Another Project Runway blog

Yes, I still watch it. And if you’re reading this, you probably do, too, so there. I was uncharacteristically positive about the new Lifetime version of Runway for a while, unlike many other bitter, sniping bloggers. While I agreed that it was a pale imitation of what it once was, it was only last night’s episode that made me think, wow…yeah. Kind of an overwhelming amount of suck there. Let’s explore why, shall we?

Cool that they went to the Getty Center, I guess, but really, the moment I most liked in the whole show was when Tim picked up some ugly green fabric and said “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” (I remembered that from high school French!) But then I immediately thought, oh jesus, don’t tell me Christopher is going to take his algae inspiration that literally, but of course, he was.

Let’s talk about Christopher for a moment. Like…why is Christopher still here? I like Christopher, but he has made so many things that can only be accurately described as appalling that I’m just scratching my head about his presence. And — again, while I do like him — when he got all choked up explaining, “Not many people could find beauty in algae-smeared fountain rocks like I can,” I thought, um, yes, they can. Someone made a piece inspired by a Polaroid of some New York City street puddle on this very show, not long ago. It was just embarassing, like the high school goth kid crying how no one understands him because he’s just too deep. No…they do. Then several people, I think even Nina, commented about how talented Christopher is, and I was like…really? But let’s move on.

Remember how a paragraph ago I said that my favorite part of the show was Tim Gunn saying “qu’est-ce que c’est?” There’s something very wrong if that was my favorite moment of the last runway before Bryant Park. Very, very wrong. Remember when Kenley almost bit it because she had “just” made a dress? They loved the dress, but Fern Mallis pointed out that she should have made a jacket or something to go with it, yet in this last runway challenge, EVERYONE made “just a dress” and no one said boo about it. And did anyone else have a hard time even checking out the dresses in the flash they appeared on the runway? Maybe I’m remembering wrong, but I thought the runway shots were totally rushed and I could barely get a good glimpse before they’d moved onto the next lackluster dress.

My God, even the nicknames are tired in the show now. “Meana Irina” when “Meana Garcia” was Nina’s well-publicized nickname at Elle? Yawn. And I think it’s funny how you don’t miss things until they’re gone: Case in point, Michael Kors. No one said he was great or essential to the show or anything but now that he’s barely on the show, everyone’s like, Hey! Where’s Michael Kors? We miss him. I miss him, too. And here’s another comment neither here nor here: Cindy Crawford seemed like a total bitch. Like, total effing bitch, man.

But I’ll dispense with the mundane runaway commentary and offer a suggestion. Other bloggers have lamented the lack of creativity in the challenges this season, so I have one. I’m sure many of you will accuse me of being an insensitive asshole, but wouldn’t it be great if they had the designers make an outfit for a developmentally disabled person? Stop cursing me and think for a second about the AWESOME stuff they would ask for. Funny hats, trains, working fountains, the sky would be the limit!! And how challenging it would be to get across their design aesthetic while still pleasing their clients? And how cute would Tim Gunn be interacting with them?

I think it’s a fucking fabulous idea. But maybe I’m just an asshole.

I hope Carol Hannah wins, but it will probably be that bitch Irina unless she sends nothing but the bear suits she appears obsessed with down the runway.

Please. Think of the Crackbabies before printing this email.

Is it just me, or is this a typically backward way of reading the results of a study? Like we’re supposed to conclude from this that parents should insist kids go to sleep before midnight, otherwise they might decide to kill themselves?

From the USA Today story:

“Teens whose parents let them stay up after midnight on weeknights have a much higher chance of being depressed or suicidal than teens whose parents enforce an earlier bedtime, says research being presented today at a national sleep conference.”

So now we’ll surely see all these alarmist, cautionary stories about the grave importance of reasonable bedtimes and sleep that ignore the obvious: that kids who are depressed don’t sleep well and parents who don’t enforce a decent bedtime are probably neglectful in many other ways, making their kids more prone to anxiety and depression.

I griped about this on der facebook, and my friend Rick (he hasn’t updated in a spell, but his blog is worth visiting anyway) posted this awesome Reason article in response: “The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years.” And I loved it so much that it inspired my first blog in how many months? The June 10 article that you really need to check out begins with a sniggering look back at a 1972 cover that warns of rampant Satanic cults then goes on to lampoon other scare articles about online porn, Columbine and of course, the crackbaby.

I was pretty young when the media began its hysterically giddy romance with the crackbaby, so I totally fell for it. I was so worried about the crackbabies in high school! I read a first-person essay about a woman who volunteered holding these doomed, troubled infants in the “crackbaby ward” of, I think, a Chicago hospital and wanted to comfort the crackbabies, too. I bothered countless friends with “Do we have a crackbaby ward somewhere in RI? Where can I hold some crackbabies?” But they were nowhere to be found and everyone just looked at me like I was nuts, as well they should have.

But seriously (not that I wasn’t serious, there), it’s horrible and ironic that the crackbaby hysteria provided justification for harsher sentencing for drug-addicted mothers, which only made the kids’ lives harder, as Jeff Winkler and Radley Balko touched on in that article.

