Week #39 in Review

The unrelenting cultural oil spill that is pop star Britney Spears continued to have her legal proceedings played out in public when former bodyguard, Tony Barretto was interviewed on the Today Show by Matt Lauer. During the interview, he stated that the reason he was coming forward with information about Spears’ drug use was because he was concerned for the welfare of her children rather than the fact that he has an axe to grind because she fired him for not picking up her hat when asked. Following that unpleasantness, Britney was charged for driving without a license.

At the other end of the cultural spectrum where the smiles are white and the conduct is virtuous, sort of, Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens were apparently so fascinating to the general public that it was reported a magazine entitled “Zanessa” would hit shelves on Tuesday, Oct 2. The magazine will feature extensive coverage of the apparent relationship between Efron and Hudgens.

Former supermodel Christie Turlington had lyme disease, entertainer Steve-O from Jackass went on the Howard Stern Show and talked about how actress Lindsay Lohan once stole cocaine from his home and the new advertisements for both Britney Spears’ new fragrance, “Believe” and Mariah Carey’s “M” came out to many people’s shock and or horror.

Girls Gone Wild producer Joe Francis was threatened with a lawsuit from some women who claimed he used footage of them without their permission despite the fact that the footage of them explicitly shows them giving their consent, model Pam Anderson was rumoured to be partying too hard and hanging out with Paris Hilton’s ex-lover Rick Solomon and the prize money being offered to former rockers Kid Rock and Tommy Lee to box in a ring over Anderson climbed from one million dollars to five million dollars.

Right wing pundit Ann Coulter stated in Esquire Magazine that she wants a fatwa placed on her, a member of the crew from actor Tom Cruise’s film, “Valkyrie” farted during a moment of silence at a German monument from the Nazi regime and Cruise fired him and it was cleared up that actually, actress Maureen McCormick did not have lesbian sex with her former Brady Bunch co-star Eve Plum, and isolated gay teen internet video sensation Chris Crocker was in Los Angeles talking about how Britney Spears should be allowed to take drugs and drive without a license.

In numbers and records news, a hotel in Sri Lanka was offering a dessert that costs $14,500 because it comes with a large aquamarine stone, an anonymous bidder paid 29,000 English pounds for a 157 year old bottle of Bowmore Scotch Whiskey, a competitive eater who goes by the name Eater X won the “World Burrito Eating Contest” by eating 10 ¾ burritos in 12 minutes and Australian John Allwood smashed 40 watermelons with his head in 1 minute breaking some kind of record.

In further news out of Australia, a woman bartender was in court for serving customers shots of disinfectant while in Asia, Japanese people were paying 43 dollars for a pint of what is called “Adult Milk”, a specific harvest of milk taken from cows early in the morning to ensure high levels of the hormone melatonin which has a calming effect and they were also paying for soap that looks extraordinarily like dessert.

In China, the government banned sexually provocative sounds and tantalizing language in advertisements on radio and television, the Starbucks that was located in the Forbidden City was shut down and replaced by a locally owned and managed coffee shop and three different people were in court for killing their lovers with rat poison; one of which put the poison in a gelatin capsule, kissed her lover and made him swallow the pill.

In Russia, the government was hard at work constructing Federation Island, a smaller island recreation of Russia itself while in Kazakhstan, outrage erupted when photos of President Nursultan Nazarbayev in tight swimming trunks were published in the media. In Africa, a Nigerian witchdoctor was arrested after he was hired by politicians to perform rituals near an election tribunal that was investigating voter fraud.

In Europe, flag sales escalated in Belgium as the Belgian inclination to show nationalistic support to their country escalated amid further discussion that Belgium may divide into smaller states and a German man celebrated Oktoberfest by becoming really drunk and then getting himself stuck in a chimney for 12 hours.

