Thksgvng Roundup... err... Rndp...

Hey everybody.

I hope everyone's emerged from their respective tryptophan haze from this weekend. I know I have. Mainly because I don't eat turkey, but that's neither here nor there.

Thanksgiving weekend started with a bang on Thursday night with an annual event I look forward to more than Christmas, Hallow e'en and the season premiere of American Idol combined - THE PUMPKIN PIE PARTY! Hosted by my dear friend, the divine Meredith Shaw, in her nothing-short-of-regal childhood home nestled in the heart of Rosedale.

Pictured the left: the hostess with the most-ess, to say the least-ess. Making her grand entrance popping out of a gigantic pumpkin pie. Only Meredith could manage to emerge completely unmarked by pie innards, by the way...

Anyballs - FUN TIMES BY ALL. I arrived pretty late as I was performing at Yuk's downtown for a crowd made up of people from Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous. Yeah. Not the most festive bunch. I think I ended my set by saying "Thank you, I'm Andrew Johnston! Good night and remember - stay the course!" I was being entirely patronizing. So sporting the mood of absolute career fulfillment, I saunter in there at like 9:30, and get right down to business, mackin' on some pie, y'all. The spread was truly awe-inspiring... every year, bitch manages to discover 5 more species of pumpkin pie or some shit. It's fucking nuts.

Another thing that was f-in' n's was the fag quotient this year. There was a record-high amount of homos up in there - many of whom I didna know. Just something that struck me funny.

As the night wore on, the more 'boisterous' contingent of the party retired to the back deck where Meredith encouraged us to make smores over the open fire. Try as she might, it didn't happen... and believe me she tried. I agreed to assist her in trying to start the smore trend. We toasted smores and over-acted like we were having fun, but kept on getting looks from everyone 'round the fire as if to say, "Stop trying to make smores happen! They're not gonna happen!"

Too bad.

We then moved into her living room/parlour - which looks like it's equipped to host aristocracy - and ogled the Royal Doultons, one of my favourite pastimes at Chez Shaw. Betcha didn't know that about me - I have a bit of an eye for figurines. A bit.

After a blitzed night out a Crews on Friday, I made m'way back to Brockville Saturday on an outrageously packed train... I felt like some sort of Central American refugee or something... only obviously less pungent. There's a bit of a ritual that's developed upon my arrival in Brockville: I get there and am greeted by the Mrs., equipped with smoked salmon rolls and a Diet Coke, because why the fuck should I wait until I get home to binge on niceties. We then make our way to the local Jumbo video where I go in, well-intentioned enough, to catch up on a whack of films I haven't seen. But instead of getting "Evening", "Away From Her", "Miss Potter" and other more legitimate fare, I get "Knocked Up", "Blades of Glory" and "Year of the Dog".

At this point my mom wants to stop at Walmart so she doesn't need to go later. I hesitantly agree. Okay... have y'all been to a Walmart lately? Do you know how fucking HUGE they've gotten?! The Brockville maga-WalMart is easily as big as a stadium. Easily. I was terrified upon setting foot inside. The first thing I see is a sign advertising a missing child that had disappeared two weeks ago. I, in dead earnestness, wondered if the child went missing IN this actual WalMart and still hadn't been found. I really wouldn't rule it out. Wow. Anyway - WalMarts. They're gettin' big. It's nuts.

When I got home, I forewent watching any movie I just paid for, but instead flipped on the TV and what happened to be gracing the airwaves? "UNCLE BUCK"! The John Candy vehicle circa 1989! I don't know how many times I watched that fucking movie when I was a kid... let me tell ya...

So I just simply HAD to revisit it now. As with every time I've recently sat down to reacquaint myself with things I loved as a child, this movie offered a wealth of entendres that went straight over my head as a child. One that jump to mind: They're in the bowling alley. Tia is sitting the game out and this slimy guy twirling a toothpick around in his mouth comes up and starts hitting on her. She says that she can't speak because her throat is very sore. He says "I got a cure for that". As a child, methinks "Cough drops? Lemon lozenges? Throat spray?" - and the greatest thing is that not only can I remember that reference, but I can remember the actual rhythm and thought process by which I digested that. Anyway, as an adult watching it, I automatically understood that he was suggesting she give him head. I had no idea was fellatio was at the time! But I learned... believe me... I learned...

Anyway - revisiting Uncle Buck was lovely. Then came "Year of the Dog", which was interesting... I wouldn't say I wouldn't say I didn't enjoy it... I wouldn't say that I absolutely did enjoy it... It was quite interesting. Molly Shannon was just as delightful as she ever is, and I found her dramatic capability very unexpected and will likely go unappreciated and underused. How the hell sad was it when her dog died? Answer: SO! I was like "moral of the story: Don't become someone who's livelihood hinges on animal companionship."

