Like a Bicycle Needs a Fish

Guy Ritchie's Devil on the Right Shoulder: "Dude, you SO scored!
It's MADONNA, man!"
Guy Ritchie's Angel on the Left Shoulder: "Run, Guy, run. NOW."

Two things I love about S.B. One, he usually only talks when he has something to say, and Two, when he has something to say, he's a crackerjack at distilling an issue down to its essentials.

Especially when it comes to my obsession with celebretards, which has caused the kind of long-suffering eye-rolling in the man that even my shoe fetish can't touch.

For instance, on Brad Pitt's leaving Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie: "Duh. Angelina's waaaaay hotter."

Now, on the Madonna/Guy Ritchie bust up: "Duh. That woman is more trouble than she's worth."

So, Party People, what's your best, one-sentence piece of self-evident relationship advice that most of us tend to ignore?

No, But I Did See the Movie

You know, for a writer with aspirations of one day publishing one of the forty million crap novels I have languishing on my hard drive, I sure don't read a lot of contemporary literary fiction. That's because I think most of it is pretty lame-o.

Recently, my feelings were confirmed by one of my fave crap magazines of all time, Entertainment Weekly. Of their recent listing of the 100 Best New Literary Classics of Last 25 Years, I've read, oh, maybe a tenth of one percent.

But I've seen every single one of their 100 Best Movies.

That's because in almost every case these days, it seems, the movie ends up being better than the book. You couldn't prod me to read the Lord of the Rings trilogy for all the Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby in the world, but I thought the movies were nothing less than breathtakingly epic. Same goes for No Country For Old Men (we'll get to McCarthy's books in a second). About the only exception to this rule that I can think of is The Golden Compass, which sucks major ass. The only entertaining thing about it is:

A. Scoping out what, exactly, Nicole Kidman has had done to her face (Ah, hah! There, see, she raised a brow!)


and

B. Trying to decide if Daniel Craig is, indeed, über hawt or only meh-I'd-do-him-in-a-pinch-I-guess hawt.


Sorry, where was I?

Oh. So, I couldn't disagree more vehemently with Entertainment's choice of the number one best books in the last 25 years than if you'd suddenly pitched Moi into a room full of Marxists who were all wearing Crocs and gypsy skirts.

Why? Because Entertainment magazine's pick for best book is, steady now, Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Yup. That's a big 10-4 WTF!?!?

Let me cut to the chase: In my opinion, Cormac McCarthy is no writer. Yes, I said it. He may be a thinker, and, as such, reveals an unusual willingness to take Big Mac-sized bites out of grand themes like good versus evil, man versus nature, fate versus free will. But he executes those themes with all the elegance of a third grader wielding a Sharpie to illustrate what mommy made him for breakfast that morning. McCarthy doesn't write so much as he lists. And he does so with such joyless, humorless determination, one has to wonder if his preoccupations are more sadistic than they are redemptive.

And my Gah do the critics just dribble themselves silly extolling the virtues of McCarthy's "economic" style. Puhleeze. There's economic and then there's downright stunted. Take Hemingway, for instance. That man put the curt in economic for sure. But he was also elegant and eagle-eyed, every word serving both form and function. Witness his cut-to-the-chase description of Francis Macomber's wife in one of the finest short stories ever written. After a couple short paragraphs of spot on observations about her hard-heartedness, he sums her up by calling her, "simply enameled in that American female cruelty."

That's so excruciatingly well done, it makes me never want to pluck at another keyboard for the rest of my life and just go sell candy at the mall.

McCarthy, however, gives me hope.

Check this out:

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.

That, Party People, is The Road's freakin' opening sentence. A sentence so clunky and tongue twisting, it just makes me want to throw the whole thing into the compost pile where all those clunky little words will thankfully decompose and bring their beauty not to the world of words, but to my basil plants instead.

Wait, though; it gets better. Check out what passes for dialogue in Cloud Cuckoo McCarthy Land:

Can I ask you something? he said. Yes. Of course. Are we going to die? Sometime. Not now. And we're still going south. Yes. So we'll be warm. Yes. Okay. Okay what? Nothing. Just okay. Go to sleep. Okay. I'm going to blow out the lamp. Is that okay? Yes. That's okay. And then later in the darkness: Can I ask you something? Yes. Of course you can. What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too. So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you. Okay.

