In which the blogger admonishes the producers of the #X Factor for Xploiting Michael Jackson’s poor children.
Broadcast News: From the loins of presidents and prime ministers
In which the blogger questions the journalistic credentials of the spawns of prominent politicians.
Now filming in Ottawa: Career Killer
In which the blogger reports on the Ottawa-Gatineau film industry, the production mecca for rock bottom remainders.
Pay attention to your life
In which the blogger finds herself at the alter of self-worship, listening to Barbara Walters give advice to a Jewish fundraising dinner.
Ben and Anderson: Clash of the Titans
Television has always featured clashes of the titans.
Frost versus Nixon. Gore versus Buckley.
Cooper versus Mulroney?
Really?
ETalk is running a series of one-on-one interviews with celebrities and, yesterday, it was Anderson Cooper’s turn to trade gentle jokes with Little Bennie.
Did they discuss the state of the world? Anderbum’s close calls and punch ups in Libya?
Nope.
Mostly, they talked about hair color. Ben was asking Andy if he thought he should go grey. Anderson said he was on the fence, that he had simply accepted the fact he’d gone prematurely grey.
Then talk turned to their famous moms.
“Are you a mamma’s boy?” Ben asked referring to Anderson’s mom, Gloria Vanderbuilt. “I am. I have to call my mom every day.”
Mila.
How sweet.
Not Anderson.
Gloria pretty much abandoned him as a child, preferring the company of Truman Capote or one of her luvvas.
Squirm.
Ben talked about how great it was to be born into an ethnic family — the Pivnickis — and how there were always warm, inviting smells coming from the kitchen.
Woof. Just can’t imagine Mila breaking a nail making a Croatian walnut torte.
Anderson told Ben that real families scared him.
“I was a weird kid.”
Ben batted his lashes, regarding Andy’s wing tips.
“How many white shirts do you own?”
“Like thirty.”
The next topic was reality television and all their favorite shows. Anderson is addicted to the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Apparently.
Ben squealed.
“Camille Grammar had to sign a cease and desist agreement to stop trashing Kelsey,” said Ben.
Anderson was impressed.
The two locked eyes.
It was love.
They were giggling.
I suppose I should NOT expect more from little Bennie.
But the Real Housewives?
Really?
He’s a lawyer and all he wants to talk about is pocket squares.
He even showed Andy how to fold a “Kennedy”.
Mommas’ boys indeed.
PET, LUV, OMG, RIP
My good friend Jean-Marc Carisse reminded me today that Pierre Trudeau died on this date.
He posted a picture of Jane McDowell and me (please see above, don’t I look fabulous, ditto Jane) and I was transported back to a time when I was 25 and worked in the Prime Minister’s Office. Back when we was fab.
How I loved those days.
Look at me. I was full of estrogen. Glowing eyes, radiant, fresh-faced.
I wanted to leap the PM at that very moment.
He was friggin’ hot for an old guy and we all wanted to bear his children, to be his sister wives.
Okay, we didn’t but we wanted to have the sumpin’ sumpin’ that PET had.
What a fox, now that I look back.
That’s why we’re all so pissed off.
We have a Tella-Tubby for a Prime Minister who lumbers around like he lost cartilage in both knees. He’s not even trying.
Jackie Boy was the sickest man on the planet but at least he tried.
And I’m looking at the crop at Queen’s Park and I want to barf.
Seriously.
Bring back the charisma.
I don’t give a rat’s ass what David Frum-did-ee-dum says. Pierre Trudeau made us proud to be Canadians.
He lifted us up.
He had ‘tude.
I am so sad for today’s youth. Nobody makes them believe.
No wonder they don’t vote.
I want to be 25 again.
I want Pierre back.
I want me back — I want to be somebody who cares.
I know how she does it
Have you seen the ads for this barfy new film, I Don’t Know How She Does It?
The movie is all about a wife and mother who is juggling her family and a big career. Mostly, people shake their heads and murmur “I don’t know how she does it” while Sarah Jessica Parker makes a variety of faces before slipping on her Manolos and toddling off to work.
At least that is what I assume happens.
I haven’t seen the movie and I’m not going to.
As a mostly single mom raising three kids, I find the whole premise supremely offensive.
I did the exact same thing as SJP without a husband and mostly people shook their heads and murmured “I think she needs therapy” or somebody would hand me a card for AA.
