For the most part, I had a hard time pulling my attention away from two things; one, a blog called Charlie Tu Eats, posted on facebook by Charlie Katsu which chronicles what Charlie Tu (who I guess is his alter ego) eats. Cheese with mustard (a combination I categorically deny) apparently causes him to fart and the other thing I watched was a fairly stock standard documentary about the Westboro Baptist Church produced by the BBC that revealed to me that Fred Phelps is probably a rageaholic and I always thought it was either that or he was a repressed homo. The real losers in the Westboro Baptist Church are, of course, the children.

When I finally did try and interact with the actual news and the tiny moving shaddows in the corner of my paranoid, placebo caffeine shocked eyes that I kept thinking were either cockroaches or rodents but were really actually nothing faded I noticed that the New York Times is reporting that a Saudi man is offering ten million dollars for the shoe thrown at President Bush’s head during his press conference in Iraq at the weekend. Nicholas Kristoff suggests that if one man is offering ten million dollars for one shoe, perhaps Bush could have shoes thrown at him all over the place and make a chunk of money to offset White House travel costs. I’m still hung up on how fast Bush reacted to the flying shoe. Why, it was almost as though he has a tendency towards immediate self preservation.

Additionally, here’s an unfathomably shit Christmas themed short film featuring the First Family about how their freaking dog put up the White House decorations which is no doubt some lame attemtp to be appealing to children and simple minded housewives that has to be watched to be believed. What astonishes me more than anything else is the cold hard fact that someone who is probably considered a professional saw this edit and decided it was as good as it could possibly be.

All in all, any pretense at presidential dignity has now almost completely melted away. [source] [source]

And while I’m lazily posting videos and writing about them, here’s one of the most tolerable Christmas things I’ve seen so far this year featuring two of my favourite people EVER. Here’s Elaine Stritch singing with Alec Baldwin playing the piano on last week’s 30 Rock. Elaine Stritch is wobbly on the first note – which is endearing – and Alec Baldwin is relentlessly adorable. I too, do not want Elaine Stritch to die. What a lovely realisation for Christmas.

Here’s a video of an Iraqi journalist throwing a shoe at the head of George W Bush as he gave a press conference. Apart from the fact that it’s hilarious that someone actually threw a shoe at Bush’s head and Bush dodged it with such natural ease that it seems like he has a in-built dodging mechanism, what’s great about this is the way the MSNBC journalist explains the significance of having a shoe thrown at you.
According to the journalist (and you might want to write this down), if someone throws a shoe at you it’s a sign of disrespect and you know, the thing about this is I’m actually glad we had that cleared up. I mean, for a moment there I thought the tall, angry man hurling a shoe at the loathed president’s head in front of international media was actually a reference to the rarely scrutinised mating ritual of the Patagonian Face Pummeling Rabbit. That, I can now officially report, is not the case.
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino now also apparently has a black eye because she was knocked in the face with a microphone. What is also amazing about this is how long it takes the Secret Service to rush in and protect the president. I wonder if they had their own moment of indecision after the first shoe flew. “Should we really rush in there and protect him from the flying shoe?” they might have asked themselves deep down in their subconscious.

Here’s Tom Cruise talking to Matt Lauer on the Today Show this morning and it’s interesting that first and foremost they spend time talking about the fact that they’re talking because, of course, last time they were at each other’s throats over the concept of pyschiatric medication. The interview is based on the fact that Tom Cruise’s new movie “Valkyrie” is about to come out but they only talk about that in the final 3-4 minutes of the interview.

Something happened to Tom Cruise where, at some point, he suddenly realised he had to stuff the crazy back inside his skull and play the normal, non-psychotic, generic, leading man again and I would love to know what that rational, ego thwarting moment actually was. It’s the professional movie star version of hitting rock bottom when you’re an alcoholic. I suspect it was something that happened around the time he was taped delivering a speech at the Scientology HQ where he was standing next to a portrait of L. Ron Hubbard and he saluted the portrait. Maybe I’m wrong though because there are so many insane moments that were documented at the time. It really could have been anything.

