newVideoPlayer("hulksmom_jezebel.flv", 463, 387,"");This clip is from an old episode of Hogan Knows Bestthat re-aired today featuring Hulk Hogan's mother Ruth, who she is nothing short of awesome. Her favorite restaurant is Hooters, she likes low-cut tops from Fashion Bug, and she doesn't take shit from anyone. Happy Easter, everyone.
Have you been wondering, like, where the hell has Hillary gone? What with all the gubernatorial humping and the Bible thumping and the AIDS conspiracy theorizing and the grandmother/bus/throwundering and the fifth anniversary of the war and the "meh" reaction to the public unveiling of her schedule for the entirety of the nineties, you'd think she had, like, left the race! Well, she kind of has. Her own people are giving her a 10% shot at winning the primary. "The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe." [Politico]In other words, when her campaign says the Richardson endorsement was "insignificant", they are pretty much on the money. [CNN]But what kind of job did it buy him? [Wonkette]Whatever, TAY ZONDAY is back in the news. [Wired]China released a list of 21 most wanted endangerers of national security. They have mustaches and carry swords. [WSJ]Why is this State Department bullshit such a big deal? Doesn't anyone think, like, you know, it would be kind of cool to see where Barack Obama traveled back when he went by the name "Barry" and a bunch of other countries went by old names like "Rhodesia" andsuch? Sayin. [Wash Post]Why does everyone love David Paterson even though he's a crooked womanizer also? I just assumed, "because it is a lot tougher to pull off being a crooked womanizer when you are blind" but actually it turns out that he is just generally a nice guy. [Wash Post]You don't hear about Spain being powerful much anymore but as it turns out they are the secret forces running professional basketball. [WSJ]Speaking of the Euros France is getting rid of some of its nukes. [BBC News]Abigal Taylor, a 6-year-old girl who had a rare intestine transplant surgery after being disemboweled in a freak pool accident last June, died. [CNN]Oh my God Jim Newell you are funny sometimes; why am I old enough to be your typical white grandmother? [Wonkette]The Republican attack plan for Obama. [Salon]You can still run for mayor after being registered as a sex offender, you are just probably not going to win. [Houston Chronicle]Speaking of attacks, this lady may not lookscary, but watch out for her outside certain tamer amusement park rides. [Fox News]When you live in New York you sometimes forget that you are missing out on anything but here, I just found something. [Very Small Array]
Around this time of the year, the little marshmallow birds know as Peeps suddenly surface. Over on Babble.com, you can watch five funny and disturbing videos starring Peeps: Peeps in a microwave; Peeps replacing humans in the movie Jaws; Office Peeps, loosely based on Office Space; Peeps being blown up and, of course, more Peeps in a microwave. (Click the picture to watch 3 Peeps be gruesomely disfigured in a microwave.) [Babble]
Past Fashion: Easter outfits!!!Slut Machine returned from vacation and brought back some advice about buttcracks.You told us what happens to your buttcracks -- and all your other lady bits -- when you are with child.(Pssst: you pee your pants a lot)We learned about man partstoo.Younger menhave the best man parts!We bemoanedthe stupidity of Bush's spokesjerk, Dana Perino.You know who else was a jerk this week? Dear Abby.Is Dear Abby a better writer than Tori Spelling?We bet Tori gives better advice.It looks like Renee Zellweger is on goofballs.Or maybe she just needs a good rogering with an unassuming household item.So take your magic coochiesand put them to good use this weekend. You're worth it!
Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnickrereads Madeleine L'Engle's 1963 novel 'The Moon By Night,' in which Vicky Austin goes camping and gets to know boys from A to Z."Vicky!"It was John's voice and he was calling for me. I supposed somewhere on the inside of my mind I realized it, but with the outside of my mind all I heard was the constant crying of sea gulls and the incoming boom of breakers.Don't buy into the party of unity: When it's comes to Madeleine L'Engle, you're either a Meg, Polly, or Vicky girl. (NO ONE is Camilla. And whatever, Maggies -- you're deliberately being provoking.) For those of you rusty on the trois dames of L'Engle's works, Meg is, OF COURSE, Meg Murray, of A Wrinkle in Timefame, while Polly (Polyhymnia) is her red-headed daughter of the excellent Dragons in the Watersaction. Vicky is Vicky Austin, of Meet the Austins, two kinds of awkward, three kinds of innocent, and strangely appealing for a fourteen-year-old given to frequent bouts of vigorous prayer.The Moon By Nightis the second in the Austin family trilogy, and when we catch up with Vicky, she's just exited the ugly duckling stage, where all her "sticky-out bones and unmanageable hair seem to come to some sort of agreement." (Exiting the awkward stage, as we have learned, is a narratively advantageous time to launch a novel, AS WE CAN NOW GET A LOVE INTEREST OR POSSIBLY TWO IN THE MIX. More on that soon.)The Austin family -- of the kindly physician father, the lovely stay-at-home mother, the older, supersmart brother, John, the pretty youngest daughter, Suzy, the surprise child, Rob, and Vicky in the middle -- have just married off Vicky's mother's best friend to her uncle, deposited their foster daughter, Maggie, with the happy couple, and headed off on a camping trip across the country, bearing their usual Austin cheer with them:"When we reached the mainland we headed for a parkway and started playing the alphabet game. You know, you divide up by who's sitting on which side of the car, and you have to find the letters of the alphabet, in order, one by one, on the signs. John and Daddy and Suzy were way ahead until they came to Q, and then Mother and Rob and I caught up with them and won. Then we played Animal Rummy, and Rob saw a white horse and won that. And of course we sang. We always do a lot of singing." Approximately every 10 pages, to be precise. This level of saccharine should of course be unendurable, but Vicky's innocence is the only acceptable kind. In L'Engle's world, there's no virtue in innocence, only a testing ground for what will happen when real choice is at stake. (Like the whole evil starfish consortium in Dragons in the Waters! Sorry.) There are only a few flavors of childhood in L'Engle: precocious, thoughtless, and as-yet-unformed, all trying to contend with what they can't understand but know they must master. In short, the Austin family still all reads in the campground together at bedtime: but they read A Connecticut Yankee.Vicky, of course, is in the as-yet-unformed camp, every experience and piece of knowledge and opportunity to feel all the more a meteor hurtling widely while all around her and snug in tight orbits:"John [is] terrifically intelligent, but not a bit of a grind. I mean, he just comes home from school and sits down and gets his homework done in half the time it takes me to do mine. He's good at sports, too, the kind you can do with glasses on, like basketball and track. As far as I can see he's good at just about everything, I'm proud of him, sure, but sometimes I feel, well, just kind of said, because I can't ever hope to be the kind of person John is. I don't even know what I want to be yet." No worries, sweets. That's why you get the trilogy! This ties in, of course, to L'Engle's vision of Christianity, one even a Spaghetti-Monster-fearing atheist might have a difficult time quarreling with, filled as it is with thoughtful analysis of one's role and a aggressive rejection of piety voiced by almost every major character. (Choice excerpt, from Vicky's uncle: "The minute anybody stars telling you what God thinks, or why he does such and such, beware.")In fact, the whole Christianity thing is so sublimated you are mostly concentrated, like Vicky, on GETTING TO THE BOY STUFF. This occurs right after the family has settled in at one of their first campgrounds and Daddy fights off a hood because he, you know, KNOWS JUDO.Suzy asked, "Daddy, weren't you scared?""I didn't like it," Daddy said, "but most hoodlums are cowards when it comes to a showdown. They're only brave when they think you're afraid of them. Now don't let this spoil our trip, and don't let it spoil Tennessee.""Are we to be frightened of our teen-agers?" Mother asked bitterly. "Has it come to that?""Vicky and I are teen-agers," John said. "You can't blame teen-agers any more than you can Tennessee. There are dopy fringe elements in every group. I wrote a paper on it for Social Studies."Sorry, I drifted off for a second, but is it...ZACH! Thank God, it's ZACHARY GREY! Like, riding up in a big black car into the campground and Vicky's life NOW!!! Zachary of very pale skin and black hair and polo shirt and totally rich parents and bad-boy vibe! Zach who is, in Vicky's words, "really pretty spectacular."Because, how awesome is it that you're on a vacation and are finally pretty and your parents are nice but constantly making you sing and you kind of like it but ISN'T ANYTHING ELSE GOING TO EVER HAPPEN TO ME and the guy across the way full STROLLS UP, ASKS YOU OUT, and is a real person, filled with contradictions, enough that your family totally hates him on sight, even though though he has his virtues and not just some weird guy trying to sleep with you:"You've got an interesting face, Vicky," Zachary said as we walked back towards our tent. "Not pretty-pretty, but there's something more. And a darned good figure. I'd say something other than darned only I might shock little unhatched you.""I'm not so unhatched as all that.""No?""No.""I'll bet you nothing's happened to you all your life long. Your meals have always been put in front of you and if you skin your little knee you can run crying to Mommie and Poppie and they'll kiss it and make everything