The breakroom on my floor vents directly into my office: right over my head, in fact. I smell every cup of oatmeal, every piece of toast, every bit of re-heated anything. Mostly this is fine, or at least acceptable as no one has yet to reheat liver.

But the one thing I hate, that I cannot abide, that causes a visceral revulsion through and through is what is currently wafting through the vent:

Microwave popcorn, with heavy artificial butterlike flavor.

I’m retching. There is something about the smell of microwave popcorn that just makes me heave. I would outlaw the stuff if I could. Or at least ban it from public access microwave ovens. I think it makes for worse air pollution than cigarette smoking.

Don’t misunderstand me, please. I think that popcorn is one of the major food groups, right up there with fried poultry skin, coffee, chocolate and liquor. But I mean real popcorn. Popped in oil over high heat. Personally, I like to use olive oil, and I once used bacon grease after reading in some White Trash Cookbook or another that bacon grease rendered popcorn ineffably delicious. It does, but I will never be able to eat it again. I could hear my arteries seizing up over the crunching.

I also miss the popcorn of my movie-going youth, when it was popped in palm oil, and real butter could be poured over it. I have seen solid coconut oil in the health food store, but can’t quit bring myself to purchase it, having a somewhat hazy memory of the reason movie theaters don’t use it any more is because it’s even worse for you than bacon grease. Probably explains why it tastes so good, too.

ADDED MAY 17, from GOURMET WEEKLY e-newsletter:

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, author of a bill to ban diacetyl, which gives microwave popcorn a faux buttery flavor but is suspected of causing a life-threatening lung disease in workers who handle it, speaking to The New York Times: “It’s not like we’re talking about a potential flaw in the polio vaccine. We are talking about a potentially devastating disease caused by buttering flavor. And there are alternatives out there. Including butter.”

This is an experiment, sort of, although it didn’t start out that way. See, the RLA, the PDBs* and I all went out for dinner tonight to a sorta kinda sports bar. Except it really isn’t a sports bar. It’s more of a diner, only in a strip mall. And with a lot of rock and roll memorabilia on the walls and a great juke box, kind of like the Hard Rock, if the Hard Rock were owned by a couple of folks who used to own the best used CD store in town, and not by some conglomerate mega-corp, and if the Hard Rock wasn’t just another theme park with food. So, maybe it isn’t like the Hard Rock at all. But I digress. We all went out to dinner at the Rock Fish Grill, and I told the owner we were on a timer, because I had to be home by 8 to watch the hamsters.

Well, not only were we not home by eight, but our food had barely arrived, so I commandeered one of the tvs, and watched ANTM. MOS.

MOS stands for “Mit Out Sound”, and is a hold over (or so my old film teacher told us) from the Very Early Days of Hollywood, when most of the film makers came from Germany, and if you were shooting without a sound track, you were shooting Mit Out Sound, and that became MOS on film clappers to this day.

I watched ANTM MOS, and let me tell you, real-time captioning for the deaf is not real time. And who ever is typing it? Either can’t hear, can’t type or can’t spell. And if it’s computer generated? They need better computers.

So. Here is what happened on ANTM tonight, as best as I can patch it together. First the girls all discuss how much they do or do not miss Sara, and Whitney wahwahwahs some more about being a plus sized model, and how she has to step up her game and whawhawhateverrrrrs.

The hair dresser comes to the house and cuts the rat weave out of Brit’s head (there’s even a sign over her bed, and other hints that those stupid made up “supermodel” names are going to be sticking around till the end of the season. More’s the pity. And there she is, left with the hair she came in with, except a better color.

There may or may not have been some recapping of Renee’s sob session. There was definitely a recapping of Fifty Cent shoving Jael in the pool. Last week RJ and I disagreed about the timing of Jael’s saying to Fitty that she was “half black and half Jewish, so that makes [her] Blewish, and you can’t hang wit dat” and him pushing her into the pool. RJ said Jael was wet when she said it, therefore it happened after. And I said it was one of, if not the last thing she said before she got wet. In the event, according to POTES, I was right.

And then, not a couple of days after the episode aired there was this brouhahah about Fifty calling Jews thugs, and other racist crap. I leave you to connect the dots. I would threaten to boycott Mr. Cent, but since he’s never gotten a dime from me yet, that would be a tad hollow. Sort of like Mr. Cent’s head.

Anyway, back to this week. This week they get their acting lessons from someone or other who “stars” on a show I’ve never seen, and then get further lessons from someone who was in a movie I’ve never seen, but I understand was a hit with some demographic or another: Napoleon Dynamite. But not the star of Napoleon Dynamite, because even I know who he is, and he’s currently tearing up the big screen as the feather-haired sidekick to Will Feral** in Blades of Glory.

With the sound off, and the closed captioning on, it’s hard to tell how bad the girls are, and I can only take the captioning’s word for it when Dionne claims to be speaking in a Jamaican accent. For that matter, I can only take the captioning’s word for it that Renee was totally committed to the role (whatever the role was, because I don’t have a fucking clue what they were supposed to be acting) and deserved to win the prize.

I expect to hear crickets when asked to name a friend to share her prize, since we all know that everyone hates her and she ain’t so keen about anyone. But she pulls a name out of her ass, and nice Dionne gets to share the prize, which seems to be some lame t-shirt that referrences Napoleon Dynomite, which, since I haven’t seen, I also have to take on faith.

Back at the house, there is the usual whining about who won and how they didn’t deserve it, and the usual snickering about how lame the prize was that they won, and probably some trash talking about how nice it was for Dionne to get to be Renee’s friend and take one for the team, ‘cause nobody ELSE was gonna pretend to be. I might be making that up.

