“Hey, wait a minute! It’s not my fault. Remember when we asked you for special interests and you said you were too busy watching the new neighbors?”
“Well, yes, but . . .”
“And when we asked again you said that right then your special interest was wondering why it is that Ashlee Simpson’s husband looks exactly like her?”
“OK, but you know I have a curious mind and sometimes, well, journalism is hard.”
“But we tried to get you to look at the page before we finished it,” Soph whined. She could see that long-promised trip to the mall to go to Forever-a-21-Year-Old-Skank disappear before her very eyes. “We didn’t mean to say that you were interested in men like that. We just meant that you’re straight.”
She was teary-eyed, so I believed that it was a simple mistake and I had her correct it immediately to read that my special interest was “celebrating the human spirit and bringing all peoples of all nations together.”
There. That sounded much better.
The Princess then showed me around the site, explaining that I had already been “superpoked” quite a few times.
“That’s disgusting,” I said.
“No, it just means hello,” Soph assured me. Hmmmm. I still had an image of Jodie Foster on a pool table in The Accused, but that’s just the kind of sick pup I really am. I didn’t want to be superpoked by anybody.
I also had a “past-life invitation” from some woman I don’t know, who said she could ask me five questions and discover who I was in a previous existence.
There were all sorts of “earthkeeper” invitations, where you send virtual plants to one another and somehow this is supposed to save the planet. Like I care.
There were even “virtual deliveries” of doughnuts and sweet tea, which just pissed me off. What good is a virtual food product? I mean, unless you’re on Oprah’s new diet.
I also discovered that there were many people who were asking to be my Facebook “friend” and I hadn’t answered them yet. I pictured an angry mob of old high school buddies who would grow bitter if I didn’t let them in immediately.
“Who does she think she is?” I imagined they would pout, all the while saying how incredibly rude it is to ignore someone’s “invitation to knighthood.”
My friend Amy, who runs her own business, wastes hours every day reading posts from old friends and sending them invitations to join “I love the ’80s” or “virtual bookshelf” or requests for “knock-me-out drinks.”
As for me, the only thing I’ve participated in is the past-life invitation, and let’s just say it’s pretty hard to be humble ever since I learned that I used to be Eleanor Roosevelt. Who looked a lot like Gladys Kravitz, now that I think about it.
Absolutely everyone has a Facebook page these days. One day over the backyard fence, my adorable child-neighbors asked me if I was on Facebook because, naturally, they are. I told them yes and now we’ve let one another into our lives via the “interweb.” I call it that just to mess with their heads.
“You should be friends with my mom,” he-neighbor said one day while planting a rosebush in honor of their (gag) second wedding anniversary. “Y’all have a lot in common. You both look a little like Diane Lane.”
OK, so perhaps I was hasty. This couple is actually quite wonderful. And they’re growing on me like a lil green patch.
Try this fabulous Southern creation the next time you need to impress the new Yankee neighbors. It’s practically vegetarian, give or take a half-pound of bacon, and comes from my mama-in-law, Nancy Whisnant, by way of her late sister Alice Armfield.
NANCY AND ALICE’S “HOWDY NEIGHBOR” PEPPERS
Make the biscuits yourself if you’re not too triflin’. And don’t even think about using canned tomatoes or substituting chicken broth for bacon grease. This is the real deal, Gomer; don’t screw it up.
6–8 bell peppers
½ pound bacon, fried crisp and crumbled (save drippings!)
6 tomatoes from somebody’s garden, peeled and chopped
1 bar Cracker Barrel sharp cheddar cheese, grated
¼ cup chopped onion
8–10 day-old biscuits, crumbled
Salt and pepper to taste
Cut peppers in half and parboil them ’til they’re softened up but not mushy, about 10 minutes. Drain; set aside. Combine all the rest of the ingredients in a big bowl and add about 4 tablespoons of bacon drippings (OK, grease) ’til things are moist but not mushy. Form into balls and stuff the peppers with this fabulous mixture. Set the filled peppers in a shallow pan and add water to cover the bottom of the pan so your pepper bottoms don’t scorch. Bake at 325 for about 20 minutes or until lightly browned on top.
