Maybe You're Jewish and Alone Too?

Hey you guys! Here is an Avatar review I wrote! Don't poop on it. It's Christmas and I'm Jewish and alone already, okay?

Weight Loss

Today I start my Whatever You Like (T.I. inspired) diet.
A pair of edible underwear for dinner,
another pair for lunch,
Patron for a 4pm snack,
and late night sex, so wet and tight, for dinner.

Unlike other diets which can seem embarrassingly middle-aged and Midwestern, the Whatever You Like diet doubles as great party conversation, and most people will think good things about you because they connote edible underwear with fruit roll-ups and fun-loving Delia's models.

As it happens, Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah-ah! Roma-roma-mamaa! Ga-ga-ooh-la-la! were also my first words as I was climbing out of a space-age German coffin upon birth. Is it weird to say I'm so proud that Lady G is part of my tribe?

Yo Betches. I finally got around to uploading my story on female eaters in the latest issue of Bitch. You may read it here. Or you may go here and watch Axl Rose being stoned by a fan. Your choice!

LOL Tom Cruise, EL OH EL.

From the Onion interview with Bronson Pinchot:

We didn’t know it was going to be a big hit. We thought Tom [Cruise] was the biggest bore on the face of the Earth. He had spent some formative time with Sean Penn—we were all very young at the time, Tom was 20, I was 23. Tom had picked up this knack of calling everyone by their character names, because that would probably make your performance better, and I don’t agree with that. I think that acting is acting, and the rest of the time, you should be you, but he called us all by our character names. He was tense and made constant, constant unrelated homophobic comments, like, “You want some ice cream, in case there are no gay people there?” I mean, his lingo was larded with the most… There was no basis for it. It was like, “It’s a nice day, I’m glad there are no gay people standing here.” Very, very strange.

UHHHHHH,

“You want some ice cream, in case there are no gay people there?”

TOM CRUISE CAN'T EVEN MAKE HOMOPHOBIA MAKE SENSE. I mean, it can't be that hard. Dumb rednecks get it right all the time. I'm beginning to think Tom Cruise might be some kind of Dadaist art project. Someone get him to buy me a Snuggie and a bag of peanuts. I bet it's possible, you guys!

Crawling into empty chicken buckets left and right.

How To Write A Modern Love Column.

My Boyfriend

My boyfriend is a rabble-rousin' son of a gun. I mean, literally, he is a son of a gun. You're probably all like, how is this possible? Well, stop, because I'll shoot you.

Betty Gives The Most Perfect American Men's Magazine Interview EVER

January Jones outfoxes even Megan Fox's I-fell-in-love-with-a-stripper attempt in successful pandering to red-blooded American menfolk in in the latest issue of the GQ. When a blow up doll falls in love with a stripper, it's sexy, sure, but also obvious? Overwrought? TRYING TOO HARD? Our Betty doll does one better-- she enthuses about downing 27 beers in one night, downs at least six with the interviewer, and effing takes him to Chili's. Tell me you are not in love:

January wants to go to the Chili’s near the H Gates. She loves the queso there. Loves it even though it doesn’t always come in one of those little cast-iron skillets like at regular Chili’s and they don’t have a “red beer” (beer and tomato juice) here like she’s seen at the franchise’s other midwestern outlets. It doesn’t matter that the place is noisy and crowded and the only TV is tucked way up behind the bar and she probably won’t be able to catch the last preseason Bears game. The queso’s that good.

One minor dispute: Chili's queso really isn't that good. The apps to choose from at Chili's are the Boneless Buffalo Wings (operative word: boneless) and the Texas Cheese Fries. But I won't be able to make the final decision for you. Asking me to choose between wings and cheese fries is like asking me to choose which breast I cherish most. They both hover too close to the heart.

Then again, apparently the queso cals go straight to the breasticles. So.....

Once

Once when I was shaving my legs I got really excited thinking one day you won't have to shave your legs, but then I realized that this wasn't true, or rather, it was only true of the day that I die. I was in the shower, so my tears weren't painfully obvious, but now I just have my interns shave my legs for me, to avoid the memory. #itcametrue.

It's ON, Bitch

Here.

Hey guys,

Are you on the Facebook? I am. Twice actually! I have a fake profile for a 22 year old dancer named Lauren B*ns who lives in Delaware. It felt like an Internet security issue to be the sole search match for my name. Everyone thinks dancers have great bods and Delaware is good for my business taxes. That is why I picked those two things.

Anyway, let's keep this short. Today I got poked by a man named Tato. His profile pic was of a snake that swallowed some sort of mammal, it looked like maybe a bunny. I mean, that's a statement right? You're going around poking people with that kind of deliberately intimidating profile picture, that says something, you know? If not about who you are exactly, then something about who you want people to think you are. I mean, I felt a little victimized. So I googled "what eats snakes" and did some reading on the subject. Then I changed my profile pic to that of an African Honey Badger and poked him the fuck back.

The End.

Announcement

Hello readership!
(i.e. Mom and Googlers arriving from a "Sarah Palin peeing" search)

Next week I start blogging at Slate's lady blog about culture and stuff. This is exciting to me. And to you, Mom. Probably not so much to the rest of you. But if your interest is peaked, please give me your loving clicks.

Also, Just Kidding! THIS IS THE BEST SEASON EVER.

The Informant: It Is Good.

