The Reluctant Whore

2009-11-05T20:05:00.002-05:00

Just saw an ad on TV for Miracle Whip - the ghetto, white trash version of mayonnaise for Americans born in a trailer park - that is meant to make the brand really unique and hip for young cool, culturally aware hipsters. It features all these young people playing near the beach and skating on skate boards holding out bottles of Miracle Whip saying things like "We are our own unique blend of herbs and spices and we will not tone it down." I really can't imagine how many creative ad execs medicated themselves to be able to cope after they came up with that one.

This is essentially the white trash American Mayonnaise substitute version of one of those unbearable Christian evangelists who try to get you to become Christian by explaining that you can still play sport and be a surfer and be a "cool "dude" and worship "the Lord". Bet you didn't think Christians rode motorcycles, did you? Oh certainly not. Consider me a convert. Where do I sign?

2009-06-02T16:19:00.006-04:00

Look at that. What a surprise to be talking about Paris Hilton after not wanting to. Forever. Yesterday, Paris Hilton was on The View to talk about her unshockingly crap new reality show “My New BFF” (which interestingly enough apparently involves a trip to the Middle East – hope she doesn’t get stoned to death). I was watching my DVRed episode of The View and thought, ok, maybe Joy Behar will hack into her a little – that should be fun except sadly there was literally no chance of that here in the North East of the US. Actually, there was no chance of that anywhere in the US as far as I know because – as had been predicted for at least the last week – General Motors was announcing its bankruptcy Monday morning and the president was scheduled to address the manner in which they were to be bailed out. So, about thirty seconds into the Paris Hilton segment ABC cut to a Special News Report and broadcast president Obama’s live press conference instead.

Look at that Paris – you got upstaged by the NEW zeitgeist. You didn’t think it could last forever, did you?

What struck me about this was that this transference of national attention was as intense to watch as the kiss between Madonna and Britney Spears or the less important figurative passing of the torch from Lauren Conrad to Heidi Montag on The Hills a few weeks ago. It really is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

I haven’t even been watching or reading the news that much for the past week and I still knew this announcement was happening. It’s not like the president just usually just grabs national news airtime at the touch of a button for no apparent reason. We knew this was coming.

Consequently, I think it’s safe to assume that the producers of The View slotted her in there as a guest because they knew the name was cheap and simple enough to get viewers in but ultimately it wasn’t going to cause any kind of conflict as it may have with a guest of any real substance that might have felt jilted afterwards. Paris Hilton, after all, doesn’t feel.

Regardless, it doesn’t seem to matter what Paris Hilton does, she’s still a figure that people love to humiliate whether it be the general public or some television producers. I couldn’t help but watch this cut away from The View and remember the time she had her Sidekick stolen and hacked and was quoted in the press as saying, “I just don’t understand why this kind of thing keeps happening to me.” - or something to that effect.

It happens to you, Paris, because you’re the cultural equivalent to cheap, pornography flavoured, corn syrup choc crème filled snack cakes. Everyone loves you because you’re affordable, consistent and easy but ultimately you induce innumerable cultural diseases. Paris, you eventuate the cultural equivalent of some kind of digestive cancer brought on by too much refined white flour and sugar. People like you until you aren’t doing it for them anymore and then they blame you because you make them feel pain. People lash out. Like phone hackers, TV producers and maybe even the smug new black president.

But wait, let’s be fair. Paris may actually have changed.

For one thing, she’s not exactly everywhere we look right now any more. I mean, that period of time where she was in and out of prison upstaged the resignation of General Peter Pace and the AP, for one, came up with a policy of refusing to report on her because she was everywhere. She was everything and nothing at once. Right now, she’s nowhere near that level of exposure and I think that shows remarkable restraint on her behalf. These days she’s only a lingering rainstorm not another city destroying hurricane.

So, she’s doing the rounds now because has a new impossibly shit reality show about how she wants a new best friend and she’s out doing media to promote it. One thing that’s different about Hilton now is that her voice is a lot lower. The segment that did air on the View involved Joy Behar asking her how she got so thin and she claimed it was because of “pilates” as all good publicist retaining celebrities tend to do and then she went on to talk about the MTV awards and her voice was noticeably lower and calmer than the time she went on Larry King. On The View she seemed less insistent on playing the role of the evil cheerleader who knows how to be polite in front of the parents at the school function. That was probably one of the reasons why there was such a backlash against her after she went on Larry King. Apart from the fact that was speaking at all and revealing that she’s not really some kind of omniscient pop culture god, the high voice made her sound insincere.

My god, this post is still going.

With her new, lower voice she sounds slightly less put-on and in fact when you look at the ads for her new reality show the music is quirky and makes her look like she’s potentially making fun of herself and who knew she had the mental capacity for something as complex as that? Although, just to end this on a disappointing note, when you watch the actual show, it’s fairly standard reality TV fodder with plenty of totally staged scenes and a minor key dancey theme song that invokes the kind of ego indulgence your average mid-western reality TV viewer needs to stay alive and kicking.

So, overall – Paris Hilton’s new show is – surprise surprise – totally innocuous and, as you’d expect, she is still being kicked while she’s down but she’s perhaps figuring out that not everything she does is gold simply because she does it. That’s why she now has a lower voice in interviews. Having that realization can’t be a bad thing when you’re now just a wilting zeitgeist being upstaged by the bankruptcy of a car manufacturer.

Done and done.

2009-05-11T18:59:00.005-04:00

Yet another mysterious beast has washed up on the North Fork of Long Island and for some reason I am less hysterical than I have been in the past when it comes to these weird hybrid beast carcasses. To be honest, the most interesting part about the video above is the fact that there’s some Long Island guy talking in a mobster accent providing running commentary in the background. Those mobster guys are so inherently likable and threatening; what a trooper.

Still, yes, there is some kind of weird human-molared carcass with white skin and tufts of black hair sprouting out from it and it doesn’t immediately look like any other type of animal so, naturally, it shall now become the physical embodiment of all irrational local fear of the immortals and, for me specifically, of my own of fundamental worldly irrelevance.

I suspect that what’s really behind this mysterious beast is just some kind of real life example of the Island of Doctor Moreau but with a tinge more military thrown in. That’s probably all it is. Chemical and biological experiments being conducted by the military near New York City and whenever they change course they just toss the mistake into the ocean and try and get on with it without dwelling too much on the abominations they keep creating. I can live with that. It’s sort of like freelance writing for gay magazines when you think about it.

Speaking of monsters returning to our collective consciousness as a metaphor, Joss Stone on The Tudors looks remarkably like Laura Bush or at least the Bush twin with blond hair who looks more like her father. It’s something in the eyes and jaw and teeth. What a surprise to be thinking about anyone in the Bush family right now. I wasn’t expecting that at all although, Laura Bush did leave such a legacy of medicated ambivalence and repressed rage that she should be a gay icon by now. Actually, George W will have to die first and she’ll need to stop wearing brown.

As Anne of Cleves, Joss Stone is clinging to a German accent and while it’s difficult to stomach that, her heavily rehearsed and strained German really is nothing compared to Jonathan Rhys Myers’ ham acting. Mind you, it is the best he’s ever done and he’s starting to learn how to deliver lines where it doesn’t always look like he’s about to pass a chair so at least we have some progress. Regardless, I, for one, am totally hooked on the show and watch each episode at least twice.

2009-05-07T14:41:00.003-04:00

I knew I was right about Obama and the hamburger. I knew it. I am so fucking right I could puke my god damned reluctant whore guts right out of my “unimpressed-with-the-burger” face.

Yesterday, media like the Christian Science Monitor and Fox’s Sean Hannity – jumped on the story that Obama went to get burgers in Arlington, Virginia for themselves and the press corp. Sean Hannity, like clockwork, went nuts using Obama’s interest in mustard which happened to be Grey Poupon as a way of proving he is elitist Liberal and therefore out of touch and , one would expect, ultimately plotting in a secret and conniving way to fuck the poor out of happiness just like Scrooge or the Grinch or that Monopoly man. Except with an east coast degree (and that makes it worse). The basis for the Grey Poupon-means-you’re-an-elitist argument is that in the late 80s Grey Poupon had a series of ads that showed parodies of rich people eating it. Sean Hannity, on TV, said, "I hope you enjoyed that fancy burger, Mr. President."

I wrote about Obama’s use of a hamburger as propaganda MONTHS ago when I saw it as the first chink in his armor. He completely disappointed me by ordering a burger on Air Force One when he could have had basically anything at all. Then he dragged out the ordering and it was labored and forced and clearly pre-meditated. I was disappointed that he didn’t stick to his dietary guns and continue being the messiah by ordering a macrobiotically balanced meal of tofu, sunlight, wheat grass and birchtwigs (actually, writing that sounds annoyingly left wing even for me – let’s reign it in and say he should have ordered a lean chicken salad with almonds and a light Asian dressing - no oil.)

Burgers may be a safe culinary bet for most Americans but they are uninteresting and every time I’m in a French bistro with an American and they order the burger it secretly makes me think less of them. That is what happened when I saw Obama order the burger. I felt like I was at a dinner with just another unadventurous person.

President Obama has to do things like order a burger in front of the press corp because many Americans demand to be coddled and led around like moronic narcissist sheep when it comes to their leaders. So this is really just maintenance. It’s the culinary equivalent to kissing babies in shopping malls but better because it feels less Catholic.

I mean, let’s face it; Obama probably did suffer mightily through that completely unnatural photo op. I posted the photo just above because even though I'm unsure if it was taken in Arlington it stil shows the pain in his face at having to suffer through crap like this. He probably sat there grinning and bearing what was probably a nauseatingly tasty but extraordinarily toxic, heart bursting death trap of a meal while Biden rambled on about how he already knew what burger he wanted the minute he walked through the door and didn’t even need to talk to his PR staff about what to order for maximum political impact. What an onslaught of bullshit he has to put up with.

So, I’m not saying I agree with Sean Hannity when he says that Obama is elitist because he ordered spicy mustard on a medium-well done burger – that’s going too far. I’m saying I agree with Sean Hannity that Obama and Biden were using the ordering of a burger to show that they’re just like everyone else. I don’t care how much of a zeitgeist the president is, he’s absolutely guilty of actively seeking situations that help prove he’s just like everyone else because he essentially isn't.

The thing is, it’s also impossible for a right winger like Hannity to win the burger argument on the basis of mustard right now because the right wing has no credibility. When the right wing do this kind of thing they just look desperate. What we see clearly illustrated here is that in America today ordering a burger in full public view makes political sense but if you argue with the burger by citing mustard it’s absurd.

That’s right – this entire thing is about the political impact of a presidential hamburger. This is America. [source] [source]

2009-04-29T18:50:00.003-04:00

I haven't been watching a whole lot of news because I've been focusing all my attention on Amanda Lepore's new 950 dollar perfume, but this exhaustive segment on the president's "swagga" caught my eye online anyway and it really is amazingly shit work by CNN.

For some reason, I can’t figure out how to embed this file so you have to go to the Huffington Post website and watch it there and then come back.

I think we can all agree that watching a white news anchor sit on camera totally perked out of his or her mind on caffeine talk about street culture by emulating it in between erupting with relentless exuberant forced optimism is very similar to watching a young mother with unpopular children whose heads are unfortunately and strangely asymmetrical try and suck up to the popular children in her kid’s class by emulating the popular kids' behaviour.

Except in the instance with CNN, everyone watching television becomes the poor insecure child who is crippled with embarrassment at what their parent is doing. Everyone means you and me.

Actually, the same thing happens when you’re watching the Hills (HA! I typed Hells and I nearly left it there because it’s funny that I accidentally named the place all Catholics are afraid of) and Spencer Pratt answers his phone to Brody Jenner and he suddenly becomes this completely amazing and nauseating white black guy. “Yo yo wassup?”. When he starts speaking like that on his phone you can see his eyes glaze over and his body freeze and his mind works overtime to become this generically marketable variable on the already hatefully bland object he is. I saw him do it on Monday and when I was in the shower I thought about how great it would be to answer “Oh hi Spencer, it’s me. I just called to distract you while a lot of people burst through your front door and beat you to death.” I also realized this week that it’s ok to watch the Hills if you are at someone else’s apartment. Also, you should watch it so you can have prior knowledge of what Richard Lawson writes about in his summation on gawker.com. That’s the rule. That’s why I’m not getting stupider and stupider from watching MTV while I figure out ways to turn Amanda Lepore’s perfume into a launching point for cultural analysis. Now I’m actually smarter and more outgoing now than ever before.

So, basically, apart from the perfume components of what I just wrote, what we have here is a whole lot of white people all over the place acting like black people when they are really just the whitest people you will ever know. I find it difficult to watch because it makes me feel like an unpopular child. Fuck you, CNN and fuck you Spencer Pratt and fuck you, kid I went to school with who I ultimately felt empathy for and now can't forget.

[source]

2009-04-14T17:11:00.004-04:00

Zac Efron has a film called 17 Again coming out on Friday so he’s everywhere and it’s impossible to miss him. When you do see him it’s impossible not to be astonished by how powerful his charms really are. I’m seeing the film in an hour and a half and all I’ve been able to think about all day is Zac Efron. I can think of nothing else and it’s not just because I’m a fag.

Zac Efron is as beautiful as Britney Spears music is catchy. It’s impossible to not have some kind of infectious reaction to him because his appeal is engineered by PR Executive Psychiatrists to be generic and easy enough for anyone anywhere to be affected by his cultural powers.

The interesting thing about the way America consumes someone like Zac Efron is that they actually consume him in parts. There’s his hair, his torso, his eyes, his singing voice and I actually think they are the primary assets he has. Teenage girls think they see Zac Efron as a complete human but they don’t. He is marketed on the strength of those things because those are the things that people notice first and most and they react to them as strongly, simply and immediately as they would the corn syrup in their twinkie or the meth in their crystal.
America has this tendency to compartmentalize the human body for the purposes of marketing. You can buy medication and appliances to treat and improve different parts of the body and the narrative involved in first gauging the product to feeling the need to buy it, buying it and using it is centered around an isolation effect which is fundamentally designed to induce panic that can be placated through purchase.

There is that nail polish that uselessly contains green tea extract (for what purpose? So you can lose weight and fight free radicals with a polymer that feeds your body caffeine and antioxidants through the dead matter at the end of your fingers? Totally!). By inferring that your nails need all these magical ingredients the manufacturer infers that not only are nails vitally important, they are in trouble, they need to be fixed, there are multiple ways to fix them (which infers that there are multiple things wrong with them usually linked to weight and age anxiety – two of the biggest motivators in western culture) but don’t worry – this product will help you. It’s the same with those inflatable water filled bags that go over your legs like pants made of water that apparently act like a self contained spa. The great thing about these pants though is that they don’t get you wet so you can stay in your arm chair facing the TV.

So, the internal monologue at this point is something like "Quick, I need a self contained spa for my legs that doesn’t get me wet. I need it because I’m going insane from trying to make sense of all these absurd products and the fact that according to TV, my body is no longer one entity; it’s a menu of items that all need to be catered for separately.

Zac Efron is a product that, like an non-wetting leg spa bag, caters specifically to one facet of our being. In this case, it’s the tide of mainstream America’s weird sexual identity and libido. Everyone either finds Zac Efron creepily fake attractive or they’re attracted to him because they don’t know any better. On the strength of his eyes, hair, torso and voice it’s impossible to find him completely repulsive or to genuinely have no reaction to him. Unless you are Siddartha Gotama.

I was watching him on The View yesterday and he is unnervingly mesmerizing. I’ve never cconsciously thought that before because I don’t care about the products he is involved in and I’ve never bothered to watch his movies. If I had I would have been completely mesmerized way earlier than yesterday. His jeans, shoes, hair and eyes were out in full, high impact force as he walked out to sell the hell out of what I think we can all safely assume will amount to a pretty obvious and average film.

Fundamentally though, no human is that powerful unless they are crafted by a team of professionals and because he is crafted as such, Zac Efron is full force American pop culture teenage sex object like no one else. So much so, in fact, that Sherri Sheppard made some weird joke about how she was fantasizing about him for the full length of the film when she saw it but the way she explained it sounded odd and Whoopi Goldberg looked really uncomfortable and then the ladies of the View just made jokes about how Sherri Sheppard is a cougar for the rest of the interview.

It sort of reminded me of when Travis Fimmel went on Sharon Osbourne’s absurd talk show and he just sat in silence while the women in the audience screamed and then that was the interview.

But you know, I think it’s OK to be hypnotized by Zac Efron’s beauty because he is designed by a massive corporate machine to be that attractive to everyone. Constantly. It’s the same kind of thing with deciding to numb your brain by watching The Hills. When you’re done interacting with it the effect wears off and you go back to being about as smart as you were before you started watching it. It’s meant to hit you hard and fast but not to last. In that sense, I guess you could say that Zac Efron is the polar opposite of Wagner whose work creeps into your soul and then just sits there and it adheres to you forever. If you want to be discerning and earnest about Zac Efron's influence on your life then just look the other way until he goes away. His powers are mainly visual anyway.

My guess is that Zac will probably vanish in the next few years anyway – unless he does a Gus van Sant or Gregg Araki film that has him cast as a rapist or alcoholic (or both!). Romantic lead roles might be likely and graspable for Efron but they lack the necessary edge that it will take to wash off the sickly plastic stench of his years as a Disney product. He needs to have dinner with Charlize Theron and take some pointers on how to be taken seriously when your physical beauty is so great it threatens to destroy you.

2009-04-06T11:36:00.003-04:00

It was just this morning that I woke up and thought to myself, “How could I possibly arrange to buy a laptop, an iphone, a hideously gaudy and ostentatious crucifix inlaid with diamonds, an equally absurd diamond ring and a attention demanding watch that explains to people that no matter how much money I actually have, I will always be plagued by a crippling status anxiety that means I will always fail to see that being understated and subtle is inherently more impressive than being overdone and insistent.

What a joy it then was to find this post on ebay.

What could be more reassuring than buying from a retailer who, while capable of apparently pulling all these items together to actually sell them, can’t stray from meaningless phrases like “on the market today” and sets up their sales site to resemble that of a function center in Staten Island.

“A must have for any tech savvy millionaire, this Apple Mac Super Set features TraxNYC's top of the line Mens Diamond Ring, Cross, Bracelet and Watch along with a Mac Book Pro and the highly desired iPhone on the market today. “

Plus, this is fabulous:

100% Authentic 100% of the time, TraxNYC only deals with natural mined diamonds, for anything else go somewhere else. {because in order to prove how serious we are about our business claims we’re going to passive aggressively call your bluff} Your item will come with documentation, click here to see what you get! {Oh, totally – I’ll click there. Actually, I’ll click there! Sorry, forgot the energetic exclamation mark that comes with the excitement of checking to see what you get when you’re paying 55K for diamonds on ebay}

Hi, this retailer is totally not some ironyless gangster from Queens who walks around in a microfiber suit nodding aggressively at everything, repressing his rapist tendencies and wearing sunglasses at night. Plus, what the fuck kind of name is “TraxNYC”? It sounds like a cross between an online sex site profile name and some hideous club between tenth and eleventh avenues where people regularly get shot; two things I totally want to conjour up as I go to buy 55,000 dollars worth of computer equipment and grotesque jewelry by mail through ebay.

This is the kind of thing someone featured on MTV’s Cribs would do. It’s like buying a piano you don’t play and a set of faux Baroque dining chairs online. Nothing about it makes sense but somehow you feel like you’re living the American dream so that makes you a genius when you do it.

2009-04-02T17:29:00.003-04:00

Everyone is shrieking about a breach of royal protocol right now because Michelle Obama put her arm around Queen Elizabeth. CNN has a quick poll of up about it and over 70% of people are saying it wasn’t. Of course, I’d say the majority of those people are American and it’s so much less likely that an American is ever going to not act like a rebellious teenager when it comes to the protocols surrounding English royalty. Unless you’re an elderly woman.

The interesting thing about his is that the Queen quickly released a statement saying she was fine with the whole thing.

Back in the early 90s, Australia’s Prime Minister Paul Keating put his hand on the Queen’s back and was labeled the “Lizard of Oz” and a similar level of controversy occurred with John Howard who had to release a statement saying that there was no contact between himself and the Queen.

