But whatever is a dandy to wear?

Embarrassed by your too-fancy hat in 'these economic times?'

As Michael Jackson would say, 'you are not alone.'

"...modesty has been a byword this recession, and baseball caps are no exception. Consumers are opting for Corollas over Cadillacs, Formica kitchen counters over granite and, it turns out, hats with traditional designs over garish ones."

(courtesy nytimes.com)

Sure, that makes total sense--the 10% decline in sales of garish hats must be because consumers "don't want to look too rich and fancy" in these Great Depressiony times. I mean, can you imagine the embarrassment if somebody realized you were wearing a brand-new $35 hat that was really ugly, rather than a brand-new $35 hat that was really plain?

My balls shrivel in fear of that day.

I wonder if anybody at New Era/NYTimes has considered the fact that the steep drop in sales might instead have something to do with people "buying less shit they don't need cuz they broke."

1 in 10 people in this country are fucking unemployed.

But, for the sake of argument, let's assume New York Times reporter Ken "Boring" Belson did his homework and the numbers don't lie--people are buying less-garish hats because they are poor.

Is this the first good news to come out of the financial crisis?

The hick in me is, for some reason, angered by this news. It almost makes him want to staple some hot-pink tassels onto a (traditional) Cubs hat and parade down the filthy, desolate sidewalks of Wall Street, preening himself in the smudged windowpanes of the once-mighty Goldman Sachs, making Indian battle cries, and waving a gun around.

There are, after all, some rights that are gloriously unalienable, you fucking terrorists.

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Asian Arnold?

Check out the rest of these cool movie posters from Ghana.

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Caption Contest #1

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High Hopes, Dashed

**Warning: A multitude of spoilers lie ahead. Proceed with caution.**

District 9 was a movie I wanted to see and expected to like--a rare occurrence these days--because I read somewhere that its story centered on an alien/human relationship that is seems, oddly, nobody had thought of before: aliens come to Earth and become our prisoners. That sounds to me like a fascinating concept rife with opportunity for social commentary, character exploration, and killer action.

Sadly, the whole shebang falls apart almost immediately. Rather than casting the aliens as peaceful and docile, which would render them easy victims, inspire compassion, and highlight their captors' senseless cruelty, first-time writer/director Neill Blomkamp instead chose to portray the aliens as powerful, temperamental, violent creatures who possess weapons humans are neither able to use nor understand.

Adding insult to injury, Blomkamp proceeded to make at least SEVEN other unforgivable mistakes:

1. For some reason, the aliens were allowed to bring their advanced weaponry with them as they were helicoptered out from their monstrous spaceship and placed in an internment camp, including a giant killer robot that must have taken a dedicated helicopter trip. Why on Earth would the South African military allow this to happen? Armed prisoners? Assuming they had their insane reasons, why did the aliens not use these weapons to escape? Why would they rather trade them to a Nigerian thug in a wheelchair for cans of cat food when they could simply point a laser cannon at his head and demand everything for free?

2. The alien known as Christopher--the one who wears a tattered red Michael Jackson vest so that we know who he is--leaves behind the fuel tube he has been working on for 20 years when the military bangs on the door to his friend's house. He then waltzes out of there and into his own house...why didn't he just take the fuel tube with him and hide it in the spaceship under his shack that nobody will notice until it takes off? Oh yeah, I know why--otherwise the protagonist, Wikus, wouldn't have been able to get his hands on it and kick the plot into gear.

3. On that note, when the highly-unlikable, bumbling idiot that is Wikus accidentally squirts himself in the face with the fuel tube, it begins trnasforming him into an alien--starting inexplicably with his hand. First off, why would the alien fuel have transformative properties? Advanced bio-technology aside, what possible use would this have had for them? And why does Wikus' hand change first, aside from the fact that this allowed him to fire their weapons and become a potential asset to the military contractor? It makes no sense.

4. Once Wikus teams up with Christopher and decides to invade MNU headquarters, he is able to gain access to secure levels of the building with his passcode, including the secret research floor he never knew about until he was dragged in the day before as a scientific experiment. Why would his passcode not have been deactivated when he became a vengeful mutant on the lam? Why would his code have ever gained him access to a room whose mere existence was clearly above his pay grade? Why would the building not have gone into lock-down when the first floor was blown out by a laser cannon? Oh yeah--because Wikus had to get in there to get the fuel tube and so that Christopher could become sad upon seeing the mutilated corpses of his comrades. This is a military facility conducting top-secret research on fucking ALIENS and yet it is easier to break into than your average bank.