The Informant: it is good. Very good. Soderbergh essentially makes over his 2000 Erin Brockovich gem with an asshole lead, casting a bloated Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre, a whistleblower who is less unappealingly horsey-looking than J. Roberts, but who has an entire stable in his backyard bought with the money he swindled from the food additive company he later decided to report to the FBI for price-fixing. So, yeah, there are valid, vaguely horse-related reasons to dislike them both. But please note that to doubt Steven Soderbergh's talent is an anti-American sentiment punishable by law.

It's weird, however, that in these hard times of economic destruction at the hands of greedy corporate white dudes you almost like Matt Damon in spite of his criminal conduct. It helps that the movie's inside his head at all times, and his headthoughts are hilarious. And apparently delusions of grandeur are always more slapstick, and less anger-inspiring when they come with a bushy moustache. The non-fiction book the film is based on is decidedly less funny (though I wish the film would have played up Whitacre's obsession with The Firm more, that comedy just writes itself) which makes it all the more daring that Soderbergh made a somewhat sympathetic, or at the very least, lighthearted, portrait of a corporate criminal and pulled it off successfully. (Madoff, look alive boy!)

In Which We Await The Imminent Robot Takeover

at TR

A Note

I would drown myself too if I were trapped in the MOST BORING SEASON EVER.

Hi Friends

I'm guest blogging at XX this week!

Gah! You guys, it's been soooooo hot here the past few weeks, I sweat constantly and wake up stained like an abuse victim from cuddling packages of frozen berries. I wasn't really born for this kind of weather, I slid out on a cool 53 degree day in the Fresh Forest climate of 1980's Minnesota, and since then I've basically needed temperatures that sound like deodorant scents to really thrive in my environment. I've been rewarding daily survival with Uncle Louie's ices and the most twee of air-conditioned rom-coms. I mean, now is the time for emo pornography, my panties are already wet from the heat.




I thought Paper Heart was going to be like Juno lite, and maybe Michael Cera could be less of a non-committal jerk without the stress of a 16 & Pregnant love interest, but apparently not-- he dumped his love-inept Asian girlfriend two weeks before the movie's release date, purportedly to roam the interiors of hotter Hollywood starlets. Of course, I don't blame lil' Cera, Charlyne Yi looks like a 12 year old who's never masturbated, and she spends the entire movie whining about her unlovability until it essentially becomes true. Her major fear of falling in love is getting ousted from the "one of the dudes" club. Evidently you can't play Nintendo once you start using your female organs. She's clearly never seen this picture:



Yi spends some time interviewing random Americans about their conceptions of love, which is sweet reprieve from the rest of the movie: a painfully self-conscious fake documentary that consists of a scripted Michael Cera awkwaromance and an actor PLAYING the film's director sighing and moaning, "We need more footage. How is this documentary ever going to come together?" (The answer: Oh! We'll just write super terrible dialogue on the pains of our artistic process!) The documentary pieces aren't enough to carry the movie-- none of the real people, though often charming, say anything you can't learn from some Hallmark cards and an Anne Lamott book.

Also, are we supposed to have heard of Charlyne Yi before? The movie spends like 3 minutes in the beginning making the case for her importance by showing off her quasi-famous friends, who then never reappear in the film, with the exception of Michael Cera playing Michael Cera. I mean, there is maybe nothing more detrimental to the specific appeal that Michael Cera has going for him than to expose it as a self-conscious act. Will the real Michael Cera PLEASE STAND UP, PLEASE STAND UP, PLEASE STAND UP. Haahahaha, that was a 1999 Eminem joke. No standing up necessary, I really don't care. I'm off to District 9 to forget this movie ever happened!

Thirteen Was Bad

Here.

In Which This Is Not Love

Here.

On Media

So maybe I'm slightly floundering. When I told my Dad about my excellent HDL level(93 BETCHES!) his first response was, "Well if you're gonna live so long you should probably get a real career or a rich husband." I mean, c'mon Dad! I'm working on some shit and stuff, but there's a distracting mouse in the apartment, and I accidentally watched too much Sarah Connor Chronicles today. Also I have this idea for a tee shirt. It's going to read "I Have Socialist Leanings....toward Blow Jobs." Which is kinda funny, and even more funny to a certain crowd of folks who like what the Internet apparel industry calls "Attitude" tee shirts and hate the political concept of Socialism. Once I get rich from this, I'm going to ban the word floundering from my vocabulary and the vocabulary of those I surround myself with. But I will still eat cooked food and retain the same friends, save for a few, namely the ones who use the word floundering. I mean, god damn this industry, right guys? And god bless attitude tee shirts and the chokehold of hope they have on my heart.

I think Chicago and I got off to a bad start. I visited my sister there earlier this Spring-- my first time back in 10 years-- and asked her to take me "somewhere cool." We ended up at the cafe in Nordstrom's on Michigan Ave. They did have really good chili, but still.

This time I was further uptown, near Wicker Park, for Pitchfork. I had been told two things about Pitchfork before I went: 1.) That it's extremely smelly and 2.) That the Chicagoan attendees are cherubic hipsters. Neither turned out to be true. It was 60 degrees the entire time so there was no sweating, and everyone seemed hot and svelte. The boys had a certain bearded lumberjack look. A few crazypants teenagers had seizures and at least one aging hippie fainted during the Flaming Lips. I drank Sparks from 2 until 10, my teeth turned orange, one night I got my first lap dance from a stripper named Alicia who had just graduated culinary school, and I didn't poop for three days. It was pretty frakking fantastic.

I like this. I only wish there were more fireworks in trash cans.

