OPTIONAL WISECRACK
If wife, daughter, or other female insists on subjecting you to Titanic on video, wait an hour, then nudge your companion and say, “Honey, would you ring down for ice?”
REASSURING FACT
In June 2000, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post wrote that George W. Bush had “acknowledged” he didn’t even know “who Leonardo DiCaprio was.”
Matt Damon
WHY ANYONE CARES
Starred in The Talented Mr. Ripley as a charming sociopath who misplaced his charm somewhere and in Good Will Hunting as brilliant ignoramous minus the brilliance.
INSIDE INFORMATION
With pal Ben Affleck, co-wrote Good Will Hunting—story of a troubled slum kid working as a janitor at a Harvard-like school who turns out to be as smart as Al Gore. This won an Oscar for best screenplay.
TELLING DETAIL
Father was an investment banker. Mother was a lefty activist. Went to Harvard.
NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH
Pal Ben Affleck, who starred in Reindeer Games as a charming sociopath, is taller, didn’t go to Harvard, and has bedded Gwyneth Paltrow.
TELLING DETAIL ABOUT BEN AFFLECK
Once directed a short film titled I Murdered My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I’ve Got a Three-Picture Deal with Disney.
LIKELIHOOD OF ENCOUNTERING MATT DAMON IN THE RACQUET CLUB BAR, ON THE MAIDSTONE FIRST TEE, OR AT YOUR DAUGHTER’S DEBUTANTE PARTY
Well, Matt did go to Harvard, but so did such characters as Al Gore.
Hilary Swank
WHY ANYONE CARES
Played a girl playing a boy in order to get girls in Boys Don’t Cry.
INSIDE INFORMATION
She is a girl.
WHAT ALL THIS MEANS
Let’s not ask.
TELLING DETAIL
When she starred in The Next Karate Kid (who’s a girl), The Washington Post said, “What is the sound of one hand clapping? The audience giving it up for The Next Karate Kid.”
ITEM OF HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP THAT TELLS US LITTLE ABOUT HILARY SWANK BUT EVERYTHING ABOUT HOW THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY VIEWS HISTORY
According to Variety, Swank is up for the lead in a movie called The Affair of the Necklace in which she’d play “an aristocratic beauty who, while searching for her heritage, manages to overthrow the French regime.”
Angelina Jolie
WHY ANYONE CARES
Best Supporting Actress Oscar for rubber-ranch chick flick, Girl, Interrupted. Daughter of actor Jon Voight.
WHY ANYONE REALLY CARES
At her first wedding, wore black rubber pants and a shirt with the groom’s name written in blood on the back. Had a steamy make-out scene with her brother at Academy Awards ceremony. Broke up own marriage and several others. Became Billy Bob Thornton’s fifth wife in a quickie Las Vegas ceremony. Now they talk about their sex life constantly in interviews. All this before age twenty-six.
WHO THE F—IS BILLY BOB THORNTON?
Actor/auteur/jerk. His Sling Blade was latest in long series of hillbillies-in-hell movies that aren’t as good as Deliverance. Was seen at a gym wearing his wife’s underwear. Said of Jolie, “I was looking at her in her sleep, and I had to restrain myself from literally squeezing her to death.” To which Angelina responded, “I was nearly killed last night, and it was the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.”
TELLING DETAILS ABOUT BILLY BOB
Born in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Mother was a psychic. Fourth wife accused him of abuse. How did we escape having him as president of the United States?
TELLING DETAIL ABOUT ANGELINA
As a child, aspired to be a funeral director.
KNOWING COMMENT
“In the nineteenth century it was about having big hips. In the twentieth century it was about having big breasts. In the twenty-first century it’s about having a big mouth.”
Will Smith
WHY ANYONE CARES
Rap singer, star of long-running TV sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Tommy Lee Jones’s partner in best guy pic of the 1990s, Men in Black (although it was no Apocalypse Now).
KNOWING COMMENT
“Every American generation has its obligatory nonthreatening person of color. And now that Denzel Washington is getting scary…”
OPTIONAL KNOWING COMMENT IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE A PERSON OF COLOR YOURSELF
“It’s enough to make Bill Cosby join the Fruit of Islam.”
INSIDE INFORMATION TO GO WITH KNOWING COMMENTS ABOVE
Some homeboy Will is—his father’s an engineer and his mother works for the school board.
JUST BETWEEN MAX AND P.J.
Smith is talented, has a sense of humor, and you would, in fact, even like his music. Do not let this get out or it will ruin his career.
Sean “Puffy” Combs, aka “Puff Daddy”
WHY ANYONE CARES
Rap impresario, rap being a form of music created by one performer shouting obscenities in a singsong voice while other performers torture a cat and throw garbage cans down a flight of stairs.
