"Either way, let's pee on it."

Poor Gabe.

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Super meta

"Comedy is a place where the mind goes to tickle itself. That's what she said."

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"Oh, here comes the chubby funster."

For some reason, I've been into Ricky Gervais's comedic works over the past few days. My renewed interest started with Extras last week and has now expanded into reruns of The Office (UK). Jim and Pam are funnier in British.

Also, for you history fans out there, a bit about Rosa Parks:

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"Meredith, where are your panties?!"

Oh, dear.

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What it feels like for a girl

As you readers know, I love The Office. It is Thursday night appointment television. As you also know, I am most openly critical of the things that I love. Hence, my feelings about this week's episode, "Prince Family Paper." Half of the episode was an homage to the failed ABC series, Are You Hot?. While Michael and Dwight were away, the rest of the office debated whether Hilary Swank was hot or not. This took up their entire day.

For many viewers, I'm sure this seemed like a yet another typical office discussion that went on for too long. For me, it was yet another reminder of the impossible standards by which even highly successful women are judged. It also reminded me that all of the writers on The Office are probably male (and white) [Edit, 1/24/2009: Except for Mindy Kaling. Thanks, molecularshyness!], which results in most of the stories centering around average-looking guys judging and hooking up with women waaay out of their league (I'm looking at you, Kevin).

Hilary Swank has won two Oscars. Yet her worth, as described by one of America's most influential television programs, comes down to whether she is hot or not. I have never heard anyone question or even mention the hotness quotient of the similarly-accoladed Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson or Dustin Hoffman (who still gets to star in movies with a woman 20 years younger than he is). Instead, I get to hear the most powerful woman in the world worry about the fact that she currently weighs 200 pounds, and let that fact overshadow her billion-dollar empire or her hand in electing Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States.

The episode also reminded me of a conversation I had this week that went like this:

Gentleman 1: Have you met Sally yet?

Gentleman 2: No, I still haven't met her. Everyone keeps telling me about her.

Me: She was at the party last Friday.

Gentleman 2: That's what I heard.

Gentleman 1: She is bangin'.

Gentleman 2: I know. That's what I keep hearing.

Me: She's a nice lady. And she has a very successful career.

Gentleman 2: I can't tell anything from that. But "bangin'" I understand.

Lovely.

Before that conversation, I was having a happy, confident day. I was still rolling, jazzed from one of my friends stating that if she were a gentleman, she would date me because I'm nice, knowledgeable, kindhearted and friendly. I refrained myself from joking than we should get a timeshare in Provincetown and instead said, "thank you." I told her that wish more guys would appreciate those qualities in me and share her sentiments, but all they care about is hotness. She said, "No, you will be successful with gentlemen." Since she was so certain, I believed her for a few hours and thought I was so cool. Now, not so much anymore. Even in an era where I can realistically aspire to be President. Or rather, first lady.

It doesn't matter if you're Fred Savage's dorky character on Working or the super popular Bright from Everwood. All that matters to guys, regardless of orientation, is hot. Then when they get hot, they're disappointed because they also got shallow. What did you expect, doofus? Like I'm supposed to have sympathy for your poor choices? I don't think so. Or, in the words of Cher Horowitz, as if.

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I would report on more Princess Unicorn stories if I could,

but these provocative stories just jump out at me:

Katrina's Hidden Race War, By A.C. Thompson, The Nation via Feministing.

. . . During the summer of 2005 Herrington was working as an armored-car driver for the Brink's company and living in a rented duplex about a mile from Algiers Point. Katrina thrashed the place, blowing out windows, pitching a hefty pine tree limb through the roof and dumping rain on Herrington's possessions. On the day of the shooting, Herrington, Alexander and Collins were all trying to escape the stricken city, and set out together on foot for the Algiers Point ferry terminal in the hopes of getting on an evacuation bus.

Those hopes were dashed by a barrage of shotgun pellets. After two shots erupted, Collins and Alexander took off running and ducked into a shed behind a house to hide from the gunmen, Alexander tells me. The armed men, he says, discovered them in the shed and jammed pistols in their faces, yelling, "We got you niggers! We got you niggers!" He continues, "They said they was gonna tie us up, put us in the back of the truck and burn us. They was gonna make us suffer.... I thought I was gonna die. I thought I was gonna leave earth."

Apparently thinking they'd caught some looters, the gunmen interrogated and verbally threatened Collins and Alexander for ten to fifteen minutes, Alexander says, before one of the armed men issued an ultimatum: if Alexander and Collins left Algiers Point and told their friends not to set foot in the area, they'd be allowed to live.

