daily roundup

The Cruise-ades

Gawker provided a nice transcript of TC's anti-psychiatry rant this morning on the Today show...Apparently there will be a Part II on monday. Bring on the crazy!...

Tom: [with patented ferocity] Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug?
Matt: I understand the abuse of all these things —
T: [interrupting] Yeah but you don’t understand the history of these drugs. And if you do, you know that it masks the problem. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance!
M: But —
T: No, Matt, I know these things —
M: No —
T: Listen —
[This continues for a few moments and we stop listening.]
M: So, depression — is it all gobbledy gook?
T: No, Matt, I’m not saying that. That’s an alteration of what I’m saying. These drugs are dangerous, mind-altering chemicals. There are ways of handling these problems so that we don’t end up in a Brave New World.
M: You want [other people] to do well, but you want them to do well on a road that you approve of.
T: No —
M: [interrupting] But if anti-depressants worked for Brooke Shields, isn’t that okay?
T: I disagree with it.
M: But aren’t there examples where it works?
T: You don’t even know what Ritalin is! If you read the papers on how they came up with the drug, the dosage… You should be more responsible in knowing what it is. I am responsible. I know these things.
M: You’re saying that you know how it affected people you don’t know, but I do? You’re now telling me that what has and hasn’t worked for people I know, and I’m telling you I lived with these people and I saw an improvement.
T: So you’re advocating?
M: No, I’m not. I’m just saying that in their individual cases, it helped them… We could go in circles on this matter. But do you want more people to understand Scientology? Is that a goal of yours?
T: Of course. And I don’t talk about things I don’t understand.

I would just LOVE to send all my severely mentally ill patients over to the Celebrity Center for TC to personally (personally!) cure with vitamins and exercise...I'm sure the vitamins will work just great when all the talk of aliens confirms the schizophrenics worst delusions and sends them over the edge.

Someone please dose this dude's Evian with some lithium. Seriously.

UPDATE: MSN has the full transcript.
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I wear my sunglasses at night

from Gawker today...hi-lar-ious!

Everyone is shuffling in, and the entryway gets clogged with people as a woman slowly escorts a man down the hall. “EXCUSE ME!” A man behind her bellows, causing the woman to turn around and snap, “He’s BLIND!” “Whatever,” Mr. Excuse Me mutters. How great that we live in a town where it is so common for people to wear dark sunglasses indoors at night, that your first assumption is not that they are blind, but that they are just being a douche. New York – faaaannnntastic!

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TomKat Drive Tabs Batshit

I love this article...it's so true, can't you just picture Bonnie Fuller freaking the fuck out over all this... "Shit! They just fucking got engaged! Pull the 'I Love This Woman!' cover and change it to 'Wedding of the Century!' No, strike that, change it to 'Baby Fever: Bumpwatch 2005'- we gotta stay one step ahead of 'em! That TomKat is a wily one!"

Cruising Toward a Tabloid Crackup: How Tom and Katie are undermining the celebrity magazines
The celebrity magazines sustain themselves on a limited and predictable set of story lines: Girl meets boy. They're keeping their affair quiet. They've gone public! Will the young couple wed? They're engaged! When and where will they get married? They're married! Wow, what a deluxe honeymoon! They want children, but can they get pregnant? She's pregnant! Is he cheating? It's a boy! It's twin boys! He's left her!

The celebrity magazine formula endures because 1) it speaks to basic human obsessions, 2) because the breeding-age "stars" the magazines showcase benefit professionally from all the publicity, and 3) because the stories follow a predictable, steady pattern as comforting to the reader as a soft rain on the rooftop at night...

...The aggressiveness of the TomKat timetable completely violates the industry formula. If the magazines are going to invest pages in a star-on-star romance, they want the thing to unfold like two seasons of Desperate Housewives so they can string along their readers—and reap the longer-term economic benefits. After the first rumors of on-set canoodling, paparazzi shots of a disheveled lover leaving a romantic sleepover should appear. Then they should be photographed on vacation or walking their recently adopted pup before aerial shots of their jointly purchased love nest are published. Finally, the editorial interruptus also known as "wedding watch" begins. The buildup should usually last six months to a year or so before breaking into something big, like a distant-yet-opulent ceremony that's canceled once or twice. The magazines want a preview of the wedding dress and engagement ring, and they want the couple to sell the wedding pics and the honeymoon pics, to pose for at-home photos in the Xanadu they build in the Hollywood Hills, to share the marital troubles they overcome, and then finally, to feed their newborns to the publicity machine.