But then, OH. MY. GOD. A SURPRISE, surprise, surprise!!!! You’ll never guess! Oh. You guessed. Yeah, this is the week that the winner gets a visit from their family. Dionne’s momma, sister and baby come. Dionne’s momma is in a wheelchair and has a Marilyn piercing in her upper lip. Dionne’s momma is in a wheelchair because some junkie that she was tryin’ to help get straight got all jealous and shit when she was gonna git married, so he shot her and now she’s all paraplegic. See? And you thought there weren’t going to be sob stories this year. Her baby is cute enough, I guess.

The powers that be managed to find Renee’s husband out on the beach where he’s been living and pluck the baby (who looks a little floppy to me, or maybe fetal alchohol syndrome, or just a little, uh, wall eyed?) from the arms of his grandmother (and why won’t she let her son stay with them? Or why won’t he stay with his own mother?)and send them to visit, too. We see the baby crawling down the runway, and I read someone saying to the baby that Miss Jay would just snatch you baldheaded if he saw you crawl down the runway like that. Pretty funny, actually, though I have no idea who said it.

We see Jael being nice and taking pictures, and then poor Natasha just loses it cause she wants to see HER baby and why can’t she? And she talks on the phone to her husband and cries and cries and cries and we see a picture of her baby, and she is really cute. With big eyes.

Oh, well. Party’s over, y’all come back now, hear? And the family members go home and the girls go to their photoshoot and poor Natasha is all red-eyed and weepy and miserable and Renee is all smiling and obnoxious and gloating about having seen her little floppy baby. And yeah, there was some serious face sucking with the husband. Eww. And she still isn’t taking off the Darth Jader head rag.

The shoot? Well, the concept is to re-enact “famous” ANTM moments from the past. They are “The Girl Who Wouldn’t Do Nude” from season one. “The Great Granola Bar Kerfuffle”, “The Siamese Twins”, “The Girl Who Passed Out Cold at Judging”, “Joanie (now Joni) In The Dentist Chair for 12 Hours”, “I Am Bi-Curious Sarah and Kim in the Limo” and “Michelle’s Impetigo”. This is as big a snooze as it sounds, even if they do bring the original girls back to co-star in their own re-enactments.

Among the highlights is Dionne, who is totally freaked having to be in a limo with a lesbian, much less having to pretend to kiss her, discovers that Kim is hot, and that she, Dionne, is liking this. Natasha is great with big old scabs on her face. Brit totally rocks out as one of the twins, now triplets. Renee can’t compete with Joni (ha!) and Whitney totally does not rock it as the girl who won’t do nude. Whitney in a white beach towel is not pretty.

I need to interject here, that the female half of the PDBs is a former art director for SELF, back in New York City. She pegged CariDee as the winner last year, just after looking at the portfolios on-line, three quarters of the way through the season. Tonight she looked at everyone and said Brit, Natasha and Renee are the three finalists, and that it’ll go to Renee. Jael, she said, was too aware of herself and her own look to be the sort of malleable putty a model needs to be. She also said that Jael is a man. I kept telling her that that distinction belongs to Jaslene, but Jaslene wasn’t even on the PDB’s radar.

So. Judging. “Hey, look! The man’s wearing a dress.” That’s Jael, and she’s not a man, dammit. The judges seem to call Jaslene a drag queen, and not in a good way. The judges, well, Nigel, gets all creamy talking about Brit and the twins. They allow as how they didn’t even notice Renee and her ugly face were in the same frame as Joni. Jael, meh. Whitney in a beach towel? Icky. Dionne gets the love from all. They love Natasha and her fierce scabs. The photographer and Jay both say how she came to the shoot all sad and teary and then WORKED IT on the set. So who goes home? Jael and Whitney are the last two called, and Tyra finally has to say goodbye to her pet plus sized girl.

But child? Please don’t show us those thighs/knees of yours again. Christ, if I wanted to see dimples like that I could look in the mirror. Well, after the scabs and bruises heal.

Next week, Jael has to take the marbles out of her mouth and learn to speak before she gets sent home.

*PDB: Persons Dressed in Black


** Yeah, I know, Ferrel. I just don’t find him funny, OK? So feral it is.

I’ve been watching the Alec Baldwin/Kim Bassinger debacle, and remembering how I felt while I was going through the protracted divorce with the Antichrist, and I’ve designed a t-shirt that I think all women who have an ex can appreciate.

I just opened a Cafe Press shop, featuring my new design.

Because, you know, it would just be so much easier that way.

Last night was the penultimate epi of ANTM, wherein we find out who the final three bitches and hos will be… can we stand the excitement?

I know I could.

We are still in the land down under, and this is the week of native dance. The girls (and Jaslene) meet some Aborigines and are treated to a dance by young girls. It is bitter cold in the out back, or so we are told by the women of no discernible body fat, although the Aboriginal girls are bare foot and seem to have no problems. But, then, they have body fat.

So. See a dance, learn the theory, make up your own story dance. And don’t forget the body paint. Renee, who seems to be really happy to keep calling herself NeNe… and may I digress a moment?

Back in the day, there was a girl among the crowd I was in with who went by the party name of Neigh Neigh Vibrato. I’m sure with a little imagination of a sexual nature you can figure out how she came by that. For me, the name NeNe really doesn’t work, although girlfriend does have something of a horse face.

Anyway, NeNe tells the story of how she was an abused child, and she has sisters and she wants to be a role model for getting above and beyond the abuse and win this for her family, because they are poor and living on a beach in Hawaii and like that, that we’ve heard a million times from her already. Fortunately for her, this is all new material to her audience and they eat it up.

Jaslene (who is now Jaz, at least to NeNe Vibrato) tells the story of his life, which isn’t so much the story of his life as it is the story of how he wants nothing in the world so much as to win this season and become America’s Next Top (Not Quite A) Tranny Model and this is his destiny, Luke. OK. Maybe I made that last part up.

