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Ugly Betty: Amazing.
My favorite line comes from Amanda (of course): "That's the kind of dirty that don't wash clean."
Grey's Anatomy: Lame.
Most eye-roll inducing moment: Izzy proves her worth as a resident by saving a wounded doe in the goddamn parking lot.
Three years ago today I sat in a small second-floor classroom above a burrito shop and a convenience store on Washington Avenue in Minneapolis. A dozen of us sat at desks, silent as we worked on sample problems.
Alan, Ben, Carl, Denise, Emily, and Francesca are staying at nine cabins in a row in the woods. No others are staying in their row. Ben, Denise, and Francesca are not at the end of the row. Denise and Emily want cottages next to them unoccupied. Francesca is next to Ben and Carl. None of the women are in adjacent cottages. From this information, which of the following statements below must be true?
I looked at the dizzying array of possible answers, each of which looked plausible. How, I wondered for the millionth time, would this have anything to do with my ability to do well in law school? And what the hell made these six people staying in cabins in the woods think they could be such picky divas?
Throughout the summer I whined and moaned to Josh K. about the LSAT and law school. My brain was on an endless spin cycle, obsessed with test scores, potential law schools, and applications. Josh did his best to play the part of the good friend, but I could tell that he lost interest after two or three minutes of these conversations. I jabbered on like a crazy person until I finally stopped, Josh K. playing with his hair and staring off into space.
"You're not listening anymore, are you?"
"I don't know. I just don't really get why you're going to law school, that's all."
During Fall 2004, as our last year of college began, I started admitting to myself that I was wondering the same thing. I had forked out more than a thousand dollars for the Princeton Review LSAT class, spent countless hours studying and poring over applications and recommendations, and knew the U.S. News and Weekly World Report law school rankings backward and forward.
I wanted to go to law school, right? I wanted the glorious starting salary, I wanted the intellectual challenge, I wanted to work in some law firm in a skyscraper, tucked in the clouds above the city streets. I wanted it. Right? Didn't I? It wasn't just my parents that wanted it for me, right? I wanted it.
Didn't I?
And so I kept studying. I went dutifully to my three-hour review classes and the intermittent six-hour practice exams held on Saturdays leading up to big test.
I grew less and less happy, more and more restless. Law school? Was this really what I wanted? I didn't want to write or do something creative? I wanted law school?
Cracks formed at the edges of my law school plans. Major structural damage was done. And yet I still forked out money to reserve my place at St. Thomas University for a space to sit for the LSAT exam.
And then, one day, it all came crashing down.
I sat with Anthony, a friend of mine, looking pitiful. I was unshaved and unshowered, clad in an old university hoodie, a stack of LSAT books in my lap.
"I really don't think I want to do this," I said.
"Maybe you shouldn't," he said.
"Yeah, but . . . I mean, it's been my plan. Isn't this probably the smartest and safest thing for me to do?"
"Well, it sounds 'safe,' but from what you're telling me, 'safe' sounds a bit boring."
"So, what, I just go and do whatever I want with my life? Who cares about jobs, or making money, or surviving?"
He shrugged. "To an extent, maybe. I don't think you're going to have any problem surviving. I think what you need think about is what you actually want to do. If you could do anything in the world, what would it be?"
Tears rimmed my eyes.
I skipped my LSAT class that night.
I skipped the next one, too. And the next. Nobody from Princeton Review called. None of my review classmates did, either.
I couldn't have been happier.
I didn't tell my parents about my new plans until it was too late to do anything to try and convince me to change my mind. At first they weren't thrilled, but eventually they came around. They always wanted what was best for me, but we differed at the time in our ideas of how I'd get there.
And so, as Christmas Break approached that year, I was a free man. For the first time in my young adult life I had no idea what exactly I'd do with my future, but I had never been happier. I felt like I'd escaped from a looming prison sentence.
That Christmas Break I sat down with Josh K., my very patient best friend, who was thrilled that law school was long gone. It was something we now joked about. ("Remember when I was going to go to law school? Hahaha!")
It was over that break, of course, that the idea of New York after graduation seemed less like a ridiculous pipe dream and more like a real possibility.