"Knocked Up" was terrific. One of the best things I've seen in a long time. I love things that can really marry haute comedy and very accessible entertainment value like that. Not since "Mean Girls" do I consider myself seeing that. Naturally, I thought Kirsten Wiig stole the show as the Katherine Hiegl's boss. Naturally, I also thought the shot of the baby crowing was was of the most disgusting things I've ever seen. No. Thank. You.

"Blades of Glory" sucked all the ass, balls and shit in the world. It was just insultingly bad. Talk about formulaic. Wow. Bad bad bad bad bad.

Sunday, after supper, I was treated to a visit by longtime hometown BFF, Laura Di Labio. Drinks were poured, and we started talking about people from high school, as we usually do, and if information is available, what they're up to now. And talk turned to an uber-religious duo, Ross Silke and Sarah McCann. Oh, they were quite the duo. Not a couple, mind you. Just like-minded super-religious BFF. Sarah McCann, quite specifically, was quite an interesting character... I remember I had her on my ICQ back in the bad old days. Her screen name was "-->>@!!!JeSuSfReAk!!!@<<--". Anyway - apparently she's teaching early childhood education now and had a place of her own.

Building on that, what proceeded was us hypothetically discussing further details in her life... if she has a husband (our conclusion: she does)... how she met him (our conclusion: at church council meetings)... how old he is (our conclusion: Old. Like 60's... maybe 70's)... whether or not they've consummated their marriage (our conclusion: Of course. He's got marital rights and God forbid she stand in the way of them)... what she wore the night of (our conclusion: a thick, totally opaque nightgown that would have been raised waist-high for the deed)... how long the physical act of love lasted (our conclusion: 7 minutes, give or take)... what she did afterwards (our conclusion: called her mother [it was only 7:30 PM, after all] and prayer)... and on and on...

Yeah... this lasted far longer than it should have. Look for it to become a new feature on my blog... "Hypothesizing Adult Lives of People I Went To High School With"...

Anyway - that's pretty much it. I promise no more blogs about my life this week.

Also, I'm on an episode of Video On Trial airing all this week. It's on at different times. On MuchMusic. Check your local listings -

Smell ya later,

--- Aj

Nuit Blance, Jour Noir

Glorf.

Might I be able to post this fucking blog recapping Nuit Blanche today? Might I? Might?

Let's do it.

So following the mighty love-in that was the SNL Season Premiere, the group of us - each one now obsessed with Solid Gold and, as a result, jazz-running across every intersection - headed for the St. Clair West subway... the one in the mega-Lawblaws/the most convenient-thereby-greatest subway stop in the system. We was told that the subway would be open until somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 AM. Not at St. Clair West, though. Nope. That renders St. Clair W considerably less awesome in turn. Fuck.

Anyballs - so we jazz-run up the escalator (pictured is Yerxa, up to his usual hijinks. And yes. I retouched the hell out of it. You're welcome, Yerx), which then saw us jazz-run over to Bathurst and catch a fleet of cabs which we instruct to take us to Trinity Bellwoods park where, we're told, there is a gigantic chocolate stag being carved and its innards distributed for consumption. You: "What the fuck?" I know. I had no idea what the balls was going on m'self.

So we get there, amidst a sea of young-ish people walking around aimlessly and drinking in public. Yerxa made a very good point when he said that it reminded him of homecoming - at Queen's anyway. I don't know if it's like that for you with your respective Alma Matter's homecoming, but at Queen's, the Saturday of homecoming is like this super crowded, rowdy Mardi Gras (loosely translated: Fat Tuesday). It's so rowdy, that it made national news a few years ago and some dude on top of a tipped over car made the cover of MacLeans or some shit. ANYWAY - bottom line: that's what it seemed like.

Here's a picture of the nicest kids in town in front of one of many random art installations - clockwise from the top: Heidi, Yerx, Anth, Caswell, Gail and the nobly squatting Georgia. She's Sheanna's friend from Australia - replete with accent and all. Something Georgia's never heard before: "Oh hey Georgia! You were just on my mind! Get it?! Get it?! Like that song?! 'Georgia On My Mind'!? From Academy-Award winning bio-pic Ray?". She's heard it before.

Anyway - we perused the park as best we could in the pitch dark, and serendipitously enough stumbled upon a plumb-tuckered-out hobo slumbering underneath a tree. I think everyone got about 8 pictures of him. Sleeping next to him. Sleeping on him. Holding their bare ballsack over his face completely unbeknownst to him while he was in a deep, rubbing alcohol-induced sleep. Yeah. Nice. And yes, that really does look like an enormous, drying puke stain that his makeshift pillow is laying on. Faaaancy.