In the United States, a restaurant opened up in New York that emphatically serves collagen as a beauty treatment and meal in one and George W Bush addressed a New York school about the importance of education programs. He made this point through use of the phrase

“Childrens do learn”

Today in Extraordinarily Odd

Last week a man put the nation of Belgium up for sale on ebay as a way of getting it a little attention and maybe it worked because sales of the Belgian flag have skyrocketed since debate has been escalating about the potential division of Belgium into a series of smaller sections rather than one larger nation. Apparently people want to celebrate Belgium the way it is. What exactly does Belgium do? They give us mussels and chips, chocolate and waffles. One thing that is for sure though, is; if you were clever enough to invest in flags in Belgium, then your time is fast approaching. Belgian flag makers: You time is NOW! [source]

An anonymous telephone bidder just paid 29,000 English pounds for a 157 year old bottle of Bowmore Scotch Whiskey. That’s a world record amount. I know that people are connoisieurs of scotch and that it’s about the fact that it’s rare etc. but when are you actually going to drink it? If you’re NOT going to drink it then it’s not really about scotch because you don’t get to interact with it. You’ve just got a bottle there. It could really just be anything you’ve paid 29,000 pounds for. It’s just sitting there. And the other thing is, it’d be pretty damned crap if you actually opened it up and it was just rat juice – as in, water that had been soaking up the essence of rat before being strained and bottled. Then you’d look stupid for spending that much money on scotch. Not before though. the paradox is, of course, that we’ll never know. [source]

A German man who went to celebrate Oktoberfest, got really drunk and then got stuck in a chimney for 12 hours. Earlier this week I saw some film of a guy who had had a lot to drink and then he got stuck in his ex-girlfriend’s chimney. People had to knock down a wall to get him out of that chimney and the girl was really pissed off. She threw a bottle at his head twice and he just stood there and took it both times. Why do drunk people apparently gravitate toward chimneys? They’re not exactly the easiest things to navigate. Maybe it’s a Santa Claus fetish. Both were in their 20s, maybe that’s why. You do crap like that when you’re in your 20s [source]

Some garden variety, rancid, gold digging hos are trying to sue Joe Francis for using footage of them in a Girls Gone Wild film without their consent, reports TMZ. The trouble is, they are seen in the footage actually giving their full conscious consent so it’s clear they’re just trying to kick him while he’s down and in jail on tax evasion charges.

It’s interesting the way America does this to celebrities who are down. Britney is the target of a relentless barrage of suits and charges and rumours that are totally ludicrous but that definitely add to the freakishness of it all and they seem to multiply simply because things are so bad for her right now. Granted she’s completely lost her mind but it’s so utterly clear that K-Fed is cashing in on her delusion for his own gain. The coverage of her performance at the MTV awards was an astonishingly cruel and unusually detailed dissection of an appearance, down to the hand with the lost fake nail.

Same basic deal here with Francis. He’s in jail so people have just decided to kick him despite the fact that the actual lawsuit is essentially without basis or merit.

My question in all of this is, “Where is Candy Spelling?” Where did she go? Where did the nation’s fleeting step mother go? Surely now would be a great time for her to emerge and write another unsolicited, menopause induced advice column. People are suing, Britney is fatter than ever before. Candy is needed more than she has ever been needed. [source]

Wow – it’s a great day in unchecked ego in Divaland thanks to the release of some vastly unnecessary fragrances and all I can say is, thank crap because today is pretty damned slow. All the news is just bland sightings and critiques of Rumer Willis’ hair. Actually Rumer Willis’ hair is pretty dreadful. I’ll post about that in a second.

But first, both Britney Spears and Mariah Carey have fragrances coming out and the ads for both are hysterically tragic and kind of alarming. Above is the new ad for Carey’s new fragrance “M”.

They graciously avoid any real close ups of her face by simply flooding it with massive amounts of light in between close up shots of what is clearly someone else’s body. So all you get is a mild pain in your retina from staring at white light rather than the shocking truth about her sagging haggard jowls which would have induced some form of intellectual revulsion anyway so – assume you came out about as scathed as you always would have with partial blindness after watching this masterpiece. I love that we’re meant to believe it’s her and even more so that some people do in the same way that Sherri Shepherd doesn’t believe in Evolution.

