Janey: I heard that Mikey P. kissed Patty Stevens near that rock in the woods.

Rocky: Me, too. Last week he held hands with Marysol.

Tiffany: Yeah. They’re all gonna have babies.

Fast forward to last week (the part where we haven’t grown up, at all).

A similar conversation went like this.

The entire media: David Letterman had some sex with some ladies.

The entire media: Oooh. Let’s tell.

The “story:” Dave had some sex with some ladies on his staff that were not the woman he was then-dating, whom he had a kid with in 2003 and to whom he is now married. Someone found out and allegedly tried to blackmail Dave. Dave went on the offensive and pressed charges, which, of course, meant he had to go public with the underlying story of his sexing ladies not his girlfriend at the time.

There’s your nutshell.

And I don’t get the coverage. Sure. Dave put his p in some v; maybe even a little a. Maybe he got kinky and went for the ear. Whatever. Absent abuse, I don’t give a damn where he hides his unit or who unsheathes his sword.

The only actual story is that it’s almost 2010 and your professional reputation as a dude who tells jokes is still in jeopardy for legal sex.

Someone, please: explain to me why the world is so keyed into reading what are basically just warped adaptations of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! starring celebrity genitalia?

First up, Different Worlds by Swedish progressive metal band Evergrey.

Let’s not mix words: worst song ever.

Eighth track on their third album, In Search of Truth.  The album is a concept album.  The concept is simulated alien abduction.  True to concept, some of the lyrics:

All my pride has left me
My value as a human has been extinguished
My close ones those who love
Disbelieve me won’t believe me
So I got no one to confide in
And what’s worse is
I’m beginning to accept this
My body’s become my prison
My keepers are what you would call…
Fiction.

Enough said, right?  Nope there’s more.  At the 3:46 mark, the frontman starts audibly shivering and shaking, barely able to murmur-chant anything other than “Please don’t touch me.”

You are welcome.
_____________________________________

Next at the podium,

I call “bullshit.”

Seriously.  I don’t get it.  I haven’t been this bamboozled since the new nanny my mom hired when we were kids showed up with presents on the very first day we met her and then it all ended a few months later after she moved her 30 year-old son in (like we wouldn’t notice) and we had to call the police to have them forcibly removed from the premises.

The last time I’ve seen any production receive this much hype and fail me so hard was Scarface.  I waited three hours for that anti-epic to finish and by then I’d already seen the “climactic” final plunge so many times elsewhere that I wanted my 25 bucks back.  Yes: 25.  I actually just bought the damn thing at Best Buy because everyone assured me it would be life-changing.  Six years later, I just want to throw it out.

But I know some of you really like Glee. And the fact that I think it’s just a series of YouTube-worthy clips with no appealing writing whatsoever is just me being me. So, to even out the hate, I’ll throw you a bone.

I own Garden State.  There.  Said it.  Call it a Jersey thing.  Fair?
_____________________________________

Finally, Cougar Town.

There were a couple of gems:

Supporting actress #1(“SA1″) — photo, rear — said “crack-a-lackin” and had a visible boob-hickey.  Star cougar, Courtney Cox, said “coochie cooch.”

But the best was this scene outside Courtney’s front door:

[Knock on door. Courtney opens and sees young guy she met at the bar. Drunk SA1 in background screaming from midnight blue VW Beetle with its top down has dropped him off.]

SA1: “Hey! You left that at the bar, bitch!”

But there’s one glaring error: Courtney Cox is the only cougar in Cougar Town.  There is no town full of cougars.  Sure: at some point, she goes to a bar/cougar lair.  But a bar is not a town.  And that, my friends, is false advertising.  It’s like going to the zoo to see the monkeys and in the pen there’s only one, lonely, botoxed, twitching monkey.¹

But I’ll watch again. I mean, it’s about cougars.

_________

¹Obviously, women are not like monkeys.  Do not go call your girlfriend a “monkey” and tell her I said it was cool.

You could rank the anticipation of it somewhere between the second-coming and The Return of Jafar.

That’s right.  The movie.

I’m sure you’ve heard about it by now.  I’m sure you have at least a dozen reasons why this movie should not be made.  I have a baker’s dozen.  But like I warned, this is not about Facebook.  This is about the movie.

So far, Columbia Pictures had its screenplay — courtesy of Aaron Sorkin — and its director — David Fincher.  But now, ladies and gentlemen, we are starting to see the formation of a cast.

The “film” is going to be based on the social network-founding trinity: Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin and Sean Parker.  In order, the actors who will play those roles:

Jesse Eisenberg
Andrew Garfield
Justin Timberlake

Yes, you read that correctly.  Justin Timberlake.  Bringer-back of sexy, serenader of señoritas and Emmy-winning SNL skit performer.