Three years later it's September and, as for so many people, this time of year has always been about new beginnings and fresh starts, embarking on something new with a sense of vigor and purpose. This September I'm more grateful than ever that I'm not starting my third and final year of law school.
Sometimes I wonder what third-year law student Josh would have been like. Would he be happy? Would he have dropped out already? Would he be resigned to his fate? What if he would have graduated with $100,000 in law school student loan debt and then admitted to himself that he absolutely, positively didn't want to be a lawyer?
It's on days like today, as I get ready to start another day in Manhattan, grabbing my bag and my keys, jutting out onto the streets amidst the honking and sirens and heat and mess of humanity thronging the streets, heading to my job at a magazine across town, that I'm more grateful than ever that I escaped a future that was never meant to be.
Josh & Josh Miscellanea
Wondering about the lack of posts for the last four or five days? I went back to Minneapolis to visit my family and hang out with friends I hadn't seen in a long time. More on that, including pictures, coming soon. --JH
Tonight Josh K. and I hit up Radar magazine's party, co-hosted by Campari, on Broome Street in SoHo. Featuring art work from emerging artists (actually pretty good stuff), free Campari drinks, and a live performance by Jonathan Rice (he did stuff for the film Walk the Line and Fox's The O.C.), we had a good time. (We also saw Matt from Seventh House PR from Fashionista Diaries, sitting on a couch and texting on a handheld device the entire night. He looks better in person.) Afterward JK and I grabbed a slice of pizza and a soda on MacDougal and 3rd on the NYU campus before heading home.
Tomorrow night we're holing up at JK's to watch the season premieres of Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy. Our fingers are crossed 'cause we want 'em to be good. Hopefully Izzy Stevens will stop being such a spazzy mcspazzerson this season. And we're ready for a return to happier times on Ugly Betty after Santos's murder in the season finale.
Friday night JK and I are hitting up Chris Garneau's concert at Joe's Pub. Still loving him, and can't wait to hear his new material, some of which will be on his second forthcoming album, and also hear some of our favorites from the first album performed live. Chris's song "Castle Time" will be featured on Grey's Anatomy on October 4th, too, so we're excited for him. (Read our interview with Chris from May 2007)
On Monday night I headed over to the Warner Brothers screening studio on West 53rd Street with a coterie of fellow magazine staffers to attend a screening of the new Brad Pitt movie The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. It was long, as many of Brad's movies are wont to be (see sidebar below), but it was also pretty good.
Brad Pitt (or Dad Pitt, as our staffers call him) plays Jesse James, an American train and bank robber in the mid-to-late 1800s. The film opens in the 1880s as Jesse's career as master robber is coming to an end and an increasingly paranoid Jesse begins killing members of his old crew, erasing information that could lead to his capture. (Brad seems to enjoy playing crazy or unbalanced on screen—as does Angelina—and he gets to do it again here.)
The movie title gives away the basics: Jesse James, American folklore pseudo-hero, is assassinated by Robert Ford (Casey Affleck). The how and why, and the aftermath of the assassination, keep eyes glued to the screen. And, in particular, it's Ben Affleck's little brother, Casey, who steals most of the show as Robert Ford.
While Brad contents himself with his usual schtick, acting mostly with the posturing and positioning of his mouth and tongue, and the occasional inverted furrowing of eyebrows. Brad is fun watch, partly because of his beauty, and the role is one of his better performances. But it's Casey who sizzles on screen. He's creepy, he's conniving, and yet somehow likable and sympathetic. It's a performance the likes of which his brother has never delivered (or had the chance to).
Alas, the wildly talented Mary-Louise Parker, cast as Jesse's wife, is woefully underused. Her scenes must have been filmed in two or three days, and she has nothing to do except work in the kitchen and then cry (though wonderfully) near the end.
Political consultant and commentator James Carville makes a cameo in the film as the governor of Mississippi, which is at first distracting, but less troubling when Carville proves he's a capable enough actor. Carville's appearance, though, like the omniscient narration that laces through the film, pulls the viewer out of the trance that movies are supposed to induce and reminds us that we're watching a movie, which is annoying.