Then there’s Britney’s fragrance, “Believe” the adverts for which I found on http://www.dlisted.com/ . I think I’ve said this before but Britney must be under an older iron clad contract with the fragrance company which states that she’ll release several fragrances over a number of years because unless that’s the case there’s no rational reason why Britney should be releasing anything at all. Including herself from a dead-bolted house. Still, the mark-up on fragrances is something like 700% so who can blame Elizabeth Arden for going in for the kill. All they have to do is churn out the cat urine, put it in a swank, green tinted glass vase and hope the teenaged girls in the fly over states don’t notice when Britney wakes up in a pool of her own vomit. Then they spend heaps of money on parties and extras and get Britney to say something poetic and bang, it’s commodified poetry for the masses.

Fragrances are incredible things. They’re nothing and everything at once.

“Believe” is an exercise in massive corporate denial more than anything else. They’ve airbrushed the reality out of Britney’s face so she looks the same as she did 3 years ago and they’re expecting us not to notice. There are people who won’t though. This will actually give hope to some kids. That’s why people like Chris Crocker exist. Well, that and massive prejudice and areas of low cultural density.

Today in Extraordinarily Odd

Courts in China sentenced three people to death this week for killing their lovers with rat poison. The most glamorous of the three is the one who put a capsule full of rat poison in her mouth moments before she went to kiss her lover and then when she kissed him, she made him swallow it. She did this because she was pretty sure he was cheating on her. That’s pretty cool film noir of her even if she is a psychopath murderer. I mean, it’s probably just your average gelatin capsule which she put together herself so she was taking a risk by doing it in the first place. What if he suddenly had to use the bathroom prior to their kiss? She would have died instead because the capsule would have dissolved. I bet she spent a lot of her life running cautiously through alleyways wettened with relentless rain at the night while wearing a black Chanel suit, black stilettos and red lipstick. Also, she ran in black and white too. [source]

A Nigerian witchdoctor has been arrested after being employed by politicians to perform rituals near an election tribunal. Politics is really interesting in this sense in Africa. In America the same basic thing happens on many levels including religious panic but even Republicans here haven’t had the gall to employ priests to stand around shrieking. Kudos to the Nigerians for cutting to the theatrical chase. The thing is though, if you’re a Nigerian politician who has managed to rig an election and the only thing you can think of doing is hiring a quack in a feathered headpiece who dances about a pot filled with a rabbit and some eggs then the problem probably goes far beyond corruption. [source]

The Japanese have been churning out the quality material of late – what with the restaurant where you can have sex with the pig you’re about to eat before it is slaughtered and the soap that comes in the shape of dessert – but they have clearly decided not to rest on their laurels. The newest offering from Japan is called Adult Milk and it is on sale for 43 dollars a pint. The Milk is designed to relieve stress as it is only collected in the morning meaning that it has three times the usual level of melatonin in it than regular milk. That totally explains why it costs 43 times the cost of a regular pint. The weird part about this is that melatonin helps you to sleep, it doesn’t relieve stress. Well, it relieves stress in the sense that it knocks you out and you don’t feel the stress. So, this should really be called knockout milk. People would buy this product in New York. Actually, let’s re-consider that. Some people would buy it and some people would base their lives on not buying it. What an interesting place New York is. [source]

The Post reports that Steve-O from Jackass went on Howard Stern and talked about how he likes inhaling nitrous oxide from whipped cream bulbs and how Lindsay Lohan once stole blow from his apartment. Not necessarily recently, but it did happen and it did involve cocaine and Lohan. Just in case you’d forgotten how well the two go together. He was filming something in his apartment the day she came over and so they even have Lohan’s signature on a release form to prove she was there.

Steve-O and the whole Jackass thing are annoyingly mindless, in much the same way that Tom Green is or used to be, but they’re not as neurotic as Green and therefore can be considered hot. Tom Green is never hot because he’s far too needy.