In these post-Diana times, it seems like letting Michelle Obama touch her back is really just in line with the royal family having its own website and the Queen flying the flag at Buckingham Palace at half mast when Diana died – despite protocol.

The Queen just wants to be liked without having to give up her mystique and it’s not an easy job. She has to never speak and be weirdly stoic in the same way burlesque artists always leave you wanting more but at the same time she has to be able to show that she can e mail people if she wants to.

As far as figuring out who to let touch her on the back, Michelle Obama is the perfect choice. She’s a woman who is married so there’ll be no charged up lesbian rumours there. Also, she’s married to the Western Messiah so she’s sort of just aligning herself with the great light brown hope. The Queen is a master at PR. If you only give her one thing – and that’s not the case because she’s given basically anything she wants – but if you only DO give her one thing you would say she’s a genius at PR.

Interestingly enough, CNN’s Situation Room is teasing the audience with an interview with Tina Brown about Michelle Obama’s back grope of the Queen and they’ve still not thrown to it and I’ve been watching for like 5 ad breaks now. Is this the part that people are hanging on for? American audiences are hanging on for a Tina Brown segment regarding Royal protocol? I always knew Americans were all closet royal fans – they just have a hard time admitting it because it makes them feel culturally subservient.

[source]

2009-03-27T20:50:00.004-04:00

So, here's what I don't get. You've got this song and it seems to have two hooks to it, it's in a minor key so self indulgent club goers can get drunk or high and dance to it and feel like the song is somehow channeling them and represents their ego's plight on a celestial level, there's a strong beat to it which means it hits you in a core place, like it physicallly resonates with you and you're going and going and going and then it just ends abruptly. Who the fuck made that lousy decision? Whoever it was better have been fired.

I've been at home sick for three weeks and so for some reason I've been listening to a really weird and limited collection of music - with the exception of the day last week when I re-discovered Lush at like 11pm as I started to inadvertently research Dream Pop and bought Lush's 1990 album that really seems ageless. For the most part however, I've honestly been listening to the above song and this other, equally as inane, gay as fuck dance music by September called "Can't Get Over".

Before I found an interview with the above woman I assumed she would be some hard talking English woman from East London who had turned her weekend club slutting into a career - which, I guess all of us have done at some point. She's actually Swedish I think which makes the whole thing less hard edged and cold and mean.

Regardless, if you look at the two songs above there are all the essential elements that anyone would need for a night out in 1995. Like I said, they're in a minor key and there's heavy bass. Also, each features some absurd woman in either enormous sunglasses or some space aged animated car. They both crawl about a lot. We're, I guess, meant to identify with September more - perhaps in the same way we are meant to identify with Carrie Bradshaw.

The other song I have been listening to is "The Riddle" by Nik Kershaw and I played it on repeat 8 times yesterday or maybe the day before. There's a nostalgia to it but I always cringe at the line "Sold to America the brave" and by that point I don't like it at all but I feel stuck with the song so I just go with it. Then I start again. It's a weird, pointless circle.

Last night I had dinner with my friend Adam at his place and he was playing random music in the background to provide atmosphere and he played The Flaming Lips "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate" which you can see here because Embedding was apparently disabled by request and that's unfortunate because it's the least irritating of the four songs I've referenced here.

2009-03-18T21:38:00.004-04:00

The New York Times reports today with a full page spread, that the Whoopie Pie is having a resurgence across the nation. Ok.

There was even a segment on it on The View this morning where Barbara Walters aggressively snatched the segment away from Whoopi Goldberg (whose name justifies the entire segment anyway) because apparently Whoopi didn’t see the story in the Times first and Whoopi was moderating.

Here is the actual text of how Barbara Walters snatched the story:

They come back from a break and there’s the star spangled “V” and the camera cuts to Whoopi Goldberg.

Goldberg: Did you happen to see the front page
Walters: YOU DIDN’T ….and I did
Goldberg: Oh…yes…go ahead Barbara
Walters: So, I’m going to do it…So, I pick up the New York Times and on the front page I see what Whoopi did NOT see. It says Whoopie! There you go. So, I got all excited and I brought it in.
Goldberg: You got excited and I split an atom and I got Whoopie Pies for us.

So, ultimately, Whoopi Goldberg wins because she brought the pies and later points out that her name has no "e" in it but it’s worth noticing the needless aggression from Barbara Walters for anyone who thinks she’s gone soft.

So, despite the fact that everyone is living for them at the moment, can I just say that I think that Whoopie Pies are, with the exception of anything that contains peanut butter, the MOST disappointing dessert experience I’ve ever had? I mean, that doesn’t include the disappointment of being at a Christian babysitter’s house and having them drag out fruit salad that has been pre-served into small plastic cups – there’s hardly anything worse than that entire scenario; the fact that you’re act a Christian babysitter’s house in the first place gives pause for thought. But apart from that I think these freaking Whoopie Pies are a really disappointing, deceitful experience.

I mean, look at them; they're amazing looking. It’s all cake and chocolate and then there’s this whipped up cream inside and it just looks like the kind of thing that could potentially replace Prozac or Lexapro or Paxil or whatever free samples your therapist has given you that week because you don’t have prescription insurance. Nothing about Whoopie Pies LOOKS disappointing. I have been to the Union Square farmer’s market on several occasions and I have seen them sitting there in bakery stalls, apparently assembled with organic cream and sugar and eggs and sunlight and Buddhist zen perfect flour from the head of Siddartha Gotama and I bought them wanting to take part in this apparent universally loved and now New York Times acknowledged cake pie whatever and from the moment you actually take a bite it’s all downhill.

The fact is Whoopie Pies are a dessert that is there without really being there. For starters, I think anyone with a brain can see that it's not a pie so, like the Catholic Church's World Youth Day, the name is saturated in deception. Then, the Whoopie Pie generally seems to refer to itself but it never really gets there and actually delivers. The cake isn’t quite chocolate cake. It can’t commit to being a cookie or a slab of cake so it just sits there in uninspiring oblivion and the cream is so light on flavor that you actually feel resentful when it spills out all over you and gets all over your face and you eventually swallow some. I mean, it’s like if you’re going to be that annoying at least be cream cheese based or have something extraordinary going on like gold leaf or little pellets of Vicodin.

Crème brulee, tirami-fucking-su, good old American pie…now THERE are some desserts you can set your watch and aim a missile launcher to.

So, even though the New York Times is all thrilled about noticing that Whoopie Pies are the new Palestinian scarf or heavy black-framed reading glasses when it comes to stall bought desserts, I really don’t agree.

When I got out of the shower my hands were so white they were transparent and I could see blue arteries pulsing beneath the skin in much the same way Tom Cruise’s face was covered in subtle blue veins in Interview with a Vampire that were probably put in later on with digital software. My hands didn’t need digital software. Does this mean I’m probably now a Vampire? I think we can all safely assume that it does.

Actually, I have no idea what it means but my gut instinct is to eat more chili. [source]

2009-03-16T20:19:00.002-04:00

Here’s an ad campaign for Johnson and Johnson in Switzerland that kindly and charmingly illustrates that the tampons they make are as hungry for your menstrual fluids as a vampire is for the blood of life – which, if you’ve done any research into the matter is a lot. On the weekend, I actually watched Queen of the Damned for some reason and it really teaches you a lot about how much Vampires need blood. They need it so much they'll often kill for it. I was as shocked as the next man.

So, consequently, if you’re a woman who menstruates, wouldn’t you want the kind of commitment to absorbency from your tampon that a Vampire has to staying alive? I’m not going to try and answer for women but I will say that if I were speaking about myself and if I were hypothetically a woman, I’d like that kind of commitment to my sanitary needs.

There was this sanitary napkin ad that was running in California back in 1989 that used to drive me insane because they never fucking said what the product even did. These two women sat on the beach and rabbited on about how it was “thin” and “with wings” and every time it came on I would get increasingly angry at the television. “WHAT is thin with wings?” and I even started to get resentful. “How the fuck am I supposed to know if I would even be interested in buying your ridiculous thin, winged product if I don’t even know what it is?” I would yell. Years later I realized I would never need to buy that product but it still annoyed me.

When you’re making an ad for women’s sanitary products there are so many things you can’t do. I mean, you can’t use any other color ink for demonstrating the absorption power than light blue. Anything else would immediately connote disease or tragedy. As we know, disease and tragedy are not usually big sellers when it comes to things with which you can willingly associate your body. [source]

2009-03-16T19:37:00.001-04:00

Here’s Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz in a video he and his whacky badnmates made where he talks about bottling his urine backstage so he can later put it onstage and drink it in front of people. They all did this because they were “bored”. This video has youtube views going through the roof.

The weird thing about writing about this is that I feel like I’ve said the same thing again and again about Pete Wentz. He’s a business created product who, despite being a nice guy (thank you Details Magazine for pointing that out – incidentally, if I read another celebrity interview in Details Magazine where it starts out with the writer waiting for the celebrity they’re interviewingin a hotel lobby or cool, downmarket café I’m going to puke my guts out. After a while, that technique means everything sounds the same, isn't that obvious?), does the same thing over and over again.

Firstly, kudos for wearing the ubiquitous black rimmed glasses with no lenses just like every other hipster is right now. Clearly, we’re throwing away the Paletinian scarves for some totally pointless faux nerd aesthetic eyewear; finger on the pulse there, yes. But fundamentally, these kind of pranks are what keeps Pete Wentz edgy. Oh, look at that…we’re on tour so we need press and the clothing line, tour sponsored by Honda, the non threateningly repackaged use of eyeliner and dive bar for him and his “dorky” friends in the East Village which is actually now a franchise are threatening the edge factor? No problem. Pee in a bottle and drink it. My guess is that as time goes by his fan base becomes younger and younger. His fan base would need to be less and less capable of critical thinking. And I’m talking about Pete Wentz’s fan base here, not necessarily the band itself.

And, just to make this even more generic, I fully admit that if I actually met him and interviewed him for something, I’d probably find out that he’s a really nice guy with a wife and kid who just flat irons his hair and wears non-gender specific eye makeup and has great teeth. Yes, I’d probably then, as I always annoyingly have, find him attractive. Curse you Pete Wentz. I really think it’s his facial structure that keeps him viable as a band based celebrity character.

2009-03-13T17:51:00.005-04:00

The Huffington Post is really wringing the shit out of this story centered around the the terse argument between Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart (who has been careful to point out he’s not alone in manifesting entirely for the point of ratings) and I just can’t stand when he does this kind of thing. Well, sort of.

Never mind the fact that clearly the entire thing had been negotiated prior to the interview with NBC logos plastered everywhere all over the background of the Comedy Central set and Jim Cramer firmly in the apologetic hotseat in much the same way Republican politicians seem to be with Rush Limbaugh, Jon Stewart may very well be in the right with this argument but the victory he has is annoying.

Jon Stewart does this every now and then. He quickly steps out of his role as a comedian and puts on the journalistic hat and tears into the media for failing to do their jobs properly and when he does that he takes credit for his work as though he were a journalist. He does that until it’s inconvenient to be a journalist and then he steps back into the entertainer category. He picks and chooses.

A large component of what has created this problem for Jim Cramer is the fact that he works within the media as a journalist and editorialist on an ongoing basis and as such has to, on a daily basis, deal with the combination of market pressures that include eviscerating his ability to focus on certain topics no matter how important they may be simply because people aren’t interested in those topics. In fact, Jim Cramer explains how it’s an extraordinarily difficult place to be because he’s running a show that is meant to be a financial information show but it has to be absurd and entertaining at the same time.

I’m not actually making an argument about Jim Cramer in this and I do think that the NBC marketing department is at fault for not reigning in their Jim Cramer campaign and Jim Cramer needs to examine his editorial philosophy obviously. Further more, from what the ocean of hype suggests, Jon Stewart has articulated the frustration of many people with regards to the current economic crisis quite well and he has pointed out the flaws of the finance media extremely well as well. That’s not what I’m irritated by here.

I’m so bored with the way Jon Stewart smugly walks into the media sphere every now and then and acts like a journalistic monitor by being a journalist because he claims he has to and then after he does that he gets a round of applause for being a demagogue and iconoclast and then goes back to his post.

Part of the profit generating appeal Jon Stewart musters up with young audiences who have shown in polls for years that they get their news from shows like his and The Colbert Report and Real Time with Bill Maher is that he is can be considered a news reporter and editorialist and yet he picks and chooses when he plays those roles so he doesn’t fall under journalistic market pressures of someone like Jim Cramer and as a result he can be as uneven as he wants. But, that doesn’t stop people from considering him a makeshift news anchor. And if you want to talk about responsibility as he clearly wants to do with Jim Cramer and the financial experts at NBC then his track record must come into question.

Stewart admits to being politically skewed but he doesn’t admit to being skewed when it comes to his role as a journalist or as an entertainer.

I sincerely doubt that without the use of someone like Michael Moore or an independent documentary film maker to explain to the average person how their media is so heavily untrustworthy and skewed, your average person would really be able to explain how media is so skewed. To many people, it’s just reassuring to be able to locate an enemy and hate them without having to think.

Right now, Huffington Post has three links. The story has headlined all day, one showing where you can watch the entire thing online, one where White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs has chimed in on the matter indicating that the president has talked about the argument (which does what? Makes the whole thing suddely more legitimate as news?) and there’s also the highlighted promise that Jim Cramer will be responding on his own show at 6pm tonight. Which is right now.

2009-03-10T18:12:00.002-04:00

Here’s PETA’s newest celebrity ad campaign featuring Ricky Gervais and Pink that is designed to sway people from buying products that rely on the harming of animals. Even though this is predictably gratuitous with the featuring of a skinned crocodile and a skinned rabbit trying to get their skin back from a demanding woman, it’s so much less annoying a statement than PETA are usually responsible for.

PETA is in a unique position because it manages to be the perfect entity for people to get completely lost in their high school anxiety and really vent some bottled up rage on the public at large but you can’t say that what they’re doing is for a mindless cause. I can't complain that I find the skinned crocodile painful to look at because who really WANTS animals to be tortured? No one except mean people, that’s who so fuck you, look at the mutilated horror. That's essentially what PETA always says to the public with their marketing gestures.

Consequently, PETA can do more or less whatever they like to anyone in public and no one can really stop them. Admittedly, PETA aren’t as bad as those people who go to anti-war rallies and stand up and get on the microphone and talk about how they were sexually abused as a child and that this is the first time they’ve ever said anything about it. No, those people are difficult to deal with.

But you know, I’ve been dealing with a fax based crisis for a while now and suddenly, it’s been solved. I have a fax machine now so that crisis is over. I mean, can you imagine not having a fax machine? Anyone who doesn’t have one will know that their life is a crisis because of the lack. So, I have a fax machine, a landline phone and seven hundred boxes that do things to keep the fax machine and landline phone working. The space I now work in is quite compartmentalised. I actually find it mildly oppressive but I’m not really admitting that to myself until summer. Nowadays everything is about the economy.

2009-03-10T18:00:00.002-04:00

The New York Times and the Guardian and everyone else is vomiting in terror-stricken glee about the fact that a new portrait of William Shakespeare was just found and it’s believed to be the only one painted within his lifetime.

The Guardian says:

“We should visualise Shakespeare as a rosy-cheeked, long-nosed man who was something of a looker.”

And the Times says:

“It shows the Bard as a far more alluring figure than the solemn-faced, balding image that has been conveyed by engravings, busts and portraits that have been accepted by scholars as the best available likeness of English literature’s most famous figure.”

Then they all allude to the fact that the painting also brings into further question Shakespeare’s sexuality and I’m trying to figure out why. The main reason given is because it was commissioned by the Earl of Southampton who was Shakespeare’s literary patron and rumoured to be his lover. The way they word it it’s as though the visual properties of the painting itself are somehow telling.

My favourite part of these kind of stories where the sexuality of a prominent figure is scrutinised is when the standard self righteous reader writes a comment like “Who cares if Shakespeare was gay. He is remembered for his plays and everyone can enjoy those.” Or “Why are we talking about the sexuality of a dead man when there’s the biggest economic crisis in close to a hundred years going on right now? Thanks a lot New York Times” Plus, there has to be the requisite, “Everyone knows he was gay…get over it.”
From now on though, I will be taking the Guardian’s advice. I will visualize Shakespear as a rosy-cheeked, long nosed man who was something of a looker. Primarily because I should. [source]

2009-03-02T14:51:00.001-05:00

Dustin Lance Black, who won an Oscar for Best Screenplay this year for his script for Milk , was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey on her show and the above clip is what that is. Just in case you read this part before you watch – I’m assuming that isn’t the case but whatever.
I’m working from Atlas Café again, and so when you combine the fact that there’s radio blaring in my ear and also the fact that there are all these graphic designers around me who look totally serious as they stare at their laptops, I haven’t really been able to totally listen to the entire thing. I’m putting it up anyway because The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took down the other two clips I put up – the ones of Tina Fey and Steve Martin and also the acceptance speech by Black – which was so totally moving and warm that Id didn’t mind that the script to Milk wasn’t actually that great. Oprah includes a bit of the speech in her segment with Black.
The great thing about this is that you get to see Black’s hair and bone structure again which is genuinely unbeatable. Genuinely. Unbeatable. I am banking on his cute, clean, bookish aesthetic becoming the new alpha male in gay culture now. Thank goodness. I was just about ready to puke over the boredom inspired by Spartan army clippered facial hair. Because it totally matters in the end. It totally matters.

2009-03-02T14:32:00.004-05:00

Here’s a picture of a vibrant collective of male comics Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, and Jason Segel in a parody of Annie Leibovitz’s portrait of Tom Ford and Scarlatt Johanson. Isn’t it great? I’m dying. They’re in fat suits! They’re not really that fat, they’re in suits that make them look fat! Hilarious!

Never mind the fact that this has been parodied twice before from what I can remember; once by Radar Magazine and another time by this kind of insufferable actor I once met.

Even though I think Paul Rudd is pretty attractive there’s something completely boring about him. He’s in a new movie called “I Love You, Man” and the poster for it is all over the place. Actually, maybe it’s not, it’s on the subway walls along the L line in New York and every time I see it I get the same reaction. This is just tired South Park humour. Smug, clever white straight men making hilarious jokes with a socio political angle but the majority of the humour comes from them humiliating themselves stupidly using physical comedy but ultimately everything HAS to be on their terms. They can act out and be silly and absurd and ridicule whoever they want but at the end they have the moral superiority and status to inform everyone else about what is reasonable and appropriate. That’s why I can’t stand South Park because underneath all that formalized moralizing there are just two infantile men who are dying to be noticed. South Park degenerated into reactionary bullshit with no deeper point than whatever moral they gleaned from the media that week which was invariably that everyone should just chill out and not take themselves so seriously. Except, of course, for the people who react to their work hysterically because that hysteria is the main reason they still get work. It feels mechanical and clever and shallow.

I think the thing about the movie poster at Lorimer Street that gets me every single time is the smug, self satisfied look on Paul Rudd’s face as he stands there going “Yeah, man…I’m straight but I can be sensitive…check me out…dude, I’m so cool. Just go with it man, feel what it's like. Just like I do. I'm so damned amazing and I should be celebrated.” And I just want to puke and or maul the poster. Maybe both. Pukemaul.

And the thing is, I don’t even care if he keeps working – go ahead, do stuff. I’m sure people love it. Go for it and be successful. I find it asinine. [source]

2009-02-27T15:05:00.002-05:00

Here’s footage of a fashion runway being punctured quite obviously and clearly as a result of a performer who strategically brings the viewer’s gaze to the very hole he created and then, moments later, a model walking straight into that hole. I read that the model who walked into that hole – and I don’t mind saying that it is in the manner of a Warner Brothers cartoon that she falls – is now suing.

The appeal of watching a model fall into a hole and have to scramble their way out is sort of akin to watching a news reader get a phonecall mid-broadcast or watching a famous movie star projectile vomit in public. It’s not what you really expect from them and it breaks their concentration which gives us a little insight into who they are.

