Meme Dump

Minute Rant: That Woman

I haven’t commented on the Bruce Jenner Interview because, well, we were gone almost as soon as it aired. But I did watch it, and I was impressed; it was less sensationalistic and tabloid-y than the first couple of ads made it seem.

But one thing annoyed me …

Diane Sawyer noted that ABC had reached out to all of Bruce’s ex-wives for a comment, and the first two, Chrystie Jenner and Linda Thompson, had lovely things to say. Then Diane said That Woman had “No comment.”

Well, That Woman  was enraged and got into a TwitFight with Perez Hilton after he Tweeted:

“Kris Jenner has no comment for ABC news and the #BruceJenner interview. His other two ex-wives give supportive statements.”

That Woman  replied:

“@PerezHilton f–k you Perez no one asked me to comment ….and I’m sitting with Bruce now watching this show so let’s keep it real…LOL….”

And then she Tweeted this:

“Not only was I able to call him my husband for 25 years and father of my children, I am now able to call him my hero.” 

Nice, except then we learned That Woman was not sitting with Bruce as the interview aired; he was watching the show with his first wife so, um, yeah, That Woman is a liar.

Then she commented that ABC never asked her to comment on the interview, which seems odd that ABC wouldn’t ask her opinion of the story that her ex-husband was coming out as transgender when every single news source in this country asks That Woman to comment every time anything happens in Kardastrophe Town.

Now, Diane Sawyer has doubled-down on her claim that ABC contacted That Woman and got a “no comment” and ABC News is backing up Sawyer.

A statement issued to PEOPLE on behalf of Kris Jenner attempted to clarify matters: 

“Kris does not have official representation but a message was left at her office and she was asked for fact checking. Kris said she was unable to respond because she had not seen the special. She did not say, ‘No comment.’ ”

However, ABC is standing by Sawyer:

“ABC News sent an email to her publicity team more than once. They called and said no comment.”

That Woman is a boldfaced liar. When Kash Kow dyed her hair blond, That Woman released a statement. When people question Khloe’s ass That Woman releases a statement. When That Woman uses the toilet she alerts the media, and she expects anyone to believe that she was never asked to comment on the Bruce Jenner Interview?

Siddown lady.

Minute Rant: "Dr." Phil

“Dr.” Phil.

Gosh, I loathe that smug, sanctimonious, self-righteous egomaniacal tool. And even more so now …

See, the Not-So-Good “Doctor” was on reported transition while making an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Last week and offered his thoughts on Bruce Jenner’s transition.

Jimmy asked if Phil was hurt that Bruce was being interviewed by Diane Sawyer and not himself — like “Dr.” Phil is the go-to source for a serious interview — and he said this:

“It would be boring to talk to me about that. First off, I would say, ‘Look. If it’s what you want to do… do it! What the hell’s it matter what anybody else thinks?’ … ‘You’re almost 80, what’s the point?. This is a theoretical exercise, right? I don’t know. He’s kind of past prime for like… right? I’ll tell you what. He’s a hell of a nice guy.”

So, I guess he has no right to be happy, eh, “Doctor”?  I guess when you reach a certain age you should just sit still and never try to achieve your authentic self.

“Dr.” Phil needs to see a shrink, and then he needs to STFU.

I Ain't One To Gossip But ...

Down in Savannah, Georgia, the fashionistas were all in a twist because the Queen was coming to town. No, silly, not the Queen of England; Anna Wintour, the real Queen of All Things.

Wintour was in town for just about an hour to see the Oscar de la Renta show that her man Andre Leon Talley curated at the Savannah College of Art and Design [SCAD], and it was that one hour — “I heard it was 65 minutes,” sniffed one attendee — that has people in a snit.

See, locals who paid $1,000 a ticket for the event had hoped to meet Wintour at a VIP reception but when they arrived they learned that she’d already left. And that was probably for the best because she did not leave a very good impression.

One insider at SCAD says, “Staff were told not to address her or look at her — like those diva movie stars,” but the bigwigs at SCAD released their own statement:

“Ms. Wintour recently attended the private family preview of ‘Oscar de la Renta: His Legendary World of Style’ at SCAD to support her dear friend Annette de la Renta. There was never an expectation that Ms. Wintour would attend any reception in relation to the opening.”

