Greg In The Afternoon: Former gay Idol hopeful says Adam Lambert can’t win; Drew Barrymore is nervous because gays know her ‘Grey Gardens’ character

It’s cold and windy outside. I do not enjoy that.

Anyway, sitting here at the dining room table actually working from home this afternoon after enjoying a terrific lunch at Andre’s.

If you don’t know Andre’s Italian Restaurant, you should: it’s a cafeteria type place tucked away in a corner of a shopping center across the street from The Grove and, thankfully, is about a five minute walk from my front door. There is always a line out the door and I know people who have been eating there for decades. The salad dressing is legendary, the spaghetti wonderful and the pizza delish! Best part: the prices are still incredibly reasonable after all these years. But you gotta bring cash!

HERNANDEZ ON LAMBERT: David Hernandez (no relation to your faithful blogger) got a lot more attention on American Idol last season for his stripping instead of his singing. Sure, he had some talent but probably would not have made the top five even if it weren’t for the fact that his job as a stripper at a gay nightclub became big news during the competition. Michael Musto of Village Voice ran into Hernandez last week and they had a chat about his exit last year: “It wasn’t the stripper thing. It was the gay thing. That’s Middle America for you. I feel like New York and LA are two separate countries.”

Season 2 runner-up Clay Aiken seemed to be a fave of Middle America among other places but did not come out as gay until last summer – several years after becoming a star on the show.

The gay thing has come up again with this season’s front-runner Adam Lambert who had photos of him kissing another guy surface. When  Musto noted that Lambert—who’s a friend of Hernandez’s “from the scene”—hasn’t been voted off the show because he’s gay, the singer knowingly replied, “Not yet.”

Frankly, the week Hernandez was voted off, he did not perform well at all. Lambert seems to be a much bigger talent and I hope he goes all the way. Also, the guy he’s kissing in that photo is completely hot!

BARRYMORE ON GREY GARDENS: I’m looking forward to seeing Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange in Grey Gardens but I really had no idea that this well-known story of two of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’s aunt and cousin had a big gay following.

Drew says in today’s LA Times:  “Most of my best friends are gay and they all act like her, talk like her, dress like her at certain moments — they all quote her all the time,” Drew said of Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale. She was the crazy-fabulous younger half of the East Hampton mother-and-daughter recluse team made famous by the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens.

After Barrymore fought to land the role, the gay anxiety struck her hard.

The paper writes: After all, in the Venn diagram circles of gay Little Edie fan and gay friend of Drew Barrymore, the overlapping area approached 100%.

“I can’t tell you the level of fear and sickness I would feel when they would imitate her,” Drew said. “They know her and love her so well — what if I do something that doesn’t feel right with them?”

We’ll find out when the movie premieres Saturday on HBO.