Meanwhile, Herrington was staring at death. "I was bleeding pretty bad from my neck area," he recalls. When two white men drove by in a black pickup truck, he begged them for help. "I said, Help me, help me--I'm shot," Herrington recalls. The response, he tells me, was immediate and hostile. One of the men told Herrington, "Get away from this truck, nigger. We're not gonna help you. We're liable to kill you ourselves." My God, thought Herrington, what's going on out here?

He managed to stumble back to a neighbor's house, collapsing on the front porch. The neighbors, an African-American couple, wrapped him in a sheet and sped him to the nearest hospital, the West Jefferson Medical Center, where, medical records show, he was X-rayed at 3:30 pm. According to the records, a doctor who reviewed the X-rays found "metallic buckshot" scattered throughout his chest, arms, back and abdomen, as well as "at least seven [pellets] in the right neck." Within minutes, Herrington was wheeled into an operating room for emergency surgery.

"It was a close-range buckshot wound from a shotgun," says Charles Thomas, one of the doctors who operated on Herrington. "If he hadn't gotten to the hospital, he wouldn't have lived. He had a hole in his internal jugular vein, and we were able to find it and fix it."

After three days in the hospital, which lacked running water, air conditioning and functional toilets, Herrington was shuttled to a medical facility in Baton Rouge. When he returned to New Orleans months later, he paid a visit to the Fourth District police station, whose officers patrol the west bank, and learned there was no police report documenting the attack. Herrington, who now has a wide scar stretching the length of his neck, says the officers he spoke with failed to take a report or check out his story, a fact that still bothers him. "If the shoe was on the other foot, if a black guy was willing to go out shooting white guys, the police would be up there real quick," he says. "I feel these guys should definitely be held accountable. These guys had absolutely no right to do what they did." . . .

There's more!

. . . militia member Wayne Janak, 60, a carpenter and contractor, is more forthcoming with me. "Three people got shot in just one day!" he tells me, laughing. We're sitting in his home, a boxy beige-and-pink structure on a corner about five blocks from Daigle's Grocery. "Three of them got hit right here in this intersection with a riot gun," he says, motioning toward the streets outside his home. Janak tells me he assumed the shooting victims, who were African-American, were looters because they were carrying sneakers and baseball caps with them. He guessed that the property had been stolen from a nearby shopping mall. According to Janak, a neighbor "unloaded a riot gun"--a shotgun--"on them. We chased them down."

Janak, who was carrying a pistol, says he grabbed one of the suspected looters and considered killing him, but decided to be merciful. "I rolled him over in the grass and saw that he'd been hit in the back with the riot gun," he tells me. "I thought that was good enough. I said, 'Go back to your neighborhood so people will know Algiers Point is not a place you go for a vacation. We're not doing tours right now.'"

He's equally blunt in Welcome to New Orleans, an hourlong documentary produced by the Danish video team, who captured Janak, beer in hand, gloating about hunting humans. Surrounded by a crowd of sunburned white Algiers Point locals at a barbeque held not long after the hurricane, he smiles and tells the camera, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it." A native of Chicago, Janak also boasts of becoming a true Southerner, saying, "I am no longer a Yankee. I earned my wings." A white woman standing next to him adds, "He understands the N-word now." In this neighborhood, she continues, "we take care of our own."

Janak, who says he'd been armed with two .38s and a shotgun, brags about keeping the bloody shirt worn by a shooting victim as a trophy. When "looters" showed up in the neighborhood, "they left full of buckshot," he brags, adding, "You know what? Algiers Point is not a pussy community."

Within that community the gunmen enjoyed wide support. In an outtake from the documentary, a group of white Algiers Point residents gathers to celebrate the arrival of military troops sent to police the area. Addressing the crowd, one local praises the vigilantes for holding the neighborhood together until the Army Humvees trundled into town, noting that some of the militia figures are present at the party. "You all know who you are," the man says. "And I'm proud of every one of you all." Cheering and applause erupts from the assembled locals.

Some of the gunmen prowling Algiers Point were out to wage a race war, says one woman whose uncle and two cousins joined the cause. A former New Orleanian, this source spoke to me anonymously because she fears her relatives could be prosecuted for their crimes. "My uncle was very excited that it was a free-for-all--white against black--that he could participate in," says the woman. "For him, the opportunity to hunt black people was a joy."