The world is batshit crazy.

A 10-minute standing ovation at Cannes, for this?? And awards, really??

I guess I’m going to go out on a limb and be the only person on Earth to say that Jonathan Caouette’s 2004 documentary Tarnation is like watching someone masturbate for 90 minutes. The gay son of a small-town Texas woman suffering from schizophrenia (I’m not even sure Caouette ever tells us her diagnosis in the film. I remember one part in which he says his mother, Renee, was in and out of hospitals, but doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her.), Caouette certainly has rich subject matter to work with. He was abused in foster care and mostly raised by his grandparents. And as a lifelong exhibitionist, evidently, Caouette has countless hours of film from when he was growing up, some of it in shirtless scenes at age 11. Dave and I wondered who the hell was filming this homoerotic footage? We never find out.

Who’s filming young Jonathan is just one of many questions that go unanswered in this thing. In the most annoying and frustrating scene, near the end of the film, Caouette confronts his grandfather (who I only found out was suffering from Alzheimer’s from one of the stories I read about the movie just now) about letting doctors give Renee shock treatments when she was a child and her charges that they abused her. It’s one jump cut after another as Grandpa isn’t given the opportunity to answer a single question. Maybe he didn’t answer, maybe he just stuttered or sighed or shook his head, but at least let us see that, don’t just cut over and over as though only your questions are important.

It wasn’t only the manipulative editing in the scene that bothered me, however. Jonathan is understandably angry that his mother endured shock treatment, but have some compassion for your grandparents given the era, for God’s sake. They were lower-middle-class Texas parents in the 1950s; a lot of people went along with doctors’ recommendations for such treatment then because they didn’t know any better. I think it’s unfair to judge their decision through a modern lens, as painful and unfortunate a decision as it was.

And some of the accusations Jonathan hits his grandfather with are pretty bizarre. Renee had told her son that her parents had beaten her and locked her in closets and that she suspected they weren’t really her parents at all. Paranoid delusions that your parents aren’t really your parents and are trying to hurt you are really, really common among people suffering from schizophrenia. Does Caouette know that? Who fucking knows. He appears to take what Renee has told him as fact. Since Caouette was raised by his grandparents, maybe his belief in her stories stem from abuse he suffered at their hands as well? Again, who knows?

I realize there won’t be pat or easy answers to Caouette’s question, “Why is my family so fucked up?” But he cold have at least let his grandfather try to answer his questions.

Also from the New York mag article: “Although Caouette admits to staging portions of Tarnation, he doesn’t feel like the dramatizations discount the emotional impact of the film. ‘Really, what is truth?’ Caouette asks. ‘I can say my truth from my point of view, but I bet my mother’s point of view is going to be completely different.’ Winter agrees. ‘Jonathan is able to composite drama into a narrative form that gets you right into the story.'”

Am I the crankiest person on Earth or is that last quote a load of shit? “…composite drama into a narrative form”? Jesus Christ. But anyway, I agree with Caouette’s statement here, but I think that the reason this film doesn’t work for me is that Caouette is too selective in what he chooses to reveal. He brings up all this crazy shit that happens in his family and then flits off into an artsy montage of pictures of himself. Like when he says that he called Adult Protective Services after he sees the conditions his mother and grandfather are living in but we never see them and never hear of this again. And while he leaves out a great many details, he lingers over old footage in segments that become pointless, tedious and even annoying.

New York magazine wrote “By all odds, Tarnation should have been an unwatchable, masochistic morass, but Caouette’s love for the broken Renee—which is the true subject of the film—is awe-inspiring.” No, you were right the first time, it is almost unwatchable. And Renee SHOULD have been the subject of the film, but she is merely peripheral in Caouette’s world view.

I am still reeling from the absurdity of the great reviews of this movie, but I should say that the most persistently annoying element of Tarnation is its self-indulgence, as I said initially. A preponderance of the film is a montage of stills in which Caouette poses. “Here’s me looking hot with a shirt on,” “here I am looking hot with no shirt,” “And here I am looking hot with long hair,” “And here I am in the backyard with short hair, note my piercing blue eyes…” Ok, you’re a good-looking guy, Jonathan, we get it. Gus Van Sant executive produced this and I kept thinking, “Thanks, Gus. I know he’s hot and all, but come on. Are you fucking serious?” Tarnation was three hours long at one point, before Gus and some other mentors gave Caouette a crash course in editing, so I guess I at least have to express gratitude to Van Sant for that.

Here’s a trailer for it. It does look interesting, doesn’t it? Some of it is. Maybe more of it will work for you than it did for me and Dave.

Friday Offensive

Greetings, jerkoffs! Happy Friday. God, I don’t miss hearing that, being unemployed…but anyhoo, I wanted to report that Dave bought me the rad new Ivan Brunetti book,
Ho! The Morally Questionable Cartoons of Ivan Brunetti. If you’re not familiar with this awesome self-loathing, suicidal misanthrope, Publishers Weekly called this collection of one-panel gags a “festival of self-loathing, sexual depravity and brutal cynicism” (but also clever and incisive).

