Perez Hilton Talks Too Much
Perez Hilton, I wish you would just shut your mouth, for the following reasons: 1. You are one illogical dude. Let me see if I have this down correctly: You get in an argument with a bunch of guys; you call one of them a "fucking faggot"; you get punched in the face; you proceed to moan about how unjust this series of events was. "Blood should never be drawn," you cry. Except with a white pen, on a photo, on the internet! See here: of course you did not "deserve," in a strictly moral sense, to get punched in the face just for screaming in another man's face that he is a "fucking faggot," just as you would not "deserve" to get slapped by a woman for calling her a "fucking whore," for instance, and just as you would not "deserve" to have your cash-filled wallet stolen just because you left it sitting on some bar overnight when you walked out, drunk. Nevertheless, we find that such things do happen more often than not! This—even more, perhaps, than strong ethical conviction—is the reason that most people living on the planet Earth do not go around screaming slurs into another man's face, without at least taking the care to duck. The particular slur that you used tends to inflame the passions of men regardless of their sexual orientation! The fact that you felt compelled to speak directly into a video camera for 11 minutes and 42 seconds after this incident is rather distasteful. Yes, there is injustice in this world. Sometimes we get punched in the face only because we are weak, or different, or in the wrong place at the time. This is a tragedy. Then again, sometimes we get punched in the face because we just screamed "faggot!" in someone else's face. This is a learning experience. 2. So then GLAAD is like "don't say that slur" and then you come back and say blah blah I am right everyone else is wrong blah blah "I would just hope people know how difficult it is to intellectualize a situation and think rationally when a thug disguised as a musician is screaming at your face and intimidating you." A) These two concepts are mutually exclusive: "Thug." "Will.i.am." B) "Thug"="SOME BLACK GUY." You have now followed your original, blatant slur, with a secondary, coded slur. C) Sometimes in life, the best thing to do is just shut your mouth and keep it moving. We failed to do that, and ended up writing this entire post. Don't make the same mistake we did. MORE >>
Is There a PC Way to Talk About PC?
So NYC Prep—Bravo's "real-life Gossip Girl" series—starts tonight. I must admit, I'm embarrassingly, Facebook-statusing excited about it. But one thing is weighing heavily on me: How the hell am I going to talk about PC? The deal with PC: He's the fashion-obsessed, Chuck Bass-esque, rich boy who has troubled relations with some of the ladies on the show. See he wants a girlfriend, but he doesn't have one, and he has trouble keeping one when he does (or something), and in the clips I've seen you just sorta scratch your head and think nastily, excitedly, wickedly, gladly, even: Wait, but isn't he gay? And therein lies the problem. By all outward indicators—the clothes, the voice, the bevy of girl friends, the overcompensatingly loud discussions of so badly wanting a girlfriend—the young fellow (who was an 18-year-old high school senior when the series was filmed) is a closeted homosexual. We are allowed to think that. But are we allowed to say it? Yes, angry pedantic commenter, I realize I just said it above, but I mean can we continue to, at length and with fervor? I'm planning on writing recaps of this thing because OMG it looks so good and ripe for making up weirdo fanfiction (for this I am paid money, ridiculously), and I'm sure I'll want to say SOMETHING about the glaring pink elephant in the room. But is that mean-spirited? Is it witch-hunty? The thing is, as this job has worn on for the past eighteen months or so, and national gay rights politics have become what they are, and the swell of June pride nags at my edges this gray afternoon, I'm becoming increasingly unsure of how to write about Gay Stuff on a nationally-read website. What's the tone to take? Is there a tone to take? Is silence, unless you have something nice to say, golden? Or is anything welcome, whatever gets the word out? Most important for me, can it ever be funny? Writing about gay issues, both profound and profane, on the internet has gotten me in trouble. Sometimes the commenting and emailing ire feels unwarranted (I believe I am allowed to state an aggressive opinion about Adam Lambert) and other times it's completely justified. Sometimes I royally fuck up and thoughtlessly post links to embarrassing photos of Oscar-winning screenwriters/young beautiful gay rights activists.* And that's OK, I think. The worthy posts and the fuck ups alike, because they're all part of a conversation that I'm having with myself and with, I hope, you, dear readers. Sometimes everyone says/does dumb things in the pursuit of... clarity. Those are the pains of progress, both personal and political. Still though I wonder should I go ahead, knowing full well that it's not exactly nice, and say what I'm gonna say about PC, some murky idea of decorum be damned? 'Cause sure it's not exactly nice, but does that make it needlessly mean? He and/or his parents signed the contract, after all, willingly stepped off that ledge into the abandon of the public domain. Calling... MORE >>
Danielle Staub's Rap Sheet