all right."Well, maybe I didn't have very much experience so far. But I was on my way to getting it.PREACH IT, SISTER! But why is Zach such an avatar of experience? Because, as we learn, he, like many of a young poet before him, suffers from rheumatic fever, leaving him with the dramatic coloring and disposition Vicky adores -- and that drives her family to try to expel him like a foreign agent. ("This camping trip's a family affair, Vicky.")What's most fascinating about L'Engle is how she's able to weave the actual events of the trip with great moral quandaries to the extent that an adult can, with a stretch, almost read them as parables. You could say some delinquents throw a Coke bottle at their car, or that they, like all travelers, are beset upon by thieves on the road. They either use their station wagon to drive some Girl Scouts out of a flooded canyon, or they are Noah, with an ark saving the innocents. There's a baby left in a tent with Mother, and a fallen woman who gratefully retrieves her. Vicky learns about Native Americans, a town destroyed by half the mountain, and the Holocaust, American imperialism. She sees New Mexico: "At home in Thornhill nobody is really poor, and it was awful to see the shacks and shanties and poor, foreign-looking people along the roadside. No wonder D.H. Lawrence isn't really happy in New Mexico." She sees "The Diary of Anne Frank" with Zach when the family reaches Laguna Beach. "If God lets things be unfair, if He lets things like Anne Frank happen, then I don't love Him, I hate Him!" she cries. Dude, don't hold on a second. YOU'RE GOING TO MEET ANOTHER GUY.And enter Andy Ford, the moral redhead who does not want Vicky to see Zach anymore than Zach wants Andy to see Vicky! Eff morality, this entire book is about two guys chasing Vicky around sunlit canyons and dark, starry nights around the fire, and, though you have to actually read about three more books to see how it resolves, I would sit through any amount of secret sermonizing to find out what happens next. "You're a funny kid," Zach tells Vicky: "a mixture of goody-goody little Miss Prunes, and quite a gal. I look forward to knowing you in five years." Trust us, Zach, there's all this crap about dolphins and lovers and telekenesis and it's AWESOME.* Gold star to anyone who can mention when this book breaks the space-time continuum. The Moon By Night[Amazon]Lizzie Skurnick[The Old Hag]Earlier: My Sweet Audrina: The Book Of Sister And Forgetting•The Long Secret: CSI: Puberty•The Cat Ate My Gymsuit: A Pocket Full Of Orange Pits•The Witch Of Blackbird Pond: Colonies, Slit Sleeves And Stocks, Oh My!•Are You In The House Alone?One Out Of Four, Maybe More•Jacob Have I Loved: Oh, Who Am I Kidding, I Reread This Book Once A Week• Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Close Your Eyes, And Think Of Jersey City•My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today•All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn•Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care•Little House In The Big Woods: I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon•The Grounding Of Group Six: Have Fun At School, Kids, And Don't Forget To Die•Are You There Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan
Kate Beckinsale told Moviefone that she would rather eat boxthan eat sushi: "I have to say, sushi freaks me out more than almost anything. At least a vagina would be warm. My publicist has literally turned a funny color and is going to go have a lie-down. He's throwing up now, as well." • Jennifer Aniston will appear on the season finale of Oprah's Big Give. Apparently she has "big news" to announce. What do you think the news is? • Eye candythis Sunday on 60 Minutes! David Beckham will be giving Anderson Cooper a tour of his tattoos. Sounds kinky! [Dlisted, Us,People]
I generally lovewatching Fox News, if only because watching it is not nearly as mindnumbing as subjecting yourself to those "There's the week, there's the weekend, and then there's the day when I would rather listen to Celine Dion in hell than watch this commercial again and that day came a LONG TIME AGO" New York Times ads that lord over CNN, but all day most of its anchors have been on this preposterous rant about Starbucks tipping sparked by a ruling in California courtthat requires the company to pay $100 million in lost tips to baristas. (Starbucks didn't keep the tips for itself, but it allowed shift supervisors and managers to share them, which violates the law and also prompts the question as to, if the company is so worried about reclaiming its lost culture, why it doesn't pay managers more.) But the issue: not a singleperson on Fox seems to think tipping at Starbucks is appropriate. In fact, they seemed truly astonishedthat actually giving such tips was such a widely-shared practice that, even in a guilty liberal state like California, the money in question could ever amount to more than a few thousand bucks. And the astonishing rationale behind this shared opinion: that the coffee costs so damn much already.There are moments when the true sinister black hole in the place of a heart of the Right reveals itself, and I would think this to be one. You know where they don't tip, Roger Ailes? Fucking FRANCE.A citizen of this country should not be fucking buying a $4 cup of coffee if he or she can't slip in a dollar - or shit, you know, some larger coins -- into the lucite box. The end. No, not the end. Seriously. I spent many years as a barista, at Starbucks and elsewhere, so I have perhaps a measure more sympathy for their plight than Neil Cavuto, but tipping is the only way I can justify going there.Some days tipping is the only way I know I'm still human. Tipping wherever possible, wherever it is allowed, is your civic fucking duty.Whatever your political stripe, your beef with the way things work in this world-- that hard work is insufficiently valued anymore, that market capitalism unfairly rewards elites and hucksters, that the meritocracy is dead or that welfare dissuades anyone from working or that cynicism has permeated our every action these days -- tipping is your quickest, easiest, most painless mode of dissent. Okay, soooo... T.G.I.F.! See you in church!
