That "Anna Wintour" Blog

Happy Tuesday to you...

Things are eerily calm in my office right now. Eerily calm. My boss is currently the star witness in this case against Garth Drabinsky or something in the hibbidy hoobady that I don't quite understand and think it's in my best interests not to. Apparently he's being cross-examined by the Greenspan brothers today, who are apparently the biggest shit deal in terms of lawyers in this country (excluding, of course, one Michael Johnston - easily the best darned real-estate, divorce and private adoption lawyer in the known world/my dad)... but yeah, these dudes repped Conrad Black. So my boss is being pistol-whipped by them today. Yikes.

Anyballs - everyone's been asking me if the phone's been ringing off the hook with press enquiries, which of course it isn't... I kind of wish it was though... so I could act really cold and elusive...

SPEAKING OF COLD AND ELUSIVE - what a segue! - I recently finished reading a book that's changed my life infinitely for the better... "Front Row: Anna Wintour: The Cool Life and Hot Times of Vogue's Editor in Chief" by Jerry Oppenheimer... it's basically a really trashy, pieced-together bio but it's written by a stuffy British guy who uses words like "grandiloquent" so at times it sounded like something I could picture myself reading whilst sitting in a drawing room sipping a snifter of Grand Marnier...

Anna Wintour, of course, is the legendary style maven and editrix-in-chief of Vogue Magazine renowned for her never-changing bob hairstyle and icy-if not-cruel demeanour. And I am currently OBSESSED with her.

Here's a precis of her life 'n times...

Her family, for the most part, are a bunch of dowdy do-gooders - except, of course, her father - Charles Wintour... the former editor of London's Evening Standard. He was known as "Chilly Charlie" to those in his employ because of his icy demeanour - one that Anna obviously inherited. It's speculated that this is due to the accidental death of his first-born song, Gerald. Anyballs... Anna was always her father's favourite, but he never saw too much in the stars for her... just a married socialite basically.

As a child Anna could be characterized as being A.) very shy and B.) very independent. In her mid-teens she moved into the basement apartment in her family's impossibly British townhouse and started dating - some men nearly twice her age. This never bothered her parents, apparently. It's also believed that she was sexually active with these men. It's around this age that she also adopted her signature bob and - save for a photo shoot she did with a photographer beau of hers later in her 20's - never altered it.

She was very active in the swinging 60's London scene, but very reserved and never drank. One thing that a lot of people don't know is that Anna - much like Amy Poehler's character Angie in the number-1 box office smash Baby Mama, "discontinued high school". That's right. The amount of formal education - or rather, lack thereof - that Anna has is staggering considering that she's the editor of one of the world's foremost publications. The only sort of post-secondary education she has was a sort of work-study program in fashion management that she also "discontinued".

Her start in fashion was modest: a summer job as a shopgirl at Biba. Y'all know Biba, right? A chain of affordable fashions popular in small town strip malls (there's one in Brockville, that's all I'm sayin'). Yeah, well back in the 60's the original Biba boutique was the shit, yo. Her father Charles got it for her, quite surprised that she wanted to work at all. Anyballs, because of a well-connected dude she was dating at the time (the prominent theme in the life of Anna Wintour), she got a job as an editorial assistant at a magazine named Harper's & Queen.

In the mid-70's, she met the man who many consider the love of her life: Jon Bradshaw - Anna's Mr. Big for all intents and purposes. Fed up with London - and always, always, always having her eyes on the prize that was American Vogue - she fled to New York with him determined to make a name for herself in the American magazine market. Using Bradshaw's connections, she got a job at Harper's Bazaar which lasted less than a year until she was given the heave-ho after disputes with the editor (did I just write "heave-ho"? Really? Wow.)

According to many sources and to Anna herself, following her disastrous stint as associate editor at Bazaar, she freelanced for a couple of years before getting back on the train - this is all phenomenal bullshit, apparently. For 2 very distinct years, she was a fashion editor at a magazine named Viva. VIVA! What was Viva, y'ask? Viva was the female companion magazine to Penthouse... yep... it was a Bob Guccione production run by his main ho, former stripper-turned-entrepeneuse Kathy Keeton. There's the first couple of classiness pictured to the right...

Anna always felt the job was beneath her - which is why she has never even remotely acknowledged it since - but was given complete creative control and an unlimited budget whilst there (all those bare, eager pussy shots that Penthouse spearheaded - although not exactly artful - amply paid 'da bills, apparently)... It's around this time that Anna also acquired her first personal assistant, who she promptly proceeded to put through hell... one particular assistant recounted that she'd catch Anna standing in her office "throwing out pennies" from her wallet into her garbage (I find that fucking hysterical for some reason) and that every day Anna would make her trek across town to get her this very specific soup that she'd throw an enormous gob of butter into, let it melt a bit, then eat the butter... "It struck me as just a way to eat the butter"... again... I find this hysterical...

