Month: February 2005
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales smiles up at U.S. President George W. Bush during his swearing in ceremony at the Department of Justice, February 14, 2005. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)
Kanye West at the Grammy’s and Emma Thompson in Angels in America
Categories
Old Timers
Sunday’s New York Times embraces the Point-Counterpoint, albeit in entirely different sections.
From Week In Review, Balding Rockers, Big Money:
But according to a new list of the 50 top-earning pop stars published in Rolling Stone, over the hill is the new golden pasture. Half the top 10 headliners are older than 50, and two are over 60…This means that, while it is good to be the next big thing, it is better to be a-couple-of-big-things-ago. Though pop music glorifies the young and the new, it actually sells these qualities at a discount…”In five or six years you’re going to see Echo and the Bunnymen and New Order and the Cure getting the high ticket prices,” Mr. Calderone said, referring to a generation of bands that is not yet content to rest on its oldies.
From Arts & Leisure, We Hate the 80’s:
Yet despite the grass-roots enthusiasm and VH1 dogma – not to mention millions of dollars in marketing – the 80’s are not selling…some label executives said they had turned away former stars who came shopping for new record contracts. “I just wasn’t convinced that the songs were compelling enough to compete in today’s marketplace,” said Andrew Slater, president of Capitol Records, who says he passed on both Duran Duran and Billy Idol…But those lucrative concerts play to fans eager for one (or two) glorious nights of nostalgia, not those interested in watching the band try to grow.
There is no getting rid of him. He’s the enigma who came to stay.
– Louis Menand, Mystery Man, The New Yorker, Feb. 14 & 21, 2005.
Enigma my aunt Sally! I am no enigma, I am a man. And since Mr. Menand conveniently forgot to mention a key fact in his little piffle, I must tell you myself: I am still alive.
Of course, I’m not quite as active as I was in the old days: you try donning your top hat and starched collar when you’re nearly 100. These days, my monocle is bifocal and instead of examining butterflies up close, I squint intently at my own dark, brown liver spots.
It wasn’t always so. Back in the old days, I was quite the playboy! In the ’30s, high on all that early New Yorker acclaim (what the limey dame editor of the magazine in its bloated late life would’ve termed “buzz”), I was everywhere, celebrating the glorious literary life with Joey Mitchell, Bunny Wilson, Dotty Parker, and James “Jiminy Cricket” Thurber.
Oh, the gay times we had! And by ‘gay,’ I mean it in the old sense of the word: we drank gin distilled in our bathtubs, danced with negro chorus girls, and on occasion, performed oral sex on each other. (We called it ‘rhinebecking,’ after the quaint little town where Bunny rented a cottage during the summer of ’36.)
Opening today is Pooh’s Heffalump Movie, the newest attempt from Disney to expand its Winnie the Pooh franchise. The Heffalump, for those of you not up on A.A. Milne’s creative output, never actually makes an appearance in the original books. As imagined by the Heffalump screenwriters, this mythical beast appears to be nothing more than 68 minutes of treacly good cheer (does 68 minute running time count as a feature?).
It would further appear that Heffalump is no more than the well-medicated counterpart to Eeyore, Pooh’s perpetually depressed donkey friend. Although Disney now disputes even Eeyore’s seemingly certain clinical diagnosis. Their character bible claims,
Eeyore doesn’t see himself as gloomy; he just has low expectations… Eeyore’s tiny bright pink bow on his tail, the one hint of color against his gray, is a perfect symbol of the kernel of joy that occasionally surfaces in Eeyore.
So bring on the ultra-pink plastered smiles – the good folks at Pfizer et al. would be proud.
(Big ups, Patrick)
Leave it to the humanitarians at US Weekly to lend a hand to tsunami relief. (If you can’t remember, the tsunami was that thing before Brad and Jen broke up and after Christmas.) As if bravely publishing the brave photographs of brave Petra Nemcova weren’t enough, US Weekly and its stable of concerned celebs have bravely assembled an eBay auction to benefit tsunami victims.
