Almost right, but not quite.

Jenna Fischer Will 'Piss On Your Face' If You Whisper The Wrong Sweet Nothing In Her Ear, from Defamer.

... now that she's a big star, she understandably has some choice words for the screenwriter who, a few years back, gave her shit for refusing to drop trou for him. In an interview with Playboy, Jenna tells a story about what happened after she ran into Halloween 5 screenwriter Shem Bitterman at a party one year into her move-west-and-act life plan. Apparently, her non-interest in starring in a "like, really raunchy" new film of his spurred the scribe to claim she was clearly "not a real actress." And while the old Jenna did nothing but go home and cry her newbie eyes out, the emboldened Office star has this to say to the Bitterman today:

"What an asshole, I should have told him, 'How about I piss on your face? Does that make me a real actress? Let's try that. I'll do that right here. I'll do that today.' Bring me Shem Bitterman."

The sentiment is all well and good, but Playboy? Complaining about female exploitation in a Playboy article makes as much sense as calling for a ban on firearms in Guns & Ammo.

Apparently real actresses only take off their clothes for computer magazines or for the children.

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A Case of the Mondays

As you readers may recall, earlier this month I had a tête-à-tête with mon amie Stephanie about how my life would be different if I were a nice white lady. I had considered doing an experiment to prove my point. But after today, no need. This morning I learned that one of my college classmates--same year, same School of Film and Television--is now three rungs higher than I am on the entertainment industry ladder. She left a company that won't even interview me, and moved to a new company where she got a promotion to a position that I should have been working in two years ago. The differences between myself and my classmate? I graduated with Honors, multiple academic and extracurricular awards, and a business minor, whereas she is tiny, white and (dyed) blonde.

You know where to send my (nonalcoholic) wine and roses, Stephanie.

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In other news that made me frown, this article greeted me this morning on the Yahoo! front page: Ten New Etiquette Tips for the Workplace, by Penelope Trunk. Yes, that Penelope Trunk. I agreed with Number 4, "Say no to video résumés." The rest of them were...ludicrous. I have excerpted the following for brevity and humor; for the complete article, you can click on the link above.

2. Don't ask for time off, just take it.

When you need to leave work for a few hours or a few days, you don't need to ask for permission -- you're an adult, after all...

3. Keep your headphones on at work.

If you use social media tools, you're probably good at connecting with people and navigating office politics -- good enough that spending all day at work with headphones on won't hinder you...

5. Invite your CEO to be a friend on Facebook.

...there's a good chance that your CEO is registered, and it's likely that she'll really want to hear from you about what to do on Facebook, since she surely has no clue.

9. Call people on the weekend for work.

...The people who grew up being super-connected don't differentiate between the workweek and the weekend, so they don't mind working over the weekend on bits and pieces leftover from the week...

...If your coworkers don't like being called on the weekend, they can tell you. But remind them that a flexible work schedule lets you put relationships first all the time, and a work schedule that cordons off five days a week for work and two days a week for a personal life means that the personal life takes a backseat every week of the year.

The best way to get a life is to stop being so rigid about the distinction between time for work and time for life.

For more unintentional humor, Ms. Trunk also wrote Why We Should Be Grateful for Gen Y earlier this month. As usual, my jollies came from the comments (ellipses and misspellings theirs):

from hatesstupidarticles:

"Who is this lady? Does she write these articles because she has a hard time at work or does she really go around calling people gen x and gen y. News flash... 15 year olds call each other gen x.... I got a great idea, why dont people just go to work, do what they need to do, then go home and in return you get a paycheck.. I just summed up this ladies article in a few sentences. Can her yahoo...."

from Kharlo T:

"Obviously, this article must be a joke. Don't ask for time off, just take it...Invite you're CEO to be a friend on Facebook...Call people on the weekend to work. What was smoked before writing here? I would clearly not hire the author as a consultant to improve employee SAT. The organization would loose billions and loss productivity of just trying to figure out where all the employees have gone. Oh yeah, I must have missed out because I haven't included them on my Facebook. DUH!"