By 1979, the party was over. Viva folded, and Anna was out of a job. According to Mr. Oppenheimer the next few years of Anna's life had her gadding about on Concords all over the world with this French disco producer named Esteban something. The details are scant.

Her return to publishing came in the early 80's courtesy of Jon Bradshaw, once again. He hooked her up with a job as fashion director of a magazine called Savvy - geared towards the professional working woman, a-la Melanie "Tess McGill" Griffith in Working Girl. Her work was turning heads, landing her the primo gig as fashion director at New York magazine.

Sometime within her stint at New York, she was granted an audience with then-editrix-in-chief of Vogue, Grace Mirabella - a woman who would go on to become one of Anna's most sworn enemies. Legend has it that in the 10-minute meeting betwixt the two fashionistas, when asked by Mirabella what job Anna would like at Vogue, Anna replied "Well, yours". SNAP! She was quickly hustled the hell out of there and back to her job at New York.

As it turns out, Grace Mirabella Schmrace Schmerabella, Anna had successfully wooed editorial director of Conde Nast, Alex Liberman who quickly found her a home within the Conde Nast family. She was brought in as 'creative director' of American Vogue which was basically code for 'pain in Grace Mirabella's vag' - she butted in on everything, changing things for no reason whatsoever and just generally being a shit-disturbing menace for the sake of being a shit-disturbing menace.

T'was also at this time that she met her first husband, renowned child psychiatrist (and renowned fug... holy balls the man is grotesque... them kids of theirs is lucky they got Anna's looks... let me tell ya) David Shaffer (pictured). He's been noted as being her constant support system and Svengali, single-handedly maneuvering all of Anna's brilliant career moves. In return, she bore him two children - Charlie (after her father) and Bee (birthname Katherine... apparently she always referred to herself as "bah-bee" when she was little, so the nickname Bee was born and stuck).

Anyballs... no sooner than she popped Charlie out of her cooch was she sent packing back to London where she assumed job as editrix-in-chief of British Vogue. It's here that she met another candidate for the arch-nemesis of her life: Liz Tilberis - a fashion editor who was vying for the job before Anna came and eventually inherited after she left. Under Anna's rule, British Vogue changed completely - Anna basically used it as a template for what she'd do with American Vogue. This didn't sit well with the old guard, whose lives she made a living hell.

Under the guise of 'needing to be with her family' and certainly NOT because she 'was being groomed by Conde Nast super-powers Alex Liberman and Si Newhouse - two men who were absolutely smitten with Anna and her knowingly put on school-girl-esque charms - to take over for Grace Mirabella at American Vogue because she just wasn't measuring up', Anna was relocated back to the US to take over as editor-in-chief of House & Garden magazine. Yeah, she absolutely destroyed it. Completely. Reinvented it as HG... made it celeb & garmet-centric as opposed to the interior digest it used to be... completely ran it into the ground...

Around this time, a little magazine called Elle was coming to prominence - featuring a younger, fresher, hipper take on fashion. Liberman and Newhouse told Grace Mirabella: BE MORE LIKE ELLE! Mirabella was all: LICK MY BALLS, BITCH! So, they canned her ass. Enter Anna Wintour into the top job at American Vogue. T'was her life's ambition and she's been there ever since. *pats hands together as if to say "case closed"*

Since then, of course, her marriage dissolved upon meeting hunky Texan telecommunications mogul J. Shelby Bryan... a torrid affair that played out in the tabloids and caused multiple cracks in her famously steely facade... at one particularly low point, she was seen at one of her Costume Institue Gala's with "mascara running down her face" after Bryan shunned her... the book notes that one of the guests in attendance this particular evening - the ever-irascible Whitney Houston - was noted as saying that Anna was "going to fuck that boyfriend of hers up!"

I just really had to throw that in there...

Also of note - as everyone knows, a tasty little roman a clef entitled "The Devil Wears Prada" was penned about an assistant's experience working under Anna at Vogue by an author named Lauren Weisberger. According to sources at Vogue who worked with Weisberger at the time, she was apparently quite content to be there. The 'memoir' came entirely out of left field...

Also of note - arguably her fiercest rival is Vanity Fair-turned-New Yorker editrix Tina Brown. The two go way back: Back in the day, Brown's father was a B-movie producer in England who's movies were constantly sneered at by Anna's father's paper - something that Tina Brown never forgot. Once the shit hit the fan re: Anna's affair with Shelby Bryan, Tina made it her business to smear it around as much as she could. Additionally - following the death of Princess Diana, Brown aired the details of a hyper-exclusive lunch date that Anna, Tina and Di had thereby scooping Anna and making her see fluorescent red.

