ultranow

mary-kate and ashley try to help

mary-kate and ashley are smart enough to know any advice they give would be vapid and nonsensical, unless the question is "how do i become a teenage billionnaire?" though their wealth is less impressive when you realize it has to be divided in two. they're now hosting the column real girls, real advice with jess on their domain, the land of the super too old tweens, mary-kateandashley.com.  i guess real girls, real advice with jessica weiner didn't have the same ring to it for them. too jewish and phallic, and so's her last name. perhaps they picked her, a painfully self-titled "actionist", due to some bizaare uncurable uncle jessie hangover. here's some sample advice from jess, followed by the right answer from me.

Sara K.: I am too scared to make out with my boyfriend, and it’s ruining my relationship. How do I stop being too scared to make out?

do not stick it

now i love nastia liukin. she's the most precisely graceful and artsy gymnast on the scene right now, and she has the world championship gold medals to prove it. and i'm sure her cameo in the upcoming gymnastics movie stick it (no it's not about post-its) is really good and dandy and fine and super. but it's just that the whole concept of the movie is so wretched and scary and horrible and i can't help but think of mitch gaylords's american anthem travesty.  please hollywood, do not make a gymnastics movie ever again because with the exception of little girls in pretty boxes and that law & order where this one girl gymnast killed this other girl gymnast with a brick, you will always mess it up.

plus the world gymnastics championships didn't make it to network or even cable tv last time, just streaming video online, and clips days later on the gymnasts' individual websites. while it should be popular it is not, so your movie will fail, worse than the mermaid movie with jojo, which i am too angry at to even link to. damn jojo. instead enjoy this. if you're gay to start, you'll either get ungayed or get really really gay. and if you're a dyke, you'll get much dykier, unless you're an assdyke and not a boobdyke. you'll see.

kelly clarkson's inescapable headshot

will kelly clarkson never escape her psychotically over-airbrushed, over aggressively hair streaked, over hide with a latch hook sweater what the music bosses perceive as her too big down home chin, first album cover? american idol music contracts can only be escaped and transcended if one is a huge huge hit and the music company sees some profit in letting a performer be herself finally in both image and song. so thankfully kelly's look is much more relaxed and deep now, if still pat benatar derivative. i should write comcast.net (the homepage where this image is still lurking) and remind them that kelly has updated her look to reflect reality and that all previous images should be burned.

and you shall find your king upon a throne of wicker and all shall be right with the world

cuh yute

too short a bus ride to bother putting on my headphones and mp3ing since i'm way overdo to switch out the songs anyway (yay 512MB limit!) so i was stuck with the music of my fellow bus travelers, all of whom were objectively awful human beings. behind me was an exuberant cellphoner who automatically got bonus points for not gushing "i'm on the bus right now!" what he in fact said was "i've got a calve's liver and i'm going to go home and cook it up and [insert his attemptedly funny pretend french chef banter which made me think how i will always miss julia childs because she cooked french but didn't try to talk in some frenchie-poo voice]."

then he has to overenunciate "calve's" 40 times because i think the plural possessive confused whoever was on the other end of the line because it was the wrong usage unless he'd bought more than one to eat in a sitting which is extreme. he likely should have said "calf's" or simply "calf" liver.

satisfied he'd been understood, he moved on to the joke he'd spent hours coming up with: "i was going to buy a lamb's heart too but i don't think i can eat that much cute." after which he was at his stop and walked past my seat enabling me to see that, lo and behold, he was wearing a beret. now that's commitment to a bit. still i'm 90% sure there was nobody on the other end of his cell.

p.s. i can eat that much cute and i don't mean lamb's heart.  i do mean cupid ass.

nude grumpy men on plastic chairs

the nazi fashions of suzanne somers

i've had nothing to say about the oscars except this little bit that probably no one else has mentioned. so abc is there at the vanity fair party and their post-oscar command center hosts keep cutting to the vanity fair party reporter while the celebrity in question is still in the middle of being interviewed by cnn right next to her. so she's forced to horn in on the cnn interviews and split the attention of the celebrity until cnn gives up. so suzanne somers is up, which can only mean they've mistimed cutting over to the party because who cares about suzanne somers anymore except home shopping network.