The fact remains though, that the whole idea that he’s celebrating 25 years of being in the movie industry is so bogus because he has actually been in the business longer than that. You have to hand it to him though because his rehabilitation a really slick, professional operation. He’s looking really good, he’s keeping it together in public, Oprah did a whole show devoted to him because they share the same demographic and now he’s back with Matt Lauer and everything is civil. I still don’t buy the forced crap about how romantic he is and how much he loves Katie Holmes but then, I’m not the demographic; midwestern housewives are so as long as they’re happily living through the blank Katie Holmes everything is going according to plan.

What will be interesting is the point at which Tom Cruise fails to contain his freakishness again and how it will inevitably come out. I imagine he’ll throw something this time. Maybe a cream puff. It’ll be at Barbara Walters and Barbara Walters will be shocked when that cream puff hits her in the face. The moment it happens whatever show they’re on will fade to black. Smoke will probably come out of the back of every TV in America at that point. That’s because Oprah loves Tom Cruise and she is controlling everything.

In response to yesterday’s reports that no magazine is interested in photos of Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpon’s new child whose name is, no shit, Bronx Mowgli – I read that name initially on Dlisted.com and thought it was a joke; the basis for which was simply two random words Michael K had seen in front of him but actually, that is his real name. Brooklyn for Posh Spice, Bronx for Pete Wentz so that leaves Manhattan for who? Katie Price probably. Queens isn’t so weird – I mean, Queen Latifa. Staten Island would be an odd name for a child. There’s no denying that.
SO – anyway. Pete Wentz writes:

About baby pics gossip: truth is like every celeb couple we were offeredmounds and mounds of money by mags from here to Guam to pimp out the baby. We just don’t want to go down that road with him.

He then goes on for a month about why they are choosing not to cash in on their kid which makes it clear that he a) has no publicist who is really helping him out and b) he is over reacting probably because actually no one really does want photos of his kid. This isn’t the first time this has come up. Months before the kid was born the same speculation was fluttering about and here we are with that speculation proving to be reasonable. Still, at least they’re keeping a hand in the game by responding. 133 people have commented on Pete Wentz’s blog posting about it. [source]

Legendary pin up girl, Bettie Mae Page has died in Los Angeles at the age of 85. The first time I ever heard of Ms. Page was when I was 16 and embarking on a study of obscenity in high school and I collected pictures of her. I remember reading that she worked out every day and dieted with military strictness and it was that part that really fascinated me. Learning that about her concreted for me, the point at which she consciously dealt with the reality of who she was; a canvas for straight male fantasies.

Plus, so many angry young women over the years have sstyled themselves on Bettie Page. The woman I bought a corset from in 1999, for example. She had a nice brother named Greg but she was angry and gothic. Actually, Greg was one of those flirty straight guys who are intriguing at first but then it's boring because they're really just attention seeking actors.

Also, the other night I was at the Paper Magazine Awards and one of the presenters, Aimee Phillips, seemed to be styled like her with the razor sharp, eyebrow level black bangs and a put-on 1950s vernacular which admittely seemed to slip half way through her presentation but I knew it was Bettie Page.

Bettie Page was a quality broad who championed free speech and for that she should be commended. RIP Bettie Page. [source]

According to Page Six, no one wants photos of the new baby to be born as a result of the union between Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson. They’ve been offering them round but no one cares because apparently no magazine editor believes the photos will sell. That makes sense , I think. Pete Wentz is meant to be so anti-establishment punk and Ashlee Simpson is the anti-Jessica and no one cares about Jessica Simpson anymore because she is appalling so when you get to the end of that equation there’s basically nothing left.

It’s at this point that Pete Wentz has to be kicking himself for bothering with the kid. Poor Pete Wentz. He sold out SO much that at the end of it all he had nothing but a chain of bars that are meant to be interesting, a relatively bland clothing line and some great but obviously laboured over hair and a rockin ass. Who could see THAT coming? Not me.