Hence the editorial crisis: Even though the convenience relationship/marriage is a time-honored Hollywood tradition, the rapid pacing of TomKat: A Love Story has fractured not only reader expectations but the magazines' faith in the enterprise from almost the beginning. Instead of swooning over the couple, the magazines were asking polite variations on the question, "What's up with this and why is Cruise acting like such a freak?"...

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Seven Fabulous Sins

This is a great idea...it should be the theme of next year's parade. I can totally see the America's Next Top Model-inspired costumes parading down Santa Monica Blvd. Oh yeah, by the way, New York? WeHo's stealing the idea...(Sin #6 "Covetousness")

Sinners on parade

Well, Gay Pride is back in the city this week, meaning that sin will be on parade down Fifth Avenue. Not just general sin, but very specifically Pride. I was staring at my "Seven Deadly Sins" shower curtain and considered how unfair it is that Pride gets a gay parade, yet the other sins are woefully neglected. In the name of equality, couldn't all of the sins get their very own gay parade? Seven sins and seven days of the week? Homos love synergy!

MONDAY! Gay Pride - Start the week with the traditional, "I'm okay, you're okay, but what's her problem."

TUEDAY! Gay Envy - Geffen as Grand Marshall while a bunch of working class mo's try to figure out if what Geffen's wearing is available at Century 21.

WEDNESDAY! Gay Gluttony - Power-bottom, crystal pig-sluts Unite! This one can be a masquerade parade as all will be anonymous, as in Alcoholics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Sexual Cumpulsives Anonymous.

THURSDAY! Gay Lust - Just cover Fifth Avenue with black plastic, lube it up and let the fun begin. Sponsored by Wet!

FRIDAY! Gay Anger - We're some of the best protesters out there. Bring out the signs, the banners, and, oh yeah, the whistles. Must have the whistles!

SATURDAY! Gay Covetousness - This one doesn't need to go all the way down Fifth. Gucci, Fendi, etc. provide all this day's parade needs.

SUNDAY! Gay Sloth - All that parading around makes you just want to order brunch in. Even the biggest mythological gay of all rested on his seventh day.

(via Gawker)
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Lifestyles of the Kidnapped and Brainwashed

Pop Culture Junkies have drawn some great parallels between kidnapped and brainwashed heiress, Patty Hearst, and kidnapped and brainwashed B-lister, Katie Holmes. Since I share their obsession with both, I'm way into it...

...And today's media frenzy triggered a thought: Katie Holmes looks like Patty Hearst! While some folks are mounting a Free Katie campaign, I'm drawn to draw parallels and make things up. That's just what I do.

Here's a series of real(and imagined) phone calls...

DAY 9
Patty has been abducted - Katie is being Oprahed

Patty H.: Mom, Dad. I'm OK. I'm with a combat unit that's armed with automatic weapons. And these people aren't just a bunch of nuts. They've been really honest with me but they're perfectly willing to die for what they're doing.

Katie H.: Mom. Dad. I'm OK. I'm with Tom and his security team is armed with automatic weapons. And these Scientologists aren't just a bunch of nuts. No, they're evolved clams. They've been really honest with me but they're perfectly willing to let Brooke Shields die for what they're doing...

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Lohan Fully Loaded?

This interview with one of Ms. Ho-han's former personal assistants is extremely compelling...an excerpt:

4). What was an average day on the set with her like? I'm just dying to know.