I’m not lying.  Read for yourself, if you must.  Variety.com doesn’t fail.

Now, look: Justin’s a pretty talented dude.  I don’t want to get on his bad side because, like Scarlett Johansson learned, what goes around comes back around.  And, honestly, every time you ask yourself¹ whether an NSYNC member should have extended pop’s stranglehold on the charts by becoming so successful at a solo career, remember that it could have been JC Chasez rather than Justin.  And imagine if you had to see JC Chasez on your TV multiple times a week.

Exactly.

But the real point is that they’ve taken a less-appealing-by-the-day social platform, made a movie about it and chosen arguably one of the top 5 stars in the world to be one of its featured actors.  There’s no way this doesn’t become an absolute spectacle.  And I don’t even mean the hype around the movie.  I mean the movie itself.

How so?

An example: let’s say you go see this movie (drunk; you and some friends each downed a pitcher before heading in).  You’re about 40 minutes in and JT says something about “poking” or how he’d “post it up, up against the wall.”  At that point, you know you might as well just leave because you’re not going to make it to the end anyway.  You’ll stumble out into the hallway, laughing hysterically and you won’t even want your money back because you haven’t laughed that hard in a while (totally worth 10 bucks).  You’ll pull out your phone, tweet about it and head to a bar where the bunch of you can continue wondering why anyone would let this movie happen.

__________________

¹And I know you do.

I like a Taylor Swift song.

No, please.  I’ll wait for the laughter to stop, the dropped-jaws to close, the head-shaking to slow to an “embarrassed for me” stare.

Ready?

Okay.

It’s You Belong With Me.

Okay.  You’ve started laughing again, haven’t you?  I can tell.  Come on.  Focus.

Good?

Now, as I was saying, it’s You Belong With Me.  The first 71 times I heard the song, I’m not sure I even actually heard it.  I couldn’t get over just how produced Taylor seems; not musically, but personally.  She started in the industry so early that listening to her talk — rather than sing — just feels weird; like you’re always watching a performance.  And so her music has just never appealed to me.  To say it felt “transparent” would be too nice; “hollow” would be better.

But, thanks to Imeem, it kept coming up as an auto-suggested song while listening to other tracks by artists like Kelly Clarkson — whose latest album is actually really, really good — Katy Perry, P!nk, Lady Gag–

*raps desk with ruler*  I swear to god if you don’t stop with the laughing.  Get it together.

Anyway.  The song.

Is it derivative?  Um… it borrows from pop culture like an economist borrows during periods of low interest rates;¹ or like a mofo borrows your Game Genie for Sega Genesis in the 4th grade and never brings it back.²

*ahem; clears throat; straightens tie³; regroups*

Is it completely unchallenging and the definition of “safe?”  Let’s just say that if music was like sex, this song would be abstinence.

But, it’s catchy and, damnit, that’s enough.

Oh, and please don’t insist that UK-born pop is “real pop” or that the best pop is written by rail-thin, emo-nstrous brats who just can’t get over their first break-up ever yet, don’t shower out of political opposition to hard water and write lyrics you couldn’t decipher after an entire week with a Webster’s and Urban Dictionary.  That stuff is good, too, but I swear: people treat euro-trash pop like it’s the sperm of god and they’d be incomplete without an immaculate conception.

The point: You Belong With Me is what it is — the new country-pop we’ve come to know over the last decade.  And it is good at being what it is.  I think it’s obvious Taylor wasn’t trying to impress me with the record.  And once I shrank my ego enough to realize that, it was totally worth a listen.

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¹That’s one for you finance kids out there.
²Hate that kid.
³I always wear a tie when I write.

But…

… there are definitely a few people who could take an absence of unending permanence.

With the sad news of the passing of Ted Kennedy last night, it seems like this summer has seen the deaths of a lot of people of massive celebrity and social importance.  I don’t know anything about death.  So I don’t know if it really is like on Family Guy — with the voice of Adam Corolla — but if it is, then it definitely seems like we should set up an exchange policy and give up a few people¹ in order to get back some of the ones we’ve lost.

Some people whose services are no longer needed:

1. Ray-J

This is the only picture I could find of you quickly that didn’t involve you a) shirtless, b) giving the camera the same sex eye you gave Kim Kardashian and Whitney Houston or c) doing both a and b.

You have contributed forgettable music, a wack sitcom and the only thing good about For the Love of Ray J was Tom Green’s freestyle that Danger smashed the homie.  Up until the part when he married Mariah, we could’ve just substituted your entire life for that of Nick Cannon.  You are replaceable.

