1. Well, he's awesome on Mad Men. And as he says of Sal, "He's the only one that hasn't cheated on his wife, you know."

2. Hazelnut - the home design store he runs with his partner of 20 years, Tom Cianfichi, is awesome.

3. He's not afraid of the "Role Model" badge.

4.He's an incredible host.

5. He missed his first Mad Men audition because he and Tom were taking their goddaughter to Paris.

6. He played Che in dinner theatre, Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast, and was in Cats.

7. His home, unsurprisingly, is stunning. He created a lot of the art and sewed the pillows.

8. He gives great quote:
"Please please please, if you need art, please do not use this one photo that everyone uses of Peggy and Sal at this party where I'm eating or something and wearing this awful maroon sweater in which I look fat and ugly - it's just really awful."

"Like if you saw me at the SAG awards, I looked like a black Labrador Retriever puppy running to his bowl."

We opened the shop also because my nieces were growing up before my eyes and I never saw them enough, and now I'm here. I get to see them a little bit more. After this [interview], I'm going to have brunch with my nieces and have a little family life, too. One thing I loved about opening up the shop is I realized, that there's a whole world out there beyond show business. If you just do one thing with your life, you let your work define who you are, and there's so many other things. As I've said in many other interviews, I'm a firm believer in "and" over "or." You can do more than one thing with your life. And if you have an interest you have to follow it.

9. He's a committed activist whose causes include Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS, Habitat For Humanity, Second Harvest Food Bank, the Human Rights Campaign (Equality Award), the SPCA, The Preservation Resource Center, The Point Foundation, N.O. AIDS Task Forc and Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre. After Katrina, he organized a number of successful fundraisers.

10.

Decorate Like a Mad Man with Bryan Batt [Southern Living]
Party Like a Mad Man [Southern Living]

Bryan Batt Talks To GLAAD About Being Openly Gay In Hollywood [YouTube]
Bryan Batt - Sway [YouTube]
Mad Men's Bryan Batt, A.K.A. Salvatore Romano: Greatest Vulture Interview Ever [New York]
Bryan Batt: The Gay Blade Of Mad Men [BlackBook]

In a flurry of bill-signing yesterday, Schwarzenegger approved a measure to make the taking or selling of unauthorized photos a crime punishable by a $50,000 fine. The bill also allows lawsuits against media companies that publish such photos. As the ABC News clip above points out, Schwarzenegger himself has been the victim of paparazzi pursuit, and he signed another bill a few years ago that tripled the damages stars could receive if they sued paparazzi for assault. But of course, paparazzi are still chasing people, and it's doubtful whether this new bill will make much of a change either.

Parade editor Jeanne Wolf (who rocks a pretty impressive Kiss of the Spider Woman look above) tells ABC,

Everyone would applaud this law if in fact it did teach paparazzi how to be dignified in their treatment of celebrities and public figures. I don't see that happening right away. What I do see happening is a bunch of court cases.

Maybe said court cases will make paparazzi a little more careful — for a while. But as long as there's significant money to be made in the "undignified treatment" of celebrities, paparazzi are going to be as undignified as they have to be. And the truth is, they are only a very small part of America's fucked-up relationship to its actors, especially female ones. The publicity actually sanctioned by celebrities — the airbrushed covers and tedious interviews and faux-inspirational weight-loss photo shoots — is just as big a problem as paparazzi photos. The only difference is that such publicity asks us to look up to celebs, while some paparazzi pis ask us to mock them. The latter is more fun, especially given the boring, self-serving content of most celebrity profiles, but both contribute to the idea that we should be watching actors' every move. If said actors really wanted to combat this, they could stop giving interviews, posing in bikinis, and selling exclusive photos to favored magazines. Until they do, they send the message that fame is okay as long as they control every aspect of it — which is more than a little hypocritical.

Schwarzenegger Signs Tougher Anti-Paparazzi Law [AP]
Gov.'s Surprise Bill Signings: Harvey Milk Recognition, Paparazzi Restrictions And Ammo Tracking [LA Times]
Governor Signs New Anti-Paparazzi Law [ABC]

"This is the year when such slick, star-driven, adult-oriented movies as "State of Play," "Duplicity," "The International" and "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" underperformed at the box office," Hornaday writes, "And when talking-toy movies like "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and "G.I. Joe" raked in millions." While she acknowledges that the recession, poor marketing, and a need for more escapist fare all factor in to the failures of many A-list films, she tiptoes around the obvious question: are we just sick of seeing the same movie stars over and over again?

The A-list is aging up: the stars Hornaday brings up in her piece, including Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Russell Crowe, and Denzel Washington, are all over 40, with most of them having held on to A-list status for at least 15 years. Their names alone are not enough to bring viewers into the theaters anymore, and though Hornaday claims that most of the movies the A-listers made "had the benefit of strong to favorably mixed reviews, most of the movies she listed seem to have already faded away, a combination, perhaps, of bad marketing, unnecessary remakes, and replaying the same roles over and over again.

Because the world is so focused on the insta-celebrity, that throwaway type of fame that brings us the Hailey Glassmans and Heidi Montags of the world, it is a bit nice to have an A-List of sorts, I suppose, to set a type of standard as far as the quality people can expect from certain performances: as Hornaday notes, Meryl Streep is still able to fill the seats, bringing in audiences to see Julie & Julia, even during the summer of giant robots in disguise.