Nowhere to be found? Sheanna. Who, by the way, shared the most perplexing anecdote I've heard in a long, long time: you know how it's fairly common practice to find Thai strippers who shoot ping-pong balls and like out of their ass-ginas? [See: Priscilla Queen of the Desert.] Anywhoozits, she claims to have heard of a local celebrity back in Australia who could do those bitches one better... this bitch, and I don't know how the fuck she does it, but this bitch can PEEL A BANANA WITH HER VAGINA.

If anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can find any information about this woman, please notify me IMMEDIATELY. I need to know how this is done. I just can't imagine it for the life of me. I've been Googe-ling it all morning and have nothing except for some erotic fiction. Come on!!!

Pressing on: eventually Sheanna reunited with the pack, and we made our way over to the evening's main attraction... the chocolate stag. It was just beyond me how a chocolate sculpture of a deer that was unceremoniously decapitated was such an attraction. It was nuts. Not the chocolate - I'm pretty sure it was nut-free. But the crowd - it was slightly out of control. It seemed like a distraction for something shady.

It reminded me of that Simpsons' episode where Marge starts the pretzel wagon, and to drum up publicity for it, they stage a fake parade to "Welcome back Space-Girl"... and Space Girl is just Lisa wearing some aluminum foil atop her head, sitting in a convertible. It really rang home the idea of "if you build it, they will come". I just didn't get it. Ahhh well...
We sifted through some of the tents... nothing remotely exciting... a lot of Scotiabank tents that no one was going near... I guess they thought they could bait a bunch of dirt-poor artist-type 20-somethings interested in mutual funds at 2:30 AM... well they thought wrong. I honestly think the most exciting thing in the 'fairground' was one of those things y'stick y'heads in... I'm sure there's a proper name for it, but who's got the time to find out what they're called...

The real fun of the evening actually happened as soon as we got to the end of the path feeling entirely anticlimactic. For reasons known only to myself, I suggested the group sing the theme song to the show "Cheers", because, I don't know, it's awesome. So we did. What then occurred was nothing short of phenomenology...

People started flocking over to our small circle like rats to the Pied Piper. What ensued was an enormous group singalong of what had to have been dozens of TV Show themes... "The Nanny", "Full House", "Golden Girls", you name it... it was quite surreal. Talk about youthful exuberance... anyway... that's pretty much it... pretty much...

It really didn't turn out to be that eventful of a blog after all. Whatevs.

In other news, I FINALLY got my assfucking ticket to LA yesterday. I leave Sunday night which means that I can still get comfortably blitzed the Saturday before Hallowe'en, which I'm ecstatic about. I'm still slightly undecided about what the be, though. It all depends if I can grow my hair out in time...

Speaking of L.A. - the website is updated - go HERE to check it out. Quite a smorgasbord... and TONNES of Canadians as well. Deb DiGiovanni, Alex Nussbaum, Rebecca's Addelman and Kohler, Mark Bennett, Sandra Battaglini, Jay Malone, the list goes on. Well actually it doesn't. That's pretty much it - but it's quite a list!

There are a tonne of Last Comic Standing people on the bill - the frighteningly hot red-headed chick from Season 4 is on my night! A lot of these people have actually done shit... like any given person has a recurring role on "Entourage" or has recorded a live DVD alongside Paula Poundstone or something... hand's down my favourite comedian is a sassy black number by the name of Cocoa Brown. For the simple fact that when we had to put down what it is we do, and if you're a standup you'd just put "Standup" or "Stand-Up Comedian", SHE puts "Stand-up (but I don't tell jokes, I tell the TRUTH)". Oh Jesus. Why am I not on a show with her. Dammit!

Anyway... s'it for today.

--- Aj

Memo to:

I don't have terribly too much time today, so let's just get right fucking down to it...


Memo to: BRITNEY SPEARS
Subject: You done lost custody of yo kids, bitch.
Body: Bright side: You'll have a lot more time to party and drive around with an invalid license.

Hmmm. I didn't think push would actually come to shove, but it did. Wow. She lost custody of her kids, y'all. And hardly kept a low profile because of it - going tanning, checking into a hotel and going to the DMV. There's a fine line between "O-Bla-Di, O-Bla-Da, life goes oooo-ON!" and utter, utter shamelessness, Brit-Brit. Guess which side you're on.





Memo to: CLAY AIKEN
Subject: Your appearance at a random Unicef function
Body: Kudos to you for leaving your house at your present weight, with your present hair configuration and general visual presentation. Not something I would do, but different strokes for different folks.





Maybe he's just on his gay period and retaining water. Maybe.




Anyballs, tragic follow-up to this picture. Just mere hours after this shot was snapped, an aggressive easterly wind took hold of Clay Aiken and two other blimps resulting in a three-way collision in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh. The death toll is estimated at 3,000,000 and counting. Oh, the humanity!



For serious, if Clay Aiken had trouble getting barebacked by dishourably discharged soldiers-turned-gay escorts before... I'm guessing that their hourly rates are going to skyrocket now.