That Other Dood Who Died That Day

A post about Seeds' singer Sky Saxon.

teh baseball

Behind homeplate spitting-distance seats.



Two of Mauer's foul balls caught. (Heh: Two Foul Balls)

The One Stop Shop for Your Next Period Piece

You know how period films are all kind of the same? Like you can expect that there will be adorned bosoms, tea cups, English accents even if it's set in France, and some sordid interclass sexual relations between two white people that the rest of the upper crusties turn their Anglo-noses up at until it's discovered that the poorer party is really a prince or inheritor of his estranged father's tea biscuit fortune? Thus true love is allowed to thrive while keeping all of the same crappy social conditions that prevented it in the first place. (The same bizarro logic exists in rom-coms too: be an unhappy single woman and kvetch to everyone about your destitute, lonesome life and you'll get swept off your feet by a handsome man who loves slobbery dogs and will unrealistically find your moodiness and bitter quips about the terribleness of the male species completely charming.)

Anyway, I find the trailer for Cheri hilarious, because it really is a cliche of itself. I mean, sub the actors out and the formula could be used for ANY period piece trailer. Start with ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE, CUE VIOLINS!, INTRODUCE KEY FORBIDDEN LOVE CHARACTERS, CUE VIOLINS!, CUT TO TEA TIME WHERE NOTHING INTERESTING IS BEING SAID, CUE VIOLINS!, SHOW POST-COITAL LOVAHS, CUE VIOLINS!, CUT TO HEARTY ENGLISH LAUGHTER, CUE VIOLINS!, MORE HEARTY ENGLISH LAUGHTER, CUE VIOLINS! And scene.

The future is totally frakked.

In the parental oligarchy that is Park Slope, anxiety prone caregivers have hijacked the sport commonly known as little league baseball and reformed it-- the batter swings (and swings and swings) until he hits the goddamned ball. The fielding team merely tosses the ball in the right general direction to score an out. I mean, I understand the desire to build a saccharin world free of hurt and rejection for the precious being that came into the world care of your doula and a Cat Stevens album, but God forbid the imminent future looks like an aluminum wasteland and Wall-E has been specifically designed to annihilate the human race and your kid doesn't even know what it feels like to be struck out at home plate.

OH FRAK. I kind of made a bargain with myself never to post a cute animal video based on an unproven theory that CAVs are the gateway drug to, like, Daily Kitten subscriptions, and PETA memberships, or worse 100 million hours of YouTube videos metatagged: ANIMALS, LOLS!, ADORABLE that become an Interwebbian mandate as your brain craves more and more dopamine, and eventually only novelty clips like a Golden Retriever puppy spooning a handicapped cheetah will suffice. But I'm making an exception for this Slow Loris video my friend sent on Friday. Because the Slow Loris is being tickled. And it is so cute. And because I'm sure as soon as Pixar sees this YouTube video they'll exploit our Slow Loris friend in some animated feature. You can say you saw it first here.

Word to the wise: The Slow Loris is an endangered species so if you see one please tickle it and give it one last LULZ. For the Internet minions.

When Duty Calls

NO ONE WANTS TO BE HERE.

Not even the unemployed, or the soul-destroyingly employed. Which may be why they screen a video first thing airing all the complaints of people like you walking into the court building for jury duty. The powersuit: "But I have SO many projects at work going on. They need me at the office!" The colorful Hispanic woman: "Why they show me bloody pictures?! What they want me for?" A pixelated 1970's Diane Sawyer offers a brief soliloquy on the nobility of jury duty and the rule of law, nevermind betch was probably just coming off her stint as Nixon's press aide. By the end of the video an American flag is waving in the breeze (meaning: justice has been served), and kvetchers are reformed, Intervention-style. The theme song from Titanic or Braveheart or The West Wing commences and the former naysayers spring out onto the court steps enthusing about their enlightened views. A Wall Street tycoon with a face like he invented roofies tells you his clients can wait because his first priority as an American is to be good citizen. A bird passes above some Melanie Griffith-in-Working-Girl head, which really only reminds you of the fact that you're inside a windowless room with archaic fluorescent bulbs. A room that reeks of medicinal farts and the sounds of throaty mucus.

The man running this shindig is mean. Every time an innocent approaches the podium with a question he answers him or her straight into the microphone despite the fact the confused party is standing inches away from his face. Thus littered in between role calls are caustic one-liners like: "Let me teach you how to read." "Funny, you LOOK like someone who knew how to listen." "How do you pronounce this crazy name of yours?" There's one guy in the second row who looks like Rick Moranis, who maybe actually could be Rick Moranis, who laughs at every single one of these. I've labeled him the Betrayer, he reminds me of the Jewish guards who ran the ghettos. Closer to home, home being this electronic light box burning up my lap, the overweight Army man next to me is a mouth breather. I know he's an Army man because he has a buzzcut and his computer screen is a rendering of a beefed-up Uncle Sam with the slogan, "IT'S WAR TIME. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HELP?" My typing annoys him. I can feel his rage in the form of heat and I imagine he's really upset right now that he's not spanking recruits out on a grassy field.

The Internet connection here blocks Blogger.com, it seems so undemocratic. And what they call straws are really stirrers and the sucking force they necessitate is putting me at risk for a brain aneurysm. I feel like a betch for betching, you know, it's just jury duty, but my shoes have been wet all day, now my feet are dank and cold, and I've just gotten to the part in the book I brought where one Euro satanic metal dude eats another Euro satanic metal dude's brain and I guess I just feel like a relatively good person comparatively and maybe like I deserve this outlet. Even if maybe I don't.

