Bump conspiracy.

I had a dream on Saturday night that I was pregnant. And so was my mom. And she was giving me delivery tips. And I had the easiest delivery in the history of deliveries, right from the comfort of home. Popped out a beautiful little girl, named her Lydia Grace, then got frustrated with my camera for defaulting to "Saved by the Bell Collage Mode" and layering all of my pictures of my little bundle of joy on top of each other with a neon paint-splatter "effect" over the top. Meh.

Bad camera.

But, was a nice dream -- she grew up very quickly, she was beautiful (but interestingly aloof), she didn't like waiting for me to fumble with the camera when taking her picture.....normal sort of stuff.

I guess I'm just getting to that "oh. I DO have a ticking clock" phase of my life for the first time in recorded history and am dreaming of painless births.

Relayed the dream to Mr Wonderful and he agreed -- Lydia Grace is great name. So, check that one off of our relationship list: we've named our first unborn kiddo. Mr Wonderful also believes that dreaming about your future babies has something to do with "the ghost of that twinkle in your eye" communicating with you before they're a biological reality.

Huh.

Sooooo -- this is all just a lead-in to dish about the fact that Beyonce's recently-revealed super-baby is already the focus of a few rather darling conspiracy theories. Mostly, they cite a performance just 10 days ago where no bump was in sight. Now, fast forward to this weekend's VMA's and some hyper-suspicious types wonder whether Beyonce sported a faux bump for the sake of announcing the pregnancy.

My take: probably. Ferheavenssake, she uses Spanx and custom underthingies to craft a smaller waist and flatter belly, why the heck wouldn't she pad the bump when she needs it to look "just so" for the purposes of big, televised reveals?

Apparently the perhaps-padding vexes the heck out of blogger Sandra Rose. In THIS POST, she pretty much calls the presumed augmentation the most narcissistic stunt she's seen in 19 years in the music industry. Here, to spare you some link-clicking, I'll quote:

In my 19 years in the music industry, I’ve seen narcissistic celebrities go to absurd lengths to grab headlines. But Beyoncé really took the cake tonight at the MTV Video Music Awards when she showed up on the red carpet with what was obviously a fake baby bump.

Beyoncé made sure she was going to upstage every celebrity at the awards show even before the show began, by announcing her pregnancy — a pregnancy that no one saw coming even though she has not left the public eye in months.

I find it necessary to remind my readers that Beyoncé was just onstage 10 days ago in New York with NO visible baby bump!
Now all of a sudden — 10 days later — she shows up at the VMA’s with a swollen belly looking like she’s 6 months pregnant? LOL! I can’t stop laughing!


And of course the gullible Beyoncé Stans fell for the lie just as easily as they fall for all the crap that Beyoncé and her camp shovels their way. Well, we’re not fooled because we know that a pregnant woman doesn’t go from 0 to 6 months in less than 10 days!

Beyoncé may very well be pregnant — and if she is, congrats to her and Jay Z — but that baby bump she was holding all night like a basketball was as fake as a $100 dollar bill with Barack Obama’s face on it!

Wow. Who knew Beyoncé could stoop so low just for attention?

Ummmmm - jaded much, Sandy?  Ferheavenssake, she's a celebrity with a big announcement to make -- do we expect this particular brand of diva to underperform? Hardly. Look -- according to Radar, she's due in February so she's somewhere around 3 months along. I'd imaging that can look different ways on different women. Apparently THIS is the picture of her from 10 days ago:

I see draping. I see a dress intended to hide the middle. And, I've heard that a belly can actually really "pop" from "meh, bloated" to "whoa, baby" in a matter of days, anyway.......I wouldn't know -- I've only ever given birth in dreams. Where umbilical cords were no issue at all and nurses and doctors arrive in your home at the tinkle of a little bell to fill out birth certificates for you and fawn over how magnificently you just delivered. Ahem.

Anyway.

Do I think it was a prosthetic belly? Nope. Do I suspect perhaps a bit of...augmentation so that there was NO doubt in the public's mind that, yes, she is incubating a little Mini-J spawn? Yes, I do suspect. Am I dreading the probably unavoidable ballad following birth of spawn that's tantamount to a super-vibrato lullaby? Yes, I'm dreading. It was bad when XTina did it, it will be just as gratuitous when Beyonce does it.

HOWEVER - in the spirit of graciousness: congrats to the parents-to-be.

This kid's gonna fall out of the womb with some serious swagger. And better hope Kanye is this kid's godfather. Oh, the things a toddler could learn from a guy with diamond teeth.......

Wow, a bad movie I ALMOST had the good sense to turn off.....

Things we've covered here before: Heather loves bad movies.

