Jezebel’s Moe Changes Her Mind!

Interesting!

And great news for Gawker fans.

UPDATE: One thing I meant to mention earlier but was running off to make spaghetti and meatballs for a brood of teenagers … but how classy was Alex Balk in this whole thing? He must be disappointed, even a bit pissed off, but his post about Moe’s change of heart is pure class and elegance. Proof that not everyone on the Internet has to behave like a petty, childish arsehole when disappointed/vexed. Love him, and I will forever miss My Cock, possibly the funniest Gawker feature ever.

 

Christian Bale: Swoon!

Yesterday, for a hot minute, my heart raced and shock came over me: Uber-hottie-damn-great-actor-best-Batman-EVER Christian Bale arrested for assaulting his mom. After regaining my composure, I realized that this must be a mistake. I communicated my feelings to a good friend, who agreed with my feeling of this being some kind of mix-up. We waxed poetic about his great turn in Equilibrium and The Machinist. We decided the news was wrong! His step-mom is the great feminist Gloria Steinem. There was no way our Christian was some sort of mom-abuser!!

We were proven right. Turns out Mr. Bale was defending his wife’s honor. His mother insulted his wife of eight years and he probably told the nasty bitch to fuck off!! A (hot) man defends his (hot) wife from his nasty mother. Could he be more dreamy?!?

 

What Would Jesus Bench?

I’ve never understood the idea of spiritual excercise. When I first started doing yoga years ago, I had to look around forever to find classes and DVDs that suited me. By “suited me,” I mean that there was no hokey spiritual bullshit served alongside my exercise. It’s kind of hard to stay balanced in Warrior III pose when something your instructor is babbling about the 8-fold path makes you roll your eyes, know what I mean?

No joke, I have this one yoga DVD where completely out of nowhere the instructor pulls some Kafka quote: “It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writh at your feet.” The first time I did the DVD I thought, “Whuuuut? Um, OK? That’s cool, are we gonna do another vinyasa flow, or am I supposed to stop and wait for the world to show up and have an orgasm on my sticky mat?”

I think it’s pretty clear that the likes of me are intended to remain unenlighted. And that’s fine. For those of you who like to have your third eye tweaked and align your chakras or whatever, I don’t have any problem with that. “Whatever works for you” has always been my motto in that respect.

People go to yoga for different reasons. Some people, like me, just want a workout. Some people like to go to a class to meet new people, or make weekly socio-aerobic appointments with friends. Others like to open their minds to guided meditation coupled with an exersion high. Others still like to treat yoga class like a baited poon field (*cough* Eric Schaeffer). Excluding the last example, I like to think that any reason people have for taking an exercise class is perfectly valid in a society when so many people are forced to put their health on the back-burner.

But sometimes, workout trends emerge that just make me go, “Come ON!” After the jump, I try to put my skeptical, snarky ways behind and see the merit beyond the cheese of the “spiritual exercise” craze.

 

How To Terrorize A Man For Years

Marriage. Marriage can be a tricky thing. You think you know someone, and not just anyone but the person you chose to be your ever-and-always, the one who knows your most scandalous unreported felonies and whether you prefer sativa, indica or a blend. And then one day, you find out that something you’d been thinking all along, some inherent part of your understanding of who this person is, well it just couldn’t be further from the truth. And sometimes the misunderstanding is your own fault.

 

In Appreciation of Teri Garr, Queen of Awesomeness

I have loved Teri Garr since I was a young girl. I remember being astonished at how beautiful she was in “Young Frankenstein,” and funny too! You just didn’t see that often in Hollywood in those days – an astonishingly beautiful, smart, funny woman.

If you’re a fan, read this great interview with her on The Onion. Even though she’s struggled with MS for years and had a brain aneurysm last year, Garr remains as funny, honest, irreverant and feisty as ever.

Here she is too on a recent episode of Letterman. What I love about this is clearly she’s not in the best of health, and has thankfully foresaken getting her face messed with like so many of her peers, but she’s still as beautiful and sexy as ever. There’s still the trademark twinkle in her eye and her coy sense of humour, and Letterman is still as hot for her as he was years ago. Love love love!

 

John Edwards Busted With His Secret Lover

OH DEAR!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: never trust a man with a bad dye job. Ronald Reagan, Wayne Newton, Jerry Lewis … there are demons within!

It takes a special kind of classy, though, doesn’t it, to cheat on a wife who’s dying of cancer? Sheesh.