One of my favorites has two people standing over someone who has just committed suicide; one laughs as he reads the suicide note and says “Haha, he misspelled ‘despondent’!” One of Dave’s favorites is a guy who shoots a woman in the head and says “Now you look sexy, whore.” You kind of have to read Brunetti for yourself to understand his genius. I would go further than saying “nothing is sacred” in his work and say that nothing is tolerated in Brunetti’s world. He skewers the hypocrisy, cruelty and weakness in people but it doesn’t appear that Brunetti loathes humanity nearly as much as he loathes himself. Check it out! Funny stuff!

Speaking of funny stuff, Nat sent me this story, or rant, by Lindy West of The Stranger. I laughed but also thought, why am I not getting paid to gripe and whine about people, god. But that’s life. I wrote a similar kind of bitch-fest in February, for free, of course, on der facebook. So in keeping with the frugality of these hard times and to console to myself that even if I can’t get paid to rant, I can at least widen the audience for my rants by recycling an old facebook “note” and posting it on my damn blog. Take that, world!

–begin recycled facebook “content”–

Friday, February 13, 2009 at 12:06pm | Edit Note | Delete

Happy Friday, fellow losers. I’m making up my own damn facebook bullshitting list, how do you like that, bored teenagers!? I told Tamara the other day that I was considering making up a list of things that annoy me and posting it on facebook and asked her to talk me out of it. She said no, do it!!! So I called her an enabler and here we are.

THINGS THAT INSPIRE MY CONTEMPT

1. Men on scooters
I suppose I will exclude Vespas in this, although I would question whether a guy who rides one spends more time on his hair than I do. I’m sure they’re zippy and convenient, but there is no bigger boner-kill than a man riding a small wannabe motorcycle with a little basket attached. Sorry.

2. The songs “Oye Como Va” and “Black Magic Woman”
I just hate them so much. I never want to hear them again.

3. People who fill the back windows of their cars with stuffed animals
Why do you do that? Don’t you need to see out of that window? Are you trying to entertain the small children you encounter on the road? Or do you actually imagine that your dusty, sun-faded toys cheer other adults driving by you?

3. People who declare something they hear is offensive before figuring out why (if they ever figure it out)
It amazes and disgusts me when people are like “Wait, can I say the word ‘Indian’?” like the context is somehow irrelevant. I worked at this politically progressive site for teen girls years ago when the movie “The Mexican” came out. In this editorial meeting, a few editors kind of hesitatingly expressed concern that the title was racist. One said “I don’t know about that title… it just strikes me as offensive…” And another, bless her, said “If the movie was called ‘The German’ would you still think it was offensive?”

It also makes me think of walking behind two Mexican guys from Napa while attending San Francisco State University. They were laughing about how they were referred to as “Latinos” there, never Mexican, and how dumb that was. Also makes me think of this funny scene in “The Office” where Michael asks Oscar, “So is there a term I should call you other than ‘Mexican’…? Something less offensive?”

The latest I’ve heard from the Sensitivity Squad is that the term “white trash” is offensive. On behalf of the white trash in the world, please go ahead and say it with my blessing. We really don’t care, but thanks for your concern.

4. The earnest clipboard holders who pester me for money and my email address while standing outside grocery stores
No, I don’t have a minute to help save the environment, and could you think of a more annoying way to ask me to stop and listen to you? Why don’t you stop lying that it’s only going to take a minute of my time and that I won’t be inundated with your stupid squawking emails for the rest of my life if I break down and write you a check?

5. Those “sex-positive” “activists” that act like they invented sex, that no one else has ever heard of anal or dildos and therefore need their sassy sex advice and their “Bad Girls’ Guide to Making You Puke” or whatever the fuck… and that talking about masturbating all the time makes them really sexy.
You know who has sex, besides you? Everybody. Shut up. No one wants to hear about your favorite vibrator or how many fingers (or hands) you can shove up your ass. Shut it.

6. People who act like eating meat makes you a carefree and fun person and that vegans invariably are humorless prigs
I’m probably 500 times funnier than you are, you fucking fuck, so fuck you.

7. The notion that sarcasm is a refuge for the weak and a cheap form of humor
Or whatever the fuck they say. A world without sarcasm is one I wouldn’t want to live in, let me tell you. What is wrong with pointing out the absurdity of our lives? Are we supposed to pretend we all have important work to do on Earth, and therefore ironic comments cheapen this foolish idea?

I think I said to friend recently, what would life be like if we were never sarcastic?? “Oh hello, how are you today? What a lovely day today is!” “Oh yes, it is a lovely day, isn’t it? Mercy.” “Well, I’m going to get into my car and drive somewhere now. Bye!” “Nice exchanging pleasantries with you!” (Am I over-dramatizing?)

Maybe I’ll stop at 7. 7! 7 rants, muwahhahaaha! …Bizarrely, I’m having trouble coming up with more.