5. Despite the fact that neither party ever speaks the other's language, the aliens and humans are able to verbally communicate without a problem. That is far-fetched, for sure, but I'll suspend my disbelief here and take for granted that in 20 years of study, talented linguists have not only pieced together an alien language and taught it all their nation's soldiers, but have also managed to teach English to 1.8 million alien. This being the case, however, why is it that we know absolutely nothing about where the aliens are from or how they wound up floating above Johannesburg in a spaceship? These are peaceful aliens, worker-drones, as we learn in a throwaway line at some point, and the language barrier has been removed, so...nothing? Not one shred of information has been gathered and presented to us during the opening montage of catch-me-up information or during the ensuing two hours?

6. When the supposedly-long-sought command module for the spaceship that has been floating above their city for 20 years rises out of the ground on national television, no military or scientific personnel rush to the scene to investigate and/or secure the ship. The only reason this might make a lick of sense is that, twenty years ago, when the command module separated itself from the mothership and descended to Earth at a snail's pace, nobody in Johannesburg was interested enough to pay attention to where it landed. In light of this continued disinterest in the spaceship on the part of people in the movie, why should anybody watching the movie give two shits about it? Why not just let it return to its home planet? Oh, wait--they did. Otherwise there'd be no sequel! LOL!!!

7. The aliens are not allowed to leave their camp, yet for some reason there are signs posted explicitly stating (in English) that aliens are not allowed to use bus benches or public bathrooms. Is this not implied by their not being allowed anywhere outside their camp? I have to imagine these signs are only included as part of a flaccid attempt to relate the aliens' struggle to that of back-of-the-bus blacks in America, South Africa, and elsewhere, but the attempt is a grave failure. The situation are not the same--the aliens were not looking for acceptance. The aliens were not looking to ride on the buses and shit in the human toilets. Similarly, any attempt to compare the alien plight to that of the Jews, the slumdwellers of Brazil or India, or the plight of...anybody anywhere falls flat because no Jew or slumdog or suburbanite has the strength to tear their tormentors limb from limb in a split second or the alien laser cannon to incinerate an entire battalion of troops. Those posters made for a killer advertising campaign, though, right? Right?


As a result of its numerous, fundamental flaws, all potential real-world parallels go out the window, nothing makes any sense, and we are left with merely a hollow action movie populated by cardboard characters for whom nobody is rooting. What then, I ask, is the point of this movie?

To those of you out there who think I am being too critical, have lost my "fun gene," that I am not approaching this movie with the right attitude, I have this to say:

I know suspension of disbelief is important in an action and/or sci-fi movie. I get that. Believe it or not, I brought that to the table on this one. I suspended my disbelief and accepted that an interstellar spaceship packed with over 1 million alien life forms came to a halt over Johannesburg and instead of its occupants being killed on-sight by a terrified global military force, they were methodically airlifted to safety in a nearby internment camp over approximately 100,000 helicopter trips. From this moment on, however, the story must make sense--and it doesn't.

Unfortunately, long before we are confronted by the who-cares image of Wikus as a full-blown alien crafting flowers out of metal for his bitch of a wife, we the audience have already come to terms with the fact that District 9 is not the groundbreaking, thinking-man's action movie it should have been, on par with Terminator, Aliens, Blade Runner, Star Wars, The Matrix, or Total Recall.

How disappointing. I suppose Neill Blomkamp can chalk it up to a rookie mistake, but Peter Jackson shoulda fuckin' better known better.

What's more disappointing? Neither of them will learn their lesson, everybody involved will reap millions, and an even-worse sequel will soon be inflicted upon the real-life, human worker drones that never learn their own lesson and propagate a self-destructive movie industry based purely on profits instead of merit.

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Saturday in LA

There's a homeless man outside, covered in carbuncles, walking an endless circle around our block, jabbering to whomever has a free ear and nothing better to do. He does this every day, never asking for money, but somehow always drunk or getting there.

I call him Barnacle Bill because I like to think of his face as the prow of a ship, content with its humble lot in life, wading through the muck day after day, doing as little as it takes to get by, patently unconcerned with trivial things like appearance, until the whole vessel suddenly falls to pieces one day, swallowed by the timeless sea, unacknowledged, relieved.

Like most fixtures in my neighborhood, Barnacle Bill is a lot friendlier since my girlfriend moved in and gave the fellas a little something to look at around these parts. He never used to say a word to me, but now he often interrupts his monologues to say 'Hi' as I walk past; I'd rather not think about what he says to my ladyfriend.