The thing is, she hardly ever went to set. That was the real problem. Her trailer was like a cocoon, a womb she could always return to, thereby adding hours, literally, to the shooting schedule every single day. Imagine being paid seven million dollars to do something - anything! - and then complaining when you got there that you had to do it. That's what it was like. All the filmmaking traditions - rehearse, light, rehearse, shoot - were out the window. And remember: we weren't making 2001: A Space Odyssey here. “Mama don't rehearse” was the implied motto. But they would ask her to, several times a day, every day. I don't know why.

Top five reasons she contrived not to come on set for rehearsal:
1) “I can't. I bit my cheek. I need to see the medic.”
2) “I can't. It's raining.”
3) “I can't. I just bought a computer, can you show me how to use it?”
4) “I can't. I'm waiting for the FBI to call.”
5) “I can't. Not until my cigarettes get here.”

(via Defamer)
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"I think I'll go for a walk outside now, the summer sun's calling my name!"

I can totally relate to this rant on Blaggblog...sometimes you just want to sit on your ass- beautiful day be damned- and the pressure from the outdoor enthusiasts can really get to you...

It's Nice Outside. Big Fucking Deal.

Look, hippies - we live in California. It's 'nice' here 90% of the time. So can you please stop having an epileptic seizure every time I tell you I'm going to be spending "this beautiful day" doing something indoors?

In fact, even if we DIDN'T live in California, with an average lifespan of 75 years, most human beings will probably experience around 23,000 'nice days' throughout the course of their lives. So stop acting like every 72-and-sunny afternoon requires a fucking millenium celebration.

"Come on, man - let's go rollerblading. It's BEAUTIFUL outside - I can't believe you want to waste the day inside!"

There's no such thing as 'wasting the day'. Do you really think going to Golden Gate Park and kicking around a hacky sack with a bunch people on pot brownies is somehow more of a worthwhile activity that sitting in the dank darkness of my apartment, drinking a 12-pack of Pabst while chain-smoking and watching "Perfect Strangers" re-runs? No, it's not.

That is all. You may now return to your enjoyment of this "glorious, amazing, gorgeous gift" of an afternoon.

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Free Katie!

I'm not sure I agree that "any press is good press"...sure, Katie Holmes is more visible now. But does ANYONE like what they see? And I can't imagine that directors, etc (other than Scientologists) will really want to deal with this bullshit...

from NY Daily News:

I hear that Katie Holmes is driving Warner Bros. Pictures absolutely batty with her insistence - or maybe it's boyfriend Tom Cruise's insistence - that a Church of Scientology official accompany the starlet every step of the way on her "Batman Begins" press tour.

Warner Bros. international marketing execs have been firing off agitated E-mails expressing severe frustration that the 26-year-old Holmes' Scientology adviser, a twentysomething brunette identified as Jessica Rodriguez, has been monitoring (and occasionally interrupting) every single press interview when not giving Holmes religious instruction.

"Tom pays Jessica to 'Keep Katie on the path,'" reports a Lowdown spy. "She goes everywhere with Katie - she's never more than a quarter-step behind her. When you ask her who she is, she says, 'I'm Katie's best friend.' She's known her for six weeks!"

Creepy is an understatement.

Katie, don't you remember what happened to Kelly Taylor on Beverly Hills 90210 when she got sucked into the New Evolution cult? You need to do what Kelly did when faced with tough choices and say "I choose me!"

Free Katie!
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No Mercy.

I love this ode to the 80s bully...so good..of course William Zabka (AKA Johnny Lawrence) is a main focus of the article...

...My final villain is really a salute to the actor more than one role: William Zabka. I do not know if there has even been a more perfect antagonizing asshole bad guy than fucking Zabka. From 1984 to 1986, this guy was the king of the on screen asshole villains. It blows my mind that this guy was not a main installment of the “Brat Pack”. He was cooler than Anthony Michael Hall and Judd Nelson combined. He must have refused to do some blow off of puke faced retard Molly Ringwald’s ass and was black balled. Zabka nailed 80’s asshole like Ron Jeremy nailed 80’s assholes. His role as King Asshole would fade, and he actually was nominated for an Academy Award for his part in directing the 2003 film “Most”. He lost, but probably would have won if he had swept the leg. Without further adieu, here is the best of the best of Zabka…

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