Someone needs to take Carrie's cell phone away.

I don't care how similarly-shaped their chins are - Carrie Underwood is Barbie-Perfect and Barbies should know better. Barbies don't date inarticulate super-human neo-celebs with perpetually pruned fingers and toes and lunatic mommies...I don't care which party initiated the "text message romance," but for the love of Flipper, please Perfect-Carrie - step AWAY from Michael Phelps...pass him off to Hollywood's other single super-chin, Jennifer Aniston (and you thought I'd say Rumer Willis...)

The one thing I can give Flipper is that he had the good sense to suggest their first date be something unrelated to eating. Apparently he's afraid he'd scare her off if she saw him eat too soon. I can only imagine that watching a grown man pick up an entire pizza, fold it in half calzone-style and shove it down the gullet for an appetizer would engender something other than lust in the average girl.

And let's be frank - the man waxes more of his body than even the average Barbie-Perfect-Starlet waxes...and that prune-skin thing...I can only imagine how delightful it would be to snuggle up to something clammy and chlorinated after a long day in the studio. AND (as long as I'm picking Flipper apart and giving him more screen time than I ought for a guy that I am as patently disinterested as I am in Michael Phelps...) are we forgetting about his...um...face? He may be chiseled from stone from the traps down, but, um...can we say Fieval Mousekewitz? My apologies if this is "unAmerican" of me to call the hunk bluff here (afterall, even Amanda Beard recanted her "eww!" comment since it was eschewed as "mocking.") but come on, we can't ALL want to marry the guy and have his web-footed super-babies. Can we really say that if we saw his face flashed on a billboard and had NO IDEA who the man was that we'd be so slack-jawed and weak-kneed? Carrie, Carrie, Carrie....

Maybe I'm debasing two young American legands here (Carrie's legendary as far as I'm concerned, gold medals or no gold medals), but Carrie...I hate to use this analogy (because it just fits too well) - but there are plenty of other FISH. IN. THE. SEA. Even gold-medal-winning fish, if that's her taste.

Ms Underwood's phone keeps getting her into trouble. If she's not being flip about calls from her ex (and how quickly did Jess jump to dispel the idea that Tony would so much as SPEAK to another woman?), she's texting her way into what could well become the most overexposed several dates in American history.

A word to the silver medalists..

I'm no athlete (let alone an Olympian) so on one hand I'm about the last person qualified to make this particular argument. On the other hand, I'm an American who loves to see American athletes perform well at the Olympics, so I'm just as qualified as the next guy to pick a bone with the host of athletes that seem to see a silver or bronze medal as "a devastating loss."

I watched Allyson Felix run a beautiful 200 meters and win a silver medal for the US. You'd think she'd been disqualified in the quarterfinals for all of the disappointed tears she shed. I understand that you train for the gold. I understand that being called the "Olympic Favorite" empowers you with a certain feeling of inevitability that means you fall harder and faster back to the earth when you're edged out by a super-human Jamaican with whom you've got a "friendly rivalry," but for a moment, appreciate the fact that you're basically the best in the world. There's only one other person on the planet at that moment in time that's any better than you. You're standing on a medal podium before all the world, the best of the best, as good as they come. You've trained, you've run, you've won! Cry, if you must - but cry tears of JOY! You've worked hard to get where you stand!

Cry if you drop the baton. Cry if you tumble over a hurdle. Cry for a false start or a busted Achilles or a "big splash" or a two-step on the landing. Cry when you're out of bounds or disqualified. Don't cry because you beat all of 'em....but one. Don't cry because you ran your hardest, gave your best and came in second to one. Be proud of yourself, be proud of your hard work, be proud of your country, be proud of your OLYMPIC MEDAL.

I'll never have one. I'll never know what it's like to stand up on that podium and lean down to have a medal hung around my neck. I'll never know what it's like to represent my country in athletic competition. I'll never be such a finely tuned machine, such an excellent example of what a human body can accomplish. There's a reason they award three medals - it's EXCELLENT to be second or third in the world. Its an amazing feat.

Be proud.