I realize that people are suffering everywhere. Fifty people just died in a plane crash, joblessness has skyrocketed, as is the suicide rate, I believe…so if my superficial griping offends anyone, please accept my apology. But writing this has kept me from shopping online for a while so thanks.
–end recycled facebook content–

More fun with craigslist crackpots

Blogger Needed (Part Time)
Reply to: job-ztnwz-1115628846@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Date: 2009-04-10, 1:58AM PDT

Part time blogger needed to discuss screenplay/novel/audio book of the same sci-fi/fantasy story, writers must be fluent English speakers and able to write articles with 100% perfect grammar and spelling. In addition the writer should be able to inject personality and flavor into the post, writer must be familiar with the story by listening to the audio or reading the book. Writer works from the comfort of their homes at their own time 3 times a week and must blog in popular social blogging sites. A report must be provided at the end of each monthly cycle. Please submit resume or short sample of writing.

* Compensation: Three Times A week, 1 Hour each session for $10/Hour ($120/Month).
* This is a part-time job.

What is this, seriously? How many times could one person conceivably blog about the same sci-fi-fantasy (shudder) story? I saw another job listing today looking for someone to write entire e-books and instructional manuals based on “a skeleton of an idea” found in “large, unorganized Word docs” for $12/hr. And they asked for a one-paragraph writing sample explaining how newspapers could remain relevant in the digital age. You know what, instructional manual person and the rest of you shits trying to hire writers and editors at slave wages because of the shitty economy? Fuck you. And shame on you. But why am I cursing you? You’ll get what you pay for. See you on the unemployment line.

No One Does It Like You

Ain’t that the truth. It’s also a song by some band called Department of Eagles. I’ve been trolling the internet endlessly for artsy fartsy people and events that I can write freelance crap about. I’ve seen enough whimsical green and brown stationery with little birds on it to last me the rest of my life, let me tell you… but anyway, I came across this weirdly appealing video directed by Patrick Daughters that I can’t stop watching. Toy soldiers twirl around like ballerinas and shoot and kill other soldiers, it’s pretty neat.

I’m reportedly not the only one enchanted. The Directors Bureau in Hollywood reports that it screened at the MOMA recently “to much fanfare.” Behold the whimsy!

Dump the Zero, Eat a Hero

Please indulge me because I’m going to get really girly and briefly complain about skinny rich people. I caught some of a rerun of Real Housewives of New York City the other night and it was the one where that dark-haired bitch is posing for her cover shoot for some high-society rag, and the stylist or editor of the magazine is congratulating her on being a size 0. “I could tell from across the room that you were a 0,” she enthuses ass-kissingly. I realize this is old news, that whereas once a size 2 was considered small, now it’s all about the 0, blah blah, Rachel Zoe, Lindsay Lohan, Kiera Knightley, gah, blah blah…

But I’m still amazed that this ridiculous nonsize that I was so deeply ashamed to be in the 8th grade is now coveted among many ladies-who-rarely-lunch and Hollywood actresses. In other words, coveted by adult women. I’m 5′ 4 3/4″ and about 111, 112 pounds and a size 3/4. So how much weight would I have to lose to be a 0? Surely more than 10 pounds…20 pounds? That would be fucking insane. I would probably cease menstruating. Gross.

Anyway, thank you, I’m done. And that woman looked like a little boy in an evening gown from far away so fooey on her.

Tough shit for the loveless
I don’t have a lot to make fun of Tough Love about because I actually like this show. All the interviews are scripted like any other reality show, but the women do seem to be genuinely — and entertainingly — neurotic. Even scary. It’s interesting, because although I think Steve’s (who Dave really hates) advice is good most of the time, it seems the point of this show is as much helping women figure out how to trick men into thinking they’re not insane as it is about helping women break through the issues hindering them from finding love in healthy, committed relationships. I mean, sure, you can force yourself to not talk about your zeal to procreate or love of Scientology on your first few dates with a guy, but the crazy is still there, merely lying dormant. Like putting perfume on a pig, in a sense.

So yes, some of Steve’s lectures and appraisals of the women’s problems are pretty astute, I think. Although I questioned a couple things he said in last night’s episode.

If any guy can get past Taylor’s nails-on-a-chalkboard voice, he is treated to a blunt warning that she won’t date anyone who doesn’t have money. Steve and the other women are aghast and repeatedly deride Taylor for being a gold digger. She is one, sure, but why set her up with some struggling actor just to teach her a lesson? Steve knew she wasn’t going to like the guy and would probably – and did – humiliate him. Who wants some dude who can’t pay his bills, seriously?

I also disapproved of his lecture to Jodi that at her incredibly advanced age of 38, she needs to get over her aversion to dating men with children. Um, maybe she doesn’t want to be a mom and knows she’d be bad at it? What the hell is wrong with that? Her boyfriend would be unhappy but more importantly, the child would. Steve’s argument is that a man who has a child is more mature, which is what she needs. Sure, parenthood usually matures parents of both sexes, but there are also innumerable dead-beat dads and moms who could counter that assertion. Bad advice!

