera ceramic sashimi knife had another thing coming. Instead, the long knives were pulled out, Sam revealed himself as Mr. Knightley when it came to those long knives, and we inched closer to reality show nirvana, "Project Runway" meets "Lord of the Flies."

So, again, what did we learn this week?

We learned that we're content to let Bravo exec Raggaydy Andy have Padma. After all, what's the point, since she would never be able to pronounce our name. Honey, it's Ah-MEWS-bee-yotch to you.

Thanks to Raggaydy Andy, we also learned we are getting a whiff of Haley Joel Osment's sixth sense: We see dyke people. And we're in love again. Our fickle, fickle hearts are Goin-Goin-gone.

We learned that everything tastes better with an accent.

We also learned from Elia that the urge to do yoga could strike at any moment, so it's best to carry your yoga mat with you at all times.

We learned that Marcel uses sugar and not Splenda to get his meringue hair to froth up in those peaks. And the mixture of egg whites and sugar is no doubt what keeps alive the white Angora cat residing in there and waiting for its Blofeld moment. (We could have sworn we saw Marcel petting it when he referred to Spice Rack as his "arch nemesis.")

We learned that Miss XaXa's Carlos knows from phallic, and when he tells us something is the most phallic thing he's ever seen, we believe him.

And speaking of dicks, we learned, through Beer Bong, that straight women are less choosy and more forgiving, and straight men luckier, than even we suspected. The proof? Some woman actually actually saw fit to marry Beer Bong. If that's not an argument for gay marriage, I don't what is.