10
Gwyneth Paltrow Wants to Improve Your Pathetic Life
Oh, poor little ol’ Gwyneth Paltrow, she of the porcelain skin, pale blond hair, and lithe body. Why on earth would I feel sorry for her? Simple. Because her decision to launch a lifestyle Web site, Goop.com, shows a lapse of good judgment that we haven’t seen since a certain cruise ship made its maiden voyage straight into an iceberg.
We know what she was thinking: “If Oprah can make a fortune showing people how to live their lives, why can’t I?”
Oh, Gwynnie, where to begin?
For starters, you can’t tell people how to live when you’re married to a rock star. It is, well, unseemly. Oprah’s never quite gotten it right in the romance department or the yo-yo dieting department, so we can relate to her a bit better. Also, it doesn’t hurt that she grew up ringworm levels of poor in Mississippi.
But you? You! With your adorable rock star spouse who is both cute and deep and your curiously named but nonetheless precious children, you just can’t. Again: unseemly.
The earlier Titanic metaphor is appropriate because Gwyneth is, so to speak, the first-class passenger wearing furs and a brooch the size of Kansas and the rest of us are wearing flour-sack knickers and eating turkey feet down in steerage.
Gwynnie’s Web site shares her “life-changing” advice to (oops, here comes my lunch) “pause before reacting,” “nourish what is real,” “go to a city you’ve never been to,” and, you’re gonna love this, “not be lazy.”
Oh, heavenly pearls of wisdom from someone who grew up in relentless, soul-crushing privilege, who attended only private schools and who even dated Brad Pitt for three years. We wish we could pause before reacting to the insane high-handedness of Goop.com.
I’ve read better advice in the headlines of Cosmo, which at least offers useful information like “1,001 Erogenous Zones That You Didn’t Know He Had! But He—Wink!—Wishes You Did.”
On Goop, Gwyneth tells us to “Cook a meal for someone you love.”
Hey, Rapunzel, it’s called dinner and we do it seven nights a week without, I must add, the assistance of nannies, butlers, and assorted cooks and pot scrubbers.
Gwyneth says that she has a great life because she is “not passive about it,” which implies that we are. Guilty as charged, I suppose. I was going to be less passive about life and “shed-yule” my own tour of lesser-known Tuscan vineyards but it was my night to bring snacks to children’s choir. My freakin’ bad.
Gwyneth Paltrow is telling us not to be lazy? Well. We’ll try not to be lazy. And we will try to refrain from pointing out possible signs of her own laziness, such as her dropping out of college or how chef pal Mario Batali has admitted it takes a lot to roust her out of the trailer in time to start shooting their über-trendy food-and-wine adventure show.
I’m guessing Gwynnie’s not really a morning person, so it’s wonderful that she needs only to arise when she is good and damn ready. One pictures bluebirds flying through her windows and draping her in the day’s couture.
Could I be wrong about this? Could goop.com be the answer to our nation’s collective angst? Will Gwyneth save our sorry souls with advice such as “Clean out your space”? Maybe. I think I’ll start cleaning out my space by taking my Shallow Hal DVD to Goodwill. Th
ere. I feel better already!
Sure, Gwyneth could be the next Martha. I mean, anything’s possible in a world where there are still some people who claim they were shocked when Clay Aiken came out.
I suspect Gwyneth just got some colossally bad advice at a dinner party one evening. Someone must’ve leaned in and said, “M’dear, you are a marvelous hostess. Why don’t you create a Web site where you can tell everyone how to live like you do?”
And Gwyneth, piddling about between projects, must’ve thought that was a terrific idea, a way of “giving back,” so to speak, without the lifelong commitment of, say, adopting a motherless Malawian boy like her BFF Madonna.
I’m picturing the two taking one of their endless strolls through the rain in London and discussing how Gwyneth could launch her lifestyle Web site for the masses. (By the way, I can’t wait ’til that Malawian kid gets enough about him to sit up and say, “Hey, white lady, the photo ops are great but could you just get my ass out of the rain?”)
I’m sure Gwynnie was advised by her pals on exactly how to save the world one mouse click at a time, but . . .