But, I suppose that the value of baby pictures is really proportional to the purity of the image of the parents. Middle aged women don’t want to gawk at photos of a demon baby with eyeliner or the baby of a hideous spoilt brat. They want pure movie star idealism and that’s it. Women seem to be in denial about Tom Cruise’s insanity so that’s why Suri Cruise is so watchable. That and the fact that she’s criminally cute. Pete Wentz’s kid won’t be cute even if it is cute. The parents are too fake-angsty which is the same as real angsty when you’re from Arkansas. Plus, they will probably name the kid Bruce because it’s weird, old and male enough to be edgy in that ironic hipster “smack me in the head because this is annoying” way. [source]

Madonna must be breathing a sigh of relief today as news reports emerge explaining that she has inspired a statement from the Catholic church in South America, condemning her as the inspiration behind some appparently dangerous “crazy enthusiasm” and “impure thoughts”.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Catholic Cardinal Jorge Medina criticised the flamboyant singer during his homily at a Mass in honour of the late dictator Augusto Pinochet.

It’s actually amazing that that wasn’t made up. The way they printed it in the Herald is just the way I copied it too. It’s one paragraph. Sort of like when you make someone stand on stage and you just throw a bucket of paint at them and then nothing else happens. It’s a standout statement by itself. Pinochet, of course, was the Chilean dictator who was responsible for the death of 2300 and the torture of 30,000 of his own people.

See, the thing is, I thought that Madonna had basically run out of steam and was outsourcing cool to several high impact 25 year olds in New York but she’s still got something going on if she is still annoying the Church. Although, it must be said that it is just the ever media attention hungry Catholic church who have a history of defining childish inanity on the world stage (see this year’s World Youth Day where they dragged a corpse half way round the world to Australia and then had a condom exclusion zone initiated for the Pope) so getting a slap on the wrist from them is like getting into a fight with Ann Coulter – it’s really just about the air time. Similarly, the Catholic official is clearly insane as he can’t see the problem with condemning Madonna and honouring Pinochet. I can’t even believe I had to write that to clarify.

So, in short: congrats to Madonna for the cultural endorsement that comes from a slap of the wrist from the Catholic church but it’s still not quite up to the standard she was once at and Catholic church; stop doing anything you freaking insane weirdo child molesters. [source]

Twelve months ago Britney Spears was in the middle of a free-fall meltdown that seemed to exemplify what happens to a human after she has been beholden to the limitless inhuman expectations that America places on its pop cultural icons. But that was then.

Now, as Christmas is only 2 weeks away, mademoiselle is fully recuperated – although I watched the MTV documentary about her which while, beautifully shot, didn’t mention her mother once and had her crying about being isolated because she is too famous to go anywhere which is a claim I’m not so sure I buy. You can orchestrate your own disappearance even if it takes a little while. I’m not so convinced she really does want to escape the glare of the spotlight that made her flip out and shave her head.

That’s why it’s intriguing that, in this completely bright and polished re-envisioning of Britney Spears that frighteningly doesn’t really differ at all from the Britney Spears she was before she flipped out as the full horror of last year unfolded for her, with her amateur style video where she stands, badly lit in front of a Christmas tree with her two boys – one of whom is disinterested enough to wander off during the message, and wishes everyone a merry Christmas – I’m reminded of the extremely neat Christmas messages of Joan Crawford and the boiling rage that flowed beneath the surface of them. It’s that instant link that my mind makes that leads me to believe Ms Spears, with her constant rocking and choice of lighting, may not be as together as her publicist would have us believe. Thank goodness.

Oh Look. After yesterday’s news that Mariah Carey is probably pregnant, more people are having children in lieu of putting out albums. People Magazine reports that Ricky Martin just had two with a surrogate mother and OK reports that Avril Lavigne, for want of something to do that doesn’t involve causing people to vomit with rage at the preposterousness of her mere existence (which is why she must have ruled out making another album) is denying rumours that she is pregnant which could mean that she is because as we know – you can’t keep the media AS interested in your pregnancy if you just admit to being pregnant. This way, celebrity culture journalists can go NUTS speculating over whether people are or aren’t pregnant and the ball can keep rolling.