INSIDE INFORMATION
Puffy has been involved in a feud with West Coast rappers that has resulted in several shooting deaths. But, so far, the killing has not been extensive enough to bring melody back to the popular song. Has dated actress Jennifer Lopez, even though she’s supposed to be a nice girl from the Bronx.
TELLING DETAILS
Got his start in 1991 by organizing a charity basketball game at New York’s City College, which was such a success that nine people were trampled to death by the crowd. Was arrested last year on weapons charge after a disco dust-up that left three people wounded. Jennifer Lopez was arrested too.
KNOWING COMMENT
“Some say his career is over, but no one says Puffy ‘can’t get arrested.’”
Jennifer Lopez
WHY ANYONE CARES
Nice girl from the Bronx. Great butt. Starred in Selena as a nice girl from Texas with a great butt. Gave the snake something worth squeezing in Anaconda. Ditto George Clooney in the Elmore Leonard (now there’s a celebrity) movie Out of Sight.
INSIDE INFORMATION
Got her start on In Living Color, which was a Saturday Night Live for non-nonthreatening people of color. But still a nice girl from the Bronx even if she has dated Puffy Combs.
TELLING DETAIL
Being a nice girl from the Bronx, when arrested she cried because her cell was not provided with (this was in Rolling Stone) cuticle cream.
WHAT YOU’D THINK ABOUT JENNIFER LOPEZ IF YOU THOUGHT ABOUT JENNIFER LOPEZ AT ALL
Great butt.
Beck
WHY ANYONE CARES
Dweeby fellow who “combines folk, blues, and hip-hop in a new sonic collage.” Pass the Tylenol.
INSIDE INFORMATION
Most noted for the slacker-generation anthem “Loser.”
PRIVATE THOUGHT
Slacker generation? Isn’t that all those kids with the damn Harvard MBAs who caused the dot.com mess?
TELLING DETAILS
Beck dropped out of school after junior high so we can’t blame the dot.com mess on him personally. But we can blame things on his mother, who was a denizen of Andy Warhol’s Factory and knew that poor Edie Sedgwick girl who came from such a good family.
Moby
WHY ANYONE CARES
Moby, who looks like something the guinea pig just gave birth to, is a Beck for the next, even worse, generation. He blends “archival blues and gospel vocals with modern-day techno”—techno being a form of music that sounds like a combination of a skipping record, the chime from the car door being left open, the microwave telling you it’s finished with defrosting, and the spin cycle on your washing machine.
INSIDE INFORMATION
Moby is very antiestablishment, which is so mainstream these days that every track from his recording Play has been sold for use in a feature film, TV show, or commercial.
MORE INSIDE INFORMATION THAN YOU NEEDE
D
Moby is also a vegan. Vegans eschew not only meat but any food that “exploits animals.” This is why, when you had your godson Nick and his sister with the nose ring over for steak and you offered Ophelia a toasted cheese sandwich instead, she got all huffy and went out and grazed in the yard.
KNOWING COMMENT
Unnecessary. Just realizing he’s not a novel by Herman Melville puts you ahead of the game.
A MESSAGE FROM MOBY’S WEB SITE
“I define basic rights…as the framers of the Constitution put it, the ability to have ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”
PRIVATE THOUGHT
That would be the Declaration of Independence, hay-breath.
Jakob Dylan
WHY ANYONE CARES
Remember when you were temporarily smitten with the beatnik girl in San Francisco during the first Nixon administration? And you went to her “pad” and she put on a record by that fellow named Bob who had a very bad adenoid problem? This is his son. (And, come to think of it, you yourself may have a kid about this age, traipsing around Mendocino in Birkenstocks, unbeknownst to you. But that’s another matter.)
INSIDE INFORMATION
Got his start playing the Kibitz Room of Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles. Oy vay.
KNOWING COMMENT
“Because Jakob can carry a tune and write songs that make sense, critics feel he lacks his father’s talent.”
Limp Bizkit
WHY ANYONE CARES
A band that combines heavy metal with rap. Oh, joy.
INSIDE INFORMATION
Even Rolling Stone describes Bizkit fans as “backward-cap-wearing beefheads.”
TELLING DETAIL
Band name was coined when friend of founder and tattooed idiot Fred Durst mentioned having “a brain like a limp biscuit.”
KNOWING COMMENT
“In the matter of proposing pop-band names, let me suggest A Noise.”
Boy Bands
’N Sync, Backstreet Boys, et cetera, but don’t bother to learn the band names because there’s another one every fifteen minutes.
WHY ANYONE CARES
Prepubescent girls care intensely. Let us hope that the Business Fun readers have no Nabokovian interest in that fact. More to the point: Prepubescent girls are in command of such large amounts of discretionary spending that the introduction of a popular new boy band can cause the Fed to raise rates in an attempt to curb demand-side inflation.
INSIDE INFORMATION
Boy bands are manufactured in Orlando by an evil Geppetto named Lou Pearlman. The Orkin man has taken care of Jiminy Cricket.