Depressed women -- whether single or in a relationship -- have a third more sex than happier women, or so says a new studyfrom Australia. According to Dr. Sabura Allen, women suffering from mild to moderate depression not only have sex more frequently, but are more likely to engage in casual sex and have a larger variety of sexual experiences. Allen hypothesizes that these women are looking for closeness and security through sex. Bullshit! By saying that happier women don't have sex that often, the study implies that women notseeking frequent sexual satisfaction are the norm. It also assumes that women only go after sex on a consistent basis because they are searching for something beyond simply having a good time, thereby supporting outdated stereotypes about women and sexuality. I can say here and now that by boning as much as I am physically able to, the only void I'm trying to fill is the one between my legs.Here's something else: I've been in a depressed state for an extended period of time before. It was the only time in my life that I didn'twant to have sex with anyone. I just wanted to be left alone to wallow. But the biggest red flag about this whole study--which will be published in the British Medical Journal--is that it was based on a survey of 107 women in Australia. 107! That's it! Shit, I've fuckedmore people than that. And I'm happy--not depressed--about it.Study Shows More Sex For Depressed Women[Herald Sun]
Best Comment of the Day, in response to Loose Lips: "I've said it before, I'll say again: between this douchebag and the douchebags at Maxim ragging on SJP, somewhere Cynthia Nixon is saying to her girlfriend,'This bullshit is why I eat pussy now.'"We say: dudes like this really do make us consider lezebelism. • Worst, in response to Annals of Anorexia: "I'm sorry, but being over weight is unhealthy and frankly depressing." We say: it's depressing us to think that you really believe that.[Image via Oh! My God! I Miss You]
"Nothing needs to be on my child's rear end. It doesn't need to have any words at all," says Suzie DeWitt of Tacoma, a mother to two daughters. You wanna know what else DeWitt doesn't want on her girls' asses? Low-rise pants. "The pants rise on little girl pants are too low to be practical. Kids run, jump and hang on monkey bars. With these fashions, their bottom is hanging out at recess." Wanna know how old DeWitt's daughters are? Six and eight. We've said it before and we'll say it again: slutty dressingis skewing younger and younger, with kids just out of kindergarten wearing everything to platforms to spaghetti straps. Recall how the beauty industry is targetingthe younguns also? Same deal applies to fashion: Things that have typically been aimed at teens are just being shrunk, literally, and marketed at the kids that teens are probablybaby-sitting. "It's opening up a whole can of worms for pedophiles and people who want them to look older...Too many parents believe their daughters need to be making some sort of fashion statement at ages 6 or 7," says mom Gina Vardon. "It almost seems to have become a contest between these women to see who can spend the most money on their children." Dear women: a child is a human being, not an accessory. The death of the It Bag should notbe followed by the rise of the It Kid. As adults are dressing younger and younger, are kids forced to look older to compensate? Where have all the grown-ups gone? Besides the problems of 1) dressing a grade-schooler like a whore and 2) using a grade-schooler as a status symbol is the problem, as yet another mother points out, that "not only are the values and bodies of our young girls being exploited by these fashions, but what kind of effect is this having on our boys?" Exactly-- if young girls (or rather, their parents) are objectifying themselves through the clothes they purchase and wear, can we blame men for doing the same to them, too?Earlier: Why Let A Girl Play When She Can Be Made Over Like JonBenet? Sexy At 7?[Tacoma News Tribune]