Whoa. Not only is McCarthy smoking some pretty good weed, his editor is for sure whacked on crack. 'Cause that shit don't float unless you're high on drugs and sporting an extremely itchy case of The Emperor's New Clothes.

So what do I think is the greatest book written in the past twenty-five years? To me, it's a three way tie between Lonesome Dove, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and Bonfire of the Vanities. Where did they fall on Entertainment magazine's list? #24, #73, and #57, respectively. All behind Waiting to Exhale, which is a nifty lil' piece of Emancipated Chick Lit If You Happen To Like That Kind of Thing, but come on, and Jonathan Franz's The Corrections, a novel so stultifyingly insignificant that you need a microscope to plumb all one-quarter-of-an-inch of its depths.

Another surprise? Not a single book by James Lee Burke, in my opinion, one of the greatest writers putting words on paper today.

I swear, someone just needs to put me in charge of everything. Until then, I'm putting the book down and heading off to the movies.

The Black Hole Ate Moi's Homework

I read a statistic once that postulated that before we die, each of us spends on average, like, 1.5 bazillion hours of our lives either standing in line or waiting for service. Which is fine with me, because, hell, when else would I catch up on my crap magazine reading?

Some places, though, are better than others. At the top of my list: the Jiffy Lube on the corner of Menaul and Wyoming in Albuquerque's Northeast Heights. For a place run entirely by dudes, they nonetheless know their market and thus stock a wide variety of the best evah magazines ranging from the most up-to-date Peoples in existence (no six month lag for these guys, oh no) to Time, Newsweek, O, and even Vogue. Not a snooze-a-mooze parenting magazine in sight. No offense to parents, but really, if you're childless or empty-nested, not even the ads are interesting. And if you're a parent, I suspect the last thing you want to read about is even MORE parenting stuff. Admit it: You'd rather read about Jessica Simpson's botched boob job.

At the bottom of my list: my gyno. Whose magazine selection is all about the OB and never about the GYN. And if you're 5.7 minutes away from having yourself poked and prodded in that particular manner, you want aspirational magazines out in the waiting room. Not ones that remind you of why you're here. Listen, you OB/GYN magazine Nazis: we all know how we got here. So now, take us far, far away. Architectural Digest would be good. And heck, forget Vogue, if that's too much for you. Mademoiselle will do in a pinch. Can't go that girly? How about Golf magazine, fer crying out loud. But my gyno, despite my most gentle encouragements, never catches on. He just smiles and nods in that way that tells me when I open my mouth, all he hears is Charlie Brown's parents. Men.

Anyway, yesterday was doc appointment time por Moi and while in my dermo, I was happily heartened to spot this:



Nah, it wasn't Dwayne Johnson that caught my eye. Although I guess you could make a case for his sex appeal in that shiny-suited, head-to-toe reconstructed way today's porn stars are considered sexy, only minus the highlights and tacky-ass French manicure. I likewise spent only a couple seconds perusing Laird Hamilton's "Surf God Workout." Sweet jeebus, I thought only women were susceptible to fairytale bullshit about our bodies. The workout? Puhleeze. AB could eat Laird for lunch.

Nope, the article that caught my really real attention was on Garrett Lisi, a surf bum physicist who has come up with a totally new unifying theory of the universe that he calls E8, which basically says, String Theory, Schming Theory, where it's at is this: fitting together the four forces of physics — electromagnetic, strong nuclear, weak nuclear, and gravity — into an incredibly intricate shape that looks like something you might have created with your Advanced Spirograph kit in the fourth grade.

Another thing about Moi: I'm obsessed with the Big Picture. Every time one of those PBS specials on the universe comes on, I'm glued to the set. But this, ugh, I'm going to need years to grok to this particular bit of information. Go check it out for yourself and maybe together we can process all this into some cohesive understanding.