People having a worse Friday than I: August edition

Here's another dose of perspective for me...I know that on any given day there are people having a harder time of it than I:

Heidi Dalibor, aka: The Library Lady



This sweet young thing from Grafton, Wisconsin owed $30 in library fines. Let's hope she REALLY loved "White Oleander" and "Angels and Demons," because they landed her 20-year old parts in jail. Not sure what she did to offend the Grafton Library VIPs, but failure to pay her library fines (and failure to take the library's calls or heed their notice to appear in court) resulted in a warrant for her arrest. Cops showed up at her door, cuffed her, and hauled her off to the clink. Her mother coughed up the $172 needed to free her daughter (whom I'll call the "Black Widow of the Grafton Library System"), Heidi ponied up the $30 in late fees. The library director claims that "a couple of dozen people are cited each year for failure to return materials or pay fines." Apparently "cited" is a nice way of saying "tossed behind bars." A visit to the U.S.S Liberty Memorial Public Library of Grafton website offers the following information about the library's policies:

Loan Periods
Books check out for 28 days.
New Books check out for 14 days.
DVDs and Videos check out for 7 days.
Magazines check out for 14 days. The most current issue does not circulate.
Compact discs check out for 14 days.
Books on CD and Audiocassettes check out for 28 days. New audio books check out for 14 days.
CD-ROMs and Software check out for 14 days.

Fines for Late Items
Books, magazines, compact discs and software and audiocassettes are charged 10 cents for each day overdue.
DVDs & Videos are charged 50 cents for each day overdue.
CD-ROM are charged 50 cents for each day overdue.
Damaged materials: a charge is assessed when materials are damaged. Fee ranges from cost of replacing the item to 50 cents.

Looks like that could use an update - something along the lines of "Occassionally the library exercises its right to incarcerate card holders for unpaid late fines. Thank you; happy reading."

The Phelps Ghost Writer

I just don't envy the person responsible for milking an entire book out of the story of Michael Phelps' success story. Oh - I'm sorry, am I being hasty to assume that Flipper isn't going to write his own book? Am I underestimating the Human Submarine to assume that the same man that uttered the phrase, "A vintage Aston Martin, like a James Bond car would be sick," when asked what he'll do with his million-buck Speedo bonus will have what it takes to pen an entire novel about "his philosophy on training and competition, as well as his life being raised by a single mother and coping with an attention-deficit disorder" in just 3 short months (because, in true "Capitalize on Flipper" fashion, the publisher is cranking out the book in time for the holidays)?

Sure, he can do that.

And the poor soul that has to crank out a few hundred pages of compelling material about the copious amounts of Frosted Flakes, chocolate chip pancakes and Mac & Cheese Flipper puts away before swimming his 5 miles a day and the rumours he deflects about which She-Swimmer he was glimpsed slipping tongue to in the Olympic Village is having a worse Friday than I'm having, that's for sure. I wonder how many different ways you can spin, "I'm just speechless!" to fill the pages of that book destined to stuff billions of stockings and be translated into every language ever spoken before Christmas?

This is one kid that hasn't jumped on the Phelps wagon.

Will women please learn to stop dating John Mayer....

OK famous-girls: enough already. How much of Hollywood has to break up with the guy before someone figures it out: the dude is skeezy. He lauds his own wandering eye. He admits to being unable to commit. He has a short attention span. He's USING YOU TO GET MEDIA ATTENTION. Those paparazzi numbskulls that make their living off of catching you in a "cellulite-moment" on the beach? John's buddies with those guys.

Frankly, as far as I can tell, he doesn't much like women. Not really. He likes what he gets from them. He likes having one around. He likes writing songs about them that paint him as a romantic. But I don't think he's a romantic. There have been a few toooooo many photos of him staring straight at the camera during otherwise "intimate" moments with girl-of-the-month for me to believe that he's not just "in it for the exposure."

My word of advice to the ladies: stop thinking you'll be his lifelong "wonderland." Unless you can personally supply him with a never-ending busload of nubile groupies and a glut of photographers and don't mind that he'll probably never be faithful and will get tired of you when the tabloids get tired of him....then frankly, you're out of your league....

A public service annoucement is in order: Women who know better don't date John Mayer.

but I don't like the bad boy types....

Dang, Shia. You're breakin my heart. You've joined the Mugshot Club. Trouble is, you weren't thrown out of Mr Chow's or caught making a scene at Pure or seen smearing your face with food at Chateau Marmont...

You got arrested at Wallgreens. For refusing to leave.

Riddle me this, you irritatingly good-looking man-child: what was SOOOOOOO hot at the drugstore you REFUSED to leave when they tried to throw you out? I've wasted time in a drugstore or two (it was standard recreation in college...broke and bored: let's go kill time wandering around the local strip malls) - but I'm a GIRL. Girls are supposed to stand, google-eyed and dazzled in front of the Revlon displays when mascara goes on a great sale. We're supposed to sniff every bottle of shampoo before deciding on the overpriced coconut-scented brand.