Perhaps what's most surprising, and what most people probably know the least about, is what happens after the assassination. Casey gets the screen to himself after Jesse's death, and as usual here, he shines.
Jesse James, already getting a warm reception from critics, opens tomorrow.
Famous For His Length
Brad Pitt Likes To Make Lengthy Movies
Just as Brad Pitt isn't shy about playing crazy or unbalanced, he also isn't shy about making films that last longer—sometimes up to fifty percent longer—than the usual two-hour running time of most Hollywood films. Here's a look Brad's half-dozen longest films.
Fifth Place (tie): Fight Club | 2h 19m
The film adaption of the Chuck Palahniuk novel has become a cult classic and set itself into a venerated class of movies with twists like The Matrix and Memento. With Brad as the devilish, virile, sexy id Tyler Durden, the film is great, but the ending still lags.
Fifth Place (tie): Seven Years In Tibet | 2h 19m
The film, with Brad Pitt as an Austrian mountain climber who befriends the Dalai Lama, is visually beautiful (as is Pitt), but it dragged (you can call it "meditative" if you want) and felt longer than its already longer-than-normal running time.
Fourth Place: Babel | 2h 23m
Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu's muli-story tie-together co-starred Brad Pitt as Cate Blanchett's husband on a vacation gone very wrong. It was long, but it was good.
Third Place: Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford | 2h 40m
Review above. It's long, but goes by relatively quickly. One of Brad's better performances.
Second Place: Troy | 2h 43m
Not very good and mostly unloved by critics and audiences alike. Brad's physique, however, makes this movie almost worth sitting through (along with Eric Bana's pec deck).
First Place: Meet Joe Black | 2h 58m
Brad Pitt plays death, but death has never looked so amazing in a tuxedo or a poolside love scene (with Claire Forlani). Still, Brad's longest movie wasn't a critical or box office success.
Celeb Sighting
Claire Danes walking toward American Airlines Theater on 43rd Street near 8th Avenue, where she will soon be performing for ten weeks in Pygmalion, the predecessor to My Fair Lady. Claire wore businessy clothes and was fidgeting with her hair and looking up at a poster of herself as I walked past. The cleft in her chin is more pronounced in person than it is on film. All said, girlfriend looked good.
JoshTube!
By now you're probably familiar with Britney's new single, "Gimme More." But which version do you like better: Brit's, or Nick Connell's (below)? (And how much do we love that the kid can sing live and actually play an instrument?)
Then, of course, there's Chris Cocker's terrifying rendition of the song. Be warned.
Most terrifying of all, however, is MTV's The Hills star Heidi Montag "singing" her new single (!) at her own birthday party. The arm flailing is like a drunken Mariah and the lip-synching is worse than a coked up Britney. It's a train wreck straight out the gate.
In happier news, Kelly is back (remember "Shoes" and "Text Message Breakup"?) and this time she wants to Borrow Your Top. Love her!
It’s what every Mac user dreads: I turned on my computer, and nothing but a gray screen loaded. Gray screen, and nothing else. I turned it off, turned it back on. Same thing.
There was some sailor-style cursing.
On Friday I took my baby twelve-inch PowerBook to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue and the teenager behind the counter at the Genius Bar delivered the pronouncement: “Your hard drive is dead.”
Still, it could have been worse. He recommended a place on 23rd Street where I could get the work done cheaper, and then I was off again. After a forty-minute wait at Tekserve, I paid $319 to have a new hard drive put in. The bonus? I started out with a 60GB drive, and when it comes back on Thursday it’ll have a 120GB drive.
After my computer adventures, I met Josh K. in Hell’s Kitchen for lunch. (I had the day off.) We ordered burgers and fries (we were offered salads instead, but we’re the kind of gals that throw caution to the wind) and gossiped at our street-side table.
After work Josh came over and we watched a couple episodes of Fashionista Diaries (such trashy fun) and made plans for the weekend’s adventures.
On Saturday Josh and I walked to Grand Central, bought train tickets, and headed north to Cold Spring, New York, for a day trip. We whooshed out of the city, traveling along the bank of the Hudson River, watching hills and trees go by. We’d both had a hankering to get out of the city, and we were happy to just stare out the window for a while.