And while you're at it; riddle me this: Ever since S.B. installed satellite radio in the Mini Coop, it seems I hear Tori Amos's "Cornflake Girl", like, sixty bazillion times a day. So if you can get a finger's grasp on what Lisi is on to, can you perhaps explain to Moi just what in the hell the woman is talking about in this song?

The Writing on the Wall

Two years ago we had a February/March snow season like few I've seen around here. One storm after the other blew in, dropping twelve, fourteen, eighteen inches of snow at a time. Of course, working at home means I can usually get on the driveway pretty quickly, shoveling it clear in between bouts of work to ensure that I'll be able to escape to the wilds of civilization for Starbucks and sushi sometime before the Second Coming. (What about SB, you ask? Well, Party People, SB is rarely home during these monumental events, spring being the best time for him to go to work moving power across 'merica's midsection. And I have the upper body muscles to prove it.)

Anyway.

Not only does snow pile up on our driveway, it also piles up on our satellite dish. Those of you who work at home know how muy importante it is to have working television at all times. So, on with the snowsuit, the snow boots, and the long broom to make the dangerous trek out back to knock the snow off the dish. Halfway there, I heard it: a rumble like distant thunder and then a swooshy sound like sand being pushed by a wave breaking on shore. The sound was coming from above me and I looked up just in time to witness a huge chunk of eighteen inch high snow come rushing down off the roof to land on top of my head. The force knocked me to my knees, the snow covered me completely. But within seconds I put those shoveling muscles to use and was able to burst forth into the sunshine. And complete my mission to free my satellite dish from being likewise smothered so I could spend the afternoon watching Fashion Television.

Since people die in roof avalanches, come summer, we did the responsible thing and called ABC Roofing to install all new gutters and snow breaks. No more roof avalanches.

But I'll never forget that feeling – however momentary – of being buried alive. It sucked. But that's how I feel this week. Part of what I do for a living, other than coming up with my own words, is making the words of others sound much better(er). And that's what I'm doing this week. Fixing other people's words. Lots and lots of them. Which can actually be harder than coming up with ones of my own. Hence, the buried feeling.

So I got nothing much else, except to tell you that I'll be posting about Muffins on Da Baking Blob soon. Oh and this:

Beyonce and Jay-Z got married this weekend. Did you hear they had 100 bazillion Thai peasants pick with their 1,000 bazillion nimble Thai fingers over 100 trillion perfectly bloomed orchids to decorate Jay-Z's Tribeca loft as part of their Twu Wuv ceremony? Sweet jeebus, that's excessive. Even by Moi's whack ass excessive standards. Then again, what else would you expect from a woman who never met a prom dress gone horribly wrong that she didn't turn into a personal fashion statement?


About Jay-Z I have nothing to say. Except that it looks like he buys a lot of shiny, silky stuff. Does he rap?

Such a Succulent Sound

It is my greatest hope that now that über-gold-digger-cum-nasty-ass-bitch Heather Mills has received her divorce settlement from Paul "The nookie made me do it" McCartney, the first thing she does is go out and hire a good stylist.

Paging Heather: 1977 called. It wants its leisure suit back.

* * *

No, No. Please Don't Design

With apologies to Ms R for paraphrasing one of her post titles, you wanna know my greatest fashion pet peeve? When celebretards decide that just because they've paid their dues taking years of advice from some underweight, over-tanned bobble-headed stylist, they're all of a sudden qualified to leave the cozy nest and design their own line of clothing and accessories.

When, really, they should just stay home.

It always ends badly, proving Moi's Fashion Dictum #456:

Celebretard + Fashion Dabbling = Total Disaster

Just look at the sorry ass state of today's perfume industry. A market that used to be dominated by big, bold chypre/aldehyde/leather frags has been successfully skinkified by a plethora of nose-numbing fruity florals thanks to Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Mandy Moore. You know the world as we know it is about to fold when Guerlain, maker of such masterpieces a Mitsouko and L'Heure Bleue, suddenly decides it simply must capture the celebrity-inspired youth culture and puts out a strawberry-infused juice inspired by Hilary Swank.

Instead of doing what we used to do, which is buttoning ourselves up and letting our perfume (think: Caron Tabac Blond and Chanel No. 5) broadcast sex, sex, sex; today, every woman under the age of 80 is trying to rock a Hot Topic crop top, while their perfume says: bite me; I smell like a watermelon.