Even the workaholic bodega guy, Michael, has gotten friendlier. One day, Michael gave me $3 and change because he said his brother overcharged me for a bottle of vodka the day before; another time he gave me a bottle of Crown Royal and three Mexican Cokes for an IOU when my debit card wouldn't work. My girlfriend, meanwhile, not only gets handfuls of free Korean mystery candies and slightly lower prices, but also has her own private stash of Italian sodas.

Unwelcome friendliness is better than a knife to my throat, but in general I prefer to avoid the local flavor, to remain anonymous, despite my conceptual yearning for community. I suppose you have to draw the line somewhere, though--do I really want Barnacle Bill drinking a beer on my couch, in his pee-stained pants? Do I want to find out what goes on behind the curtain at the all-night Taco Psychic across the street?

I saw someone buy Barnacle Bill a beer from Michael's bodega once. I learned that Barnacle Bill only drinks good beer--Modelo--when somebody else is buying, some stir-crazy lonely soul angling for a sidewalk drinking buddy. On one such glorious evening, as she smoked on the fire escape above, Bill chatted up my girlfriend by trying to convince her that toucans live in the trees outside our building.


Phantom toucans aside, nature is everywhere out here, whether you want it or not. Confused fruit flies patrol the toaster oven, an alley cat minus a tail begs for male attention, and
the cockroach perched on my toothbrush shoots me daggers. Does he know something I don't?

Somewhere in the bowels of our building, a lap dog resumes its incessant barking and the shirtless Korean man in the building next door hocks his 400th loogie of the day. It's 7:30pm. "Welcome to the Wheel!"

There is comfort in regularity; there is also resignation.

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Not-So-Talented Cats Manage to Entertain Young Children

Well, what would YOU do with yourself if you were that ugly?

Further reading about the middling adventures of a clown and his cats

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What the fuck is this all about?

More importantly, what the fuck is that picture all about? Are only kissy-face teenage moms eligible for this program?

Is this some sort of uber-expensive, 'target demographic of one,' special-interest/family-sponsored advertising campaign/intervention to get Jamie Lynn Spears back to school or something?

Is aspiring Ross Perot Jeff Sessions behind all this malarcky?

Or is it that other Republican senator from Alabama, what's-his-face, the one who's always doodling, bored as hell, and never looks at the camera...Richard Shelby, that's his name.

[Confidential advice, pricks: throw in a free liposuction if you really want to lock it down.]

But, for now, world, I must impress upon you that this is mere hearsay--wait for Ms. Spears' rep to deny it and then you'll know it's true.

Developing story...

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The Problem with Republicans

Birthers, bankers, and ignorant health-care Hessians aside, the Republicans have a serious problem.

As many of you may have already heard, yesterday, Hillary Clinton compared Nigeria's corrupt elections with those of the United States in 2000. A bold move--and certainly an unexpected one--but not a claim wholly without merit.

The response back home:

"The Republicans eagerly jumped on [Clinton's] remarks last night, saying her trip had been full of gaffes and expressed hope she would go to Africa more often."

(courtesy guardian.co.uk)

During the eight long years George Bush was in power, his countless blunders and general stupidity left intelligent Americans shaking their heads, embarrassed by the actions of the ranking representative of our nation.

Don't believe we had a good reason to feel that way? For your consideration:



We knew we were stuck with a man we loathed, but it was salt in the wound every time he spoke in public. Our desire? To prevent him from ever going abroad; to prevent him from ever giving a speech. Silence was the only chance we had to assuage our embarrassment.

Now that, in their eyes, the tables are turned, what do the Republicans want? They want more.

Which brings us to the root of the problem:

Republicans seem only to view things politically, always searching for ammunition in an interminable war against their sworn enemies--their fellow legislators who favor informed discussion and governing over squabbling and graft.

They never react as humans, as Americans, as government officials; instead, they are Election Terminators programmed only to see RED in 2010 & 12. They hear Hillary Clinton said something that could be used against her and before they even stop to consider whether it is valid, they put on their best suit, take the Blackstone chopper to Fox studios, and put in campaign pit stop #5,004,337 in a career that consists of nothing but campaigning--for a position whose duties they never even attempt to fulfill.

The current Republican wet dream:

President Obama calls an emergency state meeting with the heads of Russia, wherein he throws his own feces at Dictator Putin and shouts for all to hear: "If you don't believe that our army is faggier and more communist than yours, then I challenge you to a war on two fronts--in the winter!" Obama immediately storms out into Red Square and is devoured on-camera by starving Russian peasants clothed in naught but layers of tattered Obama bumper stickers.

