Perhaps it is because I am in the midst of a sickness-induced delirium…or maybe even because my maternal grandfather was born in Manila and I am a quarter fucking Flip…but, for some reason, even in all of it’s hideousness, I find this picture to be completely brilliant.
The only good part about this bastard cold from which I am currently suffering, is that when I speak…I sound exactly like Bea Arthur.
God’ll getcha for that, Walter.
From rotten.com:
Dateline Germany, January 2005.
Police in the sleepy hamlet of Bayreuth are in a bit of a pickle. Someone — or something — is jamming miniature toothpick flag portraits of U.S. President George W Bush into piles of dog shit on sidewalks, public parks, and pedestrian thoroughfares. Josef Oettl, parks administrator for Bayreuth, said: “This has been going on for about a year now, and there must be 2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have been claimed during that time.”
The dog-shit-on-a-stick motif was originally thought to be some sort of protest against the US-led invasion of Iraq. When the structures survived for several consecutive seasons (weathering rain, snow, and extreme temperatures in all directions) the flags were thought to be a protest against Bush’s campaign for re-election.
In 2006, the dog shit Bush parade is still going strong. Police say they are completely baffled as to who might be responsible.
“We have sent out extra patrols to try to catch whoever is doing this in the act,” said police spokesman Reiner Kuechler. “But frankly, we don’t know what we would do if we caught them red handed.”
Legal experts claim there’s no law against using dog shit as a flag stand, although Federal legal analysts warn the Constitution is vague on the issue. One possible source of all the dog shit flags has been identified only as the makeyouthink online entity, which offers downloadable PDF templates for printing, folding, and concealing in a backpack.
To be sure, dog shit is annoying and problematic in every country — but is it really subject matter capable of depositing a huge, flaming bag of controversy on the entire world’s doorstep?
on set and in character in Nashville with a double chin, a RAGING bouffant, and Eddie of the fucking Cruisers:
1. How tall are you barefoot?
You know, I used to lie like a dirty lying bastard about my height – but I no longer care that I am nothing more than a stunted hobbit. Also, the babies are now old enough to call me on my shit in public…oh, and trust me – THEY DO. I am 5 foot 1 inch tall.
2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
Oh, god, no. Never. Not wearin’ these shoes, anyway. (That’d be a no.)
3. Do you own a gun?
No, but I grew up in a home where firearms of all shapes and sizes were perpetually present — and I know how to use them. And well. I am descended from criminal Sicilian trash, lest you forget.
4. Rehab?
From what? I’m a shitkicker and a thief, yes – but I am, however, not fond of the substances. Unless you consider Ragu a substance, that is.
5. Do you get nervous before “meeting the parents”?
Oh, Christ, no. Fuck the parents. Fuck everyone, in fact. If you don’t get along with me, you got some serious social issues, my friend. I am like the most easygoing, sloth-like bastard on the planet. Mother-in-laws don’t scare me; soul-kissing someone with bad oral hygiene – now THAT scares me.
6. What do you think of hot dogs?
I adore them – with lots of mustard, onions, and relish. At the outdoor snack-shack at Costco. At backyard barbeques. At Padres games with my son and husband.
7. What’s your favorite Christmas song?
I like ‘em real old school and classic, i.e., “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” Also, any and all background music from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” sends me into an automatic state of complete and utter bliss.
8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Coffee. Good fucking coffee; two Equals and extra cream, and I’ll blow you for the difference.
9. Do you do push-ups?
You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me with this.
10. Have you ever done ecstacy?
HA! Once. In Las Vegas at some gay bar. I took it and sat down at the edge of the dance floor and sunk into a K-hole of biblical proportions. It basically just made me sleepy – like every other fucking recreational drug out there aside from baggie.