Dionne of the eternal puss face opines that she don’t do no dancin’ she don’t tell no stories, and it’s cold and she ain’t happy one little bit so she is gone do a 20 second “dance” and be done wit it. Dionne seems to me to have an awful lot of “I don’t be doin’ thats” in her life. We have already seen that she don’t be kissin. She ain’t no fuckin’ lesbo (but she did like kissing Kim). She don’t dance. She don’t tell stories. She don’t touch other men. She don’t smile. She be one skank ho, is all I’m saying.

Her dance is short. It refers to her momma gettin’ shot, her sisters and their babies, and she has a big yellow blob with a little pink blob in the uterual region of her dress, which she explains is her spirit and her baby. Yeah, what ever. She gets absolutely no applause.

Natasha actually uses props. She tells the story of how she was a weak child who went into the forest for comfort among the trees. It’s a nice story, if a bit far fetched and totally inaudible. Another woman in my past used to do that same thing. She thought if she whispered in a little baby voice while she was running a business meeting that it made people listen harder to what she was saying and made her more powerful. She, like Natasha, was dead wrong. People thought she was a total flake and whack job, which was absolutely correct. In both instances. Natasha gets some polite applause.

NeNe Vibrato wins, and gets to pick a friend. She picks Jaz to share her prize. The prize turns out to be some a-fucking-mazing South Seas pearls, and it grinds me no end that NeNe wins it. Beeyotch. No mention of how she’s going to hock this to help her family. Not like when she DIDN’T win the $40K diamond bracelet that fatty whatsername took home. No, then she was all boohoo, I needed to win that to get my husband off the beach, wahwahwah. Tonight it was all, I’m so beeeyooootiful in my princess pearls and doncha wish yer girlfriend was hott like me.

The girls (and Jaslene, but not Natasha, who is coming down with pneumonia) decide to go out and party and blow off some steam. Unlike past seasons, there is no vomiting, no random acts of sexual nature with random strangers or each other, no embarrassing moments of excess drunkenness. How much fun is that?

Instead of that, they plot how to send Natasha home, and in what must certainly be a total shocker to you, NeNe Vibrato is the ring master of that plan. She goes on in the confessional and interviews about how Natasha is a total phony (oh, yeah? Excuse me, Mrs. Pot, but there is a Mrs. Kettle on the line for you.) and how nobody even knows the name of her husband, or has seen pictures of her alleged baby, and how she doesn’t wear a wedding ring, and a whole other load of self serving crap.

OK? We, the viewing audience know her husband’s name, it’s Stuart, and she’s said it more than once. We’ve also seen pictures of her baby, and as I said then, it was much cuter than NeNe Vibrato’s floppy one, or Dionne’s unremarkable one. So stuff it, Vibrato. And you know what else? You hos have been on about her being a mail order bride since day one. (So have we out here in TV land, but then, we aren’t sharing living space with her, so fuck off). And so what if she has kinky phone sex with him? Honestly, who among us hasn’t?

Anyway. The girls and Jaslene actually come right out and talk about how they need to work a plan to send Natasha home, so that it can be the three of them in the finals. They trash the poor little Russian girl up one side and down the other. When they get back to the apartment and read the Tyra mail, Jaslene, especially is a total ball-cutting snot to sick little Natasha. What do we think will happen tomorrow? We’re going to judging and SOMEONE (meaningful emphasis and daggers) will be going home. Bitches and ho, people, bitches and hos.

The next day is photo shoot day, where there is more body paint and native dancing. Natasha is so sick she is falling over, coughing and with a runny, red and swollen nose. She tries her hardest to pose and can’t. She is awful beyond awful. Little Orange Man tries to give her a pep talk, and it’s sorta, well, other ANTM contestants have been sick and still brung it, and Tyrant has been sick and brung it, and we just can’t milk this story line one more season, so suck it up and bring it. I’m a little sorry that she just doesn’t bring up her breakfast all over him, but she tries and fails to look hot.

Nene Vibrato rocks it again, damn it. She really does. I wish she weren’t so Naomi Campbell though. What a skank ho rat bastard she is.

Jaslene gives the same old same old fierce face and egocentric reportage he always does. And this is duly noted by Little Orange Man.

Dionne is coaxed, pampered and babied into delivering something other than her puss face frown. It’s a little scary and yet bland, but it does resemble a pleasant smile. The fact that she still has no clue how to pose without constant coaching is also duly noted.

Finally, we get to judging. This is the week where the judges ask the girls who has it and who doesn’t. NeNe Vibrato is first, and she says she’s the shit and did you notice that she’s wearing her big-ass pearl prize that she won this week for being the shit? And that, well, quite frankly, Natasha is a ho-bag two-faced phony and we all hate her and she should be getting the boot tonight, thankewverymuch.

Dionne is up and says, oh so graciously, that NeNe is the shit and that Natasha is a fake piece of Russian trash who needs to be taken out. Thankewverymuch.

Jaslene allows as how, no, really HE’S the shit, and that this is the one thing in his life that he wants more than anybody or anything else in the room and he better fucking win or someone is gonna get cut. And, oh yeah, that Natasha? What a loser. Send her home.

Natasha gets up last, and says that while she appreciates what the others have said about her, actually, she must disagree and say that she has the most potential, because, really, have any of you people looked at a runway lately? It’s ALL Eastern European women who look like her. She’s got the look that everyone wants this year. I don’t even remember who she thought should go home. The judges all jump on the “why does everyone else hate you?” question, and my girl says, hell, if Giselle Bundchen was standing in the room she’s dis her, because that’s who would be her biggest competition. Connect the dots, folks.

