30 Days of Toothy Tile, Grey Goose and Baby Tile(s)
Day 1
[Prelude]: Over the next thirty days, we have decided to shake it up a bit at Narnia Dispatches, and celebrate Austin Nichols' birthday month by drum-rolling out thirty Toothy-related "finds"/observations that have been compiled throughout the years. Precious nuggets of information which began with Ted Casablanca's most famous and longstanding Blind Item about a hot, young closeted celebrity with an actor boyfriend and a hidden family. Long after Mr. Casablanca's nimble fingers ceased typing out his snarky and clever clues back in 2012, this infamous Blind Vice still remains one of the most seductive and entertaining love stories in Hollywood history. The special kind of love story that dare not speak its name, but never really ever goes away.
With this juicy teaser setting the stage for what's to come, it is only fitting that we begin Day 1 with the fondly remembered post that introduced the gossip world to Toothy Tile for the first time.
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On March 10, 2005, the following, seemingly innocuous, Blind Item appeared in Ted Casablanca's long standing gossip column, "The Awful Truth," a regularly scheduled E! Online feature. The unprecedented blurb was affectionately dubbed, "One Adorable Blind Vice":
Okay, sugar-muffins, the only reason this one's in the Vice section is because until quite recently, Toothy Tile was dating his superpopular, superannoyingly perfect girlfriend. Not boyfriend. Which, if you ask this old gossip whore, is the classification Tile would prefer his significant others be filed under in the very near future.
Mere days ago...Tile was right out in the open holding hands with his man in a West Hollywood restaurant -- which shall remain nameless -- because I love going there and they probably wouldn't serve me anymore if I start outing their customers, ca-friggin-peesh?
Not that I'd be outing anybody, anyway. Mr. Tile took care of that himself. Covertly, but he did it.
It was late in the afternoon; everybody had cleared out. Save Tile and his man-amigo, who extended his hands flat on the marble table (yes, that's a hint) until they were intertwined with Tile's. Massive smiles then appeared on both daring dudes...
And it ain't: Tobey M, Keanu Reeves, Jamie Foxx
The first question many readers pondered back then was where exactly had this low-key, but still steaming, tête-à-tête meal taken place? At first glance, the puzzle seemed to be a tough one to solve. A foodies paradise, West Hollywood was home to tons of eateries, which only complicated the matter. That is until people began to notice how many of the clues seemed to point to another article Ted had published just 7 days earlier. A post about one of the most promising young actors in Tinsel Town:
March 3, 2005
Jake Gyllenhaal, grabbin' some Cali-esque grub at Basix Café. Boys Town. Gabbing fer days with a guy-pal, Jake-poo, decked out in a white sweatshirt hoodie and jeans, covered up his buzzed noggin with a red baseball cap. The sensitive hunks lingered on fer over an hour, smiling, exchanging childhood stories--with a bit of misty-eyed emotion even? Hey, take it up with my WeHo Desk, 'kay?
Basix Cafe? Located in West Hollywood. Where there just so happens to be marble tables.
Aaaah yes, I see what he was talking about...
An outside view of the now-closed Basix Cafe.
As for the sentence, "extended his hands flat on the marble table (yes, that's a hint) until they were intertwined with Tile's"..... M&M figured out years ago that this two-handed reference cleverly translated to five digits for each hand. Five = nickel. Make sure to add an "s" because there were two hands extended and the word is suddenly pluralized to nickels. Or, in Austin's particular case, Nichols. Get it? An actual homophone to complement the wily "Boys Town" reference. Ah, those were some fun times.
Although Ted's most popular Blind Vice endured for over seven years, Jake Gyllenhaal had already become the most popular guess for Toothy Tile by the end of 2005. A not surprising feat either, since Jake most definitely was known at the time for his familiar and dazzling toothsome grin. On top of that dead giveaway, his high profile, closeted role of Jack Twist in the critically acclaimed, Brokeback Mountain, was thought to be a telltale sign as well.
The much more mysterious "man-amigo" who had been paired with Jake that day was later assigned the descriptive moniker of Gray Goose, i.e., Austin Nichols. Besides the two-handed clue that had been used in the original Blind to spell out Nichols, it was well known that Austin's father had named his son "Austin" after the Austin Nichols Distillery, which produced Wild Turkey. In fact, the spirits' packaging, at the time, displayed the nomenclature prominently on the front label: Austin Nichols. True to his special brand of subtle snark and his clever use of words, Ted came up with another popular liquor to refer to Toothy's boyfriend. Instead of Kentucky "Straight" Bourbon, Austin was transformed into Grey "Gay As A" Goose, Vodka. And the rest, as they say, is history.
collaboration: M&M and PG
pic sources: Yelp
our playlist: Beginnings - Chicago
I Want You So Bad - Heart
The Beginning - Nikos Ignatiadis
4 comments:
Good morning!! What do you think? Just having some fun but we're also aiming to educate folks. I know in my own social media meanderings, I have encountered some people who knew nothing about Jake/Austin or Toothy Tile/Grey Goose, but yet are curious. And while OMG is the mother ship and we wholeheartedly tip our cap because OMG has everything on it, sometimes folks don't want to weed through everything and start reading from beginning to end.