Upon arrival in Cold Spring we headed down to the Hudson to look at the steep hills and the rushing water. The town immediately gave us the impression of a sort of Stars Hollow/Provincetown vibe, a town that could easily be used as backdrop for a quaint CW series.
We made our way up Main Street, passing small stately houses and venturing into some of the tidy shops. We hit the local independent bookstore, stopped at an antiques shop where Josh K. bought some vintage football cards, and then continued northward. A large lawn unfolded near the old stone St. Mary’s Episcopal Church and we found a spot on the sloping hill to take in the view of the church, town, and river and hills in the distance.
“This,” I said, “is exactly what I needed.” Josh agreed.
“Why didn’t we do this when we first moved to New York City?” Josh asked. Indeed, in those early days when we felt maxed out by New York, this would have been the perfect weekend respite. Back then, though, we just didn’t know that it was an easy option, and we certainly didn’t know a thing about the workings of the Metro North rail line.
We headed back down Main Street and hit up an old-fashioned pizza shop where we got greasy slices of pepperoni and slurped sodas. Earlier in the day we had eyed up an ice cream shop, so we then made our way there to lap up some ice cream. (In our caloric defense, we hadn’t really eaten anything else that day. But really, who needs a defense? It was a weekend day trip, and pizza and ice cream were called for.)
We caught the seven o’clock train back to the city. On the way back, as the sun set, Josh K. fell asleep in the seat next to me and I pulled out a book as the scenery whizzed by.
Once we were back in the big bad city we met up with Dylan at the apartment and popped The Lives of Others, an award-winning foreign film, into the DVD player. (It’s Josh & Josh recommended.)
On Sunday Josh and I met up in Hell’s Kitchen and walked to the Museum of Modern Art, where we had brunch in their second-floor café, overlooking Fifty-Third Street. After our carb-o-licious meal we checked out the Present Tense exhibition, featuring the photography of JoAnn Verburg. Josh K. loved it so much that he snapped up the book accompanying the exhibition. (In a nod to our hometown, Verburg lives in St. Paul, and the exhibition is also showing at the world-famous Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.) If you get a chance, definitely check it out at the MoMA. (Remember that the MoMA is free on Friday nights from six to eight, courtesy of Target. We’re not paid advertisers; we just love a good thing when we find one.)
After our museum adventures we strolled Fifth Avenue, popping into an eyeglasses shop to look for a pair of glasses Josh K. has seen in a magazine, and then continued on to Best Buy to get me an external hard drive to back up data on my ailing PowerBook. (250GB for $99! Not bad, right?) We poked into Lacoste and Zara before settling into a bench in southeast Central Park with a view of the pond and the Plaza Hotel, burying our faces in copies of People and Dwell.
Finally, as the sunlight faded, we got hot chocolate and yogurt parfaits and wandered up to Lincoln Center. It was bustling, and we saw Mayor Bloomberg up close as he pressed the flesh in evening attire. The composer and conductor John Williams was set for a three-night extravaganza, playing works from Forrest Gump, Harry Potter, Memoirs of a Geisha, among others, which we desperately wanted to attend. Alas, it was entirely sold out, so we contented ourselves with sipping hot chocolate on the first chilly night of the burgeoning fall season, watching well-heeled patrons file into Avery Fisher Hall for the concert.
“It’s been a good little weekend,” I said, warming my hands on the steaming cocoa.
“It has, hasn’t it?” he said.
We walked back to Hell’s Kitchen, hugged on the corner equidistant to our respective apartments, and each headed home.
On Friday night Josh and I trekked up to Lincoln Center to see La Boheme at the New York City Opera. We went as part of the Opera For All program, wherein tickets are only $25 for all seats, and we got lucky with center orchestra seats.
We both knew that the musical Rent was based on La Boheme, but we didn't know how extensively Jonathan Larson mined La Boheme for the plot and characters of his show.