 

Historical Artifacts: First Kiss, Circa 1995

My first kiss was an event I feverishly anticipated throughout three long years of junior high.  I had attended an all-girls Catholic school since the age of nine, and the only boys I knew were the brothers of my girlfriends.  These gawky, spotty teens were the targets of near-constant obsession and angst.  A tongue-tied and shy pre-teen, the act of calling a girlfriend was something I would spend half an hour preparing for, a list of possible conversational topics in hand in case a Brother answered and I was lucky enough to stumble into a dialogue.  I harbored a particularly brutal series of crushes on my friend Georgia’s older brother and the members of his garage band, but remained romantically disappointed.  They were, after all, sophisticated high school freshman and regularly in the presence of girls far more developed than me in the breast region; I wasn’t even allowed to wear makeup.  After drooling over the band boys and some secreted issues of Tiger Beat, I composed an idea of what I wanted my first boyfriend to be like. 

 

He had to be mature and sophisticated, like me, and might even be as old as 16.  He would have to be creative so that if he were a musician, he could dedicate his songs to me; if he were a painter, he could paint pictures of me; if he were a writer, he could write anguished poems about our torrid love.  I definitely leaned toward a poet, as I had just read Romeo and Juliet and felt that passionate, fatal love was a very desirable thing.  I understood poets to have a high mortality rate.  He had to be tall with intense eyes and healthy teeth and should photograph handsomely so that I could take pictures of him to school and brag about his prolific creativity, adoration, and general hotness.

 

Teenage Kicks

Being an adult right now is equal parts depressing and relieving. It’s relieving because I’m so incredibly glad that MySpace, Facebook, blogging platforms and slam sites like Juicy Campus weren’t around when I was an awkward, angst-filled teen just trying to survive high school. Seriously.

I feel for you youngsters today, and all I can really say to you for advice is this: think before you post. Think twice, think three times. Better yet? Don’t post anything at all ever. Or, post your little heart out on a password-protected site and then never give anyone the password. There you go.

 I mean really, there’s already enough bullshit for teens to try and live through without dealing with the repercussions of splashing your hormonally-charged dramarama all over the global stage that is the interwebz. Anyway, what’s depressing about being an adult is…. Um…… Well, nothing really, other than that kids today have a lot cooler shit than when I was coming of age.

As much as I hate record-company-assemby-line hipster garbage like The Killers, it’s still worlds better than the pop music available to me in the 90s. What were the most popular bands at my high school? 311, G Love and Special Sauce (I shit you not), Incubus, Dave Matthews Band, Sublime (even though the singer guy had been dead for a number of years- such is the trickle-down of pop culture when you live in the Deep South), and all sorts of other cock-rockin’, whiteboy trustafarian, pot-smoke-billowing-out-the-sweet-Jeep-Cherokee-Daddy-bought-you tunes.

Nothing rubbed salt in the gaping Prozac hole left by the Seattle-spawned music of the early 90s quite like the happy-go-sappy-pap, wannabe eclectic, Jamaican culture-copping pop music 180-turn that was the latter half of the 90s. The musical landscape went from Sonic Youth and Sunny Day Real Estate to Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth overnight. That sucked to the point that I feel the electro-synth rut of indie music the kids are listening to today would be preferred.

Kids today also have much cooler phones and communications devices. I mean, seriously, what the fuck was the point of a pager? I hated that shit. But, I must say, the #1 thing I envy about kids today is the beauty products they have access to now.

(Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the Donnas, but this album cover always reminded me of the girly sleepovers I had as an adolescent…. and I actually do like their version of “Teenage Kicks,” sue me).

After the jump, I get some much-deserved teenage kicks from a new drugstore product..

 

A Beloved Jezebeller Departs For a New Stomping Ground

Gawker.com broke the news early this morning that Moe Tkacik, one of the most polarizing yet beloved voices of its sister site, Jezebel.com, is leaving for RadarOnline.com.

Moe had her fair share of detractors in her 14 months at Jezebel, most notably for her anti-Hillary Clinton stance and some recent public remarks about date rape and safe sex, but whether you agreed with her or not, she’s an endlessly engaging, sharp and often very funny writer. Her posts on everything from politics to tampon horror stories and King Creep Paul Janka were provocative and heart-felt.

Go get ‘em, Moe!

P.S. Expect our own Sinister Rouge, a longtime friendly sparring partner of Moe’s, to weigh in a bit later.

UPDATE: One of us just had a brilliant idea (it happens sometimes). In the comments, post some of your favourite Moe moments!

 

RetroMovies: In Appreciation of “Grosse Point Blank”

On these lazy dog days of summer, I have found myself thinking about movies I really love. I saw this John Cusack classic recently for possibly my sixth or seventh time, and once again I was reminded of what a contemporary masterpiece it is.

Firstly, the film is an off-kilter romance, with Cusack’s tormented hitman, Martin Blank, returning to his hometown for two purposes: to conduct another hit and to attend his high-school reunion, where he hopes to win back his one true love, played by Minnie Driver.