KNOWING COMMENT
“The whale would gag on Lou Pearlman.”
INSIDE INFORMATION, PART II
All boy bands consist of the “cute” one, the “moody” one, the “rebellious” one, the “ethnic” one,” and the “dork.” It worked for NATO.
FURTHER KNOWING COMMENT
“Orlando is the center of modern musical culture, and modern musical culture deserves no better.”
Eminem
WHY ANYONE CARES
A beyond-Faulknerian specimen of double-Y-chromosome white trash who mimics all that’s loathsome and stupid in ghetto-thug culture—resulting in a toilet-mouth recording, The Slim Shady LP, that made a lot more money last year than your NASDAQ investments.
INSIDE INFORMATION
His debut single was called “Just Don’t Give a F—.”
KNOWING COMMENT
“Really, what else would one call it?”
TELLING DETAIL
His mother has sued him for slander.
MORE TELLING DETAILS
Last year, Eminem was arrested for assault and carrying a concealed weapon. His estranged wife attempted suicide. They fought over custody of their child, then got back together. The CEO of Eminem’s record company is married to noted child-care expert and author of The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy, Viki Iovine, who is also a former Playboy Playmate. Where is the Christian Right when we need them?
WISECRACK (IN THIS CASE NOT OPTIONAL)
“How did God, with all his tornadoes, miss this particular trailer park?”
Britney (sic) Spears
WHY ANYONE CARES
Young, really young, pop star—younger than your readers’ dinner jackets if they’ve kept fit or their Bordeaux if they haven’t—who sings songs that would make Billie Holiday blush and wears clothes that would cause Cher to scream in embarrassment and wrap herself in a bedspread.
INSIDE INFORMATION
Former cast member of a postmodern Mickey Mouse Club apparently broadcast from a different planet than the one occupied by Annette Funicello.
TELLING DETAIL
According to the “Mr. Showbiz” web site, Britney “went to regular high school for a year.”
NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH
Fellow Mousketeer and bitter rival Christina Aguilera, who is the dirty version of Britney Spears if such a thing can be imagined.
COMMENT TO KEEP TO YOURSELF ABOUT CHRISTINA AGUILERA UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE THOUGHT OF AS A STODGY OLD DRIP TRYING TO BE CUTE
“Makes Madonna look like a virgin.”
PRIVATE THOUGHT
Britney, Beck, Buffy, Puff, Snoop Dogg: a whole generation of celebrities seems to be named after our pointers and retrievers. Are there, even now, show business people calling themselves Rover, Spot, Fido, and Shep?
“I’ve also,” said Max, “included a section called SHOW-OFF BOX. It’s for bonus points when you’re talking to people with lip jewelry.”
Rage Against the Machine
Metal group that fancies itself so politically radical that its web site provides a Marxist book list, including Kwame Nkrumah: The Conakry Years, His Life and Letters, for fans who want a good read.
Blink 182
Say, “Too commercial. I prefer the classics, like Green Day.”
Carson Daly
To be mentioned disparagingly. MTV veejay so thoroughly dumb and ordinary as to have won the hearts of every dumb and ordinary adolescent girl in America, probably including the one your readers are hitting on.
Lil’ Kim
What the drag queens will lip-sync in 2025. She went to the opening of the Urban World Film Festival wearing string bikini, giant cross, fur coat, and cha-cha heels.
Russell Crowe
Gladiator guy, therefore not hip, but it’s hip to know he has a rock band named 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.
Sisqó
Shrimpy peroxided rapper with hit song about women’s behinds. Rappers Juvenile and Mystikal have hit songs on same subject. So there may be something to be said for this musical genre, if not for its practitioners’ ability to spell.
Insane Clown Posse
White rap duo from Detroit. To name them is to know them—mentally ill gang types who dress in circus clothes.
“Plus,” said Max, “there’s what I call the PASSÉ PADDOCK.”
You Didn’t Used to Know Who They Were and Now You’ll Never Have to:
Marilyn Manson
Smashing Pumpkins
Ricky Martin
Hanson
Phish
Brad Pitt M. C. Hammer
“And Daddy!” said Muffin, who saw me one Sunday morning on the NRA political commentary show Friendly Fire and since then has been convinced that I’m something of a celebrity.
“Your godson will be here any minute,” said my wife.
Always a pleasure to see Nick, I replied. Did he get thrown out of school? Remember the time he and his friends made a Polo-Playing-Deaths Memorial Quilt and spread it on the South Quad during Aids Awareness Month?
“He gets a week off for Presidents’ Day,” said my wife. “And when he helped Max with that F-word article of yours, you said, Nick, if there’s anything I can do for you…There is. You’re going to teach him to drive.”
He’s come to the right man, of course. But where’d his father go?
“Nick’s father
tried to teach Nick’s sister Ophelia how to drive.”
The CEO of the Sofa (O'Rourke, P. J.) Page 14
