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I was having coffee and there was one of those annoying screens with photos of news with captions, stock info, and several different scrolls of infotainment feed going by. Suddenly an item listed from E! online: Jimmy Kimmel buys Gary Coleman’s pants. Excuse me??
Turns out Gary Coleman, using an assumed Ebay name, auctioned off a pair of his pants on Ebay. The winning bid was… wait for it…$400,000. Wow! But the buyer never paid. Somehow Jimmy Kimmel swooped in and bought them for the discounted price of only $500. They are a pair of size 12XL-Regular Gap Kids sweats.
This is so sad on so many levels. Gary Coleman needs money. He’s selling off his pants. His pants people! Someone considered paying almost half a mil for them, and then Jimmy Kimmel spent half a grand. And the saddest part of all, Gary Coleman wears Gap Kids.
Don’t you hate it when you run into some other kid in the school yard wearing the same thing as you?
I read today on Hoover Factory that Florent may close! Gasp! Non Merci! I did a little research, and acording to Eater, there does seem to be grave danger. Greed and the hip factor of the Meat Packing district being the main factors. Gah! Without Florent the Meat Packing district would never have gotten hot in the first place. Though I also blame Michelle Jean and Oriont, the restaurant that almost was.
Save Florent from the greedy bastards!!
I did a phone interview with Ed Westwick, Gossip Girl’s Chuck Bass. It’s posted over on the FanLib blog. Check check check it out. Sorry, I thought I was a Beastie Boy for a second there.
I am in love with the commercial for this year’s Westminster Dog Show. The song, “She’s Like the Wind,” plays over all these “fashion” shots of dogs, very glamorous, very romanticized. It’s terribly 70’s Cover Girl, hair blowing in the wind, Cheryl Tiegs/Suzy Chaffe. I can’t find the link to post it, boo, but I’ll keep looking, maybe someone will upload it to YouTube. Look out for it on TV, it’s airing a lot on USA – yes during Law and Order, what? The dog show is this coming Monday night.
Amazing, odd trivia, just looked up She’s Like the Wind, did you know it was written by Swayze? Can this be true?
It’s very sad about Heath Ledger. How do we group these deaths? Are Vampira and Suzanne Pleshette waiting for a third? Does this mean another heart throb will fill the vacancy left in the threesome of Renfro, Ledger, and ____?
One of the things I do, as a New Yorker living in LA, to make me feel connected with home and my family who are still there, is pay an extra three dollars a month to DirecTV to get the East Coast feed of ABC. So randomly, in the middle of the night, or whenever, I’ll watch local ABC news out of New York; it’s so rewarding, not only do I get to feel relieved I’m not suffering through winter (it’s only in the 20’s today), but I also get to see odd, “only in New York” moments.
A building in Williamsberg, Bklyn, was evacuated on Sunday by FDNY. Not only did they have sprinkler and loft conversion violations, but there was an illegal Matzo factory in the basement. Awesome. Illegal Matzo, completely undocumented, no prescriptions needed; just a good hook up.
This raid is just another example of New York City’s unfair treatment of the Jews.
Maila Nurmi, Vampira, who starred in Ed Woods‘ Plan Nine From Outer Space, among others, died last week; she was 86. Nurmi, who modeled her character of Vampira on Charles Addams’ Morticia, was in turn the inspiration for Elvira. Nurmi hosted horror films on TV in LA in the 50’s and was a true camp queen.
I raise my flask and lower my fake lashes, and drink to you, Maila. I say we all wear long, black, slinky, low-cut clothes this week. Now where did I put that push-up bra?
Spotted last night at Dolce, Justine Bateman; she looks good, super cute and smiley; her hair is much better now. She came into the restaurant years ago, when it first opened and we were getting lots of celebs. I happened to be standing at the front podium when she entered, and while i didn’t know who she was, she was startlingly familiar. I asked her if we’d gone to high school together or camp. She said no, brusquely. I was taken aback, asked how she could be so sure, explained I’d been to high school on both coasts, but she was adamant. Fine. So I went to Mike “Boogie” Malin and asked if he knew who she was; he said yes, Justine Bateman. Ah ha! Malory, I knew I knew her in high school!