So M&M and I thought it would be fun to try a 30 Days of, and hit upon some of the highlights accumulated over 8-9 years or so. The blind of Ted's has been around since 2005, but heck, Jake and Austin weren't even seen together in public until 2005 at the Casanova premiere.
Of course, we have to make choices about what is included and what is left out because these guys have left a lot of bread crumbs along the way. Even with thirty days available, there still will be much that is not addressed. Much that will be omitted. Basically, what we are trying to achieve by the end of the April is a better understanding of the arc of Jake and Austin's story, with a particular focus on clues that lead to persuasive circumstantial evidence that these guys are not just together as a couple, but actually raising a growing family for nearly ten years. Patterns, connections and informed suppositions will all be combined to provide a fun and informative journey about secrets, lies and deceptions, PR manipulations, and just plain old grin-producing coincidences.
Since we brought up Ted Casablanca today, I want to make a point about his sudden exit from his premiere status as one of Hollywood's most in the know, entertaining gossip columnist. His heyday was in the early years of the internet, when cyberspace was much more wild west than gulag administered control. He survived for many years, at one point pretty much outing Jake on a weekly basis. But as power agencies consolidated and became more and more powerful, it is not surprising that Ted Casablanca would be one of the first casualties of a Kremlin style crackdown.
The myth is that he was fired by E! because he accidentally outed Jeremy Renner in a Blind Item called: Blind Vice: Double Devious Doings! on May 11, 2012. He suddenly stopped posting and by early July the story hits that he's been fired. Besides being a thorn in the side of management and publicity teams, it is not to be ignored that his sudden departure came at the beginning stages of WME's repackaging of Jake Gyllenhaal. A powerful agency that had much to gain by "killing off" Toothy Tile and Grey Goose. I also believe that it is no coincidence that on March 23, 2012, Ted wrote a surprising Blind Item about Toothy and Goose specifically designed to blow-up the Toothy story. How very convenient that Ted departs from E! three months later.
Here's the Blind Ted wrote about Toothy and Goose in late May, 2012:
Blind Vice: Toothy Gets Slutty With Room Service!
Do we have any Blind Vice couples with happy endings? Stealth Stud-Poof and his BF? Eh. Judas Jack-Off and Dashed Dingle-Dream? Definitely not.
So it was with naïve, battered hope we were all holding out for a Toothy Tile and Grey Goose's happy ending, right?
Don't think we're getting it:
Because even though put-upon Grey has looked the other way during Toothy's pastindiscretions this latest one's a little harder to stomach.
T2 had the nerve to not exactly discreetly hole up in a fancy hotel room recently with a coworker. From one of his movies, no less. It did not go unnoticed by the posh inn's even more posh clientele.This is a far cry from one of Toothy's back-alley pretty-boy quickies, and it's a situation Grey's finding it much harder to not let bug him.
We say why try? Isn't enough enough?
Come on, true love's one thing (especially when you have family together), but unending masochistic devotion's entirely another. Grey, stop pretending you're Saint Suck-Up and completely move on, already.
AND IT AIN'T: Brandon Routh, Lenny Kravitz, Jon Hamm
In conclusion, I think it's quite plausible that many people wanted Ted gone because he threatened a lot of power structures in Hollywood. But, given the aggressive attempt by WME to straighten up Jake's public image, which interestingly enough began in March 2012 when that Blind appeared, (after Jake's return from Berinale and a short side trip to France to plant seeds that he was having a fling with Lea Seydoux), I have little doubt that Jake's people were instrumental in developing a plausible story to get rid of Ted Casablanca for good.
It is just too darn convenient that a neatly wrapped final Blind Item that heralded the end of Toothy and Goose after seven years because of Toothy's affair with a coworker in a fancy hotel, was tied up in a big fat red bow, just a few months before Ted's demise. Another big clue that Jake's people were involved in getting rid of Ted, points to how part of the publicity promo pushed several stories about him and Denis Villeneuve meeting in hotels, drinking bottles of wine and discussing their sex lives during the filming of Enemy in February/March 2014. Details very close to Ted's last Blind about Toothy's slutty Room Service behavior.
Side note: After all the "rumors" that circulated about Jake and Lea Seydoux "getting it on" back in 2012, it is quite interesting that five years later she is still not married and only rumored to be "dating" a model named Andre Meyer for about two years. Yes, you guessed it. Andre has gay/bisexual rumors, just like Lea. This relationship is so specious, in fact, that "The Daily Mail Online" had to run a story in November, 2015, with the most awkward kiss in a taxi cab ever seen. Oh, and not surprisingly the photo is HQ quality with no impediments to obstruct the view. The "intimate" moment certainly organic in every way, including how Lea looks right into the camera as the pic is taken. LOLLLL!
I have to post the opening paragraph to the DM article just for fun:
Bond girl Lea Seydoux was pictured putting on a very public display of affection with her boyfriend Andre Meyer in the back of a yellow cab in New York on Friday.
The 30-year-old actress and her man were travelling through the West Village together when they puckered up.
Lea is in the US to promote Spectre, in which she stars as Daniel Craig's main love interest.
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