Finally - Anna Wintour and PETA are not friends. Anna's a big wearer of fur. Apparently them crazy folks at PETA aren't so into that. They've dumped a dead raccoon on her plate when she was out dining (which, apparently, she just casually pushed to the side and continued with her meal). They've pied her with a tofu pie during Paris Fashion Week (pictured), she pronounces that "tofu is good for the skin". The use an image of her furled jaw looking like an angered opossum in one of their anti-fur adds. May the good times continue to roll. Upon visiting their website, they give Anna's contact info:

Anna Wintour, Editor
Vogue
Condé Nast
4 Times Square
New York, NY
10036

Tel.: 212-880-8800
Fax: 212-880-8169

I'm totally going to send a junk fax right now. Saying what, I'm unsure. Whatever.

In other news:

TWO WEEKS TODAY!!! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Anyballs... phew... that's it for me today...

--- Aj

Haute Topics

One great big Monday howdy'do to y' and y'rs...

How was your weekend? Great? Good? Good but not great? The former would describe mine... Friday night I did absolutely 0.0 things in anticipation for a photo shoot for Now Magazine that I had to do Saturday morning... So I laid depth-defyingly low Friday night out of fear that I'd come to set with enormous circles under my eyes or worse, sleep in past it only to arrive three hours late, have them pissed at me and intentionally photograph me looking heinous a-la Carrie Bradshaw in that episode of S&TC when she's on the cover of the magazine that was originally supposed to be under the headline "Single & Fabulous!" but was instead changed to "Single & Fabulous?"... yeah... my greatest fear... can you tell I'm counting down the days until I can get Carried away?

Anyballs... Saturday was more of the same... following the shoot, Trevor Boris, Dana Alexander and m'self went for some brunch - Dana and I drank [obviously], Trevor didn't... then the gaggle of us went and hung some posters for the next Bitch Salad... WHICH, by the way, HAPPENS TWO WEEKS TOMORROW!!! AHHHHH!!!

Following that, I had the tastiest nap in the world to the sights and sounds of one "Corrina, Corrina" in the background - thank God for Peachtree TV is all I'm sayin'... and for that movie... I loves me a light-hearted story about interracial love in the 1950's starring a pre-The View Whoopi Goldberg and a pre-Napoleon Dynamite Tina Majorino - then went out a'trawlin' for boy beav, which - by the by - seems to be in severe shortage right now... much like rice in China and Bangladesh... methinks it might need to rationed as well in the near future... anyballs - none of this important. Shia LaBeouf hosted SNL again... it kind of sucked... except for this sketch spoofing that all-time greatest game show that NEEDS NEEDS NEEDS to make a comeback, "Match Game":

Oh land's sakes that's entertaining. I don't know if you watched Match Game - you probably didn't - but I used to watch re-runs of it on the Game Show Network as a kid and I fucking loved it... they'd always be smoking and drinking at the table without chagrin and the answer for EVERYTHING was either "Making Whoopee" OR something to do with the resident titmeat's "buzooms". AMAZING.

In other TV-related news...

Do you know what show I'm obsessed with? Like OBSESSED with? "Celebrity Rehab" with Dr. Drew... It's exactly what it sounds like it is... it's like a cross betwixt A&E's Intervention and The Surreal Life... the "celebrities" involved include but are not limited to: Daniel Baldwin (the least successful Baldwin), Porn star Mary Carey (who was on the receiving end of a lawsuit c/o Mariah Carey), former wrestler and celebreality show fixture Joanie "Chyna Doll" Lauer, Seth "Shifty Shellshock" or something from that band Crazy Town, American Idol also-ran/super-skank Jessica Sierra (who's probably the most likable/promising one of the show... and that's saying a lot), Jaimee Foxworth (Judy, the forgotten Winslowe from Family Matters who later turned to a life of porn starring in movies named shit like "Booty Patrol"), the continued love of my life Brigitte Nielsen and the hottest mess in the history of hot messes Jeff "Kenickie" Conaway (pictured)...

It's a VH1 series that's airing second-hand on MuchMoreMusic here in Canada and it is a trip and a half. They're currently in the process of detoxing and some people are taking to it better than others... last night Jeff Conaway was just sitting there shaking and screaming like a loon and barfing... and I guess the whole game plan is that they're all supposed to look after each other, so as soon as he starts barfing the nurse asks "Okay, who's not afraid of barfing?" and Mary Carey leaps to her feet to help him barf... it's nuts. It's actually out of control how fucked up all these people are and I can't stop watching it. I'm afraid it's ruined future celebreality for me... I'll never be able to find "The Surreal Life" amusing because the bar has been set so high by "Celebrity Rehab"... kinda like how "The Swan" ruined any makeover/transformation show for me...