And I’m not just talking about celebrities here, I’m talking about the kinds of people who get paid to be stoic and not really express any humanity. It’s pretty easy to expect that a news reader would be a powderkeg of control issues and dominance and that one slip up would make them explode and ruin everything but when it comes to a model there isn’t much going on there anyway so falling into a hole and then being shaken up is probably what it takes for us to see real humanity. Like Sydney Schanberg said that when he had a gun to his head in Cambodia he had never felt more alive. I suspect falling into a really obvious hole in a runway is the model equivalent of that.

I once went to a barbecue party that involved a whole crap load of models who were all hanging out in casual clothes and just having fun – it was like standing inside an advertisement. When I got to the point where I was completely exhausted talking to one guy about what he was doing with his life as a model – which was inevitable because I mean, how much can you really get out of a 22 year old guy from Ohio who just moved to New York from the farm or whatever – I had to go and make myself a really strong coffee. In the kitchen I talked to this girl, who was also a model, about how I was making coffee (she was amazed I knew how and asked if I was a chef) and I asked her where the milk was. She opened the fridge and said “We’ve got almond milk, vanilla soy, rice milk and skim, plus there’s also this lactose free sheep milk.” And I said, “Wow, sounds complicated.” She got really upset all of a sudden and kind of half yelled, “It’s not complicated!”. I nodded to calm her down but I knew that it was pretty complicated... actually.

2009-02-27T14:35:00.003-05:00

The New York Times has a piece about Jeremy Piven’s mercury poisoning hearing today and it claims that he broke down and cried when asked about his experience trying to perform in David Mamet’s “Speed the Plow” on Broadway. He avoided penalties for leaving the show because he somehow convinced Actors Equity that he really was sick. The producers of the show suspected that he was actually just bored with the role in which he was cast and consequently, they were seeking to charge him with breaking his contract when he left the production.

I had almost forgotten about this story and one thing that strikes me about it is that either way, Piven is exercising his acting muscle pretty well. For one, he got pretty good reviews when the play opened so if he didn’t fake a thing and really is sick then great, it’s just unfortunate and if he is faking it and has been going out as opposed to staying in bed like he claims he’s been doing then he got away with the whole thing.

I don’t mind Jeremy Piven that much – apart from all the negativity he seems to dredge up in bloggers and the media. But, I mean, if you took that into account you’d hate everything.

Ok, so Piven saga is still going and he seems to be winning.

I am now working from home which is great except that there’s no internet so I’m sitting at a café in Williamsburg. It’s all very poetic. Coffee in reusable ceramic cups, hipsters everywhere, light, windows, old wood floors…yeah.

Except that I was given free face peel treatment gel from Sephora and I have applied it 4 days in a row and now look like I’m blotchily sunburnt. That’s really no big deal if you work from home but seeing as I’ve got no internet I had to leave the house today. The trick with shit like this is that you just pretend like nothing’s wrong and then people assume maybe there’s something wrong with their eyes when they look at you. I firmly believe that.

Plus, I’m reinforcing the notion that I’m completely normal by staring about the room contentedly every now and then. My my, how charming it is to step in and out of thinking and looking at my computer screen. I can do it at a whim as I'm just in an uninterrupted world of my own. There’s a huge map at the Atlas café - which is where I am – and I just realized that the US has dominion over a set of Islands called the Aleutian Islands which includes the Rat Islands. What a charming place they must be. Cancel my trip to Morrocco (which technically I had never booked). I'm going to the Rat Islands to be eaten alive by rodents. [source]

2009-02-23T18:22:00.001-05:00

Right. Greatest things about the Oscars last night include:

The opening number by Hugh Jackman which flawless.

The more Ann Hathaway does stuff the greater she is.

As much as I’m a stickler for a quality musical number, I couldn’t quite stomach the bizarre musical number which had a line from about twenty mainstream musicals which weirdly enough didn’t include as many Sondheim references as you’d expect. I feel like a weird musical fag hag saying lines like that. As though that editorial decision was somehow political.

Also, and I know Slumdog Millionaire won 8 out of the 9 Academy Awards it was nominated for and it was a totally enchanting experience even if it was almost absurdly violent, but the best presentation moment for me was absolutely Steve Martin and Tina Fey presenting the award for Best Original Screenplay.

Who knew Dustin Lance Black was so utterly stunning? I mean, probably everyone but me. Jesus, his bone structure and everything. Gay people are pretty mindless and herdlike so I guess that means that tall, boyish, writerly types will now be the new alpha male instead of Spartan gym queens with carefully crafted facial hair. It feels schmaltzy to say but Black’s speech was completely moving and even though I thought Milk wasn’t such a great film (with the exception of Sean Penn) I’m totally glad Black won even if it was just for his speech. And hair.

2009-02-20T20:34:00.001-05:00

Everyone seems to be screaming about these newly discovered youtube videos that feature the seamless and inevitable melding of gay porn, Japanese dance music and baby imagery all of a sudden.

It really seems like the kind of thing you’d play at a gay bar in Brooklyn where people would stand around pretending not to notice it but then you could really say the same thing about practically anything on film.

Here’s another version that has a weirdly intense beginning:

But, Japanese dance music melding with gay porn and baby head imagery, hey? Seems like a cultural pastiche emulsion experience, a well shaken salad dressing of cultural elements if you will. IT seems like sexualized innocence and ridiculed urban spirituality at once that may induce seizures it’s that frenetic.

It sort of resembles something Diesel would put together actually but honestly, right now my problem is that I’m sitting in an office in Manhattan at 8pm on a Friday night and there are 4 Russian guys slowly emptying the office of these heavy, cherry wood desks. As the minutes go the image of me sitting here increasingly resembles being on a rapidly dissolving desert island. Desks and chairs are being removed but I’m sitting here in my glasses, in the center of a flurry of drama and heavy lifting writing about Japanese dance gay porn baby videos and I just realized that there are no walls behind me so they can see everything I’m looking at on the laptop. Great.

One of them looks like Andre the Giant.

Plus, for some reason, the electric shocks are particularly vicious today and the keyboard keep shocking me. God, everything is so prohibitive.

2009-02-19T17:38:00.004-05:00

Last night, Richie Rich of Heatherette fame displayed his new line of clothes for buyers during Fashion Week and a slab of celebrities turned up. I didn’t go but my friend Adam did and when I saw him last night he was wearing an uncharacteristic Mohawk and pointed shoes. Whatever, that’s not my point.

Above is Aubrey O’Day who is part of the expansive Heatherette/Richie Rich contingent (along with people like Lance Bass, The Scissor Sisters, Mia etc) hanging out with her dog and a conveniently placed copy of her recent Playboy issue. I love when marginally famous people bring press with them to events just to remind you that images of them are published in the media. In case you’d forgotten. It’s all very self perpetuating.

The first time I ever even heard of Aubrey O’Day was in the business class lounge at JFK waiting to go to the Life Ball in Vienna. She was travelling on the charter flight to model Heatherette clothing at the opening ceremony for the Life Ball. Aubrey O’Day spent that entire trip painted a celebrity orange color, wearing flowing robes made of sheets and towels and she had two light blue explosions for eyes. It was just eccentric enough to be mildly noteworthy. I mean, here’s a slightly famous performer who wants to be more famous so she paints herself orange and light blue and walks around in a sheet in Austria for 4 days. That’s sort of interesting, isn’t it? In a Warholian sense?

That’s why it seems like a step down for O'Day to just carry a painted pink dog and a magazine cover around with her. There’s no skill in that, it’s just blatant need.

Incidentally, waiting in that lounge on our way to Vienna, Tinsley Mortimer, Manhattan’s answer to Paris Hilton was walking around with a copy of “Socialite” magazine on which she was the cover model for that month making sure everyone who photographed her realized that it really is viable to publish pictures of her in the media because look, other people have.

When you’re surrounded by people like that it’s sometimes ok and sometimes it is exhausting and other times you just want to stab your own eyes out because those people don’t even have down time when they’re alone. They really need and believe their own press. That was two years ago though so, if nothing else, at least we know Aubrey O’Day has stamina.

As far as Richie Rich goes, I have only ever seen Richie and my friend Adam actually wearing Heatherette/Richie Rich clothes in real life although I heard tell they do well in Asia. Once I was at Barracuda Bar and was talking with Richie and he was doing his high pitched shrill boyvoice thing and I told him some dark joke and he laughed sans character. It was at that moment that we cut through the character and got genuine evidence of him being a human and that was interesting. Certainly more interesting than the clothes although they’re harmless and fun and pop. Not sure who wears them but that's alright.

Additionally, here’s a picture of some model wearing Richie Rich hotpants.

Totally wearable.

2009-02-19T15:03:00.004-05:00

The New York Times reports that UK reality TV star, Jane Goody, who is dying of cervical cancer, has opted to do so on television which will be a first in at least reality TV where we all know it’s coming and we don’t look away. She seems have just the right ratio of apparent naiveté, narcissism, exhibitionism, desperation and media savvy to make it work, the media execs are buying it and I’m less appalled than I thought I would be. I mean, it’s not like we really DO have to watch and I also think that’s because Goody has been explicit about trying to raise as much money as possible for her children before she dies from a disease that can be spun into an awareness campaign and that she did nothing to contract. The actual death part is something I can't imagine. I liken it in my mind to Katie Couric's colon and I have no real problem with that except that it's cheap, unimaginative footage but that's another thing.

Ultimately, she’s just taking advantage of her media viability while she still can.

Goody is marrying her fiancé Jack Tweed and has been offered a million dollars for the media rights to the ceremony. This really isn’t the first time this kind of perverse, narcissistic martyrdom has occurred though.

A little while ago there was a girl who was writing a blog about how she was going to kill herself on a certain date and it was obviously compelling because it hadn’t really been done in blog form before. Plus, when I was at art school someone did a performance piece where they basically just had someone tell everyone they’d died and three months later they showed up fine. Both cases were met with an aggravated eye roll as the self indulgent university student at the center of each tried to justify inflicting such anxiety on people by saying it was an art project. The blog one seems less accountable because she remained anonymous throughout and you don’t have to read a blog. I'm also pretty sure that most art schools have had a student like that at one time or another and it's possible they pop up semi regularly. Early twenties angst is a terrible thing.

While the New York Times makes the point that “This is reality television carried out to its most extreme, grotesque conclusion, one not even envisioned in the film “The Truman Show” all those years ago.”, this conclusion was actually envisioned earlier than “The Truman Show”, in the film “Network”:

Plus, it seems like this guy in Italy got pretty close in real life.

God, what a deadly, morbid day. Here’s a sneezing baby panda to lighten it up a bit:

Apparently, this panda video has been viewed more than 31 million times. [source]

2009-02-17T15:15:00.002-05:00

The Huffington Post reports that while Lindsay Lohan is emaciated, she was quoted as saying that not only did she recently eat a Big Mac, but she is thinner basically because she’s been working a lot and also because she isn’t sleeping a whole lot. (The thin actress thing is big right now because it's Fashion Week. This topic always gets a bit of airplay around now)

However, that explanation pretty much solves the weightloss mystery when it comes to Lohan. Done. Nothing to see here.

What’s interesting about Lohan in the image published on the Huffington Post is that while her body looks eaten away by a nagging and crippling fear of irrelevance, her breasts are somehow the same size.

I genuinely think that if you’re an actress or a model and you’re losing weight so you can maintain the physical stance of someone who is easy to dominate and therefore you’re more employable because the sexual image you create will be compliant with the desire of sexually carnivorous straight men and aesthetic obsessed gay men, then being formally addressed about your weight is really just a milestone in getting employment. I mean, Lohan had that Big Mac comment figured out before she left the house. She’s got her eye on the prize. [source]

2009-02-17T14:56:00.002-05:00

Here’s footage of a model falling over a Fashion Week here in New York. When this kind of thing happens there’s a series of things that occur as a result and it’s always more or less the same. She’ll go backstage and cry, maybe eat a lollipop and the other models will do one of two things; either they’ll rally around her like girls do at school where they all hug incessantly as the faller cries or they’ll keep their distance from the tainted one. The designer will be incensed to at least some degree. Fashion people love drama. They really love it. And because they think fashion is the be all and end all of everything, any tiny thing that goes wrong is treated with the same intensity as anyone else would consider a genuine military invasion of a nearby town.

Men who work in fashion love doing this thing where they’re in a crowd of people backstage and they put their fingers to their temples and shake their heads with their eyes open wide when something goes wrong. They do that because it clearly shows that a cultural apocalypse is occurring and it also shows that they will probably have to fix it but that it wasn’t their fault and ultimately, they are above the problem and still “fabulous”. Being fabulous is the most important thing at all times in fashion because it maintains your status as a kind of fashion muse. Which everyone in fashion is. They are the human embodiment of purity and inspiration. They are not of us. They are eternally youthful and happy and refined.

Women who work in fashion tend to have the same basis for their behavior as men but they scream and bellow a lot. They also charge about more. The more feminine a man is the more he will charge about. It’s a proportionate thing.

Also, after the fashion show where the girl falls, she is taken out the back and eaten alive by advertising personnel. Her agent says it’s ok though because he’s getting free champagne at the bar and Anna Wintour is near enough for him to feel no pain.

2009-02-16T16:06:00.001-05:00

Speaking of videos, this is the new ad for Hulu that features Alec Baldwin. It’s essentially brilliant. I mean, I am the biggest fan of Alec Baldwin at the moment but even aside from that, this is totally perfect. It’s everything and nothing at once.

2009-02-16T16:01:00.003-05:00

If you don’t have 45 seconds to watch the above cologne commercial then I’ll explain it for you here. Basically, here's the deal: rapid piano music, cars, blur, rain on the road, Henry Cavill gets out of a car, guitar, bass kicks in, dark, tuxedo, tunnel, woman, London, Parliament, blur, cologne, blur. That could really just be any perfume commercial. Especially the tuxedo and night parts. The cologne is Dunhill and it’s their new variant called black. So, it’s Dunhill black. Dunhill is such a 70s or maybe 50s brand. Yeah, more 70s. I also equate it with cigarettes. I would never in a million years buy a fragrance by Dunhill unless I genuinely liked it. I mean, that’s my basic response. When you climb over all the obtuseness of this fashion based post, you’ll see that what I’m saying basically means nothing but then, that’s the essential culture of fashion anyway. Or not. I’m really just posting this because it’s fashion week.

Speaking of a million years, I spent Saturday talking into a microphone for 4 hours. The first two were sitting in a white box in a gallery in Chelsea reading out the odd numbers between 79,100 and 80,150 like a controlled robot as part of On Kawara’s installation piece, “One Million Years” and then 2 hours after I finished that I co-anchored D List Radio at the Patricia Field store in the East Village for Valentines Day and for the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. That show was essentially 2 hours of shrieking, fashionista, liquor and absurd banter. So, when you think about it, it was a very broad range of microphone usage. Stark minimalism and then over glittered chaotic inanity.

2009-02-13T18:46:00.001-05:00

I’m preparing to work out of my apartment rather than the Fifth Avenue office I’m normally in and today was spent going back and forth with some Baby Boomer Mortgage Broker from New Jersey who is buying two tables from the office and wanted me to clarify everything with the building before he books his truck and hired goons to come and cart his stuff away. He seemed extremely excited by the process of calling and e mailing me at the same time about the same thing and then calling the building but insisting I call to ask the same questions as well. His pants were too high when I first met him and he had grey hair and a kind of weedyness you really only get from Baby Boomers who are very controlling but smile a lot and lack imagination so they work in lending or they sell toilets.

So, that was great. Then some wannabe Mafioso guy came in and mumbled a lot. I’m really terse with people who are not immediately easy to deal with and who ask too many questions about chairs. People who really need to agonise over the difference between two virtually identical chairs are not my ideal conversation partner.

I received this e mail today, also about chairs:

What type of plants do you have?
Who is the make on the desk chairs?

That second question wasn’t quite clear enough so I responded by asking them to make more sense. I could have figured it out but I just wanted to point out that they weren’t trying hard enough.

Interestingly enough, India is about to have a cow urine-based soft drink launched at them, in a commercial sense. Not only will it be natural and I guess environmentally friendly but, the India Express reports: "In addition to this, it will prove and justify the high stature accorded to a cow in Indian culture."

Also, Michael Jackson’s body may be rotting away. I think sometimes that happens. [source] [source]

2009-02-12T15:30:00.002-05:00

The Huffington Post reports that Prince Harry is about to go into racism training so he can be disciplined for saying a few racist things while in the blistering heat of the desert while on secret army duty. This, of course, follows on from the time he went to a party dressed as a Nazi.

I think it’s fairly safe to say that most aristocrats are inbred and when you couple that with the fact that Prince Harry lives in a cultural bubble even despite being in the army, the chances are he’s probably just a product of being the socially warped grandson to Prince Phillip and the great grandson of the late Queen Mother – both wildly racist people. There are weblistings of the racist pearlers Prince Phillip has come out with over the years. No wonder he always has to walk behind the Queen. She’s worried he might insult someone. That’s all it is!

Plus, I mean, Harry is sort of the Susan Lucci of the royal family too. He’s almost someone but then isn’t quite because Prince William is the heir and nothing will ever change that unless …William… dies.

What a conflicted life Prince Harry must have. On one hand he’s probably not REALLY the son of Prince Charles but that’ll never come out as long as the Queen is the CEO because it would ruin everything. But, then, he is the more attractive of the two princes so he’s got more media appeal. So, that’s important to note. We’ll put “attractive” down on our list of pluses for the prince.

But then, see, he’s sort of resentful that he’s bound up by all the rules of being in the royal family when his mother was killed by the paparazzi primarily because she was marketable and royal. Technically she was an ex-HRH when she died but the British people still managed to figure out some protocol to cling to for the funeral so in the re-telling, it’s not that important that she wasn’t a legitimate princess anymore.

So, really – it’s all very confusing when you are Prince Harry. No wonder he’s a racist. I bet that class will sort him out. Classes in the appreciation of diversity are certainly not token and they are always effective. Good. That’s sorted. [source]

2009-02-12T15:13:00.003-05:00

Seeing as it’s Fashion Week I thought I’d mention that Jonathan Rhys Meyers is now modeling for Energie and the above shot is part of a new ad campaign that will come out in Details magazine any second now. I mean, you know, and in bus shelters too. A multi-platformed campaign is what we're in for here.

I once owned a pair of Energie jeans until I wore those mothers out. I bought them on a Summery Saturday in Chelsea along with a massive palm tree that died because I live in a basement with no natural light. That story makes me feel like I am more connected to Jonathan Rhys Meyers than before, when I hadn't consciously remembered.

Good old Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I remember it was only a little while ago that he was wandering about telling people that he had turned down modeling contracts from Versace because they hadn’t offered enough money to him – and this was only a few years after the dreadful but addictive “Velvet Goldmine”; years before he was actually famous. Now, here he is, showing off and acting the clothes horse. Also, good on Energie for catching on to the high top trend that started over a year ago. There’s nothing more reassuring than the outright repackaging of old ideas with the conviction that no one will notice.

Someone near me is eating something hot, synthetic and covered in ketchup and it's disconcerting. It's like I'm in the 80s again. Jesus, what a nightmare.

The other reason I posted this is because I really just can’t go past a good Jonathan Rhys Meyer photo. That basically means that the above paragraph was more or less just filler.

2009-02-12T00:23:00.002-05:00

Here’s a photo of Mischa Barton that is inspiring a slew of people on the internet to protest that she looks too thin. I don’t know that I’ve ever written the name Mischa Barton before. I just looked her up and found out she was English which is a surprise considering the way she so seamlessly resembles any other generic LA actress.

Regardless, I’m just wondering if she really is that thin or if she imploded her face to look thin when they took the shot. People do that all the time, they suck in their cheeks for the camera, but for the most part it looks ridiculous so the follow up plan to that is to turn your head to the side so you emphasise your jaw line. It’s what all the irony free fags do in back of the gay street press in those photos of who was seen out and about. They do that head to the side thing and the serious eyes all of a sudden because it really turns up the marketable sexiness. I’m sure there’s more to say about that but I think my hands are refusing to type anything more about gay people photographed for the back of gay street press.

One thing going for Mischa Barton in this photo is that she does look genuinely dead behind the eyes and that makes it seem like maybe her emaciation is bona fide. Still, is it really a good idea to shriek that she looks too thin? Isn’t that what a starving actress wants? Proof that her starvation work has paid off and that she really does look thin? Yes, Mischa, you’re thin. We can all see it. Maybe it’s best for us to just ignore the thinness and concentrate on her work. Where is that by the way? She seems to simply turn up to things and date people but I don’t know what the hell else…oops, there go my hands again. Not letting me type anymore about Mischa Barton.