The Least Offensive Theory of Shopping goes like this: Your younger sister drags your begrudging self into a Strawberry’s. After playing on your cell phone for a few yawny minutes, you start casually filing through some of the racks because.... Sequined Fergalicious blouse. Pleather leggings. “Cuddle Power” Carebear underwear. By the time you reach the faux-denim romper with gold heart buttons you’re like, hey, is this cute? Five minutes later: Yeah this real cute. It’s only when you get home, far away from the Gloria Estefan-pumping confines of the store, you tragically realize your 30 bucks would have been better spent on new floss and a precautionary tube of athlete’s foot cream. Point being: Cuteness is environmentally relative. The latter sentence: the new signature on my credit cards.

Land of the Lost, Land of the Malls

Oh hi! Haven't posted for a while. I was visiting the parental abode last week, spending perfect spring days alternating my time between the indoor confines of the Mall of Amer and various chain restaurants, getting to intake some much missed trans fat in a state that still doesn't have a senator.

Anyway, I saw Star Trek last night. What a rollicking romp of a revel! I have much I want to say about it, but not really in any coherent paragraphic form, so bear with les bullets:
1.) Flip phones in the first scene, really? This is supposed to be "the future" after all. Is this foreshadowing some terrible fate for the iPhone? Do Romulans gain majority shareholder stake in Apple during the space year 5306-87-6839? So many questions. And a little sadness, for I think the movie could have gone differently had the Federation possessed iPhones. Impending spaceship crash? THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT (TM)

2.) Captain Kirk is dating Audrina, or so says OneIndia, the most reputable source for Hollywood gossip. Or Hollywood gossip, outsourced.

3.) Okay, that bar scene in Iowa--- was that not Good Will Hunting meets space age setting? Genius townie walks into a bar, flirts with hot female cadet, she insinuates he doesn't know what xenolinguistics is. Genius Townie gives a perfect definition. Male cadet comes over and is like, "Is this dumb townie bothering you?" Hot cadet is like, "no, I can handle him." Still, fight ensues because Genius Townie loves fights! Then academy professor looks up Genius Townie's files and discovering that his "apptitude tests are off-the-charts" gives him a lofty speech about his destiny. Moral being: No Undisclosed Genius is Ever Left Behind, Ever. Not in Boston. Not in Iowa. Not in the Future. NOT FAIR.

4.) Homeland Security should take comfort that the chauvinistic American cowboy personality is always right, even in space. Western Hem's future dominance assured! Terrorists lose!

Lastly, they showed a preview for Land of the Lost before the film last night. I will see this because I like Will Ferrell. I also thought it was interesting that half of the comedy seems based on "ironic CGI", like this-scene-is-funny-because-it's-painfully-obvious-that-Will-Ferrell-is-standing
in-front-of-a-blue-screen (see top picture). This is good, because CGI nowadays is like an annoying scholarship student always showing off its accomplishments.

There is a questionably homeless man who sits in the Minneapolis skyway (pictured right) playing an acoustic guitar and singing a song called "Tim Pawlenty Must Die Because He Lies" which sounds similar enough to Corey Flood's "Joe Lies" that I'm going to call it a possible reimagining. I should probably also take the opportunity to inform you that though the skyways are crazyfuntimes, I'm not quite sure why there is a collected mass looking out on the street in this picture. Guesses: Prince sighting, cow parade. Hey!

I bring this up, because it's pretty obvious now that Tim Pawlenty will die, albeit not in the literal means outlined by the skyway man. Nate Silver had a good rundown on 538 yesterday about Pawlenty's plummeting approval rating due to the fact he refuses to give us people an acting senator and is instead towing the party line, and for no good reason. ( Didn't he learn his lesson when the GOP, standing in his homestate's convention center, proclaimed Sarah Palin their VP pick?) Luckily he has a pocketful of "my wife won't have sex with me...she's fishing" jokes that will play real well with the other ice hockey Dads when he's out of a job in 2010.

Here is A Case Study

How Flocabulary, A Study-Guide Publisher Reinvented Itself.

Enjoyment of “reality” shows like The Hills or Daisy of Love come with certain conditions. One: it’s a bad idea to watch alone. Or at least without a solid Internet connection and the misguided notion that blogs are friends. There is nothing more demoralizing than sitting down by your lonesome to a show whose main value lies in the external dialogue created around it. The Hills is basically that back page of Star magazine “Week’s Worst Dressed” wherein C-grade comedians and sometimes Julia Allison make unfunny, mostly incomprehensible quips at the expense of the terribly dressed. (Picture: Martha Stewart dressed in striped shirt, Quip: “Looks like someone misses the prison couture.” Yes, THAT one.) The point being that the terribly dressed celebs are a platform, just as reality shows like The Hills showcase stupidly attractive narcissists vaguely acting out scripted reality so Ivy League grads with loosely defined bloggery-type media jobs like yourself can expound on your campy enjoyment of it or sit around at Monday night viewing parties and make sharp-witted comments. And don’t get me wrong--- THIS IS A GOOD THING. But my point is that if you took away that meta-TV reaction, you are just sitting on your couch alone watching morons who will never earn your emotional investment. That can’t be fun. I mean, I suppose there are people in the world who take The Hills very, very earnestly, hence Lauren Conrad getting a Kohl’s line, but I’m pretty sure those people are stupid or preteens. And I’m pretty sure I don’t want to address the stupid or the preteen.