Memo to: SHILOH-NOUVEL JOLIE-PITT
Subject: STOP BEING SO SEXY!!!!!!
Body: STOP BEING SO SEXY!!!!!

For real! How is it possible for a baby to be that stunningly gorgeous? I showed my boss that picture today and she was like, "yeah, my babies were never that cute." Mothers will actually conceit that they're kids are visually subpar against Shiloh-Novel - THAT'S how attractive that fucking baby is. Nuts.

What's more adorable? The fact that her parents have enough money and power to buy her all 13 known moons of Neptune if she so desired, but that little cherub's toy of choice is A ROLL OF SCOTCH TAPE! Amazing.


Even more? Can someone please explain those lips to me? They're absolutely out of control. If this kid doesn't get into show business, the world will suffer a great disservice. I can already tell ya what this kid's first gig would be - she could easily fill in as the mouth for the Rocky Horror Picture Show logo if/when it's remade.

Xexy.


Nuit Blanche recap action tomorrow. For real.

--- Aj

Solid. Gold.

Oh wasn't that so clever it just made y'head spin.

K. D'afternoon and happy October to y' and y'rs. My head is currently hazier than a bayou in the deepest part of the deep south. Bayou. Fun word. Does anyone remember that movie "Eve's Bayou"? No? Well it's a good thing I do! It was about a black family in 1960's Louisiana that was headed by a philandering father and the effects that his adulterous ways had on his young, idealistic, protagonist-daughter, Eve.

It ended with a gargantuan bareback orgy-turned-murder-suicide. No. It didn't. It wasn't nearly that eventful. I watched it one overcast afternoon on Cinemax back in the bad old days when I was living in Brockville.

WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW???!!! BLAST! I'm making no sense whatsoever.

I just got back from an audition for Futureshop - you know one of those quirky, Dudely Duderson types? The breakdown said "very average looking comedic performer" a-la Seth Rogan/Paul Rudd. I e-mailed me agent back and was like "Really? Really? Wow. Is this what it's come to?"

Apparently - it has. Anyway - the audition saw my 'character' mulling over buying a gift for his girlfriend or giving her a song that he's written instead, that happens to be an 80's power-ballad. So, my Michael Bolton impression came out in full force and stunned all involved. Now my voice is kind of raw and in pain, but it was worth it. I don't know how M-Bo did it all those years. It really took a stripe offa me. And I was just pretending to be Michael Bolton for 5 minutes. He IS Michael Bolton, 24/7/365/80-or-so if he take his vitamins and stays out of harm's way. So golly, is the point.

Anyballs - this weekend was craziness. And the best part is it cost me NOTHING. Friday night was spent at Dance Cave, which I always seem to have an okay time at despite the fact that I'm also so resistant to going. Hmmm. Funny how that works out. Anyway, as the crowd never fails to be straight out of a tickle trunk in terms of their multiformity, there was some dude wearing goth-ified makeup and a mothafuckin' top hat. Naturally, everyone insisted in having their picture taken with him.

Saturday was considerably more interesting. Starting off uneventfully enough - I went shoe-shopping. I bought a pair of white Pumas that look exactly the same as the last pair of white Pumas that I bought. Meh. Then to the gym. - things took a turn for the dramatic on m'way home from the gym.

At St. Clair station - where my gym is - there was a good old fashioned jumper. Yeppers. Someone fucking jumped. As if to say "Not only am I going to end MY own life, but I'm going temporarily inconvenience YOURS in the process. Muahaha". It truly is the most destructive form of suicide. I count subway jumpers right behind belligerent obese people and wayward teenage mothers on my list of "Pirates of my Convenience" on the TTC.

I find out that this is a jumper by politely asking some random mangy girl of Mediterranean heritage who just came up from the station if they had just been evacuated. She gives me a once-over and very snidely goes "... yes." To which I laughed in her face and said "Oooooh... attitude..." It was all I could do to hold my tongue and tell her that if I looked like some gypsy whore straight off the barge, I might not be packin' that attitude, but didna as y'all, them Gypsy's is crazy. They're like starving rabid squirrels - they're just not afraid to die!

No matter... I was super pissed that I needed to walk to Yonge as it's like 5 kms and I just did cardio... and the whole point of me doing cardio is so that I don't fucking need to walk! So this is just counterproductive!!! I took my pissed-off-edness out on an unsuspecting mother out for a stroll with her baby carriage that nicked me in the Achilles' tendon. I looked back at her with an absolutely bone-chilling look of disdain, then turned my head back around and laughed. It was ridiculous. Anyway... I'm extraordinarily long-winded today... what's that all about?