There is some very interesting debate from the judges, wherein they talk about how hot NeNe Vibrato is, even though she photographs like a hard and ravaged old hag. Jaslene has one look, and they pull up his first S&M death penalty shot to prove it. Yep. Just the same. As are they all. Then they talk about how having one look can get you a lot of bookings, but after one season, you are done, done, done.

Dionne is recognized as being a puss-faced yak who can’t do dick without heavy art direction. And can I digress a moment to say she should have been called on the carpet last week when at every go-see she asked to KEEP THE CLOTHES!!!! What kind of just-out-of-the-backwoods hick is she? CAN I KEEP IT????? One person cracked that he thought she was going to try to steal the dress, and the final designer, very frostily told her she could BUY what ever she liked. But sweet baby Jesus drinking gin from the cat dish, where did she ever learn her manners or professional etiquette?

Well, that leaves Natasha, whose photo was The Worst In ANTM History. Or so the judges said. Worse than the fishy thing that used to be the worst? It doesn’t matter, because at least she takes direction and tries and showed a huge amount of class in the face of everyone talking shit to her face.

The judges decide that she probably was the victim of a plot to get her tossed out, or else why else would all three of the other girls say exactly the same thing, and anyway, she’s a damn sight nicer and prettier than Dionne, so, bottom line?

The last three standing are: NeNe Vibrato, Jaslene the Tranny, and Natasha, the sweet Russian Mail Order Bride.

Yesterday was the third anniversary of my father’s death. Last night I lit a candle. Today I went to temple and sat through an entire, albeit informal and short, service. I said kaddish for him, and I said his name out loud.

I say to myself, this is what he wanted; that this is what he expected of me, expected without hesitation or question. I would go to temple, and I would say kaddish for him.

This, the third year after his death, was the first time that I could. Don’t get me wrong, I sat on my haunches at the back of the room, holding his gold chain with the tablets and the Lions of Judah, and cried the whole time. It was not easy.

But the torah says that this is holy: to honor thy father and mother, to give comfort to the sick, to visit the grieving, to rejoice with the bride and the groom. To honor thy father and thy mother.

The tallis I made for Daddy, the one in which he was buried, has that as its collar prayer. Tomorrow I will continue my quest for holiness and visit my mother.

After shul, I went to a bead show with Star and the Number 1 Surrogate Daughter and indulged in some heavy retail therapy. My grandmother, the mother of my father, always said that I had golden hands, that I had a gift. In doing my retail therapy, I merely honored Grandma Ida, as well.

I’ll make things, and I’ll sell them and the honorable chain of my family of artisans and merchants will go on.

You know, it seems that every time I turn around someone else, someone totally unworthy of the privilege, is getting jiggy with The Bob. Today there was the following article on Page Six.

EASILY SCARED

KINDERGARTEN kids in ritzy L.A. suburb Calabasas have been coming home to their parents and talking about the “weird man” who keeps coming to their class to sing “scary” songs on his guitar. The “weird” one turns out to be Bob Dylan, whose grandson (Jakob Dylan’s son) attends the school. He’s been singing to the kindergarten class just for fun, but the kiddies have no idea they’re being serenaded by a musical legend - to them, he’s just Weird Guitar Guy.

And you just know that they have no appreciation of the finer points of guitar picking or lyrics like “I used to care, but things have changed.”

Miserable rug rats.

And you also know, that, same as it ever was, I’ll be having a nice dinner complete with birthday cake on May 24, and the ungrateful man won’t show up at my door. I don’t get it.

A few years ago MTV had a contest along the lines of explain why you are your favorite artist’s biggest fan and we’ll send you on the road with them. Yeah. I didn’t win.  It’s not like I’m stalking him for pete’s sake. I mean, I never, ever rush the stage and grab him, unlike that 15-year-old emo skank in the Jerry Garcia t-shirt a few tours ago. I’ve never painted Soy Bomb on my naked chest and boogied like a spaz while The Bob edged away and waited for the bouncers to drag the loonie off. I thought about, but did not, rip off my arm sling and scream “I’ve been healed” when he made eye contact with me the year I had shoulder surgery, and I was mashed up against the stage in an open seating venue. I’ve never even dumped an entire serving bowl of potato salad on him, as one of The Coolest Person In The World’s other friends did, when she was in a buffet line and the person behind her asked for some, and she turned around and saw that it was The Bob*.

I’m respectful, dammit, and what does it get me? Bubkes, baby, bubkes.

Never mind. The table will be set for my personal Elijah, and if he wants some home cooking, he knows where to find it.

* Ever cool, he just said, “I didn’t want that much.”

Tata, over at Poor Impulse Control, went to a party for bloggers the other night. Said party was hosted by no less a personage (corporage?) than NBC its own self. Wow. I don’t get invites like that. Once there, the doors were locked, and souls were bargained for.

Find out what happened when Tata met the underlords of the dark.

In honor of the many thousands who have died or suffered grievous bodily harm in the four years since this momentous announcement by our Idiot In Chief, let me wish everyone a very happy “Mission Accomplished” Day.

As always, the Rude Pundit is more eloquent on this subject than I can ever be.

I’m sure that it was merely a coinkydink or oversight by the higher powers that this proclamation of arrogance and imperialism was made on National Workers’ Day (May Day).

Feh.

Here in Miami, the sun is shining and the people are in the streets, protesting our government policies regarding immigration. Will this help their cause? No. It will only annoy those of us who will be stuck in our offices at the end of a business day and can’t get home because of the blockaded streets and horn-blasting protesters.

My boss, The Skipper, sent this to me yesterday for my blog. He could give the Rude Pundit a run for his money, sometimes.

