Category: Shallow

Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure
Anyone know when George Gurley‘s birthday is?
[Thanks, Madame J!]

Lock up your hermaphroditic daughters: The Chapman Brothers are back! Like a nasty case of herpes that pops up every few years to make the skin of the body politic crawl, Jake and Dinos Chapman have returned with their unique take on shock art, just in time for awards season.
Who can forget their adorable take on smushed-together pre-adolescent girls with penis noses? Or their enlightening take on the Holocaust involving miniature concentration camps. (The figurines would be right at home in a Bürger Führer Unhappy Meal™.)
Here’s part of their latest bid for a little attention—and a lot of scratch—in the 20th annual Turner Prize in December. On the left, we see Death, (note the oblique, deep title) “a life-size bronze cast of two inflatable sex dolls engaged in fellatio.” Oh, so that’s what those two dolls were doing!
The weird thing about Jake and Dinos’ shocking, shocking art is that it’s really, really boring. I mean, what angry 10 year-old boys hasn’t doodled the same things in his notebook during a boring math class? It reminds me of the name (and the cover art) of an old album. And I didn’t have to go to a museum to see it.

Simon Reynolds goes prog crazy on his blissblog. Sort of reminds me of how the Smurfs talked only, um, more prog.

I saw this headline on The New Republic Web site and assumed it would be yet another piece on Gregg Easterbrook: When it comes to anti-Semitism, old habits die hard.
Instead, I found an essay on the Middle East by TNR‘s Cambridge Diarist and editor-in-chief Martin Peretz.

Let’s see if the Teflon Hip-Hop Don can outrun this latest controversy:
A Hip-Hop Star’s Fashion Line Is Tagged With a Sweatshop by Angel Franco.
I’m betting he’ll flip this in his favor just like everything else in his charmed life.

Setting the hearts of hipster geeks everywhere aflutter, The New Yorker offers up the delectable geek girl-on-girl pairing of the week: Virginia Heffernan and Tina Fey. Except maybe this might have been called the writerly menage a trois that never was; does anyone know what happened to Entertainment Weekly‘s Kristen Baldwin?
We ask only because Heffernan’s profile of Fey seems to channel the spirits of Baldwin’s coverage of Weekend Update co-hosts Fey and Jimmy Fallon, which originally appeared in the May 10, 2002 issue of EW. To wit:
1. Sit in on writers’ meetings and/or SNL dress rehearsal discussions to convey the humorous give-and-take of Fey’s job.
“[On a saturday afternoon] The writers were trying to come up with a joke about the Dixie Chicks, whose lead singer had slighted President Bush. Doug Abeles read the setup: “While in London on Thursday, the Dixie Chicks angered country-music fans when lead singer Natalie Maines told the audience, ‘Just so you know, we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.’” Fey squinted, as if detecting a quip in the distance…“We apologize,” she suddenly declared. “We forgot that our entire fan base were hillbillies and idiots.” Everyone chuckled except Shoemaker, who pointed out that Dixie Chicks fans were people like his wife. Fey agreed, without apology, and the group moved on to a joke about a man who swallowed a diamond ring in order to ask his proctologist to marry him.” (The New Yorker, 2003)
“Update cohosts Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon survey the patchwork of hilarity looking for stuff to cut, while simultaneously facing pressing challenges…And then there is the Captain Morgan problem. “A new study reveals that eyedrops work as well as eye patches to correct lazy eye. A skeptical Captain Morgan said, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.'” Although it’s not every day a person gets to work the swashbuckling mascot of a rum brand into a joke, an Update staffer has some bad news for Fallon: “The thing is,” he says matter-of-factly, “Captain Morgan doesn’t have an eye patch.” In a room full of comedy writers, that’s all it takes to provoke a riffing frenzy.” (EW, 2002)
2. Invoke Fey’s adulatory hipster fan base, and the discomfort this provides her.
“As we were talking, a man in his twenties, with wild tufts of dark hair, stopped by our table, which was near the soda fountain. Over the roar of a blender, he shouted to Fey, “Can I tell you that you are amazing? I don’t want to interrupt, but you are truly, truly amazing!” Fey thanked him, staring down at her plate.” (The New Yorker, 2003)
“It would embarrass Tina if she knew how many people have told me they think she’s, like, the hottest woman on TV,” says [Weekend Update producer Michael] Schur. The sex-symbol issue is, in fact, one that makes both Fallon and Fey squirm uncomfortably and stare at their hands. “I just try to stay out of it,” says Fey, who’s married to theater director Jeff Richmond. (EW, 2002)
3. Mention People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” list in some capacity
“She lost thirty pounds in the year before she went on camera for “Weekend Update,” and she now works out with a trainer and counts the point value of each meal according to the Weight Watchers system. (Earlier this year, People included her in its annual list of most beautiful people. “Don’t mention it,” she told me. “Ride it out.”)” (The New Yorker, 2003)
“Brace yourself for some full-body blushing, buddy: Fallon just landed on PEOPLE magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful list, and gossip columnists have spilled much ink linking him with such ladies as Winona Ryder and fashion designer Tara Subkoff.” (EW, 2002)

