Redeye - You know how I know you're gay? March 01 2006

You know how I know you're gay? You went to the INXS concert at the Atlanta Civic Center on Wed., Feb. 22. I should know. I was there. I admit it: I watched CBS' "Rock Star: INXS" all summer long, and my morbid curiosity couldn't be denied. I had to see if series winner J.D. Fortune would shimmy his way into deceased INXS singer Michael Hutchence's tight trousers and people's hearts, or had merely been given enough rope to hang himself. Fortune (camp alert, this Canadian's a former Elvis impersonator) certainly has the meticulously waxed features to be a drag queen. The brooding songs want to be Mick Jagger, while the jaunty, joyful delivery seems to be more ABBA.

And if you were at the show and you're not gay, that might mean you're a mom. That was a majority of the audience: your mother, her sandbag-like titties heaving for Fortune. I just pray that it wasn't your mother who held out the swatch of cloth that Fortune took from someone in the front row, stuck down his pants, ground quite forcefully into his groin and handed back.

And what good fortune, to land a gig fronting a band looking for a new sensation. Except Fortune may have won the tube, but I needed more 'tude. It wasn't that the band (a group of nice and deserving guys, no doubt) is defanged; it's just that INXS is grateful, not hungry, and certainly not tortured. While the musicianship and sincerity is not in doubt, there was a missing tension. Maybe we should put them on "Survivor" and see what kind of album comes of it.

Oh, and if you weren't gay or a mom and you were there, you were the AJC's Rodney Ho, who sang back some of INXS' key '80s hits as enthusiastically as anyone else in the audience. And, dare I say, was that air guitar I glimpsed?

Following INXS, I went to my second event of the evening featuring effeminate men doing what amounts to karaoke: the Miss Jungle 2006 Pageant (is this where you say, "Know how I know you're gay?"). I was in the need for something fierce, plus I was supporting my brah Jason Jupiter. And nothing says fierce like A) a rhinestone-encrusted face done up to resemble a lion; or having the balls to tuck your dick in your ass. Throwing fake tits around like props and with insults tossed like salad, Ms. Jungle had the snark and the spark. Congratulations to the newly crowned Shawnna Brooks. And so what if I thought the "women" in the competition were hotter than the crowd at INXS.

So what's around the corner for Atlanta nightlife? Well, it seems we can look forward to actual places around the corners. After a burst of high-profile openings, there's a trickle of semi-secluded rumored rooms with names such as El Bar/the Aztec Room and Amsterdam. Of course, there's still the constantly postponed re-opening of Fever, and the supposed March opening of Verve Lounge (feels very ESSO to me). But do the discerning clubbers of the city now equate flash with flash-in-the-pan? Sounds like a topic to corner in the near future.

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