the feverish interviewer from abc, who for some reason repeats her own name over and over and the fact that she's wearing st. john, asks suzanne who she's wearing and suzanne says it's her stepdaughter's creation, which i can't help but think is some sort of plug for the hopefully never dvd release of the horrendous step by step tv wastehole. the dress is silver and shiny and clingy which is generic and fine. meanwhile suzanne's face is spackled plus airbrushed plus fake plus scary but she's smiling and friendly.

then she holds up her purse and says her stepdaughter also made it, which is fine again. then she says it has her initials so no one will mistake it for their own, unless there are stormtroopers around, and then she gives a playful pantomimy scan for stormtroopers while holding up her purse. suzanne somers, get it? so she's not talking star wars stormtroopers, 'kay? though i guess this is all fine, because where is nazi humor more fitting than at a vanity fair party? don't they have stories on the intermingling of nazis and celebrities like every other month?

"the world's first intelligent shoe"

the adidas_1 1.1 is billed as "the world's first intelligent shoe". it "senses your every step", "understands that your needs change when you move faster or slower" and "understands that your needs change when the ground gets harder or softer", among other special effects. but could not every other sneaker that's ever existed be said to operate not on "intelligence" but on the much more important in the scope of evolution "instinct", thereby negating the need for an "intelligent shoe" in the first place?

my asics aren't "intelligent" but the laws of physics and chemistry determine the behavior of their assorted components. rubber knows what to do and rubber changes what it does based on if i'm running on grass or pavement, if i'm walking away or running away from a gaybasher, if i'm doing double dutch or have been abandoned in the vacuum of outer space. it changes based on most every little thing that could change. earthworms may not be "intelligent", unless you believe in james and the giant peach as i do, but they know how to get the job done.

i do wear smartwool brand socks, but that company uses the word "performance" not "intelligence" and their socks don't cost $250 a pop or even $20 a pop. if i want something wrapped around my feet that, as adidas claims, "senses" and "understands" my needs, i'll get a foot fetishist.

no...pink...toilets

the thing is i did this before when i was thinking oh i'll go to school because i don't know what i want to be when i had just gotten out of school semi-recently. school is not the place to go when you don't know what you want to be. it's the place to go when you know exactly what you want to be and education is the only way to get there because it's so damn expensive. i was going to go back into school. and get money from places i didn't want to owe. and then i said to myself while walking back up the hill from work one night i don't want to go to school. and i realized i didn't have to and it felt good. so i didn't. which was fine because i sort of became something or was already something and didn't need to become anything.

so i just looked into the whole condo thing and i thought i have to do this because i don't want to rent forever and maybe i could get a roth ira if i save up but i can't live in a roth ira. so i met with some people and got the news. and it's bad. which is maybe maybe maybe i could scrape into the whole thing, get something tiny. but i want to do it right if i'm going to do it. no zero down. no 2 mortgages from the start. and no buying a new refrigerator if the one in the place breaks, which i realize is what i would have to do if it did because i would in a way own it. so just like i didn't have to go to school again and it was a relief to say so, i don't have to buy a condo right now or ever. it's too much. i can't even keep my apartment spotless. i can't even get myself to exercise enough or drink enough water or emote enough. i do fine where i'm at. i'm grateful for what i have. i don't have anyone to set me up with a nice and tidy down payment and closing costs and all that rigamarole. it's all me. and i'm not doing it now.

if i'm going to do it, it's going to be full on, 12 months of monthly payments in the rainy day bank. 1 mortgage not 2. and no...pink...toilets. which is the color of the toilet in the one condo i could maybe possibly afford right now, contingent on winning scratch tickets from the grocery store. if my refrigerator breaks in my rent-a-home, i know who to call and it's not my credit card company to increase my credit limit. it's my good old landlord. lord of the land. and i, humble serf, will give him orders. that's the way it should be. until i turn 40. then i better have a condo or i'm going to be seriously desperately pissed for 5 minutes.

he's a little bit country and a little bit rock 'n' roll