My pissed off-ed-ness was replaced by delicious curiosity when I FINALLY got back home and noticed that it was customer appreciation day at m'local Dairy Queen. Do you know what this meant? HALF-PRICED CAKES. So I went in, just to get the lay of the land, as it were. I was like "Cakes is half-price?" and he's all, "Yep". So I was like, "Oh... I'll have one then!". AND I DID!!! I GOT A WHOLE FUCKING BLIZZARD CAKE. Which I devoured yesterday. It was both incredibly delicious and incredibly shameful... but I'll choose to focus on the positive.

Anyway - Saturday night was important for two reasons: A.) T'was the season premiere of the 33rd season of Saturday Night Live, B.) It was Nuit Blanche... a citywide, high-end installation art-exhibit on the streets of Toronto sponsored by my bank, Scotiabank (pronounced Sco-see-a Bank, of course).

A slew AND I MEAN SLEW of us gathered at Anthony's house in picturesque Clairhurst (that's actually what the neighborhood at Bathurst and St. Clair is called... which is retarded... it's like me calling my neighborhood of Broadview & Danforth something like Broadforth or Danview or Droadfow or Brandviewth or something crazy like that), a gathering made extra-extra special by the presence of none-other than SHEANNA JAMES!!! Freshly back from a prolonged schooling excursion in Australia and back into our hearts! (Pictured to the right w/me and Caswell)

Anyway... SNL was more hit than it was miss - although LeBron James sucked it as much as any athletic figure they for-some-reason get to host, it was positively joyous to see Maya Rudolph back in action. The Penelope sketch made us weak in the knees. The high school musical sketch was hilarious and particularly poignant for one Heidi Brander. That digital short featuring Jake Gyllenhal and Adam Levine of Maroon 5 was glorious. Weekend Update had some sheer brilliance, especially Amy Poehler's "A man in Boston used a crossword puzzle to propose to his fiance. However, this comes 6 months after he used a word jumble to divorce his last wife." That word jumble is pictured to the left, to the left. I figured it would be more effective and less time consuming to just replicate the actual graphic than explain what it looked like, so there.

My personal highlight of the episode, however, was that motherfucking Solid Gold sketch. For those of you who don't know what Solid Gold is/was, I don't blame you. It was before my time, too. But it was fantastic. The best way I could describe it would be to say that it was the "So You Think You Can Dance" of its generation - not in that it was a competition, but that it was a dance show. It was like American Bandstand, or Soul Train, or Hullaballoo or any one of those shows that featured live, lip-sync'd performances by popular artists of the day that went the way of the dodo after the advent of music videos --- except it had a stable of dancers that would execute intricate, pelvis smashing jazz-dance numbers with military execution alongside or behind the artists and most titillating of all, there would be a weekly countdown narrated in movement by the Solid Gold dancers. For some reason, the douche bag who uploaded this clip disabled embedding, so I IMPLORE you to go and watch THIS CLIP of the Solid Gold dancers. And upon watching it, I defy you to not get a boner/lady boner.

A few things of note re: that clip. A.) I'm under the impression, right off the bat, that this show was shot in the 1980's. Just a hunch. B.) If you watched the actual countdown, you'll note that I have every single one of those songs on my iPod right now. Heart, ABC, Starship, oh hells to the yes... C.) How amazing was their routine to Starship's "We Built This City"? Answer: very.

Suffice to say, they became superstars in their own right - much like the So You Think You Can Dance kids did and have. Darcel, Jamillah, Beverley, Elaine, Coolie, Marc, Nicole, Pam. And for some ungodly reason they were big about disclosing their height and weight as evidenced in this almost-surreal clip:

I love it when I can find the exact youtubings that SNL bases their parodies on, and the above two clips were just that. In the sketch, they had an interview portion in which all of the dancers said their names, height and weight and their interests. They ranged from "making vests" to "roasted whole turkeys" to "jazz-walks on the beach". So of course we went apeshit over this, and subsequently jazz-walked and/or jazz-ran everywhere the livelong night. It was like we were the modern day Solid Gold dancers. A point driven all the way home with this promo shot we had taken to commemorate the occasion.

And yes, that is me as Darcel.

That's it for today.

Tomorrow - a recap of our Nuit Blanche, and, corresponding Jour Noir.

--- Aj

That Leaked Boudoir Pics of Celebrities Blog

Golly.

I think this marks Day 5 or some shit of these Shaw auditions. Today, so I'm told, is the day that they see all the non-union swill that was lucky enough to make the cut. So it's a lot of fresh theatre school grads/kids who are still in theatre school who are nervous as all get-out and, so I'm told, have little to no control of their bowels. So I'm told, they zip into the bathroom before they're slated to audition and evacuate their bowels hastier than New Orleans a half-day before Katrina touched down. BADDA-ZING!

So I'm told.

