Perez Hilton - TMI: My Life in Scandal

TMI is the memoir of Mario Lavandeira and how he became Perez Hilton, a celebrity blogger with millions of readers around the globe. Growing up in Miamis Little Havana in the 1980s, Perez was bullied at school because of his weight and his sexual orientation, so he devoted all his free time to eating and watching TV in his bedroom. A scholarship to NYU was a life-saver, as Perez felt at home in New York. But his finances took a battering, and he moved on to L.A. After being fired from three different jobs within the space of ten months, Perez suddenly hit it big in 2005 with his gossip blog. With Perezs help, many promising young artists reached the masses: Katy Perry, Adele, Amy Winehouse, and Lady Gaga, to name just a few. Perez soon became a Hollywood insider, but during his dramatic fallout with Lady Gaga he realized that he had been used.

Perez admits his popular blog became increasingly meanit went from bitchy to downright nasty, he recalls. But a turning point came when he uploaded a video for the It Gets Better campaign and was surprised by the backlash it received. People called him a bully and a hypocrite because he previously outed gay celebrities. Perez was forced to reevaluate not only his alter ego but also himself as a person. Following the birth of his son, he was also faced with a number of new opportunities for growth and personal reflection.

TMI reveals the man behind the blog in a revealing, heartfelt, and juicy memoir.

Copyright 2021 by Perez Hilton, Leif Eriksson, and Martin Svensson

All rights reserved

Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-64160-404-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hilton, Perez, 1978 author. | Eriksson, Leif, 1957 author. | Svensson, Martin, 1978 author.

Title: TMI : my life in scandal / Perez Hilton with Leif Eriksson, Martin Svensson.

Other titles: Too much information

Description: Chicago : Chicago Review Press, 2020. | Summary: The story of how Mario Lavandeira became Perez Hilton, the worlds first celebrity blogger and the most hated man in HollywoodProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020024462 (print) | LCCN 2020024463 (ebook) | ISBN 9781641604048 (cloth) | ISBN 9781641604055 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781641604062 (epub) | ISBN 9781641604079 (kindle edition)

Subjects: LCSH: Hilton, Perez, 1978 | Television personalitiesUnited StatesBiography. | YouTube (Electronic resource)United StatesBiography. | BloggersUnited StatesBiography. | CelebritiesUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC PN1992.4.H557 A3 2020 (print) | LCC PN1992.4.H557 (ebook) | DDC 818/.603 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024462

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024463

Unless otherwise indicated, all images are from the authors collection

Interior design: Jonathan Hahn

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

No matter how much of an insider I ever become or am, Ill still always be an outsider.

P EREZ H ILTON

All literature is gossip.

T RUMAN C APOTE

Its 2010, and Im with Lady Gaga at the dress rehearsal for the Much Music Video Awards in Toronto when I hear a womans voice behind me: Why have you been writing all those nasty things about me on your website?

I turn around and see Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas. Shes standing just a few feet away from me, at the edge of the stage. From the speakers, I hear the intro to Paparazzi, and Lady Gagas voice soon fills the empty venue.

Fergie gestures wildly. Why are you being so mean?

I dont really have a good answer for herwhich is why I continue to ignore her questions.

Fergie shakes her head and walks away.

The next evening, at the entrance to Universals after-party, I bump into will.i.am.

Hey, Perez, he says. I need you to do me a favor. I need you to never write about my band on your site again.

I take a deep breath before telling him, Uhh Ill try.

Other people have started to gather around us. Im tired and sweaty, and the makeup I wore to the awards show is making my face itch.

Will.i.am continues: Whyd you disrespect me, man?

I meet his eye for the first time. I dont have to respect you. Youre such a fag. Stop being such a faggot.

Sadly, I dont even have time to regret my words before, from the corner of one eye, I see a man step forward with his fist raised. Everything goes black.

I escape to Moms Spanish gossip magazines and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

I grew up with my mom, dad, maternal grandparents, and little sister in a super suburban neighborhood of Miami called Westchester. Everyone who lived there was the same; the families on both sides of the block were Cuban, and mine was just like all the others. The single-story house we lived in looked the same as all the others, tooaside from the fact that we didnt have a pool, and my bedroom didnt have any windows.

Back then, my name was Mario Lavandeira, born Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr., though I was also known as the Fat Kid. Thats what everyone called me after a couple kids from school started to sneak up behind me and give me embarrassing back fat pinches, laughing at me. Either that or theyd make fun of me in other ways.

But before I get into all that, I need to tell you about the first few years of my life, because they were actually pretty goodand above all, totally carefree. A few blocks from where I lived, there was a place called La Perla Supermarket. I loved going there with my mom, Teresita, and always used to grab a bite to eat in the bakery while she shopped.

Before I was born, she actually worked as a cashier there, and thats how she met my dad, Mario (though everyone called him Mandy, short for his middle name, Armando). They had both moved from Cuba in the late 1960s, back when it was still legal to do so.

My moms dad used to own a couple of butcher shops in Havana, but when the Castro regime took over, the government confiscated all private businesses and brought them under state control, so he decided to try to create a better life for himself and his family in America. Virtually all of my mom and dads relatives did the sameits truly tremendous what the Cuban community managed to accomplish in Miami.

In the mid-1970s, while Mom worked at La Perla, Dad and his parents were living in a rented apartment right down the street, and she would see him almost every day when he went in to buy coffee. Mom was only sixteen at the time, Dad twenty-eight, but he was still living at homewhich wasnt unusual for a single Latino man back then. It was four years before they got married, but just two years after that, on March 23, 1978, I was born.

At the time, we were living in a two-room apartment on Southwest Twelfth Avenue in Little Havana. It was a predominantly low-income neighborhood, but there was a great sense of community there, mostly because there was one major thing binding us all together: our culture. Everybody knew everybody, and my moms parents, Felipe and Elia, lived only a short walk from our apartment.