But the A-List isn't worth much more than the insta-celebrity if the films aren't any good: there's only so many times we're willing to pay to see our favorite actors on the screen if the parts they choose to play aren't worth our time. You can put a prestigious label on a film, but it's no longer a guarantee that anyone will spend their ten bucks to see it. It might be time for the A-List to stop assuming that the audience owes them anything, simply because they've put on a good show before. As far as "grown-ups" losing out, I think it's more a matter of grown-ups rebooting the way they approach their own audience. Robot films may be mindless "kiddie" fare, but at least nobody is pretending they're anything but.

Something's Out Of Line For Hollywood And Grownups [Washington Post]

If we consider what nearly ruined Mickey Rourke's career in the first place; the reputation for being difficult, the bad movie choices, the plastic surgery that rendered him practically unrecognizable, it's fairly amazing to consider that Mickey Rourke might just walk away an Oscar winner this evening. Yet in a way, it's not: Rourke has always had the talent, he just couldn't seem to keep his shit together long enough for anyone to give him another chance to prove it.
But would an actress who went through the same struggles as Rourke even ever get that chance?

Though The Wrestler may be Rourke's greatest performance, he's still being, well, Mickey Rourke all over the place, giving wackadoo speeches like the one he gave at last night's Independent Spirit Awards, wherein he demanded that Hollywood consider giving roles to his friend, Eric Roberts: "Eric Roberts is probably the best actor I ever worked with, and I don't know why in the last 15 years ain't nobody give him a chance to show his [stuff]…. Eric Roberts is the [expletive] man. Like I got, he deserves a second chance, and I wish there would be one [expletive] filmmaker in this room that would let him fly because he is something else."

And where, as former Jezebel editor Jessica Grose points out, this is what he had to say about co-star Marisa Tomei: "I wanna thank uh, who else? oh! Melissa? Marissa Tomei. Goddamn she had to do all this with a bare ass and she brought it. Is she here? Not many girls can climb the pole. You understand what I'm saying? She climbed the pole and she did it well, and it was a very courageous performance."

Regardless of Rourke's fairly gross speech, Hanna Rosin of XXFactor argues that The Wrestler has a decidedly feminist edge to it, in terms of how it portrays the struggles of both Rourke and Tomei:

"Usually when the exploitation of the male body is a theme, the context is noble sport, or test of manhood- boxers face off like warriors, quarterbacks take one for the team," Rosin writes, "But here the context is pure exploitation. What's happening to his body is the exact equivalent of what's happening to the character played by Marisa Tomei - an aging stripper who can't convince any of her clients to buy a lap dance. The wrestler often refers to himself as an "aging piece of meat" and he is always objectified by the camera - shot from behind, or from the chest down. He's not a victim in the straightforward sense - the wrestlers are all very polite and discuss their moves in advance. But he is in the second wave sense - trapped in a larger system which gives him no other choice."

But in the real world, an actor like Mickey Rourke can undergo extreme plastic surgery and dress like an insane scarecrow and wax poetic about his dogs and forget his co-stars names on stage and be forgiven, due to his talent and ability. Do actresses receive the same forgiveness? If Marissa Tomei, who is undergoing a comeback of her own, wasn't still quite lovely and couldn't "climb the pole," would she have been cast in her Oscar-nominated Wrestler role? If she was the one who was known for extreme plastic surgery and erratic behavior, would people even give her the time of day? It's a strange but sad question that is, perhaps, worth asking.

So what say you, commenters? Is it easier for men to make a comeback?

Marisa Tomei's Quiet Comeback [PBS]
A Very Courageous Pole Performance [XX Factor]
Is The Wrestler A Chick Flick? [XX Factor]
The Mickey Rourke Show Enlivens Spirit Awards [Chicago Tribune]

It starts early: as a child, you are led to believe that the Academy Award is the pinnacle of all things, as the Oscars are the awards that everyone talks about, everyone tunes in for, and they seem, for some dumb reason, to hold an importance that goes beyond all other awards, like say, that Nobel thingie or whatever. Whatever, science and peace! There aren't any performances of lame Randy Newman songs at the Nobel Prize ceremony!

The popularity of said awards shows is fairly easy to understand: we like to be entertained, and we develop some strange bonds with our "favorites"; people we've never met but champion as if they are our sisters or neighbors or best friends. We refer to them on a first-name basis: "I hope Kate wins tonight," etc, and we yell at them when they wear an ugly dress or make a stupid speech. We are reject cheerleaders, screaming for a side that can't hear us, waiting to celebrate a victory by a complete stranger. And when it's over, we forget: can you even name 5 winners from last year? Me, either.

This year's Golden Globes promise to be glitzier and more over-the-top than ever; a choice that may seem strange or insensitive, considering the difficult economic times we are in. Yet perhaps some of us want to tune in for escapism purposes, to see people waltzing about in borrowed jewels and designer gowns, knowing that it is all for spectacle, just to have one night where everything seems, well, normal.

I am one of those people who bitches and moans about awards shows, but always ends up watching anyway. There is a tiny chance that something awesome or weird will happen, and I'd hate to be the only person on earth who misses it. But the real reason I tune in is the same reason I watched when I was a kid: it is really, really fun to watch people win. Especially actors you like. The awards are meaningless; they won't change the universe, and might be a slight career bump (or a hindrance, at times) to those who receive them. But there is something really great about watching someone's dream, however stupid we may think that dream is, come true.

And in a time where dreams are being lost and broken all over the place, watching one night of bloated, ridiculous celebrity fantasy might just be a decent way to pass the time.