I've never known a man in my life that wanted to spend more than 30 seconds buying his bar of Safeguard and getting out of that drug store as quickly as possible.

Maybe Chicago's different? Maybe in drugstores in Chicago there are X-Boxes set up with Halo III and free beer and hot wings and maybe the aisles are long enough to toss a football - maybe they're more like sports bars.

Or maybe Shia likes shampoo? And greeting cards? And makeup? Maybe he's just reeeeeeaaaallllly into vitamins and toothpaste? Maybe when he's drunk he gets an irresistible urge to floss and wash his face with Olay products? Maybe he wanted to slather himself in Carmex or Caress body wash? Maybe a night of hard drinking left him feeling...dirty.

Beats me - why bother getting yourself arrested for "trespassing" in a drug store? Isn't that like Megan Fox getting arrested for refusing to leave a Sports Authority or something? I don't get it.

HOWEVER - if I ever end up in Chicago's Chi-Town, I'm finding that Walgreens and taking a picture of myself there...in that Walgreens that obviously sells giant plasma-screen tv's and broadcasts football throughout the store (the aisles of which are OBVIOUSLY filled with hot strippers and models in their underwear) and has a bar in the back serving $1 pints of Kokanee (that come with free Grey Goose shots or something).






p.s. - I still love you Shia - you and Brad Paisley. You're the only ones on my very short list of men I'd have to think twice (no, think a dozen times) about leaving K for if you ever asked me to run away with you...er, or if you asked me to go buy mascara and bubble bath with you...?

she was willing to DIE for those things?

Ok, maybe this is silly after such a long blog-recess to take up issue with Heidi Montag, but I'm sorry, what could I do with a quote like this (regarding her boob job):

Heidi said she fully understood the seriousness of surgery. “Right before I went in, I was like, ‘What if I don’t wake up? Oh, this is scary.’ Then I thought, I don’t care. If I don’t wake up, it’s worth it. I just wanted it so badly.”

Oh dear.

I mean, um...good for her for being so ambitious and not letting a silly thing like DEATH keep her (and her douche of a "boyfriend") from indulging her insecurities.

Here's the entire story (courtesy of msnbc's "tabloid tidbits"), decide for yourself:

After lifetime of suffering insecurity and poor body image, Heidi Montag did indeed place herself under a surgeon’s knife last April — and supportive boyfriend Spencer Pratt couldn’t be prouder!

“I’ve always been very insecure about my body,” the “Hills” hottie, Us magazine, confirming speculations about her nose job and breast augmentation. “On the beach, if I was standing next to a girl with big boobs, I’d be like, I hate her! I hated my nose too. I have my dad’s nose, which is huge. It took up so much of my face, when I looked down, I could see my nose. I couldn’t get away from it!”

Heidi denied that Playboy Bunny-lovin’ Spencer pressured her into the surgery. In fact, she told Us, he was really supportive. The day she went in for the operation, “Spencer said, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ It was like he was wishing me well off to school: ‘Love you! Bye’!”

Heidi said she fully understood the seriousness of surgery. “Right before I went in, I was like, ‘What if I don’t wake up? Oh, this is scary.’ Then I thought, I don’t care. If I don’t wake up, it’s worth it. I just wanted it so badly.”

I'm not sure who to start with...poor little "insecure" Heidi or that proud, supportive lame-brain she lets herself be photographed with on the beach. Girls like Heidi are, by the way, the reason I don't particularly like girls. "Forces completely beyond her control gave her bigger boobs than me...ohmygosh, I hate her!"

She must hate her dad, too, since he gave her a nose that she was so eager to lance off she would happily DIE to fix it.

Um, dad? Where were you when she took up with a no-good, hanger-on, wanna-be, dirt-bag boyfriend who was PROUD of her for pumping herself up with plastic pillows and slicing off her schnoz.

And Heidi, darling: I hope you feel better about yourself, because if you keep wasting time with guys who enthusiastically shoot you off to be nip/tucked like it was the first day of school, your new nose and your new rack will be all you have to keep you warm...oh, wait - that assumes she's smart enough to shake those boys off. That assumes she's realized they don't love her for HER. They love her for the bizarro photo ops. That assumes she knows what's good for her...aw geez, then I guess she and Spence' will be living happily, obliviously, artificially ever after...together forever on beaches where she can stand next to other big-boobed girls and fixed-nosed girls and feel luuuuuuuv for them, because she's got what they've got.