I hope you don’t consider yourself violated when I tell you that this has all been an overly meandering exposition for a fairly simple sentiment: I frakking LOVE MTV’s high school reality show Taking The Stage. Mostly because the equation doesn’t compute. MTV + high school + reality show doesn’t = dumbfuck microcelebs. And, as it turns out, that’s more refreshing than a 4pm Fresca after a mid-afternoon tampon change. Sure the students have banal high school anxieties— half of Mia’s time is spent trying to decipher the lame-ass flirtations of Tyler, who has a girlfriend he is very clearly too pussy to leave. But after Mia finishes her naïve, navel-gazing rant about how great they would be together, the fact remains that she sings like this:



Contrast that against Heidi Montag’s ill-fledged music career or Spencer Pratt’s should-be-trademarked method of existential dickbaggery, both of which unfortunately have more staying power than swine flu. Isn’t it kind of nice to watch a reality show with people you like, despite their annoying traits? With people who maybe have some obnoxiously grandiose dreams, but are so talented you’re not upset by all the props MTV throws their way? I think this is what being a really nice person feels like, and I like when TV inspires positive character growth in my person.

In Which We Drive So We Can Get Laid.

Inquiries and
Mitigations Made by
Both Your Financial
Consultant and Your
Gynecologist.

Hipster Grifter

Yes, this story is crazy, and obviously, so is this girl.

But I felt when I was reading it that there was undue emphasis on her being a sexual manipulator-- like, not only was she a con artist, but she (gasp!) preyed on innocent men who were only trying to be good caretakers to her! This graph is what really got me-- it's pretty much positioned as evidence that she was some sort of femme fatale, manipulating the very earnest (almost suspiciously so) men around her with her devastating sexual prowess:

It was also around November that a guy named Troy was at Union Pool, the Williamsburg bar, when the bartender passed him a note from another customer. It read, “I want to give you a hand job with my mouth,” and was signed “Korean Abdul-Jabbar.” It was, according to Troy, from Ms. Ferrell. Another time, a patron at Fabiane’s, the café on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, said Ms. Ferrell passed him a note which read: “I want you to throw a hot dog down my hall.”

I mean, isn't there a chance that I WANT YOU TO THROW A HOT DOG DOWN MY HALL wasn't part of her manipulative technique, but rather her being funny? Because it's pretty fucking hilarious, and I am adding it to my lexicon. Thank you, Ms. Ferrell.

Of course there's no denying that she conned boyfriends. But considering the number of women she tricked, the idea that she was out on the hunt for another male prospect seems forced. But who am I to argue against a crazy maneater story, cue Hall & Oates please.

If Hollywood dramas were an accurate barometer of the efficacy of our education system, pretty American children would have colonized Mars by now and inadvertently found a cure for AIDS during a game of I, Spy played on the shuttle ride up there. Kids are pretty much always absurdly precocious in movies, and their innocence only adds to their brilliance. They can sense what you’re too old and world-weary to sense: Dead people, aliens, the pain of a sweet fawn hunted down in the forest. Knowing, the Nicholas Cage apocalypse drama, is no exception. Despite the title and Cage’s role as a widowed MIT astrophysicist, it’s the overachieving nine year olds that have the power to preserve humanity. Though keep in mind we’re referring to the same humanity that has continually served Nicholas Cage terrible, terrible scripts, bad judgment, and male pattern baldness verging on Lithgowian. So, uh, you decide the value of that.




The plot begins when Cage’s 9-year-old son, Caleb, brings home a page-long number sequence from a time capsule buried at his elementary school back in 1959. The page was scrawled out obsessively 50 years ago by an unnaturally pale girl named Lucinda (who really would have been put in a special ward for schizophrenia in ’59, but whatever, for the purposes of the film she went to public school). After partaking in the widower’s evening whiskey ritual, Cage drunkenly sets his glass down on the paper leaving a circular mark that allows him to see the pattern. It’s a doomsday calendar! Listing the dates of major disasters, the location coordinates, and the number of people killed. It conveniently begins after the Holocaust and conveniently excludes Vietnam, Sudan, and other war deaths, yet somehow includes the Arizona hotel fire that Cage’s wife died in years earlier that had a total death toll of, like, 40 people.

Anyway, as you may have guessed, the crazy girl Lucinda wasn’t crazy-- she was hearing alien voices, which were noted in the subtitled hearing-impaired screening I found myself in as “inaudible whispering.” (Note: If you’re hearing impaired I would suggest not seeing this film as half the movie and 100 percent of the suspense is the “inaudible whispering”) Cage’s son, Caleb, as it turns out can hear the alien whispering too. What’s scarier, the aliens aren’t some looming unseen, they look like Tilda Swanson in a bald cap, or my friend thought more like Spike from Buffy, and they drive around in a ’70 Chevrolet following Caleb, and leaving what turn out to be plot-meaningless black pebbles everywhere. Also, once they show Caleb a vision of doomsday that features a hilariously majestic CGI moose leaping out of the brush on fire, like a Lisa Frank folder in need of an exorcism.

At the same time, Cage is following the numbers to the sites of all these huge disasters. Essentially the movie becomes disaster porn, and nearly all of it in New York. Okay, I get it. Middle America can only stomach Hollywood tragedy in the location they visit for a weekend every five years.



