Fourteen reasons that Britney should End It All now
Because suicide's on the verge of becoming trendy again, and before long everyone will be all like, "Damn copycattin' bitch."
Because people are starting to take K-Fed's side, and girl needs the sympathy.
Because the public is in danger of forgetting how truly fuhtup she is.
Because Mary Hart is running out of things to say and is seriously considering having one of her assistants read up on that Darfur place everyone keeps talking about.
Because someone's gotta beat Amy Winehouse to the punch.
Because I'd like a topical costume for Mardi Gras, and I can't find a John Edwards wig.
Because inheritance taxes are lookin' pretty good right now. You know, for the kids and stuff.
Because her sister's newborn child needs a namesake.
Because Nostrodamus said she would. Really.
Because there's construction in the works in downtown New Orleans, but you can't name federal buildings after anyone with a pulse.
Because she's proven she can perform in her sleep, which means she can probably do so when she's dead.
Because she must prepare the way for The Chosen One.
Because it'll show that she's environmentally conscious, what with all the decomposing and everything.
Because Roy Cohn wants entertainment, dammit, and he wants it now!
Doug MacCash is an artist and art critic with a refined aesthetic sensibility and a knowledge of the global visual arts community that occasionally borders on the encyclopedic. So why is he reviewing the Hannah Montana concert--and more importantly, liking it?
Living in New York in the pre-Giuliani mid-90s was a mixed bag. On the one hand, the city still had its unique, gritty charm: walking to my office on 42nd Street, I passed crackheads and abandoned theaters, whose marquees had been colonized by Jenny Holzer, and my home turf was kept safe by convivial Dominicans with a strong sense of family, plus a couple of well-intentioned smack dealers. On the other hand, I went to NYU, and my department was a total drag. And I lived in the East Village, which is never pretty: it's slightly out of the way and chock-full of tenements that lack the charm you find in apartments elsewhere in Manhattan. Also, I lived next to a fire station. And my window faced the street. And there were a lot of fires.
The one consistent bright spot in my week was The Mrs. Mouth Show, which ran on New York's public access station. The show was ingenious and irreverent on a budget of $5.99--basically it consisted of a nut-job from Broomall, Pennsylvania, with Donna Mills-esque eyes painted below his lips and a thrift store wig perched on his chin, doing wacky little things that were recorded on a third-hand video camera. Periodically, Mrs. Mouth, aka Eva Moskowitz, would encourage viewers to run to their windows, throw open the sashes, and scream, "I love Mrs. Mouth" into the night air. Occasionally, people did.
Mrs. Mouth's best gags were (a) her lengthy phone calls to complete strangers, and (b) the end-of-show snack, the nature of which was often kept secret from her until it had been placed in her mouth by the show's "producer". She also put together a soap opera/sitcom kinda thing called The Aunt Gail Show, which was done with a variety of dolls--kinda like Todd Haynes' Superstar, but Aunt Gail said the word "vagina" a lot more.
For years, I've cherished the one and only Mrs. Mouth episode I own. By some strange twist of fate, it's a Christmas episode, so I've had a tendency to drag it out every holiday season. It's not the best of Mrs. Mouth's shows, but my friends have all expressed polite amusement.
A couple of days ago, however, the boyfriend informed me that someone recently uploaded a buttload of Mrs. Mouth shows to YouTube. So now I get to inflict them on you, too. My faves so far:
Katrina Dawlins, Sissybears, and the Death of Social Networking
1. If New York magazine is to be believed--and granted, I'm never entirely sure they are--the heroes of this year's Sundance Film Festival are a couple of scrappy, street-smart Katrina survivors from the Lower 9. In an otherwise lackluster year, Kim and Scott Roberts' footage of the storm's onslaught and aftermath, cobbled into a documentary by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal and entitled Trouble the Waters, has captured the attention of media bigwigs and audiences alike. The full story's here, including a couple of unconvincing minutes of video excerpts. Over on YouTube, there's some crappy handheld video from the premiere--so crappy that it took mom 30 seconds to realize she'd left the lens cap on--but still:
I've said it loud and said it proud: Sissybears rule! Especially since the show's been kinda short on sissybears as of late. (Michael Kors doesn't count, 'cause I'm pretty sure he waxes his raisinets.)
Bitch is quick. For someone who can't run, Miss Chris whips off a lot of snappy lines--enough to keep wee Christian in check anyway.