11. Are you vegan?
Jesus, no – and at the risk of perhaps offending certain members of my friends list, even though I don’t really eat much meat myself and never have (it’s a taste thing, not a political thing) I am generally annoyed by such complicated dietary horseshit. I put up with it as long as said vegan doesn’t loudly ramble on and on about it at every public meal. What my crew usually says to this sort of attention-seeking behavior is: “Yes, yes, yes, we all know that you’re a vegan. We also know that you’ll once again be wolfing McDonald’s cheeseburgers in about six months…so, for the love of god, just do us all a favor and SHUT THE FUCK UP AND ORDER ALREADY.”
12. Do you like painkillers?
They don’t work on me, and for some inexplicable reason healthcare professionals just LOVE to load my ass up with the bastards. I have Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets full of Vicodin rotting in my bathroom – which makes me very popular on film sets and at writer’s meetings, I gotta tell you. But in the end, Vicodin is completely worthless to me. Vicodin is Satan’s droppings.
13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex/potential lovers?
The fact that I’m a real fuckin’ lady, I am.
14. Do you own a knife?
I have no idea exactly why, but this question made me BELLY LAUGH OUT LOUD.
15. Do you have A.D.D.?
Oh, who doesn’t after a few cocktails?
16. Date Of Birth?
21 August
17. Top 3 thoughts at this exact moment:
1. I saw Santino’s baby picture on “Project Runway” – and I’ll be goddamned if he didn’t look EXACTLY like a member of The Addams Family. But, man, oh, man…I still want to bang him.
2. WREK (out of Atlanta) has the best fucking music of any radio station in the history of humankind.
3. My cooter itches.
18. Name the last 3 things you have bought:
1. Groceries at Trader Joe’s
2. College textbooks for a cute little fashion design diva!
3. CDs by The Supremes, The Four Tops, Elvis Costello, The Beatles, and The Flaming Lips.
19. Name five drinks you regularly drink:
Bubbly water, coffee, cinnamon yogi tea, the occasional Diet Coke at a restaurant, my own sweltering urine.
20. What time did you wake up today?
6:00
21. Current hair?
A growing out Rosemary Woodhouse Pixie Cut. It’s back to the Bob with me.
22. Current worry?
My mother-in-law (aka: The Yenta) wants to come and stay with us for a weekend and I need to figure out where we are going to sleep her since our supposed top-o-the-line air-mattress fed the fucking tree.
23. Current hate?
Yawn.
24. Favorite place to be?
The Pirates of The Caribbean ride at Disleyland. Or Hampstead, England. Or The Southwest of France.
25. Least favorite place to be?
Department of Motor Vehicles. Or the holding tank at the Fresno County Jail. (Wait, did I just say that out loud?)
26. Where would you like to go?
Disleyland.
27. Do you own slippers?
Because we don’t really do the shoes in the house thing, I veritably live in slippers. I am, however, in the market for a new pair – but I am currently wearing some little knit Mary Jane thingies I got at Target. They are fuschia and chartreuse and I loves them.
28. Where do you think you’ll be in 10 yrs?
Writing books, making movies, traveling like mad, and hanging out with my family in a beach house in Malibu.
29. Do you burn or tan?
I used to tan when I was little, but I am not altogether sure what I would do now seeing that I am medically forbidden to directly expose myself to the sun and its wicked, wicked ways. I boldly move through this world under the protection of a chartreuse umbrella.
30. Last thing you ate?
Homemade crockpot vegetable soup. Yummy!
31. Would you be a pirate?
If I could bathe regularly and had access to good dental care…sure. Why the fuck not. After all, I do so love plucking the rings from the fingers of the dead.
32. Last time you had an alcoholic drink?
Michael Pare kindly ordered me a Long Island Iced Tea at Maggiano’s in Nashville a few weeks ago – and I took one sip and then proceeded to let it rot on the table before me while I ate my angel hair pasta and spied like a schoolgirl on Martina McBride at the table next to us. Before that, it’s probably been years and years. I defecate on alcohol.
33. What songs do you sing in the shower?
Nothing. I listen to NPR.
34. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child?