Still, it’s good that even though Lohan has been nowhere to be seen, apart from the shots of her sitting around smoking in the forest with her new addict friends, and in rumours that she has been busy screwing that dumb ass billionaire’s husband in rehab, that we can still fixate on her drug use anyway. Particularly because it certainly drums up some quality publicity for Steve-O whose entire career is based on being a parent’s nightmare and a professional idiot. He has quite remarkable teeth though. [source]

Ben Widdicombe reports that former model Christie Turlington has Lyme disease. Isn’t that interesting? I mean, here you have two separate parts of a story that would ordinarily probably not get that much press on their own but when you put them together it’s oddly fascinating. Christie Turlington, the extraordinarily beautiful face of Calvin Klein’s iconic 90s fragrance Eternity and Lyme disease – a disease people get from ticks.

Lyme disease is one of those old diseases too, that have a more severe sounding name because it was named a while ago, before all the diseases got mnemonics for names. So, Christie Turlington seems to have been hanging out with ticks, she got Lyme disease.

“Supermodels” aren’t generally associated with “disease” at all let alone one that involves a sort of lesion either. Well, unless you’re talking about the models that are physically ruined so they stay thin to keep working and the horror is immediately evident in their shrunk wrapped torsos.

Turlington’s husband, Ed Burns’ has a rep who says she’s healthy and happy but we all know that’s a party line. Now, for some reason I can’t help but picture her in a stone tower lamenting her ill-health, staring down sadly, while she is quarantined. Quarantined, again – just so we don’t forget – because of Lyme disease [source]

Today in Extraordinarily Odd



A clever and focused young man named John Allwood from Australia has made every Australian worldwide as proud as whatever gets really proud a lot by smashing 40 watermelons with his head in one minute. Isn’t that lovely? I’m glad someone finally DID it. There’s no doubt about it, when he dies: State Funeral with a royal visitor. [source]







The great thing about the Japanese is that they really do think of everything. They sub-divide ideas and come up with genius new ones that the plain old simple, plodding West would never have had the foresight to think of. Like cucumber flavoured Pepsi from a while back and soap that is shaped like elaborate European and American desserts. Now in Japan you can get soap that is painstakingly shaped to look like dessert. It’s actually a really great thing too, particularly for the uber-rich and completely unhinged freaked out sadists that are going to that weird assed underground restaurant where they have sex with the animal they’re about to eat before it’s slaughtered and cooked for them. With dessert shaped soaps you can eat your last sexual partner and then experience the visual delights of dessert while simultaneously trying desperately to remove the stuck on horrifying dirt that will probably never ever come off anyway. Scrub away! It looks like an éclair! Genius! I’m distracted from my own rapidly decaying sense of decency! Ok, not all Japanese people are freaks. I know. I mean, Jessica Simpson had a line of dessert smelling bathroom crap recently and she’s probably about as culturally corrupt as a Japanese bestial restaurant so, yeah, this kind of thing transcends national borders. [source]








Outrage has erupted in the Kazakh parliament because pictures of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in tight swimming trunks were published. “For me, he (Nazarbayev) is a God-appointed person," said Bekbolat Tleukhan, member of the pro-Nazarbayev Nur-Otan party that controls every seat in the lower house. "This is not just impolite, it's pure shame. ... It goes against all our traditions." Of course. Of course this kind of reaction could only come from inane organized, institutionalized religion. But, you know what? Whatever. It’s too bad that they hate to face the reality of their physical selves but that’s nothing new. They’re religious. What’s great about this is the way Reuters has skirted the responsibility of publishing the photo by doing what the Post did with pictures of Saddam Hussein in his underwear; they published a clear picture of someone reading another newspaper that had – thus relinquishing responsibility. [source]









China is back in the saddle with some good old fashioned inane bannings again and this time they’re banning “sexual sounds” on the airwaves. "Commercials containing sexually provocative sounds or tantalizing language as well as vulgar advertisements for breast enhancement and female underwear are banned, effective immediately," said the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television notice. Well, great. Way to cripple the advertising industry. It’s good that they’ve banned “tantalizing language”. As everyone knows, advertising should never be tantalizing. [source]