What's been extra-special about today is that a slew of people I know from Queen's are in today, most importantly of all, the divine Robin Willis, pictured to the left, to the left... So talented I can't stand it, I pulled her into my cell/office and had a chat that was both hearty and heady. She's currently based in New York and is taking the shit by storm - because she got dual ci'izenship... lucky... and it's because her father was a draft dodger back in the bad old days. Talk about the fucking best of both worlds... wow...

Another silver lining to the scene out of the movie "Fame" that is today is, of course, early 20-something musical theatre fags are pretty much my bread, butter and marmolade so I've been making eyes at them all day entirely unsure about what I'm hoping to accomplish by doing so. Like, do I think I'm going to have some shenanigoats with one whilst held up in my mental hospital cell-of-a-workplace? It would certainly liven things up around here, that's for sure. I'm actually considering bringing in a Sudoku puzzle tomorrow. Considering.

I'm totally making eyes with one right now - THIS VERY SECOND - as I type this. He's warming up. Like stretching... getting limber... I'll bet he is. Yeah, this is totally gonna happen. Ohhhh there he goes... well, we'll see.

Did you enjoy that real-time blogging? Should I do it more? Mayhaps.

K... a haute topic of sorts...

For the life of me, I cannot fathom what drives people to take private pictures of themselves in compromising situations in the first place. Naturally, don't get me started on people who take said photos of themselves then share it with others, particularly in a digital format. Finally, don't even get me started on those people who do this that are celebrities. DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED.

The phenomenon arguably began with Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy fame when his T-Mobile was hacked and private picks he took of his schlong were leaked for all the world to see. And see them all the world did - he became a household name and poster boy for candid self-photography gone awry.

Since then, countless celebrities have fallen victim to leaked personal photos that have been taken with a mobile device... which is presumably the only reason that mobile devices are equipped with camera or video... to send pornish shit back and forth and hope for the best... I remember I got sent something once by this dude I met... like the night of... I got a video from him - for that pocket of you who know my dating history, you'll have heard him referred to as "Pier 1" for reasons that are pretty straightforward - but it was during the days that I was sporting that little LG number that I'm quaintly sure was the first flip phone ever invented - with green screen to boot! - so I couldn't see it. Still... anyway...

Why do people do this? I assume it's rooted in exhibitionism... I also assume that committing one's self to digital image is also subconsciously intended not for posterity but indeed so it'll be shared/leaked. Like, does anyone actually think it'll be kept sacrosanct by the receiver? I'm talkin' to YOU, generously buttocked Fantasia Barrino (pictured in hacked cell phone photos, to the left, to the left)...

Anyballs, two particularly high-profile leaked personal photo scandals that have caused quite a controversy of late are those of teen queen Vanessa-Anne Hudgens and boxing luminary Oscar De La Hoya...

Hudgens is, for those of you with lives/who don't know, one of the stars of Disney's breakout smash hit "High School Musical" and long-time g-fry of "It"-boy du jour, Zac Efron. Nude photos were leaked of of someone reported to be her, but not really resembling her. I didn't think they were real - I thought they were just some wonky faced skank with an obscenely full bush that looked nothing like her. And it wasn't just me who shared this perspective... every gossip blog, infotainment program and celebrity weekly also held down a fair share of skepticism about the legitimacy of the photos as well... and then in a stroke of sheer genius, Hudgens' camp CONFIRMED that the photos were indeed real and expressed her chagrin that they were released - which, really, was just their way of saying "we're sorry that her bush was so unkempt when they were released" 'cuz shit, it was indeed a pizza slice of a pubis. [Sidebar: Whose parents let their teenage daughter own lingerie like that? Do you wanna just sell her into white slavery in Bolivia now or later?]

Anyway... SCANDAL!!! Apparently she was only 17 when these pictures - allegedly taken for then-boyfriend and associate teen sensation Drake Bell - were taken, which makes them illegal... well, barely illegal if you choose to see the glass as half-full.

Some people seem to think that she leaked them herself in an effort to emancipate herself from the cover of "Bop" and teen queen vehicles onto the cover of "Maxim" and into the ever-seductive young Hollywood scene. I refuse to believe that because again, holy balls, her bush is ROBUST. I'm entirely serious people - that pizza slice is BARELY covering it.

On the flip side: Oscar De La Hoya. Photos reportedly showing De La Hoya in a fishnet onezie and other trannylicious ecoutrements surfaced recently - which are, I'm sorry, TOTALLY of him - and his camp issued a statement saying that they were 'convincing fakes'. (Click HERE for a larger version).

BULL. SHIT. As someone acquainted with photoshop, I'd love to see the exhaustive forensic reports proving their fraudulence. The pictures were allegedly taken by an exotic dancer ladyfriend of his (read: 2-cent whore), who explained to Access Hollywood that they were stolen from her by someone with malicious intent to exploit De La Hoya.