Still, the perfume industry is the least of my worries. What really has my engine cranked are celebrity clothing designers.

Check out this offering from P. Diddy/Sean John's Fall 2008 Collection.


Now, I ask you: In what universe – gay, straight, or sittin' on the fence – would wearing this outfit not be an occasion for sending the wearer straight to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, just sit your happy ass in there for a bit and think about what your utterly idiotic choice in clothing is going to do to the unsuspecting public?

About the only thing that sweater is good for is smuggling hamsters out of Syria.

How about this?


This sassy lil' number is from Gwen Stefani's Spring 2008 L.A.M.B. collection, which was dominated by, you got it, a naughty school girl theme. With some sequins tossed about here and there to keep the buyers at Neiman's from completely running screaming into the hills. They just got halfway there and said, "Meh, isn't Lindsay Lohan out of rehab by now?"

Look, I know, hell, I understand, that the vast majority of fashion design is about fantasy. It's okay if an outfit says, "If I were a countess slumming on Capri, I'd wear that dress." Or, "If I were a rock star, I'd for sure be purchasing those purple suede thigh high boots." Even, "If I were escaping from Bellevue, then I could see myself merrily skipping out the gates in that bubble skirt and shrunken cardigan."

But there's a big problem if your first thought is, "Wellllllllll, if I were from Mars . . ."

Some celebrities try to distract us by naming their clothing line something totally innocuous and unrelated to their celebrity. Like Jennifer Lopez's Sweetface and JustSweet labels. But she's not fooling Moi. I can sniff out a poorly constructed celebretard knockoff a mile away. With a raging head cold.


You can dress it up in shiny silver and cornea-searing apple green silk, but it's still a freakin' hoodie and tunic dress. And a couple of ho-hum ones at that.

And while I admire Kimora Lee Simmon's for her single minded dedication to grabbing life's gusto with both bejeweled hands (and of course her lucky ducky locking of lips with Djimon Hounsou), her Baby Phat design aesthetic is, to put it kindly, Über Trash on Wheels.


So here's another one of Moi's Fashion Dictums (#674):

The next time your fave celebrity comes along hocking their latest perfume/evening gown/camo cargo pant/bed linen, turn on your heels and walk away. Because, Party People, just as we do not want to go through life smelling like a bowl of fruit salad tossed with a hint of Glade bathroom freshener, neither do we want to look that way, either.

Jessica Alba is a Dumb C-Word

Because, obviously, she's too busy getting high (or spray on tanned or whatever it is movie stars do to la, la, la, la, la themselves through the empty spaces of their lives) to do more than superficially surf the town in which she's making yet another one of her crap-ass movies.

In an interview with TeenHollywood.com about her recent movie, The Eye, Alba says of Albuquerque, Moi's beloved hometown and the city where the movie was shot:

In Albuquerque there's really only one restaurant that's pretty good. You can only take Applebee's and Chili's so much. Our big day was hanging out at Walmart for five hours. It was like, 'Yeah Walmart!'

Obviously, the bitch has never heard of the fact that Albuquerque is one of the oldest and most historic, culturally diverse, architecturally stunning, and downright fascinating cities in the history of the universe.

Did she go downtown and see this,
one of the greatest extant examples of Pueblo/Deco architecture?

How about this, home of world famous iconoclastic architect, Bart Prince?

Did she climb this?

Visit here?

Shop these?

Dine here?

or here?

How about here?

(Oh, I forgot. Bitch don't eat.)

Did she take a stroll along here in the morning?

Cool off here in the afternoon?

Party here at night?

Did she buy any of this?

Or talk to them?

Obviously, not.

Look, I love the fact that Albuquerque is rapidly becoming a top notch movie-making destination. We even have some brandy new studios and Moi's very own father is making fine pocket cash as a movie extra. But actors are notoriously stoooopid and that we do not need. It's bad enough we have a pea-brained despot for mayor.

So please, all you Hollyweird folks: just do your job, spend your money, and then go home. And once back in Fantasy Island land? Keep your mouth shut.