In other, other news...

The trailer for the impending Anna Nicole Smith biopic is up and running... To the surprise of no one, it looks terrible...

I don't really know what anyone was expecting? Like, did you think this was going to be on par with Elizabeth: The Golden Age or something? Sheesh.

In other, other, other news...

Tonight. 8 PM. Season 2 of the newly reinvented American Gladiators bows. Mysteriously (and troublingly) absent from the promos? One Robin Coleman A-K-A HeLLga.

I should hope that this is a glaring, GLARING oversight on the promotional producers behalf. Because so help me God, if HeLLga's out - and I couldn't fathom why she would be - SO AM I, MOTHERFUCKERS.
Methinks that's going to be it for me today...

OH - trivia: did you know that I almost got botox on Thursday? Yeah... I was invited to this industry thing where they were giving out free treatments... sadly, I had a gig, otherwise, I'd be lookin' like Nicole Kidman up in here...

Anyballs,

--- Aj

Bitches Loved, Bitches Hated...

D'afternoon to y'...

So... last night we bid adieu to the muppet and the catcher's mit...


Talkin' 'bout Jason Castro and Dominique, from American Idol and America's Next Top Model, respectively and respectivelier...

Two of the more polarizing, entertaining contestants of their respective televised reality derbys, both were shown the door last night met with two single tears shed precisely an hour apart.

Jason's future could be promising... He could go the Jack Johnson route, make some idiosyncratic records about being shy and snorkeling in the springtime - maybe even sell his hair - why the balls knows?! The world is truly his oyster... for approximately the next three weeks...

Dominique, howevs... not too promising... I can't the tranny-catcher's mit hybrid rollin' in opportunity... I supposed if ever George Hamilton was starring in a prime time soap and his character had a tranny sondaughter or something, Dominique would certainly be on the shortlist to play himher... And she can certainly speak some mean mock-Italian... anyballs, best of luck to both of them.

In other news:

I have gotten downright lacksadaisical about keeping up this Bitch I Loved/Hated this week posts and that stops NOW!

So yeah... here they are for last week...

BITCH I LOVED THIS WEEK

CHRISTINE MARINONI (pictured, the the right)

Who: Ginger-haired campaign manager for the New York state branch of the Alliance for Quality Education who rocketed from anonymous citizen to bonafide Hollywood arm-candy when she entered into a relationship Sex & The City star Cynthia Nixon.
Why I Loved Her: Christine MariNOni? More like Christine MariYESni! ... Marinone's basically epitomizes everything I envy about lesbians... namely: you can look like that, but because she's got such a beautiful spirit, she gets to bump rugs with Miranda. WTF?! You know what - go on wit'ya bad self, Marinone's...

BITCH I HATED THIS WEEK

CHERYL BURKE

Who: Overly gregarious clam-faced supposed-24-year-old dancer who's sky-rocketed to somewhat fame and somewhat infamy as a mainstay dancing partner on super-lame Celebreality paso-double-fest, Dancing With The Stars.
Why I Hated Her: Sometimes it's just as simple as the fact that I don't like y'face... and this is almost that simple - but yeah, this woman does as much as possible to force herself into the foreground of DWTS as humanly possible... and does she have an affair with EVERYONE she dances with? I'll bet she tried to get all up in Marlee Matlin's business (and succeeded, to a point, as I'm sure Marlee didn't hear her coming...) Anyway... yeah...

Have I made sense at all today? I doubt it... ah well..

SO...

GUESS WHAT'S UPON US AGAIN?! IN JUST SHY OF THREE WEEKS?!?!?!

Yeppy.

Talk tomorrow...

--- Aj

Mega-Post

Hey you crazy characters...

Apparently, I have some business to catch up on...

Sorry I haven't been around this week - I had to go and take photographs of empty penthouses at the suites at 1 King W... Why, you ask? Because that's how G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S my fucking life is. No. Because that's the company I work for... we're handling the selling/renovating of those... anyway - it was pretty nuts... one of them is a WHOLE FLOOR... like I thought that shit only existed in movies. The kind of shit where you take the elevator to the 48th floor and it's just an apartment... not a hall with doors leading to other apartments - oh no - but AN ENTIRE EFFING APARTMENT. Yeah... the kind that billionaire playboys or sultans own and stage spectacular, earth-splitting orgies in... I can't even handle it...

So yeah. That's where I was this week.

My weekend this past weekend was so very eventful, I can't even handle it.