Whoever the hell thought it was a good idea to get President Bush to teach a grammar lesson to some New York school kids is either a freaking moron or a genius counter operative on the inside. He actually addressed the kids with the phrase, “Childrens do learn”. This isn’t a surprise seeing as only today a copy of a speech he was to deliver was accidentally posted on the UN General Assembly website and it showed how he has to have all the “difficult” words spelt phonetically. Still, it’s odd that a snotty little New York genius kid didn’t either smugly correct him or pop a cap in his ass. Either would have been good. [source]

Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens are apparently so fascinating and clean and pure and worthwhile to the American teen and pre-teen public that their relationship warrants an entire magazine that documents it and it’s coming to get us from news stands on Oct 2. Wow, Hudgens, way to transcend the filth of nude photos and be involved in one of the most totally inane cultural artifacts since the Tamagochi.

What the hell is IN a magazine that is entirely focused on the corporately constructed union between a squeaky clean teen musical heartthrob and his recently sullied gal pal. A whole lot of LA style shiny teeth and relentless, Prozac propped up smiles. The greatest thing about the cover of Zanessa (whoever came up with that title deserves an Academy Award ) is the way Zac Efron’s stomach is slightly visible because his t shirt is just above his waistband. That could be a metaphor for the national American notion of desire. Just enough to be there but not enough to mean an unsafe response happens. And furthermore, am I the only one who thinks this magazine cover looks like it could just as easily have been a breakfast cereal rather than a magazine? I mean, kids eat breakfast cereal too.

Wow, and look it’s not just your teen version of Brangelina that’s featured in the mag, it’s all your favourite High School Musical 2 stars! I’m dying! Literally, I mean. I just quickly smashed my faced on the keyboard so many times I am now unconscious. Thank GOD. I will, however, have to get this “n” key repaired. [source]

So, Tom Cruise and the cast and crew of Valkyrie were all visiting an historical site at which anti-Nazis were executed. They were having a minute’s silence because Tom Cruise is working as hard as humanly possible to make the Germans like him and seeing as he’s a freaking insane cult leader, that’s harder than say smiling and waving like the actual Queen does.
Everything was going according to plan when someone in the crew farted.

The reports on Female First don’t say whether someone else giggled or whether or not a whole lot of the boys up the back started pointing and laughing and groaning but it’s probably a surefire bet that that’s what happened. Then Tom gave them detentions. When you get a Tom Cruise film detention it means you have to go underground to his 10 million dollar subterranean bunker in Colorado for a week. Only boys are allowed and they’re not allowed to wear clothes because clothes are …ah…well, what…he hasn’t quite figured out the religious reasoning behind that rule yet but it is for religious purposes.

Seeing as Tom Cruise is such a high maintenance control freak, it would be interesting to see just how much stress he can deal with until he actual cracks open and the burnt walnut that bounces around inside him falls out in a cloud of fairly toxic gas. Yes, it would be interesting to see how long it takes to get to that point and actually just to watch the theatrics of it too. That walnut is all that is left of his unmedicated brain.

At the end of the day, it’s good that Cruise Corp was forced to witness a fart seeing as he seems to uptight he probably has them surgically removed at night. By porn star surgeons. Yes, that’ll do.
[source]

Pam Anderson is apparently on her way to living out the same fate as Britney Spears, according to the Post. Page Six reports that she’s hanging out with pimp Rick Solomon, she may or may not either think they're already married or actually already be married and is getting way too drunk in public, way too often.

Pam Anderson, as far as I can remember seeing as I’m hardly part of the Baywatch demographic, is one of those rare American celebrities who figured it out and kept it simple. She has always wanted to be, by her own admission according to Ruby Wax’s autobiography, just a ho. And frankly, not only has she been a successful one, she’s been a 100% grade A, top shelf ho with a genuine sense of irony.

She never lost the plot entirely – she just goes out there like a trooper, shows up behind her breasts, laughs, smiles, gets paid and goes home. She parodies herself all over the place. It’s genius. Pam Anderson could easily have been a complete train wreck earlier on in life like Lohan or Spears when you consider how much of her life she is really consciously responsible for creating. She never really has fallen apart. Until now, apparently.