That said, I suppose it’s a worse idea to immediately discount a guy who has a kid even if you don’t want to be a parent. Parents — good ones — are usually cautious about introducing a girlfriend or boyfriend to their kids, so hey, it could be a while before the kid is actually getting in the way of your life. I don’t know. The kid thing is clearly not the only hurdle Jodi is going to have to jump, let’s put it that way.

There is much meltdown action to look forward to in the next episode, evidently. Both Arian (remember those little kids with the fucked-up names like Cleetus “White Power” Jones or whatever? Hmm…) and Jodi, we are promised in preview clips of the show, throw tantrums. Arian appears to take offense at being called slutty and Jodi freaks out for an as yet unknown reason. I shall be tuning in!

Rock of Love Short Bus with Crap Michaels
Yawn. Snore. Click.

Cancun street brawls, dating your dad, the definition of Boston proper and fucking random Mexicans
Yes, I’m talking about The Bad Girls Club Reunion Show. I thought in the last episode Tiff forgave Amber M. for being a dramatic, wishy-washy bitch accusing Tiff’s visiting brother of touching her inappropriately. After Amber sexed him up over the phone, etc. That was dumb. So I was confused about why the vitriol had returned with such incredible force on the reunion show.

North Boston: Shut the fuck up, you don’t make any goddamned sense, bitch. Would you want to live in a house with someone who beat your ass? I don’t think you would.

I have to say, I liked how Perez Hilton hosted this show. Usually on these things, the host is bland and tepid and just says stuff like “Whoa….ok, um, we’re going to take a break now” when a brawl breaks out but Perez called out the fab five several times. He told Aliea that she’s a crazy bitch and that it was shameful that she showed no remorse for kicking Amber M. in the head, for crowing about it the next day, and for still expressing no regret about it three months later. He also told her she should return to the loony bin for a re-evaluation and spend some time there. Later, he asks Boston, “So tell me why anyone who isn’t from Boston would give a flying fuck that you’re from Boston?” Then in response to his probing, she admits she is from North Boston, yet insists this is still considered Boston. I lived in Boston for six months and I don’t remember what this means. But it was a long time ago. At any rate, hear hear, normally odious celeb blogger!

So…Tiffany reports that she is now lecturing impressionable young girls about anger management now? Hmm. What a great idea. And that uh, what’s her face, is being paid to hang out in bars. And wait, is one of the Ambers going to mortuary school? Did I hear that correctly? Such a stepping stone, these reality shows.

You don’t think there will really be an “Amber Show”? Do you? DO YOU? I shudder to think.

Shockingly, I have some love for Ray J
Well, at least I do for this one episode I caught, Damn! Ray and sister Brandi (Brandy?) have the remaining bitches pen nasty questions for the others for a lie detector test. Thirty questions each! Yowsers! Stuff like “Have you ever had a restraining order placed against you?” (yes) “Have you ever tried to harm a past boyfriend?” (yes) and “Have you ever had thoughts of killing any of the other girls in the house with you?” (YES! omg!) It was fucking crazy awesome.

Then Ray took the big winner who lied the least out to dinner and a strip club. Every girl’s dream. Then the girl, Chardonnay, laboriously crawls to the top of a stripper pole after she is coaxed on stage, and drops to the floor in a split. Ray jumps up and down like an excited 6-year-old, clapping for the booty. Yay! And I was thusly reminded why I don’t usually watch this show.

Midget Skank of Love
Daisy is returning to TV! Ask and you shall receive!

Have you seen the dudes pretending to vie for the love of the diminutive, stripping Rock of Love 2 alumnus? Do yourself a favor. My friend Mai and I laughed and laughed, oh, how we laughed! 20 Pack is back with a host of scary fellows. It’s taking way too long to try to save photos of these idiots on photobucket, so please. Please check out these twats. You won’t be sorry.

Cleaning for the Crazy

Amazing job opportunity! I found this gem
in the “tv and radio” jobs section of craigslist.org:

*** Healthy Maid $50 an hour *** (Malibu)
Reply to: job-2j9am-1076127925@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Date: 2009-03-15, 11:25AM PDT

I want a healthy maid $50 per hour guaranty $2500 per month, place of work Malibu beach house, Must have no criminal records or Tattoos on your face. Send in resume and full body photos .Contact:Karim 23852 pch #720 malibu,ca.90265 call after you send your resume and photos 310-488-0403 / No experience required.No smoking and no Drinking, Must have a car and have good manners. (Must bring a letter from your doctor that you are healthy)

* Location: Malibu
* Compensation: $50 per hour

Check it out! Karim needs help! His brain be dirty, maybe it need to git wash!

Face tattoos seem like an odd concern, but Karim is clearly an odd guy. Perhaps he has been watching too much Ray J.