Sad but true. And you wonder why things are the way they are these days...

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"Sir, Step Away from the Weights. Slowly..."

Is it possible to arrest a man for doing too many steroids and lifting too many weights? Or can we at least put him under house-arrest so nobody has to look at his freak-show self and become gravely ill for the rest of their lives?

I mean, SHIT!

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What Is Going On Here?

Who wears a napkin and duct tape to the Grammys?

Jennifer Hudson, I guess.

Why? Is fashion.

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Sex Advice for Nerds

Tired of all them fly bitches all up on ya at Comic-Con? Can't even get down to the pharmacy for a new inhaler without fighting your way through a Berlin Wall of babes in heat? Ever wonder how you can guarantee zero female companionship?

Recognize:

1. Build a bed that looks like a Y-Wing fighter from Star Wars.
2. Sit back, relax, and watch every woman alive avoid you like a plague-ridden near-corpse hacking up a lung. Trust me--it works.

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Anyone Have Jason Bourne's Cell Number?

It cannot be mere coincidence that two years after renowned superhuman Jason Bourne hung up his balls to prance around town/have children with a saucy former Miami bartender, Europe has gone to shit.

Who's running things over there across the pond these days? Criminals, that's who:


- $15.5 million in jewelry and cash stolen from an ignorant Saudi princess visiting Italy with enough cash to buy the Pope

- $66 million in jewelry stolen in broad daylight from an unbelievably vulnerable London jewelry store that beat its own previous record of $37 million

- Russian woman pointlessly lobs coffee mug at bulletproof Mona Lisa in Paris

- Russian agents teach two Chechnyan activists a lesson; bodies found in trunk of car

Wherefore art thou so selfish, J-boy? Methinks it's high time for you to once again don the proverbial cape. Just make sure your will is in order before you leave American soil--it would kill me if any of your descendants ever had to work for a living.

Update: Bourne heeds call to arms, prepares to resume the good fight. In two years, when he is good and ready.

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Why Is Cameron Douglas So Ugly?

You know you're really something special when your freaky father or 92 year-old walking corpse of a grandfather are easier on the eyes.

No wonder the guy fell into the notoriously dead-end world of bath salts...

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Very Kind, Indeed!

After eight years of sleepless nights and near-constant regret, fortune has once again smiled upon Ma & Pa Clinton, as they recently discovered a nearly-impossible-to-locate-trust-me-they-tried Kenyan man's 2000 offer of 40 goats and 20 cows for their daughter's hand was still valid.

As elated as a Hollywood producer landing Johnny Depp for scale, President Aeternus Bill Clinton finally opened that dusty box of Cubans he's been saving since Chelsea's bittersweet sixteen and had a good long smoke with his incredulous Secret Service team.

"I bet Kim Jong-il is kicking himself now!" He laughed heartily, recalling his recent clandestine lobbying efforts in North Korea. "I told him 20 goats and a pirated Golden Girls collection was an insult, and lo and behold..."

The silver fox trailed off, unsure how to finish this sentence, a cocktail of emotions swirling beneath his regal facade.

"Well, I guess sometimes words just have their limit, my friends--and that's why the good Lord invented jazz."

And just like that, Bubba hefted his battered and bruised alto saxophone and fudged his way through some Coltrane.

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If Only Nora Ephron Was Gay

And for some reason followed 24/7 by a vigilant camera crew--I would have loved to watch footage of her hitting on her own sister in a Las Vegas mall.

While I'm wishing for things, can we also eliminate Michael, You've Got Mail, and Bewitched from the cinematic consciousness?

Thank you, Jeebus.

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The Perfect Movie?

Talk about a convergence of ideas:



Delicious cinematography, confused tweens, rebellion, escapism, VAMPIRES, John C. Reilly, Salma Hayek with a beard, that chick from 30 Rock, a wannabe Gollum...and biting comedy!!!
(excuse the pun)

Call me crazy, but I might actually go see this movie in the theater (in Week 9) while under the influence.

What? It looks hilarious! Troll 2, eat your heart out!

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As IF There Was a Virgin in 16th-Century Mexico...

It seems frightening, multi-millionaire screenwriter Joe Eszterhas has finally shaken his Showgirls curse and has a new project underway about the Virgin of Guadalupe.

While the story sounds boring beyond belief and the last person I would want to write any movie is a one-trick pony who found Jesus post-throat-cancer, I'll cut him a little slack in light of Flashdance and Basic Instinct.