No matter, Pam Anderson doesn’t suck. She’s probably just due for another stapling up session. And some skin plumping. Why doesn’t everyone just leave her alone. She’s had two fucking kids…all you people want is more more more more more. [source]

Today in Extraordinarily Odd


This was from the weekend but I only found it now but I think it’s still great. I’ve always thought that if Russia could only re-create itself as a tropical island but keep everything else the same it would be the perfect place for me to write the great novel from wherever it is I feel like I’m from these days. You’d have the stone, vodka, pig fat, poverty, mafia, potato, bluntness, Shostakovich and a delightful run of sunny, sandy beaches on which to play. Imagine my sheer and unhindered delight when I realized that actually Russia is in fact sinking several billion dollars into a building project that WILL be Russia but on an island. The island is called Federation Island and it should be ready in time for the 2014 Olympics. Thank GOD. [source]

An hilarious Australian bar woman was in court for serving customers beers with a shot of disinfectant in it as a joke. She literally got shots of hard core disinfectant and fed it to a man at the bar and her line of defense is that is was simply a misguided joke. The thing about Australia is that you can use that type of defense there. When I worked in a bar in Sydney I served a guy 2 shots of vodka for every one he ordered and every time he reached out to get his drink I would smile and insist that he to explain to me how much of a crippling failure he was before I’d let him drink the pain away. I got asked what I was doing and I said it was a joke. No one cared. If you’re not laughing in Australia then you’re causing sadness. Laughter is like an anti-terrorism initiative. It’s run on fear. Now, idiot freak who drank the crap is another matter. What the hell are you doing drinking detox. Get a fucking life idiot. [source]

New York Magazine reports that a new restaurant called Hakata TonTon is opening up in New York where collagen is on the menu. Way to go restaurant! One of the best ways to get noticed is to serve a dish that costs a stupid amount of money and isn’t worth it OR serve something that is meant to dissolve self esteem problems. Usually beauty treatments are marketed entirely as just that; treatments like the fish that eat dead skin off your psoriasis infected skin or the lecithin injections or the bull semen in the hair. This way, you get to eat collagen in a restaurant in the form of pig foot AND feel like you’re getting hotter. New Yorkers love to multi-task so being able to eat, restrict calories by eating pig cartilage, be seen in a hot new restaurant AND get battle fine lines and wrinkles at the same time should appeal enormously. The article says that shark cartilage was too expensive to sell in New York. What crap, nothing’s too expensive to sell in New York. [source]

Ann Coulter has stated in Esquire Magazine that she wants a fatwa put out on her and look, I completely understand. She was quoted as saying:

"I WANT a fatwa. I used to see Salman Rushdie in the Sky Bar in L.A. He wasn't in hiding; he became world-renowned for his fatwa. So why can't I get a fatwa? Don't they read my stuff?"

The difference here, of course, is that they probably do read her stuff and as a result don’t think she’s dangerous. She gives the game away before it’s even begun. Actually, what would be fascinating right now would be if Spencer Pratt, Ann Coulter and Chris Crocker were trapped in a small house together in the Midwest and they had to survive for 40 days. Who would eat who? Equally as importantly: who would wash up?

Ultimately though and just to get back on track: I never thought I’d say this but Coulter is absolutely right. Any thinking entrepreneur wants a fatwa or to be excommunicated or denounced by the Catholic Church. It’s just like writing a book and having it put on a statewide high school syllabus. Religious disapproval is the kind of endorsement that pays and pays. [source]

Britney was just charged with driving without a license and at this point it’s probably safe to say that Britney is a lot like the Queen Mother. The only reason that the Queen Mother was able to live over a hundred years with those wood-brown teeth, frail, war remembering skeleton, legs that required TWO walking sticks and two other humans to help them operate and eye poppingly racist views is because she lived in a massively well funded bubble. It’s the same with Brit. The only thing keeping Britney going right now is the fact that she’s a multi millionaire and doesn’t have to do anything that would be considered unpleasant yet necessary for self sustenance.