Oh, and p.s.....

WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS GIRL GETTING COVERED ON MSNBC FOR ANYWAY? SHE'S THE POOR MAN'S KRISTEN CAVALERRI...and there should never BE a low-rent Kristen Cavalerri...that's like...below d-list. That's Q-list. And I just proudly wasted a page on 'em both :)

people having a worse monday than I

Since I hate mondays...particularly mondays following a nice wedding anniversary weekend when i'm overloaded with work the second I sit down at my desk, I began this little ritual of cruising through news, current events or celebrity gossip to find people who's mondays...um, suck considerably more than mine. While I usually prefer the obscure to the overt, I do have a Lohan-fixation that just won't die...

So, in no particular order, here are people who probably wish they were me this morning:

Barry Bonds.

Because he's fallen into poor favor with Bob Costas. And Bob Costas is an American force to be reckoned with (not to mention object of my 10-year-old-self's innocent desire...in fact, I remember having an imaginary conversation between myself and some out-of-towner that commented on my equally imaginary licence plate frame that read, "Beautiful B.C." (not particularly odd up in these parts where we have plenty of British Columbia transplants). "Oh, you're from BC," they'd remark. "Oh no," I'd say, "That stands for Beautiful Bob Costas." I kid not. He's aged poorly...tends to look like the melting man a bit these days, but 15-20 years ago, he was foxy in that understated, deadpan style...)

But back to Barry, the man that drew the Costas ire. According to MSNBC, Costas thinks Bonds' 755th career home run will be an "ambivalent" moment for fans since the history Bonds is making is not "pure or laudable" and that "There are elements of history that are tragic or about which we feel ambivalent, and I think ambivalence is the best possible way anyone outside of San Francisco can feel about this."

It gets better. Barry and Bob make it personal. After Bob made a remark on the air about the existence of "credible information that Bonds has used performance-enhancing drugs to turn himself from a great player into a superhuman one," Barry decided to take the high (and articulate) road and responded by calling Bob "that little midget man."

Barry, Barry, Barry. You're insulting the premier sportscaster of our generation - the man to emcee at least a million Olympic Games - an athlete's advocate. A handsome, easy-going guy.

Bob's response: “As anyone can plainly see, I’m 5-6½ and a strapping 150, and unlike some people, I came by all of it naturally.”

Anyway, Bob goes on to sound decently intellectual, saying “It wouldn’t matter if I were the mayor of the Munchkin City. What matters is the validity of the information and the validity of the comments I have made, and very often when people have no credible argument — and in this case Barry Bonds has no credible argument — they resort to nonsense and ad hominem attacks, and that’s what he did.”

Anyway, sorry Barry - Bob wins on this particular Monday. I'd rather be me than Barry on this particular Monday - this kid never wants to draw criticism from The Bob.

Chief Justice John Roberts

He took a tumble on Monday. That's not what makes his day worse than mine (heck, I trip over my own feet a few times a day, I'm lucky to stay balanced, upright, and maintain a facade of gracefulness for half of my waking...er, walking hours) - what makes this a bad day is that, at 52, it's news when the man falls at home...and is hospitalized as a "precaution."

Soooo, did he fall off of a roof? Did he fall while driving the riding mower? He was conscious after the fall (thanks, CNN, for that edge-of-my-seat detail), but apparently fell well enough to warrant a trip to the hospital.

This could go one of two ways: we'll either be bombarded with forthcoming details in the next day or so telling us all about the state of the Chief Justice's dislocated shoulder (an unfortunate accident while building a tree house for his nephew or trolling for lobster)...OR we'll hear nothing and can assume it was somehow related to a sex swing.

Danika McKellar

Who? Oh yeah, WINNIE! From The Wonder Years!!!
So, after all these years she's resurfaced. She's as hot as I imagined she'd grow up to be. She's still got the shiniest hair on the entire planet. She's being featured on CNN...and after all of these years she's come back to tell us girls that "Smart is cool." Only trouble is, she manages to make saying so sound pretty ditzy: after making the easy Paris-Lindsay slam she manages to provide global news outlets with this very articulate sound byte:

"I want to show them [girls] that being smart is cool. Being good at math is cool. And not only that, it can help them get what they want out of life."

then this:

"I want to tell girls that cute and dumb isn't as good as cute and smart."