It kicked off Thursday night, a night which saw me get waxed. "Oh. How was that?" you ask. How the fuck is it ever. Painful... for real... and I'm not even kidding - I could definitely see an upside to chemo. I'm not saying that to be insensitive or sensational - I'm just saying I could definitely find a way to see that glass as half-full... anyway...

The esthetician and I were talking about America's Next Top Model and how we both liked sassy plus-sized stunner Whitney (who squeaked by last week within an inch of her life, yet again) and then out of NOWHERE, she produced the random quote of the week: "... You know who's really upped their game? Cotton Ginny."

I fucking lost it. It was so random. Anyballs... thought I'd share...

This passed Friday night saw me, Anth and Heidi FINALLY take in Baby Mama...

I don't think I need to tell you that we LOVED it. LOVED.

I thought it was charming, well-paced and not unsurprising... I thought it was a little outside the formula... I mean it wasn't the sort of female Superbad that I think I was hoping for, but it wasn't 27 Dresses, either.

I'm, for one, THRILLED to see a female buddy comedy score so solidly at the box office, particularly one that stars two comedy goddesses that I adore so, so much... which means - hopefully - that we can expect more. Remember the good ol' days when yer Lily Tomlin's or yer Bette Midler's could open a movie? Or, better yet - remember the Shelley Long film? I'm a firm believer that in the mid-late 1980's, there were only five genres of film - the teen horror film, the Police Academy series, the rom-com, the action-adventure and The Shelley Long film. A light-as-whipped-topping comedy with Shelley Long at its centre typically playing an impossibly quirky-albeit-not completely unfuckable heroine... a-la...

Or...

Or...

Or...

And in particular, in the greatest comedic romp ever committed to celluloid...

I'm not even kidding. TBH is magical. It's the definitive movie of my childhood. I remember actually making a participation script for it a-la The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And may I just add - how the fuck much fun would it have been to be Shelley Long posing for the poster shoots?! Like every picture, the photographer's just yelling "Be Quirkier! Quirkier! QUIRKIER!!!" - oh what it must have been like to be Shelley Long between the years of 1986 and 1991...

Alright - enough of my Shelley Long lust.

Last night I went to see Hairspray - which is in town for one week only at the Princess of Whales theatre featuring the touring cast - and by golly if it didn't turn an otherwise run-of-the-mill Tuesday upside down.

Just a delight... the production itself wasn't AMAAAZING... I was told that touring shows are rather hit-or-miss as they're non-Equity... apparently once they had a touring production of Cats up in there with an INFLATABLE SET - which I can't imagine is terribly practical for a show where the company has claws, but maybe that's just me... always with the logistics - but yeah, this production was not without its charm...

At the top of the show, following the requisite "Hairspray is set in 1962. Back in 1962, they didn't have cell phones. Please turn your cell phone off"- yeah, it's supposed to be funny - they announced that not one, not two, BUT THREE roles this particular night would be played by the understudies including those of Tracy and Edna - YEAH, PIVOTAL. This was met by an audible groan from the audience... it was HILARIOUS. Because immediately after that, the curtain came up and this bitch who's understudying Tracy has to break into "Good Morning, Baltimore" right after basically being told by hoards of people "we don't wanna see you". Nuts!

So yeah... the Tracy chick could sing just fine, but she wasn't fat by a million miles. What they do is pad the bitches down, and they just look like they've got a beer gut, but they're not the portly little outsider that Tracy's supposed to be. Edna's understudy was pretty "meh" as well...

Whatevs... Amber, Penny and Motormouth were all fierce, fierce and fiercer... However the highlight of my evening came in the form of a celebrity sighting... it's not a celebrity that will mean anything to many of you, but to the select few of you - ha-cha-cha... in attendance at last night's performance of Hairspray was none other than Eddie Stone - pictured, to the left...

Yeah, he's a gay porn star. An apparently Toronto-based one, now. Anyway - this was perhaps the weirdest celebrity sighting I've ever encountered... because it's a very different sphere that porn stars occupy in one's mind than movie stars... like the feeling of recognition I felt when I was sitting at a table next to Naomi Watts was very different than the feeling of recognition upon seeing Eddie Stone...

With Naomi Watts it was like "Holy fuck! Hollywood A-Lister! Oscar Nominee! Nikki Kidman's Bestie! FUCK!"... whereas with Eddie Stone it was like "... ... ... I've totally seen you felch before... hey, how's it goin'?" NUTS!

So that was that... Anyballs... Idol last night...

General Note: YAWN. This is thoroughly anti-climactic at this point. It's 8 million % going to be a David v. David showdown.