He's one more thorn in the side of a certain lachrymose queen--a queen whose uppance must soon come, since he's demonstrated an abiding love for my Least Favorite Person on the Planet, Amy Goddamn Winehouse. I'd like to see Chris do him in personally, like in Desperate Living, where Griselda smothers Mr. Gravel with her ass--Down, down, down!--but I'll be content if Ricky's just voted off.
3. WHY, OH WHY, DOES GREG FREAKING BRADY HAVE A SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE? I know the internet is for porn, but this is too much. HAS BARRY WILLIAMS NO DECENCY, SIR?
I only sleep six hours a night. Is that okay? I know Thomas Jefferson supposedly slept only four, but that just seems wrong. For a lot of reasons. Not to mention bad for you.
I worry about the boyfriend and the hounds. Constantly. What if, what if, what if, and so on. I know Jonno returns the favor, but what about the dogs? Do dogs worry? Have they got my back?
I'm happy with my beard, but does it make me look too scary? I know I'm no oil painting to begin with. And it's not like I want a job a Disney, where they don't allow facial hair at all, despite being adored by thousands upon thousands of circuit bears. But can I keep the beard and not have couples cross the street when they see me ambling toward them late at night? Or do I care?
I have a lot of domains registered in my name. Am I ever going to get around to doing anything with them? I feel like I've dropped the ball. Am I lazy? Or just a prospector?
I have stuff in boxes in the attic that really ought to be thrown away. The boxes haven't been opened in years. They're cardboard boxes. Mice have probably destroyed them anyway. I think my diplomas are up there somewhere. I hate having stuff, but it's a necessary evil. Do I have too much stuff? I feel like I have less than some of my friends, and I've been trying to get rid of a lot of it, especially since the storm. I want to be portable. But do I have too much?
I've built 90% of my purchasing decisions around the hounds. And Jonno too, but that's different. Will this blanket hold dog hair? Will Tania be prone to chew on this coffee table? Is this what having a kid is like?
I wish some people were dead. Not a lot. Just a couple, really. But I worry that they'd end up as martyrs and ruin everything. Is that wrong?
I try to count calories, and I do okay 'till mid-afternoon, and then everything goes downhill. Am I doomed to heart failure? Or something worse? I know they say you should only eat until you're 80% full, but I just can't stop myself.
I'm trying to learn PHP. Really I am. But I just can't stay interested. Is it too late for me? Am I forever limited to HTML and CSS?
I play a lot of videogames for someone my age. Am I compensating? Or avoiding something? Or is it okay? I like videogames. I've played them for most of my life. Is there a time to stop?
I'm so out of the loop as far as art and literature are concerned. I can fake my way through the art stuff, but the lit world has left me in the dust. Who are these novelists anyway? Can I be a full-time resident of the 21st century and be content with a bookshelf that stops at 1938?
I feel like I'm a total fraud when it comes to theatre. We put on good shows, and people seem to like us, but I don't always know what I'm doing. Is that where my "artistic impulses" are kicking in, or am I just lucky?
I mean, you're the freaking HISTORY CHANNEL fer chrissakes. Okay, I admit, your target demographic may be a little more manly, a little more likely to own multiple assault weapons, a little more prone to compensate for a small penis. So maybe you need to punch up your junk, condensing the Civil War into something like The 10 Most Awesomely Bloody Bayonet Wounds of Gettysburg. That's fine.
But what the bejesus is Life After People? Did some stoner on your staff see that Will Smith thing and think, "Aw, dude! Let's churn out a whole movie like that!" Weak. It's not history, it's an exercise in Photoshop. A half-assed exercise in Photoshop, even. Put it in a low-rent biennial somewhere in the Ukraine. Or better yet, give it to Animal Planet.
Your ceaseless pandering is making me very angry. A channel with an online presence as austere as History.com ought to have a little sense of pride.
Your history-minded and ever-more crotchety friend, Richard
My favorite handout from last night's Krewe du Vieux parade. It's from one of the subkrewes, the Krewe of PAN, which chose to revere a slightly obscure but magnificent writer known for his quotability. Case in point:
Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. ...But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes, than to own the whole state of Ohio. --Lafcadio Hearn, 1879
P.S. Note the gilded bagel from Krewe du Jieux in the background--my first ever! Sadly, I didn't get it on my own; it was procured on my behalf by someone with much bigger tits. But whatevs. I never claimed to have it all..