Speaking of children, congratulations to Faith over at DyslexicChicken.com who just had a stunning baby boy and I’m fairly certain her new son is hardly in place of an album she could have put out. This child=album theory really only applies to lazy famous musicians and movie stars. Faith was probably working on an album as she actually gave birth. [source] [source]

Page Six reports that while Tom Cruise is on a damage control mission and he’s basically apppearing on every show that will have him to talk about his upcoming movie, Valkyrie, he lost his Blackberry. Under his direction, United Artists has produced a series of pretty dreadful films and his production partner of ages past, Paula Wagner has stopped working with him. Most of this is because he’s insane and really good a playing a totally charming leading man in public. Blackberry loss aside, essentially the point of this story is that Tom Cruise is really doing the rounds, using his celebrity power to try and dazzle people into being interested in Valkyrie. I’m not even sure why everyone thinks that Valkyrie is going to be SO bad anyway.. I mean, sure Cruise doesn’t bother to do a German accent, or even an English one for the German character he plays but that doesn’t mean the film really is ludicrous.

So, he’s even departing from his usual focus of middle aged women to stoop down and appear on the shockingly pointless After The Hills talk show – a show devoted entirely to speculation about what is going to happen on The Hills hosted by two eternally pepped up, dead behind the eyes LA actor wannabes who are doing the show with genuine intense interest because they’re just so grateful to have work. Here’s his utterly needless segment where he talks about how, as a man, you’re meant to give the woman the wedding of her dreams:

The interesting thing about Cruise losing his Blackberry though, is that now someone out there has a whole chunk of evidence about what exactly goes on for real behind the curtain of Tom Cruise, not just his contracted wives and children. So far, nothing has been reported. [source]

The New York Times reports that Oprah Winfrey is now 40 pounds heavier than she was in 2006 and she is “embarassed” and “mad” at herself. She’s mad at herself primarily because she has all the tools and did not follow her own fundamental rule of taking care of self first.
It’s such a useful time for Oprah to renew her human side and to get a bit of national press coverage that focuses directly on an issue that her demographic all totally relate to. The Times piece goes on to mention that her upcoming project “Best Life Week” starts on January 5. Perfect timing. Oprah really is a mastermind and she should be listened to on all matters.
She is at once both pop cultural mega-deity and regular human. Now we can all tune in to see her agonise over her weight, watch the audience sigh with relief that they are just like her, listen to her figure out what to do and complain about how boring food is (just like us!) and all the while she will keep ad sale revenues up. Doesn’t that make her a more sophisticated Tyra Banks?
Excellent work. [source]

The Post reports that Pamela Anderson was all over the place at the weekend in Miami. She was covered in weird bruises, passed out at a party for a while, got smashed, made out with Stephen Dorff and then made out with a guy who wasn’t Stephen Dorff. Ok, so first things first – THIS is where Stephen Dorff has been for the past however long?

I always really liked his hair in the 90s and there’s something attractive about him in a genuine, ongoing way. I wasn’t aware that he was about, as they say. “Are you about, Stephen Dorff?” Ha ha ha…. His imdb page says he has been working steadily in a list of things but none of them resonated with me on any real level.

So, it’s nice that Pam Anderson can let us know where Stephen Dorff has been. She smoked him out of his cave, so to speak.

Anyway – also – what a shame about good old Pam Anderson as well. I mean, she’s always been a bit of a class act as far as I’m concerned and here she is looking like a weirdly morphed, angry doll as she passes out and makes out with people who both are and are not Stephen Dorff. Apart from anything else, it’s clear her virtue is hardly intact. But then, I guess this kind of breakdown had to happen at some point because when your entire life is based on the fact that you have breasts and you look a certain way – there’s only a margin of control you have over your livelihood and you must always be staring at a pretty bleak future once everything falls. Which it now apparently is. [source]

The New York Post reports that Mariah Carey is probably pregnant because she was seen coming out of of an ob/gyn’s office holding some kind of paper and a group of people waiting to meet her outside cheered when she held up the paper.
Mariah Carey having a child is going to be far more narcissistic and insane than J Lo having a child but it will be along the same basic lines. It will be an open casting call for whatever it is the opposite of mourners are called…heralders, I guess. Heraldic beasts will also be in attendance as will a river of pure kitten and rainbow velvet.