On Sunday, the Associated Press distributed its comprehensive list of boosh admin types who have had to leave the I-pledge-to-restore-honor-and-dignity-to-Washington administration under a cloud of corruption. Although this list does not include the dozens of Republican members of congress and their staff who are now falling at the rate of one-a-day (see Central Florida boosh buddy Tom Feeney as the very latest example), and although this list does not include those who’s greatest failing was/is sheer incompetence (Heckuva Job Brownie or heckuva plan Rummy or heckuva UN presentation Powell, for example), and although this list doesn’t include those who couldn’t even make it past a pliant Senate (Bernie Kerik, UN Ambassador Bolton, dozens of incompetent prospective federal jurists, for example) to join this benighted administration, and although this list doesn’t include all those U.S. Attorneys fired for one reason or another (all illegal), it is still a useful/enjoyable list:

Bush administration under a cloud

By The Associated Press Sun Apr 22, 1:41 PM ET

A rundown of Bush appointees who left under a cloud or face conflict-of-interest allegations

Do we really think that 5 million Rove and Mehlman e-mails went missing because a handful of US Attorneys were fired for blatantly political reasons? Puh-leeze! Those e-mails have been erased off the RNC server, and those e-mails were sent from a non-WH server to begin with because they no doubt detail intimate coordination of the so-called independent 527s (Swift Boats Liars for Truth) by the WH and RNC in 2004, in blatant and massively illegal violation of federal election laws. Under the 527 laws, none of the Swifties should have mentioned word one of their nefarious slimebagging to Rove and Mehlman and their stormtroopers. Wanna bet THAT didn’t happen?

After reading this list, do we think that ANYONE, other than Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, John McCain, Bill McCollum (all men of questionable lifestyle and morals themselves), really cares about the unspeakable evil of blue dresses that never quite made it to the dry cleaners?

I had a rough day yesterday, and was more than ready to settle in on the sofa with the glass of red wine, fuzzy slippers and fuzzy doggie. It’s TV night at the Casita des Zapatos, and time again for the bitches and the hos. Whee. Good times, peoples, good times. Except. Not. Because at the end of the show, my sweet, gently bewildered Jael was the first girl to head back to the states. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Open on the usual shit talking about who went home and how nobody’s going to miss them. Random leaping about concerning who’s left.

Doorbell rings and in walks…uh, that pointy-faced girl from Season Two? The one who got her own on-line talk show? April. The one that Nigel was so hot for. The one who didn’t win. She’s going to teach them how to interview and be interviewed. She has a grinning little midget friend with her to help her with the examples of talking too much and talking to little. He looks like Teller, only shorter and with a rubberier face. Woof.

Then the girls team up and practice. Jael and Dionne get nasty with each other, but Jael is, and it pains me to say this, terrible. No, really, I mean terrible in new and different ways, most of them involving bizarre facial contortions and wildly inappropriate body language.

Natasha isn’t too bad, Jaslene has really big teeth, Renee is such a hateful ass that I don’t care if she does well or not. Brittney reveals that she doesn’t know if she can do this sort of thing because she got run over by a car when she was 17, bounced her head off the curb, had 8 (or 18—accounts varied) staples in her head and absolutely no short term memory any more. I wonder if that’s why she couldn’t keep her weave pretty? She couldn’t remember how to handle it? Wash/comb…don’t wash/don’t comb…

And then, they learn that they are going to have to take their newly-honed skills out into the real world and interview people on the street. The streets of Sydney, Australia. And there is Tyra in a broke-ass kangaroo suit. I love Tyra, because she is fierce and fabulous enough to let herself be put in a ratty roo suit and hop up and down on my TV screen. The woman deserves some sort of Emmy for that. Natasha doesn’t understand for, like, a minute or two that they are going to Australia, and then she starts shrieking like a banshee. It’s pretty funny, in an ear-splitting, nails-on-a-blackboard sort of way.

We see them pack, we see the little animated plane with their faces in the windows, and then we see them disembark in Sydney. Jael is wearing a flowered mini-tank dress over jeans and a lime-fucking-green tu-tu. It’s reeeeealy mind blowing, and not in a good way. Who had brain damage, again?

They are met by an Aussie supermodel who treats them to a slang-filled welcome speech. As you would expect, there are crickets chirping everywhere. Especially around Jaslene, who has really, really big front teeth. I’ve seen beavers with smaller front teeth. The model gives the girls (and Jaslene)a guide book to Aussie slang, a microphone and a big send-off to discuss American fashion faux-pas with the guy on the street. They will score points for each usage of the slang.

Dionne rocks that, basically by using what I suspect is her own verbal tic, but which coincidentally is also in the phrase book…“That’s cool.” Repeated two or three times after every response. But she says “I want to AKS you a question” which had me sticking my fingers in my ears.

Jaslene is just pathetic, Brittney talks to an American and is told that in the interviewee’s opinion, the worst thing American girls do is to wear skimpy tank tops with their bra straps showing. OMG! I was there being interviewed and I didn’t even know it. Brit, of course, is wearing a skimpy tank top with her bra straps showing. I love this show.

Natasha, who already learned one new language and has the skills for it, totally nails the use of slang in her interviews. She’s cute, and perky and just adorable.

Jael is, uh, not.

Then it’s off to their new digs and on to the Cover Girl commercials, where they have to memorize their lines and deliver them in an Australian accent. This is one time when I almost wished for closed captioning.

They are all just dreadful. Renee is dressed in poufy sleeves and really ugly eye makeup and delivers like (she says) Steve Irwin. In judging, the panel agrees that she did sound like a man, and maybe that wasn’t the best choice of role model when you are selling lippy.

Dionne comes back with her Jamaican-not accent. Brit cries and blows her lines even with cue cards and wahwahwahs about getting run over and having no short term memory. We know, because you already told us that story, and we do remember it.

Jaslene can’t speak American English, and her attempts at an Australian accent are embarrassing and awful and grating and pitiful. On the up side? She nails her lines without cue cards.

