Ugh...I'm going to be sick

I was checking out Joe Rogan's website a few days ago, where he was talking about how great it felt to have such a ton of public support after his favorite club and agent both dropped him.

He also said that a few folks have been less than gracious, and included a nasty note that some woman had left him on his myspace page. As you might expect from a comedian who's got a reputation for annihilating hecklers, Rogan goes off.

There were some jpg's pasted in to show the woman, and Joe Rogan points out that this is what a Carlos Mencia fan looks like. The jpg's were broken, and I wondered if that was a part of the whole DMCA bullshit that was going on at the time.

But then I went back yesterday, and the photos were up. Oh my god, I'm going to hurl. Yeah, this is one nasty woman. And the reality is, these are photos that she posted of herself! Whenever I see something like this, I have a sort of Jerry Springer-esque reaction, hoping that this is fake, then instantly realizing that there are people like this all over the country. Take a look for yourself:

This woman looks like she's bobbing for fried ice cream. I think that stripper had a cheeseburger in his thong to induce that kind of feeding frenzy from this woman. It's just all too awful...the feathered hair, the '80s Tootsie glasses, the 'glandular issues'....ugh. And that poor stripper...he looks like he's going to be asphyxiated between that woman's thighs.

And the saddest thing of all is that you just know that this is the one of the hottest sexual experiences of this woman's life. A part of me really wants to know who this woman is. I thought about trying to track down her myspace profile, but let's face it, my tolerance for interminable page loads is almost nil. My first reaction is nausea. Then I feel just awful thinking about her life. Then I just get kind of angry.

I mean, who the hell is this woman to proffer her useless opinion on someone else's life?!?! What the fuck gives her the right to be anyone's barometer of acceptability?!?!? Why is this fucking failure of a human being out in the world trying to tell other people anything at all?!?!?!

For the record, here's the precious note that she decided to send to Joe Rogan:

"Unfortunately it is extremely clear there is an extreme amount of jealousy and resentment you have towards Carlos. He carries himself with pride and class and doesn't walk around looking like he needs a free meal and a razor to clean up. I don't care if he does steal shit from other people because it is obvious that he must tell the shit better than others. I have seen his show and it is always a sell out and it makes people laugh and go home feeling good. You are only out there to be an ass like always because you feel inferior to Carlos and will never be as popular or successful as he is. I don't care that you did Fear Factor because you sucked in that also. So why don't you get a life and take a shower and shave up and head to your local mission and get a free meal you loser!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

First of all, it makes sense that this bottom-feeder would feel uplifted by Carlos...he's an even bigger loser. All of that fake hispanican humor probably feeds right into the bigoted pseudo-jokes she and her trashy friends tell in the vast industrial cafeteria of whatever assembly line she works on. Plus, if she were a good christian, she'd offer up that free meal herself. I'm just saying...

But this woman is just one more example of a repetitive theme. If we measure human beings on a scale of 1-10 for their intelligence, worth, contributions to the world...any number of characteristics that we as a society claim to hold dear, this woman would be a 2 or 3 at best. Yet she's coming into the fray like she's way higher on the food chain. Like she actually has something to offer that the world wants.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you'll almost always hear a beautiful girl admit that she thinks she's 'plain' rather than pretty; a highly intelligent person will tells you that he or she is 'just average'. Because the truth is, people with some sense of themselves and the world around them know that there is always someone out there who is smarter, better looking, or more competent on a number of levels.

Yet the dregs of society shamelessly present themselves as if they are the standard by which the bar is set. Ask a 400-pound woman in spandex how she looks and you'll hear "I look good!" Ask someone who's never traveled more than an hour outside of the town that they grew up in, much less say visited a foreign country, and they'll expound for hours on foreign policy. Ask a person who's never in his life handled his own finances with any aplomb, and he'll be glad to tell you how the American economy works and where it falls short.

This woman is one of those people. A bottom-feeder with too much confidence. Maybe there's something about being on the lower half of the scale of humanity that doesn't allow for any sense of shame. Maybe there's some human defense mechanism that allows them to inherently believe they're much better than they are and thus prevent them from committing suicide en masse.

For the rest of us, there's not much gray area. It boggles the mind that these folks can't see it in themselves, but we all know they're losers. The fact that this woman doesn't "care if he steals shit from other people" speaks volumes about her character, even without the ghastly photos. Hopefully some of this backlash will get back to her, and she might start to realize just how fucking pathetic she really is.

Other Folks Weigh in on Joe Rogan vs. Carlos Mencia

Pauly Shore actually comes out and says "Joe is right", and then follows that up with a sniveling round of, 'but he should shut the fuck up and take it.' Methinks Pauly should make it his life mission to make sure he never goes to jail.









Up next on deck we have Bobby Lee. I actually think this one is fucking hysterical, because, is it just me, or does Bobby Lee look like a battered wife? He's kind of shaky and smoking and his eyes are either darting all over the place or just looking down at the ground like some kind of Taliban hostage.