"They didn't want any of the 'ghetto niggers' coming over" from the east side of the river, she says, adding that her relatives viewed African-Americans who wandered into Algiers Point as "fair game." One of her cousins, a young man in his 20s, sent an e-mail to her and several other family members describing his adventures with the militia. He had attached a photo in which he posed next to an African-American man who'd been fatally shot. The tone of the e-mail, she says, was "gleeful"--her cousin was happy that "they were shooting niggers." . . .

How sad is my Thursday night

without 30 Rock and The Office? I can't even find a good show on Logo. I have seen every episode of Rick and Steve, The Big Gay Sketch Show and Exes and Ohs at least twice. They really need fundage for some new original programming.

"I'm talking about Big Companies, and their Two-Faced Fat Cat Executives."

Because I'm too lazy to write my own Gossip Girl recaps:

"What's with the business formal? Are you being arraigned for something?": Gossip Girl, by Carrie at South Dakota Dark.

You can read my feelings in the comments section that follows.

~

Victor, Victrola, by Jacob at Television Without Pity.

"What if there was this gay serial rapist who accidentally fell in like with his best friend's girlfriend, who was kind of his best actual friend, because they were kind of rapists together, and they got together in the seamiest, creepiest way...but you were cheering them on the whole time, and kind of got teary when they sealed the deal, even though it was presented in weird '90s Nine Inch Nails jumpcuts played against weird '00s emo-punk-rock crap? Like their creepiness cancels each other out and it's kind of...sweet? Like, 'Way to lose your virginity to the gay best friend of your shitty boyfriend'?"

~

‘Gossip Girl’ Exceeds Our Expectations … Again!, from New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer.

• Okay, so Vanessa sneaks in while Dan and Serena are making out, which brings to bear the question we've been wondering since she first stepped foot through his window. What if he were masturbating?? This is high school, not Clarissa Explains It All; you can't just sneak through a boy's window without warning if you don't want to see some frighteningly awkward hunching maneuvers and a flash of low-grade Internet porn. Minus 5.

• Aha! Only a few minutes later, Vanessa comes in and Dan is looking at porn. Except he's still not masturbating. Not to be vulgar, but in what world would that happen? Minus 5, for willfully and repeatedly ignoring the libido level of a high-school boy. These creatures will hump APPLE PIES, people.

Josh, if you're reading (fingers crossed!), did you write this third one? Because I don't know many bloggers who can work in an effective Clarissa Explains It All reference.

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My thoughts on this week's 30 Rock:

"A whale is trouble! I have to go." Love love love Al Gore.

"What do you do with the Pop-Tart?!" Ewww. Poor Liz Lemon.

Also, Mr. Pancholy, please get more press so I can link to you in a Joseph Gordon-Levitt manner. You are so funny and talented. You're like a primetime broadcast version of Lloyd.

I didn't realize until right now that David Schwimmer wasn't playing himself. He was playing a previously out of work actor named "Jared." Right.

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I haven't finished watching The Office yet, but my initial thoughts include these: Jim, everyone likes to have their own special day on their birthday. I know I do. (Winky-wink.) Kate from Jon & Kate + 8 acknowledges this, and she has eight kids who share two birthdays. You only have thirteen employees for an entire year. Plus, party planning is Angela's entire reason for being. Let everyone have their own day and their own cake.

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My favorite Strike videos today

Found first via Stephanie's Soap Box:

The Office is Closed




Why We Fight

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Found via pamie.com:

WRITER SPEAKS OUT

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From Defamer, Defamer Visits The Paramount Picket Line, starring Stanford Blatch and a naturally lovely Rhoda Morgenstern. I can't embed the video, so click on the link.

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"Just became self-aware. So much to figure out."

Still watching last night "Launch Party" episode of The Office. My favorite part so far:

Ryan: Yeah, I created a website. Look, at the end of the day, Apple's Apple is flying at 30,000 feet. This is a paper company. And I don't want us to get lost in the weeds, or into a beauty contest.

Ryan's boss, Thomas Dean: I told you, I don't want you doing these things in here. You can use your own office or do it in the hall.

Ryan (now crammed into his own tiny office): Convergence. Viral marketing. We're going guerrilla. We're taking it to the streets, while keeping an eye on the street--Wall Street. I don't want to reinvent the wheel. In other words, it is what it is. Buying paper just became fun.

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Next topic: Nobel Spurs Gore Supporters to Urge Presidential Bid, by Jim Malone, VOA News.

Hooray for Al Gore!

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Time to delve into the Yahoo dating advice files! by zuzu at Feministe. Clickety-click on the link, and note that I was First! in the comments. I'm so cool.

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Read my comment here, too: Color adjustment: The return of The Boondocks, by Todd VanDerWerff at The House Next Door, via South Dakota Dark. So far no one has responded to my brilliance under the post, but that's okay.