See, here’s the thing: Out here in the world of two-hundred-thread-count sheets and twenty-fifth anniversary dinners celebrated at Olive Garden, Gwyneth’s advice seems a bit, well, preachy and weird.
There’s a slight finger-pointing tone to her tips, a metaphorical pursing of the lips. We’re all just a bunch of big sillies! What is wrong with us?! Life is fabulous and we need to go about the business of celebrating it.
It’s kind of like how another rich lady, Christie Brinkley, wanted us in her corner as she slogged through her third very public divorce, but we just yawned.
People get divorced and have custody disputes every day. Christie didn’t seem to get that the stuff she was claiming made her so outstanding was stuff we all do.
My heart broke a little when she showed up at the courthouse clutching a dinosaur diorama she’d helped her kid make as evidence that she was a good mother.
What did she expect the judge to say?
“I see that you have helped your child construct a prehistoric animal habitat entirely from Elmer’s glue and old newspapers. I believe that my work here is done. You get the kids, the house, the cars, the boats, and all the money.”
Why do women always think they have to resort to crafts to prove that they’re good mommies?
Will Madonna herself have to drag out her Creative Memories scrapbooks and curvy cropping scissors to prove her devotion to parenting when she finally battles what’s-his-face in court?
So we’re to believe that Gwyneth cooks every night and Christie helps her kids with their schoolwork? Not bloody likely.
I would’ve had much more respect for Christie if she’d left Dino in the car and said, straight up: “Your Honor, my husband cheated on me repeatedly and he’s addicted to Internet porn.”
Seems like that should have been enough.
Christie’s scuzzy ex, Peter Cook, could have fought back by bragging about how he helped the kids with math homework.
“Your Honor, I always help the kids with their math problems,” he could’ve said. “I tell ’em, if a hooker charges five hundred dollars for thirty minutes and she has three friends who charge one-third of that for twice as long, how much money would you need to have with you or risk getting repeatedly kicked in the nut sack by their pimp?
“Or, how about this? Court documents reveal that Daddy spends approximately three thousand dollars a month on cyber porn. How many polar bears stranded on that melting ice floe that makes Sharon Lawrence cry in the World Wildlife Fund commercial could Daddy save just by giving up his addiction to Adult Friend Finder for six months?”
But Peter Cook did none of that, even as evidence mounted that he was a bad dad, even dunking his stepdaughter’s head in a bucket of water. (Frankly, I can’t imagine the girl’s bio dad, Billy Joel, not calling on old Allentown friend “Knuckles” to deal with Cook, and by deal with I mean causing him to bleed from many new and different orifices.)
For all this misbehavior, there was one thing that cemented, in my mind anyway, that Peter Cook was a jerk: He gave his eighteen-year-old mistress money to buy a Nissan Maxima.
Man, being the mistress of a millionaire sure ain’t the gig it used to be. What, were they all out of Dodge Neons?
Given her penchant for advice-giving, Gwyneth Paltrow could have counseled the entire Cook-Brinkley family because, to hear her tell it, she understands the human animal, and I am not just talking about David Duchovny. She admits that she has made a few mistakes, but that was all in the past. Now it’s time to share with others what it has taken her a lifetime to learn.
Like—and I am not making this up—“where to eat when you’re in London.”
Oh, for shit’s sake, Blondie, most of us are just lucky to get to Six Flags once every five years. London?
Giving Gwyneth the benefit of the doubt, I will just assume that she got bored with hearing how fabulous her husband was and she’s “acting out” rather than just accepting her position as an in-demand and much-lauded actress.
Maybe Goop really got its start after someone desperately tried to keep Gwyneth from becoming the next (God rest her soul) Linda McCartney or (egads!) Yoko.
Chris Martin is insanely talented and the last thing he needs is wifey standing waifishly at stage left shaking a tambourine or insisting on taking the mic during set breaks to deliver a heartfelt plea to save the endangered truffle or whatnot.
This whole business reminds me that women don’t know how to be rich anymore. I mean nobody except Heather Mills McCartney who, I’m sure, doesn’t cook, unless it is to lightly braise the still-beating heart of a freshly slaughtered baby lamb.
