RIP, Crybaby

I always thought Johnny Depp's looks would carry him through to the rest of his career, kind of like Paul Newman. But I guess not.

PS: Some assorted horrendous looks Johnny Depp has worn over the years.







God, what a nerdlinger. I guess he has been in a downworld spiral for years. It seems like that last photo is of a wax version of him, I don't know.

I definitely prefer the dandy/greaser look to the Chris Angel/Dave Navarro/90's steampunk gypsy look he currently fancies.

Remember when Johnny Depp wasn't really famous anymore and then after Pirates of the Caribbean he got a new lease on fame, kind of like Robert Downey Junior and John Travolta, even though they all make more sense in their ingenue years?

Mary's Musings: Ten-year old Steve Martin fans, RomComs are for Losers, etc.

As a kid, I loved comedy. My main favorites were Bill Murray and Steve Martin, whose dry wit I both related to and adored. I was also a fan of John Candy, another comedian I felt I grew up with. I loved The Three Amigos (something tells me this movie would be significantly less watchable as an adult) Ghostbusters, Wayne's World, the non-corny parts of Father of the Bride 1 & 2 and L.A. Story, Twins starring Danny Devito and Arnold Scwarzenagger (I also have my doubts about that one holding up) and the work of Leslie Nielsen. Many of these movie were copied for me from video-store tapes to VHS tapes, and when the FBI warning would flash on the screen I would be terrified, anticipating a team of FBI agents breaking into my home and seizing my copy of Joe Vs. The Volcano as I watched it for the twenty-second time.

The Naked Gun series, as well as Hot Shots 1 & 2 were movies I rushed to see in theaters. My family saw Naked Gun 33 and 1/3 while traveling through Europe. We first chose to see it in England, but the British wouldn't let me see it as a ten year old, though I was with my parents. (Maybe because of the scathing Queen Elizabeth parodies such as this one?) We ended up seeing it in the formerly communist city of Prague, Czechoslovakia, in an extremely Soviet-style, all-cement movie theater. The theater creepily echoed the cement apartment we were staying in, where the lights would shut off if you didn't make it fast enough down the hallway, and at the end of the hallway, we were rewarded with an always ajar-door with red stuff on it leading to the apartment next to ours, where Czech people had violent domestic arguments. These terrifying settings did not spoil my enjoyment of the movie, which I loved. And Anna Nicole was in it, and I thought she was so beautiful. I also selected it as a film to watch at the very last birthday party I remember having, age ten or eleven, a sleepover where I felt alternately embarrassed at the crassness of my selection and annoyance that people weren't watching it.

I also remember when Wayne's World came out. It was really exciting. I was eight, and my mother and I went to see it, but we got there really late and missed the first half, so we stayed in the theater to re-watch it. I later received free or cheap copies of both Wayne's World and the equally excellent Addams Family on VHS from McDonalds as a pack. What a combo!

On a more 90's note, I enjoyed Tommy Boy and the works of Adam Sandler. I loved Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. Saturday Night Live as one and a half hours of pure enjoyment. At the end, when the cast waves goodbye and the credits roll, I would feel a great loss. It seemed extra sad because of the dramatic farewell, and I wished I was up there on that stage with my fellow hilarious castmates, signing off at the end of another great show. I didn't have cable, so there were no reruns. In vain, I would stay up, hoping something good would be on. I usually ended up watching the beginning of Showtime at The Apollo, which didn't really satisfy, just as Soul Train or Professional Wrestling would come on after cartoons and I'd watch it much more out of desperation that enjoyment.

Some of these movies have certainly held up- Bill Murray's Groundhog Day (besides Andy McDowell)/Ghostbusters 1 & 2/What About Bob? type movies are light years better than all his stupid mopey Wes Anderson/Jim Jarmusch/Sofia Coppolla roles. Dumb and Dumber is another I will not hesitate to watch if it happens to be on TV, and obviously the aforementioned Wayne's World and The Addams Family are some of the Greatest Films Ever Made. I still like Seinfeld, a middle-school age obsession neatly fitting in with my other dorky passions.

I think most comedy is really age-appropriate only for a precocious nine-year-old, whereas now the retard tingles you get after watching Michael Cera stammer his way through the same movie for the eighteenth time tend to overwhelm any "funny" aspects the movie promises to contain. Luckily, the trend of wacky sports movie died (Thank god the one starring Andy Samburg bombed) but looking at the comedies still set to be released in 2010, it doesn't look pretty. More romcoms starring Kristen Bell, and then more movies starring Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd as a duo, and then Owen Wilson is the live-action Marmaduke movie. Looks like the studios are taking some crazy, creative chances yet again!