Jael is totally done in by the need to be cute, sweet and perky. She proves to be utterly incapable of smiling on cue. In fact, she sort of reminds me of the scene in Addams Family Values where Cristina Ricci is at sleep away camp and is forced to smile, and all the other campers squish back and start to cry that she’s scaring them. Yeah. It was pretty much like that. She cries and climbs a tree to make herself feel better, but we all know that this is it for my favorite little anarchist.

Natasha does an Austrailo-Soviet accent, which is much more endearing than it sounds.

Judging! Jael is looking fabu in a dress and heels. We see the commercial and it opens and closes on Renee. She is getting the fucking redemption arc so large and blatantly that it looks like McDonald’s neon arches in Times Square. The judges comment on the fact that Jaslene has this history(?) of drag queens. What? First we heard that she was raised by drag queens, and now she has all this experience with drag queens. See? This is what I’m saying… Jaslene IS a fucking drag queen.

In a huge upset during panel, the Aussie model talks about how the girls got off the plane (we see the flashback to Jael and her lime green tutu) and of all of them Jael (says the model) was the one who came out with enthusiasm and joy and a passion for the job and and and. Well. She was out-voted. The looks that passed between Nigel and Twiggy and even Miss Jay? Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle, they could not have been happier to finally give Jael the old heave ho. But it was certain curtains for Jael when Tyra said that she didn’t look like a Cover Girl, she looked like an anarchist cruelly mimicing a Cover Girl.

Then the panel discussed Brit’s head injury and subsequent short-term memory loss. Right. Head injury. Sure it was. That’s not what they tell us in drug class. It’s something else that causes long term loss of short term memory. Well, I think that’s what I remember them saying.

The bottom two are Brit and Jael, and Brit gets to stay, along with this advice: Sack up ho, and figure out how to deal with your disability.

Personally, I thought Jaslene should have been standing there with Jael, and I would have preferred to see her skinny ass out on the tarmac, but so it goes.

The winner of the challenge, remember the challenge? was Natasha, who received as her prize a field reporter job on the Tyra Talk Show. No kidding. How cool is that?

Next week, I don’t know what to expect because I didn’t get any previews. All I know is that with my pet anarchist gone, who cares. I’m going to go climb a tree and pet the grass. Who will protect us from the evil ducks of the universe now?

As often as I am wont to say that I hate the living, I don’t think the answer is locking the doors and shooting everyone else.

And as much as I’m a Yellow Dog strict constitutionalist, and all, I think that the intent of the founders regarding the 2nd amendment had more to do with protection of the citizenry in the face of no standing national army and less about the right to bear arms for the hell of it, or the day the silicon chip inside your head gets switched to overload.

For the POTUS to deliver some mealy-mouthed inanity like he did: “Oh, jeez, everyone should have the right to bear arms, but they should obey the law”* just makes me want to vomit.

You know what? In this day and age, there is no need for the average citizen to own a handgun. Or an assault rifle. Or any other small arms. And if you want to, then join the fucking military and go defend us from the world.

Or how about this? You can own all the guns you want, but you can’t own the ammunition. Or how about the British model, and the guns are locked up in gun clubs and the only time you get to play with your toys is when you are out with other killers hunters shooting at animals. And not like here, where there are hunting farms, where the animals are penned until you get there to kill them. That would be the kind of hunting done by that masterful asswipe, the Vice President of the United States, who shot 400 quail and his hunting companion. There were 500 quail released that day. Oh, I made the numbers up, so sue me, I can’t remember everything I read. But he did go out shooting live skeet, and he did shoot his buddy, so do the numbers really matter?

But no. This is America, land of the freely stupid and bravely stubborn in the face of all logic. How many more? How many more people will be shot for no reason by people with no reasoning but plenty of guns and ammunition? When will the neo-cons and NRA apologists figure out that guns don’t kill people, but people with guns do?

To quote the Rude Pundit, have you ever heard of a drive-by stabbing?

A long, long time ago I dated a man who used to dream about killing his ex-girlfriend. Not in an abstract way, but vivid and explicit dreams about shooting her in the head.** (No, I didn’t date him long after I heard about that, and when he wanted to see me suddenly after a year or so had passed, I would only meet him in a public place.) A therapist told me that we all dream about or can dream about killing people, but that only a person capable of doing it in real life could see it all in that kind of detail. But that was twenty-some years ago, before hyper-real FX in movies, and first-person shooter games on every PC and GameBoy and Wii.

We have not become, as our Moron-in-Chief says, a culture of life, America has become a culture of glorified violence. It is approved by our government when we dance around the definitions of torture re: the Geneva Conventions. It is approved by our government when we out-source our prisons to folks without the same delicacy of nature that America pretends, as a nation, to have.

How many more students will be shot down? How many more innocent folks, putting gas in their cars? How many children caught in the cross fire of gang wars? How many more gallons of blood will paint the hands of the NRA and their spineless puppets in Congress before we decide that maybe, just maybe, in the 21st century, in this place, we all don’t need to have a sidearm strapped on?

I hate the living, but that doesn’t mean I want to kill them.

* Especially since the POTUS and his entire administration seem unable to obey any laws theirownselves. You know, the little ones, like perjury, and destroying evidence, and doctoring evidence, and leading this country into an illegal war, and wiretapping, and illegal search and seizure, and spying on US citizens, and you know, the whole rest of the ten commandments and most of the US constitution.


** That boyfriend? Killed himself. I was never able to find out how, but there were hints… he’d watched Blue Velvet a hundred times, it involved massive amounts of drugs and, yes, a gun.

I see that Kurt Vonnegut has died. And I’m sorry, I really am, because in my youth, I adored his work. Unfortunately, it was the work from his youth, and as we both aged, I lost any appreciation I had for him. His later works pretty much failed.