The Smoking Gun has tracked down the court files from Real "Cokewhore" of New Jersey Danielle Staub's 1986 federal prosecution for extortion and cocaine possession. She was arrested with six kilos of coke and $16,000 cash in plain view. The rough outlines of the case are known: Staub's drug-dealer boyfriend kidnapped a client, and Staub ratted him out, cutting a deal with federal prosecutors. That deal was brokered by her boyfriend, professional informant Kevin Maher, who knew the U.S. Attorney in Miami. But the details in the documents are spectacular. In 1986, Staub went by the name Beverly Merrill, but her working name as a high-end prostitute was "Angela Minelli." She was living in Miami, and one of her clients was Daniel Claudio Aguilar, a cocaine dealer for the Medellín cartel. According to a federal indictment, Aguilar was selling two kilos of cocaine to a group of men for $48,000 in June of 1986. The deal was being "brokered" by Staub's neighbor, Carmen Centolella. Before it was consummated, Staub accompanied Centolella to his apartment down the hall from hers with one kilo to "test" it. When they got there, four men jumped Staub and ran off with the cocaine. Aguilar blamed Centolella for the robbery, beat him, kidnapped him, and repeatedly called his father demanding $25,000 and threatening Centolella's life. Interestingly, one of those threatening phone calls was made by Staub—we mean "Angela"—herself. Centolella's father called the FBI, who arrested Aguilar and another man with a 9 mm pistol in their car. They picked up Staub at Aguilar's house with six kilos of cocaine and $16,000 in cash. After talking to Maher, Staub turned on Aguilar. She pleaded guilty to one extortion charge and cooperated with prosecutors. This made Aguilar mad! Maher told us a couple weeks ago that Staub was crazy to appear on a reality TV show, because the guy she put away might want to know where to find her: "The guy she locked up was a high-level drug dealer from Medellín," Maher said. "Now he's out. What do you think he's gonna do when he sees her face on TV and knows exactly where she lives? She's got to be out of her fucking mind." That makes even more sense now, because according to court documents, Aguilar orchestrated threats against Staub back then: After she started cooperating with the government; Aguilar's mother called Staub to yell at her, another woman called to say "Your life is at an end, honey,"; her apartment was broken into; and a male called her to say he'd seen her walking her dog and that she shouldn't take "risks" like that. Aguilar was released from prison in 1994. During and before the trial, Aguilar's attorneys tried to attack Staub's credibility by pointing out repeatedly that she was a prostitute. And two years after the trial, while Staub was out on probation, a doctor wrote the court to advise that, given her "drug history and her former drug lifestyle," she should remain in a court-mandated rehab program.... MORE >>
The Transformers Sequel Is Loud, Obnoxious, and Loud
As it lurches toward us, metal gears clanking and whirring like Larry King at a mixer, early reviews of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen come trickling in. The word? Basically it's loud and garish and, worst of all, not fun. Take Roger Ebert's scathing review for the Chicago Sun-Times: If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination. Oh, sad robot. Ray Bennett at the Hollywood Reporter is equally dismissive: Bay's team of four editors stitch together smashing but meaningless images, though it's as difficult to make out which machine is which as it is to tell what anyone is saying. The noise level — not helped by Steve Jablonsky's relentless score — is super-intense and everyone yells lines at high speed. Because nothing they're saying makes any sense, it's hardly important. LaBeouf gets little chance to show what charm he might have. Meanwhile, Fox has little to do except look great in a tank top and tight jeans while running in slow motion through flying sand. Variety and a couple other pubs actually enjoyed the thing, if only for the slickness of the stupidity. But while we're fully expecting the movie to ravage the Fourth of July holiday box office like so many crazed alien robots ravage the lurid curves of Megan Fox, we also wonder how long this dumb-but-bracing genre of summer action pic can last. What with a big, big hit like Star Trek earning glowing notices and being zingy and CGI-packed. Can a schlockist like Michael Bay continue to tread water when more and more talented directors—both visualists and storytellers—successfully raise the bar? Let's hope not. We mean, watching a toaster come alive and eat Shia LaBeouf may have its place in the world, but it's also nice to at least begin to care about characters and revel in a witty turn of phrase here and there. "Run, oh God, run! The angry space Egyptian robots are coming," barely even counts for camp value these days. MORE >>
Elisabeth Hasselbeck: Book Thief?
Potential plagiarist, at least! When author Susan Hassett sent her book Living with Celiac Disease to screechingest View hostess Hasselbeck, perhaps she was seeking some advice or PR. Instead, Hasselbeck published her own similarly-themed book a year later. Hasselbeck's masterwork has the catchier-sounding title The G-Free Diet: A Gluten Free Survival Guide, but what lies within bears a wealth of similarity to Living, Hassett and her attorneys claim. TMZ has gotten their mitts on the legal documents, which detail the many suspicious likenesses between the two books. Chapter names, phrasing, and content, etc. Some examples: So, hm! Not exactly smoking guns, but warm ones perhaps. While we're not terribly certain just how many ways there are to write a book about Celiac Disease and diet, we're also not sure that Hasselbeck (although she is a Boston College graduate!) has the wherewithal to come up with anything on her own steam, unless it's some bird-language rave about Sarah Palin. Anyone read her book in full? Or Hassett's? Let us know! MORE >>
'Westchester Is the Bestchester Is an Allegory of ...'
Huzzah, the time has come for yet another "Awful Craigslist Media Job Ad of the New Depression." This one has a riddle! No answer is correct, however, you must be high enough to think that phrase is clever in order to write for bumbenschwacker, blog of the future. Apply now. MORE >>
Fox & Friends Finally Have an Informed Debate
Oh, phew! The hole-in-the-head gang at Fox & Friends finally had a lucid and credible debate about an important topic. Abortion? No. Iran? Nah. The earth-shattering divorce of Jon & Kate Gosselin? Why yes, of course. OK, and when we say "lucid" and "credible," one must remember that we're speaking relatively. The conversation still eerily resembled three raccoons swatting at moths in an empty warehouse, it's just that this time they maybe actually caught a bug or two. Of course in the end Brian Kilmeade had to go and talk about chunky soup and then Gretchen Carlson proffered her sage medical augury, so the sweater started to unravel, but for a second! For a brief moment they were shining and wise! Like three be-mortarboarded owls, hooting meekly at the cold, oblivious sky. MORE >>
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