A tall, thin, man who looked like he stepped straight out of an old black and white film. He wore a stovepipe hat and black eyeliner – just like all those silent fim stars did. He creaked as he moved about my room and watched me as I slept. Even to this day, I sometimes catch him out of the corner of my eye.
35. What’s in your pockets right now?
No pockets right now – but generally, my cellie, my to-do list for the day, and a whole lotta luck.
36. Last thing that made you laugh?
There is absolutely no telling as I belly laugh every five.
37. Best bed sheets you had as a child?
Peanuts. Oh, and a set with big pink old school English roses. I think they may have been from the 50’s or something. As lovely as lovely could be,
38. Worst injury you’ve ever had?
I’ve never been injured. Never broken a bone, never had stitches, never been in a car accident. Up until a few years ago, I had never even been sick. No chicken pox, no whooping cough, no measles, no nothing – this despite having been repeatedly exposed to them all, and much, much more in a family of nine children.
40. How many TVs do you have in your house?
Five. And two TiVo machines – all crankin’ WHITE HOT. We don’t fuck around ‘round here.
41. Who is your loudest friend?
Jerrie, when she gets hammered on tequila.
42. Who is your most silent friend?
Davy Troffer. He rarely says a word – but he’s fucking brilliant and we love him.
43. Does someone have a crush on you?
Gregory does.
45. What is your favorite book?
The Chronicles of Narnia. And “Capote” by Gerald Clarke.
46. What is your favorite candy?
Most of it is off-limits to me now (bastard blood sugar!)…but, back in the day, I really, really liked green apple Jolly Ranchers.
47. What songs do/did you want played at your wedding?
“What’s So Funny (About Peace, Love, and Understanding)” by Elvis Costello
48. What song do you want played at your funeral?
Oh, that’s easy – and my husband and everybody already knows this one, too: The Peanuts theme song by Vince Guaraldi.
49. What were you doing at 12AM last night?
Reading a really great book called “Steven Spielberg: Interviews.” I love him.
50. Do you love the pain a tattoo brings?
Well, I wouldn’t know, seeing that my husband-borne-of-the-upper-middle-class has told me that if I ever get one – even a really cool and meaningful one — he will henceforth refuse me sexual favors. Gosh, I’d love to have one, but a girl has simply GOT to get her muff chowed every so often. Capische?
Last night, Gregory and I excitedly settled down for a long winter’s viewing of the much-anticipated return of Tony Soprano and the boys. As expected, it fucking rocked — no surprises with the quality of the writing or acting; it remains, hands down, the greatest television show of all time. What I did find shocking, however, was the positively shameless and non-stop Product Placement present in just this first episode alone.
Starting with the huge and slow-moving Nestle’s Qwik logo on the side of Bobby’s model train, to AJ’s morning box of Special K cereal strategically turned so as to afford the best camera angle, to the close-up shot of Tony’s Cingular cell phone alerting us that it was Janice calling (when just fucking answering it and saying, “Hey, Janice…” certainly would have sufficed in letting us know just who the hell it was), to the quartet of high-end David Yurman diamond watches given to Tony by one of his foot-soldiers who was trying to buy his freedom from the family bidness, to Carmela going on and on and on, in scene after scene, about her new Porsche Cayenne. It was, quite literally, almost more than I could bear.
And as proof that it’s not just happening on The Sopranos, in the brand new HBO show about polygamous marriage, “Big Love,” whose premiere immediately followed Tony and crew, there was a line that had absolutely nothing to do with the forward thrust of the scene, in which Wife #2 (Chloe Sevigny) emerged from the pantry of Wife #1 (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and with a nearly empty peanut butter jar in hand, inquired, “You don’t mind if I finish off your Skippy, do you?”, when “You don’t mind if I finish off your peanut butter, do you?” would have gotten the point across just fine.
Look, I understand that it’s a Brave New World in television advertising and all, what with the fast-forward through commercials capability of TiVo, et al, but as a writer, everytime I witness these sort of hucksterish hi-jinks, it makes my flesh crawl…as I can just imagine those writers cringing at the specific sponsor directive to find some way – no matter how obnoxious or cheesy or pointless – to work their product into the storyline.