The Chronosynclastic Infindibulum

But his early works, in which he coined such phrases as that above (the time/space continuum from Sirens of Titan and in which he was still full of piss and vinegar, and had yet to succumb to morbidity and chronic depression, those were brilliant.

Everything was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt

I hope his widow, the photographer Jill Krementz (whom I met once in college, when she reviewed my portfolio…which she threw to the floor once she figured out what, exactly, was in the hotdog bun in that sort of blurry black and white photo) has the good humor and questionable taste (well, she and Kurt were married for a long, long time, but she did throw the hotdog picture) to put that on his tombstone. Assuming he has a tombstone. If not, then on his container of ashes.

From the wire story obituary comes this:

“We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard… and too damn cheap,” he once suggested carving into a wall on the Grand Canyon, as a message for flying-saucer creatures.

And, like so much of his social criticism, he was absolutely dead on.

Maybe I will miss him more than I think. To quote from another dead and favored author,

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

BTW: Poor Impulse Control also notes his passing here.

As does the always excellent Rude Pundit.

Let me first set the record straight, and say right out, I am not a cutter. I do not find pain (mine or anyone else’s*) enjoyable. However, I tend to be just a wee clumsy, and especially when I’m depressed.

Many years ago this tendency was spotted by a boyfriend, who commented that I didn’t just hurt myself, I hurt myself in complicated and very torturous ways, like some kind of exotic, oriental pain. That immediately became my club name: Oriental Payne.

So. Last week, after a brilliant morning (I found the very first spot in the parking garage open, and I met a new person on the train—an Apple-carrying, clog-wearing film person) and an ok work day, I trotted out of the building, aware, as always since last year’s Valentine’s Day tumble down the stairs, of where my feet were as I went down those steps. The light on Biscayne Boulevard turned red as I reached the curb, and so I took off across the street without breaking stride.

I saw the red car in the first lane. I saw the blonde boy with light eyes and no helmet on a yellow sport motorcycle in the second lane. I don’t know who or what was in the next lane, because I stepped out of my very high, very fabulous brown mule and went ass over tea kettle and did a magnificent face-plant in the middle of the third lane.

Thankfully, nobody ran the red light.

My glasses went flying. My book bag went flying. My titanium Mac in its chic little Vera Bradley bag went flying. My shoes, ditto.

I have a road rash on my left leg that extends from mid-calf to knee. The knee is completely skinned - flayed, even. The bruises are impressive and keep traveling around (yesterday a new one appeared below my ankle and wrapping around under my instep).

The right knee turned purple immediately and swelled to the size of a pie pumpkin. It is now green, with interesting purple undertones, and the right leg is also host to travelling bruises.

The only person to even acknowlege me sprawled across two lanes of traffic was a man on the far curb, who called out as I was gathering up my possessions and my wits “You OK there?” He did not, nor did anyone else, offer to help me.

*OK, I admit, there are a couple of people in whose pain I would take pleasure. My ex, for one. My ex-bosses, for two, three and four. And, you know, a few Neo-cons and a POTUS or two. But really and for the most part, no.

Years ago I read a fairly lame and unmemorable first novel with the promising title of film had a total A-list cast, though it was made in 1997, when none of the actors were known. Jack Black, Luke Wilson, Andy Dick, Jeremy Sisto, Jamie Kennedy, Alicia Witt, Brittany Murphy. So I clicked and added it to the old queue, and last night the RLA and I watched it.

Except for the title, it bore such faint resemblance to the book, that I had to look it up on imdb to confirm that it was, in fact, allegedly based on the novel. Then I went to Amazon and read up on the novel, just to be sure it was the SAME novel.

I may be the only person to have read Bongwater, so let me assure you that the only thing the two have in common is a funny title and content that falls flat. The action takes place in the same cities, but most of the characters have been renamed and recreated to the point that they bear little or no resemblance to those in the book. And while, since the book was so vapid and unremarkable, this could have been a plus yet, it was not.

The only reason I bring this up today is a scene about three quarters of the way through the film, when Alicia Witt comes back to Portland to see Luke Wilson, and his friend, Andy Dick tries to keep her away. Andy is playing a gay man, and he hurls this insult at her: “blahblahblah, something, something, FIRECROTCH!”

Huh. Not only was Brandon Davis an ass, he was a plagarizing ass. To use a lame quote from a lamer movie, delivered by the lamest of the actors within, and never give credit that the epithet that made him a tmz/YouTube star was originally spoken by Andy Dick in a third-rate flick about stoners. I mean, if Andy Dick didn’t even want to grab his five minutes of continued “fame”, you know it has to be bad.

How low can you go? I’m a little surprised that nobody has come forward with this revelation prior to now. I think I’ll go over to tmz and drop this dime.

The best parts of the movie, if you want to waste 90 minutes with it, are Jack Black (but of course) as the pot farmer in the forest, and the audio track over the closing credits. The track is the phone message tape from the Luke Wilson pot-dealer character, and it is a non-stop series of coded messages like “I think I left my green shoes at your house? or “Has the printer gotten back to you yet? Is the ink on the brochures dry? Can I come pick them up?”

And that’s how bad the movie is, in a nut shell. The closing credits are the funniest parts.

Last night the most amazing thing happened: the RLA watched the show with me. It took a while for him to figure out the players, because he said they all looked the same. That said, he was quick to pick up the following: Renee is a beeyotch. Jael is peculiar. Saying “Just cuz” to Mr. Jay is going to get you sent packing.

Another day dawns with mist on the swimming pool at the House O Hamsters in the LA hills. And that, dear readers, is why the swimming pool in Spain was icy: they were saving budget dollars for this year’s pool heating to get that mist to rise.