David Cook did absolutely nothing different with Duran Duran's "Hungry Like The Wolf", as he claimed. And anutha thang: You get 500 songs marked as the most influential songs in rock 'n roll history and you choose something by DURAN DURAN? Was Hall & Oates' "Private Eyes" not available for clearance? (Although, not gonna lie, would have been pretty awesome if someone did "Private Eyes"...) His second offering, "Baba O'Reilly" was thoroughly "meh" as well - the only reason anyone would have been excited about it was because someone was doing The Who, not because of anything that David did to it. Daniel Feinenberg of Zap2it.com said something interesting about David Cook... "nights like this remind us of just how anonymous he would have been on CBS' Rock Star"... it's very true... if there's one thing I can say about David at this point is how when he's off, or he doesn't do something exceptionally 'him', he's really off and really indistinguishable... read: he's lacking X Factor, and people are embracing him as this year's "resident rocker" - a role he occupies tidily. At least with yer Bo Bice's or your Daughtry's, whenever they did something and it wasn't exactly great, it still reeked of being them... can't say the same for David Cook...

Whereas if that's the one thing I can say about David Cook, the one thing I can say about YeYe Mercado is that she sure picked a fuck of a time to show up. Really - would it have killed you to have started this momentum say, 8 weeks ago? Well, no. Anyway - she went up first singing "Proud Mary", and although did it nowhere near the justice that Tina Turner - or for that matter, Season 2's Trenyce - did, no one can say she didn't go for it. But t'was certainly her second song, Sam Cooke's "A Change Gonna Come", that goes down in Idol history as one of the greatest 11th hour plea-bargains that might just pardon her from Idol death row. Did that make sense? Here's hoping. YeYe worked it out on this one... it's the first time I've been excited by her, and that she actually understood what she was singing about (really, it's so refreshing whenever a contestant actually understands what they're singing... such a treat)... also, her torrent of tears following Simon's rave ain't gonnna hurt either...

Jason Castro doesn't want to be there anymore and that's all there is to it. I don't really think I need to say too, too much more about it. "I Shot The Sherrif" was actually for Jason's own shits and giggles. And his substitution of "hmm hmm hmm hmm" for that verse of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" was so blatant, I'd believe it was planned. I can't really fault him though... I guess...

D'Archuleta continues to give the people what they want, which is more of the same. His "Stand By Me" was likely his best performance in weeks... His "Love Me Tender" was probably lovely, too... I wouldn't know, I fast-forwarded right through it because I assumed it was more of the same... And I really, really can't stand his overwhelmed modesty after he receives gushing from the judges... whatevs... he's finalista material...

BOTTOM 2

Given last night's performances, Jason and YeYe. Given the fact that this was always an inevitability that everyone except for the David's days being numbered, Jason and YeYe.

GOING...

Did YeYe finally do enough to stay last night? I'd say so, but who knows how the flyover states feel. Did Jason finally not do enough to keep his fangirls power-dialing for him? It's anyone's guess. My bets are on Jason going... but if not, expect Syesha to throw the shit down. I can just tell that she's the type of person who would not even feign diplomacy and just say "WHAT THE FUCK, MOTHAFUCKAZ?!"... then, in an Idol first, expect Jason to resign himself in favour of YeYe...

Yeah... Unlikely... well who knows...

In other news: I promise to blog with more frequency for precisely the next three weeks. (read: another Bitch Salad is coming up...)

--- Aj

Business Woman's Special...

Currently, I am like a pig in shit.

In that I'm just having the most pleasant afternoon ever... I'm currently smack dab in the middle of watching a double feature of "A League of Their Own" and "Romy & Michele's High School Reunion" - easily two of the greatest films ever made. And life is just lovely...

Made lovelier in that tonight, at 8:30 PM an all-new Video On Trial airs and the videos are amazing... it's gonna be NUTS.

I thought I'd try something else and let you in on something I said that will have no doubt make it onto the cutting room floor... and also put m'new camera to use, which I'm also very excited about... I'm just super-happy today, apparently... I'm cooing like an effin' newborn up in here... crazy... anyway -

So yeah.

Tonight. 8:30. MuchMusic. Check y'local listings.

I invented post-its,

--- Aj

Idol...

Hoo-hah...

Let's just get right down to it...

It's official: Paula Abdul has more Vicodin in her body than water, blood and poop combined.

What the balls was that all about last night??? Has American Idol become such a grand phenomenon that its cast members are now exempt from staying within the spacetime continuum? Because that's basically the only way that Paula's people could explain what happened last night that doesn't make her sound like KRAZY.

If you don't know what happened, do catch up:

Apparently they wanted to save time by having the judges judge all the performances at once after they all concluded - kinda like at a commencement ceremony when the stuffy, curmudgeonly principal asks you to reserve your applause until all the names have been read out (but no one ever does because fuck that).