Kindly exit stage left.  Your services are no longer needed.

2. Mika Brzezinski

Being as objective as I can be, I simply do not enjoy the “don’t know much, but I’m trying” approach to the news you use on MSNBC.

Please join Ray J to the left of the stage.

3. Mel. Gibson.

How many times must we tell this joke, Mel?

Unless you are making a Braveheart sequel — which you couldn’t possibly be, because even Braveheart knew when to die — please exit Earth immediately.  Your life — a debt you owe to humanity — is now 30 years delinquent and is in collections.

You don’t even get a picture.

4. Jon and Kate

You hate yourselves but love your lives. You hate your lives but love the exposure. I can’t keep up.

Get off of everything I see — pop-up ads, magazines, the news, TV trailer-commercials during shows I actually want to watch…

Between the two of you, you’ve contributed two bad haircuts and eight emotionally-wrecked children.

Actually, there’s your reprieve. Get back together for good and be the anti-Duggars. Pump out 37 badass mofos and shift the social balance. You could be heroes.

Or, stage left.²

_________
¹Obviously, only in cartoon-like fashion.   Do not harm any of these people.
²But leave the kids behind.  Maybe we can help them.  Plus, I wouldn’t want them to meet Mel.

I can’t embed the video.  Thanks, Sony Entertainment.  But I can show a still shot of what looks like her dancing inside some sort of human orifice.

Nothin’ says lovin’ like dancin’ in a colon.

Poor thing.  Somewhere between wanting to blend the leotard-marketability of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé with trying to dance like a werewolf would,¹ the whole thing falls apart.  It gets weirder and weirder and weirder until one final WTF series and a confused look on your face.

That dancing in the mud thing she did in 2001 in Suerte (Whenever, Wherever) probably bought her at least a decade of immunity.  But still: in 2009, she’s dancing in a colon.  Granted, it looks like a sparkling clean one.  I’ll give you that.

Anyway, happy Friday.  Let’s go make some bad decisions tonight.  We’ve got a whole weekend before we have to pretend like they never happened.

Edit: Floreta has made a great point that I forgot to mention.  Shakira is still hot, despite the orifice dance.  This odd creative decision doesn’t change that — at all.

_________
¹Because werewolves are known for their fancy footwork.

What I’m about to say might hurt.

I’m more of a Kelly Rowland kind of guy.  Actually, I’ve liked Kelly more since you were in Destiny’s Child and there were four of you.  I feel confident that this shouldn’t crush your ego since I’m completely irrelevant, but I figured I should just get that out there.

The point…

If you miss being in Destiny’s Child, just say so.  I am tired of watching you live your regret of going solo.

Let me explain.

Exhibit #1: Single Ladies

Exhibit #2: Sweet Dreams

Exhibit #3: Diva

Exhibit #4: Green Light

Exhibit #5: Ego (Remix)

Notice anything familiar?  There’s clearly a pattern here.  I think you have separation anxiety.  You left a group in which you were always featured standing/dancing/singing between two other women, so that you could always be featured standing/dancing/singing between two other women.

I don’t get it.

Hell, Diana Ross doesn’t get it, and she understood when you guys first copied The Supremes years ago.

Actually, maybe you don’t regret going solo.  Maybe you love it.  Maybe you felt the others were dragging you down and you being flanked in the videos you’ve released lately by two essentially nameless ladies is your way of telling Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, “It’s not me.  It’s you.”

Classy.

Either way, you’re talented.  I get it.  Congratulations.  But I can’t take one more video that looks exactly the same as 5 of the last several videos from you.  You’re the self-proclaimed heroine of R&B right now — allegedly just overflowing with cutting edge tracks and visual ideas — and yet the finished product so often looks like it’s been done before.

I know your coattails are awesome, but at this pace, you’re going to ride your own coattails into the ground.  Change it up.  Come up with a new formula.  Do something different.  Because me?  Bored.

Irrelevantly,
f.B

P.S.  Kelly is still cuter.

But, for many of us, losing Michael Jackson is heartbreaking.

It’s not that I don’t care about the widely-believed rumors.  I did and I do believe that there was much more to those rumors than an acquittal in 2005 could ever address.  But, for today, I respectfully request that we don’t rehash that.  As flawed as he so undeniably was, to pretend that that denies how great he was is myopic.