Oh look, you’re utterly unhinged and suddenly divorced! Quick! Fly first class to Hawaii! That’ll take the edge off.

Oh look, the children are crying! Quick! Drop 75,000 bucks on a new car and a yarn based wig.

Oh look, you broke a nail! Quick! Order 8 pounds of Iranian caviar marinated in the blood of young blonde virgins and then dump it all down the toilet immediately and sing something from Walt Disney's "The Little Mermaid".

She has every little whim catered for through a rotation of staff and a flood of cash and so what would be the otherwise quite telling details of every day life that may require for anyone else have virtually no effect on her except in the brief moments where she’s forced to stare at herself. The last time that happened was after the VMAs when she finally saw how fat she’d become and she ran screaming into the night until a doctor was brought in to medicate her. Hours later she was still out in no underwear. This is to say nothing of the fact that fresh pictures of her using a public restroom on the Pacific Coast Highway are suddenly lavished upon us all over the internet and her brown wig has a weird white stain on the back of it. That's just today.

While it’s really just another plot twist in the endless repetitive din of chronic ineptness that is her current life, it’s probably still worth mentioning that she’s been charged with an alleged hit and run and for driving without a license for which she could serve 6 months jail if convicted. Indeed. So, you see how when you read that it becomes yet another moment of blur – it’s like there are words coming at you but because it’s about Britney and failure it’s just noise at this point? I think we’re all about at that stage. Still, if she does go to jail then that’ll mean that America has thoroughly punished all 3 and a half popular girls for being badly behaved. 2 and a half have gone or will go away and all that’s left is Brit. [source]

Today in Extraordinarily Odd

A man who goes by the showbiz name of Eater X has just won what was called the “World Burrito Eating Contest” by eating 10 ¾ burritos in 12 minutes. I love Mexican food," he said after his victory. You can actually look him up on Wikipedia. Go on, look him up now. He’s there. Plus, there are a bunch of other people who no doubt live in small town America who are “big” in the competitive eating “scene”. They have whacky, whimsical names like “The Black Widow” and “Badlands” and “Gravy”. Gravy is a word I have never liked. Ever. Still, it’s good that people have found a way to turn their tendencies toward self abuse and emotional over compensation into a joyous, rewarding pastime. [source]

Well, look, it wouldn’t be a week without some kind of inanely overpriced dish or shoe or bodily treatment that was priced out of the stratosphere now would it? The answer is no. So, that’s why it’s good that this week is validated on a Monday, right off the bat with reports that a hotel in Sri Lanka is offering a dessert to punters who are rich but also mindless that will set them back $14,500. It’s got Dom Perignon champagne in it as well as, gold and silver leaf -- and an 80-carat aquamarine the diameter of the head of a soup spoon set into the dish. These dishes aren’t ever just food. They’re always like say 400 bucks worth of food at the very most and then the rest is a diamond or an antique chair or something. Like, “hi – try our 40 million dollar cheesecake. It’s a slab of Carnegie deli cheesecaske which our interns have pushed diamonds into and it’s served on the deed to a three story manse on East 73rd Street”. If I ever get rich enough to buy a slab of 14,500 dollar dessert I don’t want a precious jewel at the end, I just want to be full and finally happy. [source]

A little while ago, Chinese officials were in an uproar that began after a TV anchor complained about the fact that Starbucks had somehow managed to install a shop in the Forbidden City. Starbucks fought back and they all screamed and finally Starbucks was forced out of the UNESCO listed site. Since then, a different coffee store has opened in the Forbidden City that is run by the Forbidden City. Gosh, this whole affair really reminds you of why it’s called the Forbidden City, doesn’t it? [source]

What the hell happened that made public interest in the increasingly irrelevant Kid Rock and Tommy Lee suddenly worth 5 million dollars? I mean, they got in a fight at the VMAs in a publicity stunt that is essentially on par with the handiwork of Spencer Pratt and presto, they’re about to fight each other over Pam Anderson for a prize of 5 million dollars. The Post reports that where it used to be 1 million, now it’s 5 million. They added 4 million to the prize presumably because they figured somehow it was worth the extra 4 million. How?

