Perez Hilton: The Queen of Mean

As a child, Mario Lavandeira spent most of his time in bed, watching TV. He watched Friends, Melrose Place, She-Ra, He-Man, G.I. Joe, The Wuzzles, Snorks, Transformers, Thundercats, The Facts of Life, Diff'rent Strokes, the talk shows, the soaps and all the MTV he could. He glued himself to the tube for hours on end, usually dressed in just a T-shirt and shorts. His parents allowed this. He didn't even have to get up for dinner. His dad, who hung wallpaper for a living, delivered Mario's meals to him on a tray. He may have been picked on at school, because he was chubby and effeminate, but in bed he was top dog. Nobody pinched the fat on his back there. He was in charge. It's part of what made his childhood so special, so delightful, so memorable, so fun.

In the future, though, what would become of a child such as Mario? In fact, what should become of a child such as Mario? His mom thought he'd make a good lawyer. The way it turned out, Mario came out of the closet, changed his name, dyed his hair, gussied himself up, glued himself not to a TV but to his laptop and became Perez Hilton, of perezhilton.com, which draws about 7 million visitors every day to see what the self-styled Queen of All Media, twenty-nine years old, is up to now.

What he does with his blog mainly is scrawl nasty, snarky comments on pictures of young Hollywood-type celebrities — Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie — and hand-doodle suspicious-looking little white dots around their noses, mouths and nether regions. It's lowest-common-denominator stuff, totally debasing, totally now, totally like he's getting even with those kids who pinched the fat on his back, and it's turned him into a sensation. He's got a book deal. His chubby cheeks, pointy teeth and obnoxious-gay mannerisms have enlivened shows like The View. When he reports that Fidel Castro is dead, legitimate news outlets take him seriously (for a second). He's being sued by DJ Samantha Ronson for $20 million, for calling her a "toxic," no-good friend to Lindsay Lohan — a true sign of arrival. Also, he's been banned from the Chateau Marmont for no reason other than on general principle. ("Hey, I love that kind of thing," he says. "It means I'm doing something right!") More recently, he got his own reality series on VH1, called What Perez Sez, about him hobnobbing with celebs. In fact, he's become one of them now — a star, influential and to be reckoned with. The first episode boosted ratings among eighteen- to forty-nine-year-olds by 112 percent and featured Hilton teaching sweetie-pie singer Mandy Moore how to grind on a stripper pole — and maybe she should run her tongue along the pole while she's at it.

So it's been a crazy, wondrous, topsy-turvy time for the former Mario Lavandeira, and he probably deserves a break right about now. But that's not how he operates. He's got his blog to maintain. Today, for instance, he's working inside his Los Angeles apartment, flopped in a low-slung chair, laptop balanced on his dimpled knees, searching for content. He does this nineteen hours a day. He checks his e-mail constantly and flits from one site to another, hoping against hope that the next sight he sees is a fresh picture of, say, Lindsay Lohan all coked up and slitty-eye wasted. Of course, sometimes he has to leave his place to attend an event or a party. But he'd rather not. He'd rather stay right where he is, wearing the same uniform he wore as a TV-loving kid, shorts and a T-shirt. As for his meals, since he has no dad around anymore, he has them delivered by a diet-food outfit.

"I just love what I do," he says during a break in the action. "I think it's so exciting. Celebrities are just so crazy. They live in these bubbles and surround themselves with enablers. I love it. They are just so much fun. And I'm all about the fun. That's one of my mottoes: Just have fun. And if it's not fun, make it fun. Follow the fun, create the fun, be all about having fun."