SCAD also denied it was behind the quick renovation of a Victorian house where Wintour  was ALLEGED to have waited before seeing the exhibit though for the three days prior to Wintour entering the house there was a whirlwind overhaul, with buzz saws and furniture movers and painters.

And she was in, and then she was out, and the regular folk were pissed.

So, Kim Kardastrophe. Still making news for the bedazzled housecoat she wore to the Grammys. And now she’s decided to up the ante on her husband’s delusions by issuing some of her own crazy talk in an interview with Love Magazine.

On whether or not her career got its boost from that sex tape her mother — That Woman — pimped out, Kimmy says:

“Maybe that’s how some people heard about me but I didn’t launch my career off of that. That was 12 years ago, no 13 years ago now, so I just try to move on and put it in the past because I think that everyone in life does things they’re not proud of but you can’t sit and dwell on them forever.”

And fourteen years ago no one knew any Kardashian other than the one who defended that murdering ex-football player. Then you went heels-to-Jesus with Ray J and suddenly you’re the big name.

But my favorite Kim K answer was to the question, “What do you do again?"

“Ask my f—king bank account what I do.”

Her bank account? I thought she just kept her money in the nightstand drawer, you know, after the tricks leave it on top.’

Poor Justin Bieber broke his foot over the holidays playing soccer game, though it didn’t require any kind of boot to stabilize it; he wore his regular size four shoesies, but wants y’all to know he’s still in a lot of pain.

I mean, he must be, because he’s using the ALLEGED injury as an excuse for not completing the community service requirements for his probation. Not probation for drag racing, not probation for a temper tantrum, probation for egging his neighbor’s house.

And while he’s been taking his anger management classes as part of his plea deal he has yet to complete a single hour of community service because of that soccer injury.

His lawyer, Attorney Shawn Holley, who was in court last week trying to clear up the reason why her other client, Lindsay Lohan didn’t complete her community service, issued a progress report in his egging case: Biebs has completed 9 out of 12 anger management classes but as for his 5 days of community service, well, Holley said, his bad foot made it impossible for him to pick up trash or remove graffiti.

Holley submitted a doctor’s note to satisfy the judge, though I wonder if the doctor was the same one who diagnosed Lohan with that Chimichurri bite she got in Bora Bora.

Just sayin’; same lawyer, same doctor, same lame-ass excuses for bad behavior..

Will Smith has done pretty well for himself; I mean he had a hit TV show and then parlayed that into a successful run at the movies until recently, when he learned that not every film he makes turns out a winner.

Like, um, After Earth, which starred Will and his crazy son Jadon, and bombed at the box office. Apparently that thud caused Will Smith to lose.his.mind. something he talked about while promoting his latest film, Focus:

“For me, [Focus] really marks a transition in my life and emotionally and in my career. After the failure of After Earth, a thing got broken in my mind. I was like, ‘Oh, wow. I’m still alive. Oh, wow. Actually, I still am me, even though the movie didn’t open number one. Wait. I can still get hired on another movie.’ I realized that I still was a good person, so when I went into Focus, I completely released the concept of goal orientation and got into path orientation. This moment, this second, these people, this interaction … It is a huge relief for me to not care whether or not Focus is number one or number 10 at the box office.”

Gosh, he makes it sound like the failure of After Earth was so devastating; you know, like he hadn’t gotten a $20,000,000 paycheck for it, and so he couldn’t keep the lights on at the manse, and he couldn’t afford the insurance on all twenty cars, and couldn’t keep Jada in designer Herve Leger bandage dresses or something.

Get a grip, Smith. You’re a multi-millionaire who still got paid for a job not so well done.

Sheesh.

This story kills me, because, had it happened, we wouldn’t be celebrating week two of Brian Williams Is A Big Fat Liar.

See, apparently, NBC News anchor — for now, at least — Brian Williams made a bizarre bid to quit the serious world of mainstream journalism — and I laugh at the idea that he will ever again be considered a journalist — to try his hand at late-night comedy by replacing Jay Leno as host of “The ­Tonight Show.”

Seriously? Imagine Diane Sawyer asking ABC to give her a shot turning letters on Wheel of Fortune. Imagine Rachel Maddow wanting to open the big box on Let’s Make a Deal. Imagine Brian Williams back at a news desk in six months.