After all, Paul Verhoeven followed up the Showgirls turd with the fabulous, widely-misunderstood satire Starship Troopers and then knocked it out of the park recently with Black Book--probably the only movie about WWII that I've ever enjoyed (well, besides his 1977 effort, Soldier of Orange).

But I suppose Verhoeven's oeuvre has always been far more diverse than Joey E. I guess we'll just have to hold our breath and see what happens. Start...now!

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Photos from the Front: Ed Whoredy

Finally, trailer-park beavers and douchedudes across Glendale can drink their bathtub-brewed chardonnay the way fashion fuckwad Christian Audigier wants them to--by putting money in the pockets of his ugly pants.

Not enough Ed Hardy in your life?
Try this. And this. And this. And this. And this...

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So THAT'S Why They Call It B.O...

For those of you not on the left coast, fyi, it's been hot as balls; an ideal time to seek refuge in the comforts of an ice-cold movie theater, 1920s-style.

Yet it's hard to recall a time when I was less inclined to venture out to a movie theater than this past weekend--and based on the precipitous drop in box office, it seems I wasn't alone.

But don't worry, folks--not only does notorious turdlet G.I.Joe open this Friday, but so does the long-awaited "adventures of the wishing rock," if the startlingly self-mocking poster I saw at the bus stop last night is to be believed.

Seriously?

William H. Macy, say it ain't so! I'm broke as hell, but I'll gladly sell my blood and give ya the dough til a better role comes along! You don't need this! Really! Your wife makes plenty of money on that shitty TV show anyway!


At this point, I'd rather see El Mariachi 6 starring Jack Black and Shia LaBeouf than anything else the egomaniacal Robert Rodriguez churns out at his sadly-highly-profitable, one-man movie studio...

The world doesn't need any more Steven Spielturds--one is more than enough.

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Well, Color Me Asleep!

Grey Gardens helmer Michael Sucsy will make his feature directorial debut on Goree Girls, with Jennifer Aniston headlining the true story of an all-female country band in a Texas prison in the 1940s. (courtesy Variety.com)

Jennifer Aniston in a period piece? Where she sings? Country music?

As hard as it is to imagine boring ole Jennifer Aniston doing anything that would send her to prison, it's somehow even more difficult to picture her as a musician. The closest I can come to it in my mind is her playing a boring, even-less-believable-as-a-musician version of Sheryl Crow, who is herself nearly unbelievable as a musician, despite her career.

In fact, that's probably how this whole project got started in the first place: a vehicle for Sheryl Crow. Then they discovered she can't act, so they racked their brains trying to think of an actress that looks like her.

Enter Aniston, a dead-ringer who really resonates with lonely, pissed-off women who would love to see a boring movie about a bunch of tough women playing boring music about how much men suck and how hard it is to be a woman sometimes--yet how rewarding it can be, too--in front of a prison full of other tough women, in the 1940s, when women were women.

Don't believe me? Well, check out the titles of Aniston's recent projects, which will tell you all you need to know about not only how the world perceives her, but also how she and her reps want the world to perceive her:

Derailed - The true story of her life after Brad. Or something like that.

The Break-Up - A movie about Vince Vaughn breaking up with her

Marley & Me - "In an attempt to stall Jennifer's 'biological clock', John gives her a puppy." Ouch. And she even plays herself? In a movie based on a book whose plot was clearly adapted from Clifford the Big Red Dog?

He's Just Not That Into You - The Brangelina story? The Vince Vaughn story? The John Mayer story? The Adam Duritz story?

Love Happens - If you wait long enough and lower your standards, grrrrl.

The Baster - Who needs a pesky penis when they have cooking utensils!

Getting Rid of Matthew - McConaughey?

The Divorce Party - Nothing wrong with being single, bitches! It's fun! Let's have a party! Men don't define us!

Pumas - I guess Cougars was already taken. LOL! So clever!


But, alright, back to this Goree Girls mess.

This project has been in development at DreamWorks for years, was based on a newspaper article, and has already chewed up and spit out at least two seasoned writers.

Shouldn't this be a sign that this movie wasn't meant to be?

Surely, Overnight Productions must have better projects in the pipeline...

Overnight has a November start set on the Darren Aronofsky-directed Black Swan, a ballet thriller developed at Universal that will star Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. And it will start production next year on the Jonathan Jakubowicz-directed Southbound, a border drama developed at Warner Bros. that will star Matthew McConaughey and Eva Mendes.