'Tis Better to Give than to . . . Get Knocked Up?

(Goodness. What a morning. There I was, putting the finishing touches on Moi’s Christmas post, when the Today Show bombarded the airwaves with yet another shock and awe pronouncement: Britney Spear’s sixteen-year-old-sister, Jamie Lynn, has managed to get herself knocked up. Sweet Jeebus in Heaven, these girls are old enough to drop the equivalent of Peru’s GNP on Bottega Veneta bags and oversized Dolce and Gabbana eye wear, but they don’t know from birth control?

It’s taking a great amount of will for Moi to refrain from completely revamping this morning’s post. But because we’re in the middle of Advent here, Party People, a holy, holy time, I will place my commentary on said incident reluctantly on the back burner and save it for a later date [sloppy ass 'ho.])

* * *

The closer I get to the holidays, the more I start thinking about stress. The stress of extra work. Or not enough work because everyone has decided to adopt a cavalier attitude about deadlines (what, suddenly, we’re all European?). The stress of trying, when you have a fractured and far-flung family, to fit in days with the in-laws and days with the parents and days with the niece and days with friends.

Then there’s the stress that builds around gift giving. I know people who find this custom so meaningless, so mired in useless commercial excess, they don’t even stick around for the holidays but instead steal themselves away to some tropical beach or small overseas town where Christmas is more about praising Baby Jesus and stuffing one's face, and not so much about desperate, last minute purchases.

But you can’t escape Christmas. It’s like death and taxes, only sparklier and with more booze.

So I try hard, real hard, to turn the frown upside down and to view the holiday as a time of giving and gratefulness. As a time to honor one’s family, even crazy uncle Charlie with the grubby fingers and the weird politics. To call a long lost friend, even though the last time you spoke, they made fun of your shoes. To spend an afternoon – stone cold sober, mind you – letting a child run wild through Toys ‘R’ Us even if it ultimately means they choose one of those abhorrent Hannah Montana dolls over your suggested gift of an ant farm. And I try to spend even more time in the great outdoors, not just because exercise melts stress, but also to wonder all over again at the magic of creation that constructed itself just fine without concrete and glass. And to marvel at the concrete and glass, too, because they're also beautiful and also part of our world.

I also refuse to pass judgment on any gift I receive. Whether given out of obligation or irony or love, I will honor the fact that someone took the time to think of me, dip into their pocketbooks, and come up with something they think I’ll enjoy. Even if it’s a plastic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer who poops root beer flavored jellybeans. Even if, for some bizarre reason, something about Moi says Birkenstock rather than Blahnik.

And you know what else I won’t do? I won’t re-gift. Now that's a crass practice, right there. It’s one thing to say, “Hey, I got this laser-powered-toe-nail-clipper-blender-drink-maker-nylon-life-preserver-
sweater last year and you know, I just can’t use it. Would you like it?” And of course, it’s perfectly okay to just give the thing away to a local thrift shop in the hopes that it will become some else’s love at first sight. At a mere $1.99.

But it’s another thing entirely to package the thing up, re-wrap in brightly colored paper, stick a big fat red bow on it and pass it off to someone as something you picked out all by your lonesome. Talk about sin, Party People.

Don’t do it.

All I Want for Christmas

Dear Santa,
I know you’re taking up a lot of the slack for God this time of year, so before I add my own voice to the mix, may I just start by saying what a fine job I think you’re doing? Really. The Big Guy Upstairs should just go ahead and hire you on full time for the entire year. You know, kinda like a Heavenly Secretary of State, albeit without the Prada heels.

Anyway.

If you take a moment to look back through my history for the year and ignore that one teensy, eensy moment I had with the jerk off, er, impolite elderly gentleman, in front of me in line at Sam’s Club, you’ll see that my nice outweighed my naughty by what can only be considered a major improvement over last year.

With that in mind, I herewith present you with Moi's Christmas 2007 Wish List:

1. You know how you can innocently start off a Saturday night with a few slices of pizza, a couple beers, and a piece of chocolate raspberry blackout cake and then wake up on Monday morning, a mere two days afterward, and suddenly find five extra pounds attached to your happy ass? But then it takes a papal dispensation plus about five bazillion months of eating cardboard-flavored rice cakes to divest your ass of that extra weight? Well, I’d like that whole process reversed, por favor.