None of those things will happen.

Yeah, I know, we’re still talking Kanye’s panties-in-a-twist moment at the Grammys, as well as his rant at an after-party where he demanded Beck give his Grammy to Beyoncé, but now it’s Kanye’s turn to talk about Kanye, his favorite subject. When asked why he raced up onstage, as though he was gonna pull a Swifty-VMAs repeat, he said, ahem, and I quote:

“You know, I felt like just the whole Grammys, right when that happened, everybody was looking at me, and then people started screaming, ‘Kanye! Kanye! Go do it!’ Okay, that didn’t really happen, these were voices in my head. So the voices in my head told me to go up, and then I just walked up, like, halfway up the stage.”

Actually, you half-wit, you walked all the way up onstage because you were standing next to Beck. Perhaps the “voices in your head” give bad directions? Then he says he likes Beck:

“Beck is one of the nicest guys and one of the most respected musicians in the game. So there’s nothing that I would want to do as a fellow musician to disrespect him in any way.”

But you did, Blanche! You did disrespect him, because your big fat Krazy Man ego—as well as those voices — got in the way. And then he was asked why he went on that rant after the show where even his wife looked at him like he was a lunatic:

“Well, you know what happened? It’s because I sat there and I kind of let that [smolder] and I was asked my opinion and I was given a platform. And when given a platform, it’s very hard, as we know — and I’m going to talk in third person like I’m a crazy person …” ... and we’ll stop, because, again, y’are a crazy person, Blanche, y’are crazy ... “... but it’s very hard for Kanye West to not be very true and vocal to what he feels… [But] I think it came off the wrong way, and that was a mis-wording on my part … I felt — and this is my opinion and he’s his own man and he’s not wrong and we’ll still go play basketball and stuff [unless] he doesn’t want to do it — that even though the Grammys sometimes give awards to people who you wouldn’t think should win in the category, as a respect to artists, we mention the other artist’s name in our speech…”

What the hell is this word soup all about? He’s sorry; he’s not sorry. He wants to play basketball; he doesn’t want to play basketball. For a man who’s made a living of rapping — and acting the fool — he cannot even string together a coherent sentence.

Siddown.

Charlize Theron and Sean Penn were out and about with her son Jackson over the weekend looking all lovey-dovey and stuff, but then this happened:

Rumor has it that Sean was, ahem, getting’ busy with Charlize’s stunt double. At least according to a  new story in the National Enquirer — hey, they’re half right half of the time — suggests that Penn spent several “romantic” nights with Fleur van Eeden, who happens to be his girlfriend’s stunt double on the set of their new movie, The Last Face. And Fleur is talking …

“I find Sean very sexy still, even though he’s older, [and since] Charlize didn’t come. I was alone with Sean and a few crew [members] ... They put up a tented camp for the crew, and offered Sean the guesthouse. But he refused and insisted on sleeping with us. One night we all stood ’round a bonfire, and suddenly Sean said, ‘I want to read you my poems, my private collection. Would you mind?’ It was phenomenal – awesome – under the big starry sky. He’s a great poet, a very deep, romantic guy.”

Wait. What? He read poems? Well, no wonder he did it with Fleur. I mean, c’mon, Charlize has probably heard those same poems a thousand times, and decided it was too risky to hear ‘em again, so she sent in the double.

Makes perfect sense to me …

We don’t hear much about Cuba Gooding Jr. anymore, but apparently he’s a douche, and a misogynist and makes waiters cry; let’s dish …

Back in 2012, Cuba ALLEGEDLY punched a female bartender in New Orleans, and then took his drunkenness to New York City where there was a child tossing incident on GMA, and after that his 20-year marriage has collapsed and now it seems the douchebag-itude is back.

Cuba was dining with pals one night at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo and invited two women from another table — Danish model Ammalie Overbeck and Dutch beauty Bo ‘t Jong — to join him. Once they did, Gooding kept “pulling up his shirt to show [them] his abs” until he wanted more drinks and couldn’t find a waiter. That’s when he  hopped over a banquette and got in the man’s face:

“He grabbed a waiter by both shoulders and gave him a verbal shellacking,” said a source—possibly Lohan, because it’s a club and folks were drunk—who added that the waiter was found by two members of Gooding’s group “sobbing” in the rest room. 