Meanwhile, it’s Fashion Week in New York this week which means that all up and down Fifth Avenue near the office will be these vague, aggressively casual looking models juxtaposed against the bland, urban landscape usually populated with fat boring people from Long Island who wear those pointless Bluetooth headpieces or tourists who walk slowly that have flown from Arkansas or the UK.

The UK tourists stand in line at Walgreens and moan about things. That’s my favourite part.

I keep seeing these black flashes in the corners of my eyes. They’re like demon rats that transcend physicality. I told Paul Capsis once that I had a fear of rats before I came to New York and after I got here it expanded to include hallucinations. He said, “Well, it was either going to get better or get worse.” He was right.

2009-02-09T18:58:00.003-05:00

The New York Times reports that the Catholic Church is still selling indulgences in New York City. Isn’t that great? Along with a mysterious beast story, there’s nothing I like more than a good story about how fucking ludicrous the Catholic Church can be. Well, any religion really, I mean they’re all about as insane and arbitrary when it comes to the specific rituals and political positions they take and it all resembles big business but the Catholics tend to put on a good show.

The last time I remember the Catholic Church coming out with a perfectly absurd proclamation was when they decided to abolish the notion of Limbo, the place where unbaptized stillborn children. It hadn’t really been used that much of late so they just abolished it. Actually, World Youth Day in Sydney while I was there last year was a pretty astonishing experience. They carted a dead body around the world to show it off and banned the presence of condoms from within a certain radius of the Pope. What does that imply? That he barebacks? Also, World Youth Day was actually several days long. So, the entire tissue of confusion begins with the freaking name. It wasn't actually one DAY. Gosh, the lies...

Here we have churches selling absolution from wrongdoing.
The Times reports:

According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.

Another great quote in the Times piece is:

“Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who has embraced the move. “Because there is sin in the world.”

Ah, yes – and because it will also pay for whatever personal indulgences the clergy are into. Finally, they can say yes to that Italian marble for the spa in the vestry.

I think sometimes when it becomes possible to write about something as ludicrous as this I get so overwhelmed I basically just shut down and can’t be bothered. It becomes like a dam with a hole in it and that’s a real commitment to make. [source]

2009-02-09T17:55:00.003-05:00

Here's my take on the Grammy's last night because the Huffington Post is reporting that the Jonas Brothers had some dubious fashion choices throughout the night of the Grammys and I really don’t think that was the case. I mean, maybe it was but the whole show was sort of inane and the Jonas Brothers fashion sense was hardly worth its own post.

For one thing, Hipster Jonas, the one with the floppy hair and v-neck, was really just a pork pie hat away from wearing the quintessential hipster outfit; pointed black shoes, skin tight black jeans, a v-neck t shirt and a black vest. I mean, all that was about was cornering one aesthetic angle of the youth market which he did fine.

Technically, I skimmed through the entire Grammy’s last night about half an hour after it started so I didn’t have to sit through the country music portion and Whitney Houston was clearly keeping it all together with some original strength cellotape. Most of what she said was fine but only in the way that most of what Sharon Stone says is essentially fine. Ok, what else…the tooth grindingly awful presentation by Dwayne Johnson was like eating glass and I was literally asking him out loud to leave the screen.

Hipster Jonas may well have figured out how to look like a hipster stereotype but the three brothers were hamming it up SO much while playing with Stevie Wonder I just didn’t buy even a second of their enthusiasm. The insanely pregnant MIA, who was, according to Kate Beckinsale, supposed to give birth that very day still managed to climb onto the stage and churn out a performance – no doubt because you really do have to take every single chance you get when it comes to show business even if that chance is a superfluous number featuring four gargantuan male rapper egos that drowned her out even though she maintained a team player stance throughout the entire number in her weird lady bug pregnancy outfit. I mean, it would have been outright demeaning if they hadn’t given her the last line. Why do people talk about how fucking great Kanye West is? I have never ever instinctively cared about his work.

Radiohead and the marching band that accompanied them were pretty amazing even if they were introduced by Gwyneth Paltrow wearing what was effectively a glittered belt and nothing else. Chris Martin is annoying even if he is pretty damned attractive and it seemed like Sir Paul MccCartney didn’t quite hit a few notes but whatever I mean, he’s Paul McCartney – something that was repeatedly brought up. Oh, look, it’s Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney, the massively famous star. Some people were ironic about him like Jack Black’s joke about how he’s a bassist to look out for. Fascinating! I suppose it was lucky Paul McCartney was there to be a default focal point for all the phoned in fake humility and selflessness. Also, I mean, maybe it got old because I’d just eaten a bowl of red jello with some whipped cream on it and I was suffering a sugar crash. Either that or the pending apocalypse.

What else? I walked off about five minutes to the end. [source]

2009-02-05T11:40:00.000-05:00

For some reason people are really responding to the Christian Bale rant through song and as such, here’s a youtube video of The Mae Shi’s take on it. Its borderline clever white male art a la South Park which is rarely funny on a genuine gut level but because it’s dancey and rockerish it’s ok and silly.

The bigger question here is, why are people responding in song? I suppose it’s only fair. I mean, when Fraulein Maria was running through the hills of Austria she responded by singing “The hills are alive with the sound of music.” So, as far as first reactions go "song" has to be considered viable. I’m going to call this the Fraulein Maria Effect.

Also, to be fair, there have been two main responses I’ve gauged; and keep in mind I am really only barely paying attention at this point because I’m on two deadlines. The two main responses are either song based or they’re from women and gay men who say “Yeah, he has rage issues but I’d still hit it.”

Cool. So, we’re either dancing our way through other people’s rage or deciding that it’s fine to be aggressively assaulted. This is my kind of town. If only Xenakis were still alive; we could have both at the same time.

2009-02-04T17:10:00.001-05:00

I’m writing this piece for DNA and am trying to adhere to a deadline for a class I’m taking that is on tomorrow night and so I haven’t got a whole lot of time to blog today but last nevertheless, night I went to see Justin Bond perform his final night at Le Poisson Rouge and he was astounding. I had forgotten how good he really is. Rufus Wainwright and Jake Shears were there but they didn’t do anything except watch.

Justin performed a couple of Bambi Lake songs including this one:

I was in the front and directly in front of him and so with the light behind his head he looked like an illuminated prophet.

Plus, it’s snowing here and snow always slows everything down and this freaking essay I’m writing isn’t coming together. I have to figure out a way to create a moment of tension in a character profile and it’s just not working and I have to be somewhere in less than an hour. This is just like the holocaust but a million times worse.

2009-02-03T11:34:00.001-05:00

Here’s a remix of the recorded Christian Bale tirade by DJ RevoLucian that was making the rounds yesterday. That's right, it's Christian Bale rage you can dance to. Finally. I mean, I already dance to American Psycho but this is so much more effective.

I was lying in bed, sort of frozen this morning, in that space between being awake and asleep and even though I had far more pressing things to think about, I couldn’t help but think about Christian Bale being such an angry angry man as a way of avoiding my own problems.

Where did this anger start? Did he pick it up in China when he was playing Jim in Empire of the Sun? That’s the only place I can think of based on what I know of his life and I’m pretty sure I know enough about his life to think and talk about it a lot and to draw some pretty reasonable conclusions. I saw Empire of the Sun 14 times. I remember it was on TV once in 1991 and it was a choice between Empire of the Sun and Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles and I wanted to watch the Turtles movie because it was familiar and unchallenging but my parents insisted on Empire of the Sun and in retrospect I thank them for that.

The thing is, Christian Bale is English. When you’re English and you have to be that repressed all the time eventually you explode. Most English people aren’t famous but the ones who are know to live in constant hiding for fear of bursting in public. Christian Bale failed to remember both of those two well-known realities. Now, he may want to think about marketing himself as a human weapon. A killing machine. The perfect killing machine.

Honestly, what else is there?

2009-02-02T16:59:00.003-05:00

The Associated Press reports that as China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was attempting to give a speech at Cambridge University, someone threw a shoe at his head. Yawn.
The AP goes on to report:

The protester seated near the back of the auditorium stood up during Wen's speech and shouted: "How can you listen to this unchallenged?" before throwing a shoe that landed some distance from the premier.

And when you tell it like that, it sounds like some kind of Absurdist Theatre – which I find personally, rather exciting.

But nevertheless, Absurdist Theatre elements aside, by my count there are only one or two chances for someone to jump on the shoe throwing bandwagon left before it becomes eye roll worthy and actually would probably boost the public profile of the target of the shoe.

This sort of reminds me of the time Britney Spears was wheeled out of her house on a gurney and Courtney Love immediately jumped in saying that she and Courtney were the only ones who had ever had that happen. The Delta Burke took third place saying she was a depressive hoarder and also, there was that guy who said he was an insomniac. After that, mental illness became passé. You only have so many windows of opportunity to get things done and capitalise.

And the other thing is, someone apparently made a huge sculpture of the shoe thrown at Bush in Iraq which was taken down from being displayed and I would actually say that that counts as half an attempt at capitalizing. Similarly, there was the whole sale of the original shoe for a massive sum which is about half an attempt meaning that at this point there’s only one attempt left.

Sadly, this was tiresome because nothing really happened as a result of the shoe throwing except some emergency English protocol and politeness. The AP report goes on:

“The university is a place for discussion, debate and considered argument, not for shoe throwing," said Tim Holt, a university spokesman.

The protester was taken to a local police station for questioning, police spokeswoman Shelly Spratt said.

Just as an aside, I’m looking for a place for shoe throwing and I’m wondering where I can go. This is very serious. I find myself in need of some appropriate theatrical shoe throwing. [source]

2009-02-02T16:46:00.002-05:00

The Huffington Post reports that Michael Phelps has issued a statement of apology for smoking marijuana from a bong at a party recently and it goes like this:

"I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again."

It’s almost as though this is just some scripted routine designed by some PR executives to keep Michael Phelps in the news. I mean, the statement is almost a fill in the blanks paragraph churned out by a computer that specialises in American cultural and moral crises management. He had started to fade out a bit and the narrative arc of something like this is probably going to be helpful for Phelps in the long run anyway. He comes out with a statement where the underlying tone is that he never really did anything bad but that he’s sorry, everyone is upset for three minutes until he apologises and makes some public gesture that illustrates his intolerance of drug abuse and then the American public forgives him.

The American public is sort of like a gang of insecure teenagers in that respect. They love to turn someone into a demagogue and then tears them down almost arbitrarily based on absurd moral outrage and then, after they’ve publically flogged them for a while, the demagogue is allowed to come back but this time with kind of performative humility. It’s like American enjoys being dominated by something until it doesn’t enjoy it and then it changes its mind again. Just like a spoilt child.

Meanwhile, Michael Phelps is standing in the middle of the hurricane having more or less done nothing at all and just has to weather it with the help of some PR consultants who know how this works because it’s always the same.

Strangely enough, Phelps hasn’t been approached by Paris Hilton yet and that’s interesting. I always thought that would happen and then a zeitgeist baby would be born. Or at least a massive explosion of celebrity plasma would spray all over everyone and that would tide us over as the Obama flame dies down. [source]

2009-01-29T17:45:00.002-05:00

Elizabeth Hasselbeck announced today on The View that she is pregnant again which really suggests that her only real appeal on the show is the performance of motherhood in front of the audience of women who love thinking about children and how they’ve either had them or want to or something.

It always seems like Elizabeth Hasselbeck is coming up with some reason to stay employed on that show whether it be her contrived, breathless and excitable right wing stance on everything because it’s her angle or whether it be the stories of her pleasant domesticity as a working mother with a sporty husband – everything comes back to survival. It’s not necessarily about substance or reason, it’s just survival.

I often wonder if, for Elizabeth Hasselbeck, life is simply a complex process of filling in time until she dies. I mean, there must be moments where she just sits there as her husband is in the next room smashing his head against the wall to try and numb reality somehow, where she cuts to the core of the issue and just looks at her watch and rolls her eyes. I mean, it’s got to be over soon, right? Life? [source]

2009-01-28T17:35:00.003-05:00

Following on from yesterday’s post about how gawker was getting in early with their criticism of Barack Obama’s tendency to be a humourless control freak in order to prove that they never swallowed the Kool Aid, at least as journalists anyway, Women’s Wear Daily is reporting that after they broke the story Black Artists’ Association criticizing Michelle Obama for not wearing clothes by a black designer to the inauguration, death threats were received by the Black Artists’ Association.
“BAA’s co-founder Amnau Eele, a former runway model, said she was not speaking on behalf of individual designers, but merely wanted to broach the subject. She has faced death threats as a result,” WWD reports.

See, death threats are the kind of thing that make criticism of the human elements of the Obama entity so valuable. I mean, if you weren’t doing the cultural equivalent of taking away the people’s opiate then why would it be so courageous? That being said, give it a rest.

The woman was First Lady for literally only a few hours before she was being beaten down for not making the right choice of dress to wear. She already went out in J Crew which is a pretty strong statement to make in terms of fashion and economic status. Besides, she chose Jason Wu who is a kid – that is sure to inspire other kids to get out there and make dresses. And that’s what the presidency is all about. It’s about how many kids are designing gowns for women.

In other news, last night I went to Alan Cumming’s birthday party for like 10 minutes. That was after I ate a whole wheat humus and falafel sandwich. The nice thing about snow in New York is that it’s all light, pure and enchanting for the first bit. Of course, once the city rolls over it it becomes brown messy sludge and the mess doesn’t leave until April. Also, there are less rats everywhere when it’s snowing and I enjoy that. [source]

2009-01-28T17:28:00.005-05:00

Icelandic Social Affairs Minister Johanna Sigurðardottir would be the world's first openly gay Prime Minister if she becomes Prime Minister of Iceland, as is widely expected, reports the Huffington Post. Her achievement as a gay politician is, in itself, impressive but with that we are, yet again, presented with an example of how Iceland is ahead of the world. Look at her up there in that small picture I posted. She's got her glamorous red lipstick on and white, ice-like hair, if you will. What a patriotic Icelandic woman. It's no wonder she's basically in charge. I mean, her hair indicates she's already living the part.

For about two months last year Iceland was THE place to be planning to go for New Year’s Eve due maybe in part to a tourism ad campaign on the subway and all over New York following the collapse of Iceland’s economy. All anyone would talk about was Iceland. “Oh, hi, I’m thinking about going to Iceland” is what they would say to me as I stood about at parties making idle conversation with actors, publicists and hookers.

And I didn’t blame them, either. While I’ve never travelled to Iceland, I have known of the delights of Iceland for years prior to this momentus historical moment whether it be from my ongoing and relentless research of puffins, the playful Atlantic seabird often affectionately known as the clown of the sea, Bjork, my interest in the different ways that caraway seeds can be used including as the principle flavor in Iceland’s national alcoholic beverage Brennivin, or whether it be the always enchanting Icelandic appetizer, hakarl, a cheese like substance made from the meat of a rotten shark. It’s certainly no surprise to me that again, even in the face of economic ruin, the Icelandics are still managing to do interesting things.

The Huffington Post goes on to report that Ms. Sigurðardóttir's appointment has been met with general apathy both inside and outside the country, a cultural reality that could only possibly be the result of massed intoxication and delusion. I am delighted to say that the news of her appointment is certainly not being met with apathy from me. Why, I am pleased as punch and, in fact, will be sending her a note with a list of national suggestions bracketed with compliments so that she doesn’t feel too hard done by as a result of my admittedly pushy tone.

Thank you again, Iceland, for being small and important. Not everyone couldn’t give a shit. Keep it up! [source]

2009-01-27T19:35:00.002-05:00

Gawker has joined the ranks of media outlets who write critical things about the Messianic President by posting a story about how Obama has been all nice so far but now that he's the president he's letting out some of his controlling rage (look at him in that picture above - all pissed off and shit) and for some reason I was surprised there for a moment. It’s like , “oh, look at that…someone on the north east left talking smack about the human embodiment of hope for western culture…that’s something you don’t see every day.” That's not surprising at all!

I mean, for one thing, gawker is always among the first to be bitchy and snarky so it’s true to form. In reality though, it seems like it’s just a matter of time before even more leftist journalists jump on the bandwagon of being highly critical of Obama – and not entirely because he doesn’t deserve to be viewed critically – actually because the first to depart from the hero worship can claim credit for being journalists with unique credibility.

In fact, now it’s almost like the opposite of what happened with conservatives jumping ship prior to the election and joining the progressives. Leftist journalists are going to slowly clamor to write things critical of the president and the more they go against the libidinal tide of popular opinion the better for them.

Everyone is trying to prove that they were at the helm of the issue first. That’s half the job of writing in the public sphere anyway. You have to actually be there and can I just say it gets exhausting.

I took a break from attempting to be at the helm and last night I went out to dinner with Greg Allen who is an immensely talented hair stylist who graciously cuts my hair for like nothing and does a bang up job in between styling for Harper’s Bazaar and a ton of people, Adam Klesh – some loud restaurateur I once met and Matthew Woodin, Adam’s ex but who is also tolerably funny. It was really amazing to remember what it was like to go out with people and socialize in a way that wasn’t the result of some rancid online invitation that attempts to lure you in with an open bar. Plus, none of us drank so it wasn’t messy. I mean, it was practically 1996 again. Minus the pending depression, post school poverty and relationships with several people on anti-psychotics who were into self harm. Yeah, that was a great period of time. [source]

2009-01-23T14:28:00.001-05:00

The Huffington Post reports that Sarah Palin’s $180,000 wardrobe, the wardrobe that was supposed to be donated to charity after she wore it parading about the national stage during the presidential campaign, has actually not been donated to charity, it’s sitting in garbage bags by the looks of things, at RNC Washington DC headquarters.

If anyone needed any further evidence that Sarah Palin was the Dina Lohan/Rosie O’Donnell of the political arena then this should quench that dire need. And it probably is dire. There’s about five cents worth of doubt in my mind that Sarah Palin kept those clothes on purpose so she could bump up her publicity as the entire country does the inevitable and forgets about her now that the Democrats have taken the White House.

Only very recently, she was jumping on the Caroline Kennedy media bandwagon to remind people that she’s also a woman who had run for major public office. That interest waned and so she’s dragging out plan B. The clothing. It’s not really that important unless you want to talk about how 180,000 dollars is a lot of money. For me, paying 180,000 dollars in public money so that we never talk about Sarah Palin again seems like a good investment. I would not be surprised if something to do with her kids and maybe incest rape comes out sooner or later. She’s using her cards one at a time.

So, this is really all about Sarah Palin trying to keep her hand in. And I think we’re all pretty comfortable that she’s not really that relevant any more.

One thing that struck me about her clothing was that she always seemed to choose these jackets where the sleeves were simply too short. When she raised her arms to wave it looked like she was wearing a non-commital t shirt. Is it a t shirt? Is it a jacket? How is that comfortable? In fact, John McCain had a hard time raising his arms too. So, all up, both Republican candidates had restricted arm movement and that always felt difficult to me. It was difficult to feel comfortable in a physical way while watching Sarah Palin and John McCain deal with their arms.

Oh my GOD, I’m still writing. [source]

2009-01-22T13:27:00.003-05:00

Here’s a video from a documentary about Air Force One, which is technically any flight the president is on. From the very beginning, all I was thinking about was, “what kind of food do they serve on Air Force One” and that was all I could think about. It’s actually all I ever think about when it comes to airline travel. I don’t think about the journey, the sleeping tablets, the fact that the different cabins are a clear nod to classism unless I am in business class because I have relatives who work for United. Nope, I only think about food.

That’s why I was initially delighted to see Obama order food and to really explain what he was getting. One thing that is for sure though: the American always orders the burger. They really always do. No matter where you are, they always order the burger. And then they make a massive production out of smearing some weird mixture of mustard and ketchup on the bun and they drip it all over my white bed spread and I have to contain my rage because that stain will never come out and it was always a mistake to attempt to smear your ketchup all over the bun and not really watch what you’re doing. A mistake I would never have made because “the burger” is the least interesting item on the menu most of the time.