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From Defamer: Hollywood Women On Working In A Schlong-Obsessed Industry. My favorite comment:

By TheHMSBeagle:

I'm so, so, so tired of this retardo argument about how wah wah wah women should buy tickets to change the world.

Maybe if they gave us some movies that didn't

a) Suck
b) Treat women as disposable backdrops to the hero's journey of some dude
c) Act like Vera Farmiga's role in THE DEPARTED was "A fucking awesome part for a woman" (WHAT.)
d) Pretend that women die en masse at 29
e) Approach the world solely from a male perspective
f) Treat women as, at best, humorless authority figures out to force you to change and generally fuck with your good time, and at worst as sexual objects who exist only to strut across the screen once or twice and then service the hero after he defeats the giant robots

WOMEN WOULD BUY TICKETS.

And Lynda Obst is such a hypocrite. I know for a fact that she's been rejecting female-lead scripts because they have female leads for at least the past year.

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More sad news: Mychal Bell Of 'Jena Six' Ordered Back To Jail, by Kurt Orzeck, MTV.com.

"He's locked up again," Bell's father, Marcus Jones, told AP. "No bail has been set or nothing. He's a young man who's been thrown in jail again and again, and he just has to take it."

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To brighten your mood: Your feminist cute for the day, by Jessica at Feministing.



I'd move to New York to get my daughter into that school. Or, I could use the relocation money to put in her into a good girls' school here in LA. Ha! Like I have money.

Pam and Jim were there too.

Season 4 of The Office premiered last night with the much anticipated episode entitled "Fun Run". I haven't watched the second part of it yet, but here was my favorite exchange of the night so far:

Michael: Kelly, you are Hindu. So you believe in Buddha.

Kelly: That’s Buddhists.

Michael: Are you sure?

Kelly: No.

(Michael turns to the new IT guy.)

Michael: What are you?

IT guy: Well, if you’re gonna reduce my identity to my religion, then I’m Sikh. But I also like hip-hop and NPR. And I’m restoring a 1967 Corvette in my spare time.

Michael: Okay so one Sikh. And . . .

Oh, Michael. While searching unsuccessfully for a video or screen capture of that scene, I found this lovely article: Masti See TV, by Hilal Nakiboglu Isler, at Nirali Magazine.

. . . [Mindy Kaling's character on The Office, Kelly Kapoor] might be a minor one—like most roles that go to desi actors—but it is different. Tune in to NBC on Thursdays and you’ll see why: Kelly is memorable–not because she’s Indian, but because she is chatty, upbeat and, well, irritating. There are no exaggerated accents to her performance, no suggestions of superior ability in math, no terrorist plots uncovered by co-workers.

Kelly Kapoor is the girl next door (make that cubicle). And her character is so stunningly ordinary, it represents a real triumph.

Kaling, a Dartmouth College alumna, once told her school paper she felt the world of “sitcoms and sketch” was “very white.” A script intern for Conan O’Brien at the time, she found the lack of women and people of color backstage to be disappointing.

Six years later, she is now in Los Angeles—and with acting, writing and producing credits on an Emmy-winning show, she’s out to change the plot. . .

If you readers watched the show last night, what was your favorite part?

His Girl, Freaky, Night Lights, After Next.

Stories I liked today:

From WireTap Magazine, A Big Tent With No One in It, by Ally Klimkoski:

In November of 2004 there was one age group that voted for John Kerry. Only one. One group decided that George Bush was an unequivocal moron and should not return to the White House. Only one. What we've now learned is that it's not only the standard to believe the president is a complete moron, it's actually quite fashionable.

What is surprising is that this same age group is the one age group that is most often ignored by the Democratic Party, Democratic candidates and most political organizations.

That's right -- it's us. It's the 18- to 30-year-olds.

My favorite part of the article, under what the DNC can learn from the Calvin Klein IN2U campaign, targeted at the 18-30 demographic:

5. Listen -- don't lecture...I am holding out for the day I see a candidate begin a college lecture by walking up to the podium, grabbing the mic and saying "You know, I'm not going to sit here and lecture at you. You get that all day long. I'm curious in what you think and what you want out of me. And before I leave this lecture, I want to come out with some reasonable action items that I can work with you on."...

...7. Age doesn't equal issue. 23 isn't 18, and it's not 25, and it's not 28 and it's not 30. There is more diversion between the 18-30 age group than any other group because so many things change between those times. A new college freshman is nothing like a 21-year-old; being 21 is not the same as someone who has just graduated at 23; and someone who graduated at 23 is nothing like someone who's 25 or pushing 30. They each have different issues that concern them. Student loans will appeal more to the 23+ crowd, but kids who aren't paying them off yet aren't thinking about that yet.