I’ll get used to this, as we all eventually will, I am sure — to the point where the practice is so ubiquitous that we won’t even notice it anymore…but it’s just gonna take some Timex.
Page Reveals Childhood Trauma
Iconic American beauty Bettie Page has spoken out about the abuse and neglect she suffered as a child in a new newspaper interview. The 82-year-old former pin-up and early porn star, dubbed the Queen of Curves, tells the Los Angeles Times she was molested by her father and despised by her bitter mother, and hates recalling her youth in rural Tennessee.
Page says, “(My father) molested all three of his daughters.” But life at home with her mother, Edna, wasn’t much fun after she divorced her husband when he impregnated a teenager. Page adds, “All I ever wanted was a mother who paid attention to me. She didn’t want girls. She thought we were trouble. She didn’t help with homework or teach me to sew or cook. She didn’t go to school plays I was in or go to my high school graduation.”
And things got even worse when Edna kicked the stunning brunette out of her house when her lover spurned her for her daughter. She was forced to live with her father. She recalls, “I couldn’t review my exam notes, which were at home (with her mother). Because of that I got beat out of graduating valedictorian by a quarter of a grade point and lost my dream of getting a scholarship to attend Vanderbilt University. It was the worst disappointment of my life.”
In the Times article, Page reveals she’s now a born-again Christian, who spent years in a mental institute after attacking a former landlady with a knife. As she awaits a rebirth in the US, thanks to new TV movie The Notorious Bettie Page, she reveals she’ll never agree to be photographed again because, “I want to be remembered as I was when I was young and in my golden times.”
“Having children flips the game from being about you to being about what you can create in a home and what your responsibilities are. I’ve thought about quitting, but I love what I do so much – it’s the big conundrum of my life…. So I’m fighting to keep my foot in the business, be creative and stimulated, and still take care of my children.”
— Uma Thurman
Booker winner’s robot brainwave may spell the end of the book tour
Novelist’s invention means that authors on one continent can autograph volumes on another
By Anthony Barnes
19 February 2006
The bizarre, futuristic device would not be out of place in one of Margaret Atwood’s sci-fi novels. But next month the Booker Prize-winning writer will unveil a machine she has invented which means authors will never have to meet their adoring public again.
Ms Atwood, the Canadian author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin, has created a machine that will allow her – without leaving the comfort of her home – to autograph the pages of her books while she is in another continent.
The imminent arrival of the gadget, called LongPen, has prompted fears it could kill off the grand tradition of the book-signing tour. Those long hours spent on trains and motorways, trudging the publicity circuit as writers to press the flesh with the people who pay their wages, could be a thing of the past.
Yet the threat has led to a backlash by other authors. D J Taylor called it “an absolutely feeble idea – another example of fatuous modern technology”, while novelist Jilly Cooper believes “if the signing tour were to die off, it would be a tragedy”.
Ms Atwood, 66, is to launch the device – which has been seen by only a select few at secret testings – at the London Book Fair a fortnight from today, where publishers and authors from around the world will be given a demonstration. The writer will be in Canada but will create what is being billed as the world’s first transatlantic autograph.
A video screen will link Ms Atwood with the public, allowing them to speak to her. Then, as she signs a personal message at one end, a robot arm instantly replicates the strokes in a copy of the book at the other.
“You don’t have to be in the same room as someone to have a meaningful exchange,” she said. “As I was whizzing around the United States on yet another demented book tour, getting up at four in the morning to catch planes, doing two cities a day, eating the Pringle food object out of the mini-bar at night as I crawled around on the hotel room floor, too tired even to phone room service, I thought, ‘There must be a better way of doing this.’
“So I talked to a few people, then put together a team to find out whether anything like it existed – no – and whether it could be done – yes.”
It may well find favour among some writers and publishers. Mark Hutchinson, a director of literary PR agency Colman Getty, said tours could be a huge boost to sales, but could be demanding on authors who had little time or had commitments that made it difficult to travel.