Things we may not have covered here before: Heather (lately), specifically enjoys Kristen Bell's quasi-slapstick-ee brand of bad movies -- those movies that can't quite decide whether to fall back on trite physical humor, or cutesy wry sarcasm or whether to just slap a pretty dress on her and pit her against good looking co-stars who lack much charm. Remember "When in Rome?" No? No worries - it was bad. I liked it.

BUT. There's a line I draw. Um -- a line that I just discovered today, when I had to continually PAUSE the movie "You Again" because it was so uncomfortable I couldn't watch any more. I had to flip over to a different browser tab and cleanse my mind's palate with a little Sephora-cruising or Huffington Post-trawling. It was THAT. BAD. I wouldn't have thought that any movie combining Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigorney Weaver, Victor Garber AND Betty White could actually BE so horrible -- but -- um, wow. It was REALLY bad. Yeah, I kept going back for more, but it was in a brain-twistingly self-loathing way -- I was enjoying the pain. Hating myself for it, but enjoying the pain.

It wasn't just the "20-something lovebirds" claiming that "Kiss On My List" was their favorite tune, then singing along loudly, off-key.

It wasn't just the pre-wedding dance lessons that ended in a family "dance-off" to Britney's "Toxic."

It wasn't just the over-played cameo by Kristen Chenoweth (that was enough to make me HATE an actress I normally find cute and likable).

It wasn't just the attempt to make denture cream funny, or Sigorney Weaver cougar-sexy or Kristen Bell's faux acne believable.

It wasn't just the completely cliche "little brother character" that writers love to abuse for bad, one-liner quips that no real 12 year-old would EVER utter.

It wasn't just the ewwww factor of watching Victor Garber make repeated "AH-OOOOOH-GAH" faces at Jamie Lee Curtis over and over again.....

It wasn't just the range of inconceivably contorted facial expressions that Kristen Bell manages (and seems to assume are quirky and endearing when -- in fact -- they're flippin horrifying).

It wasn't just that the dude cast as the "hunky brother" had total John Edwards hair.

It wasn't just the choreographed dance routines and white-girl rapping at the wedding rehearsal dinner.

It wasn't just the repeated use of BAD KARAOKE as a vehicle for laughs.

It wasn't just the fact that female conflict was reduced to plate-tossing, hissy-fit cat fights.

It wasn't any one of those things on their own. It was a little bit of all of these things.

So, what's the premise?

Um - Kristen Bell's character was a geek in high school (I can relate). She had an "arch nemesis." Ehhh, can't necessarily relate. She grows up, gets sexy, becomes VP of a successful PR firm (heh -- right. Only in the movies). She goes home for her brother's wedding and discovers her future sister-in-law is none other than that "arch nemesis." Along those lines, her mother (Jamie Lee Curtis) also discovers that her own high school nemesis will now be in the family as well. Hilarity ensues. Er, at least, Kristen Bell tries to unravel the pending marriage, hoping that love-scales will fall from her brother's eyes and he'll dismiss his hot fiance on the grounds that she did mean things to his little sister an indeterminate number of years ago.

No one can let go of the past. No one can forgive anyone else for what happened that indeterminate number of years ago. Girls can't run fast, geeks can't dance, ugly girls are bitter, pretty girls are bullies who are out to get us all, women are always looking for the next excuse to pull one another's hair, the career-driven woman is secretly miserable because she's not happily married, when girls are emotional they'll sit in front of the fridge and eat everything in sight (*gasp -- CARBS AND ALL - ! gasp*), all men are gullible buffoons following the best rack around town, when in love, people sing Hall & Oates songs -- dear heavens, the stereotypes, the stereotypes, the stereotypes.

But I can live with stereotypes if they're well-written, and actually snag some legit laughs AND if they omit choreographed dance numbers. Wait -- in the case of "She's All That," we completely forgive the choreography.  BUT -- Usher was not in "You Again." And, let's face it, Kristen Bell is just not QUITE the movie star studios keep trying to convince us she's become.

Real life: we don't hold grudges against the other "mean girls" from high school. We become their Facebook friends and console ourselves with cheap comparisons over who's gained (or lost) more weight since high school. We don't ruin their weddings, or pull out old videos of their worst moments to air in front of all of their friends and family. Is it just me? Am I crazy? Are MOVIE GIRLS so desperately, artificially VENGEFUL that they're giving real girls a bad rap? Or do we do that to ourselves.....?

Big sigh.

I watched the whole thing. Begrudgingly. The John Edwards Hair didn't get any better. The girls made up in the end, everyone lives happily ever after. Do yourself (and women everywhere) a favor and DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE.

Thanks.