In my mind, this video got made because Carlos showed up on Bobby Lee's doorstep, dragged him out of bed by his neck (what else explains the hair and the just-woken-up face?!?) and shoved a handycam in his face and told him to fucking get with the Carlos version of events, since no one else will.

Judge for yourself:









Seriously, I can't even believe that Carlos still has a job. And you want to know what I find supremely fucking funny about all of this? Before this whole imbroglio, I had never even heard of Carlos Mencia.

Now, I sure as hell knew Joe Rogan. News Radio was an awesome fucking show. I've known of Joe Rogan for fucking years. So the idea that some random dude out there has enough juice right now to pull this kind of five-minute power play is hysterical. And you want to know why? Because that kind of juice is soooo short-lived.

Maybe Carlos doesn't know that yet. Maybe that's the even bigger surprise waiting for him after he goes to raise the pot one more time and realizes that he's out of chips. Or maybe he does know...senses it like a cold chill raising the hairs on the back of his neck. And maybe that's why he grabbed a handycam and yanked Bobby Lee out of bed to read some fucked up pap that was scribbled on some dirty cocktail napkins just out of frame.

Ah, what the fuck am I saying? The so-called 'mind' of Mencia is surely not that complex. Good luck with that impending fall into comedy oblivion, Carlos.

And Carlos, if you want to try to DMCA my ass over that statement, go ahead and try. Just remember, every player at the table has a finite amount of chips to play.

Oh, Jesus...THIS Answers THAT Question

In case you missed it, there's been a lot of hoopla over Britain announcing its plans to withdraw from Iraq.

It's sent global media into a tizzy.

Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama used it as a catalyst to tear into one another.

Dick Cheney stumped the topic from Japan.

What's important to note here is that all reports state that Britain will pull troops in May, with a complete pull-out within 12 months.

Fair enough.

But then this morning, up pops a teeeeeeeny little news item.

Guess who is scheduled to head to Iraq? None other than Prince Harry. And, oh yeah, he's due to be deployed in May.

Wow....that's a curious coincidence, isn't it?

FRIDAY UPDATE:

Reader "Brendan" kindly reminds us that Harry has done a bit of soldiering before, at a controversial Halloween party.

Look out, Iraq.....

Crazy Ass Britney Spears Leaves Rehab. Again.

Holy fuck, do these places have revolving doors? Can someone not shoot a tranquilizer dart into this bitch's neck and tie her down for a day? I'll be damned if Britney isn't turning out to be the maddest hatter at the ball!

When the hell did Britney Spears morph into Courtney Love?

God, it makes me long for the simpler times...back when Britney was trying to convince us all that she was a virgin.

I mean, seriously, somebody call Donatella! Because what really matters here is that she may not be able to dry a bitch out, but she can at least get the dirty street whores of Hollywood to keep their panties on in public.

And anyone who saw those shots of Britney's va-jay-jay knows that she needs to keep that shit under wraps.

So, please, Donatella....hear my plea. Pull out your crazy ass magic wand and work one of your drag queen miracles. Hose a bitch off, smear some product across her face, shoot some ass fat into her lips, and finish her off in some spandex and sparkles.

Because king of all trailer trash K-Fed is actually scheduled for an emergency court hearing today to take the bebe's into his crack-smoking custody. Unlike Courtney, I don't think Brit's got a nanny to play mommy for a few years.

Just in case you've forgotten, dear Donatella, that sperm donor already has a couple of pieces of vagina fruit that he seems to have misplaced.

Yes, folks, it's come to this. Perhaps if public outcry is great enough, we can get Miss D to rise to the occasion and turn another dirty white trash skank into something that will maintain respectability for a couple of years, then kindly fade off the radar.

And really, isn't that what we all want?

How To Write Chick Lit In Ten Easy Steps

Maureen Dowd has come under fire. Again. This time for making the audacious statement that "chick lit" has overtaken the bookstore shelves. She judges the genre as fluffy at best, and bemoans the dumbing-down of American literature, noting that "I even found Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" with chick-lit pretty-in-pink lettering."

Commentators and chick lit fans everywhere are taking up (exfoliated and moisturized) arms over her dismissal of the vag-centric books. Novelists and their readers seem to feel that Dowd's column was an opening shot, and taken to the flame war to both intelligently defend their the niche and make juvenile personal attacks against the journalist.

I find all of this to be incredibly ironic. The day before her column appeared, I had just sent off an email saying almost exactly what Maureen Dowd printed. As I read the New York Times piece, I wondered if the journo hadn't truly fallen on hard times and was resorting to stealth email reading programs for her next controversial scoop.

The only exception I take with Dowd's column is that she's, frankly, several years late to the party. Her anchor hub for the chick-lit movement is the ubiquitous The Devil Wears Prada. Anyone who's cruised the endcaps and displays of a bookstore within the past ten years knows that the genre took over those areas like kudzu years earlier, with books such as Bridget Jones's Diary and The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing. (For the record, I'll go ahead and say that I actually enjoyed "The Girls' Guide..." when I read it in 1999.)