So as t'were, each contestant came out, sang their first song, then Seacrest delivered the number sans the judges weighing in. Then at the halfway point, in what looked to be an honestly impromptu move on the producers part, they scurried the Idols back on stage and had 'half-time reactions' from the judges so far... Randy offered up standard "Just okay... the bomb!" fare, and then when it came time for Paula... well... hmmm...

Yeah.

My take on the matter is this: it's fairly common knowledge that the judges watch the Idols in rehearsal and plot out their critiques - they're not so off-the-cuff as we're lead to believe - and Paula's brain simply could wrap its head around the sudden change of plans and a combination of all those things resulted in a good-old-fashioned, juicy Abdul-brand brain fart. *pats hands together*

Although I'm sure people will be OBSESSED with speculating what sort of crooked, drug-fueled truth is behind it... was Paula drunk... are the judges reading scripted comments by the producers that are formulated before they perform... personally, I'm just happy that something eclipsed all that Miley Cyrus topless bullshit as quickly as it has.

Anyballs... moving on:

Neil Diamond Night! GO!!!

As much as I'd offer up a moustache ride to him any old day of the week, Jason Castro is fading - and at a very crucial point in the competition... kinda like how, when baking a cake, there's a crucial rising point, and if you interrupt it, y'alls cake is busted. How the fuck do I know that? I've never baked a cake in m'life. Eaten a cake - HELLS YES. Baked one -nope. I digress... His first song, "Forever In Blue Jeans", started too low and really went nowhere. This would have been just fine about 10 weeks ago - he totally could have coasted by on his goofy charm - but methinks people are getting over that. Fast. He didn't fare much better on his second number, "September Morn"... I actually can't remember a thing about it other than the fact that he said he almost choked on something before he sang it... big fat whatevs... for the first time in this competition, I didn't find that I anticipated what he had coming... hmmm...

David Cook's pretty much the only one up to tonight who doesn't make a complete mess out of himself tonight, but it's not like the roof is exactly jumpin' off the place either. His first song starts out in his problematic lower register a-la his disastrous Idol Gives Back week performance of "Innocence", and kind of evens out in the end but I didn't really notice either way. For whatever reason, I can't really remember David's second song either, but something tells me it was another serviceable effort which directly and explicitly speaks to the type of record he'll make when he wins blah blah blah... he has 0.0 things to worry about tonight...

Brooke White continues to punish us all. He first song, The Monkee's "I'm A Believer", was the type of performance you'd expect to see in front of the Alzheimer's wing of an old folk's home. She was totally someone's grand-daughter who was there to give her new guitar a whirl for nana... Her second song, "I Am, I Said", resulted in me penning a song to counter-offer entitled "You Suck, I Said". Done. GET HER OUT OF HERE!!!

David Archuleta was looking particularly Eddie Munster-esque this evening. Re: his performances... meh. At least he sang recognizable Diamond gems (redundant? yes) - which he delivered with the exact same generic R&B affectations and conviction that he's saving the homeless that he's injected into all of his performances so far. What I can't handle is when Simon commends the contestants for singing a patriotic song, calling them "smart"... see, thing of it is, these contestants - like David last night and Kristy-Lee before him - don't know that they're pandering to the fly-over states... they're just doin' what comes naturally... whatevs...

The producers' finally threw her a bone and let YeYe close out the night... singing two songs that I hadn't a clue what were... she did fine with them - she's hands-down one of the top three vocalists in the competition at this point... but the fact remains that she's so abrasive, she makes Season 3's LaToya London look like a Care Bare by comparison (in terms of accessibility)... I predict trouble with a capital "T" for YeYe...

GOING...

Bottom 2 should be Brooke and Jason. Bottom 2 probably will be Brooke and YeYe. Bottom 2 definitely will be anyone except for the David's.

Although YeYe did well-ish and was given the pimp spot last night, at her best she's a million times away from being as embraced as Jason is at his worst, so methinks he'll be safe in place of her.

I just can't imagine Brooke escaping Bottom 2 at this point. However, she's been reaping the pity vote like Anna Nicole Smith to J. Howard Marshall's fortune, so I wouldn't place any money what's'ever on her leaving us.

So yeah - bye bye YeYe.

C'est tout.

Tomorrow - to botox or not to botox.

--- Aj

Haute Topics

So...

Kind of an eventful couple of days since last I blogg'd...

To recap:

1.) Carly got the boot on Idol. I know - shock and awe. I was super pissed. I'm currently performing unspeakably horrific acts on a makeshift Brooke White Voodoo Doll I've fashioned out of a corn-cob, a pair of googly eyes and a Brillo pad.

