«I'M A DEEPLY SUPERFICIAL PERSON»

I suppose in some way "The A-List" is groundbreaking. The series shows that no matter what sexuality you are, you have been infected by the media-soaked bizarro world of American life in the early millennium. Like the "Real Housewives," "The Bachelor" and any other show that features hot tubs, spray tanning and mansions with curved driveways, "The A-List" takes outdated markers of glitzy life in the '00s before the financial crash and repackages them as an aspirational consumerist lifestyle we can watch from our Ikea-decorated living rooms. This time it's gay men, living in fabulous, increasingly unreal gay ghetto bubbles.If you're in New York and want to give yourself a little bit of cultural whiplash, check out the Act Up Oral History Project now up at the White Columns gallery in the West Village. At the exhibition, you can watch videos of interviews with surviving members of the important AIDS activist movement talking about that fiery time in the late '80s when gay men were furious and essentially at war, chaining themselves to the White House and lying in front of Pfizer trucks. Just 20 years later, we have "The A-List." No wonder I don’t go out that much these days. Instead I sit at home in my droopy sweat pants and watch the A-Listers go out on TV. What a weird gay world it's turned out to be.

-Salon