All I need is a letter from my doctor and some hot myspace pic action and I bet I’ll be in! I wonder if he just wants to masturbate while he watches this person clean or if the plan is to hang the maid by some hooks while he stabs her or flogs her with raw chickens or something. Who knows!? Life is an adventure!

On buses and stools

Here’s my Beavis and Butthead review of the Stool Academy reunion (aside from the “whereas”): Whereas the Rock of Love 2 reunion sucked, the Stool Academy reunion ruled.

Or it ruled until it got embarassingly Springer, just like the finale: Think lie-detector tests, supposedly random women arriving to announce that they were pregnant after a romantic gas-station tryst with one of the stools and “what’s up now, bro??!” chest-thumping challenges of fisticuffs.

Jenna gets off some surprisingly entertaining jabs at the strangely uppity bitch single mom Christa, who has reunited with boyfriend, Tommy. Tommy proudly reports that he now has two jobs…unfortunately, Tommy was evidently much more faithful as a couch potato living off Christa’s child support than he is in his new bartending job. Several women evidently crowed on the VH-1 message boards that they partook of Tommy, detailing the disfiguring scars in the vicinity of his junk as proof that he’d been had. This is revealed in the lie detector test performed on stage (ewww, so embarassing).

Christa storms off screaming at Tommy that he can go back and live with his mom and he follows her, blustering “I didn’t cheat on you, baby!” until she slaps him. He reacts with the Incredible Hulklike behavior we witnessed on the show during the “put a bed together” challenge, hurling furniture and generally showing the craft service tables what for.

Wearing a MATSUFLEX t-shirt (Jenna wears one, too), Matsufeces showcases his newfound sensitivity and maturity running through the studio audience for high-fives after Jenna intimates that they finally fucked. Mega is very astute and TV-friendly putting Shawn down (if not a trifle dramatic), telling him “you are glass; I can see right through you and so can everyone here.”

Shawn sits between his “pretend” girlfriend (Jamie, I think?) and his “real” girlfriend, Aida, who has since dumped him, and watches as the skinny, pretty brunette with some Deliveranceish dental issues who, according to this ridiculous show, he impregnated at a gas station not long before arriving at Stool Academy. The host acts like he had no idea she was there, of course…ho hum. Why do I watch these things??

The winning couple reports that Josh hasn’t gone bowling in five months (a major relationship thorn, evidently), and that creepily gigantic dude who bragged that he had “trained” his girlfriend, Ashley, to be his slave announces that he and Ashley were engaged. That’s….gross.

Experience life-changing therapy AND life-threatening physical violence yourselves! Visit toolacademycasting.com! (Make sure you “appear younger than 30” though. God forbid we let any women over 30 on TV, unless they’re being castigated by the Millionaire Matchmaker or Steve from Tough Love…review on that to come!)

The short bus gets shorter
So Farrah got sent home. I kind of liked her. She said about 9,000 times in her cute southern drawl what and who was laaaaaame, but I didn’t really get tired of it because she was pretty much always right. Those bitches are lame…Taya sucks the most, I think. Her drawn on eyebrows irritate me before she even opens her mouth…I’ve seen senile old ladies on the bus with better pencil jobs. And how many times can your Penthouse centerfold come up in conversation, for the love of God and everything holy?? Put a sock in it, you hag.

And Mindy, pfft. All that whining and getting dolled up in that trite and trashy leopard-print lingerie and doing icky Crap Michaels….so putrid. I liked Beverly after the first episode when she took on the “blondtourage” but she has been crazy, whiny and lame ever since. Three kids? Why are you here, seriously?

And then there’s some new chick still here for some reason, even though she admits in her interview with psychology experts Heather and Amber from Rock of Love 1 and 2 that she wouldn’t be interested in Bret if he hadn’t been in Poison. At least she’s honest, I guess.

Ashley’s relentless ass-kissing and strategizing was super annoying but she did do some of the most entertaining commentary. Her “baby daddy,” who she lives with in Vegas, came to the show to ruin her chances for short bus love (maybe he didn’t want to be saddled with the kid while Ashley was off making bullshit publicity appearances pretending to be Crap Michaels’ girlfriend. Who could blame him?), charmingly telling Heather and Amber “nobody pulls my bitch.”

So a bewildered and angry Ashley is cut along with pugnacious, mentally challenged psycho Brittanya (don’t hit me if we ever meet, Brittanya..you were like totally the hottest!) . Ashley sniffs “Good luck” to Crap trying to have any fun with those laaaame girls: “They talked about cereal for three hours yesterday. Three hours! Are you f–king kidding me??”

I have to agree. The show is going to suck without them now. Unless someone finally punches Taya. I’ve got my money on Beverly…but not much.