Following on from that, I realised I have actually never felt more uncomfortable watching Barack Obama move and speak. I always felt he had a strangely fake, affected way of operating but in this film his fake interest and goodwill is unnerving. Also, the way he drags out giving his dinner order is really difficult for me to deal with. I mean, just say what you want. Don’t you have other things to think about? God. Plus, what ELSE was on the menu. I bet they had a quality steak frites or a duck confit. Actually, you know they had a Maryland crab cake with chipotle sauce or a quesadilla with shrimp in it. American menus are pretty standard. It’s often the amount and type of cheese that fluctuates. Also, what actually constitutes cheese in America tends to fluctuate as well. With very little concern to anyone but me.

Also, here are two other things. Yesterday I was running late and as I concocted an excuse about why I was late and rehearsed saying it so it sounded sincere while waiting on the platform at Union Square, a man in hand cuffs jumped down onto the track and literally ran into the tunnel (away from the incoming train). Moments later, police officers ran up and the trains were held up. My reaction was one of total relief. I mean, you can’t BUY a more plausible excuse than an escaped criminal held up the train and one really did.

Then, later on, as I was buying my steaming oatmeal breakfast on a blisteringly cold and inhuman morning in New York City, a woman walked buy me on her cell phone and said “Yeah, we bought enough sperm for three kids.” There is no idle chatter in New York. It’s all about getting things done.

2009-01-22T12:54:00.002-05:00

The 2009 Academy Award Nominations are out and for the first time in a really long time I have actually seen a large chunk of them. Not Slumdog Millionaire yet but I will change that asap. Fundamentally, though I’m actually involved this time and that’s better than my usual experience of the Academy Awards which involved annoyance that I didn’t see most of the films, annoyance that I wasn’t invited to attend it, some kind of just general fury at my own lack of awards and also the preposterousness of the Academy Awards anyway, being essentially disappointed in whatever extent the choice of winners goes to so that Hollywood can prop up its own mythological power and the inevitable disappointment that boils up when its over and I’m sitting in my apartment or an apartment or some place and I realize that the paint is peeling off the ceiling.

I just feel a little cynical about the Heath Ledger nomination as the hype far out weighed the performance he gave and I also think the same can sort of be said for Mickey Rourke who might just be the Jennifer Hudson of this Academy Awards show. So, all in all, it’ll be a great show.

FULL LIST OF NOMINEES FOR THE 81ST ACADEMY AWARDS

BEST PICTURE

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" "Frost/Nixon" "Milk" "The Reader" "Slumdog Millionaire"

BEST ACTRESS

Anne Hathaway; "Rachel Getting Married" , Angelina Jolie; "Changeling", Melissa Leo; "Frozen River", Meryl Streep; "Doubt", Kate Winslet; "The Reader"

BEST ACTOR Frank Langella; "Frost/Nixon", Sean Penn; "Milk", Brad Pitt; "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", Mickey Rourke; "The Wrestler", Richard Jenkins; "The Visitor"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Amy Adams; "Doubt", Penelope Cruz; "Vicky Cristina Barcelona", Viola Davis; "Doubt", Taraji P. Henson; "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", Marisa Tomei; "The Wrestler"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Josh Brolin; "Milk", Robert Downey Jr.; "Tropic Thunder", Philip Seymour Hoffman; "Doubt", Heath Ledger; "The Dark Knight", Michael Shannon; "Revolutionary Road"

BEST DIRECTOR Danny Boyle; "Slumdog Millionaire", Stephen Daldry; "The Reader", David Fincher; "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", Ron Howard; "Frost/Nixon", Gus Van Sant; "Milk"

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Dustin Lance Black; "Milk", Courtney Hunt; "Frozen River", Mike Leigh; "Happy-Go-Lucky" Marttin McDonagh; "In Bruges", Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon; "WALL-E"

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Simon Beaufoy; "Slumdog Millionaire", David Hare; "The Reader", Peter Morgan; "Frost/Nixon", John Patrick Shanley; "Doubt", Eric Roth, Robin Swicord; "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM "The Baader-Meinhof Complex" (Germany), "The Class" (France), "Departures" (Japan), "Revanche" (Austria), "Waltz with Bashir" (Israel)

BEST ANIMATED FILM "Bolt", "Kung Fu Panda", "Wall-E"

BEST ART DIRECTION "Changeling", "The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button", "Dark Knight", "The Duchess", "Revolutionary Road"

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY "Changeling"; Tom Stern, "Slumdog Millionaire"; Anthony Dod Mantle, "The Reader"; Chris Menges, "The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button"; Claudio Miranda, "The Dark Knight"; Wally Pfister

BEST FILM EDITING "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall, "The Dark Knight"; Lee Smith, "Frost/Nixon"; Daniel P. Hanley, Mike Hill, "Milk"; Elliot Graham, "Slumdog Millionaire"; Chris Dickens

BEST COSTUME DESIGN "Australia"; Catherine Martin,"The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button"; Jacqueline West,"The Duchess"; Michael O'Conner, "Milk"; Danny Glicker, "Revolutionary Road"; Albert Wolsky

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE "The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)", "Encounters at the End of the World", "The Garden", "Man on Wire", "Trouble the Water"

BEST ORIGINAL SONG "Slumdog Millionaire", "Jai Ho," A.R. Rahman, "Slumdog Millionaire"; "O Saya", A.R. Rahman & M.I.A. "Wall-E," "Down To Earth," Peter Gabriel & Thomas Newman

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE "The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button," Alexandre Desplat, "Defiance," James Newton Howard, "Milk," Danny Elfman, "Slumdog Millionaire," A.R. Rahman", WALL-E," Thomas Newman

BEST MAKEUP "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," Colleen Callaghan, Fionagh Cush, "The Dark Knight," Peter Robb-King, John Caglione Jr. "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," Mike Elizalde, Thom Floutz

BEST SOUND EDITING "The Dark Knight"; Richard King, "Iron Man"; Frank Eulner, Christopher Boyes, "Slumdog Millionaire"; Tom Sayers, "Wall-E"; Ben Burtt, Matthew Wood "Wanted"; Wylie Stateman

[source]

2009-01-20T14:00:00.005-05:00

Here are a couple of the photos I took of the inauguration from where I was in Times Square.

2009-01-20T13:57:00.002-05:00

Here’s a video I just shot in Times Square looking up at the Fox News screen at the live broadcast of the inauguration of Barack Obama. There were about 5 screens in Times Square with several of the major networks showing their own version of what was going on but weirdly enough, Fox News was the only network to think of actually including subtitles on the screen as there was no sound.

Because of that, the whole of Times Square was weirdly and almost eerily quiet except for brief moments when people would cheer. I got one of those cheering moments on video above.

Barack Obama is looking good too. Not only is he a demi-god who clearly works out, he may very well have re-defined what it means to be a zeitgeist leaving Paris Hilton in the dust of cultural irrelevance. That's ANOTHER thing he's done. CHECK! Well, to be fair she left herself there a while ago but still - why not attribute that cultural triumph to President Obama? Everything else that represents progress seems to be as a result of him. People apparently booed when George W Bush was announced and Dick Cheney attended in a wheelchair. What an exit.

America has a black president.

2009-01-16T15:01:00.004-05:00

Here’s Jeremy Piven on Good Morning America talking his way out of and yet, still into, the hole he is digging and filling regarding his recent quitting of David Mamet’s “Speed the Plow” on Broadway.

He talks his way around the whole idea that he could have somehow ingested enough mercury to get mercury poisoning which impaired his ability to continue working. Because he’s a coke hound and plays an aggressive manipulative agent on television people aren’t buying his

Mercury poisoning story right now so this is apparently damage control.
Celebrity damage control is almost always ridiculous. It’s sometimes necessary – as was the case with Queen Elizabeth around the time of Princess Diana because it became political – to go on TV and explain yourself but certainly not incessantly. If you’re going on TV and in the print media to argue about how you really aren’t lying then the trick is to avoid sounding desperate.
Piven sounds desperate.

Plus, I love how when a celebrity is acting like a freak they always have some disease no one else has – conveniently – so no massed understanding of the ailment can debunk their smoke screen. I mean, remember when Amy Winehouse had “impetigo”? Quick, no one will know what impetigo is! It'll buy us some time while we get her on some cipro and put her through some microdermabraision.

For the amount Jeremy Piven has gone on about this you’d think someone was accusing him of being gay. People who get accused of being gay never deal with the question well in the media. Actually, Chase Crawford doesn’t do too badly at it. Joy Behar asked if he and Ed Westwick were gay lovers and he rolled his eyes and fobbed the question off. He didn’t answer it but he certainly didn’t look like an earnest douche avoiding the question for what is billed as high brow political reasoning. Like Mika or Kevin Spacey or Anderson Cooper.

So, essentially, what I’m saying here is Jeremy Piven is to Mercury Toxicity as Mika was to Gay.

Yes, it is true that I could have just said that but I didn't and...here we are.

2009-01-16T13:48:00.004-05:00

I was reading a couple of magazines recently and ended up paying attention to the subscription inserts they're always pummelling you with and realised that if I just paid for a subscription I wouldn't have to actually go and GET the magazine because it gets posted to you and also, you save like a million percent on magazines. As a result, I now get all these magazines every month and so, now I can write things about what's in them after I've gone through them. I mean, it sounds like the bleeding obvious but it's really surprising what you figure out when you really think about the small things. Like, just as an aside - it took me ten years or something to figure out that CC's, the packets of corn chips you can buy in Australia, were named CC's because it stands for fucking "Corn Chips".

But, better late than never.

So, to my genuine, unadulterated delight, one of my favourite non fiction writers, Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi has not one but two pieces out at the moment. One is an omnivorous demolition job on New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in the New York Press which is classic Taibbi acidic conversational language assault. I haven’t followed Thomas Friedman in a while so this utter distain for him is unfamiliar to me but it’s still worth a read if for no other reason than the graph he constructs that charts the correlation between the size of Valerie Bertinelli’s ass between 1985 and 2008 and Happiness.

The other is a fictionalized interview with George W Bush in Rolling Stone, written entirely by Taibbi where, apart from making Bush apologise, he delivers a stunning, laser sharp summation of the Bush administration in one hard paragraph.

If you go to Rolling Stone online they won’t give you the final paragraph so I’m going to graciously type it out right now:

Matt Taibbi: I think there are a lot of people who feel that way.
President Bush: Really, what do they want to say?
Do you really want to know?
Sure.
Ok, here it is. You’re the child of two emotionally absent aristocrats who denied you any kind of love and affection from an early age. You grew up resentful and lacking completely in natural gifts or curiosity and by early adulthood found yourself desperate to fulfill the expectations your parents by then mostly only had for you much more competent brother, Jeb. You failed every test you ever faced as a young man and were unable to hold any job at all until the age of 45 or so, at which time you decided to try to win some self respect by going into the family business. You were aided in this quest by a bunch of narrow-minded lackeys and holdovers from your father’s administration who every step fo the way manipulated your obvious Oedipal resentments to their advantage, enriching themselves and their friends. All you wanted was a pat on the back and a few accomplishments of your own to hang your hat on, but instead you’re about to spend the rest of eternity pondering your now official legacy as the worst and most pigheaded leader in the history of Western Democracy, a man who almost singe-handedly sank the mightiest nation on Earth by turning the presidency into a 50 trillion dollar therapy session that ended in two disastrous wars, a financial crisis that threatens the entire system of international capitalism, and a legacy of corruption on a scale not seen since the Borgias or maybe Nero.
That, Mr. President is what they’re thinking and not saying to you.

Jeez, I thought you were a music magazine.

[source] [source]

2009-01-12T16:48:00.002-05:00

One of the best moments in the Golden Globes last night was Sacha Baron Cohen’s routine about the recession.

“Victoria Beckham hasn't eaten for days, he cracked, and Charlie Sheen has been forced to have sex without paying for it.
But he drew boos when he ripped on Madonna.
"Madonna has had to get rid of one of her personal assistants," Cohen said. "Our heart goes out to you, Guy Ritchie."

Was Madonna even there? Salma Hayek looked appalled which was appalling in itself. What the hell are they afraid of, exactly? I mean, apart from the physical threat of Madonna. If Madonna’s career has proven anything to us it’s that on the whole she isn’t an actor. At an awards ceremony for actors it would seem odd that people would be scared of offending her. Plus, when you consider that Baron Cohen was a favourite of Madonna’s for a while, maybe it was a personal joke between them. You know, like “hey, go out there and humiliate me and my husband…it’ll be great!”.

I do think that perhaps Baron Cohen was potentially in the same league as Rupert Everett when it comes to Madonna ie. One minute she loves him the next minute she hates him and he’s on the outer so maybe this was his way of getting back at her. In which case he should be commended because she can see through steel and breathes fire. Uncontrollably.

Suffice to say, amid the idealism and hope these awards ceremonies always bank themselves on fostering, it was good to see a little bit of acid to cut through the marshmallow. [source]

2009-01-12T16:35:00.002-05:00

As much as I did like The Wrestler, I totally love Darren Aronovski and I think it is always good to see someone transcend some level of self destruction like Mickey Rourke did through playing The Ram and then winning Best Actor at the Golden Globes; the relentless cheering at the announcement of his triumph reeked of self congratulations to me in much the same way that Jennifer Hudson winning the Academy Awards did.

It really seems like things like this are set up in no small part to propagate the myth that Hollywood is the land or organically fostered dreams and that it is not entirely about politics and insanity. Everything worked for Rourke, marketing-wise for this film and he won.

It was sort of similar when Russell Crowe won Best Actor at the Academy Awards and he went out with his private school haircut, suit and father’s medals on and opened up with the line “G’Day Folks” just to hammer it home that he is the physical embodiment of thick masculine ruggedness. I mean, he’s from New Zealand the land of sheep farming, for Christ’s sake. It all felt like an entertaining routine for the relentlessly bored Hollywood Exec.

There was a sincerity in what Mickey Rourke said as he accepted his award (the part about his dogs particularly) but he’s looking awfully well styled now that he’s the personification of transcendence and hope. Perhaps he could have dinner with the Obamas and blind us all forever more. [source]

2009-01-09T15:27:00.001-05:00

The former vice presidential candidate for the Republican Party, who shall remain nameless because printing her name only encourages her to keep talking and issuing statements to the press which are crapulently addictive in the same way gummi bears are even though you know that they have no nutritional value and about twenty minutes after you gorge yourself on them the darkness creeps in like the Angel of Death and you just wish your income tax would calculate itself, is in fact issuing statements about how the media’s treatment of Caroline Kennedy as a woman in the public eye will help to clarify whether she herself was exploited by the media elite.
Because it’s totally all STILL about you, isn’t it dear?
The interesting thing about said former vice presidential candidate is that apart from her red neck appeal, the main angle she had was that she is a woman and so it really comes as no surprise that in order to keep fostering public interest in her, she has to keep reminding the public that she is a woman. Second to that, the point is that sure she didn’t actually succeed in taking office in the White House but that is in no way really her fault. That is the fault of all the elite leftists in the media.
The Huffington Post writes:
Palin also complained about reports suggesting that Trig Palin was not her son and said she was "frustrated" by rampant rumors about her and her family. However, mainstream media stayed away from such rumors, which were fueled by bloggers and others online and the supermarket tabloids.

"I wasn't believed that Trig was really my son," she said. She called it a "sad state of affairs."

It is a sad state of affairs but I really think that any frustration she felt or still feels was as a result of not profiting more from whatever press she got and still receives. Poor dear is stuck up there in Alaska with a teenaged mother for a daughter and a good natured oaf for a husband. She’ll never win the pageant from up there. [source]

2009-01-09T13:00:00.002-05:00

The Daily Mail in the UK is reporting that the skeleton of another strange, mysterious and incredible beast has been found on the beach in Devon reigniting interest in the dreaded and feared Beast of Exmoor that was apparently responsible for the mauling of 100 sheep. Unlike the blood curdling, fear marinated story of that weird, dry, sunburned cat like thing that washed up along the shore of Long Island a while ago, this thing is huge and is probably just a large cat like a panther, according to experts.

The actual Police had a hand in investigating the find and PC Tucker added: 'It's a good 5ft and it has black fur. It certainly looks quite beast-like with those teeth.'

I tell you, a quality beast sighting is always a good thing. It’s almost better than a celebrity sighting because beasts are so much less predictable. On a fundamental level, it’s hard to justify using the words maul, beast, and mysterious all in the same sentence when you’re talking about celebrities unless you’re talking about their publicists so I always welcome a beast sighting. Especially if one involves official confirmation that giant cats live in Britain. What an absurd notion and yet, it’s true!

Plus, there really are semi regular beast sightings too. All over the world. The places where the beasts are more likely to be real, however, always tend to be places with access to areas of higher cultural density.

There’s a mysterious monster in Africa that apparently goes around raping men at night and I’m almost certain there’s no real cause for alarm there except from whoever came up with that story. I'd be surprised if the originator of that myth isn’t an hysterical Catholic, Muslim or member of some other sex phobic religion. Reports of that African rape beast only usually surface around election time anyway.

So, in short, Hooray for Beasts! [source]

2009-01-07T17:01:00.002-05:00

For some reason I’m having technical difficulties uploading pictures. I’m having problems with Windows Vista in general actually. It’s a complete pain the ass what with its constant need to shut off all sound every now and then and require System Restores to be performed semi regularly.

SO – apologies for the lack of illustrations.

One thing I can say is that last night I went to a book reading for one of my favourite non fiction authors, Benoit Benizet Lewis because he has a new book out called America Anonymous: 8 Addicts in Search of a Life. I haven’t read the book yet but when it arrives in the mail I totally will. I spoke with him a bit which was all very pleasant and the book is bound to be great but here’s the thing; they had a really swank buffet.

Exceptional chicken wings marinated with some kind of asian glaze, rare roast beef displayed in a kind of makeshift rose shape which I found oddly vaginal, turkey or pork – I can’t tell which because they’re both white meat and when they’re cut into semi circles you just can’t tell unless you try them and when I did I wasn’t paying attention, prawns on sticks with a variety of dipping sauces, two aioli type dips which after a while looked slightly oxidised on the top so I just avoided those. There were also salads and a delightful baguette too. There was no alcohol at that party because it was hosted by a rehab organisation and so I drank Coke and it made me thirstier than I've ever been. Isn’t the point of a drink that it is meant to quench your thirst? Coke does not care about that point apparently. I was sort of appalled. Kirsten Johnson was there and said that her new movie that comes out today is dreadful.

Also, here’s a link to an article in the London Times arguing that Tin Tin was gay. Why not? [source]

2009-01-07T16:56:00.002-05:00

The Washington Post reports that the guest scheduled to stay at Blair House, the official guest quarters for White House visitors, during the period the Obamas had requested to stay there– a party that the White House refused to identify when the request had originally been submitted turns out to be none other than former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. BOOOO. Cue: kazoo centric introduction music as the huge curtain draws back to reveal the short and generally unimpressive John Howard. John Howard was the reason the Obamas couldn’t move into Blair House a couple of days early.

At this point, all stories about the Obamas as people are really anchored in the idea that they are the physical embodiment of hope and inspiration for America. It’s often inane but that’s the way it is. How fitting then, that on one, admittedly minor situation where the Obamas were denied being able to break with tradition and take up residence slightly early, a moment where their wave of light filled progress was sort of held up – the person at the center of it was the consistently disappointing and little John Howard.

What was he REALLY doing there anyway? The Washington Post says he's a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Honor but is that really the reason he's here? He’s not Prime Minister anymore so he was probably just on a quick tour to the US so he could cash in on the perks of being part of the Coalition of the Willing before Bush is officially out of office. Perhaps the breakfast rolls at Blair House are second to none and Howard wants to stock up before he’s completely irrelevant on the world stage. Quick, stuff them in your INSIDE pocket John. Why not ask the staff to send you a case? You can probably keep them in your freezer at home. [source]

2009-01-07T16:15:00.003-05:00

The Huffington Post reports that Sarah Palin’s Grandson’s father, Levi Johnston (whose mother was incarcerated on around about the same day his son was born) has quit the job he had lined up as an electrician’s apprentice for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation after coming under fire from a newspaper columnist who reported that you actually need a High School GED before you can take that job. Apparently, Johnston hasn’t finished high school yet.