My personal favourite is the one with him in the boxing gloves. It's like he put those on to make sure that there would be absolutely no mistaking that it was him. It'd be like Vanessa Hudgens shaving "High School Musical" into the rain forest that is her bush. And believe me, she may well could have.

So ya got a full bush and you wanna show it off to your teenage bf? So ya like to wear stripper's clothes and boxing gloves? Gabba gabba hey, live ya life - that's what I say... but WHY DO PEOPLE FEEL THE NEED TO TAKE THESE PICTURES OF THEMSELVES?! It's just beyond me.

Anyballs... before I go for the weekend I thought I'd throw one more onto the pile for you... not to be outdone, here's viral video sensation and emo Britney super-fan Chris Crocker whipping out his vagina for the world to see...

If you're brave/into shemales go here for the NSFW version...

I hope you're weekend is a fucking zen pleasure.

Smell ya later,

--- Aj

Haute Topics

Wow.

Okay, sorry about the no postage yesterday. I'm actually held up in a white room sorting out blueprints. A friend from Queen's, Stacey, is down the hall running the auditions for Shaw that are STILL ONGOING (but thankfully, less obnoxious. The bitches are still coming in off the street wearing character shoes and being forceably outgoing, but they've ceased the warmups... knock on wood...) and I brought her in to see where I'm working today and what I'm doing. We agreed that it looks like I'm in solitary confinement in a mental hospital. A fact made that much clearer when I started to sing "Come To My Window" by Melissa Etheridge. Just call me Juliette Lewis... fuck...

Okay... SO much to talk about and here's hopin' I can get it in before my bosses come back from lunch and shun me off to my cell for the duration of the afternoon...

1.) THE ROLLERCOASTER THAT IS MAYA RUDOLPH

Let me walk you through my yesterday as it pertains to this situation...

I haul my reluctant-yet-hot ass into work yestermorning where I proceed to work hard for the money and insist that in turn, they better treat me right when all of a sudden I receive a facebook wallpost by one Miss Dini Dimakos expressing her condolences for the departure of Maya Rudolph from SNL.

Knee jerk, me: "Dat bullshit. I've read a press release saying the entire 06-07 cast was back in its entirety." Prompt reply, Dini D: "No. Horrifying truth. Go to Dlisted" (which I do basically every second of the day but for some reason it had eluded me this particular morning). I do. I'm redirected to EW.com where they confirm that indeed, Maya has flown the coop. I promptly posted this link on my dear co-fag and co-Maya superfan Anth telling him it's "best he hears this from me".

Me = DEVASTATED. I can't even tell you. I was so forlorn, I actually did work. And I was in a funk the rest o' the livelong day, let me tell ya. Even more devastating is that she'd be departing to join the long, long, LONG list of talented female SNL alumni who have virtually no afterlife following their stint on SNL (I'll be blogging about that exact topic Friday). Honestly, it was like a loved one had died. Terrible.

Flash forward to around 6:45 Post Meridian, I gets a message from dear co-fag Anth saying that the link I posted on his wall did not lead to a story saying that she was leaving but instead a story saying that she was instead staying... Curious... I receive another call from busom bestie Yerxa elatedly-nay-JUBILANTLY proclaiming "She's staying! She's staying!".

And that's all she wrote. Last minute negotiations came through and she decided that in the end "as a mother and as an actress it was the best choice" to stay with the show. A lot of people are taking this as code that "they offered her more money". I happen to think it's the opposite... she wanted more... they wouldn't give it to her, and then she conceded... but that's neither here nor there...

Anyway - I'm basically elated that she's back. Basically. It's a huge shit deal to me and mine. We'll be having a viewing party this weekend when the season premiere hosted by LeBron James and musically guested by Kanye West bows, and it will be festive.

To celebrate Maya's return, and also because I have an edition of "Signature Look" in this blog, let's all enjoy her turn as Tunay Griggs... KALOOH KALAY!

2.) THE PRESIDENT OF IRAN VISITS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, DENIES THE EXISTENCE OF HOMOSEXUALITY IN IRAN

Free speech? Or giving the enemy a no-strings-attached HJ for publicity?

I'm more inclined to agree with the latter...

As you may well have heard by now, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinjad visited the venerable Columbia University on Tuesday in an effort, to, I don't fucking know, bring sexy back to Iran in the eys of the US or something.

No. He addressed Iran's nuclear capacity, didn't address his denial of the holocaust and/or why he wants to obliterate Israel and in what will no doubt go down in the history books, denied homosexuality existing in Iran, claiming, "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who told you that we have it."

Yeah... how was this man allowed to set foot on US soil and not arrested is really the first issue... a lot of people make the analogy that this is like giving Adolph Hitler the podium. The Free Speech enthusiasts assert that it's important to hear his side of things in order to understand.

I'm sorry - there is no other fucking side of things when it comes to radical Islam and a . There is nothing to be empathetic about here - all there is, is a bunch of oppressive, psychotic code that serves an elite few.