Like in some other civilization dramas-- Contact, springs to mind, Cage, the once stubbornly atheistic scientist is awed into religious submission. It doesn't even matter if it's God or aliens by the end-- they're one in the same for all intents and purposes. The movie conflates Cage's new faith in determinism with his reconciliation with his preacher father, and devoutly religious family. Cage becomes a son again, and his son, Caleb, in some ways becomes a father. Science, in turn, becomes a myth, and not even a particularly helpful one. Note to astrophysicists: UR LIFE IS A LIE.

The lives which turn out not to be completely useless however, are those of two upper crust white kids, both from Lexington, Mass. who the aliens want to propagate the human race on the retired set of What (Wet) Dreams May Come. Good to know what higher beings value about the human race: PBS, Nantucket Nectars, and L.L. Bean.

Now is not a bad time to be a straight guy. While most markets are disintegrating faster than Dick Cheney, the heterosexual dude market has exploded with successful diversification. You can be constipated by your own masculinity like Don Draper or an effeminate Apatowian weeping into a maxipad and still have throes of female admirers. In the forthcoming comedy Hang Over, Bradley Cooper, whose abs are more contoured than an upscale dildo, pals around with comedy schlub Zach Galifianakis in Vegas. Fifteen years ago, the same pairing would have Cooper tying Galifianakis naked to a flagpole and smearing his balls with mayo. But in a world where chicks are writing fan fiction about nailing Michael Cera, Animal House-era masculinity rules don’t really apply anymore.


YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES.

As Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall proves, emasculation is comedy gold, but no longer a disqualifier for heterosexuality, or even unattractive to the opposite sex. When Segel’s bawling in his Hawaiian suite over his recent breakup, Mila Kunis, the cute hotel receptionist, calls his room to check in after getting guest complaints about a “weeping woman”. As he frightfully deliberates jumping off a cliff into the turquoise water Kunis yells up at him, “I can see your vagina from here.” Later that night they bone. Regardless of his figurative genitalia and what Mahnola Dargis describes as his “suggestion of an A cup”, Kunis still wants his pee in her vee.

It's acceptable to be a wimp and a heartthrob, especially in comedy. The jokes in these movies are formulaic, but funny, mostly because we have not yet reached the event horizon after which the idea of a mangina ceases to be funny. A dude does something traditionally feminine, his friends balk, he defends his actions with masculine authority, his friends make some sort i-see-your-vagina joke. If Jonah Hill played a guy going to Weight Watchers meetings, the setup would go something like this:

Hill blots the cheese on his slice with a napkin, then on second thought just peels the cheese layer off entirely. He pulls out a small black book and calorie calculator.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Um, it’s called ‘Bite it and Write it’, asshole. Journaling what you eat is the first step to discovering your triggers.”
“Maybe you’re not fat, dude, maybe you’re pregnant.”



The greatest victory of neo-masculinity is the Bromance. To bastardize the feminist idiom, bromance is the radical notion that men are people. They have emotions and the desire for close relationships, even when it comes to their same-sex friendships. It’s kind of about time. I'm serious!

The main problem with Bromance movies is that they typically marginalize the female characters. In Superbad, the bromosocial bond between Jonah Hill and Michael Cera was so strong that girls were pretty much an obligatory pursuit, one that was directed entirely by the penis. The girls are boring or underdeveloped, so there’s a trade-off: Give up fun for sex. In I Love You, Man Paul Rudd at the very least really wants Rashida Jones, but we're unsure of why. The two split up for a brief second after Rudd asks her, “Why are we even getting married?” and then get back together based on Rudd assuring her, “There are so many reasons I want to marry you,” without actually listing even one of them.

But I do think Bromances are generally good for straight male sociality, if only because they self-consciously carve a place for openly compassionate male-male friendship. Over on the televisual funbox, the first season of MTV’s Bromance had Brody Jenner repeatedly using the line, “You’re just not being real” to kick off potential brofriends. The dudes who he couldn’t connect with on a personal level, mostly the dudes who didn’t tearfully confess some family trauma during the one-on-one sessions and subsequently binge-drank were the ones eliminated first. Oh and the elimination round was always in a hot tub. Because seriously, nothing proves you’re straight like being comfortable enough to jokingly insinuate you’re not.

Sunshine Cleaning Essentially IS Little Miss Sunshine

I think maybe it’s a problem that I can’t forgive any family drama for not being as good as 2nd season Six Ft Under.

But still. The main problem with Sunshine Cleaning is that you’ve already seen it. There’s a wide-eyed, ostracized kid who’s wise beyond his years. Alan Arkin as the immature, oddball Grandpa who pals around with said kid. There’s the holy triumvirate of fam drama: money problems, relationship problems, grieving problems. And an unreliable, but beloved used van. Like, couldn't they have at least picked a different car model?

What’s weirder is that Sunshine Cleaning even recycles the “sunshine” metaphor. In both Little Miss Sunshine and Sunshine Cleaning, the “Sunshine” entity, be it beauty pageant or cleaning service, enters the movie first as an ironic marker of the family’s dysfunction, but later ends up being the source of their redemption.

I think if I were tech savvy enough, this all would have been best expressed via charticle.




My other gripes include: The movie ends with a self-discovering road trip, which has lost all non-spoof purpose since Britney Spears did it in Crossroads.

My likes: Amy Adams, if her smile does not fill you with warmth inside than you are a nanobot. Emily Blunt, a beautiful, beautiful duck.

I Read All The King's Men And Summed It Up In The Following Haiku So You Don't Have To!