Unfortunately the auction isn’t quite living up to expectations – the lion’s share of brave donations have yet to earn a single bid. But with items such as Debbie Rowe’s signed original Fox and the Hound pencil drawing, how could they possibly go wrong? From the sketch’s description:
The drawing has been framed and signed on the back by Debbie Rowe and includes the message, “Best wishes, enjoy from my collection…Debbie Rowe.” She has also included a doodle of a face below her signature. Debbie Rowe is known for being Michael Jackson’s second wife and the mother of his first two children, Prince Michael I and Paris Jackson.
The item has yet to register a single bid.
Or how about the bikini that Ivana from The Apprentice revealed to allure the financial district’s finest? Though eBay doesn’t specify if the item has since been washed, who could resist Ivana’s sharpied signature on the ass? The H&M bikini bottom and top (a mere 32A) can be yours for anything above a $72.50 bid. Meanwhile, the Nicole Miller dress and Nike shoes worn by Apprentice skank Heidi has not garnered any interest.
Most surprising, perhaps, is that Eva Longoria’s cheerleading uniform from her days shaking it at Texas A&M is similarly un-bid upon. Frankly America, you should be ashamed – don’t the children deserve better? Think of the children.
But US Weekly isn’t the only venal rag to auction off empty celebrity signifiers in support of tsunami relief – Teen People and Ashlee Simpson have also thrown their hat in the tax-deductible ring. Their auction, however, is doing significantly better.
A phone call from One Tree Hill hunk Chad Michael Murray is going for over $600, and an Ashlee Simpson concert experience (start your jokes) is already fetching over $3000.
Incidentally, a personalized phone call from low culture’s resident hottie Jean-Paul Tremblay is also available, with all proceeds going to the “low culture Jamster Ringtones Fund.”
Categories
Rummy, Mr. Nice Guy
See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil (background); evil (foreground), (via Reuters)
You peer out across the rolling vista stretching endlessly away from your frame, your gaze occupied by the gently sloping ups-and-downs of miles upon miles of unfettered grain, sprinkled with two distinct herds of buffalo, and what appears to be a small outcropping of what must be oak trees. Oak trees, yes? The horticulturist concurs. This is the Other Country, he says. The O.C. But what is that over yonder?
It appears to be savagemen on horseback. Reds. Indians. The horticulturist nods again; yes, they are Indians, and that is what they are to be called (as though this were really his specialty; James merely tagged along on your voyage out West to escape the clutches of your sister’s affections, and while you understand this motive, you nonetheless resent his schooling Degree from that University in the Northeast––though not his presence, as his understanding of the numerous families of barley and grain has proven to be quite useful for your campfire dining endeavors of late).
But digression is your latest endeavor, no? The savages, the Indians…they appear to be rapidly approaching your camp. What will become of this, James asks you, and you nod in Daniel’s direction. A thuggish lad by nature, Daniel has proven to be quite…versatile in your travels. And handy with a shotgun, too, though you recklessly traded away far too many shells at that last outpost in Nebraska several nights ago, because you were overloaded with ale and that gentleman who claimed to have traveled all the way from Southern California mistook you for a Betting Fool. And wound up being quite right, it seemed, as the ale had its way with you, and you were suddenly awakened several hours later by a comely red-headed whore’s bottom perched atop your face in an upstairs parlor. Several shells short. Even sturdy Daniel had proven unable to re-acquire them.