In their attempt to just be one of us—be it through cooking shows, Web sites, or gluing their regal hands together making dinosaur habitats—they succeed only in pissing us off.
Billy Joel (see above) trotted out his latest wife a while back to promote her cookbook. The wife of the world’s wealthiest comedian, Jerry Seinfeld, also wrote a cookbook.
It almost makes me like Heather. Say what you will but Heather Mills McCartney earned her money the old-fashioned way: Marrying a billionaire and then ensuring that his life is so miserable that he’ll pay you $43 million just to leave. Write a cookbook? Oh, hell no.
I can hear a few of you out there whining a bit as you read this. After all, doesn’t a woman have a right to pursue her own hopes and dreams and talents?
Right. So the tiny, itsy wittle Ms. Joel demonstrated her awesome cooking talents by making meatloaf on Oprah’s show.
Yes, meatloaf.
At the mention of meatloaf, the audience squealed as if she’d started to prepare pheasant de foie gras snootypants.
“She’s making meatloaf!!!!” Oprah bellowed; you know how she does. And then she bellowed it three more times.
All this is going on and I’m thinking, Dude, you married Billy F-ing Joel. Fry the guy a steak at least, or make what I’d make if I were married to him. That’s right: reservations.
From all appearances, Mrs. Billy Joel is utterly charming. Ditto Mrs. Seinfeld. But I’d like ’em a lot better if they just sat up there on Oprah’s couch and said, “You know what? My husband’s worth $800 million. I got no flippin’ idea where the stove is. Ewwww. This sofa’s sorta scratchy, O.”
I guess celebrity isn’t what it used to be. Jennifer Lopez and Nicole Richie, in separate People interviews, recounted tales of sleepless nights and numerous diaper changes.
Oh, big deal. Celebrities can do poo just like some damn Appalachian Juno. As if. My guess is, Carmelita is the only one changing nappies in those mansions. What’s next? Yard saling with Eva Longoria Parker?
Acting poor is just so 1995, y’all. At least Gwyneth got that part right. Bless her heart.
11
Jon & Kate Plus 8 Better Without the Kids
Have you seen Jon & Kate Plus 8, the reality TV show about a Pennsylvan
ia couple who are raising one set of twins and sextuplets? While I would’ve been tempted to just name them Dopey, Sneezy, Grumpy, et cetera, as they kept popping out, Jon and Kate Gosselin aren’t the frivolous type.
What fascinates—and repels at the same time—is the couple’s weird dynamic: She kvetches and finishes his sentences; he walks around in a semistupor fretting about his workout regimen or his teeth-whitening progress or where they should go on vacation.
While most fans claim to love this show because of the rambunctious, adorable Gosselin children, I just fast-forward the TiVo through all the boring kid scenes.
Any time I sniff a looooong scene of eight kids eating Cheerios for breakfast, I just go “boo-boop” to get to Jon and Kate chatting on the couch. Until those kids are old enough to discuss the environmental impact of offshore drilling or at least have a mature, intelligent discussion about whether or not Zac Efron is gay, I will speed through the endless “Ball! My ball!” arguments, thank you very much.
In each episode, Jon and Kate spend a fair amount of screen time sitting on a cramped love seat facing an anonymous interviewer and nudging each other in the ribs (a little too hard, I think) and bantering about their chaotic life as the parents of multiples.
A bit player in this psycho drama is Aunt Jodi, a slightly anorexic-looking young mom of four with a penchant for clothes that have that distressing “I buy all my clothes from the TV” Quacker Factory vibe to them. Jodi once agreed to take care of the eight little Gosselins—six of whom had the flu—while Jon and Kate flew to California so Jon could get hair plugs.
When Jon got home and complained how much his scalp hurt, Jodi would’ve been within her rights to carve him up like a Christmas ham on the spot, but she is way too nice to do that.
Another bit is Kate’s unfortunate obsessive-compulsive disorder. Watching her yell at the workmen for installing new blinds incorrectly, as in a tiny fraction off center, was downright uncomfortable. Kate is very big on “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” Just ask Jon, who hasn’t been able to do anything right in Kate’s eyes in a very long time, possibly ever.
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