“I can see that it would be an attractive proposition to simply sit and do the signing from their home,” said Mr Hutchinson, who has organised signings for clients such as J K Rowling and Nigella Lawson.
“It can be a demanding, and occasionally mundane, experience – the writers will be meeting and greeting for hours on end, smiling and exchanging pleasantries. If they can do it from the comfort of their armchair and not have the added burden of travelling around, it might be an attractive proposition.
“Some publishers have been trying to think of ways round the whole touring thing for a while. When you think that you instantly email people, this might be an obvious extension and authors could do a virtual world tour in a few hours.”
But many authors are aghast at the idea of axing tours. Mr Taylor said: “You have to turn up in person – you have a duty to the people who turn up to see you. Authors spend so much time in their rooms … the more that technology keeps them sat in their rooms, the worse it is. We can’t all be J D Salingers – at some point we have to leave the home and meet the people who pay our wages.”
The comedian Charlie Higson, who has recently been promoting his book Blood Fever about the young James Bond, said: “I don’t think a robot arm is a substitute for an actual signature. Plus, you still have to go through the actual process of waggling your arm across the page. I do like to do a short tour if I have the time, although if you are in the middle of something else it can take for ever.”
Signed copies of books can be highly sought after and collectable – but a new generation of remotely produced signatures may have the reverse effect.
Roddy Newlands, expert in modern first editions at London’s Bloomsbury Book Auctions, said: “I think if it were to be signed this way, it might actually take something off the value. I would say it could probably cause a depreciation of the price.”
Ms Atwood insists that the device is not a hoax. “It’s real. Trust me. You need to have more faith.”
Although it’s not something I am necessarily proud of, for the most part I — along with the entire pack of treacherous, delightful Jackals of which I am a proud founding member — am completely hideous and jaded when it comes to celebrities. An alarmingly large percentage of these so-called stars are completely NO-talent as people. Regarding the ones who are evil, annoying, uninteresting bastards, I would fucking cut their throats just as soon as look at their stretched, petulant, botulized faces. I don’t play any shit. A NO-talent meathook is a NO-talent meathook. I wake up with chunks of celebrities in my fucking stool, baby.
However, every once in a while, I get the opportunity to meet one who stuns and humbles me — and I become a babbling fool, drooling at their feet and worshipping at the altar of their brilliance. Having the chance to work with Danny Trejo on the set of Furnace recently was one such moment — and I didn’t hesitate for a second to tell him so.
His story is one of the most amazing in all of show business; he was born in a really rough section of Los Angeles and was a full-on drug addict and criminal before he hit adolescence. He spent time in prison, where he excelled at boxing. After his release, he became involved in AA and ended up on a movie set to meet a friend who was also affiliated with the program. It was there the director discovered that Trejo was an astonishing boxer and asked him to coach some of the actors on the set for their scenes. He was eventually put into the film himself — and that was just the first of many in which he has acted, including several with Quentin Tarantino. In fact, if you IMDB him, you will see that he is one of the most prolific actors working today — he virtually travels from set to set, working and winning people over with his extraordinary kindness and professionalism. There is almost something buddha-like about him; he has THAT FACE on the outside…and inside, the heart of a gentle wiseman.
In addition to that — he is surprisingly hilarious. One night when we were standing around freezing our asses off, waiting for the lighting guys to work their magic for the next scene, and marveling at the beauty of one of the young actors in the film, he turned to me and said, “Let me tell you something, Miss Muffy — I never felt uglier in my life than when I found myself standing between Antonio Banderas and Johnny Depp. I just looked to my left and then looked to my right…and then raised my hands to heaven and asked god, ‘What the fuck, man? What’d I ever do to you?'”
When I met him, he was as gracious, charming, and affectionate as could be — and when I was bowing down before him, chanting that I wasn’t worthy, he laughed and told me, “Shit, stand your ass up, Holmes. We’re all the fuckin’ same, man.”
What a prince.
muffy bolding 