For example, the summary of the beginning of Act One: "On Christmas Eve in Paris, two poor young bohemians, Marcello [read: Mark], a painter, and Rodolfo [Roger], a poet, attempt to work in their freezing garrett. Their two roommates, Colline [Collins], a philosopher, and Schaunard [Angel Dumott Schunard], return home." Any of this familiar? It goes on to describe Mimi coming over to interrupt Marcello from his work to have him light her candle, upon which they both fall in love. Later everyone gathers at Cafe Momus [Life Cafe, anyone?] where they hold the nineteenth century version of Rent's act one finale "La Vie Boheme."
Indeed, Josh and I were most in love with the character Musetta [Maureen] who, in the Cafe Momus scene reminiscent of "La Vie Boheme," delivers an aria that has her belting it out, up and down the scales, finishing by whipping off her red high-heeled shoe, waving it in the air, and chucking it across the room of well-heeled patrons to make her point.
Love it.
Diverging from Rent, Mimi kicks the bucket at the end of La Boheme and then the curtain falls. Finis. No big pumping carpe diem anthem to rock you out of your seat. It's just, "Yep, she's dead. Curtain." But we still really enjoyed it.
On Saturday Josh and I headed downtown and strolled the promenade park near the World Trade Center area. We found a stretch of lawn and lay down for a couple hours, reading, talking, napping, and taking in the view of the Hudson River and Jersey City skyline.
Afterward, on our way back to the subway, we passed the World Trade Center site.
Construction is set to begin on the new buildings in January 2008.
We stopped at the sculpture fountain in front of 7 World Trade Center, the first of the buildings to be rebuilt (it looks great), and Josh K. took a break to play in the water.
We eventually both got into the fountain and started playing with the camera. How much do you love this spazzy picture?
We headed back to Hell's Kitchen and settled in at my apartment to watch an episode of Fashionista Diaries (ahhh, the blessings of addictive reality trash TV) and then watched Georgia Rule, which wasn't at all what we expected. We went in prepared for a sappy intergenerational girl-power family story. It wasn't. Not really. The film is a messy jumble in a way, but it did feature great performances from Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman and, yes, even Ms. Lindsay Lohan. It was much darker than we would have ever guessed, with surprising twists in the plot.
Whatever else may be said about Lindsay Lohan, the truth does remain that she's a talented actress. Unlike her tabloid brethren, Britney and Paris, Lindsay started out
with actual talent, and hopefully that will make the difference for her
in the end, once the familial and drug/alcohol issues get sorted out. She's compelling on screen, and when she wasn't on screen, we missed her. Hopefully this girl can get the help she needs and make a comeback, because she could have a promising career ahead of her.
On Sunday Josh K. and I grabbed takeout and headed to his office, where he had bribed me to hang out with him while he took care of a few projects. I brought a stash of entertainment and put my feet up on his desk as he worked away and we idly gossiped.
I got bored at one point, sitting in his office's conference room, and decided to photograph the contents of my bag. I just knew you were dying to know what's in my sack, anyway, right? (Heh heh.)
Contents of bag: The Economist (headlines: Nuclear Power's New Age, Waiting for Petraeus, India's Airline Magnate); Us Weekly (headlines: Howard, Anna & Larry: Secrets from the Grave, Why I Left Jen, Heath & Michelle Split!); Rolling Stone writer Jancee Dunn's memoirish But Enough About Me (recommended), 100 Calorie Nutter Butter granola bar; Trident White Spearmint gum; ancient cell phone I've had since freshman year of college. Fascinating!
Once we had done our good deed at Josh's office we met up with Dylan and went to the Museum of Modern Art, where we each treated ourselves to a one-year museum membership. (Josh and I had been talking about doing it since the day we moved to the city, so we decided it was time to finally bite the bullet.)
We decided to hit up the museum that day because it was the last day of the Richard Serra sculpture exhibits. Josh and I had seen some of Richard Serra's stuff at Dia:Beacon (also highly recommended), and were excited to see more.
In the MoMA garden sat two of Serra's giant sculptures. While Dylan moved on to other sections of the museum, Josh and I checked them out and then sprawled out in chairs for a while, taking in the whole scene. (One of the great parts of going to a museum is the people watching.)
Eventually Josh and I made our way back into the museum, where more Richard Serra sculptures awaited, but unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures.
We also checked out MoMA's sixth-floor contemporary painting exhibit.