Gooding’s pals explained that the Selma star’s going through a divorce — his wife filed for divorce after 20 years of marriage last April. But does that excuse the asshat behavior? Or does it excuse the fact that when Gooding returned to his new friends, he asked the women to engage in a sex act with him. They rebuffed the loser, so he instantly went to another woman at the bar and tried to woo her with his abs and bad behavior.

Cuba’s representative denied this story, but it seems to fit in with other drunken escapades of Gooding’s, like last December when he was “like a freshman at a college party” and telling women his name was “Dick McWilly.”

Well, he’s a dick, all right.

I won’t say anything about Bruce Jenner’s recent car accident that resulted in a woman’s death. He has been very co-operative with police, was tested for being drunk at the scene — he wasn’t — and was questioned about whether he was texting at the time of the crash — his people say he was not.

Still, please to explain, Bruce, why on Tuesday, mere days after the crash, you were spotted out driving and chatting on a cellphone while behind the wheel.

It’s not clear what he was doing on the phone, except he was very clearly breaking California  law by using a non-hands-free phone while driving.

You’d think the last thing he’d be doing, after what happened over the weekend, is to be on a phone and behind the wheel of a moving car at the same time.

Knock it off!

This one reeks of publicity stunt or truly disturbing story ...

Actress Victoria Rowell is suing CBS, “The Young and The Restless” co-producers Sony Pictures and Bell-Phillip Television Production Inc. and other parties ALLEGING that she’s been repeatedly snubbed while trying to reprise her role on the soap because she’s been a longtime advocate for more black characters on daytime soap operas.

Her suit accuses executives of retaliating against her by not welcoming her back — despite numerous requests over the last three years — because of critical comments she’s made both on and off camera about lack of diversity in the soap industry.

Rowell — who was nominated for three Daytime Emmy Awards and earned 11 NAACP Image Awards starred on the show for seventeen years — even alleges on-set racism went on for years with any repercussions. She claims that white actress Melody Thomas Scott, who plays Nikki Newman, once ran onto the set “dancing wildly and wearing an oversized Afro wig to mock” Rowell’s “Afro-styled hair” and that another white actress, Michelle Strafford, once allegedly “collaborated” with a white producer and a white director before spitting on Rowell, calling her a “freak” and saying “no one likes you.”

Man, if any of this is true, it’s ugly and disgusting, but then one asks the questions: why stay there for nearly two decades and why tell those racist stories now and not at the moment they happened if you’re such an advocate for black actors on soaps?

The suit also claims that Rowell has been blacklisted from reprising her Y&R role on CBS' sister soap The Bold and the Beautiful and can’t get another job on daytime TV because of her outspokenness.

But the nuttiest part of her lawsuit is where she claims she was not consulted before a storyline was developed where her character went insane and was “placed in a straight jacket and dragged to an asylum.” Rowell’s character was written off the show later that year at her request but since then she has been lobbying for her job back.

Y&R execs claim Rowell wasn’t brought back due to creative reasons that had nothing to with race, and CBS issued a statement saying it’s “disappointed to learn that, after leaving the” soap “on her own initiative, Ms. Rowell has attempted to rewrite that history through lawyers’ letters and a lawsuit that has no merit. We harbor no ill will toward Ms. Rowell, but we will vigorously defend this case.”

I smell a whole lotta ugliness about to come down the pike.

My Two Cents: Bruce Jenner

So … Bruce Jenner.

I’m of two minds on the topic. The first is, that I wished he hadn’t been playing the ‘is he or isn’t he’ game for the past year or more. I mean, we’ve all seen the pictures of the facial transformation, the longer hair, the rumors that he’d had his Adam’s Apple shaved down, the fingernail polish. And we all talked about it. Is Bruce Jenner transitioning? Is he transgender? Is it any of our business?

I don’t know the actual, factual, answers to those first two questions, but I do know that it’s not really any of our business, except that he’s been doing this change in public, but also privately, because he doesn’t speak about it, which is where I get this feeling: I’m annoyed by him.

I don’t like that he plays his life on a “reality” show; I don’t like that he plays his life in public, but when his appearance changes, and the rumors grew, he said nothing; that bothers me on two levels.