I think having a kid for these women is easier than putting out an album. They just get knocked up, deny everything for months for some reason – probably because it keeps the media guessing and writing about it – and then when they are about to give birth they buy a small island, overhaul it, give birth and sell the photos to the highest bidder and while they're recuperating they have enough surgery to make them look essentially the way they did before they went under.

With an album you have to work with a whole lot of people, pay a lot of money, actually perform, settle on creative decisions. It’s just exhausting.

With a kid though, sure you’re risking your marketable body and sure you’ll have some human to take care of – in a legal sense – but at least you don’t have to get out of bed. Having a kid is something to do when you’re completely creatively barren. I mean, isn’t that why straight guys in their late twenties who studied engineering as an undergraduate course and, by the age of 24 have lives that resemble their baby boomer, middle aged parents do it? It’s something else to do. It’s like getting married, buying a car or smoking crack and winding up in jail. Sometimes, having a kid is what stops the sides from touching. Plus, for Carey’s husband, a kid is his ticket to easy street for the rest of his life. [source]

New York Magazine reports that Fran Drescher wants to fill the New York Senate seat that Hillary Clinton is about to leave vacant now that she will be joining President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet as Secretary of State.

“I was thinking I’d take the next four years to lay some groundwork, but I’m throwing my hat in the ring.” What else makes her a good candidate? “I’m an authentic and honest person,” she said. “And I think Capitol Hill needs more of that.”

I’m not sure exactly what my take on this is but the reason I thought it was interesting was because I went to a party two years ago with her and she told me she just bought an Egon Schiel. She is also in pretty good shape and she doesn’t always talk that way. You know, that way? The nasal thing? Her real voice is a lot less skull penetrating and I think when you combine those three things alone, she will be a fine senator. Look at her in the image above, for example. Why, from the look on her face you just know she's thinking of a couple of new things to do; staring up there to the right where all the ideas are. She's looking up there to find a new idea and she's got a little smirk and a playfully flirty top on. All those things are important and indicative of her ability to inspire change and fun. Good on YOU, Fran Drescher. If I could vote I probably would vote for you.

I mean, what else is she doing? She told me she has an assistant too so I mean, she’ll need to do something that includes enough work for two and being a senator in New York may be just the thing. [source]

Page Six eye rollingly reports that “NOW that Kristin Scott Thomas (above) has the potential to be an Oscar and a Tony winner, well-heeled New Yorkers all want a piece of her.” And the thing that immediately came to mind about this is that I’m unsure how many ways I can explain that this is wrong. It’s not NOW that New Yorkers want a piece of Kristin Scott Thomas because of her awards, Americans have always felt this weird colonial, Boston Tea Party need to scramble for her approval. Kristin Scott Thomas is everything Americans feel inferior to in an English person. She’s a generally pretty reserved, talented, ageless and beautiful, effortlessly bilingual, fashionable and chic actor and she lives in France even though she’s English. What the fuck? Whoa, where? Hang on…she lives in France?

I remember watching her co presenter at an awards ceremony trip over himself to vomit compliments at her as they stood together at a lecturn and she stood there and thanked him gracefully without losing a skerrick of her composure. He, an American, who was no doubt her professional equal himself, suddenly acted like the ground had falled out from underneath him. It was like he just needed to feel equal to her but never felt he could. Watching that, I felt like he was representative of all Americans in front of Kristin Scott Thomas. And the thing is, I went to see her in a French murder mystery at BAM a few months ago and she was fine in it, I guess, but the film was inane.

