Category: Shallow

Where on earth does hard-hitting editorial cartoonist Sean Delonas come up with his ideas?
Oh, right.

“Powerful Quake Strikes Central California”
Associated Press
“Moderate Earthquake Shakes Central California”
Voice of America

That’s a heart. And it’s for you. Well, it’s for you if you plan to blog about I ♥ Huckabees this week.
But be careful. It’s easy to mess up this special tag and wind up with the wrong title, like:
I ♣ Huckabees (Way too violent.)
I ♠ Huckabees (The ASPCA does advocate the spaying and neutering of Huckabees, but only by a trained veterinarian.)
I ® Huckabees (Only David O. Russell can say that!)
I ‾ Huckabees (Only Jon Brion can say that, and he doesn’t tend to over-score the movies he works on. Well, other than Magnolia, that is.)
And, finally, a title that seems unlikely since Huckabees is opening in limited release against Ladder 49 and Shark Tale this Friday:
I $ Huckabees.
I’d ♥ that, but I doubt we’ll see it.

“Weakened Ivan circles Gulf; expected to die”, The Advertiser, Lafayette, Louisiana

You see this exciting, bold, vibrant graphic peeled from the cover of the most recent issue of Us Weekly (October 4, 2004), the issue that insouciantly proclaims that Britney Spears’ much-hyped marriage last weekend to Kevin What-the-Fuckshisname was “staged” and “faux”?
The circle, which appears alongside the magazine’s logo in the topmost corner of the cover, boasts about there being “12 bonus pages” to the issue, which, I guess, is a worthwile, valuable component, except the “bonus” factor is somewhat diluted by the fact that each and every issue of Us has borne this same tagline since, ummmm…bear with me, here…the May 24, 2004 issue. May. Spring. We’re talking flowers, not fall foliage.
Or, for a better sense of perspective, the cover feature for the very first appearance of this “New! 12 Bonus Pages” promotional graphic was a large portrait of a beaming Jennifer Lopez and the headline, “New Ring, Big Trouble: Jen’s flashing an 8-carat rock from married Marc Anthony. As his wife fumes, is Lopez headed for more heartache?”
Well, we all know how that worked out. She got married. And what’s new is old again.

Harper’s Magazine has kindly translated from Hebrew a Hasidic Jew petition/prayer distributed during a January protest in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Jewish group was particularly distraught with the rising costs of housing in the neighborhood, a trend that they have affiliated with the trendy young people now populating that area of Brooklyn.
This prayer goes a step beyond playa-hatin’, it likens the hipsters to the plague:

Master of the Universe, have mercy upon us and upon the borders of our village and do not allow the persecution to come inside our home; please remove from upon us the plague of the artists, so that we shall not drown in evil waters, and so that they shall not come to our residence to ruin it.

Let it be known that we adore, nay, cherish the pearls of wisdom put forth by columnist Frank Rich each and every Sunday in the New York Times. Yes, in the past, we may have thrown the gauntlet on occasion and gotten all up in his business, but we’re willing to let bygones be bygones. And, like our new hero Frank Rich, we’re willing to overuse and abuse a slew of conversational cliches in our writing.
In Rich’s latest missive, “This Time Bill O’Reilly Got It Right,” (which appeared in the September 19, 2004 edition of the Times) readers are treated to a feast of such verbal banalities. To wit:

“If a stopped clock is right twice a day, why shouldn’t Bill O’Reilly be right at least once in a blue moon?”
“This was G.O.P. TV raised to not-ready-for-prime time self-parody, lacking only the studio audience to yuk it up.”
“CNN, the inventor of 24/7 news, once prided itself on being a straight shooter.”
“Now it and Mr. Carville have argued that the line wasn’t blurred here…”
“At some point after 9/11, the news business jumped the shark…”
“Should network news ride into the sunset…”
“The only hope for a successful alternative is not to fight Fox’s fire with imitation Fox fire in the form of another partisan network but to reinvent the wheel with a network that prizes news over endless left/right crossfire…”

Hey, world: Stop Playa-Hatin’, okay?
First, you piss in our PBR by telling us that the batteries in our iPods have about as much lifespan as a potato clock.
Now, you rain on our dodgeball game by telling us that our bikes would be safer secured with a diary lock! Goddamnit! Why must you hate on our hipster lifestyles*? Are you jealous or something?
What’s next? Onion T-shirts cause cancer? Are you gonna tell us that The Killers abuse child labor laws? Oh, is blogging going to be characterized by the DSM V as a mental illness? Then I bet you’ll tell us that PBR is already 70 percent piss! Thanks for sharing, you goddamn haters.
* Yes, your middle-aged boss has an iPod and your mom has a bike. Maybe your boss and your mom are hipsters, ever think of that, jackass? (I guarantee your boss has a Member’s Only jacket in his closet and your mom wears those flat nurse’s shoes.) Next you’re gonna tell me that making fun of old people and squares makes you look like an immature, bitter, Urban Outfitters-shopping monkey-boy! Goddamn haters!