So who knows if you’re watching new talk show host Jimmy Kimmel on ABC, but the Chicago Tribune (2-5) says he’s asking things you want to know: new director George Clooney was asked if he had so many male derriere shots in his new movie, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind because of his being ‘so tired of hot naked starlets.’ Clooney’s answer was not reported.

If you’re into racy stuff from another era check out a new book: Scanty Particulars: The Scandalous Life and Astonishing Secret of Queen Victoria’s Most Eminent Military Doctor by Rachel Holmes as reviewed in the NY Times Book Review (2-2). Dr. James Barry was instrumental, like his contemporary Florence Nightingale, in improving medical techniques and sanitation and as the Manchester Guardian told it when breaking Barry’s secret after his death in 1865: ‘Thus it stands as an indubitable fact that a woman was for 40 years an officer in the British service, and fought one duel, … sought many more, had … a legitimate medical education, … received a regular diploma, and had acquired almost a celebrity for skills as a surgical operator!’ Furthermore Barry was no big butch—’he’ was petite, had a high-pitched voice and was often mistaken (??!) for a woman.

Kevin Spacey has the Brits in a dither. The NY Times (2-6) says Spacey has become the director of a new production company at London’s Old Vic Theater. The theater was in danger of being ‘turned over to lap dancing and bingo parlor promoters.’ The British being both star-struck and polite are ecstatic about Spacey but are hoping, as even the Times of London said, ‘… that Spacey might … end the speculation in the media about his sexuality.’ However as our Times reported, ‘… nobody asked and nobody told.’

You probably know the artist, Robert Indiana, even if you think you don’t. The creator of the giant LOVE (with ‘O’ tumbled) that graced stamps has moved to an Odd Fellows Lodge in Vinalhaven, Maine, says the NY Times (2-6); the openly gay Indiana has apparently kept every piece of clothing he ever owned, all unsold works and a huge personal scrapbook and is happily decorating the (he says, appropriately named) Odd Fellows Hall, a Victorian mansion. He has his first show of new work in 12 years in New York.

The New Yorker (2-10) notes a revival by way of DVD and festivals of German movie-maker, Rainer Werner Fassbinder; ‘… the wild-man champ of organic filmmaking,’ died 20 years ago at age 37. Fassbinder, whose output was enormous, often reflected the gay community he was part of, especially in the The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972) and Fox and His Friends (1975). In Fox Fassbinder played a street hustler who becomes the victim of his upper-class lover.