First, it bothers me because, if you’re going to be on a TV show, playing the part of yourself, then you need to talk about yourself. Having the show depict you as a person undergoing changes in appearance and then not addressing them — given the rumors — makes it seem like there is a sense of shame involved; that being transgender — if that’s the case and not just that Bruce loves plastic surgery — is somehow too shameful to speak about, then I think it sends a bad message to the younger T in the LGBT spectrum.

Secondly, to learn that, after this season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Bruce will appear in a reality show, or docu-series, to address these stories is bothersome. Is he selling his transition for a spot on TV? That bugs me, and yet it elates me, too, because then this might be a chance for those people questioning their orientation to see an actual person go through the process. It might give people who are hiding, the hope to step out and say, This is me.

And, like I said, I’m annoyed that for right now he is saying nothing, yet allowing people like Kim Kardashian to hightail her rather large posterior over to Entertainment Tonight to tell the world that Bruce is “on a journey” and has his own story to tell. I hate that people like That Woman are talking about Bruce and his changes as being his story. If it’s his story let him tell it, and you media whores stay out of the picture as his transition doesn’t concern you, except in the realm of your own understanding of what he might be going through.

I’m also annoyed because his mother is speaking about it, as though it’s a given, which feeds into that sense of shame about what it means to be transgender while at the same time, I applaud Esther Jenner’s understanding and support, when she told People magazine:

“I just learned about [his transition]. Bruce filled me in, and we had a very long, long, long talk about it. I have never been more proud of Bruce for who he is, himself as a father, as an Olympian, a wonderful public speaker. He instills enthusiasm in people. He’s gifted. Right now I am more proud of him for what he’s allowing himself to do. I am more proud of him now than when he stood on that podium and put the gold medal around his neck. He deserves all the respect.”

It appears that the secret is no longer a secret, though we have yet to hear from Bruce; we’ll be waiting until May when his interview with Diane Sawyer airs, just as his E! docu-series begins.

So, yeah, I’m annoyed that, by keeping this quiet, and yet not at all very quiet, he’s perpetuating the stereotype that many people have about being transgender, but, as I said before, I am of two minds on this, which leads me to say …

I’m happy for Bruce. I’m happy that, if he is about to transition, that even at age 65, he’ll finally be his, or should I say ‘her,’ one true self. I have a small inkling of what that feels like; every gay person does. It’s called the closet, where you keep your secret; where you hide yourself.

But coming out as gay, while difficult for many, is nothing at all like coming out as transgender. People don’t understand transgender; they don’t understand being assigned male at birth, for example, but feeling as though you are actually female. Many people think there are males and females and if that’s how you were born, that’s how you are, and should be always.

They wonder that, if you were say assigned male at birth, and have always been attracted to women, are you a lesbian after transitioning; or, if you were assigned male at birth, but sexually attracted to men as a male, are you a straight women after.

It gets confusing. So, I prefer not to think about whom Bruce Jenner sleeps with, now, or in the future. I prefer to think that, if this story is true, and we are in a holding pattern essentially until Bruce decides to talk, I prefer to think of the huge weight being lifted, the huge sigh of relief being expelled, that sense of joy …

I am myself. And isn’t that all any of us deserves? So, as annoyed as I can be with the media hype, and the media blackout, as annoyed as I can be with the ‘is he, or isn’t he,’ I will stand behind Bruce Jenner and hold him up as he begins to do whatever it is that makes him say, I am myself.

Random Musings

Taylor Swift is everywhere this week because she has a new album coming out; get over it, I’m old, and I’ll call them “albums” until I die. But seriously, she’s everywhere and I am so afraid to see that Blow Up Doll’s bright red lips that I won’t turn on my TV.

So, what will I do about tonight’s episode of How To Get Away With Murder? I mean, I love Viola Davis. But what if Swifty appears? Unless, and this could be good, she’s the murder victim? I mean she plays the victim in all her songs, the ones that have infiltrated my brain without consent, so maybe she’d be a good victim on HTGAWM.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I like some Mindnumbingly Dumb Pop Music, but at least the kind I like comes from actual singers and not the computer-enhanced variety—Google her disastrous “live” performance on the Grammy’s a couple of years back when she couldn’t carry a tune in Size 10 Jimmy Choos.