Let’s just recap the basic facts about Levi Johnston. He is a self described redneck who doesn’t want kids and who should be at high school but has dropped out and now has a son with his girlfriend to whom it appears he will not be marrying any time soon despite the fact that it was officially announced the entire world during the election campaign that this would be the case because if he didn’t he would be a human strike against his sort of mother in law’s political platform. Plus, his mother is in jail for drug related charges. What a crippling loss for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation.

Is there anyone more fucked than Levi Johnston right now? Sarah Palin rushed to his defense but what exactly could that really do anymore besides aggravate?

Still, he could always make money working for Sean Cody or Randy Blue. Sure it’s gay porn and he’s straight but doing gay porn for publication on the internet would probably require no more or less squinting and pretending that he’s psychologically somewhere else than his life does now on an hour by hour basis. Talk about political prisoners… [source]

2009-01-06T17:24:00.002-05:00

The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama wants the always alluring Dr Sanjay Gupta to be the Surgeon General of the United States. Gupta is a neurosurgeon so he’s not just one of those evil doctors who appear on TV but don’t really know what they’re talking about. Dr. Phil, I’m looking at you.

Here’s the thing about this. I remember when the pope died and Dan Savage wrote about Cardinal Ratzinger who then went on to become Pope Benedict. He wrote:

But before I open the girl-power spigot, I wanna get two things off my chest: First, Ratzinger? Ratzinger! Jesus Fucking Christ. Ratzinger.

And the inference there is that Savage totally knew everything about how lame Ratzinger was and that I mean, Jesus, we could have done better than that! As though the current posse of potential popes contained someone better that any normal and informed person would have known about. Oh totally, Savage. You totally knew. You know everything.

I’m not going to pretend that I know a whole lot about who is potentially up for the role and I don’t watch Nip Tuck or Grey’s Anatomy so I can’t make a sassy and predictable comment about how Julian McMahon or Patrick Dempsey could be worthwhile candidates (although Patrick Dempsey’s character is also a neurosurgeon so …you know…) even though they’re not actual people.

What I will say is that if Sanjay Gupta is made Surgeon General then the Obama administration will be far more sexually marketable than the Bush Administration. I mean, Stephen Galson is certainly no Yasser Arafat in the looks department but I mean, Sanjay Gupta has a sparkling, professionally whitened smile and doesn’t look at day over 33. Put that next to a shirtless, gym fit President Obama with his presidential pecs glistening in the sun and you have yourself some high impact porn…sort of.

Obama’s administration is going to turn out to be many many things and sexy is definitely one of them. Isn't that reassuring? [source]

2009-01-06T17:07:00.003-05:00

Here’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s talking about her shitting experiences on her blog. She’s talking mainly about detoxing and the menu she goes with when she wants to detox but part of detoxing is shitting out toxins. That’s right, Gwyneth Paltrow expels human waste from her body by shitting! Ok, so she doesn’t actually use the word “shit” (at least in public!) but it is probably ok to admit that the idea of her doing so is like some kind of thematic juxtaposition and that’s interesting to me.

Gwyneth Paltrow, a living zeitgeist whose entire being is at once focused on being in cleansed harmony with the universe while she stays thin enough to be a leading female movie star product who is married to an ego maniac musician, likes to detox and she doesn’t mind talking about her bowel movements. What an amazing world we live in.

“If your bowel movements get sluggish," she says. "You can accelerate things by drinking half a cup of castor oil or using a mild herbal laxative. Bowel elimination is paramount for correct detoxification.”

What a trooper. Why, she’s just like us!

It’s important for me to admit that I would totally follow that diet because it actually seems like nice food and I figure that Gwyneth probably spends a shitload on herself when it comes to health specialists. This way, I get to benefit from her costly, movie star medical advice.

However, ultimately, I’m torn between totally buying into the hype and shit-centric information she gives and the natural tendency to simply find fault with her because she is a movie star and therefore probably not actually a real person at the end of the day. Well, I mean, she’s probably a whole lot of nerves and body image anxiety and need. That’s about it though. God, it’s complex being alive. [source]

2009-01-05T14:42:00.001-05:00

Is Tom Cruise insane or if he actually the smartest man in the entire universe equal in some ways to God? I like to think about that kind of thing a lot and I also enjoy letting it override every thought I have so I’m glad the Post has run a piece about how Robert Pritikin, the man who wrote the Rice-a-Roni jingle is suing someone because a replica of one of Hitler’s globes was featured in “Valkyrie” without copyright payments being made. Robert Pritikin bought the globe and several other Nazi artifacts and copyrighted their likeness so no Nazi group could use them to promote Nazi causes. Ok, wow – all of that really did happen.
Pritikin wants to sell all his Nazi art so he’s using this completely random event to mention that too at the end of the news piece by suggesting that Tom Cruise buy it all and donate it to a museum.
Apart from the fact that this reeks of a media savvy Pritikin using this angle to get some press so he can sell his artifacts, I wonder if this is all part of a world dominating plot by Tom Cruise to repair his freakish image and to promote the film.
After all, the film is the third highest grossing film at the moment and that’s after a series of apparent set backs during its production not the least of which were based on Tom Cruise’s personality being “unpleasant”. All that bad press kept us thinking about a film that really had no reason to be any worse than anything else when you consider the cast and production values. Here were are again wondering about conflict that is connected to Tom Cruise and it really only serves to make Tom Cruise look like a hero and to let Robert Pritikin sell his Nazi art for top dollar. It’s win win for everyone.
Right, everything is a plot. I’m not paranoid – everyone is in on everything around me. [source]

2009-01-05T14:27:00.002-05:00

I am so glad I went and back read some of New York Magazine’s Vulture blog today because had I not I would have missed Chris Martin’s interview that made me feel just great about being alive. There’s nothing I enjoy more than that feeling.

When talking about his work, the Coldplay front man and male counterpart in boredom inducing uber celebrity douchebagness to Gwyneth Paltrow was quoted as saying:

We feel bands need to fill their first 10 years, so we have lots to do before December 31, 2009.
“I know it’s stupid, but that’s kind of our deadline. We have to do something good by then.

“We’ve done some pretty good stuff, but there’s something about the year changing to 2010. I’ll also be 33 that year, and I always feel that marks a different phase of songwriting. So I just try to keep as busy as possible till then.

“Most of my heroes did most of their great stuff before they were 33. It’s not that you can’t do great stuff afterwards. You just have to have deadlines, otherwise you’ll spend all day in the sauna.”

Even though when he says "We" he’s clearly talking about he and the other band mates, the way he uses the word “We” makes him sound like he’s in a cult and his inadvertent “We have to do something good by then” is simply too easy to attack.

Aside from that, just to calm myself down and place the razor blade back in the safety drawer, I did reassure myself that I am in fact a year younger than Chris Martin so I totally have another whole year to scramble my way up to his level. That being said, the quote reads like something out of a sit com script that sends someone directly into a mid-(ish)life crisis after which they spend half an hour freaking out and being weird only to discover that actually wherever they go there they are. Oh, how wonderful…I’m nauseated. Kick ass, Chris Martin – you’re so tolerable!

Still, there’s something great – and I genuinely never thought I’d say this - about a major celebrity rock star who is always drunk on ego gratification talking about the world that is almost better than a can of frosting at midnight while watching a marathon run of Iron Chef. [source]

2008-12-23T16:04:00.002-05:00

Scarlett Johansson went on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, blew her nose into a handkerchief and then put it in a plastic bag and sold it on ebay for $5300. Here’s the link to the actual page.
The seller included comments on the ebay page that included the earnest, slightly agitated statement: UPDATE: DUE TO REPEAT QUESTIONS ON THE SAME TOPIC, PLEASE NOTE THAT THE ITEM CAN ONLY BE SHIPPED WITHIN THE UNITED STATES…
Which means that people all over the world must have been hankering for some Johansson mucus. Plus, you just know the assistant who did that has "crazy busy" syndrome and is angry because no one knows how busy she or he is. After all, all this has to be taken care of before he or she can get that fllight back to Arkansas for Christmas. Working for a movie star is a pretty tough job! How entirely enchanting this WHOLE story is.

Ultimately though, mucus and bitchy gay assistant aside, there’s really nothing more reassuring than when people spend vast amounts of money on useless crap. I mean, sure this is for charity, but the thing is over one hundred thousand people have ordered copies of the exact shoe that was thrown at President Bush during his press conference in Iraq and that’s after a no doubt bored rich Saudi offered several million dollars for the actual shoe and one man offered his daughter as a bride for the thrower. It seems odd to me that more people would be sleeping in homeless shelters in New York City than in any other year since 1983 when records were first taken, that since the financial crisis began there are too many people wanting to be cab drivers and there aren’t enough cabs and yet, someone is spending 5300 dollars on a mucus soaked tissue.

Still, I guess it’s better than some lame bull semen hair treatment or complex fish based exfoliation experiment in Europe. Those things are just a waste of money and they are careless, frankly. [source] [source]

2008-12-23T15:48:00.002-05:00

Pete Wentz may not be able to sell pictures of his new kid Bronx Mowgli to the gossip magazines for a tidy profit because he has principles and also because the magazines are genuinely interested IN pictures of the kid but he can still get some coverage by talking about how he has tasted Ashlee Simpson’s breast milk. Here’s the quote he graced the reporter from Pop Wrap at the New York Post with:

Can I tell you, I've tasted it. My mom was sitting here, I swear to God she was sitting here and she's like 'It's the sweetest milk on the planet, you can't even...' - I was like 'What are you talking about?' It kind of tasted, I don't really know how to explain what it tasted like - it's kind of soury weird milk. The baby loves it, it's the only thing he's had a chance to have."

Talking bluntly about things like drinking his wife's breast milk and ass fucking is more his style anyway – it keeps him slightly edgier than if he were just in a picture holding some kid with flat ironed baby fuzz. That would make him look like something other than a cool, out-there, uber hipster father with really straight, shiny eye covering hair and if he did look different than that then what would he be then?

Because if J Lo has taught us anything it’s that if you have a dwindling career the best thing to do is get your newborn offspring involved. You may not have a music or acting career but at least you can make a living. [source]

2008-12-22T18:39:00.002-05:00

I do NOT watch “The Real Housewives of New York City” because the premise is unimaginative and crap. There are all these totally uninspiring franchises of the show too like “The Real Housewives of Orange County” which, I believe came first and also the immediately inspiring “The Real Housewives of Atlanta”. I’m culturally offended by all these shows at the basest level. Actually reality TV in general offends me. Back in 1996 or something I thought that Reality TV would be the fondue set of the late 20th Century and boy was I wrong. It’s not enriching to realize that. It is sad and crap and I feel vomitous.

But back to the point. There’s some woman on The Real Housewives of New York City named Alex McCord and she’s written a book about parenting.

My god…it’s just so obvious how this works out. Having never seen the show I can’t be sure but I warrant a pretty good guess that her children were shitty brats who got whatever they wanted and she was oblivious and or incapable of parenting them because she was too busy obsessing over status and jewels and credit cards. Ok, wait, she lives in Brooklyn so she was probably obsessing over how big and expensive and intrusive her stroller was, how much brown she could wear and how ironically enjoyable cupcakes are. God, I’m even bored trying out that angle.
So, releasing a book works because there’s got to be a percentage of people who watch that show that will just buy whatever comes out in relation to it and furthermore if Alex McCord writes a book about parenting it will tap into the rage she inspires in people because she’s probably a bad selfish child adult. That way, you can’t look away from the horror she inspires.

The thing is, I don’t even hate her because I don’t know who she is but I can just take a guess and what I come up with is lame. It’s less about her and more about the fact that something like her is viable that sucks.

Oh yeah, what’s the book about? McCord was quoted as saying:

"It's not about how to discipline. It's about things like how to get a passport for an infant when you don't have a birth certifi cate yet," she says. "It's gonna be fun."

Oh good, so I’ll put it on the shelf next to the book on how to lose weight by the fat idiot Gotti brat. Cool. Let’s find out about inane things from people who have no earthly idea what they’re talking about. [source]

2008-12-22T18:21:00.002-05:00

I wondered what had happened to Ted Haggard, the high profile Christian evangelist who was brought down by a hooker he had sex and smoked crystal meth with – and here’s a promo for a documentary about him that promises to update us. He now apparently delivers guest sermons at small churches and sells insurance. He considers himself a loser at this point in his life. Isn’t that heart warming? It’s a little frustrating that no mention was made of the ex-gay therapy he attended as part of damage control for his public image. After all, I was hoping to find out if it worked and I’m sure plenty of people would like to know whether they won or lost money when they bet he would slip up and accidentally find himself in a hotel room with another male porn star.

We interviewed the guy that slept with Ted Haggard on D List Radio and I asked him what Ted Haggard did the minute they had finished having sex and the guy said he had written a book about it and you had to buy the book to find out. I never did find out. I imagined he would have prayed and cried and then negotiated reality with himself and then gone into damage control and pushed it way down in the dead vacant space inside him where a soul should be and continued with his day. It was always amusing to me that his last name was Haggard because it seemed to me that he was a pretty emotionally haggard guy.

One thing I've learned in all my years is that Christian evanglists tend to get freaked out by hooker porn stars. Not me; I’m bored by them. They’re every second person I meet so I’m not freaked out by them at all. All you do it pat them on the head, talk to them about something like income tax and they glaze over and wander away. Sometimes into a wall. That’s how you deal with hooker porn stars. Of course, I’m not a high profile Christian evangelist so that makes my experience a little less comparable.

Still, this documentary looks compelling.

2008-12-19T15:32:00.002-05:00

The Post reports that there are several photos of women who have been linked to Tom Cruise showing them with cold sores. The inference here is, of course, that the common link between all the women is that they’re believed to have kissed Tom Cruise and consequently, Tom Cruise probably has herpes.

Ordinarily, I’d say this was just a story thrown in at the last minute by an editor who didn’t have much to run today but you know, this sort of reminds me of the exhaustive campaign Tom Cruise went on to prove Katie Holmes was pregnant by dragging her bloated and probably exhausted frame out in front of the media. “Look!” he was more or less saying. “I got her pregant, I’m the MAN!”

With all the other career rehabilitation going on through the efforts of Cruise’s camp – with the inane celebration of his 25 years in showbiz, the launch of his website, the Oprah interview, his appearance on the Today Show – a little item like this fits right in. It emphasises one of his primary characteristics; that he makes out with women he is married to. There’s a lineage of them too – a lineage of fine Hollywood beauties that Tom Cruise has made out with. They are all marked with the mark of the Cruise – a swollen sore on their lip. [source]

2008-12-19T15:21:00.004-05:00

Even though Sarah Palin wasn’t elected as Vice President for all manner of reasons, not the least of which was because her candidacy was emblematic of a bullyish, cynical, anti-intellectual narcissism that appeared to plague America , it’s apparently still important that we talk about her daughter Bristol Palin’s pregnancy and that’s why the Post is reporting that the Palin grandfather has stated that it is a boy but that the kid’s parents have no name picked out yet. It’s due tomorrow. Additionally, Levi Johnston’s mother, Sherry L. Johnston, was just charged with six felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance.

Isn’t it interesting at this safe point to think about the last election as a kind of Faustian fork in the road? America could have taken the red pill and gone the way of car donuts on the White House lawn, a drug addicted white trash second mother in law, teenaged pregnancy with a resentful alpha male bully father being roped into a life of forced public visibility and a “Second Dude” as the VP’s husband. The great part about this being something we see explicitly now, with a Democrat president like Barack Obama firmly in place is the fact that this is something we see explicitly now with a Democrat president like Barack Obama firmly in place.

It’s important for the media to fixate on this because the way the Republican Party dealt with it was so completely about papering over the cracks with unbelievably transparent and unrealistic lies regarding the fact that Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin were to be married, despite the fact that Johnston’s myspace page lists him as a redneck who doesn’t want children, that the longer the saga is drawn out, the more likely it is that the Palins will end up caving in and we’ll find out the full extent to which they really are unfit to run a gas station let alone the extent to which their social ideals have no practical application. The money shot will be documenting the essentially irrelevant Palins as they acknowledge failure and defeat. Failure and defeat are gratifying when you're watching TV and it's someone else.

So, yes, the two kids are still unmarried despite clear assertions that they would marry prior to Sarah Palin’s nomination and Levi Johnston’s mother is a drug addict who was just arrested. Surely they deserve at least a reality show. [source] [source]

2008-12-19T14:54:00.003-05:00

Argentine soccer player Gaston Aguirre killed a pigeon with a single shot -- right off his foot. "I kicked the ball and, poor pigeon," the San Lorenzo defender said. "Now I will be remembered as the pigeon killer."

I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that this reminds me of the time Rob Lowe was playing golf in Iowa and the ball he hit not only killed a bird mid flight, it killed a Goldfinch, the state bird. No one could really pin that on Lowe because it’s pretty unlikely that a person could calculate killing a bird inflight with a golfball. I mean, he would have to be some kind of God to be able to do that and Rob Lowe is not a God.

unless...

No. Rob Lowe is NOT a God.

This situation with Gaston Aguirre is less “interesting” because pigeons are vermin of the air who sometimes hobble around on stumpy, fungus infected stump legs and have terrible cases of scaley face which I’m sure is the bird equivalent of leprosy, at least aesthetically. In that sense, because they are less attractive and are lower on some kind of bird niceness scale, it matters less.

Additionally, with sentences like “I kicked the ball and, poor pigeon” Aguirre sounds mildly neanderthal – not unlike, if you will, the good natured giant in “The Princess Bride” who was played by Andre the Giant.

SO – ultimately, it’s bad luck that Aguirre killed a bird by killing it but he should take heart. With notoriety like this he could get enough press to warrant his own reality TV show. It could either be a show about poor children learning to play soccer or it could be about how long he can survive while trapped in a cage filled with very angry and possibly forlorn pigeons. That show would be called “Payback: it’s Pigeon time” and every week would be the same half hour distillation of the full 38 minutes Aguirre spends in the cage per week to pay off his karmic debt. Commentary would be provided by Katie Price and the President of France. Only. [source]

2008-12-17T15:26:00.000-05:00

Season 2 Online Premiere - Flight of the Conchords (US Only) - watch more funny videos

Also - Here’s the ENTIRE of the first episode of Season Two of Flight of the Conchords.

2008-12-17T15:11:00.001-05:00

Tom Cruise was on Letterman to talk about Valkyrie but overall as part of his career rehabilitation and he read out a list of the Top Ten Craziest Things People Say About Tom Cruise.

It would seem that if you’re going for the whole “humanise me” angle, particularly in the wake of the career horror that Cruise suffered after he fired Pat Kingsley, then you really should be trying harder to be softer and lighter. Cruise was wooden and stoic with Letterman and none of the points were particularly edgy or “hilarious” – except number 4: I believe all emotional and psychological disorders can be cured with Vicks Vapo Rub. I wonder just how many PR executives had a hand in sanitising that list before it was cleared for the show.

Although, if you want to talk about putting your ego aside for the sake of the work then I guess he should receive props for at least attempting to reach out to younger audiences by going on the discussion show that is broadcast after The Hills. He actually sat there and talked about how Spencer Pratt should have planned a bigger wedding for his wife and smiled. That was gutter level inanity and anyone who has to suffer through that shit and actually does should be given some kind of credit.

I’ve taken to eating these ridiculous meringues because they’re vanilla flavoured. The thing is, I would actually probably see Valkyrie and I don’t quite get why it has been denigrated so much. It has been pushed back plenty of times and sure, Cruise doesn’t bother with an accent but why is that so bad? Wouldn’t that make it just that bit more accessible to Americans who hate to watch things that differ terribly from the familiar?

2008-12-16T22:28:00.002-05:00

Tom Cruise is talking to Us Weekly and he’s saying he would love it if Suri Cruise became an actor. He actually said this, as in – this is the quote:

"I'd love it. I'd love it," he told Usmagazine.com at the NYC premiere of Valkyrie on Monday. "Acting is ... a great life to get to entertain people and create characters and stories."
No matter what his children do, "They have the life that I wanted," Cruise said. "I always wanted to travel the world, to be developed by different cultures, learn about their history.