Thanks Winnie...

I'm going to err on the side of confidence in her intellect and suspect that CNN just did a poor job hyping Winnie's return to the American consciousness...she has, after all, just written a book called "Math Doesn't Suck" which includes "tips to avoid mistakes on homework, ways to overcome test-day anxiety and profiles of three beautiful mathematicians."

Hmmm. Well, not to insult the smart, hot chick and fall back into the very predictable gender stereotypes Winnie's trying to fight, but, um, if you're trying to make a statement about valorizing smarts...would it hurt to sound smart?

myspace: feeding the ravenous socially voyeuristic streak in all of us

I've decided the only reason I still waste any time on myspace is, ultimately, a creepy reason.

I'm a myspace spy.

I'm one of those "virtual lurkers" that hops from page to page to page just "checking in" on people...reading comments, cruising pictures, weaving through a "friend maze" until I'm looking at pictures of people I've never met but who might be friends with a friend of a friend of a friend that I may have vaguely known through someone else years ago in college. I can stumble across a play-by-play of someone's wedding, camping trip, graduation, drunken frat party, find out who misses who and who hasn't seen who in a long time...all from the comfort of my own little computer desk.
Creepy.

Addictive. Creepy. Because I know there are people out there lurking in on my life...and even more strange: doesn't bother me (of course, I guess I wouldn't blog or even bother with a myspace page if I were much afraid of e-voyeurs. Afterall, isn't it fun to feel like you were "really there" for someone else's trip or family reunion or bachelorette party or the birth of someone's first child...when you vaguely remember that someone being a friend of your little sister's back in grade school?

Anyway - for now, as long as people are updating their profiles with fun pictures they took of themselves at arm's length off some friend's balcony on the 4th of July, I'll probably be there, lurking.

creeeeeeepy.

ok, the spice girls won...

I was all ready to weigh in on this embarrassingly catty exchange-that-won't-die between Elizabeth Edwards and Ann Coulter or speculate about the cheerleaders that died tragically in the SUV accident overnight, or even whine about the fact that Seattle is currently colder than Anchorage, Helsinki, Oslo, North Dakota, you name it.

But then I see that the Spice Girls are reuniting - CNN confirmed it.

The way I see it, they should advertise this "global assault reunion" with a slightly more self-deprecating bent: call it the "Spice Girls PTA Tour." Parade their kids up on stage, trade organic cooking tips, breast feed during the intermission...

Aside from the fact that all five are looking a little road-weary, I can't figure out how this is to anyone's financial advantage...? The Girls had a brief run of "fame" in the states, but for the most part they're remembered as a parody as much as anything...I think they recognize this, too...the pictures I've seen of them assembled on cobblestone holding flags looking like suburban moms (with the exception of Posh, looking like a waxy mannequin...) look self-conscious, uncomfortable, terribly unlike a group of women ready to unleash a comeback on the...world.

The way I see it, unless they can get N'Sync to sign on with them, they're doomed...

leave me AND my bologna in peace...

Ok, superguy, I get your point: you wouldn't eat what I'm eating.

You think my tasty, heavenly little slices of mechanically separated turkey solids, hydrolized gelatin, modified food starch and sodium erythorbate (my "Meat Composite Cocktail!") are "bad for me."

And that's fine. Because I wouldn't want you eating my 98% Fat Free Bologna, anyway. More for me.

Thing is, I didn't ask you if I was good for me. I didn't consult you, Kashi: Go-Lean-eating Superguy, before I ate my 25-calorie-per-slice discs of pure happiness. If I wanted your opinion on my lunch, I would have asked.

While we're at it, aren't my mechanically separated turkey solids, snap peas, bell peppers and dried papaya slices a little higher on the "good-for-me-food-meter" than your giant bagel and cream cheese? HMMMMM?

Oh, what's that? It's "organic, non-dairy cream cheese substitute?" You think you've won this round, but don't get too comfy resting there on your health-food laurels - I see the weekly expense reports: last week when you had a lunch meeting, you went to that sports-bar-dive a few blocks from my house...and you BOTH ate the BBQ beef burger - with FRENCH FRIES. And a pint of Jolly Roger.

Mwuahahahahahahahaha.

Leave me and my beloved bologna alone and no one will ever have to know what I know: that the box of Kashi on your desk is the SAME box that's been there since 2005, and you DON'T eat it for breakfast.