2. I want you to make Brad Pitt’s Christmas wishes come true. Not that I have any special fondness for Brad, mind you, and, no, my dislike has nothing to do with being on Team Anybody. I mean, I've been to Springfield, Missouri. All it takes is about 30 minutes inside one of their Steak ‘n’ Shakes to understand why Mr. Pitt let loose of that golden-glowed, Malibu-surfer-chick-meets-Dolce-and-Gabbana wife of his in favor of a woman whose personality is like one of those pousse-café drinks from Pat O’Brien’s in New Orleans: all kinds of multi-colored layers of C-R-A-Z-Y. The man was genetically predisposed to start slummin' at some point.

Nope, with his $500-an-hour personal trainer abs and the $10,000 a month he spends on bottles of what is basically tarted-up petroleum jelly to pamper his delicate facial skin, Mr. Pitt does a fine job all by his lonesome of making Moi go, meh. What I do like about him, however, is the very real passion he has for New Orleans, thoughtful urban development, and innovative architecture.

With those passions in mind, Mr. Pitt is pledging $5 million dollars of his own money and enlisting the assistance of innovative urban planners and architects from across the globe to raise enough money to build 150 new homes in New Orleans's Ninth Ward. All at the cost of about $150,000 each, a pittance by today's $2-bazillion-per-square foot Taco Bell Mansion standards. Still, it doesn't take a math wizard capable of carrying his zeros to know that's nonetheless some mighty mucho dinero right there, Party People.

As S.B. says, let's just forget for one moment Pitt's annoying ass celebrity. The man is doing what we Americans do best: instead of whining and crying and beating our breasts for our gub’ment to do something, we’re saying, fuck the gub’ment. We can do this ourselves. We can open our hearts and our pocket books, roll up our sleeves, and get down to the business of building something.

And sweet jeebus, just look at these homes. They’re so gorgemous, I want to buy one!


So, please, Santa, work some magic so these people who lost everything dear to them can once again know the solace and safety of Home.

3. And before you starting worrying, you can go ahead and slip Moi some of these while you're at it:

Yours in peace, joy, love, and (Christ)ian Louboutins,
Moi

The Day After

You know the problem with Thanksgiving?

The Day After.

Because the day after Thanksgiving, I always feel like such a slug. It's pretty tiring, all this merry thankfulness. 'Cause, you know, I'm thankful for just about everything. Well, except Crocs. Those can go.

How sluggish do I feel? So sluggish, I can't even walk the dog. I can't even muster up enough enthusiasm to finish my post on Elvis's jumpsuits. And I could not care less, less, Party People, that I am wearing every bit of fleece I own (well, to be fair, temps did plummet yesterday and it did snow overnight, so at least it's cold). Likewise, the fact that I could at this very moment be stalking the racks at the brand spanking new Anthropologie store in Albuquerque, taking advantage of a bazillion percent off that gorgemous Sleeping on Snow tunic sweater I've been itching for all fall, only makes Moi go: Meh. Where's my blankie?

But, all is not lost. In the hour and a half before LSU takes on Arkansas, I did manage to watch Evil Dead on satellite, a guilty pleasure for a sluggish day for sure, which led me to ponder the unsung pop cultural significance of Bruce Campbell's square-cut jawline. Which somehow led me to ponder this:



If you're going to name someone The Sexiest Man Alive, then for goodness sakes alive, you for ding dang sure better put a sexy photo of said winner on your cover! I loves me some Matt Damon as much as the next red-blooded film fan, especially when he gets all muscled up and steely-eyed for those Bourne movies. But here he looks less like a man of steel and more like a man who just finished dragging his ass at 2:00 a.m. to the nearest Wal-Fart for diapers for the Baby Bourne only to return home to a bloated Luciana screaming from the bedroom in Italian or Portuguese or whatever the heck her native language is for more Yoplait pronto.

Not. Sexy.

That's all.

Irony Much?