Most comedies are geared toward men. Comedies geared towards women are called "romantic comedies," but they're not really comedies. Romantic comedies are not funny. I'm tired of women on feminist blogs being like, "We have to stop criticizing romantic comedies because they're for and about women. There's no shame in loving romantic comedy. Why aren't people ashamed of action movies instead?" Romantic comedies are insulting to women, that's why. The very format of a pathetic fairy-tale romance combined with the forced wacky hijinks of polite society makes me want to kill myself. They are simultaneously boring and embarrassing. They are almost always about women feeling stupid/ugly/single/uncool/bad about themselves. The women are never crass and funny. I think Tina Fey can be very funny, but to me 30 Rock is just like a romantic comedy- it's about hating herself (Like Chelsea Handler, I often get the feeling Tina Fey actually hates all women.)

The last time I regularly watched romantic comedies was in middle school, when friends would take me to see them. Even then, I cringed. I thought about selecting the The Wedding Singer as a movie to see for my birthday party, but after the final scene, wherein Adam Sandler sings a song called "I Want to Grow Old With You" to a very non-80's looking Drew Barrymore, I was glad I hadn't. It made me uncomfortable to watch such such treacle, and it still does.

Sure, action movies are retarded too, but they are exciting and exhilarating, and not always based on some series of horrible, cutesy, faux pas. I don't know how you can compare an entire yacht blowing up or someone getting stabbed in the face with some girl worrying whether she is too fat for her date with Hugh Grant. Only one of these scenarios should be fulfilling some kind of primal urge.

A lot of these modern, "I Love You, Man" style comedies kind of blur the line between romantic comedies and wacky retard comedies, both because the men in them appear to be in long-term, committed relationships with their male friends, and because they also have to resolve a problem with their nagging but inexplicably hot wives or girlfriends. Plus, they are always talking about their feelings. So many women seem to have embraced these kind of comedies, even laboring under the delusion that the men who star in them are attractive and sexually appealing due to their "comedic" "talents." I recently heard a young woman say she would have sex with Jonah Hill if he asked her to. Do you think, fifteen years ago, a lot of guys would be like, "Hey, she's such a great comedian, I'd have sex with Roseanne, wouldn't you?" Talk about a double standard.I mean, it would be cool if a guy said that in a way the opposite would never, ever be cool.

Also, I know I've been ranting a long time now, but I also am so sick of the faux-documentary style format I want to puke. It had already been perfected with the British The Office, some Christopher Guest movies, and Arrested Development, but, instead of thinking of something new, everyone just jumped on the bandwagon to play out a bunch of third-rate versions until it looks really dated and everyone hates it. I feel like I am the only person on earth to hate Steve Carrel and the U.S. The Office. The last commercial I saw for it promised Jim and Pam or whatever their names are having a baby and they were having a baby special episode! Way to stay true to the dry, realistic, melancholy spirit of the original, American colonialist TV producers!

Needless to say, I also hate Judd Apatow and think he directed all the most sexist, trite parts of Freaks and Geeks, which he wrongfully gets credit for and is the greatest show ever.

In conclusion, it's really hard to find funny comedies, and if you want to get high and watch a retarded comedy you haven't seen, please check out Spring Breakdown, starring Amy Poehler, Rachael Dratch, and Parker Posey, which manages to be feminist without being patronizing (alright, I can't recommend the scenes with Amer Tamblyn, but still, the movie is good.) If you are like, "Why is Jonah Hill in all these movies but these famous, established female comedians can't get their much funnier comedy released?", obviously the answer is the patriarchy, and I guess that is also the answer to the question about why I never watched any female-driven comedies or remember liking an female comedians, but we all know that.

I Am Sick of Looking at this Bitch

Not that it really matters, but I am sick of looking at the face of Gerard Butler. Everyone keeps talking about how handsome and manly he is, but are they seeing the same face that I am? He looks like he got punched in the face one too many times. I hate how it's fine for male actors to have squashed noses and faces because it looks like they got in lots of sexy, masculine fights, but women can't even have a bump on their nose.

Speaking of squashed faces/being hideously ugly, remember Shane West, who played Darby Crash in that little-seen Germs biopic? Really he should have been in a Sum 41 biopic, as "Dereyk Wibley", ultra-talented lead singer and ex-husband of Avril Lavigne. Shane West is another one people thought was cute in high school, and I was like, "Him? That Shane West?" I think they are seceretly the same person, much like David Cross and Corey Kennedy. Anyway, if Hollywood is calling, I'm ready to answer: yes, I will direct the biopic of the life of Dereyk Whibley.