The reason he says this is because he gets to do two things. One, he gets to talk about how he’s an entertainer first and foremost which is his main concern seeing as his foray into being an advocate for Scientology wasn’t smart business practise and two, he gets to remind us he has a freaking daughter in the first place. Part of it is that in reality, no real, rational parent would ever want their child to go through the personality corsetting human ruination of being an actor in the way that Tom Cruise is one and so by vouching for his lifestyle and pointing at his kid everything gets put in its place and Cruise can try and get back to where he was a few years ago; on the whole not universally creepy.

I categorically deny that I am over thinking this. [source]

2008-12-16T22:19:00.002-05:00

For the most part, I had a hard time pulling my attention away from two things; one, a blog called Charlie Tu Eats, posted on facebook by Charlie Katsu which chronicles what Charlie Tu (who I guess is his alter ego) eats. Cheese with mustard (a combination I categorically deny) apparently causes him to fart and the other thing I watched was a fairly stock standard documentary about the Westboro Baptist Church produced by the BBC that revealed to me that Fred Phelps is probably a rageaholic and I always thought it was either that or he was a repressed homo. The real losers in the Westboro Baptist Church are, of course, the children.

When I finally did try and interact with the actual news and the tiny moving shaddows in the corner of my paranoid, placebo caffeine shocked eyes that I kept thinking were either cockroaches or rodents but were really actually nothing faded I noticed that the New York Times is reporting that a Saudi man is offering ten million dollars for the shoe thrown at President Bush’s head during his press conference in Iraq at the weekend. Nicholas Kristoff suggests that if one man is offering ten million dollars for one shoe, perhaps Bush could have shoes thrown at him all over the place and make a chunk of money to offset White House travel costs. I’m still hung up on how fast Bush reacted to the flying shoe. Why, it was almost as though he has a tendency towards immediate self preservation.

Additionally, here’s an unfathomably shit Christmas themed short film featuring the First Family about how their freaking dog put up the White House decorations which is no doubt some lame attemtp to be appealing to children and simple minded housewives that has to be watched to be believed. What astonishes me more than anything else is the cold hard fact that someone who is probably considered a professional saw this edit and decided it was as good as it could possibly be.

All in all, any pretense at presidential dignity has now almost completely melted away. [source] [source]

2008-12-15T14:03:00.001-05:00

And while I’m lazily posting videos and writing about them, here’s one of the most tolerable Christmas things I’ve seen so far this year featuring two of my favourite people EVER. Here’s Elaine Stritch singing with Alec Baldwin playing the piano on last week’s 30 Rock. Elaine Stritch is wobbly on the first note – which is endearing – and Alec Baldwin is relentlessly adorable. I too, do not want Elaine Stritch to die. What a lovely realisation for Christmas.

2008-12-15T13:52:00.000-05:00

Here’s a video of an Iraqi journalist throwing a shoe at the head of George W Bush as he gave a press conference. Apart from the fact that it’s hilarious that someone actually threw a shoe at Bush’s head and Bush dodged it with such natural ease that it seems like he has a in-built dodging mechanism, what’s great about this is the way the MSNBC journalist explains the significance of having a shoe thrown at you.
According to the journalist (and you might want to write this down), if someone throws a shoe at you it’s a sign of disrespect and you know, the thing about this is I’m actually glad we had that cleared up. I mean, for a moment there I thought the tall, angry man hurling a shoe at the loathed president’s head in front of international media was actually a reference to the rarely scrutinised mating ritual of the Patagonian Face Pummeling Rabbit. That, I can now officially report, is not the case.
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino now also apparently has a black eye because she was knocked in the face with a microphone. What is also amazing about this is how long it takes the Secret Service to rush in and protect the president. I wonder if they had their own moment of indecision after the first shoe flew. “Should we really rush in there and protect him from the flying shoe?” they might have asked themselves deep down in their subconscious.

2008-12-15T13:25:00.000-05:00

Here’s Tom Cruise talking to Matt Lauer on the Today Show this morning and it’s interesting that first and foremost they spend time talking about the fact that they’re talking because, of course, last time they were at each other’s throats over the concept of pyschiatric medication. The interview is based on the fact that Tom Cruise’s new movie “Valkyrie” is about to come out but they only talk about that in the final 3-4 minutes of the interview.

Something happened to Tom Cruise where, at some point, he suddenly realised he had to stuff the crazy back inside his skull and play the normal, non-psychotic, generic, leading man again and I would love to know what that rational, ego thwarting moment actually was. It’s the professional movie star version of hitting rock bottom when you’re an alcoholic. I suspect it was something that happened around the time he was taped delivering a speech at the Scientology HQ where he was standing next to a portrait of L. Ron Hubbard and he saluted the portrait. Maybe I’m wrong though because there are so many insane moments that were documented at the time. It really could have been anything.

The fact remains though, that the whole idea that he’s celebrating 25 years of being in the movie industry is so bogus because he has actually been in the business longer than that. You have to hand it to him though because his rehabilitation a really slick, professional operation. He’s looking really good, he’s keeping it together in public, Oprah did a whole show devoted to him because they share the same demographic and now he’s back with Matt Lauer and everything is civil. I still don’t buy the forced crap about how romantic he is and how much he loves Katie Holmes but then, I’m not the demographic; midwestern housewives are so as long as they’re happily living through the blank Katie Holmes everything is going according to plan.

What will be interesting is the point at which Tom Cruise fails to contain his freakishness again and how it will inevitably come out. I imagine he’ll throw something this time. Maybe a cream puff. It’ll be at Barbara Walters and Barbara Walters will be shocked when that cream puff hits her in the face. The moment it happens whatever show they’re on will fade to black. Smoke will probably come out of the back of every TV in America at that point. That’s because Oprah loves Tom Cruise and she is controlling everything.

2008-12-12T13:42:00.002-05:00

In response to yesterday’s reports that no magazine is interested in photos of Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpon’s new child whose name is, no shit, Bronx Mowgli – I read that name initially on Dlisted.com and thought it was a joke; the basis for which was simply two random words Michael K had seen in front of him but actually, that is his real name. Brooklyn for Posh Spice, Bronx for Pete Wentz so that leaves Manhattan for who? Katie Price probably. Queens isn’t so weird – I mean, Queen Latifa. Staten Island would be an odd name for a child. There’s no denying that.
SO – anyway. Pete Wentz writes:

About baby pics gossip: truth is like every celeb couple we were offeredmounds and mounds of money by mags from here to Guam to pimp out the baby. We just don’t want to go down that road with him.

He then goes on for a month about why they are choosing not to cash in on their kid which makes it clear that he a) has no publicist who is really helping him out and b) he is over reacting probably because actually no one really does want photos of his kid. This isn’t the first time this has come up. Months before the kid was born the same speculation was fluttering about and here we are with that speculation proving to be reasonable. Still, at least they’re keeping a hand in the game by responding. 133 people have commented on Pete Wentz’s blog posting about it. [source]

2008-12-12T13:27:00.003-05:00

Legendary pin up girl, Bettie Mae Page has died in Los Angeles at the age of 85. The first time I ever heard of Ms. Page was when I was 16 and embarking on a study of obscenity in high school and I collected pictures of her. I remember reading that she worked out every day and dieted with military strictness and it was that part that really fascinated me. Learning that about her concreted for me, the point at which she consciously dealt with the reality of who she was; a canvas for straight male fantasies.

Plus, so many angry young women over the years have sstyled themselves on Bettie Page. The woman I bought a corset from in 1999, for example. She had a nice brother named Greg but she was angry and gothic. Actually, Greg was one of those flirty straight guys who are intriguing at first but then it's boring because they're really just attention seeking actors.

Also, the other night I was at the Paper Magazine Awards and one of the presenters, Aimee Phillips, seemed to be styled like her with the razor sharp, eyebrow level black bangs and a put-on 1950s vernacular which admittely seemed to slip half way through her presentation but I knew it was Bettie Page.

Bettie Page was a quality broad who championed free speech and for that she should be commended. RIP Bettie Page. [source]

2008-12-11T16:52:00.001-05:00

According to Page Six, no one wants photos of the new baby to be born as a result of the union between Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson. They’ve been offering them round but no one cares because apparently no magazine editor believes the photos will sell. That makes sense , I think. Pete Wentz is meant to be so anti-establishment punk and Ashlee Simpson is the anti-Jessica and no one cares about Jessica Simpson anymore because she is appalling so when you get to the end of that equation there’s basically nothing left.

It’s at this point that Pete Wentz has to be kicking himself for bothering with the kid. Poor Pete Wentz. He sold out SO much that at the end of it all he had nothing but a chain of bars that are meant to be interesting, a relatively bland clothing line and some great but obviously laboured over hair and a rockin ass. Who could see THAT coming? Not me.

But, I suppose that the value of baby pictures is really proportional to the purity of the image of the parents. Middle aged women don’t want to gawk at photos of a demon baby with eyeliner or the baby of a hideous spoilt brat. They want pure movie star idealism and that’s it. Women seem to be in denial about Tom Cruise’s insanity so that’s why Suri Cruise is so watchable. That and the fact that she’s criminally cute. Pete Wentz’s kid won’t be cute even if it is cute. The parents are too fake-angsty which is the same as real angsty when you’re from Arkansas. Plus, they will probably name the kid Bruce because it’s weird, old and male enough to be edgy in that ironic hipster “smack me in the head because this is annoying” way. [source]

2008-12-11T16:33:00.002-05:00

Madonna must be breathing a sigh of relief today as news reports emerge explaining that she has inspired a statement from the Catholic church in South America, condemning her as the inspiration behind some appparently dangerous “crazy enthusiasm” and “impure thoughts”.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Catholic Cardinal Jorge Medina criticised the flamboyant singer during his homily at a Mass in honour of the late dictator Augusto Pinochet.

It’s actually amazing that that wasn’t made up. The way they printed it in the Herald is just the way I copied it too. It’s one paragraph. Sort of like when you make someone stand on stage and you just throw a bucket of paint at them and then nothing else happens. It’s a standout statement by itself. Pinochet, of course, was the Chilean dictator who was responsible for the death of 2300 and the torture of 30,000 of his own people.

See, the thing is, I thought that Madonna had basically run out of steam and was outsourcing cool to several high impact 25 year olds in New York but she’s still got something going on if she is still annoying the Church. Although, it must be said that it is just the ever media attention hungry Catholic church who have a history of defining childish inanity on the world stage (see this year’s World Youth Day where they dragged a corpse half way round the world to Australia and then had a condom exclusion zone initiated for the Pope) so getting a slap on the wrist from them is like getting into a fight with Ann Coulter – it’s really just about the air time. Similarly, the Catholic official is clearly insane as he can’t see the problem with condemning Madonna and honouring Pinochet. I can’t even believe I had to write that to clarify.

So, in short: congrats to Madonna for the cultural endorsement that comes from a slap of the wrist from the Catholic church but it’s still not quite up to the standard she was once at and Catholic church; stop doing anything you freaking insane weirdo child molesters. [source]

2008-12-11T16:18:00.000-05:00

Twelve months ago Britney Spears was in the middle of a free-fall meltdown that seemed to exemplify what happens to a human after she has been beholden to the limitless inhuman expectations that America places on its pop cultural icons. But that was then.

Now, as Christmas is only 2 weeks away, mademoiselle is fully recuperated – although I watched the MTV documentary about her which while, beautifully shot, didn’t mention her mother once and had her crying about being isolated because she is too famous to go anywhere which is a claim I’m not so sure I buy. You can orchestrate your own disappearance even if it takes a little while. I’m not so convinced she really does want to escape the glare of the spotlight that made her flip out and shave her head.

That’s why it’s intriguing that, in this completely bright and polished re-envisioning of Britney Spears that frighteningly doesn’t really differ at all from the Britney Spears she was before she flipped out as the full horror of last year unfolded for her, with her amateur style video where she stands, badly lit in front of a Christmas tree with her two boys – one of whom is disinterested enough to wander off during the message, and wishes everyone a merry Christmas – I’m reminded of the extremely neat Christmas messages of Joan Crawford and the boiling rage that flowed beneath the surface of them. It’s that instant link that my mind makes that leads me to believe Ms Spears, with her constant rocking and choice of lighting, may not be as together as her publicist would have us believe. Thank goodness.

2008-12-10T16:44:00.002-05:00

Oh Look. After yesterday’s news that Mariah Carey is probably pregnant, more people are having children in lieu of putting out albums. People Magazine reports that Ricky Martin just had two with a surrogate mother and OK reports that Avril Lavigne, for want of something to do that doesn’t involve causing people to vomit with rage at the preposterousness of her mere existence (which is why she must have ruled out making another album) is denying rumours that she is pregnant which could mean that she is because as we know – you can’t keep the media AS interested in your pregnancy if you just admit to being pregnant. This way, celebrity culture journalists can go NUTS speculating over whether people are or aren’t pregnant and the ball can keep rolling.

Speaking of children, congratulations to Faith over at DyslexicChicken.com who just had a stunning baby boy and I’m fairly certain her new son is hardly in place of an album she could have put out. This child=album theory really only applies to lazy famous musicians and movie stars. Faith was probably working on an album as she actually gave birth. [source] [source]

2008-12-10T16:13:00.002-05:00

Page Six reports that while Tom Cruise is on a damage control mission and he’s basically apppearing on every show that will have him to talk about his upcoming movie, Valkyrie, he lost his Blackberry. Under his direction, United Artists has produced a series of pretty dreadful films and his production partner of ages past, Paula Wagner has stopped working with him. Most of this is because he’s insane and really good a playing a totally charming leading man in public. Blackberry loss aside, essentially the point of this story is that Tom Cruise is really doing the rounds, using his celebrity power to try and dazzle people into being interested in Valkyrie. I’m not even sure why everyone thinks that Valkyrie is going to be SO bad anyway.. I mean, sure Cruise doesn’t bother to do a German accent, or even an English one for the German character he plays but that doesn’t mean the film really is ludicrous.

So, he’s even departing from his usual focus of middle aged women to stoop down and appear on the shockingly pointless After The Hills talk show – a show devoted entirely to speculation about what is going to happen on The Hills hosted by two eternally pepped up, dead behind the eyes LA actor wannabes who are doing the show with genuine intense interest because they’re just so grateful to have work. Here’s his utterly needless segment where he talks about how, as a man, you’re meant to give the woman the wedding of her dreams:

The interesting thing about Cruise losing his Blackberry though, is that now someone out there has a whole chunk of evidence about what exactly goes on for real behind the curtain of Tom Cruise, not just his contracted wives and children. So far, nothing has been reported. [source]

2008-12-09T17:05:00.001-05:00

The New York Times reports that Oprah Winfrey is now 40 pounds heavier than she was in 2006 and she is “embarassed” and “mad” at herself. She’s mad at herself primarily because she has all the tools and did not follow her own fundamental rule of taking care of self first.
It’s such a useful time for Oprah to renew her human side and to get a bit of national press coverage that focuses directly on an issue that her demographic all totally relate to. The Times piece goes on to mention that her upcoming project “Best Life Week” starts on January 5. Perfect timing. Oprah really is a mastermind and she should be listened to on all matters.
She is at once both pop cultural mega-deity and regular human. Now we can all tune in to see her agonise over her weight, watch the audience sigh with relief that they are just like her, listen to her figure out what to do and complain about how boring food is (just like us!) and all the while she will keep ad sale revenues up. Doesn’t that make her a more sophisticated Tyra Banks?
Excellent work. [source]

2008-12-09T16:53:00.001-05:00

The Post reports that Pamela Anderson was all over the place at the weekend in Miami. She was covered in weird bruises, passed out at a party for a while, got smashed, made out with Stephen Dorff and then made out with a guy who wasn’t Stephen Dorff. Ok, so first things first – THIS is where Stephen Dorff has been for the past however long?

I always really liked his hair in the 90s and there’s something attractive about him in a genuine, ongoing way. I wasn’t aware that he was about, as they say. “Are you about, Stephen Dorff?” Ha ha ha…. His imdb page says he has been working steadily in a list of things but none of them resonated with me on any real level.

So, it’s nice that Pam Anderson can let us know where Stephen Dorff has been. She smoked him out of his cave, so to speak.

Anyway – also – what a shame about good old Pam Anderson as well. I mean, she’s always been a bit of a class act as far as I’m concerned and here she is looking like a weirdly morphed, angry doll as she passes out and makes out with people who both are and are not Stephen Dorff. Apart from anything else, it’s clear her virtue is hardly intact. But then, I guess this kind of breakdown had to happen at some point because when your entire life is based on the fact that you have breasts and you look a certain way – there’s only a margin of control you have over your livelihood and you must always be staring at a pretty bleak future once everything falls. Which it now apparently is. [source]

2008-12-09T16:37:00.002-05:00

The New York Post reports that Mariah Carey is probably pregnant because she was seen coming out of of an ob/gyn’s office holding some kind of paper and a group of people waiting to meet her outside cheered when she held up the paper.
Mariah Carey having a child is going to be far more narcissistic and insane than J Lo having a child but it will be along the same basic lines. It will be an open casting call for whatever it is the opposite of mourners are called…heralders, I guess. Heraldic beasts will also be in attendance as will a river of pure kitten and rainbow velvet.

I think having a kid for these women is easier than putting out an album. They just get knocked up, deny everything for months for some reason – probably because it keeps the media guessing and writing about it – and then when they are about to give birth they buy a small island, overhaul it, give birth and sell the photos to the highest bidder and while they're recuperating they have enough surgery to make them look essentially the way they did before they went under.

With an album you have to work with a whole lot of people, pay a lot of money, actually perform, settle on creative decisions. It’s just exhausting.

With a kid though, sure you’re risking your marketable body and sure you’ll have some human to take care of – in a legal sense – but at least you don’t have to get out of bed. Having a kid is something to do when you’re completely creatively barren. I mean, isn’t that why straight guys in their late twenties who studied engineering as an undergraduate course and, by the age of 24 have lives that resemble their baby boomer, middle aged parents do it? It’s something else to do. It’s like getting married, buying a car or smoking crack and winding up in jail. Sometimes, having a kid is what stops the sides from touching. Plus, for Carey’s husband, a kid is his ticket to easy street for the rest of his life. [source]

2008-12-08T18:03:00.003-05:00

New York Magazine reports that Fran Drescher wants to fill the New York Senate seat that Hillary Clinton is about to leave vacant now that she will be joining President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet as Secretary of State.

“I was thinking I’d take the next four years to lay some groundwork, but I’m throwing my hat in the ring.” What else makes her a good candidate? “I’m an authentic and honest person,” she said. “And I think Capitol Hill needs more of that.”

I’m not sure exactly what my take on this is but the reason I thought it was interesting was because I went to a party two years ago with her and she told me she just bought an Egon Schiel. She is also in pretty good shape and she doesn’t always talk that way. You know, that way? The nasal thing? Her real voice is a lot less skull penetrating and I think when you combine those three things alone, she will be a fine senator. Look at her in the image above, for example. Why, from the look on her face you just know she's thinking of a couple of new things to do; staring up there to the right where all the ideas are. She's looking up there to find a new idea and she's got a little smirk and a playfully flirty top on. All those things are important and indicative of her ability to inspire change and fun. Good on YOU, Fran Drescher. If I could vote I probably would vote for you.

I mean, what else is she doing? She told me she has an assistant too so I mean, she’ll need to do something that includes enough work for two and being a senator in New York may be just the thing. [source]

2008-12-08T17:30:00.002-05:00

Page Six eye rollingly reports that “NOW that Kristin Scott Thomas (above) has the potential to be an Oscar and a Tony winner, well-heeled New Yorkers all want a piece of her.” And the thing that immediately came to mind about this is that I’m unsure how many ways I can explain that this is wrong. It’s not NOW that New Yorkers want a piece of Kristin Scott Thomas because of her awards, Americans have always felt this weird colonial, Boston Tea Party need to scramble for her approval. Kristin Scott Thomas is everything Americans feel inferior to in an English person. She’s a generally pretty reserved, talented, ageless and beautiful, effortlessly bilingual, fashionable and chic actor and she lives in France even though she’s English. What the fuck? Whoa, where? Hang on…she lives in France?