8. Students are not the same as nonstudents. Targeting college students who are 18-25 is nowhere close to targeting working 18- to 25-year-olds. The issues are different; a few people target them differently. Similarly, the working college students who attend tech schools, community colleges or night four-year schools are also different than the regular 18- to 25-year-olds at regular four-year schools. Similarly, those who attended colleges are different than those who didn't yet fall in that demographic, and their issues aren't the same.

From WireTap Magazine, via Feministing, U.S., Denial and the Culture of Violence, by Samhita Mukhopadhyay.

What some are calling the worst shooting in United States history, the death of 32 Virginia Tech students was indeed deplorable. The media circus that followed was also deplorable. Shouldn't the families and victims be given some privacy to deal with the tragedy?

But also what is it about these isolated incidents that capture the national imagination? As other bloggers have noted, last weekend 65 Iraqis died and just yesterday another 183 in Baghdad alone. Why the hypocrisy? So far in 2007 there have been 27 deaths in Oakland County alone. Why have none of those deaths made headline news? Why does America only care about certain people's death? Do some people just deserve to die?

I also liked this article linked inside the previous one: "It's like when 9/11 happened", by Joe Eaton, on Salon.com...

Ko, a senior accounting major, said he and other South Korean students are afraid to stay on campus. Ko said many of their friends in a Korean Christian group were also planning to leave Blacksburg for Northern Virginia.

"It's like when 9/11 happened," Ko said. "Arab people are victims even though they didn't do anything wrong. It's just the same to me." Ko said Korean students have been e-mailing and calling each other since the release of Cho's name this morning. He said he wanted to attend today's convocation at 2 p.m., where President Bush was scheduled to speak, but friends warned him against it. "People said don't attend because it could be a bad situation," he said.

...as well as this student at Virginia Tech writing in his livejournal in real time about the event. It's a sensitive, human account of the tragedy, more so than the breaking stories from NBC and the other American "news" outlets, who have been plastering the killer's mugshot and gun porn photo on every show and website they own.

All of the above reminded me of this exchange featured in Bowling for Columbine:

Michael Moore: If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine or the people in that community, what would you say to them if they were here right now?

Marilyn Manson: I wouldn't say a single word to them, I would listen to what they have to say and that's what no one did.

Here's the article from Reuters that gave me a sardonic giggle: Catholic Church buries limbo after centuries. Sucks to be those people who believed in limbo for hundreds years. I wonder what will happen when the next Popes declare that gays are A-OK, women can join the priesthood, and contraception might be a good idea?

Even though I enjoyed the rerun of The Office last night, I would have appreciated a new episode. I totally related to 30 Rock, though. I don't think Bill Cosby and Oprah are coming after me, but I can understand feeling like a supermodel in Cleveland. "Well played, Garkel."

Though I don't see how Jack Donaghy can talk himself out of this one: Alec Baldwin calls Dora the Explorer.

Hey there, buddy. I love Dora the Explorer! All she said was, "Hola." There was no need to call her a "rude, thoughtless little pig." I guess once Mr. Baldwin's book is published, I will understand "the incredible strains created by parental alienation."

BTW, Jack's assistant Jonathan is my new TV crush. Move over Psych guys.

"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.

He Can Always Work at Dunder-Mifflin.

Did y'all catch Kevin Reilly on last week's episode of The Office? Yes, the sometimes delusional President of NBC Entertainment had a three-second cameo at the beginning of "The Return" as Dwight's potential employer. I wasn't sure it was Mr. Reilly at first. But Defamer confirmed it for me. He's pretty darn cute, for a older gentleman. And I'm two degrees of separation away from him. Sweet! Kevin is my latest "wishes-he-were-a-celebrity" crush. Because network presidents are only tabloid-worthy if you can find them on The Sunset Strip. No matter how cool Jeff Zucker thinks he is 'cause he knows Kirstie Alley.

Even if the constant breaking rumors turn out to be true at some confirmed point in the near future, I'm sure Kevin will land on his feet. If nothing else, his golden parachute and his big pile of money will help cushion his fall.

Oh yeah. Loved the rest of the episode, too. "I liked you better as the temp." "Me too." You're lucky you're still around, BJ.

Update, 3/1/2007: KEVIN REILLY RE-UPS AS PRESIDENT, NBC ENTERTAINMENT