apropos of nothing

Deconstructing the ‘Auction of 1,000 Stars’

Someone was feeling sultry on January 31st.Photo: Courtesy of The Actors’ Fund of America

We’re all for a little charitable giving, especially if it’s to a donation-worthy cause like the Actor’s Fund.

And most of the items at their Auction of 1,000 Stars are truly covetable: a custom portrait by famed artist Peter Max, drinks and a show with the irascible Alec Baldwin, and tickets for your favorite little ones to attend the Nickelodeon ‘08 Kids Choice Awards (currently going for $15,000; apparently slime-love crosses all socio-economic boundaries).

Alas, to get a truly fair and balanced sense of an auction, one must examine the least-popular items up for grabs as well. Such as a program (shown above) signed by Queer Eye’s Jai Rodriguez for his one-night show Xposed, which happens to share its name with a particularly gnarly porno site, just so you’re forewarned.

Attracting even less interest is a copy of Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock’s memoir Don’t Eat This Book, signed, not so appealingly, “Eat Your Veggies! Morgan Spurlock.â€

Pulling up the caboose, though, is a copy (autographed, of course) of the program for Charles Ross’s One-Man Star Wars Trilogy, which ran for a remarkable three months back after a mostly positive reception in 2004, but was likened by at least one reviewer to “a kid playing ‘Star Wars’ in his basement [without any] toys,†in “double-time.â€

The Actor’s Fund’s Seventh Annual Auction of 1,000 Stars