The South is depressed
And the adored Gov. corrupt!
Don't do his biddings, k?

Blog lapses happen.

I am trying to Tumbl but I don't quite get it yet

LaurenBans.tumblr.com

OMG U CAN SEE ITS BRAIN

I Just Can't Quit You, FB

I have a small contribution to Facebook Rules.

He's Just Not That Into You

Molly and I talk HJNTIY!

In Which I Just Blogged To Say I Hate You.

.

Us in Dia: Beacon

SHOULDA PUT A RINGTONE ON IT

The latest issue of Marie Claire features a HJNTIY-themed interview with two of the film's leading actresses, Ginnifer Goodwin and Jennifer Aniston, and one of the film's barely-on-screen-but-pegged-as-leading
-actress, Drew Barrymore.

The interviewer asks the three ladies what helps them get through breakups.

First Drew lies about eating carbs. I know this because she answers, "Macaroni and cheese. Kraft. Deluxe. The kind with the cheese you squeeze out of the bag that takes at least a month to pass through your body." As any student of carbohydrates knows, Kraft Mac n'Cheese comes with the powder-based cheese. Only Velveeta brand comes with tubular liquid cheesestuff. Celebpretties will deign to know the essence of KFC-induced diarrhea if it makes them seem relatable. Tsk Tsk poseur.

Jennifer Aniston hilariously responds to Drew's comment: "I don't eat a lot. (ed. note: DUH) I go straight to my girlfriends."

Thus a discussion of the importance of girlfriends ensues, which is odd, because HJNTIY hates your girlfriends. And your Mom. It lays its case against them in the opening montage.

First a little girl gets punched and told she smells like shit by a boy on the playground. She runs weeping to her mother, who tells her: "Don't cry. When little boys do that it means they like you." Next four women comfort a crying friend at a bar, cooing, "He just couldn't handle how amazing you are." All while the narrative voice is informing us, "You see, you've been brainwashed all your life into believing that when a guy doesn't call it means he likes you..." OMG, Moms are to You as Scientology is to Tom Cruise! Cut the umbilical cord! Punch ur friends! Frak you, Mom!


A mother looks on encouragingly as her daughter throws herself all over a carrot that is so clearly Not. Into. Her.

But it's hard to stay mad at your girlfriends for long, because they're dogs. Or some kind of cute, little naive animal. Ginnifer Goodwin laps up Justin Long's advice about men and dating (the HJNTIY philosophy) like a dutiful canine companion, looking up at him with sorrowful puppy eyes that seem willing do all kinds of rolling over for just one link of meat. The women are in the film to learn, to be taught, to be trained. Infantilizing, sure. But, on the other hand, Ginnifer's haircut was crazy ADORBS, and who doesn't like a good dog-com?


GIRL, HE IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOO INTO YOU!

Besides, taking He's Just Not That Into You seriously is like taking the babysitter seriously. The movie breaks every rule that it makes. After enduring two hours of Justin Long screaming at Ginnifer: "He Ain't Into You!", something magically snaps and the movie morphs into He Just Doesn't Know HOW Into You He Is, in which the males are not disinterested, they're just in self-denial about their own feelings because their luv for you is too strong to consciously bear.


Consciously bears in luv!

There are some other plots going on. Drew Barrymore gets thrown in as the token Tech 3.0 dater who communicates through pretty mainstream mediums like e-mail, Blackberry, text message, and MySpace, but talks about them as if they were cutting edge technology and the rest of the world is full of lame luddites stuck on landlines. Which is actually true of the film's other characters. The movie is strangely anachronistic, an oddity they tried to reconcile by setting it in Baltimore, where people who haven't seen The Wire can believe Internet is not mainstream yet.


Also, Drew Barrymore has all gay friends which showcases how technologically advanced she is.

ScarJo is the Quirky Aggressive-esque character. She plays a one-dimensional slut with the soul of a vacuum cleaner who jumps naked into community pools and says crazy things to married men like, "You have an ass I'd like to dry hump." Her boobs are the elephant in the room that everyone's thinking about grabbing.



The moral of the ScarJo plot is that if you're a wanton woman you'll end up a lonely lounge singer on qualudes. And that she needs a new agent. She didn't even manage to get one Tom Waits cover into the soundtrack.

You're Just Not That Into You

Maybe the problem is you hate yourself too much.

You're Just Not That Into You on The Morning News.

Usher's "Trading Places"; Beyonce's "If I Were A Boy"

What's up with Usher wanting to be a chick and Beyonce wanting to be a dood, and then both of them having moronic conceptions about what it means to be the opposite sex? Someone please get them together so they can have a retarded androgynous baby who will save the world from the perils of gender.

But, uh, I still think the Usher song/video is absolutely awesome and hilarious.

1.) He imitates a female orgasm at the end.
2.) Folgers coffee gets brand recognition.
3.)"You order Chinese food right before you do me."

Manifestations In Laziness: REPOST

Dear R.,
Facebook informed me that your birthday is this week. We haven't spoken since the mishap with your planted pet, but I do hope you're super. I'm reposting this June blog entry about you. I could position the repost as a birthday gift, but that would make me a huge betch.


Chumma,
P.R.


If, for some reason, you've been living in the seams of my grandmother's house dress for the last five years, I have something to teach you: the world wide web is full of friends. You don't even have to know someone in reality to be friends with them on the Internet! The web is also full of pervs. Sometimes someone can be both a friend and a pervert.