Regardless, if you need any more evidence that America has this weird inferiority complex to the British that they balance out by being publicly bigger and stronger then the Post’s photo of her should clear that up. Here is the Post – New York’s idiot everyman paper – running a nothing piece about how elite New Yorkers all want a piece of an award-winning serious British actor and the photo they put in has her eyes buried in a sea of whitened wrinkles and her teeth are a yellowed set of unwashed miniature plates stacked inside her head. It’s not hard to find a flattering shot of Kristin Scott Thomas and yet, here the Post is making sure they pull her down.
So. No. It is not NOW that Kristin Scott Thomas has the potential to be an Oscar and Tony winner that New Yorkers want a piece of her, it’s always been that way. It was probably that way for Julie Andrews although from what I would like to imagine, Julie Andrews has a mouth her like a trucker and I’m certain that would have disarmed a few Americans upon impact. [source]

Here’s the music video for Andy Samberg’s new clever straight male humour single “Jizz in my Pants” which is actually not so bad. There’s really only so much South Park humour I can take and Samberg’s stuff is always either completely and utterly jaw droppingly terrible or it’s clever Comedy Central humour where you’d put it on late at night and the Army would intersplice it with ads so they can catch the pot smoking non-college kids who still live at home but I mean, sure, it’s fine. Except for his Mark Wahlberg piece which was funny but, actually still kind of one note. You could actually play this in a club and it would work. Plus, it spirals into something essentially absurd towards the end which makes it palletable.

The other thing I realised about Andy Samberg is that he does these songs and they’ve always been about getting high or they’re about “hey look at my crotch” and maybe that’s because he only sporadically comes up with anything at all and when he does he wants to hammer it home by tying it to his power source which is that there’s something crippling hot about him. It is undeniable. Even to someone who has no trouble denying it the hottness of Samberg is undeniable.

I swear to GOD, getting a new computer I didn’t pay for has been a trial. Not as much of a trial as it was to have my hard drive and then backup flash drive stolen but I’ve been on the phone to tech people in India all day trying to figure out how to install various softwares and Vista IS as annoying as people say despite the admittedly genius Mojave ads. Whatever.

So, anyway – here are three fascinating things.

1) Tom Cruise and Kate Holmes (because her name is Kate as she is a woman, not a child on an adolescent TV show. She is also a genuine adult wife. A Wife. Of a Man. A Man who is married. To his wife. She is the wife. Got it?) are in the New York Times Style Magazine this week and someone from Cruise’s camp must still have the ability to hold a gun to the head of the press while they write crap about how legitimate the relationship between Cruise and Holmes is. It’s a full on multi media presentation done by the Times about the life and work of Cruise. Watch the video file, he ccomes across like an animated senator. Ok, wow, that would be interesting. Tom Cruise running for the senate. Excellent. [source]

2) OJ Simson got at least 15 years in prison. I bet he’d get 16 but only because someone else had said 15. So, I really knew it was something anchored in the number 15. No idea how. Probably because I went to the gym in the morning today and then had lemon and apple juice. The interesting thing about this is that this sentence has to be include residual animosity from the jury and judge for the way he got off in his murder trial. Also, it really seems totally reasonable to suggest that he won’t make it out of jail for some reason. He’s looking, right now, at the way in which he will die. How calming. [source]

3) While I find it sort of interesting to think about the fact that Sarah Palin’s kid was perhaps not really her kid and could have been her daughters because, as porn star Owen Hawk pointed out to me, incest is more prevalent than you think and it seems possible that Bristol and the older son could have had sex – the overwhelming reality about Sarah Palin is that she needs to be ignored and America needs to move on – as it has selected to do by electing Barack Obama. Thank Crap.

Bless Andrew Sullivan then, for staying HARD CORE on the case with a blog entry today about the mystery surrounding Sarah Palin’s alleged pregancy earlier this year and how it might not have been legitimate. I mean, someone has to.

Sullivan writes:

I begged the McCain campaign by private email and in a private meeting to give me something - anything - to kill the story off. I promised to run any evidence that would blow this out of the water. That offer still stands. Please make me look like an idiot for asking these questions.