Chuck Close has been a favorite of ours since we first saw his paintings at the Minneapolis Institute for the Arts as kids. (Almost all of the wheel-chair bound artist's paintings are large format, painted with tiny brush strokes that give the impression total photo reality.)
And, of course, a dash of Warhol to top it all off.
Afterward the three of us had dinner in Hell's Kitchen and then, after Dylan begged off, citing disinterest, Josh and I headed to his apartment to watch the MTV VMAs. The rest, of course, including Britney's frighteningly bad performance, is history.
It was a good little weekend, hanging out together and gleefully mixing highbrow with lowbrow. We wouldn't have it any other way.
P.S. Did you hear that Jennifer Hudson is joining the cast of the Sex and the City movie? The film begins shooting next week here in New York, and Jennifer will be playing Carrie Bradshaw's assistant. Josh and I have secret plans to stalk the production and snap a few pics. We'll see if we can make that happen.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think it's safe to say that Ms. Britney Spears has driven a very large, very sharp spike into her chance of a comeback with her performance tonight of her new single "Gimme More" at the MTV Video Music Awards.
The lead-up to this performance was intense. The blogs churned endlessly about how great this performance could be, how she's gonna shock us all, and "leaks" about working with Criss Angel on the show and her "amazing" choreographer had us believing she'd pull it all together and jump start her phenomenally ailing career.
But the actual performance? It wasn't pretty.
Let's start with the fact that tonight Britney was certainly the heaviest she has ever been in a public performance. In previous years she was so tiny and taut that she would run and prance and nothing on her lithe frame moved. Tonight in her performance she barely moved at all, and when she did, things were kind of jiggling all over the place. (I know that's really horrible, but it's true!)
Britney has always at least been known for putting on an energetic, choreography-heavy performance, movin' her ass all over the place, running her showmanship to cover up the fact that she doesn't really have a voice to work with. Tonight she mostly just looked tired and confused (she kind of lumbered around like pill popper Anna Nicole Smith in her E! reality series) and couldn't seem to muster any enthusiasm whatsoever for the performance.
Britney, who is a very seasoned lip syncher, and usually carries it off with a certain amount of panache, couldn't seem to quite decide if she cared to fake us out anymore with the fact that she's not singing live. The "microphone" she wore looked like a cell phone ear bud, and more than a few times what her lips were doing did not match the shockingly obvious non-live sound.
Girlfriend was also sunburned. There was definitely a lobster thing going on with her as she clomped around in her black underclothes. When folks fake bake like Britney sometimes certain parts, like arm pits, remain stubbornly white. It happened to Brit tonight, and worse, things didn't exactly look cleanly shaved.
The fake hair she wore kind of looked flat, greasy, and awkward.
All of the same stripper moves are getting tired. The camera panned to 50 Cent who looked totally nonplussed, waiting for something to happen.
This all sounds vicious. If you could hear me speaking you'd hear the tone of disappointment, though, not unadulterated bitchiness. I've been a total closet Britney fan for years. Hell, I've been to a concert. All the albums are on my iPod and are a staple during workouts. I wanted this performance to be good. But with the heftiness, the total lack of energy and enthusiasm, the barely-there choreography, the sunburn, that hair, the lapsed lip-synching . . .
I think the girl is in trouble.
That said, let's talk about Sarah Silverman, the irreverent comic who came on right after Britney and tore Britters about fifteen new orifices. Listen, I like Sarah, but I've seen some of her stand-up and it's so sort of dark and mean that it's hard to tell if it's funny or mortifying.
If you think what I said above is rude or unfair, wait until you hear what comes out of Sarah's mouth, transcribed below. The camera cut to the faces of Jennifer Garner and Jamie Foxx during Sarah's tirade, and they were mortified.
Sarah Silverman immediately after Britney's 2007 VMA performance:
"Wow, was that incredible! Britney Spears everyone. Wow. She is amazing. I mean, she is twenty-five years old and she has already accomplished everything she's going to accomplish in her life. It's mind-blowing. And she's so grown-up! She's a mother! It's crazy. It's weird to think that just a few years ago on this very stage how she was this very sweet innocent little girl in slutty clothes writhing around with a python. That's not nice--calling Madonna a python. But have you seen Britney's kids? Oh my God, they are the most adorable mistakes you will ever see! They are so cute! They're as cute as the hairless vagina they came out of. What, I'm serious! They're this cute, you guys! [Silverman turns her head sideways, grabs her lips, pulls them and elongates them until they look like female genitalia]"
Damn!
