Eating Out with Jim Verraros

While poetry falling from the lips of Isabella Rossellini turns half of Chicagoist on, the other half melts at the sight of more manly actors -- namely, the new gardener on Desperate Housewives. That's why we were excited to hear about actor Ryan Carnes also starring in Eating Out [Workplace Warning: shirtless dudes click!], which makes its Chicago premiere tonight at Landmark Century Center.

The story is hardly novel: Hunky straight college student falls for straight girl. Hunky straight boy's gay roommate convinces him to pretend to be gay to capture girl's attention -- a ploy Chicagoist's parents are still hoping their son has been doing for the past 5 years.

Instead of falling for him, straight girl decides to set up faux-gay dude with her gay best friend (played by Carnes) and then straight girl's actual boyfriend comes out of the closet. Whoa. That's a serious amount of homo flying about.

Playing the part of gay roommate is Chicago-native Jim Verraros, the gayest thing to come from American Idol besides Ryan Seacrest's hair.

Jim also has a new album out titled Unsaid and Understood. It's music, as Verraros told Windy City Times, that even Fox wouldn't air: "A lot of the music I'm doing now is edgy and pretty sexually charged. It's not bubble-gum pop and it's not like Clay Aiken's music, thank God... I think that because I'm not sexually active, it's fun to play out that stuff through my music. It's fun to be a little bad. It's fun to be a tease. It's fun to growl and moan. I think that this type of music is hot and makes people feel good."

Yeah, but will it sell records?