Carson Kressley is playing a waiting game at the moment. He's finished shooting the pilot for his prospective Lifetime talk show. It's being edited now, and "then we'll show it to the network, they'll do some testing on it, and we'll see. Hopefully, we'll get a green light."

He's also awaiting word on the third season of his well-received "How to Look Good Naked."

"It could be one or the other, or both, I don't know. If it's both, I'll be happy and tired," says the style maven who rose to fame on "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

As far as adding a chat show to his resume, he says, "When you've had success on TV, people will often say yes to crazy ideas — like, 'Let's do my own talk show.' Standing out on the set in Glendale, [Calif.], with my name up in lights above me and an audience out in front, I told them, 'Even if it doesn't go any further than this, you've helped make a dream of mine come true.'"

Kressley is currently doing a series of appearances — fashion shows with Q&A sessions — across the country on his NY Style Tour for New York & Company (www.nyandcompany.com). He appears at the Los Cerritos Mall in Cerritos, Calif., tomorrow (11/14). "It's super fun. One of the things I get to do on my show is help women help themselves look great with what they're wearing. I can do that one-on-one at these fashion shows, answering questions for the ladies, meeting the fans. That's one of the best things about being on television. Just today at the airport in Dallas, a woman came up to me and told me, 'You're doing a really important thing.' She was so serious and so nice."

He's also interested in helping women make the most of their wardrobes "now that our 401Ks are 201Ks." And speaking of money, Kressley, a fan of Michelle Obama's fashion sense, is amazed by stories of Sarah Palin spending $150,000-plus on her campaign wardrobe: "It sounds outlandish even to me."

MUSICALLY SPEAKING: Don't be surprised if songstress Kimberley Locke tries her hand at a Broadway show sometime in coming months. The "American Idol" alumna tells us, "I've been doing a lot of talking about that, and I'm looking forward to doing it in the near future. I haven't done theater since I was in high school. It's always exciting to do something new, but nerve-wracking. It's nothing like what I'm doing now."

What she's doing now is the 15-city "American Idol" holiday tour that launches at month's end. "It's work, but a lot of fun, too," she says. "Normally these are family shows, and we have Santa Claus up on the stage. I always equate 'American Idol' with high school — it's like going back to high school and singing with the choir. Everybody has the same background. I'm looking forward to getting to know some of the people on the tour who are from different seasons than mine." Making joyful noises along with Locke will be Diana DeGarmo (Season 3), David Hernandez (Season 7) and Chikezie (Season 7).

INSIDE INSIGHT: Dr. Drew Pinsky, the addiction specialist who is currently starring on the second season of VH1's "Celebrity Rehab," has become somewhat of a celebrity himself. However, he tells us he never lets it get in the way of his psychiatry work. "I've been on television for over 10 years. It's never really reverted me from my day job. I just do what I do. I don't think about the other stuff," claims Dr. Drew, who has also become popular for his radio show "Loveline." "It's fun to do radio and TV to educate people, but at the end of the day I just go back and do my patient care. Occasionally it affects the patients because sometimes I'll get hospital-referred patients, and they'll look up and be like, 'Aren't you that guy?' But then they quickly get over it because they are there to get help."

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW: Now it's Joan Cusack joining Lifetime Television's movie slate with "Acceptance," a dramedy about a group of teens trying to get into their colleges of choice. The cable firm's effort to move into the elite league of film-for-television purveyors certainly seems to be paying off, with Lifetime having also recently announced Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons starring in a Georgia O'Keefe bio-pic — a telefilm to be directed by Bob Balaban, who scored spectacularly with his HBO "Bernard & Doris" Ralph Feinnes-Susan Sarandon-starrer last February.

With reports by Emily Feimster.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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