American Idol started last night, and it renewed my desire for an end to the writers’ strike. Not because it’s left us with reality dreck, but because I want to see Poehler do her Paula Abdul impression. The first hour brought me to tears because Americans are fat and sad.
Finally, OJ’s had his bail doubled for contacting a co-defendant while in jail. It’s amazing that some people never think the rules apply to them. They only don’t apply to me. Stupid people.
In Martha’s Home Housekeeping Book, in the chapter on how to properly keep the room in your home devoted to your library (ha) clean, she says that once a year you should take all the books down, and dust the spines and covers and the shelves. Well, what started out as a simple afternoon activity became a two day project when I realized that my main bookshelf was dangerously dry. I actually felt bad for the poor thing.
So, I took everything off the shelves, organizing the books into groups as I went, then took out all the removable shelves. Using Butcher’s Wax Boston Polish Amber Paste Wax – which I had to special order last year, because it’s the shit and I couldn’t find it in LA – I waxed and buffed the shelves and left them to dry for several hours. Then I alphabetized the books within their groups and re-shelved them. I also took the opportunity to carefully clean and organize random chazzerai and to winnow out some of the clutter. Read the rest of this entry »
I was wondering, is the Latin word for Smother, Smater?
It’s official, no Golden Globes this year, just an announcement to the press of the winners. I think it’s great that SAG is supporting the WGA, but everybody is so busy looking at the writers’ wallets, that they’re not seeing who this latest move affects in a fiduciary manner: the red carpet “journalists,” the fashion houses, and the paparazzi. I ask now for a moment of consideration for all those who make a living off of the self-congratulatory awards-show juggernaut.
And now you are free to resume your life, knowing that are at least three hours this year that you won’t waste wondering who dressed Nicole.
Charlie Wilson’s War is mostly an entertaining, funny movie, and it’s a pleasure to see Tom Hanks‘ return to lighter fare. Following the true story of one congressman’s fight to help the Afghanis fight the Soviets in the early 80’s, the movie starts out as a light, entertaining, “swinging” romp, and then loses its way in the last quarter.
Hanks is good time guy Charlie Wilson: lush, womanizer, and congressman. He’s a yes man who’s breezing his way through congress doing just what he must to remain in office. Then he learns about the slaughter of the Afghani people by the Soviets and, at the same time that he’s fighting allegations of drug use in a Las Vegas hotel room (side note here, Rudy Giuliani was the prosecutor of the case), he decides undertake to solve the problem in Afghanistan.
Once Hanks has met up with Julia Roberts and the superb Phillip Seymour Hoffman (dare I say the best actor of his generation?), he convinces congress to continue increasing the defense spending in Afghanistan, until they can afford anti-aircraft guns. Okay, at this point in the film we’ve seen the refugee camps and we have sympathy for the Afghanis, but now we see stats about Soviet planes shot down with weapons we gave the Afgahnis, and we’re supposed to feel triumphant. What I felt was conflicted. On the one hand I was into the movie and the Soviets were bad, on the other, this is what created the situation we’re in with the Taliban. It was a very strange thing.
Performance-wise, as previously stated, it was terrific fun to see Hanks in a lighthearted role; it seems like years since he’s done a comedy. Unfortunately, some comic actors stop doing comedies when they become stars, I don’t know why. It’s easy to forget, with the success of films like Philadelphia and Cast Away, and their ilk, that Hanks started out in comedy: Bosom Buddies, Bachelor Party, and Big to alliteratively name a few.

Julia Roberts does her best with a one dimensional role. The woman behind the man, I wanted to learn more about Joanne Herring; unfortunately, the film did nothing to fill in the blanks. Amy Adams was charming, as always, in a supporting role. The real reason to see this though is Hanks and Hoffman together. What great chemistry they have; a few more scenes together and this might be considered a buddy pic.
This is not necessarily a big screen film; you may as well wait for DVD if you haven’t already shelled out the bucks at the box office.
