The Reluctant Whore

Week #10 in Review


With the news that Calvin Klein is about to launch a fragrance called In2u where the clever title is a reference to texting language, it became official that computer nerds are no longer just fat insecure males hell bent on world domination, they also include scruffy, thin, insecure male hell bent on world domination who also like to smell fresh and light and possible unisex.

And while Calvin Klein had us sit and think about who the zeitgeist was this week, it became clear that Michael Jackson doesn’t immediately spring to mind any more but he did say, in front of a crowd massively overcharged Japanese people that so far, if he had the chance, he wouldn’t change anything about his career – not the abuse, the paederast charges, the sleepovers, the drugging of children, the massive amount of physically disfiguring surgery…nothing, it was all good. Because one day, years later, people in Japan cheered for him and that makes it all worth it.

Jennifer Hudson, despite being cheered on by the entire planet relentlessly for the past 6 months for doing far less than would warrant the accolades she got, was not cheering back – at Simon Cowell this week as she lashed out at him on television urging people to simply look at the old tapes of him and her on American Idol. Because it’s been a hard year so far and perhaps this was the only way she could explain the pain away. But, to be fair, Jennifer Hudson wasn’t alone in playing subservient to a newly out of proportion ego, with the return of Star Jones to television in what was announced this week to be two different roles; one probably a lawyer or something on Law and Order SVU and two probably a lawyer on some Court TV show. Because she’s a lawyer.

And speaking of celebrities who consider their every move to be made of pure gold – no question about it – Isaiah Washington, fresh from rehab and really no less an object of scorn for calling T R Knight a faggot on set was handed an award by the NAACP for simply being such a great role model for black people but sadly the adoration poured upon him by the NAACP didn’t carry over to his negotiations with ABC for a pay raise, oh well. Suck it up.
While Isaiah Washington was busy paying his dues for saying the word faggot out loud, Ann Coulter, right on cue, jumped on the bandwagon and referred to John Edwards as a faggot, this week, claiming it was a joke but that didn’t stop most of her advertisers and sponsors from dropping her.
But while the earnest left were busy vomiting in offense at Ann Coulter, the Navy was busy putting the finishing touches on their own contribution to vomit culture – namely a weapon that interrupts the nervous system so it causes anyone within range to spontaneously vomit and feel disoriented. The weapon can apparently travel through walls which should make for some genius television a few years down the track which some LA c-list hack gets their hands on one.
Vomiting itself, as we know, is the process by which the body rapidly expels matter from the stomach that it really feels very strongly shouldn’t be there and that’s all well and good. The opposite of that, ie. shoveling things that shouldn’t be in the stomach INTO it was happening (no not in the parking lot of an Iowan Krispy Kreme) in India where a calf was found to be relentlessly swallowing chickens. The locals explained that the cow must have been a tiger in a former life which, as far as hypotheses go, had to have satisfied everyone. At least all the thinking people, anyway.
As we travel back from India across Europe and then swoop to Belgrade, Serbia, the stake plunged deep into Slobodan Milosevic’s grave that was hammered in this week by a protesting student, may not be there anymore but at least evil spirits lurking around his grave weren’t either as it was revealed that a student went through the medieval motions to rid a space of evil spirits. Because he considered Milosevic a source of evil.

The Mayans, it seems, consider George W Bush a source of evil too as it was announced that Mayan priests in Guatemala are planning on what they consider to be a vital spiritual cleansing of the area he inhabits while in their country this week as he apparently embodies so much evil that it would impossible for them to continue with every day life after he leaves without a real gutting of the aura.

Gutting out the ego of celebrities is more or less an hourly occurrence when you think about it but it was notable that Jared Leto this week actually had his face broken by a crowd of his fans when he entered a mosh pit. Who knew he was at such risk of fan-based hysteria? While there would be no doubt that fans of the late James Brown would be capable of hysteria, there was no way it could be projected that his body would remain above ground after he died for such a long time because of FAMILY based hysteria. Family conflicts about the godfather of soul’s will are still happening and his body is still not buried despite the fact that he died last year.

And speaking of death, the death that itself simply won’t die, over in camp Anna Nicole, the melodrama continued as it was revealed the negotiations between Larry Birkhead and Howard K Stern don’t actually appear to be centered around who is the kid’s father, they’re more interested in who gets what. As we, by virtue of the fact that time passes, draw ever nearer to the conclusion of the Anna Nicole saga, OJ Simpson must have started to panic that he hadn’t stepped in and used it for press purposes so far and so he piped up that he might be the father of the kid too. The Grandmother of the kid and mother of the dead, after failing to have the funeral stopped, went along conveniently dressed in black, and took it upon herself to furiously shovel dirt into the grave – way beyond the call of duty and ET ran bland, Virgie Arthurless footage of the after party for the funeral. Just in case you felt like you needed to see it. Which America apparently did. American also indicated, at least as far as Sephora was satisfied with, that it wants a product that heightens the presence of nipples.

While Anna Nicole’s relentlessly drawn out death plodded along, Rosie O’Donnell’s relentlessly drawn out campaign to get her own show did so as well as she chose her next high rating focal point for more or less ill-conceived bickering when she claimed the American Idol producer, Nigel Lythgoe was weightest and racist for getting rid of fat black people from the show.

The other American pop icon, Britney Spears was rumoured in US magazine to be way more fucked up that anyone previously considered, which is really insightful of them and also very clearly a point that you’d make at the point in a developing story once you realize you’ve got no further information. While Britney convalesced at great expense in rehab, Kevin Federline – suddenly a model father in comparison, shopped the rights to his birthday party around.

And while Kevin thought it was a shoe in to get people to pay to come hang out and sing happy birthday, it was a shoe in in Germany this week to argue that no one will ever be going to the birthday party of the 42 year old man who karate chopped an 8 year old boy during a soccer game – ever again because he is an asshole. The father, no doubt completely satisfied with his life’s accomplishments, took out his frustration on the kid getting a foul by simply kicking him in the head and then jumping on him. And, interestingly enough, the madness didn’t end there in Germany, when another man, in a small town – facing a divorce from his wife calmly and gently chainsawed his house right down the middle and then drove away with his own half on a truck while in the German town of Eggmuehl, an 18 year old man was caught on a security tape leaving his own shit in front of a bank’s ATM on several occaisions. No doubt, the security tape is being used as porn this very moment and finally, speaking of porn for odd people, teenaged Republicans the nation over sighed in disappointment as their ultimate masturbation fantasy was revealed to have no real basis after George Bush Sr. denied ever grabbing Teri Hatcher’s ass on camera. Oh well, maybe just stick to the old staple of Ann Coulter and Strom Thurmond - at least they’re either dead on the inside of actually dead already so nothing will really change no matter what denial is issued about those two.