What the hell does anyone care about these two boozing, bloated rockers? I mean, maybe there’s some appeal in watching Tommy Lee smack a republican in the mouth but 5 million bucks?

Even Pam Anderson couldn’t care less about both of them and she’s the object of their affection. According to rumours on the internet she’s dating Rick Solomon the other half of the cast in the critically downloaded “One Night in Paris“ that starred Paris Hilton.
God, it’s all top notch talent around the net this morning. [source]

So Marcia Brady apparently never ate out Jan Brady behind the scenes of the Brady Bunch. Sadly. Last week it was reported that Maureen McCormick’s new book was to detail her mild lesbian affair with Eve Plum while they were filming the Brady Bunch and so, naturally, everyone got all excited. The publisher of her book, however, has stated that these rumours aren’t true. What a jip. Why couldn’t that have happened? I mean, everything else apparently did on that show.

Still it makes sense that she might leak that rumour though. The “pull back the curtain of sparkling American values to reveal the less than pure, entirely human underbelly for shock value” technique is a surefire way to get press in America right now – especially if you’re from something as inanely polished as the Brady Bunch. America has such a hard time with facing the reality of where it’s at culturally right now that if news of another icon of one dimensional purity being corrupted by lesbianism is leaked it will inspire predictable immediate shock. Teenaged lesbianism is so typical and common that America has no choice but to find it entirely horrifying and is therefore engaged by its own horrifying reflection.

What the hell kind of tell all book drums up press with leaks about what’s not included because those things never happened? Wouldn’t you choose an anecdote that was both engaging and included? Wasn’t there a time when say, McCormick walked into Florence Henderson’s dressing room and caught her smoking some pot while getting a foot rub from a naked Mexican midget? I can totally see that happening. Actually, I can see pretty much anything happening. Hell, at least she had bulimia. [source]

Tony Baretto, the alarmingly fat witness who is testifying that he saw Britney abuse drugs on numerous occasions was just interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today Show and it was another one of those scenarios like the Larry King interview with Melanie Brown regarding the child she has with Eddie Murphy. There’s really no reason why an ex employee of Britney’s should come forward to cause her pain other than to get her back for firing him. She says he didn’t pick up a hat when she asked him to. He says he didn’t hear her. Judging by his size, would it have been possible for him to pick anything up at all? Only science would really be able to ascertain that.

What we can ascertain now, however, is that the security guard, when asked why he was doing this at all, essentially deferred to his lawyer, Gloria Allred. Allred explained that it was because the security guard has two children of his own and he was concerned as a father. Actually, she said, “Because he’s the father of…” and because she’s a pushy American corporate showbiz lawyer who appears on TV it actually sounded like she was going to say, “Because HE is the father of her two children…” which would have made the entire thing so much more interesting than the repetitive vomit spill mop up it so relentlessly is at the moment.

It’s so great to watch attention hungry people stutter and trip over themselves in their attempt to find an alternate answer to the question, “Why are you doing this?” when the honest answer is really something like, “Because I’m an attention whore and I’ll probably get to skip the line, get a few drinks out of it and possibly launch my singing career.” [source]

He was edging that way last week but Chris Crocker now officially sucks. The schtick and the approach seemed far too savvy for someone who was supposed to be stuck in a small town with his judgmental Pentecostal grandparents with no outlet except for his video files from the very beginning. With TMZ’s new video of him standing outside the most obvious places in LA, playing the bitchkid answer to Ann Coulter entirely on the subject of Britney, he’s descended to the level of Bobby Trendy.

His initial point, no matter how inane, was essentially understandable; he, sort of like Shostakovich really, was starved of necessary contact with people like him in the outside world. It’s not exactly uncommon even if it is shrill with a veneer that makes him look like he has a little potential to be an actor or at least marketed as one.

Now, though, he’s just playing up to the people in his hometown but en masse and there’s nothing else to him. What he says isn’t offensive, it’s reactionary. He’s got 3 minutes left. When you take into account the hair, he’s the new Sanjaya. [source]

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