I remember watching her co presenter at an awards ceremony trip over himself to vomit compliments at her as they stood together at a lecturn and she stood there and thanked him gracefully without losing a skerrick of her composure. He, an American, who was no doubt her professional equal himself, suddenly acted like the ground had falled out from underneath him. It was like he just needed to feel equal to her but never felt he could. Watching that, I felt like he was representative of all Americans in front of Kristin Scott Thomas. And the thing is, I went to see her in a French murder mystery at BAM a few months ago and she was fine in it, I guess, but the film was inane.

Regardless, if you need any more evidence that America has this weird inferiority complex to the British that they balance out by being publicly bigger and stronger then the Post’s photo of her should clear that up. Here is the Post – New York’s idiot everyman paper – running a nothing piece about how elite New Yorkers all want a piece of an award-winning serious British actor and the photo they put in has her eyes buried in a sea of whitened wrinkles and her teeth are a yellowed set of unwashed miniature plates stacked inside her head. It’s not hard to find a flattering shot of Kristin Scott Thomas and yet, here the Post is making sure they pull her down.
So. No. It is not NOW that Kristin Scott Thomas has the potential to be an Oscar and Tony winner that New Yorkers want a piece of her, it’s always been that way. It was probably that way for Julie Andrews although from what I would like to imagine, Julie Andrews has a mouth her like a trucker and I’m certain that would have disarmed a few Americans upon impact. [source]

2008-12-08T17:14:00.000-05:00

Here’s the music video for Andy Samberg’s new clever straight male humour single “Jizz in my Pants” which is actually not so bad. There’s really only so much South Park humour I can take and Samberg’s stuff is always either completely and utterly jaw droppingly terrible or it’s clever Comedy Central humour where you’d put it on late at night and the Army would intersplice it with ads so they can catch the pot smoking non-college kids who still live at home but I mean, sure, it’s fine. Except for his Mark Wahlberg piece which was funny but, actually still kind of one note. You could actually play this in a club and it would work. Plus, it spirals into something essentially absurd towards the end which makes it palletable.

The other thing I realised about Andy Samberg is that he does these songs and they’ve always been about getting high or they’re about “hey look at my crotch” and maybe that’s because he only sporadically comes up with anything at all and when he does he wants to hammer it home by tying it to his power source which is that there’s something crippling hot about him. It is undeniable. Even to someone who has no trouble denying it the hottness of Samberg is undeniable.

2008-12-06T09:44:00.003-05:00

I swear to GOD, getting a new computer I didn’t pay for has been a trial. Not as much of a trial as it was to have my hard drive and then backup flash drive stolen but I’ve been on the phone to tech people in India all day trying to figure out how to install various softwares and Vista IS as annoying as people say despite the admittedly genius Mojave ads. Whatever.

So, anyway – here are three fascinating things.

1) Tom Cruise and Kate Holmes (because her name is Kate as she is a woman, not a child on an adolescent TV show. She is also a genuine adult wife. A Wife. Of a Man. A Man who is married. To his wife. She is the wife. Got it?) are in the New York Times Style Magazine this week and someone from Cruise’s camp must still have the ability to hold a gun to the head of the press while they write crap about how legitimate the relationship between Cruise and Holmes is. It’s a full on multi media presentation done by the Times about the life and work of Cruise. Watch the video file, he ccomes across like an animated senator. Ok, wow, that would be interesting. Tom Cruise running for the senate. Excellent. [source]

2) OJ Simson got at least 15 years in prison. I bet he’d get 16 but only because someone else had said 15. So, I really knew it was something anchored in the number 15. No idea how. Probably because I went to the gym in the morning today and then had lemon and apple juice. The interesting thing about this is that this sentence has to be include residual animosity from the jury and judge for the way he got off in his murder trial. Also, it really seems totally reasonable to suggest that he won’t make it out of jail for some reason. He’s looking, right now, at the way in which he will die. How calming. [source]

3) While I find it sort of interesting to think about the fact that Sarah Palin’s kid was perhaps not really her kid and could have been her daughters because, as porn star Owen Hawk pointed out to me, incest is more prevalent than you think and it seems possible that Bristol and the older son could have had sex – the overwhelming reality about Sarah Palin is that she needs to be ignored and America needs to move on – as it has selected to do by electing Barack Obama. Thank Crap.

Bless Andrew Sullivan then, for staying HARD CORE on the case with a blog entry today about the mystery surrounding Sarah Palin’s alleged pregancy earlier this year and how it might not have been legitimate. I mean, someone has to.

Sullivan writes:

I begged the McCain campaign by private email and in a private meeting to give me something - anything - to kill the story off. I promised to run any evidence that would blow this out of the water. That offer still stands. Please make me look like an idiot for asking these questions.

The thing is, maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. Sarah Palin was a tool used by a desperate and cynical John McCain because she represented the basest narcissistic desires of Americans and McCain’s investment in her did not pay off. Isn’t that embarassing and crap enough to essentially let her be and stop paying attention. She is, after all, like Dina Lohan. She just wants attention and when you stop paying attention she will dissolve. [source]

2008-12-04T16:16:00.002-05:00

I just downed an espresso from the ever rancid Starbucks across the road and therefore the images of Madonna’s Louis Vuitton campaign really only form a fragment my current focus.

While in England, I got back into the habit of drinking several espressos a day (which is to say that I effectively relapsed) – partly because there was some extraordinary coffee available at the Borough Markets, across the road from where my friend Sio lives which is where I was staying.

The trouble with me drinking that much espresso, of course, is that it completely splinters my consciousness and I can barely remember anything but the relentless screams of my inner rage and whatever sparkly poodle runs in front of me. Plus, even in London, on coffee; every shadow is a mean spirited rat.

SO, yeah, here’s Madonna and her Louis Vuittonness. Ha ha, old bag selling old bags, something about gristle and muscle and surgery and how much work it takes to get a cow to look that good. Excellent. Prophesy fulfilled. Genius. Actually, she looks alright. Clearly, these are professional shots.

Here’s the interesting thing though; when I was in Bath, England on Sunday I went into a pharmacy with Sio and we looked at all the fragrances you could buy and I actually think that half of them – on an entire wall of fragrances – were named after celebrities. David Beckham, J Lo, Mariah Carey, Paris Hilton, Kate Moss blah.. . What the hell is WITH that? The profit you can make on a fragrance is huge because fragrances are total hype. Liquid smell that becomes a blank canvas for a cultural gesture costs nothing and has a seemingly limitless range of potential manifestations. Calvin Klein made his most recent fragrance about hip online Williamsburg culture, Mariah Carey makes hers about unicorns and vaguely ethnic ghetto sex, Paris Hilton makes hers about cheap, denial laced, imperious, pornographic glamour, Kate Moss makes hers about a gay centric throw back to the 90s by default but with a top note of low rent trash etc.

Who buys this shit? Not me. I actually have 5 fragrances, none of which I purchased, and they are on an admittedly absurd display in my bathroom because I thought it looked like a semi-effective attempt at zen, clear surfaces. Actually, that’s not true. I bought the Paco Rabanne while escaping the Venezuela jungle with my ex. It doesn’t work to escape WITH who you’re trying to escape – that’s the lesson I learned from that trip. Still, because we spent time in an airport in South America trying to be civil I now get to smell alright whenever I want.

See how this plays out? You’ve got Madonna, celebrity fragrances, inner rage, arbitrarily emphasised details, a tiny bit of amateur cultural deconstruction, South American drama. Still; it’s either this or some kind of durge. [source]

2008-12-04T14:21:00.000-05:00

There’s really nothing like a quality collaboration between unlikely teams. I am personally always partial to one of those sitcoms from the later half of the 20th Century where people from totally different shows meet up and hang out. Right now, for example, I’m thinking about the The He-Man Christmas Special. I was anyway, but this music video really makes it seem relevant because it was almost inane to see the rippling machine made body of He Man standing next to Santa Claus but underneath the inanity there was a certain allusion to unity. Here’s a section of it. I can’t get past how reassuring the woozy, crap soundtrack is.

That’s why the new music video for LCD Sound System’s “New York, I Love You…” that features Kermit the Frog is more or less enjoyable. It’s certainly not overtly disappointing. I’ll give it that.
I mean, you can tell it’s not the REAL Kermit because there’s some complication going on with the green fabric neck but I mean, the point is there and sometimes that’s enough. Kermit himself is a symbol of simple clarity that has come from an urban environment.
This isn’t the first time Kermit has dabbled in a melancholy repertoire and I would put that down to the fact that his life as a children’s television star probably required a lack of emotional balance in him. Below is Kermit’s cover of Hurt. It’s less soul wrenching than the Johnny Cash cover but then, Kermit is, when you get down to it, actually little more than a mass of green fabric with some good intentions projected onto him.
Still, it makes it viable that the pure sanitation of children’s television isn’t a sanctified bubble within which nothing complex, realistic or dark ever happens and vice versa and while that may not be such great news for the kids, it’s fine by me.

2008-11-20T14:09:00.002-05:00

I have to get packed because I’m going to London tomorrow morning at an ungodly hour. I was however, interested to note two things that Post had published today. The first is that Guy Ritchie is fine with not taking any money from Madonna, he just wants joint custody of the two boys, David and Rocco. Madonna’s daughter Lourdes will apparently live with her in the United States in a living set up that will eventually dissolve into a contemporary version of the Mommie Dearest saga and the boys will go back and forth racking up frequent flier miles and getting out at just the moment either parent gets to be unbearable. It does seem clear that Guy Ritchie is the more civil of the two but did we really need confirmation of that? Apparently Madonna’s only friends are her stylists. That is a surefire indication of an inner chasm. The best part is the earnest commenter who wrote:

steveack wrote:
once again, i ask. just why is this non story on the front page? has the post turned into a supermarket rag? the comings and goings of this "star" belongs on the gossip page, not page one!
11/20/2008 10:07 AM EST

Take heart, Steveack. I’m sure this is just a slip up. Before long they’ll be back on track and you’ll see the Post as the pinnacle of unbiased journalism you’ve come to so reasonably rely on. Supermarket rag? Certainly not. General use rag? Maybe. [source]

2008-11-20T14:06:00.002-05:00

Following on from the media’s relentless portrayal of the Obama family as the great black hope for the future of the world and all generations to come in every facet of culture, the Post reports that Avon will be producing a book called “The Michelle Obama Style Guide”. This is probably about as pop as the US can get when it comes to the First Lady– in light of a comparison to say, Carla Bruni’s recent album release. However, half of the credit for the injection of fashion inspiration Michelle Obama seems to embody should go to Laura Bush. Next to Laura Bush’s brown, school teacher smock the other day, a taxidermied sloth would look like a Chanel gown. [source]

2008-11-19T16:37:00.002-05:00

The Post reports that the most idiotic of the Baldwin brothers, Stephen, has admitted he has a lot of respect for Barack Obama even though, traditionally he’s a delusional religious Republican.
"Obama is obviously talented and intelligent, and I have great respect for the man. He's got my full support, and I'm gonna be praying for him and his administration."

This comes after he announced on Fox News that he would leave the country if Obama won and he also stated that he considered Obama a “cultural terrorist”.

I’m actually a real fan of Alec Baldwin right now. He’s majestic and informed and outspoken. His work on 30 Rock is genuinely funny. Sure he’s a little large but he’s large in that French, majestic way. Stephen Balwin’s primary asset, on the other hand, was his bubble ass about 10 years ago. He’s now fat and delusional and has out dated hair. I’m not interested in him and he should stop talking. [source]

2008-11-19T16:20:00.003-05:00

People Magazine’s sexiest man for 2008 is Hugh Jackman and without doubt, at this point he's a more interesting choice than George Clooney or Brad Pitt. You know what would really have thrown a spanner in the works? If they named Justin Gaston the Sexiest Man. Who would be expecting that? And what a rags to riches tale! One minute he’s essentially not famous and the next he’s a 20 year old in a relationship with a 15 year old Disney tycoon and BANG, king of the world. It's the American dream!

Plenty of important people are going to sound off about Hugh Jackman being the sexiest man and I can't wait. Philip Bloch maybe, Carmen Electra, Patti Smith, Vivien Leigh. Important, informed and interesting people. And with good reason too. It’s an important topic. Truthfully, I think Hugh Jackman seems like a lovely and attractive married guy. He’s the only actor who has done action movies AND been a leading man on Broadway in a musical. Additionally, I think a lot of my disdain for everything today is because I keep eating Swedish fish. They are sitting here in a bulk container and so I just grab a few and chew on them. Needlessly. Consequently, my emotional state and sugar levels are like a roller coaster. Yes, it’s needlessly unpleasant but I DO think it keeps me guessing as to what will happen next. Anything could. [source]

2008-11-19T16:11:00.001-05:00

Miley Cyrus was on Ellen and she acted like a complete tool. Ellen asked her if her pederast, social climbing boyfriend Justin Gaston was actually her boyfriend and she giggled and contorted herself like a child wanting to get out of a car seat after a long road trip. Miley Cyrus has the laugh of a forty year old smoker on helium. Whatever that means.

Every time I see Cyrus I am convinced she will have a Britney-esque breakdown at some point. She’s being allowed to date a 20 year old, her parents are reliant on her, she’s got to be a Christian virgin even though she’s probably neither. It will come crashing down eventually. My favourite part of the interview is the part where she says she likes that fact that Justin Gaston is Christian because that’s something important to her. Remind me, is she running on a Republican platform or is she just a reluctant child whore. At her age, if she’s successful, its usually hard to tell.

2008-11-18T17:01:00.001-05:00

The Post reports that Madonna is the new face of Louis Vuitton for 2009. Last year they got Keith Richards. Both are unusual choices for a luggage company seeing as they both either resemble old leather or are considered tough and baggish. Madonna was apparently paid 10 million dollars for her likeness. Phew. I was worried she would be underpaid.

Maybe Louis Vuitton thinks there’s some alignment between their brand and old iconic musicians. Ie. Our luggage is timeless and iconic. I can see that being the point of a pitch meeting but ultimately, right now when I think of Madonna I think of gristle. I cannot deny that. Also, I think of frog legs. Her arms are oddly frog leg like.

When I think of Keith Richards I think of a very dry apple with a hat on it. I also think of smoke clouding an already cremated lung.

To link those two images to Louis Vuitton luggage is mildly absurd to me. Mind you, I have pretty much nothing riding on it because I will probably never be able to justify spending 4000 dollars on a handbag.

Someone near me is listening to lite jazz, elevator music for fun and I really understand my reaction to that now. It’s never been clearer: listening to elevator music, the kind you’d hear in an elevator where it pipes out the crap, Florida pastel sax version of “the Girl from Ipanema” for apparent enjoyment is actually more traumatizing to me than confronting the chaotically dark reality that religion is the product of a fear of death. Give me nothing before you give me elevator music. [source]

2008-11-18T16:50:00.001-05:00

Tyra Banks has always had this uncanny ability to be the gutter dwelling lowest common denominator when it comes to what she creates for culture. She is like a mix of Oprah and Jerry Springer but with far more Jerry Springer than Oprah and I have always found her incessant, unironic demands for attention to actually be embarrassing to watch. I mean, I don’t watch – particularly after she started shrieking about her “fat ass”. Oh, GOD I don’t care Tyra.

So now according to Queerty, she’s giving away a sex change operation on her show to tranny model Isis from America’s Next Top Model which I guess constitutes some kind of first and for that reason we should all pay attention in the way I am right now. Or something like it.

Let’s hope they televise the entire thing in full make up. Actually, I hope Tyra manages to somehow insert herself into the surgery footage. She’ll sit there, brushing her hair back past her ear as they reassign Isis’ gender. Isis is out cold in Montreal and Tyra is sitting there doing her thing. Giving the people what they want. More Tyra. Obviously. [source]

2008-11-18T11:41:00.003-05:00

The radio show I do on East Village Radio with Daniel Nardicio was canned yesterday because the station was offended by something Daniel said. They confiscated the show we recorded on November 8 and have refused to give it back. We just sent out a press release about it and the attached photo is from the photo shoot we did last night with ace photographer Greg Thompson.

After four years of broadcasting the wildly popular nightlife talk show DList Radio, East Village Radio has cancelled the show after a scandalous incident on the episode recorded for broadcast on November 8.

The show, a very popular podcast on iTunes, has been called “Party Monster meets The View” and “Gay Howard Stern” in the media. Despite all of this attention, EVR station manager Jorge DoCouto deemed it necessary to bring Nardicio in to the station and berate him for producing a show the station considers "inappropriate", "offensive" and "no good".

“He was seriously going off the handle about how there was no line I wouldn’t cross and no offensive thing I wouldn’t say which is absolutely untrue. It’s a gay shock jock type show; that’s the format- don’t they listen to radio?”

During the as yet un-aired November 8 show which features interviews with comedians Booth and Pat, the band The Tigerlillies, clown porn star Dick Chibbles and an interview with Dr Poussait, a French anthropologist who studies the similarities between Bonobo apes and Homos, hosts Daniel Nardicio and Matt Phillp discussed how enamored Nardicio was with the station’s sound technician “Joe” and afterwards, the show was mysteriously unavailable online.

“I called the station the next morning to find out where our show was because it is always on iTunes immediately after we record it live on Saturday nights,” says Nardicio. “I was told the show had been lost.”

Nardicio and Phillp apologized to “Joe” for the offending remarks and even offered to edit the “offensive” bit out if the station would broadcast the November 8 show. East Village Radio refused. Nardicio and Phillp then asked several times for East Village Radio to return the recording of the November 8 show and they not only refused, they reacted by canceling the show.

“Based on the station’s support of our celebrity interviews, our top iTunes rating, the fact that we’re syndicated on other web radio sites like QNationFM.com in Cleveland and feedback from fans, we're pretty confident we're neither “inappropriate”, “offensive” or “no good”,” says co-host Matt Phillp.

D List Radio was featured in the Village Voice’s Best of New York for 2008 and has recently broadcast interviews with celebrities like Rue McClanahan, Michael Musto, Elijah Wood, Lady Gaga, Alison Moyet and Fred Schneider - many of whom EVR were proud enough to advertise on eastvillageradio.com's homepage.

“What confuses me is that EVR’s official party line is that they’re “community based” and “East Village” yet when I was dressed down I was told our show was too much for the “new” East Village, which caters to yuppies who have moved in to live the generic Carrie Bradshaw dream rather than do something genuinely interesting,” says Nardicio. “EVR is doing exactly what so many East Village businesses are doing; they’re trying to make it more like the Meat Packing District, and our show is directly counter to that movement."

The show, which will be going on the road this fall with their road version called “Fairy Home Companion” will be making an announcement after Thanksgiving about their exciting new NYC home for the show.

“Regardless, Matt and I are still doing the show live at Sugarland in Williamsburg this Friday with Robbyne Kaamil, Bianca del Rio and DJ Aaron Elvis,” says Nardicio. “Legal proceedings to retrieve the confiscated show are also underway and to help us finance this free speech lawsuit you can purchase a “I fucked Joe” at www.theDshop.com starting this Friday and all our shows are now available at www.dlistradio.com. Well, all except the Nov 8 show. So far."

2008-11-17T16:07:00.002-05:00

Ok, actually, one more. DJ Aaron Elvis pointed this youtube clip out to me last night as we stood in a secret speakeasy and it reminded me why Amy Sedaris is important. She is important as a cultural entity and as an iconoclast. I would like to eat dinner with her now. I also really think Chelsea Handler can be hit or miss and it was clear she was weirded out that she was by far the less funny of the two.

2008-11-17T16:02:00.001-05:00

Paul Rudd was on SNL on the weekend and he did the scene above with Andy Samberg and it was genuinely funny. It’s such a weird surprise when Andy Samberg does funny things because he’s generally kind of innocuous and used as filler. The entire episode was extremely gay what with the unpleasantness of Prop 8 coming to fruition during the week. Maybe there's hope for Samberg yet. He has an unmistakably good neck.

I have to take care of a lot of stuff today because tomorrow I’m part of a big press announcement and so that's it for Monday. That’s really vague and non-committal but that’s how it has to be right now. Something pretty appalling happened today so stay tuned to find out what. It’s actually pretty amazing that it DID happen in light of the cultural outrage over Prop 8 in California. That's all I'm saying. Oooooh, how intriguing.