After I got divorced and abandoned, somebody told me that I should stop trying to be the perfect woman, the person who “has it all” and just let a few things go.
I thought that was a brilliant idea, so I stopped doing housework and laid on the couch watching Regis and Kelly. Eventually, I realized that I had become one of those hoarder types so I cleaned up my act and went back to work and raised my kids well enough that none of them has landed in the slammer or on a slab in the morgue.
Nobody, but nobody, gave me an ovation when I’d find myself in the principal’s office with coffee stains on my sweater explaining that I didn’t realize a kid was cutting school. Nobody, but nobody, not cops any way, have me a salute when I came to pick up a kid who had gone on a five-finger discount. And certainly, nobody was giving me a high five when I spent evenings in my car looking for one of my kids who’d decided to runaway.
Unlike SJP, I didn’t live in a mansion. I lived in a crummy old townhouse with a leaky roof and windows which didn’t quite shut, which meant that Stef had snowdrifts coming into his bedroom. Also unlike SJP, I didn’t have a fabulous job because I spent too much time at home with sick kids. I remember one year when I actually got a job. The first month, there was a teacher’s strike, the second, there was the famous ice storm and the third month all kids came down with chickenpox.
Oh, miserable me.
There was no man to pick up the pieces. There was nobody to tend to the kids when I was sick. Only a couple of sympathetic pugs looking on and wagging their tails.
Thank God for the pugs.
As for how SJP does it, I can tell you. She neglects her family for her career. The kids are small in this movie, I’m assuming, but if you shot the same movie when they were teenagers, they would call her an asshole and a bitch. Her fine-looking husband would be having an affair or sticking it to the babysitter.
Women can’t have it all.
They simply have to choose what parts of the pie not to eat.
Dr. Oz: Weight Watchers spokesthingy
“America’s doctor” Mehmet Oz is proud of the fact he’s not Dr. Feel.
He says he won’t endorse or sell vitamins and other products to his lemmings yet today he announced a million dollar prize for one of his loyal viewers who manages to get her Body Mass Index into the 25 zone. All of this is brought to you by Weight Watchers which is offering a “free” BMI test and meeting for everyone in North America.
Free, what a joke.
It’s the old bait and switch. Get ’em in the door cause Dr. Oz says so; let them convince you that you need Weight Watchers so you can look like a Barbie Doll on a bogus weight measurement scheme.
The BMI isn’t a one size fits all measurement. Somebody like me with a size H bra size comes in at a whopping 33 on the BMI scale which doesn’t account for the 16 pounds I’m carrying up front.
I asked Ottawa weight specialist Dr. Yoni Freedhoff if BMI was an accurate measurement for me.
“Nope,” he replied on Twitter. “I don’t think it’s important. Goal is to live the healthiest life you can enjoy i.e best you can do is best you can do.”
Then he wondered how much Dr. Oz (or his company) was getting paid by Weight Watchers for this campaign.
This is very disappointing.
I love Dr. Oz, but of late, I’ve found he’s turning a little wacky — now that Oprah has given him her time slot.
He’s already been in the news this month for alarming America’s moms, telling them there are high amounts of arsenic in imported apple juice. The FDA has vehemently denied this is true.
Dr. Oz seems to be going to the dark side, in fact, becoming another Dr. Feel, finding new ways to market his popularity and take his viewers to the cleaners. There are many weight loss shows out there, like the Biggest Loser, that are marketing machines designed to take advantage of those of us who struggle with body image issues.
But they are at least up front about it.
Dr. Oz is an MD, a professor of medicine, a cardiologist. People put more store in what he has to say; they believe him to be trust worthy because of these credentials.
I’m not saying that Weight Watchers doesn’t work. It works for a segment of the population that needs peer support, but there are many other programs that work. Heck, a visit to a nutritionist also works.
Essentially, weight loss experts all say that all programs work at least for a while. The key is to burn off more calories than you take in.
Duh.
But the BMI is bunk as far as I’m concerned.
And Dr. Oz might as well join the circus and start selling elixir.
Anderbum
Anderson Cooper has always struck me as the whitest white man on television news.
He’s like CNN’s version of Wonder Bread — the kind without the fibre.
Anderson Cooper can make anything bland. He can be standing in the middle of a hurricane, buffeted about by million mile winds, and his hair still stays in place. He just stands there with a grin on his face. He might as well be eating a sandwich.
