April 29, 2004, 10:43PM

On eBay, wedding dress for success
By LOUIS B. PARKS
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

It was the eBay auction that made 8 million people laugh and sold one wedding dress. It contained some truth, some fiction and made seller Larry Star an overnight media sensation, with a couple of movie offers and a lot of explaining to do.

"It was satire," Star said Thursday when asked if the story behind the auction of his ex-wife's wedding dress was true. "Let's just say it was satire."

But more on truth and ex-wives later.

Star, 42, from Everett, Wash., became an underground celebrity this week when his eBay auction -- selling what he said was his ex-wife's worn-just-once wedding gown -- was forwarded all over the country on the e-mail chain-letter circuit. It's still accessible at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=63851&item=4146756343.

Not only did Star, a musician with the Seattle-area rock band The Buzzcuts, model the dress himself, blurring his face but not obscuring his beard, do-rag or his hairy, heavily tatooed arms, but he also wrote a hilariously catty commentary on why he was selling it.

"She took the $4,000 engagement ring but left the dress. I was actually going to have a dress burning party when the divorce became final, but my sister talked me out of it," he posted on the auction site.

He wrote that he was afraid he couldn't get the dress on but "then I figured she got her Texas cheerleader hair through there (so) I could get my head in it."

His sales pitch was unique: "Don't worry, ladies -- I am wearing clothes on underneath it. I gotta say it did make me feel very pretty. So if it can make me feel pretty, it can make you feel pretty." and "I think it's funny that one picture makes it look like the chest plate off an Imperial Storm Trooper."

As the auction became an Internet phenomenon, Star added material twice, thanking viewers for their support in a difficult time and telling them "Five years of misery (in his marriage) was well worth the hearty guffaw that was my pleasure to give you."

At one point the bidding went well over $10,000 for the $1,200 dress. When it became clear that some bids were bogus or from people caught up in bidding frenzy, eBay stepped in to help Star eliminate nonlegitimate bidders.

Final tally: More than 6 million visitors looked at the auction by the time it closed, resulting in 113 official bidders with the dress selling to "absolutsth," whose eBay About Me page tells us his name is Barry and he likes music. And wouldn't you know, the winning bidder was trying to get out of paying.

"As far as I know, he's not going to pay me," Star said. "I'm probably going to have to re-list it, actually."

But the end of the auction was not the end of the story. By 1 p.m. Thursday, about 8.6 million visitors had looked at the auction site, which was still growing as an Internet destination as people e-mailed it to friends.

Star went on The Today Show Wednesday morning and was booked solid on Thursday.

"I'm hoping for a writing gig somewhere, a column, a radio show. I got offers for movie rights to this thing. I asked the guy, `Who would you get to play me?' He said, `If it's a feature film, we'll get Jack Black.' I'm like, `I'm a lot freakin' funnier than Jack Black. I'll play myself, thank you.' "

His band's Web site, www.thebuzzcuts.com, has "gotten tons of hits." He hasn't gotten any job offers yet, but "they're flying me out to do stand-up in Atlanta and then go back on the Today show," he said Thursday.

When the Chronicle asked him if the dress was really his ex-wife's, he sidestepped.

"I got the wedding dress, I wanted to get rid of it. I was going to burn it and had the idea of selling it on eBay. I needed to sell it on eBay with all the other dresses on there, and I needed to make it stand out."

"It's satire. You know, people are blowing this thing out of proportion," he hedged. "I wrote it because it's funny. I've been married twice. I'm not lying saying I haven't spoken to the ex-wife in years. I don't know where she is."

That's apparently the first ex-wife, because he and the second ex-wife divorced in 2003, according to the Seattle Times. Their divorce came, the paper reported, after fourth degree domestic violence charges were filed against him after he and his wife had an argument. According to the police report, she hit him and threw a guitar at him, he pushed her and she fell, scraping her face. They went together to the police to report it. The case was later dismissed, but the couple divorced last June.

And, despite the hair crack, neither of his exes is from Texas.
HoustonChronicle.com - eBay wedding dress sensation continues to grow