It's hard to pick which one is more attractive. Or more punk rock!

Mary's Musings: I Liked It, I Am Sick of Looking at this Bitch, and More!

Issue One: Here is a dress Jezebel hated on as "one of the worst of the year." Whatever! I think this dress is cool. It looks kind of like your everyday cocktail dress crossed with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. It's special and weird!

This, on the other hand, they loooved. It was one of the "best of the year." This is like the kind of dress you might look cool in when you are seventy years old and you're a grand dame type with an elegant and stately style, but if you're 23 or what this Olsen is (God, remember the Olsens??? Everyone was so obsessed with them!) you are just boring and safe as hell. Much like Anne Hathaway in this dress:
What a bunch of boring crap! I'm so sick of rewarding celebrities for wearing a $12,000 gown their stylist picked out for them. Except for the Rhianna dress in there, nothing considered "great" is risky, inventive, unique, or strays from the typical model. I love how celebrities won't even wear necklaces or jewelery half the time because they are so intent on looking classy.


Issue Two:
What the fuck is up with these new cell phone commercials starring an unforgivably bloated Luke Wilson? Who's like, "Well, if fat 'n frumpy Luke Wilson wants me to change my coverage, I will!" I remember when I was a child, and I saw stuff on TV and craved it intensely (once I made my mom buy me this red sugar goo that you were supposed to squeeze onto your oatmeal to make fun shapes- needless to say the goo just kind of smeared and melted everywhere, and I think I learned a valuable lesson.) Anyway, I would love to visit an alternate reality when female stars show up looking fat and disheveled and shilling something on a TV commercials and no one bats an eye.




Issue Three:
Hey, guess what? You suck, Tim Burton. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory sucked, Sweeney Todd sucked, Big Fish sucked (I watched this in college with my new-at-the-time roommates and they all cried at the end and I was like "WTF?") , Corpse Bride looked like it sucked, and your new obsession with CGI really sucks, because at least you used to be all about this unique, hand crafted, stylized aesthetic and this preview looks like a video game. Also, much of this aesthetic has become totally cliche- ie, of all the stupid Nightmare Before Christmas plastic crap made for pez Hot Topic teens. Also, Alice is a little girl, not sexy babe with her dress half torn off. I do like Beatlejuice, but that was a long time ago!

Issue Four:
Also, you suck, Michael Jackson. I am so sick of hearing Michael Jackson songs in every place and context. It was bad enough when it was just a hipster party staple, but now you can't escape it anywhere. Of course, there are only like five songs anybody will even play, and no one ever even plays, like, Man in the Mirror. Michael Jackson obviously had a huge cultural impact and is an icon and blah blah blah, but musically those songs aren't anything special. And everyone is so intent on claiming Michael Jackson as their own, like playing Billie Jean at a bar for the five hundredth time is really going to blow everyone away.


Issue Five:
You know what else sucks? "Remixed" old Christmas songs that are like Bing Crosby's voice going "Chestnuts roasting- roasting- roasting- beep bloop boop oonz oonz oonz." It's such a travesty! I hate the modern assumption that no one has enough of an attention span to listen to something slow and complete that doesn't jump or cut into something after five seconds.

The Hills Vs. the City Vs. The Bad Girls Club

As many of my readers know, I really hate The Hills. If I were to choose between that show and another, also mostly semi-scripted "reality" show about women in their early twenties, my choice, by far, would be the always-excellent The Bad Girls Club (TBGC), on Oxygen.

Here are some reasons why!

1. The Hills is boring and nothing happens on it. Seriously, nothing happens. It's as boring as real life but at least real life is actually happening, but this show is just a bunch of bitches being like, "Justin Bobby texted me...I'm so upset," and the other one being like, "LA fashion week that no one cares about anyway because it's LA fashion week is coming up and I'm supposed to put a belt on a model within the space of six hours." Who cares? No one! Then we have The City, which is the same format as The Hills because it's a spin-off, but it's set in fabulous NYC so everything is really "chic" and "urban" and they "go" to "art openings".

2. The ladies of The Hills look like crap. I would take the spandex mini dresses, huge hair, large earrings and giant silver shoes of the bad girls over the bland sacks The Hills/City crew are regularly seen in.

Check out the Bad Girls style! Trashy exuberance, i call it!

3. The Hills reinforces female stereotypes, whereas TBGC reinforces male stereotypes, but stars women- thus rejecting female stereotypes! It's not that the bad girls never backstab and gossip, but that whole aspect really takes a backseat to them establishing dominance in a stereotypically male fashion, whether the girls are knocking down someone at a club for looking at them funny or challenging someone else to a fight. There's always a lot of screaming to "Bring it!" on - quite a contrast to the classic passive-aggressive "Mean Girls" style The Hills endorses.