What’s with the name? Most guys named Anderson would be Andy or Coop — names they acquired in childhood. Maybe it’s because he’s the son of Gloria Vanderbilt and had to spend his after school hours giving out scent swatches at Fashion Week.
Maybe he never played organized sports, which is probably a good thing because he’s virtually invisible to the naked eye. If he played goalie, the defencemen would have a pretty difficult time figuring out if there was anyone in the net. He looks, it seems, like he might have played organized backgammon.
So when he announced he was creating his own afternoon talkie, I thought, boy, this is going to be a snoozefest.
And sure enough.
Yet, I’ve found myself strangely glued to his show.
I cannot get enough of it.
It’s not because Anderson is a scintillating host. In fact, he’s quite the opposite. He is still bland as sponge cake, but it almost makes him funny.
He’s like the William H. Macey character in Pleasantville. He can have the most shocking guest on his show, and his pulse never rises about half-dead.
Last week, he had Jerry Seinfeld on his show. Jerry Seinfeld, the man who invented the modern day comedy. Anderson, who inexplicably is friends with Seinfeld, spent most of the hour debating whether it was a good idea to put honey on a peanut butter sandwich, and why anyone would opt for a waffle when a pancake is perfectly fine.
That’s because Anderbum doesn’t eat anything fancy. He eats no vegetables which probably accounts for his ghost-like hue. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, it certainly looks like he never has sex. He cycles to work without a helmet — even though he knows it’s dangerous — and he hosts a talk show in some art gallery in Manhattan with borrowed furniture.
The man screams for an intervention from Ghostbusters.
It is fascinating to watch how Anderbum can dumb down every conversation. He had his mom, fashion icon Gloria Vanderbilt, on the program to discuss the untimely death of his dad and his brother. On any network, this would have been must-see-tv.
Yet, the two of them sat there talking as if they were discussing the proper use of a triangle in common fabric creations.
When his brother threatened to jump of the roof of his building, his mom told the audience, she wanted to go with him — he did jump, she didn’t — but she only stayed on the planet Earth because she didn’t want to leave Anderson alone.
Instead of grabbing her and having the big ugly cry, Anderson smiled as if she was talking about somebody else.
Sarah Jessica Parker appeared on the program — if it had been Oprah, she would have screamed so loud you could hear her in Milwaukee — and Anderson shared that he thought they (Sarah, Anderson) had the same giggle.
“Have you ever had a martini?”
“No, I don’t drink.”
“That’s a coincidence,” Anderson chortled, tipping his white head sideways. “Neither do I.”
What the heck is the point of this show?
It has no entertainment value whatsoever.
Scott was home one day and I made him watch. He shook his head and said: “Wow, this show won’t be on the air very long.”
Exactly.
Oprah: Next time, keep your politics to yourself
Oprah Winfrey is undoubtedly the richest, most influential woman on the planet.
But she’s not perfect, no way, no how.
She’s too trusting. Remember the James Frey fiasco? Any one?
And the movies she’s personally produced? The ones that flopped at the box office?
The Color Purple: The Broadway Musical?
Then there was the whole girls’ school in South Africa nightmare, with the headmaster who abused the girls while Oprah was having her hair relaxed.
And, of course, there’s the Oprah Winfrey Network, the multimillion dollar embodiment of O Culture that nobody’s watching — nobody.
I think the biggest Oprah blooper was getting Barack Obama elected.
People are starting to hate Barack Obama. He doesn’t play well with others. He nearly tanked the entire U.S. economy because of his personal hubris.
The American people are just now realizing that maybe John McCain might have made a better president.
And he’s a million years old and confused.
Even Donald Trump wouldn’t have risked destroying the American economy — and tanking the world’s money markets in the process. The Donald would have nuked his opposition.
Do you know what I don’t like about Barack Obama?
Nothing seems to phase the guy.
Even when the house of cards is coming down on his head, he doesn’t sweat. His pulse stays exactly the same.
Now Americans are turning on him. A poll yesterday suggests that the majority of Americans think he’s doing a lousy job as president. I mean, who wouldn’t?
It’s all Oprah’s fault.
We trusted her.
She told Americans to vote for B.O. and that’s exactly what they did.
Now the entire nation is smelling like an armpit.
Oprah! Stick to the talk show business.
Next time, keep your politics to yourself.
Rose's Cantina 