Friday, December 22, 2006

Moving too fast. Not again:


Enrique Iglesias is in Israel to collect a reported $1 million paycheck to perform at a private Hanukkah party for a billionaire. Fine, that's great, but must you go do...whatever it is you're doing near my sacred site?

What is it with these crazy celebrities using my wall as a photo opportunity? I blame Madonna and her b.s. Kabbalah fascination for making Judaism all the rage.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

I've got a perfect body. Today in Celebrity Sightings:

I'm not usually one to brag, but I really outdid myself this time. I had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sighting while walking down Prince Street. In a crush of people, I spotted a familiar face and placed her right away as the worst part of "Popular," in my opinion, Carly Pope. She was looking a little bedraggled in her military-esque cap and dirty hair. Still, she was having a good time, laughing it up with her friend, and that's a lot better than the sullen-looking, nervous celebs I usually see.

Make you work hard. Once upon a time, when I was a wee assistant arts editor on my college paper, the Opinions Section had a weekly "Cheers and Jeers" column. With my impending move, I have become nostalgic. Thus, I bring you my own little "Cheers and Jeers" offering because there is nothing more important than my opinion.

Cheers!


  • Buffy worship continues.


  • Tom Perrotta worship heats up (scroll down to Item #2).


  • Merry Christmas to you, too, Britney Spears. I'll take acne over vajayjay any day.


  • So over The Gibson and The Lohan.


  • I just received my first business-related holiday gift! I got a gift pack of dried fruit, nuts, chocolate and jelly beans. People try to bribe me with candy. I'm finally important.


Jeers!


  • Yay for new discoveries in HIV prevention, but was this really necessary? I doubt that it was.


  • Oh fuck, that's disgusting. I think I'm scarred for life.


  • Anyone else getting a distinct "Hiroshima Mon Amour" meets "Schindler's List" vibe from Cate Blanchett in "The Good German?"


  • No snow! How am I supposed to go skiing?


  • Christmas is on a Monday this year, meaning I have to work Tuesday, meaning that my annual post-Christmas tradition of raiding the Saks Fifth Avenue Day-After-Christmas sale is ruined! Thanks a lot, Baby Jesus.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Make 'em laugh. According to "Vanity Fair," women aren't funny. Who knew? I certainly didn't get the memo. Apparently I was born with a penis I never noticed because I am certainly funny. In fact, I would say that I am much funnier than my boyfriend, and he would probably agree with me on that. My female friends are all very funny. In fact, most of the women I know are hilarious.

But, no, we must be wrong because women are not funny. Why aren't we funny? Because all we think about is reproduction, and reproduction makes you serious:

For women, reproduction is, if not the only thing, certainly the main thing. Apart from giving them a very different attitude to filth and embarrassment, it also imbues them with the kind of seriousness and solemnity at which men can only goggle.


Apparently, not relishing piss and fart jokes means women have no sense of humor. All of the intelligently humorous women out there, even the ones who do enjoy body function jokes, are automatically disregarded. I'm sure Jane Austen, one of the best satirists in English literature, would appreciate that.

In case you have any doubt as to the veracity of the woman-aren't-funny axiom, Christopher Hitchens uses Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Female of the Species" as supporting evidence. Apparently, verse by a notorious bigot is all you need to support your thesis.

This is what I like to call "convenient journalism." It doesn't require any research or basis in reality; it's just based on one person's limited view of the world. It's like if Jerry Seinfeld started writing magazine articles instead of doing stand-up.

"Ever notice how men are douchbags?" There's your next headline, "Vanity Fair."

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Nothing compares to you. For all five of you who haven't heard yet, Mary Cheney is pregnant! That's right, the evil Vice President's lesbian daughter is expecting a child with her longtime partner. Not surprisingly, this isn't going over well with certain conservative groups. For example, Carrie Gordon Earll, a policy analyst for the conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family, had this to say:

"Just because you can conceive a child outside a one-woman, one-man marriage doesn't mean it's a good idea. Love can't replace a mother and a father."
Um, what? This doesn't make any sense. Apparently, it doesn't matter how much you love your child or how well you raise your child. If you and your partner are of the same sex, you are inherently doing your child a disservice. The most important thing for a child is that the child has a parent with a penis and a parent with a vagina. Doesn't matter if dad beats the kid, doesn't matter if mom is an alcoholic. All that matters is different genitals!

I'd like to understand the religious Fascist Conservative viewpoint. I keep rolling this stuff around and around in my head, and I Just. Don't. Get. It. I really don't understand where these people come off saying that love doesn't count. Good parenting is good parenting, no matter who is raising the child. Every time one of these morally self-righteous bigots gets up in a public forum and spews this crap, every child from a non-traditional family hears this and is disheartened. Every kid raised by grandma or a foster parent or a single parent or two parents of the same sex is going to think that he is in some way defective or given the short stick in the life lottery. If these conservative groups were really concerned about building healthy and happy families, they would work to provide all children with health insurance, school lunch, and proper education at the very least. They would even legalize gay adoption so that the massive amounts of kids in foster care could have permanent, safe homes. Conservatives are only interested in hate and self-interest. They don't give a shit about families.

I haven't thought of you lately at all. Today in B-List Celebrity Sightings:

Christmas came early, apparently, as I had a very obscure celebrity sighting last night right before I got on the 1 train at Houston. I was on the phone at the time, and I had to interrupt my conversation to say, "Hey, I just saw a celebrity."

Though, I have to admit, it was something of a lie as Ms. Krysten Ritter is not much of a celebrity. She has become the go-to annoying ditz for teenage girl-focused television, first as Gia Goodman on "Veronica Mars" and now as Lucy on "Gilmore Girls." If you can believe it, she's even skinner and more ridiculously-dressed now than she was on "Veronica Mars."

Anyway, when I saw her she was wearing a black ski hat, black scarf, and black peacoat, all of which, coupled with her jet-black hair and incredibly paleness, made her look like some sort of goth wanna-be rocker chick who moonlights as a cat burglar when she isn't writing bleak poetry. Either that, or she was just trying to be incognito, in which case she has an over-inflated sense of self-importance. Or she was just cold, but if that was the case, may I please suggest some color to offset the black? Maybe a kicky red scarf or a ski hat with a fun knit pattern? You know, just to spice things up a bit.