Have you facebooked Paul Reubens yet?.... Why the hell not?

I'm in the habit of accepting any Facebook friend request I receive. As an old-timer, I've lived through the Great Friend Drive of 2004 (aka the founding of Facebook.com). I've experienced the mad rush to accumulate a decent number of online social network pals, the kind of desperation that leads one to friend request that weird Communist girl who brought her parents along to a naked party in college and had no qualms about her dad ogling fellow students' nubile bodies , or the ex-boyfriend who told you he preferred smaller boobs. I feel your pain, newbies.

As a direct result of my empathetic nature, I have many new friends from the Philippines, Mexico, and India.

R., my most recent international friend, uses a picture of the late Bollywood hunk Raj Kapoor for his profile picture.


This profile picture conveys the following messages to your loyal Facebook readers/friends: 1.) I can sing and dance 2.) I died in 1988 and 3.) Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and The Olive Tree is my fav book ever.

When R. friend requested me on June 4th, he included a slight neg in his accompanying message.

June 4th, 2008 7:58am

Hello Lauren

You look sexy and nice. Would you like to be friends? Your the girl on right side?

R.


At the time, this was my Facebook picture:

The girl on the right is my sister. I responded "Yes" anyhow. This is what the Internet is for: pretend.

Over the next few weeks, R. proceeded to inundate my notification box with a variety of sexual quiz invitations.

Quiz: What kind of lover are you?

Quiz: What's your favorite position?

Quiz: Are you sexually compatible with your partner?






I was beginning to regret friending R. He posted "Hello sexxy" on my wall. I deleted it immediately.

But then I noticed R.'s status messages. Rather than cliched sexual come-ons, his status messages were filled with inspiring, motivational words. It was like absorbing the wisdom of a Des'ree song without having to endure the moans of light rock saxophone:

R. is: you've got to be wise in life.

R. is: believing in true love.

R. is: love your friends. Friends 4life!

But recently R. started down a dark public announcement path:

R. is: feeeling lonely.

R. is: not understanding.

R. is: scared.

R. is feeeling so lonely.

The last reiteration of R.'s loneliness was posted late Sunday night. I was alone myself, with both my housemates out of town and no one to intercept my idle chatter. An hour before, around midnight, I had realized I was sitting on the living room floor in just my oversized "MATH MASTERS" t-shirt, clipping my toenails while intoning "Wall-EEEEEEE" to myself. That realization will make anyone reach out for late night contact.

I messaged R.


June 29, 2008 12:45am
Hey R.

I've been noticing your Facebook status messages are kind of sad lately. Hope everything is okay!

Lauren


The response:

June 30, 2008 5:17am

My chia pet died! Stay good, sexy.


And that's what friends are for.

Typo on CNN News Ticker

Obama to Muslims: "Americans are not your enemas."

And He Didn't Even Kiss Me Goodbye!

In These Blog Times

Post-colonic Oscar predictions over on TR.

In Which These Were The Real Best Moments in Film.

Inaugural Chat-Thoughts.

Evident Truths on Drinkware.

Anti-Love Drug May Be Ticket to Bliss

Breaking News Ladies! You don't have to see He's Just Not That Into You despite the mandate that is the coy hamantaschen between your legs, because pretty soon science is going to render the dating advice industry nonessential. Take that $10 and spend it on a classy cheeseburger.


"Really Ginnifer, do you notice how you always get cast as the round-faced rejectee? Maybe you should, like, stop eating carbs."

Yes is the new No! According to the New York Times article, it won't be long until we're being love raped at bars with a hormone mixture that induces feelings of attachment and bonding. Or in the whimsically-worded forecast it sounds like date rape at the hands of Benjamin Button: an unscrupulous suitor could sneak a pharmaceutical love potion into your drink!


Rule #1: If his head is cocked to the LEFT, then he's just not that into you.

The findings revolve around two hormones. Vasopressin creates urges for bonding and burrowing when injected into male prarie dogs. Oxytocin promotes much the same in female prarie dogs. I'd be willing to go out on a limb and add that the similar-sounding oxycontin makes everyone want to have sex with everything.


Rule #2: If you're not Jennifer Aniston, then he's just not that into you.

Oxytocin has also been in the news of late for being the big O behind the orgasmic birth trend. It is as it sounds-- an orgasm during birth, helpfully described by one midwife as "powerful and juicy." Having placed my black market order for O, I've already started praying to God for quintuplets.

It's heartening to see science really prioritizing its research budget during these times of economic recession. Now that coupledom will be reduced to a chemical concoction, perhaps womanity can take a second assessment of the Sex & The City franchise and discover it has little to no anthropological use.


Rule #3: If you use sex to finance your extravagant purchasing habits, he's just not that into you.

I see this coming to market in a variety of ways: Love supplements, love cologne, love lipstick, all replete with addictive hormones. Maybe we'll eventually have diaphragms that secrete vasopressin upon contact with a penis making it feel intractably drawn to the entered vagina.

And I thought my Crazy Glue-in-the-cooch method was effective.

Remember still, it is now a certifiable CNN fact that women shouldn't say "I love you" first. Instead you should devote years of your life to a monkish study of The Rules (or, apparently now you can just lap up these kinds of advice nuggests from mainstream news outlets) until he puts a ring on it, all the while waiting impatiently sans bread products for the technological advances that will allow you to trick him into loving you via chemical addiction.

And remember once upon a time you thought relationships were intuitive! Psssht.