I kind of love money
I would like to update you on what’s going on with this show but I can’t, and I don’t think anyone cares. The backstabbing and alliance formation and dissolution have been dizzying since Tailor Made managed to rally his fellow untethered losers to band together as a viable force to combat Frank “The Entertainer”‘s “empire” (as Frank actually calls it). The dismissal of Heat (I think it’s Heat…I always get him confused with another squat, dim-witted contender with spiky hair) was soaked with tears and booze…pretty entertaining. And Becky Buckwyld continues to gun for her own show, I’m guessing. Maybe she and Frank — who are the show’s latest sickening coupling — think that a two-for-one deal will finally snag them their own reality series. They could call it “The Entertainer Gets Buckwild.” Or however she spells it…eff you, it’s a better name than “Daisy of Love.” Where is that show? Maybe they’re waiting to air it until they think of a better name. As well they should.

I’m going to waste my life watching the new one in a few minutes. Even though I never get around to writing about them, I would like to recommend some reality tv that is actually good, believe it or not: Ru Paul’s Drag Race and Toddlers & Tiaras, on A&E, I believe. Check that shit out, is my eloquent, expert recommendation. You are welcome.

Also check back for some thrilling commentary on Tough Love, as I already promised. Misogyny or painful reality? (it’s kinda both.)

Thank God for AA

A very stool-y wedding
Well, seemingly in an effort to increase my shame for liking this show, Stool Academy ended its first season with an embarassing Springerlike wedding. Oof. Dave had delivered this impassioned monologue explaining why Matsuflex would win the grand stool prize. And that guy was surely motivated, my god. Dollar signs gleamed in his eyes in every interview in which he bragged of the incredible progress he had made in the last week or so. Dave felt that the show would want to shock viewers with a less expected win for its villain (or second-in-command villain after Shawn) rather than crown Josh “Mr. Awesome.”

But Josh, the “Tiny Tool” prevailed, and I won $5 from Dave for predicting his triumph. Hurray for cigarette money! Then the show dove headlong into a bucket of sensationalistic sleaze and put the winning couple on the spot (relatively) to get married on the show. In attendance were Ashley’s dad and I think Josh’s mom and aunt or something. And of course the Stool Academy host and therapist. So romantic.

This show was a strange combination of campy skuzziness, reality show intrigue and petty squabbling and exploration of real psychological issues of the contestants. It was gratifying that Matsuflex was not rewarded for his very careful exploitation of the game and that they identified his self-absorption as unfitting for the winner of the title “Mr. Awesome.”

The curiously coiffed Shawn, who all closet Stool Academy fans love to hate, reveals during “Parents’ Weekend” that his materialism stems from having been poor as a kid. The guy is a big jerkoff to be sure, but it’s hard not to have some compassion for a guy who once lived in a car with his mom and has supported her for much of his life.

And poor Ashley: In her therapy session she says that she wakes up every day feeling like she’s not good enough for her mom (who makes no appearance on the show). Josh’s dad left the family when he was young, and the therapist has him draw out his anger at his dad by yelling at her. She totally taunts him, saying that she (playing the role of Josh’s father) never wanted him and doesn’t need Josh in his life…it’s…kind of creepy, but maybe this is what therapy is like. I wouldn’t know.

I missed the opportunity last week to snark about Shawn’s dismissal from the Academy, where Matsuturd and Tiny Tool taunt him from the safety of a balcony, Tiny Tool telling him his girlfriend is a hooker. The ejected only “real” couple, as Shawn says, run inside for a fun confrontation, shouting insults and threats at Tiny Tool (Dave said he thinks “faggot” was bleeped out of a shout at Tiny Tool), who folds his skinny arms a safe distance behind one of the show’s large production guys.

Hurray! We have all learned so much about ourselves!

Give it up to God
I am not a religious person, not a spiritual person. Anti-religion pretty much, although I have always thought that atheism was a trifle arrogant. I cannot assert that I know the unknowable, although at least once a day some putrid thing I see or read makes me think “There is no god. Jesus.”

So the God-y aspect of Alcoholics Anonymous has always turned me off. It has always annoyed me that people turn to God when they have nowhere else to go. I’ve always thought that religion is a crutch for people who are scared and hopeless rather than a true love of “Him.”

But in terms of AA, I’ve been having a change of heart recently. It has helped a lot of people. Hearing more about it lately, I can’t dismiss it like I once did. I can see how striving to rid yourself of the self-pity and self-loathing that makes people abuse drugs and alcohol is a positive thing. Ditto for the tenets of being part of a community and helping others, focusing less on yourself.

Although they’re careful to never actually mention AA, Celebrity Rehab Sober House drips with its philosophy. They refer to “the program” often, Andy Dick “makes amends”…this is all AA. Maybe this was obvious to everyone but me, but I’m just saying that this aspect of the show is veering more toward positive than negative to me now.

The finale begins with a tough scene with a surly Steven Adler telling his loved ones to fuck off and insisting that he’d rather go back to jail than have to discuss his sobriety any further. I feel sorry for his wife, who Steven gripes to the rehab tech whose name I’m forgetting that he will probably divorce her. Testing positive for pot, Steven elects to go back to detox.

Amber searches frantically for an apartment. I really hope she’s ok. I worry that living alone or with her mother griping endlessly will make her pop pills again. Or that some douchebag she goes out with will try to ply with substances hoping for an easier lay. Dave shook his head the other day and said “everyone relapses.” It’s depressing to think about.