We may recall Andrea, a latecomer to the bad girl house on Season 2, who basically got challenged by the rest of the ladies for not being enough of a bad girl/a weak anorexic, and endured a lot of her housemates' screaming and threats for no reason. ("You're a moron and food tastes good!" yelled one, notably.) Not soon after, Andrea left the house, having been chased out because she couldn't, you know, take the hazing ritual she was being subjected to. And the rest of the bad girls were like, "We don't know what's up with her! I guess she's not a bad girl! She couldn't take it!"

5. Race and class are often discussed on TBGC. "Whathat?" sayeth Whitney, who may be functionally retarded, no? I'm not going to pretend TBGC is, like, intent on helping and/or positive for women or anything (I'm talking about reality TV here!) but many episodes have the stars discussing their economic and racial backgrounds and how they are shaped by them. On The Hills, everyone is from the exact same background, which is that of an orphan raised by the studio. In Laguna Beach.

4. No one, to my knowledge, has ever pushed anyone into a pool on The Hills, or yanked out someone's weave, or peed in the kitchen sink. Not once. In TBGC, everyone knows the big rule is that they get sent home of they actually physically assault anyone else on the show. But is there even a reason for such a rule on The Hills? No.

Vs:

5. The men on TBGC a mere props, clearly introduced by the show with BS and/or porn jobs like "party promoter", "surf instructor", "poolboy", "handyman", and "stripper." There are some episodes that revolve around men, but they're mostly there for the bad girls to have sex with, like bunnies in their own personal Playboy mansion. No fucking Spencer types with faces too small for their heads further ruining their hopeless lives, dude!

In conclusion, fuck The Hills!!!!! Especially Lauren Conrad and especially all the other boring-ass skanks on that show!

Weak Ass Halloween Costumes and the "Celebrities" Who Wear Them

So lately I have not really had any time to post, or call anyone back, or do anything for some reason. But I'm trying to keep up a better posting schedule, and then I thought, how about another post about how I hate Lauren Conrad, but this time, focusing on her crappy Halloween costume? How about, in fact, changing the name of this blog to ihatelaurenconrad.blogspot.com? Anyway, nice "flapper" outfit! Is it really so hard to put on period makeup and hair and get something that actually resembles a dress from the 20's? No, it's not. Especially when you have makeup artists and millions of dollars (for some reason) at your disposal. She looks like she got the costume from the dress-up bin at the Ye Olde Tyme Photo Booth down at the Six Flags. She probably doesn't even know what a flapper is. To illustrate, below is one of my favorite photos of Clara Bow. Who knew they had gold slouch boots in the 20's?

On the plus/non-hating Lauren Conrad side, one of my favorite bloggers, the aforementioned Tricia Royal of Bits and Bobbins, posted my outfit photo on her wardobe_remixers of the week post. Thanks! And if you don't know who I am, perhaps it will be fun to guess based on various withering comments I've made on this blog!

Joan Rivers Is Alright

It is shocking- simply shocking that Ms. Lauren "LC" Conrad has not only maintained her level of fame from when I made a post about hating her an entire year-ish ago, but her fame level has actually risen. MTV's The Hills really feeds into our culture's obsession both with faux-reality TV and the blandest and shallowest of female archetypes. Whereas once MTV had shows like Daria and played Hole videos, today it's a horrifying amalgamation of My Super Sweet Sixteen, Katy Perry's astoundingly weak-ass take on retro glamour, the botoxed 22-year olds of The Hills and beyond, and the occasional Hannah Montana visit. Nice outfit, LC! Real unique!



Just like your fashion line, which we can see an image of to the right. Loving that sag! It must have taken a lot of hard work to design this one.

All I have to say is, may god strike down anyone who buys anything from any celebrity fashion line, except the Joan Rivers line on QVC (For some reason, my mom got in all this Joan Rivers brand jewelery into her store, and people would look at it and then look at the box and be like, "Joan Rivers?" and I wasn't really sure if I should pretend it was a different Joan Rivers or not. It was not a different Joan Rivers.)

On the plus side, I'm enjoying the photo of Beyonce below. She is bringing it in a way it so rarely brought in today's dire media landscape. Let's have a little more of this and a little less of this, please.

The Hollywood Face

Jesus Christ. I propose we start taxing cosmetic surgery procedures 50% more and put the money into self-esteem raising programs for young girls

Edited to add: Heidi "I am sick of looking at this bitch" Montag.