- Neil Patrick Harris and house husband David Burtka need to get a room, but instead the happily married queens put their love on display for the February issue of Out magazine. [Out]

- Grammys Love Cool J. Rapper/actor/my baby daddy LL Cool J will host the 54th annual Grammys, the first time the “awards” show will have a proper host in some seven years. [Deadline]

- After 14 years of clandestine lovin’, Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis are allegedly hitting the proverbial rocks. [People]

- PETA is taking issue with fox fur merkins. Because a fox and a pussy should never cohabitate. [Huff Po]

- A commissioner in Shreveport, LA is pushing to have pajamas banned in public. And I say bravo. Back in my day you didn’t step out of the house without a full face — and by “you” I clearly mean “I” and by “my day” I clearly mean “yesterday.” [Shreveport Times]

- Funny ladies/Cover Girls Ellen DeGeneres and Sofia Vergara apply a little lip-shtick on the former’s daytime show.

Photos: Out Magazine

“His real name is Tom, but I call him Tender.”

Hardwich referred to Ford as Tender to “distinguish between her two Tom turkeys…one was Tough (her husband) and the other (Ford) was Tender.”

Tom and Richard’s is a story that almost restores one’s faith in true love…almost.

They met by chance at a fashion show after which Tom — being, as he describes himself, “extremely, almost pathologically shy” — ran away from Buckley.

“[W]hen the show was over I literally bolted out the door and down the street to avoid him.”

10 days later they met again at a photoshoot for WWD, got to talking, and on the elevator ride down Tom decided he was going to marry Richard. Through their 24 years together they’ve weathered illness and lowered expectations.

As Tom explains:

“One of the things that always amuses me – amuses isn’t even the right word, because it doesn’t amuse me — but often, I’m at dinner parties with very close friends, straight, and they realize that Richard and I have been together 24 years, and the response is often, ‘Wow, you guys have been together 24 years! That’s so amazing. I don’t think of gay men being together that long.’”

Honestly, I don’t think of gay men being together longer than one night, so I understand their shock. Unlike the lesbians, who mate for life, the gays seem to float aimlessly from one experience and one partner to another, guided, if by anything, their need for sexual gratification wrapped up in the guise of emotional fulfillment.

Tom and Richard are, sadly, the exception, rather than the rule. They’re lucky not only to have found one another, but to escape the height of the AIDS outbreak unscathed.

Richard describes getting throat cancer and how his supposed friends, assuming it was AIDS and terrified that they might catch it, refused to see him:

“Tom just cut them out — wouldn’t even speak to them if he ran into them on the street.”

Losing so many friends to the disease also affected Tom’s views on sex:

“[I]t damaged the way I think about sex forever. You just associated sex with death—or at least I did.”

This strikes me as particularly strange considering Tom Ford’s relationship with sex and sexual imagery over the years.

When one thinks Tom Ford, the next thought is usually sex; an exposed breast, bare buttocks, a jumpsuit cut down to there.  But when one thinks of Tom Ford they also don’t think of a pathologically shy man with a “good heart” who has been in love with the same man for 24 years.

Perhaps that’s the brilliance of Tom Ford: he’s an iconoclast, a provocateur and a helplessly old-fashioned romantic. Those elements are found in everything he does, whether it’s his collections, his first film (the heartbreaking A Single Man) or even a gig as a guest editor. He brings his own viewpoint, which never ceases to be interesting.

Link Love: Out

This year’s Out 100 has a sassy line-up, starring Ms. Martin, Ms. Moore, Mr. Maddow, and lesbian power couple Johnny Weir and Nate Berkus.

Ricky looks adorable in his say-something blazer, in what appears to be a mid-Twist. Ms. Weir made an unfortunate choice in hair, make-up, wardrobe and pose. I hope Rachel Zoe wasn’t behind this disaster.

Or behind Rachel Maddow‘s power suit. Her pose seems to be saying, playfully, “Hey, what do you want from me?” The answer: sequins.

I’m dimly aware of who Nate Berkus is, but he’s affiliated with Oprah so I’ll take it.

But the real star of this cover is one Ms. Jules Moore. Radiant as ever and on a horse…for no particular reason. A horse, I don’t get. A unicorn, however?

Gasp.

If that horse was a unicorn this cover would burst into gay flames. Bravo to Out for practicing a little restraint.

Cheyenne Jackson shows off his Broadway bod in the November issue of Out Magazine. The spread was photographed by Doug Inglish and styled by Grant Woolhead. And who says there isn’t beauty in nature.

LINK LOVE: Homotography

I’m totally not into the new Christina Aguilera, but I can’t deny the sexual energy that Ellen Von Unwerth unearthed from the songstress in this spread for Out Magazine [Click to View Spread]. Instead of looking like a Gaga copy, Christina shows us a side of her new image that in itself is refreshing. Now if only Nicola can style the girl…

LINK LOVE: Christina Aguilera Reclaims The Fame , Christina Aguilera: Madame X [Out]

LINK LOVE: NY Mag

Despite Lady Gaga’s extreme attempts at shocking fashion it seems rare to find her on the cover of a magazine or in a stylized shoot. But now that I have found one, I’m on the hunt for more. Having someone else be her stylist is a much more flattering look then my little pony hair and Kermit the Frog blazers. At this point I’d be more shocked to see her in normal clothes! The styling in this Out spread is far from normal, but she looks good and its vampire inspired so no complaining from me.

GALLERY: Lady Gaga for Out

SOURCE: Nicola Formichetti’s Blog