For me, the tragedy is in the incompleteness of his circle.  I watched and I waited, for years now, hoping he’d turn it all around.  I just knew there’d be a moment when he’d become able to finally find some balance.  I knew it until I cried when I watched his body transferred from a helicopter to a coroner’s van.  At a time when I’m really in need of examples of people transcending trial — even tribulation they may have contributed to themselves — the fact that he was forever stuck, running at rest in stationary motion, is defeating.  I wonder if he was ever happy.

How do I describe the weight of his example?  “Billie Jean” was the first video by a black artist on MTV.  He and his brothers broke barriers at times some of our parents we’re just being let into integrated schools.  Many of us were left out of the worship of Elvis and The Beatles.  Michael was a conversation we were invited to be a part of.  I don’t know how to explain how much that means to people who expected to be ignored.

It just feels so incomplete this way.  I wanted another chapter.

But if we’re to celebrate rather than mourn…

Underwhelmed by last night’s SYTYCD, I sorted through my go-to-channels (Discovery, NatGeo and Animal Planet).  At any given moment, there is a show on at least one of those channels featuring adventurists gone wild, seemingly begging for a no-casket-death and poking at the fragile human/wildlife balance.  I found “Lion Feeding Frenzy.”

The premise?  Well, you can go here to watch a clip that explains it all.  Basically, two morons place themselves in a prey box¹, get dropped off in the middle of lion country and then proceed to entice and tease hungry lions with actual carcasses dangling from trees, actual flesh placed on top of the box they’re in and fake, rubber “carcasses” set up around the box.

At first, I thought I’d write about just how spoiled-human it was for two guys to initiate staged feeding frenzies.  Miss Bianca was right: no one cares about the safety of the idiots.  Unlike people like me, though — who eat because food is there — lions eat almost exclusively for intertwined reasons: health and dominance.  Encouraging them to fight amongst themselves to see who could be the biggest, or wasting the time they’d otherwise be hunting actual food by planting dummies, is ridiculous.

But forget all of that.  I have a better idea.

I’d watch a show about someone putting the NYC Prep kids in a prey box and dropping them off in lion country.

credit: theinsider.com

Especially that kid in the center.  There would have to be a catch, though: the prey box would have to have an “accidentally overlooked” structural flaw, such that… well, you know… hilarity ensues.

I missed my chance to throw a blog-based tantrum about those My Super Sweet 16 brats — a group Common tenderly calls out at the 1:37 mark in this video for a track on Finding Forever.  But I want this show made: NYC Prey School.

The set-up: 5 derivatives-of-their-parents’-wealth, NYC prep school kids with a survival package — 2 hand mirrors, 1 cell phone and 3 cans of SPAM — a poorly manufactured prey box and a ravenous pack of male lions with something to prove.  It would be a little like I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, except better in every single way.  Plus, since it’s my idea, I’d get paid for it and all of you would be invited to the red carpet premiere.

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¹They called it a “predator shield,” but come on — who are they kidding?

Nat and Natalie.

Ella and the Duke.

Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson.

The Captain and Tennille.

And while watching an episode of Crossroads¹ yesterday which featured Maroon 5 and Sara Evans performing duets of each other’s songs, I watched this clip of She Will Be Loved:

It was cool.  I actually like the timbre of Sara’s alto and that as you watch her and Adam stand there, the way we categorize genders of voice means your mind expects each of their voices to be coming from the other person’s face.  But there are also a few places where it just didn’t work; not even miniature disasters or minor catastrophes, just blips.

But my mind started roaming.  I don’t why I go to extremes.  I wanted to know what the worst collaboration or duet in the history of time was.  And as I opened my browser to see how deep the rabbit hole went for a few pairs I could think of, like anti-manna from hell, a gift and a curse fell into my lap:

“Mel Gibson and Oksana Grigorieva are expecting a child, but that’s not their only collaboration.”

Annnnd… my search was done.

Billy Altman wrote my sentiments perfectly.  Despite my love for Braveheart,

with everything that’s come and gone over the course of Mel Gibson’s career and life in the public eye, there did seem to be one area that was safe from Mel-dom, and that was music.

You want the lyrics Mel co-wrote?  Of course you do.

I got no way back home/ And every time my heart beats, it’s one less that remains…The future contrives to draw me in its wake/ I’m not afraid of leaving, if I know why and when/ I’ll have to walk a few more miles before you say my name again/ My name again.

“Contrives to draw me in its wake.”  That just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?  And it gets better: this is all product of Mel’s label, Icon Records.  He actually has a label, which means we’re at risk of him signing a max of 3-4 other confused souls and spreading their work around like some aural plague.

But maybe I’m overreacting.  Tell me about a collaboration that makes you cringe more than the idea of one featuring Mel Gibson.  Do it.

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¹In no way affiliated with the Britney Spears movie of the same name.