How you could use those shells now, you yell at Daniel! O, to fire gracefully upon these savages, and thereby prevent a recurrence of the episode in Missouri Country even earlier, when you found your youngest compatriot scalped mercilessly after he forced his way upon the Red-skinned lass your crew had encountered as you swept across the great Mississippi River. Victor had never been much much of a ladies’ man in Virginia, and after the Depression of 1839, and his loss of steady employ at the stitcher’s place, he asked if he, too, could come with you as you set forth to cross the frontier, and establish a legacy anew in the Western Territories––particularly Southern California, as you heard they were riddled with wide-open ports which served as gateways to the Sea, the open Sea, and you aspired to return to your Father’s once-proud tradition for shipping. You would make your money back, and start life anew. Crates beckoned, they did. ‘Twas destiny, and ’twas manifest.
But these Indians, these savages! They arc across the nearest crest of grain-laden hills, far too close for this to be a pleasant experience. James corrects you, and asserts that they are, in fact, cresting atop what is actually an offshoot of maize, and is therefore not a grain in the literal sense. James can be quite a cretin, and you’ve more than once grown weary of his verbal antics. Most notably, just the other evening in the Kansas Territory, when he kept your entire camp up well past nightfall with his forlorn tales of what he imagined young adulthood must be like out West.
While you enjoyed hearing his fantastic stories of neighborly betrayal, and wanton adolescent lust, which reminded you of your own boyhood, you felt his characters lacked the great depth that only a Serious Novelist could bring to such a tale. And these names he used were quite questionable. You were proud of characters such as Caleb and Luke, who would carry themselves in a good Christian fashion, but Marissa? Seth? Sandy? Were these not the ideals of Jewry embodied in James’ storytelling? His schooling had poisoned his Nature, it seemed.
And Nature is now unkind to you, too, as the savages are upon your camp. It seems these Redskins are of the same bloodline as those Indian females that several of your men had been, well, rather…aggressive with yesterday morning after your morning baths. James had warned your lot about the perils of this sort of sexual and physical recklessness, but the gentlemen had laughed off his concerns as they wantonly had their way with the Red women. And now, it seems, there is, indeed, a price to pay; James, that smug bastard… Oak trees, maize, and immoral sexual congress.
You toss aside your rifle, and the empty, spent shells, and you run. You run, run, run across the fields. You know not where you go, but the West beckons. James’ Other Country, his O.C.…it’s there, a ways across the horizon.
Actually, I’ve never seen The O.C.; I’m sure it’s pretty good.
The O.C. airs Thursdays at 8PM EST on FOX.
Earlier: O.C.-centric entries, embodying the Manifest Destiny inherent in Rupert Murdoch’s modern-day empire.
Categories
The Celesbian Dating Game
Editor’s Note: Since lesbians are way hot (both in the media right now, and, you know, like, in general), low culture asked our special alternative lifestyles correspondent to weigh in. Here now, from our Soho office, Nikki:
The recent coupling of Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi has given rise to many inches of tabloid gossip. (And for one delirious week, before the door slammed shut, everyone and his two mommies were trying to pair up Marcia Cross with another TV star.)
Everyone likes to hear about women getting it on, but it’s also comforting when famous gay people go out with other famous gay people—that’s fewer gays to keep track of! So it was with a sigh of relief that straight people everywhere read that two celesbians were newly nestling in the Hollywood Hills, after dumping what’s-her-name and what’s-her-face. Meanwhile, the Christian Right can point to the degeneracy of the liberal film industry and take heart that soon Scientology will make straight pod people of them all.
(The English, of course, outclass us even in lesbians. Instead of a high-profile stand-up and TV twosome, they have the theater-and-film duo of Fiona Shaw and Saffron Burrows. Cherry Jones has taken note, but none of you care about theater people, so let’s move on.)
In light of this, here’s a fun game you can play alone or with friends: Come up with your own gay celebrity pairings to make things easier for everyone! Strangely enough, there aren’t too many gay famous people, so the permutations are limited. Don’t worry if the stars are in committed relationships and even have children together– at least there won’t be messy papers to file! Extra points for matching haircolor. Send in your answers to Liz Smith, or post them in the comments.
Coming soon: Famous people of color should hook up with other famous people of color.