HOW DOES ONE GO FROM THIS:

TO THIS?

I dunno, but the Eric Cartman in Moi hasn't giggled this maniacally in ages.

And She Ran

She ran so far away.

Question is: Why didn't she just keep going?

'Cause that Cruisin' new haircut? It would send me screaming into the hills.

(Psssst: is it just Moi, or is this look perhaps a wee bit Clay Aiken?)

She's Praying to the Aliens

One of these days I will sit down and suss out why, oh why, I am so obsessed with Posh Spice. But this is not that day. Instead, I leave you with only this: proof positive that the woman is, indeed, from an entirely different planet.



P.S. And those shoes? Totally NOT fabulous.

She Needs a New Toy to Keep Her Head Expanding

According to recent news reports Angelina Jolie (shown here greatly improving the plight of yet another underprivileged child by gifting her a matching mother/daughter Valentino handbag) is severely depressed by her inability to change things for the better in the Third World.

I know, huh? We all had such high hopes for her, believing she was the answer to ending world hunger, human rights violations, and child slavery, just by wishing it so.

So I guess I understand the shopping therapy tactic.

But for handbags, Party People.

Not for children.

This is Not My Idea of a Good Time

What in the feckin' hell was Vogue editor, Anna Wintour, thinking? The only way I'm going to get this puppy on a plane is to book a separate seat for it.

Coming in at a whopping 1-3/4 inches and a bazillion and one pages – the vast majority of which feature ads for clothing that 99.975 percent of the global population cannot afford – the September issue of the world's most popular fashion magazine is a daunting and downright grim tome, indeed.

Now, no one loves fashion more than I do. But that's because it's supposed to be fun (unless you show up to a funeral in flip flops, in which case you should be beat silly about the head with an Hermes scarf) . Yet to take it THIS seriously that you have to create what amounts to a virtual King James Bible out of a few ads for some Tod's sweaters and an article on making friends with brooches (I shit you not, but that's Plum Sykes for ya – that airhead I want to beat about her entire body with a sledgehammer).

I won't bother to comment further because the witty folks over at www.glossedover.com have performed a brilliant, nearly page-by-page deconstruction of the entire mess. I will only reiterate just a couple observations:

1. The Groucho Marx Eyebrow trend for fall sucks the big one;

and

2. Enough already with Sienna Miller. I'm sure she is a very nice person, but fashion icon? Puleeze.


No one should be caught dead out in public in this outfit. I mean that. If your HOUSE were burning down and this was what you were wearing and you couldn't put on a robe or coat to hide it, you should just give up on life and burn, baby burn.

The Bubble-Headed Bleached Blonde Comes on at Five

Oops, sorry. I meant bobble-headed.


Calling all my Pals Across the Pond: Can you take her back now? We're done.

Recipe for Disaster

Why would pro wrestler Chris Benoit murder his wife, his son, and then kill himself?

Here's one theory, courtesy of S.B.:

Start with: one pro wrestler who becomes famous for extreme forms of behavior marginally recognized as a sport but which is really just dumb-ass spectacle for twelve years olds (literally and figuratively).

Add: a gradual addiction to the accompanying attention and fame.

Mix with: a raging addiction to steroids and perhaps a slight mental illness masked by the extreme forms of behavior demanded by the industry.

Blend in carefully: a viewing public with an average I.Q. below that of, say, a door mouse (no insult to the door mouse intended) who rewards increasingly extreme forms of behavior.

Fold in: career decline and the pressure of having to give up the spotlight in favor of the "real world."

Sprinkle with: the normal shit that happens to us all on an every day basis.

Bake: for 22 years in a 500 degree oven until the mixture bubbles over.

And there you have it: yet another titillating bit of "news" to keep our minds off what is really going on in this country, like, perhaps, the creeping beginnings of a nasty-ass inflationary period and, oh yeah, the Iraq war. Ho, hum.

Good News/Bad News

The good news:


To quote CNN.com:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republican support for President Bush's Iraq war policy suffered a significant crack Monday evening when Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana urged the president to change course in Iraq "very soon."

The well-respected GOP voice on foreign affairs took to the Senate floor to urge Bush to avoid further damage to America's military readiness and long-term national security.

