This isn't working

My hope of comming up with enough odds and ends about celebrities to use as fodder for mean spirited one-liners has gone down the tubes. I'm way more interested in coffee cup lids, t-shirts and beach weather than I am in celebs. Therein lies the problem.

A good portion of the topics I've broached in Daydream Vaccination are subjects I found really compelling. Because I cared about what I was writing I would work too long and neglect my real job, which is grant writing by the way. My hope for Celebrity Nes was, since I care so little about celeb news, that I could write a casual comic blog about it. No luck though, I find this shit unbearable.

I figure the best thing to do now, since I'm really sort of hooked on blogging, is to just write what I want and be mature and disciplined enough to not let it interfere with the rest of my life.

Please join me back over at Daydream Vaccination for new posts. Thanks, and my appologies for being so flighty.

Matt LeBlanc's Divorce is Finalized

If it was my job to write boring headlines for eight hours a day, five days a week, I would never be able to touch the frailty of this Friday, September 22, 200 headline from The Washington Post:Matt Leblanc's Divorce is Finalized



Nothing about this makes me want to continue reading. If I was Senior Editor over at Google News I would have at least attempted to make this turd shine.






-Certain to be His First of Many, Matt Leblanc's Divorce is Finalized.

-Matt Leblanc's Divorce is Finalized Sparking a Series of Violent Protests in Gaza.

-Matt Leblanc's Finalized Divorce is a Somewhat Hot Topic At the 2006 AVN (Adult Video) Awards.

-Matt Leblanc's Divorce is Finalized Over a Plate of Human Brains!! That's Right, He's a Cannibal!!

-Matt Leblanc's Divorce From Friend's Co-Star David Schwimmer is Finalized. That's Right, They Were Lover's!!

-President George Bush's Divorce is Finalized.

Franchise or the Star

We've all heard the news--Tom Cruise has been kicked out of Hollywood for being weird. Paramount's going with Brad Pitt--big surprise--to head up the Mission: Impossible franchise. An insider (shiftless office temp?) told London Lite newspaper: "MI:IV will not include Cruise's character, agent Ethan Hunt. They're considering a brief mention, saying Hunt retired to live a safe life with his new wife. They're set on Brad taking over as a gutsy new head operative who puts together his own unique team of specialists."

This party line that Hunt has "retired to live a safe life with his new wife." is a thinly veiled shot at Cruise's personal life if you ask me. Cruise didn't retire! Due to a string of bizzare public outbursts that initiated with his marriage to child bride, Katie Holmes, he was shitcanned. To say he "retired to live a safe life" implies that marriage has heped to normalize Cruise when, in fact, it has done the opposite.

In answer to this flagrant inversion of the truth I think that Tom's independent production company should set to work adapting to film the late 1980's Nintendo game classic Impossible Mission starring Tom Cruise in the role of this dude:


Tom is far from retiring or settling into the straight life (no pun intended). He's got a shitload of money and a brand new will to be wierd that promises to yield some awesomely deranged masterpieces. (I'm praying for a no-holds-barred throw down Scientology epic that makes Passion of the Christ look like Forest Gump.) It's Paramount Studios that's playing it safe: "They're set on Brad taking over as a gutsy new head operative who puts together his own unique team of specialists." They're turning Mission: Impossible into a buddy flick so that no one knuckle head actor can take down the franchise with naughty behavior.

This better not be a trend. I don't think I could handle Indiana Jones with "a unique team of specialists".

What is Acting Anyway?

Critics love Ryan Gosling. Many are throwing around the moniker of "Young Brando" in their reviews of his recent performance in Half Nelson. He does have some of that lithe physicality so, hey why not? I don't know shit about acting. When it comes to leading men and women, once the actor has shown him or herself capable of memorizing lines and doing a fair approximation of an English accent, it seems to me, that they are only as good as the material. Do you really think that if John Travolta's part in Pulp Fiction went to, say, Luke Perry of 90210 fame that it wouldn't be Luke Perry with the revitalized career and a fleet of prop-planes in his backyard?

I was subjected to watching The Notebook, Gosling's previous film, this weekend and, I'll be damned if he wasn't just another competent actor in a mediocre chick flick. Half Nelson on the other hand is a great movie. The premise is totally original, each scene punchy and about something, the dialogue is brilliant and subtle but I think Kirk Cameron (Growing Pains star turned religious nut) would have done just as good a job as "Young Brando".

I know I'm wrong, I'm just not sure why. I know acting isn't a science, it's an art, and Brando in, pretty much, everything up to The Godfather is undeniably it's greatest practitioner on screen anyway. Maybe I should read a book on it.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is breaking my heart

As a long time Seinfeld junky I have found Julia Louis-Dreyfus' brief respite away from The Seinfeld Curse a little tough to watch. A recent public-mercy-fuck at the Emmys for her performance on The New Adventures of Old Christine
has led to a trickle of guest appearances(SNL and couch time on the Late Shows) as well as an improved time slot for the show--9:30 instead of 10:00. A few crumbs, that's all. Her new show is bad and everyone knows it, especially her.

On Lenno last night she told a story about a gawking crowd of fans who stopped her on the WB studio tour. "I'm sooo famous..." was her inner monologue just before realizing that George Clooney was crossing through the parking lot behind her. Ooouch. Jay and the Late Night audience rolled with it the way you do when someone newly wheelchair-bound makes a self depricating joke about their handicap. The same story comming from a cute 21-year-old blond from the OC who, by a fluke, won an Emmy would be charming and adorable. Even from someone like Courtney Cox the punchline would have been--Sure, I won an Emmy but NO ONE is famous as George Clooney!

But Elaine from Seinfeld is as famous as George Clooney. People know Elaine Benes from Nebraska to New Delhi.


As an asterisk here, Julia L.D. is rich as God, she's healthy and happily married. I love her and Seinfeld is tied with The Simpsons for the greatest show of all time.

Thank You

Chairman of The Board

This may be taken as a man-crush but I have to say it anyway: Leonardo Dicaprio is a pimp.

Let's look, for a moment, at the way this guy was able to spend his twenties:

While Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and the rest were being driven halfway to nervous breakdowns-- living in L.A., married to famous women, running around like fugitives in sunglasses and baseball hats, their names literally mangled (i.e., Brangelina, Tom-Cat...) by bottom feeding faux-journalists--Leo quietly took his Titanic money, moved to a mediteranean paradise to, instead, swim and bang supermodels in peace.

He does no interviews, is absent from premiers and nightclubs. He'll show up at the Oscars, but then only when nominated. He has found a way to, over-and-again, drop completely off the map for two years at a stretch while maintaining the star power of Johnny Depp and Tom Hanks combined. It seems the only reason he bothers with Hollywood at all is to star in the latest Spielberg or Scorccesse flick.



He was on Letterman a few years back, promoting The Aviator , and I noticed a vibe--a strange vibe. It was like it had been a really long time since he'd driven a car or paid for something with a five dollar bill. I got the feeling that he would be tickled to death with the notion of eating peanutbutter. When talented people are as famous for as long a sustained period as Leo has been famous, I think it's only natural for them to be, well...a little fucked up.
There may be some major chinks in Leo's armor that we don't know about. He might be an under-the-radar philanthropist or he might kidnap baby kittens and use them for target practice in his backyard. It'll all come out in due time. But Leo is thirty now and the way he's played Hollywood is something to be appreciated.