I guess not. Good luck to you, Overnight! I hope your company doesn't fold...overnight...because America is just not that into you...[snore]

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Country Music Industry Revelation

Well, it took them awhile, but the music executives in charge of destroying what was left of the country genre have finally put together what the pop/rock fuckers figured out long ago:

If the music is shitty, cliche-ridden, simple enough for a 12 year-old to play, and guaranteed distribution, why not just put a pretty face out there to put a little shine on that apple?

Sure there was Dolly Parton, Nancy Sinatra, Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Martina McBride...but looking at this new crop of girls 'coming up' just makes my head spin:

Miranda Lambert

Ashton Shepard

Julie Roberts

Kellie Pickler

Jessie James

Veronica Ballestrini

Jennette McCurdy

Have there always been this many 16 year-old, blonde, sexy/pre-pubescent musical savants out there? Could we just not find them in years past because the lack of internet rendered most of the South impenetrable to wealthy executives?

Or are there other forces at play?

The new Nashville credo:

As long as the heavily-photoshopped CD cover photo makes every redneck with a woody want to pin that girl down on a pool table and have their way--and makes every girl want to be that girl, to listen to how she became that girl, whether the girl wrote the songs herself or not--then we have a hit record on our hands, folks!

Oop--what's that? Looks like we've somehow tapped into a phone over at Sony Music Entertainment. Might as well listen in, right?

"Call Wal-Mart--tell 'em to clear some shelf space--I just found a 15 year-old porn star who sings really well when we digitally alter every note in ProTools and have a 40 year-old fat gay man in Hotlanta write songs for her about texting and Twittering and cute boys. It's perfect--I'll get rich and get out before all this shit implodes and the music industry needs a bailout!"

Fuckers.

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Reader Poll: Should the $100 million man get his due?

As many of you already are aware, Andrew J. Hall is set to receive a $100 million bonus from a unit of Citigroup--a company which would have gone bankrupt had they not been bailed out by the taxpayers to the tune of $45 billion.

To make matters worse, his impressively profitable performance derives from speculation in energy markets, which is a practice on which the government is considering placing heavy restrictions.

Andrew Hall is one of those guys who manipulates the price of crude oil/gasoline, irrespective of the effect his efforts may have on millions of consumers with far less money than he, purely in the name of profit.

But then again, Mr. Hall has a contract--and this is America. He made Citigroup billions of dollars and we want them to make money so they can pay us back, right?

Or do we ever really expect to be paid back? I certainly won't hold my breath, or even stand on one leg.

Technically speaking, Mr. Hall did nothing wrong--he performed his job within legal boundaries (one would assume, although you never know when oil is involved) and it's the system that's broken.

But how do you fix a system if you keep giving people financial incentives to be selfish pricks? Maybe denying him his exhorbitant bonus would be a good first step in "putting things right that once went wrong."

And so it is that, not for the first time, I wish we would have simply let all the selfish, stupid, speculative financial firms in trouble just go bankrupt, allowing the healthiest ones to feast on their remains and grow stronger--things might have been a lot hairier, maybe, but such is the cutthroat nature of capitalism and, in the end, decisions like these would have been so much easier:

"Sorry, Mr. Hall, I know you made us billions of dollars in profit from all those stupid commoners who have to buy gas from the oligopoly to get to their $6/hr jobs cleaning the shrimp you eat out of the mouths of blue-blood virgin debutantes every Friday afternoon at the closing bell, but we have no money to pay you! We fucked up! Now, do me a favor and go fuck off back to your German castle and jerk off on your Schnabels!"

Man, life would be so much easier...

Or would it? What do you think, world?

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I Mean--Ya Gotta Feed the Monkey, Right?!

This just in:
Annie Leibovitz may be a raging cokehead with holes in her purse and the financial savvy of Donald Trump.

Why the hell else would a woman who earns over $3 million a year need to take out a $24 million loan she will never be able to pay back without selling her entire catalog?

Better yet, how will her three children ride her coattails for the rest of their lives if they lose the right to her future royalties?

I'm really worried...

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The 4 Most Important News Stories on April 29, 2009

1. Is swine flu 'the big one' or will it fizzle out?
2. See what former TV stars look like now
3. The last guy selected in the NFL draft
4. Obama's first 100 days and Bea Arthur dies

And you wonder why so many Americans have no idea who Sarkozy is, but can recite a detailed play-by-play of Emmanuel Lewis' lost years.

If ole Nic wants to finally enter the American consciousness, maybe he and Carla Bruni should have mixed-race midget octuplets on live television. I smell a hit!

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