I caught an earful of her new song, Shake It Off, the other day where she, for lack of a better word, “sings” about “haters gonna hate” … repeat ad nauseum … and I got to thinking that all she sings about are the people who’ve wronged her and don’t like her and are mean to her.

And it hit me that she likes being dumped and she likes people being mean and she lives for the haters, because without them, er, us, she’d have nothing to, again, for lack of a better word, “sing” about.

After the 9th Circuit Court struck down Idaho’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Idaho state Senator, and certifiable Pandering Loon, Steve Vick proposed a solution to what he calls “gross governmental overreach”:

“If we’re not allowed to determine the standards for a marriage license, then maybe we should just not issue them. … I’m exploring is just eliminating marriage licenses in Idaho.”

Seriously, if Idaho is gonna have to “let” The Gays get married, then Vick wants to outlaw marriage altogether. That’s his solution!

I say, You first, Steve! Why don’t you call your lovely wife at home and tell her that your marriage is meaningless because now The Gays can do it, too, and so, since you’re obviously — and this is just my opinion … I have no proof — a deeply closeted homosexual, you and your wife should call it quits.

I mean, if marriage should be outlawed, Stevie, make it retroactive.

Asshat.

I used to have a mad crush on Bruce Jenner, the Olympian. The Bruce Jenner of reality TV fame? Not so much.

I don’t know what’s going on with him, and it isn’t my business, but the hairdo, the Farrah he’s rockin’, the shaving down of his Adam’s Apple, and this new picture of him with his lovely nail polish?

I don’t know if he’s transgender and planning to transition, or if he’s become such a famewhore that he’s taken a page from the Kash Kow’s playbook and will do anything to keep people talking.

That said, while I was stunned by the polish, I was more shocked that he’s a smoker.

AHS is getting some NPH and I am like OMG.

Neil Patrick Harris, and his adorable husband David Burtka, are set to guest-star on AHS. 

NPH will appear in Freak Show‘s 11th and 12th episodes as a chameleon salesman, while Burtka will turn up in the season finale—episode Lucky 13—in what is said to be a sexy storyline with Jessica Lange.

I.Can’t.Wait. But …. In other AHS news:

Lily Rabe, who played the role of Sister Mary Eunice on American Horror Story: Asylum, will reprise her Asylum role on Freak Show in Episode 10. 

And since Naomi Grossman returned to AHS: Freak Show as Asylum’s Pepper, maybe Sister Mary’s return involves Pepper and how she went from the freak show to Asylum‘s Briarcliff Institution.

Again: Can’t.Wait.

Leave it to FoxNews, the media arm of the GOP, and the talking-heads from The Five to declare that the war on women a creation of the Democratic Party.

And yet, in a segment focused on voting and how women and women's issues are impacting the midterm elections, co-host Greg Gutfield says it's a fact that women grow more conservative as they grow older, and so they should wait until they're older to vote:

"With age comes wisdom. I tell young people, 'You don't have to wait to become a conservative."

And off camera, co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle—a women, I’m guessing—is heard saying that women should wait "to get a brain." And then on-camera, she talks about how, as an attorney, she dismisses young women when choosing juries:

"Young women on juries are not a good idea."

She says she tells them to "go back on Tinder or Match.com," because they "don't get it" -- "it" being experience with household duties, "paying the bills, doing the mortgage, kids, community, crime, education, healthcare."

So, explain again how this whole war on women is a Democratic thing.

Asshats.

We watched Constantine last week; what a horrible show; and not one shot of last week’s Random Musing hottie, Michael James Shaw. A total waste of time.

So, this week, we’ll show off Carter Macintyre from USA’s new comedy — which started off funny so we’ll see — Benched, and the lovely and talented Erich Bergen, the Is-he-gay-or-isn’t-he assistant on Madam Secretary.

Totes adorbs.

I have talked before about how I wake up every day with a song in my head, and how, sometimes it’s something I heard on the radio or TV during the previous day, and how sometimes it’s just a song I like and how it crept back into my brain and out my mouth.

This week, though, it’s a song I haven’t heard since I was a young queerling and had a young queerling crush on Larry Gatlin.

But it’s pretty and, well, when I YouTube’d — that’s a verb now — it, I still felt a little something  …

Anyway, here’s the song that been playing on a loop in my head for the past few days.