Oh Britney.
New York Post's online headline: "Britney Jeers: Porky Pop Tard Bores and Jiggles Like Jello At Underwhelming MTA VMAs." Whoa!
MSNBC headline: "Britney Bombs at VMAs: Out-of-Shape Singer Looks Bleary and Unprepared." "Somewhere, Kevin Federline is laughing. . . . [Britney] lazily walked through her dance moves with little enthusiasm. It appeared she had forgotten the entire art of lip-synching; and, perhaps most unforgivable given her once taut frame, she looked embarrassingly out of shape. Even the celebrity-studded audience seemed bewildered. 50 Cent looked at Spears with a confused expression; Diddy, her new best friend, was expressionless."
CNN headline: "Britney Bombs." "As in most train wrecks, it was hard to focus on just one thing as the Britney Spears disaster unfolded. There was just so much that went wrong. Out-of-synch lip-synching. Lethargic movements that seemed choreographed by a dance instructor for a nursing home. The paunch in place of Spears' once-taut belly. At times she just stopped singing altogether, as if even she knew nothing could save her performance."
Hey everybody! We hope you had a good Labor Day holiday. Josh K. spent his break out in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with his boyfriend, while Dylan and I stayed closer to home. Dylan and I visited his family out of state and then spent the remainder of the time in the city, which was pretty much a ghost town, going for walks and watching movies and TV shows on the couch. It was pretty decadent in its lazy quotient.
Sad, but true: Dylan and I watched the first four episodes of ABC's summer reality series Fat March this weekend and we're totally hooked. (All the episodes are available free online.) The show follows twelve obese Americans, weighing 225-500 pounds, as they walk 575 miles from Boston to Washington, D.C to try and chuck as much weight as possible and go for a $1.2 million prize.
Part of the fascination for me is about how much weight these people are losing just by walking and eating 2,000 calories a day. It's also kind of nice to be watching the kind of reality show where, for once, the drama isn't about Tammy stealing Amber's boyfriend who's secretly in love with Candy, who also stole Tammy's hairbrush.
The Fat March contestants are wrestling with food addiction, struggling to walk a half-marathon or more a day, and dropping 15 pounds a week while walking across nine states. Who will make it the whole way? Who will drop out or be forced out? Who's going to lose the most weight and look the best in the "after" pictures? My next fix is on Monday night and I can't wait.
Another tragic trash TV addiction: Josh and I are hooked on SoapNET's The Fashionista Diaries. (Again, you can get all the episodes free online.) The show follows six twenty-somethings who have come to New York to work in magazines and PR as interns. We're endlessly amused by the dumb-but-gorgeous Andrew and bitchy climber socialite-wannabe Bridget. And what's the deal with Nicole, the Queens girl who just can't hack it? We must admit that we kind of love Rachel, the tomboy we'd most want to be friends with, or even Tina, who channels her inner soccer mom in every episode.
The show is often a little unrealistic (um, what national magazine intern goes to editorial meetings and pitches stories to the editor in chief?), but as twenty-somethings ourselves who've moved to New York to work as creatives, it's must-see fodder. It's also a hot topic of conversation among the interns and assistants at the magazine where I work. Fluffy trash it may be, but inquiring eyes are definitely tuning in.
This week the New York City Opera is hosting Opera For All, which means that for three nights (September 6, 7, 8) tickets to shows like La Boheme and Don Giovani are only $25 for all seats. Josh and I snapped up tickets stat and can't wait for our first outing to the NYC Opera. Get 'em while they last.
From The "Aw, Shucks" Department
This week the LOGO blog After Elton named Josh and me "Internet Stars of Tomorrow" and posted an interview with us. Our thanks to Adam Lutbitow for the write-up and our gratitude to After Elton for the nod of recognition.
What The Joshes Are Reading Now
Josh H. is reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
Josh K. is reading Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.