With all due respect to chick lit novelists and readers, I have to say that I find their impassioned defense of the genre to be haughty and without merit. By and large, this is not the great literature of our time. This is not the cutting-edge prose of the 'zipless fuck' in Erica Jong’s revolutionary Fear of Flying. This is not the analysis of globalization offered in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. And it's certainly not up to snuff with the lyrical writing of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison, whose novels' opening lines I can still recite verbatim, years after first taking them into my brain.

No, this particular genre is not any of that. What we're now calling chick lit used to be known by another name. The Harlequin Romance Novel. Yes, the seedy-for-its time paperbacks that our mothers and aunties and grandmothers kept hidden under their pillows and in their sewing baskets for a quick read when the men and children weren't in the room. Fabio isn't on the cover anymore, inviting us into a fantasy world. Now we have clever cartoons and pseudo-sophisticated graphic design that allows us to project a lifestyle that we believe we can, should, and might be desperately trying to have.

I truly believe that anyone with the discipline to construct basic noun-verb agreement for 180 pages or more could write a successful chick lit book. For anyone willing to take a stab at it, I'll offer my handy guide.

"How To Write Chick Lit in Ten Easy Steps"

1. INTRODUCTION: A female protagonist, in her 20's or 30's, living in an urban setting.

2. STATIC CHARACTER: Endless descriptors of name-brands. Particularly shoes. Mention of Manolo Blahnik and/or Jimmy Choo is mandatory.

3. DEVELOPING CHARACTER: Body issues. Must be examined thoroughly and repeatedly throughout the novel.

4. EXTERNAL CONFLICT: By second chapter, protagonist's otherwise perfect world will be upended by relationship or job loss.

5. RISING ACTION: Protagonist goes into a cocoon of self-pity, dragging the reader along with her.

6. INTERNAL CONFLICT: Incessent self-analyzing ensues. This is the body of the novel.

7. INTERNAL CONFLICT BECOMES EXTERNAL CONFLICT: A hundred pages past the point of extreme self-absorption, even the protagonist's closest confidantes become infuriated with her. Insert another several dozen pages of whining in solitude, adding the "no one understands me" complaint.

8. CLIMAX: Peripheral character emerges to give protagonist a moment of clarity. Because there are typically only about 5 characters in a chick-lit novel (7 including the designer labels and body issues) it is not difficult for the reader to identify this hero-on-the-sidelines fairly early in the story.

9. FALLING ACTION: Suddenly, everything in the protagonist's shattered world comes together.

10. DENOUEMENT: Cue happy ending, which means an even better guy or job than the one that initially started the whole crazy chain of events.


One area that chick-lit enthusiasts like to point out in defense of the "lit" element is the overly-analytical 'journey of self-discovery' that they claim occurs over the course of the novel. Personally, this part of the ride really bothers me. It seems to embody the "Oprah-zination" of our society. There are no boundaries. In fiction and real life, incredibly intimate details are doled out like canapes at cocktail parties. Everyone gets their 15 minutes to cart out their old wounds and childhood traumas to display for the world.

Anyone who's gone on a serious self-pity bender knows that point where one suddenly realizes, "Ugh...I'm sick of myself!" Chick lit protagonists do not possess this internal filter. Their capacity for self-analysis is numbing, and as a reader, I often find myself rooting against, rather than for them. After surviving endless pages of introspection that borders on a clinical diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome, I find myself cheering the 'bullies' in the novel, so lacking is the protagonist in redeeming qualities.

Because of this, reading chick-lit often feels like listening in on a series of therapy sessions--most of the content is vapid and dull. In the rare moments of salaciousness, it feels dirty and inappropriate for the main character to suddenly graphically convey sexual content. By the time this happens, I've already read hundreds of pages of the protagonists' inner dialogue, detailing their deepest fears and secrets.

When that character suddenly shifts to genitalia-speak, I find myself wincing, reading through the barely-parted fingers of my hand, much in the same way I watch a scene in a horror movie. It's the same sickly feeling I would have if I were to walk in a room where the older ladies in my family were detailing a particularly hot blow job. It's just too creepy to be either titillating or educational.

On a lesser note of aggravation, I'm sick to death of everyone acting like their lives should or somehow do resemble a season of Sex and the City. I'm sick of cosmo-swilling twentysomethings with $600 highlights. Whether in literature or out at a bar, I'm baffled when I see a $30,000 a year grade-school teacher sporting a $1,500 handbag, $300 sunglasses, and $500 shoes. What is going on in the world that weekly mani-pedi's and Brazilian waxes have become de rigueur for high school girls?

I'm going to make this clear to everyone: Unless you have been approached by a legitimate representative of the entertainment industry who wishes to convey your life story in novel, television or film, you don't possess the lifestyle you're trying so desperately to project.

It is this same cookie-cutter characterization that makes chick lit so bland. Rather than cultivating any kind of unique back-story, attributes, or lifestyle for their protagonists, novelists and publishers continue to crank out the same formula ad nauseum. But until chick lit's popularity wanes, we're going to continue to see more of the same in bookstores and libraries. And judging from the lifespan of the Harlequin series, I doubt we'll see this shift anytime soon.