Deep in the bowels of the New York Times website, a queen has been stirring. For nearly a week, Francesco Vezzoli (perhaps best known for his stunning, over-the-top trailer for a remake of Caligula, which will, alas, never be remade) has been laboring in the gay salt mines, dredging up reminiscences and videos featuring the divas of his childhood.
On the downside, almost no one seems to have noticed Francesco's work. On the upside, among his top divas we find one of my own: Monica Vitti. If I had my druthers, I'd curl up right here on our well-worn sofa, which sits dangerously close to our 1940s-era gas space heater, and reacquaint myself with Ms. Vitti's oeuvre. Unfortunately, I have to run out in this crappy weather to teach a class on PowerPoint (yes, freaking PowerPoint). And you thought you had it bad.
Unrelated note: If you're in South Carolina, get out and vote Mike goddamn Huckabee outta town.
...Krewe du Vieux--which has been known to feature oversized organs of many varieties--rolls this Saturday. As soon as I can wrap my head around the fact that 12th Night was less than two weeks ago and we're already having parades, I'm going to start cleaning for our wee house party. If any of y'all are in the Marigny for the festivities, drop in before or after for a cup of grog. Or mead. Or ale. (What can I say? I'm in a medieval mood this morning.)
...Manohla Dargis--who has surely been called by many euphemisms for "giant vagina" over the years--just poked a hole in my hopes for Cloverfield. I mean, it's not like I ultimately choose to attend the cinema based on a few well-crafted words from a snarky, overpaid, underappreciated critic, but the review was fairly brutal--especially for a paper that claims to stay above the fray. Among girlfriend's choicer excerpts:
[T]he film is too dumb to offend anything except your intelligence, and the monster does cut a satisfying swath through the cast, so your only complaint may be, What took it so long? (A little fifth-grade, but okay.)
The movie moves relatively fast, though it’s nowhere near as economical as its colossus, whose thunderous shrieks and fiery projectiles bring a downtown loft party to a merciful, abrupt end. (Not bad, but I've seen better.)
But then there's this great description of the cast: Smart as Tater Tots and just as differentiated...
...On April 12, "The Vagina Monologues," which has become a worldwide phenomenon, launching the V-Day project to end violence against women, will play the 17,000-seat New Orleans Arena with a cast scheduled to include Jane Fonda, Glenn Close, Jennifer Hudson, Ellen DeGeneres, Charmaine Neville, Salma Hayek, Rosario Dawson, Ashley Judd, Julia Stiles, Marisa Tomei and Oprah Winfrey, for whom Ensler is writing a new monologue.
April 11 and 12 will find the Louisiana Superdome interior turned into a pink and red vagina -- "with a big vagina entrance," Ensler said -- as a setting for performance events, parties, parades, workshops, wellness and education programs, speakers, even spa treatments, which will be free to residents of New Orleans and the Gulf South. (Men are excluded only from the spa.)
For those two days, New Orleans will be "the Vagina Capital of America," Ensler said. "We're coming here to say that we should celebrate New Orleans, cherish it, protect it, just as we do our vaginas, and make sure it goes on and on."
If you're the sort of person who spends a lot of time awake--say, three hours a day or more--you've probably had one of those "okay, what's next?" moments. Like in the mid 90s: remember palazzo pants? Remember how you first thought they were all cute and edgified, and then your dad's girlfriend, Nadine, started wearing them, and you were all, like, "Oh, okay, time for something new"? Remember that?
Well, that's kinda the feeling I've got these days.
Reality television? Next!
Skinny jeans? Next!
Faux-naive TV reporters pretending to be shocked as they cover the "latest" trend in fitness: pole dance workouts (which is, coincidentally, what's on my TV right now)? Freaking next please, before I put on my robe and slippers, warm up the car, drive down to the station, and bitch-slap both the reporter and that Denise Austin clone-whore with a goddamn boom mike!
I'm bored, people. Must I be responsible for my own amusement? Can't someone else do it for a change? The worlds of media, fashion, design, music, film--they've all let me down, they've all disappointed me. Everyone's saying that even Gawker can't do it anymore. And when the New York Times tries to do it alone, they either fail miserably, or their dullard readership doesn't know what to do with it. Or, more likely, both.*
So it's up to you, people: entertain me! Quick, before I finish that gay-tastic Dorothy Draper book and things really start to go downhill.
* Frank Rich excluded. You'll always be my snarky little snuggle bear, Frankie.