The thing is, maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. Sarah Palin was a tool used by a desperate and cynical John McCain because she represented the basest narcissistic desires of Americans and McCain’s investment in her did not pay off. Isn’t that embarassing and crap enough to essentially let her be and stop paying attention. She is, after all, like Dina Lohan. She just wants attention and when you stop paying attention she will dissolve. [source]

I just downed an espresso from the ever rancid Starbucks across the road and therefore the images of Madonna’s Louis Vuitton campaign really only form a fragment my current focus.

While in England, I got back into the habit of drinking several espressos a day (which is to say that I effectively relapsed) – partly because there was some extraordinary coffee available at the Borough Markets, across the road from where my friend Sio lives which is where I was staying.

The trouble with me drinking that much espresso, of course, is that it completely splinters my consciousness and I can barely remember anything but the relentless screams of my inner rage and whatever sparkly poodle runs in front of me. Plus, even in London, on coffee; every shadow is a mean spirited rat.

SO, yeah, here’s Madonna and her Louis Vuittonness. Ha ha, old bag selling old bags, something about gristle and muscle and surgery and how much work it takes to get a cow to look that good. Excellent. Prophesy fulfilled. Genius. Actually, she looks alright. Clearly, these are professional shots.

Here’s the interesting thing though; when I was in Bath, England on Sunday I went into a pharmacy with Sio and we looked at all the fragrances you could buy and I actually think that half of them – on an entire wall of fragrances – were named after celebrities. David Beckham, J Lo, Mariah Carey, Paris Hilton, Kate Moss blah.. . What the hell is WITH that? The profit you can make on a fragrance is huge because fragrances are total hype. Liquid smell that becomes a blank canvas for a cultural gesture costs nothing and has a seemingly limitless range of potential manifestations. Calvin Klein made his most recent fragrance about hip online Williamsburg culture, Mariah Carey makes hers about unicorns and vaguely ethnic ghetto sex, Paris Hilton makes hers about cheap, denial laced, imperious, pornographic glamour, Kate Moss makes hers about a gay centric throw back to the 90s by default but with a top note of low rent trash etc.

Who buys this shit? Not me. I actually have 5 fragrances, none of which I purchased, and they are on an admittedly absurd display in my bathroom because I thought it looked like a semi-effective attempt at zen, clear surfaces. Actually, that’s not true. I bought the Paco Rabanne while escaping the Venezuela jungle with my ex. It doesn’t work to escape WITH who you’re trying to escape – that’s the lesson I learned from that trip. Still, because we spent time in an airport in South America trying to be civil I now get to smell alright whenever I want.

See how this plays out? You’ve got Madonna, celebrity fragrances, inner rage, arbitrarily emphasised details, a tiny bit of amateur cultural deconstruction, South American drama. Still; it’s either this or some kind of durge. [source]

There’s really nothing like a quality collaboration between unlikely teams. I am personally always partial to one of those sitcoms from the later half of the 20th Century where people from totally different shows meet up and hang out. Right now, for example, I’m thinking about the The He-Man Christmas Special. I was anyway, but this music video really makes it seem relevant because it was almost inane to see the rippling machine made body of He Man standing next to Santa Claus but underneath the inanity there was a certain allusion to unity. Here’s a section of it. I can’t get past how reassuring the woozy, crap soundtrack is.

That’s why the new music video for LCD Sound System’s “New York, I Love You…” that features Kermit the Frog is more or less enjoyable. It’s certainly not overtly disappointing. I’ll give it that.
I mean, you can tell it’s not the REAL Kermit because there’s some complication going on with the green fabric neck but I mean, the point is there and sometimes that’s enough. Kermit himself is a symbol of simple clarity that has come from an urban environment.
This isn’t the first time Kermit has dabbled in a melancholy repertoire and I would put that down to the fact that his life as a children’s television star probably required a lack of emotional balance in him. Below is Kermit’s cover of Hurt. It’s less soul wrenching than the Johnny Cash cover but then, Kermit is, when you get down to it, actually little more than a mass of green fabric with some good intentions projected onto him.
Still, it makes it viable that the pure sanitation of children’s television isn’t a sanctified bubble within which nothing complex, realistic or dark ever happens and vice versa and while that may not be such great news for the kids, it’s fine by me.