I love Elvis Mitchell so much that if he were to review the phonebook, I’d read it just to admire his turns-of-phrase and character sketches of Aaron A. Aaronson and Aaron A Adams. Somehow Mitchell manages to be both cool and a major geek at the same time. Case in point, Mitchell’s piece in this week’s Times Arts & Leisure section, The ‘Kill Bill’ Soundtrack: D.J. Quentin’s Recycled Mix in which Elvis waxes geekier than Harry Knowles, “Moriarty”, and Quentin Tarantino in a three-way AOL chat.
Mitchell references movies and TV shows no one (not even the stars and creators) remembers like They Call Her One Eye and Codename: Foxfire.
It’s a good article, but man, if no one outside of the smallest of Internet chatrooms will find it interesting. My hat’s off to you, Elvis Mitchell, King of Geeks.

I just can’t get enough exhilaratingly bizarro news about Mel Gibson’s upcoming The Passion of Christ, and I don’t even believe in God. But I do believe in crazy movie-making antics!
First, there was last week’s news that lead actor Jim Caviezel was struck by lightning while filming. OK, sure, I can buy that.
But then Variety‘s Army Archerd also reported last week that Gibson was using — get this — an animatronic, Jim Henson-esque robo-Christ to suspend from the cross for a number of scenes, since I guess being splayed out on behalf of sinners everywhere for extended periods of time made Jim “I’m no method actor” Caveziel uncomfortable. The virtual Jesus
“was created by Keith Vanderlaan’s Captive Audience F/X company which allowed Gibson to shoot long exterior shots in Italy because “Jim Caviezel couldn’t remain on the cross in that cold for hours with only a loin cloth.” According to Archerd, “the animatronically controlled head moves, the bleeding and beaten chest heaves… [with] special bloody prosthetic makeup appliances to be CGI’d on the figure of Jesus which is stripped down to the bone resulting from the ‘horrible instruments of torture.’.”
So what happens to this action-figure/son-of-god when shooting wraps? Does Mel Gibson get to keep his own, personal, Jesus? (That, by the way, is the second almost-unintentional Depeche Mode reference in this particular post, after the lead sentence. Won’t happen again.)

Step aside, Vincent Gallo. Schlockbuster movie director McG has laid claim to the new monopoly on jaw-droppingly shocking interviews given in support of recent film projects. The Hollywood hired hand and former music-video veteran, whose public perception had seemingly been limited to knowledge of his single-word name, his sandy blond hair, and his surfer-dude appearance, is making an effort to transcend (or at least justify) his body of work, which includes the garishly awful (and thankfully short-lived) television series Fastlane and — most notably — the two Charlie’s Angels films. In other words, the guy has exclusively trafficked in “wham, bam, glam and slam.”
Or so we thought. In a recent interview for DVDFile.com given to support the DVD release of Charlie’s Angel’s 2: Full Throttle, McG has bestowed upon us his take on everything from philosophy to life in the digital age.
Some highlights, lest you continue to think the guy’s a total dunce who produces films of little or no redeeming value:
“When I was younger and I was in school, I wanted to be a psychiatrist and I was studying philosophy very deeply and I found myself becoming increasingly unhappy. And just I was getting into sort of Locke and Hume and I was studying Nietzsche to a degree, the more I said, look, I’m really passionate about music, I like the way it makes me feel, I’m very passionate about film, I like how I lose myself and become immersed in a picture when I go to the theater for two hours. I got more and more excited about that and let go some of my philosophical dwellings and I’ve strangely become a happier person for it. And I mean it is just an approach to living, because I’m very cognizant of different philosophical takes on the life experience, but I’ve been unsuccessful in trying to unravel the mystery of life.”
Well, then. But what are highlights without a few lowlights? After all, who doesn’t love a good cliche every once in a while?
“Sometimes you capture lightning in a bottle and sometimes it eludes you, and you know, this one has just been a little bit of a bittersweet symphony.”
And some bad cliches, or cliches that never were:
“With Drew Barrymore, the special moments outnumber the mundane. You know what I mean? She just has a way of making chicken salad out of chicken shit.”
Erm…stick with the well-worn aphorisms, dude.

No excuses. Saturday Night Live presents The Best of Tracy Morgan Saturday October 25, 2003; 11:30PM EST on NBC.
Earlier thoughts on Tracy Morgan from low culture