I was driving around the city this morning, flipping through the radio stations, when a convo on Star 98.7 caught my attention. The woman being interviewed was Izabella St. James, a former live-in girlfriend of Hugh Hefner. Apparently she’s authored a tell-all, Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion. Her interview implied that perhaps — shocker! — life as one of Hef’s girlfriend’s isn’t all fast cars, fancy clothes and mind-blowing sex. She implied that Hef is possessive and controlling — the girls have a 9 pm curfew, and when they’re out in public they are always followed by guards, even to the bathroom, to insure they’re not messing around on the side (she said most of them are anyway) — she implied that Hef’s oldest son is gay and basically confirmed that his current #1 girl Holly is every bit the insane Hef-pleasing zombie she appears to be on Girls Next Door.

I’ll be picking up this book this weekend and will have any and all wonderfully juicy tidbits for you next week.

If anyone can find a link to the transcript of the STAR 98.7 interview (it aired around 8:30 am today), please send it my way.

Get the book:

Not much today, kids. Not much at all.

• Gawker’s backstage reporting from the VMAs is worth a read.
• Remember when Ben Affleck was cool? And when he was in a movie, people wanted to see it? Yeah. Not so much now.
• You know how you can tell it’s a really slow news day? Pictures of Jamie-Lynn Spears.
• Ashlee Simpson may or may not be dating Pete Wentz. “Who is Pete Wentz?” exclaims America.
• Pre-VMA report from Page Six: Ryan Seacreast hanging with his gays; Jason Wahler makes Lauren Conrad cry; Brandon Davis may (shhhh) be on drugs.

A little something to incorporate into your daily prayer ritual.

This woman looks strangely like Teri Hatcher. Taking a cue from Ryan Seacrest, are we, Matty?

[ICYDK has more of this charade]

There’s been plenty of gossip this summer regarding the apparent love triangle between Jake Gyllenhaal, Matthew McConaughey and Lance Armstrong. The three have been photographed together almost as frequently as they’ve been photographed shirtless these past few months. With that Sheryl “The Beard” Crow out of the way, we all just assumed the man-love was running rampant. Now it appears there may be a less debaucherous explanation for their behavior: both Gyllenhaal and McConaughey were up for the role of Lance Armstrong in his upcoming biopic. Gyllenhaal won out, so brace yourself for Brokeback Mountain, but this time with more Spandex.

It’s a daunting task to isolate the Stephen Sondheim musical that would have the least commercial appeal as a big-screen release, but Tim Burton has risen to the challenge, moving forward with a DreamWorks production of Sweeney Todd. True to form, he’s asked the individual who we, at this point, simply must beginning referring to as his muse — Johnny Depp — to play the lead. The feel-good cannibalism film of the decade is slated for a late 2007 release. With any luck this will tie up Depp’s schedule long enough that we, as a nation, won’t have to cope with Pirates 3 until 2008; at that point, the 17 hours of Mr. Depp drinking gin from potted plants and sporadically penetrating Keira Knightley with a rotted oar while reading Leaves of Grass aloud will casually out-gross the GDP of Finland.

Unless you have been holed up in your room with nothing but your gin and your Def Leppard albums for the past 15 hours or so, it should come as no suprise to you that Lance Bass is gay. If you had ever even heard of Lance Bass before today, it should come as even less of a surprise. He is gay, gay, gay, in much the same way he’s been gay since the very early days of *NSync, by which I mean obviously. If you still don’t believe me, TMZ has the video. He’s also very much in love with Amazing Race phenom Reichen Lehmkuhl, who is clearly very important right now because the mainstream media is taking the time to spell his name right.

Starting from nearly the minute I woke up, I have received an unending barrage of IMs, emails and phone calls from people relaying this information to me. People who haven’t called me in months called me today because Lance Bass is gay. So thank you for that, Lance Bass. Even stripped of your tenuous (and therefore unthreatening and marketable) heterosexuality, you are still giving young women in this country something to bond over. You’re that good.

The real news here, of course, is not actually that Lance Bass is gay, because Gawker’s been reporting that since sometime in the late 80s. The news here is that Lance Bass had the balls to look a mainstream media member in the face and say it. And that is awesome, and I like the guy so much more now than I ever did when he was boy-banding or faux-Cosmonauting or doing whatever it is that washed-up boy-banders do before they come out to People magazine. I’m impressed with his fearlessness and his sense of self, and also with the example he has set for Hollywood, for closeted aspiring boy-banders everywhere, and for poor Tom Cruise.

In editorial fairness, I should note that the timing of this “revelation” coincides with him pitching a gay-centric sitcom (with Joey Fatone — whose last name, with some cryptographic magic, can be rearranged to read “Fat One,” which is funny because he was the fat one), but I’m so damn impressed with the dude I am not even going to harp on that. Just don’t get me started on Kat McPhee’s “bulimia.”

So there you have it, America: Lance Bass is gayer than the day is long. Now pour some more gin and blast Euphoria again.