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Happier news. After the comments that I wrote on Friday at this post about Mad Men at the TIME magazine Tuned In blog never appeared, I thought that the Time Warner family had it in for me. Apparently it wasn't personal, and James Poniewozik does not have a vendetta against me and my kind; some bug on the website registered my comments as spam. Also, Mr. P then responded to what I had written about the show. This experience has taught me that it does pay to ask about what happened when you were wronged. A similar situation happened to me with Dan and the Willamette Weekly. I got all paranoid then, too. But it turned out okay. Now I get to add a new site I like. Welcome, Tuned In!

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Next happy. Things I Had to Try Really Hard Not to Say When I Found Myself Standing Next To Jenna Fischer at a Bookstore, by pamie on pamie.com.

1. "Oh, my gosh! You're Pam! And I'm Pam! I mean, I'm really Pam, and you're playing Pam, but your Pam is awesome and I'm not fictional."...

...3. "Hey! My name is Pam and I write on a TV show and you play Pam on a TV show...

I tried to explain this meta concept to my friend Chrissy a few months ago. She either didn't get understand what I saying, or she wasn't that impressed by the realization that every other TWoPer had already come to when The Office premiered in 2005.

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More happy. Man Band, man! by Irwin Handleman on From Studio Twelve A.

...I did not see the commercial for "Mission: Man Band" until last night, but boy am I glad I finally did. I could not be more excited about this show...

...It's Rich Cronin. Who is Rich Cronin? Let me give you a hint: "I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch, I'd take her if I had one wish". Or who could forget the classic couplet: "When you take a sip you buzz like a hornet, Billy Shakespeare wrote a bunch of sonnets!"

That's right, it's the lead "singer" of LFO. They were most likely the low point of the boy band movement. That song was just horrific. It's like "Transformers" is to me now, it makes you question the country you live in. As someone on youtube posted under the "Summer Girls" video, "this is why the world hates white people. I am so ashamed"...

Here's the Television Without Pity take on VH1's latest masterpiece: Mancasting.

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That was my day. How was yours?

"Radical Transparency?" Yeah, okay, Wired.

Insert eye roll here.

It all started as it usually does: I was reading Feministing. This article about the revolting cover of the latest issue of Vanity Fair caught my attention. As I was scrolling through the growing number of comments, I noticed one that suggested I "check out this month's Wired." So I did.

Here is the cover of the April 2007 edition of Wired magazine:

First part.

Second part.

Here is the article, which I did read before writing on anything on this matter: "What We Can Learn From The Office." If you click on the image to enlarge the words, you'll notice that Jenna/Pam has absolutely nothing to say in the article. Michael Scott is quoted extensively, as he is the star of the show. So why isn't Steve Carell posing naked in Wired with random white male hands sticking Post-Its on his body?

I am disappointed. In the same way that I was disappointed by this Vanity Fair cover from last year. Though I did enjoy Salon's astute commentary, "Topless bodies found in brainless magazine," about the issue's twisted compilation of photos. I am also disappointed in the same way whenever I watch almost anything on BET. Have y'all seen College Hill? Eek.

My reaction remains the same to whomever I am disappointed in at the moment: You can do better than this. If you have enough star power to headline a blockbuster movie or a critically-acclaimed hit television show, and you can therefore sell truckloads of magazines because your face is on the cover, YOU NO LONGER HAVE TO BE THE NAKED GIRL! Yes, I AM SHOUTING! I have yet to see a magazine cover with John Krasinski or BJ Novak posing partially nude. And somehow these guys can sell last month's Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair with only their faces and hands left bare. Yet many women of the same caliber are under the impression that they need to take off their clothes to move product.

I'm not saying that Jenna, or Scarlett or Keira for that matter, are bad people because they disrobed for magazine covers. I'm not saying those particular magazines are bad for continually putting semi-clad young women on their covers, while all of their male models are always fully clothed, older, and arguably less attractive. Because that is another post for another time.

I am saying that if you are encouraging others to "Rule the World"--like the placard covering your apparently naked body is ironically telling us to do--you, and your obvious talent, might be taken more seriously if you put your clothes back on.