Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Perry begins this likable collection of his gay humor columns from Frontiers and Instinct magazines by apologizing for the subtitle forced on him by his editor: "Can anyone not named Minnelli live up to that?" he asks. Perry's essays are arranged in topic-specific chapters like "Food and Sex," "The Arts" and "Politics and God." A little more sexually explicit than his contemporaries David Sedaris and Michael Thomas Ford, Perry opens the book with a tale of his first inklings of being different from other boys: he spent each Saturday watching cartoons and the neighbor boy wash his car in swim trunks; while reading Hardy Boys mysteries he continually imagined himself the meat in a Frank and Joe sandwich. Lamenting the cost of his newest fetish, his "Leather Boy on a Budget" is a hilarious send-up of compulsive shopping, gay aesthetics and how a cheap pair of leather pants can ruin a "Best Buns" contest. His astute account of Food & Wine magazine as near porno in its decadent descriptions and glossy photos is a sly delight, as is his fear of "unnaturally beautiful" gym-goers: "Where is the gym you go to to get in good enough shape to go to a gym?" Perry may not be a Minnelli, but there's no shortage of fabulous material in this debut collection that should attract attention in the growing gay humor category. (Dec.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
"Fortunately for normal heteros, there are homos. It is our lot to bring glitteringly over-the-top things into being and share them with our fabulosity-challenged straight brothers and sisters." Perry, self-appointed arbiter of things fabulous, proudly portrays himself as the person who writes and produces comedy sketches for the same company that produces shows for Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Rush Limbaugh. These nearly five dozen short, purportedly humorous essays originally appeared in Instinct magazine and the Los Angeles edition of Frontiers Newsmagazine. Trying much too hard to be cute, he turns his tepid wit on such topics as shopping, clothes, politics, the arts, travel, food, sex, and himself. Even if the book's only goal is to capture a certain West Hollywood gay camp sensibility, it narrowly verges on the offensive. Not recommended.--James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