We open with Renee getting all up in Whitney’s face, asking her with “sweet” sincerity if she (Whitney) really truly believes that a fat girl will ever grace the cover of Vogue. ‘Cause, you know, rilly she just wants Whitney to face reality and not get all bummed out and all. She’s just asking. Whitney shows that she’s the real deal classy babe by not punching Renee’s skank ass out. Diana wanders in and gets pissed off for both of the fat girls.

A sidebar, if you will: please remember that by “fat girls” we are talking about women who are NORMAL by all other standards; they wear size 10s, not XXXXLs. OK?

After seeing the girls in some of their own clothes at judging, the PTB have decided that this is the week to give them lessons on style. Thankfully, we no longer has arbitrary assignments of personal style that they will have to learn it live it love it. Just, you know, a little bit less skank.

In what is my favorite scene to date, the girls are dressed up and asked to evaluate their looks to the head of Elite Models and one of her real working girls.

No crickets chirp, but they all gamely announce that they luv-luv-luv what ever the hell has been thrown on them. HAH! Fooled you! These are all TERRIBLE Fashion Mistakes. Natasha explains to Miss Elite Models that they all said they liked the clothes because as working models, you have to believe in what ever is tossed on your back. (Like her. By her mail-order groom. And please, if there is a God, do not show any more footage of her talking on the phone with him and playing sex games involving meowing. It just skeeved me out. But then, all the hamsters, once they wrapped their collective mind around it are a little skeeved by that marriage. Of course, some of the hamsters are less skeeved than just bitchy gossips, WHITNEY! But I digress)

There is a little round of clothing swappage, and the girls now look less awful. Except for Diana, who really, really, really needs to put on a little lipstick and wash her hair now and then.

After they learn about Bauhaus art theory as it relates to the fashion industry (Less is Still More, hos.) they are sent off to their challenge. In a warehouse somewhere, they find lots and lots of high fashion clothing from Sears, three platforms and two male mannequins. Renee thinks that they are terribly life-like, and they may very well be. Since they are actually two male models. They said they were identical twins, but either one of them was wearing lifts, or they weren’t all that identical, because boyfriend on the left was a couple inches taller.

The challenge consisted of getting separated into teams, and nobody was at all happy with their team or their team members. Each team had a few minutes to put together three looks (that had to work separately and together as a group), some props, and pose on the platforms. Dionne the Dentist used to work in retail, so she pulled the looks together for her teammates Renee and Sara. Natasha, Jael and Whitney called their look Afrodity’s something or others and when the twins pointed out that the hamsters has spelled Aphrodite wrong, Natasha stepped up to the plate and explained that when you make up a name you can spell it any way you want so there. Phhhhhtt.

The final team was composed of Diana, Jaslene and whoever I can’t remember and needs to go home. Right! Brittney! Brittney and her ratty weave that looks worse each week.

The prize this week will go first to the group who does the best, and then to the individual girl. The prize is getting to take all your challenge photos, then review them with Mr. Jay, and then re-shoot. I have to say, that’s a fucking GREAT prize. PS: If you aren’t in place when the boys say time, you will be disqualified. You know it. Someone isn’t on point. Want to guess who?

The winning team is determined to be Jael, Natasha and Whitney, except for the fact that they weren’t on their posing platform when the boys said time. Natasha, who really, really stepped up her game this week, was all but yanking Whitney up to the platform by her arm. Maybe if girlfriend was one of those anorexic hos, she could have pulled her into place. But she isn’t and she couldn’t and so Whitney, who would have been the Number One girl two weeks in a row became just another also ran.

That meant the second runners up were the winners. Sara, Dionne and Renee were the winners. Sara was chosen as the best of the three and won the prize. And, OH. MY. GOD. the stink face that Dionne put out was astonishing. Renee, of course, opined that she was the best, yadayadayada, and should have won something or another, because after all, she was the one who picked the accessories for Sara. Dionne, though, she picked out the outfits, and so Sara shouldn’t have won dick. Boy-howdee, were those two girls miffed. Big time. Dionne wore a puss for the rest of the show.

The other three? Chopped liver.

The photo shoot this week was the season’s gender bender, where the girls (and Jaslene) had to dress as boys. The twist, and it was funny… OK, I know I keep saying that this show has jumped the shark, but I gotta admit, this is the best season yet. The shoots are good, Mr. Jay is adorable, and Miss Jay is out of the picture most of the time (except during judging when he’s wearing that ever-growing clown ruffle). But I digress. The twist. The twist is that they are going to pose as men, with women. The women in question are drag queens. That’s right, throw those little cluesless hamsters to the she-wolves, and see who can keep the camera focused on them.

Jael was cast as a boho, and really had a great time and threw around a lot of poses. Dionne had to be a powersuit. Whitney was a f(r)at boy. Britney was a redneck (best quote: Hi. I kill things). Sara was a glam rocker and totally channeled David Bowie. Jaslene was one half of a pair of chaty-yachtys and Diana was a red-carpet star (HAH!-not. She looked stiffer than the giant paper mache Oscars) Renee was a rocker… but she was no Brian Setzer. The star of the shoot was, no kidding, Natasha. She had to be a hip-hop guy, and she even made her own grill out of chewing gum foil. Insert Soviet Union joke here. It was awesome. She was chillin like a villain. She was down wit it, dawgs. She was stylin’.

Jay said something inane like, no wonder the Russians take home all the gold at the Olympics. She’s competing. She brought her A-game. While he was trying to get something, anything out of Diana, Mr. Jay asked her why she was there. Her depthful reply: “Just cuz.” That’s when the RLA said: she’s history, and in the next scene, at judging, she was.

When it finally came down to Whitney and Diana, and Diana got sent home, Jael ran over and jumped on her, throwing her legs around Diana’s waist. It was awesome. I love me some Jael.

Next week, Jael finally bitch slaps Renee. Is life great?