"Our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond. Our continuing absorption with military activities in Iraq is limiting our diplomatic assertiveness there and elsewhere in the world," he said.

Thanks for not towing the party line, dude.


The bad news:



Dozens of Rodeo Drive boutique owners breathed a collective sigh of relief this morning, as Paris Hilton is back on the streets and ready to shop. Boutique owner children everywhere rejoiced as well, since it looks like they will be able to go to the Ivy League colleges of their choice after all.

Is it just me who thinks this, but is this poor child's problem not that she's rich and spoiled rotten but that she's mega-retarded and the family just doesn't go there?

Frodo Wants to Be Your Dog

Whew. Phill the Mac Tech God saved the day again. Turns out, we have some sort of weird network in the area that is playing with my iMac's low megahurtz thingees (poor baby, it's old), the result being my Mac flipped back and forth between all of them, never locking onto one. At least that's how my feeble brain understands it. All I needed to do was run down to the Apple Store (my goodness, this place rocks), purchase an Airport Express Base Station, hook it in and bada bing, I'm up and running. Regardless, party PC people – Mac still kicks y'all's butts. Never mind the fact that I also lost my entire email program (unrelated – I think that was my fault). (Those of you who actually read this blog, could you please resend me your email so I can build my list back up? Muchas gracias.)

So, okay, back to our regularly scheduled program:

Which Hollywood crackhead, uh, sorry, genius producer, thought this one up? I demand to know.

Elijah Wood to play Iggy Pop? What's next, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to star in Atlas Shrugged? Oh, gawd. The world is spinning out of control.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Elijah Wood, per se. Even if he did spend the entire LOTR series looking like he needed to take a serious poopie, and we won't even go there with Everything is Illuminated , although, to be fair, the movie was bound to be a stinker to begin with (am I the only person in the universe who hated the book? Anyone?) But over all, I think Elijah has a wee bit of talent as well as an oddly compelling, creamy/dreamy pre-adolescent cuteness that can make him interesting to watch. If you happen to be a pre-adolescent girl. Or a gay man.

But, really, Iggy?

From this:













To this?

Why oh why didn't the producers just give Ewan MacGregor a ringy dingy? He did Iggy once, to fine accord, and he's already got the penis wagging thing down cold. I don't think I want to see Elijah's woody. Do I? No, I'm pretty sure I do not.

Lambs to the Slaughter

Well, it's now official. Prince Harry is not going to war in Iraq. Too many kidnapping and death threats and all that.


Harry has been quoted as saying that while he's disappointed, he realizes that it's not just his life that's on the line. Dozens of other members of his unit will most likely get caught in the crossfire of whatever yipee skippy jihadist is tasked with the oh-so-glorious duty of blowing Harry's smooth-as-a-baby's bottom into teensy little bits. As Harry goes so too go dozens of cheese makers' sons from Derbyshire. Millers' daughters from Yorkshire. Butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers from God-only-knows-where-else-shire.

I for one am greatly relieved. And not just about the cheese makers, et al. After all, the last thing we can afford to lose is yet another member of the British royalty. And not just because it will most likely spawn yet another limp-wristed Elton John tribute because the Queen mum is too daft to accept something much more ska-punk pithy from, say, Lily Allen ("There's no one in the world who could replace you.")

Anyway.

They start falling like flies, these royals, what happens to the various and sundry industries that depend on their extraordinarily impetuous consumption? Like hat designer Misa Harada? After all, British royalty virtually invented the Occasion Hat fashion genre (who else BUT a royal would wear this?)



and without Harry's trail of girlfriends all flocking to her studio, Misa will be forced to rely instead on the good graces of Jessica Simpson.

Then there's Giorgio Armani. Sure, he's also a fave of many high faluten' 'merican movie stars, but we all know that Katie Holmes is going to last maybe five point six more seconds with that whopper of a whack job husband, a fact which will no doubt send her running for the hills, not to mention the discount racks at Barney's like the rest of her B-List Hollywood brethren.

So, once again, the Brits save the day. Not only for the future of the royal family but also for the overblown fashionistas who will follow them there.