A lot of people laugh off his denying the existence of the homosexual 'phenomenon' in Iran as if he's an Ostrich with his head in the sand. Yeah, it's a little more destructive than that. The reason that homosexuality doesn't exist in Iran is because those who are aren't out and those who do 'practice' it are sought out and killed! It's just maddening.

Bottom line is that the line that separates free speech and pure evil is about as fine as a gorilla's pube (read: it's not fine. It's rather thick, distinct and coarse) and this man should have been arrested.

Happier topics...

THIS IS HER SIGNATURE LOOK: JENNIFER HUDSON EDITION

On the set of the upcoming "Sex & The City" movie where she plays Carrie's assistant, Louise:

Fancy that,

--- Aj

big whoop! who gives a bibble? gabba gabba hey.

Crikey. (what does that even mean?)

'Sup? Not much on my end. Sorry this is coming so late - I had precisely 0.0 time to blog today at work, as I've been held up in a barren room that is completely barren except for the fact that it has gigantic roll upon gigantic roll of blueprint drawings that I'm to be cataloguing right now and yeah... it sucks... but whatever.

Salt in that wound is that Shaw festival auditions continue down the hall from where I work, and I guess today they were seeing every quirky soprano the city had to offer. Gah it drives me nuts. Three things, as a rule, that these chicks have in common:

1.) They all wear character shoes. Yep. Like right off the street. And they ain't dancin' today. For those of you who don't know what 'character shoes' are, I'll enlighten... they're the traditional footwear for female performers in musical theatre - unless you'ze a ballerina or a Pussycat Doll, you're most likely wearing character shoes - a sturdy 3-inch closed-toe heel that looks like something you could picture a stenographer, or mayhaps mimeographer, named Geraldine in the 1950's wearing. Yeah. Anyway - these bitches wear them right in off the street.

2.) If I pass one of them in the hall or in the elevator, they're all so forceably outgoing and dole out these really contrived pleasantries because they think I'm working the auditions or something. GAH! Drives me nuts!

3.) They all do the gayest vocal warmups in the hall like it's not annoying. Yeah. They walk around doing scales while puckering their lips (like making a fart noise, only prolongued and to a melody) and I'm like "I DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE NOT WARMED UP!!! YOU LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE!!!".

Said it before, gonna say it again - GAH!

Anyway - this past weekend. Hum dinger, let me tell ya.

I didn't think that I was going to go out this weekend at all seeing as I was so rife with disease, but thankfully I have horrible friends who only live for today and care about their own enjoyment far more than my physical well-being. Jesting. They'z good people. But yes - me not going out on Saturday would not be tolerated.

So I did. Buddies, natch. Where something called ArtHouse is currently going on. Because of this, there was a box on stage. A BOX. Yeah. Well, a frame of sorts. And it was just left on there, inviting catastrophe if y'ask me.

People started to filter on in - the most notable burst being a gaggle of students who couldna been more than 19. It was clearly some floor's night out at some Ryerson residence, which was just fantastic. It made me feel old. Estelle Getty-stylez old. No matter.

Along for the ride this particular evening was the increasingly entertaining Heidi Brander - who's just so much fun I can't handle it. Here she is. Pictured. To the left, to the left.

Apparently so taken with this box, Heidi attempted to run up the side of it a-la Jackie Chan/Super Mario/this dude in the video for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" (at precisely 2:47):

Does anyone else feel the almost-uncontrollable need to do a shot-by-shot reenactment of that video sometime in the VERY near future? Because sister, let me tell ya, I do. Wow.

Anyway... dancing inside the box has become a reasonably popular destination by mini-gays all over the place, and shinanigoats are ensuing... people are rocking the box, hitting the box, boxing the box, and bouncers are taking the stage each and every time.

Not to be outdone, Heidi attempts to do run up the side of the box for reasons known only to her. This didn't bode well with the bouncers, but really, what the fuck were they expecting? THERE WAS A BOX ON THE STAGE AND EXUBERANT YOUTH RIGHT, LEFT & CENTRE!!! Meh... anyway, in lieu of the angry bouncer, Heidi fleetly flee'd the scene like - as Yerxa brilliantly put it - Delores Van Cartier in "Sister Act" to the bathroom. That's where the bouncer's found her, conducting a chorus of misbegoten gay youth "I Will Follow Him". The similiarities betwixt Heidi and Whoopi abound. Sheesh.

Yeah... I know that's the second one of my friends that I've photoshopped into Whoopi Goldberg's habit, Dana quite gloriously being the first. But I'm going to tell ya right now... it really beat the first idea I had to photoshop Heidi as a black chick which, I will include simply because I don't believe in letting my efforts go to waste.

Art? Or simply a modernized take on black-face? YOU decide!

I promise more interesting fare tomorrow...

--- Aj