Oh well. The saddest thing is that it is over for Carly. OVER. Like, expect to see her listed as a 'faculty member' alongside Paris Bennett, Gina Glocksen and George Huff at Idol Camp. So sad... so, so sad... not even the most gorgeous of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling could cheer me up right now...

2.) Lest there be an iota of doubt lingering in y'mind, Mariah Carey is crazy. Yet regal. She was on Good Morning America show last week and her sound fucked up somethin' fierce. I guess her track started out of synch with her music or something - all I know is that catastrophe ensued...

Of course the out-and-out highlight of that was Mariah singing "Stop singin' my part now baby" to one of her background singers. I can't EVEN tell you how much I would have paid to be a fly on the wall for the absolute chaos that Mariah reeked after that... for realsies, I'll bet one or more people died.

Then Mimi proceeded to royally sass Diane Sawyer when she reintroduced her for her next single, "Bye Bye"...

OH SNAP! OLDER LADY FIGHT!!! "Are you going to give me some indication as to when we begin?" "Here's your queue... Bye Bye! Bye Bye." Holy shit... Had they been given access to a wrestling ring at the ultra-glamorous Las Vegas Riviera sometime in the late 80's/early 90's, and the management of either Aunt Kitty or Jackie Stallone, they surely would have engaged in a smackdown so brutal it would make this classic bout betwixt G.L.O.W. staples Attache and Tammy Jones look like a walk in the park.

Yes. I'm still thoroughly obsessed with The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Deal with it.

3.) Miley Cyrus needs to fuck off. In fact, the entire Cyrus machine needs to fuck off. Hot hot hot button issue of sorts: Miley Cyrus posed for an 'arty' Vanity Fair layout shot by renowned photographix Annie Leibovitz that resulted in a 'topless' shot that's causing all sorts of stir.

I wouldn't really call that topless... unless you cum in y'pants over bare shoulders (and if y'do, God love ya), I don't really see what the HUGE FUCKING DEAL that everyone's making about it is, but whatevs. I'm kinda with the majority of people who find that picture of her wearin' the hip-huggers nestled in her father - Billy Ray Cyrus's - crotch a bit more disturbing... but that's just me.

Anyway - an uproar resulted from her mostly tween-slinging, mostly-Middle-American fan base and a desperate apology was released immediately, claiming that Miley was "manipulated" by Leibovitz and Vanity Fair and she was "embarrassed" by this. Vanity Fair begs to differ: apparently Miley's handlers from Disney and parents were on set for the entire she-bang and gave approval to each and every frame.

This is all bullshit. It is all a good old fashioned case of a good old fashioned Prosti-Tot wanting to look and act like the older kids... unfortunately, it's not conducive to her image - the very image that's made her the 900 billion or so dollars that she's worth - so it's time to backpedal at the speed of light. It was a retarded, hypocritical, self-indulgent move on her part and that's all there is to it.

4.) The TTC can mow down on my taint.

For those of you in the glorious berg of Toronto this past weekend, you would have noticed that there was an impromptu strike by the Toronto Transit Commission, or TTC. Which means that the city was virtually paralyzed over the weekend.

I had absolutely no idea that this shit was going to go down, so imagine my surprise Friday night to find nary a streetcar in sight to carry me home from wherever the fuck I was hanging out on Queen West. 25 fucking dollars later, I'm home.

Apparently this strike was over siding with maintenance workers, who were seeing work meant for them contracted out to the original manufacturer of the buses or some shit. By Sunday evening they were forced back to work by legislature or something, but their mouthpiece - Bob "God Complex" Kinnear - insists that they're still decidedly unhappy. What's more, they're not appreciating the hostility from passengers who are unhappy that they're striking (for real... this was an actual statement issued...)

Here's my take on it: YOU DRIVE A FUCKING BUS ALL DAY AND MAKE OFF LIKE VIKINGS (with benefits).

I swear to fuck, you motherfuckers all need a swift kick in the box. Does it not occur to your that teacher's make less than you, face the exact same dangers and work about 9 times harder? Or nurses? Or cab drivers - the cab driver I had on Friday night said he was punched in the back of the head the very previous week... anyway - bottom line... we all have unpleasantness we need to deal with on the job. So either start racially profiling passengers of suck it the fuck up!

Monday morning, I went up to the first TTC attendant I could find - a woman working at Broadview station - and asked her how I could apply to the TTC. Because I'd really love a job that I could just pick and choose to come into.

Anyway... I'm hoping it becomes an essential service because A.) IT IS and B.) It'll finally stick a cork in the constant shitstorm they're serving us indefinitely. That'd be sweet.

Anyballs...

--- Aj