The show totally renovated and redecorated Rodney King’s house so he didn’t have to return to utter squalor and could start running a sober living facility. I hope it’s successful. Dave told me that Mary Carey just finished shooting a porno movie called something like “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Screw,” which made me really, really sad. Really sad.

I don’t want to run through the cast making judgments on who I predict will be most able to stay sober. I know people google themselves and despite the shit I write here, I don’t want to hinder anyone’s chances with any negativity. It’s a serious thing, a lifelong thing.

So whether they can get behind the God thing or not, I hope AA can help these people. Dave told me this great story of a guy he met in a hospital once, who said of AA, “Yeah, it’s brainwashing, but your brain be dirty, maybe it could use some washin’!”

Amen, brother.

Craptasmagoria

Reviews! Late-night reviewz…with a “z,” they’re so stupid!

Three minutes of the Adam Samberg movie Hot Rod
Oh my god, what an unfunny piece of crap. And there are actors in it I recognized from other movies that were actually funny. And was that Isla Fisher in the “romance” scene who says she wants to join Samberg’s race team and he tells her there’s an initiation and when she asks what it is, he pours some soda on her shoe? Seriously. It’s like a 7-year-old wrote that movie.

The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles
Really thought I would like this book. Overall, I did not. Ok, maybe half of it was ok, but that is generous.

They somehow got award-winning author Colson Whitehead, who wrote the awesome The Intuitionist, to contribute one of the few satisfying essays in this collection, which was about his loathing for all desserts after scooping ice cream on Long Island for a couple of summers in his youth. But strangely, some of the writers in this relatively slim volume write stories only peripherally related to having a shit job. It’s not only irritating but perplexing, because we all know people who have awesome stories about terrible jobs they’ve had, yet The Customer Is Always Wrong saw fit to include, for example, an essay by a whimsical performance artist who once watched a gift shop for a weekend while couple friends left town for a convention. Her big trauma is that some guy stole a clock on her watch (derrr hurrr) and she broke a wall sconce the couple warned her not to break. Big deal, lady.

Even more annoying, the editor, Jeff Martin, let many of the writers include these unnecessary and distancing explanations that they are really Writers, and these jobs were just odious and traumatic detours before they got that big book deal. I just hate reading something that makes me scream “no shit!!” so loudly and so often.

In addition to being annoying, some of the editing was actually appalling: In one story, the same phrase, about “checking out cute boys at Sbarro’s at the mall” appears in two consecutive paragraphs. To geek out further, I will tell you that I was miffed that it was apparent that no one editing this book had any grasp of proper comma usage whatsoever.

In one story, I thought a graf on page 3 should have been the start of a story; other parts stood out as totally extraneous…my impression is that these writers are friends of Martin’s and he didn’t want to alienate them by editing their prose (or fixing their comma gaffes…?). But he should have.

Dave bought this book for me (and agrees with my assessment wholeheartedly, so this won’t hurt his feelings) because I read a positive review of it in The Onion. I suspect the reviewer hadn’t read the book. As someone who has written countless DVD synopses of movies she has never seen, I can relate to this situation. But I’m still a little irritated about being mislead that this book is the awesome.

Interestingly, the book’s publisher, Soft Skull Press, lists writers on its own website page for the title that didn’t end up being included. Like Po Bronson, T Cooper and Trisha Thompson. Not there. I wonder why.

Jim DeRogatis, author of Let It Blurt, wrote a story for this that totally SUCKS. Seriously. It has nothing to do with having a fucking job, it’s about the music shop where he started buying drum supplies when he was learning to play. I guess it’s supposed to be about Al, the proprietor of Al Rocky’s Music Store in Jersey, but DeRogatis admits that he doesn’t have much feeling for Al. While a colorful slice-of-life type thing, if he has some point about his youthful apathy toward Al Rocky, he doesn’t make it very effectively. And at any rate, it belongs in a book about learning to play instruments or growing up in Jersey and not here, since DeRotatis didn’t even ever fucking work at Al’s.

Since I’ve bagged on it so much, I want to mention the writers whose stories I really enjoyed: Randall Osborne’s “How Swede It Was,” about the Midwest pancake house his parents owned for a time in the ’70s, had me guffawing and was probably my favorite, and Victor Gischler’s “Ear Man,” about his time selling hearing aids door to door, was excellent.

And although it appears to be completely made up, I enjoyed Wendy Spero’s essay about selling knives. Clay Allen’s story about working the overnight shift at a sex shop was also one of the better ones.

Perhaps surprisingly, I wouldn’t dissaude anyone from buying this book. Just don’t get too excited about overzealous reviews and expect greatness. And if you want to avoid getting seriously fucking annoyed, skip Timothy Bracy’s story “Klaus,” which reminds of this idea I had in my early 20s where I thought that it’d be great to make a movie that made no sense at all and had no resolution whatsoever and would be called Annoying Movie. Bracy beat me to it, in essay form.