Spears family and There Will Be Blood: separated at birth?

I saw There Will Be Blood on Friday, and while it was very gorgeous to look at and had an interesting score, by the end I thought it devolved into such a pile of overwrought disaster that it had ceased to be compelling.

In other words, it was very similar to the Spears family. Like a Daniel Day-Lewis character, Britney was the epitome of a certain brand of American ambition and success--and, like the TWBB, she was pretty to look at and listen to ("Toxic" was poetry, and don't try to tell me otherwise). The stage mother and the sweet-faced kid sister were great supporting characters. When Britney entered the Period of Skankiness--the 48-hour marriage, the backup dancer babydaddy, the Irish twins, the going into public bathrooms without her shoes on--it seemed to just add to the complexity, and drew us in farther.

But then sometime around the head-shaving incident, the whole thing started to unravel. In There Will Be Blood, SPOILER ALERT, the same thing happened approximately when D D-L caused a scene in a restaurant by getting huffy about slow service, putting his napkin over his face, and threatening to slit someone's throat. Once you've started down that path, it's a steep downward slide from fascinating into banal awfulness. The psychiatric committment, the pregnant 16-year-old sister whose boyfriend is demanding a paternity test--they might as well just SPOILER ALERT kill all the other characters in the movie and be done with it. Yes, yes, America is built on unbelievable depravity, I get it. I'd rather see Juno.

Oops, she did it

Britney Spears' 16-year-old sister, Jamie Lynn, is pregnant. I think the Spears family is engaged in a grand, albeit probably unintentional, scheme to push celebrity news right up to, and then past, the line between titillating and depressing.

2006 Best and Worst!

I like year-end lists, so here's mine.

Worst

Worst actress about whose life direction to care: Katie Holmes. I held out hope there for longer than was even vaguely reasonable, grasping at the breakup rumors and conspiracy theories like so many promises to train the Iraqi police, but it was all in vain.

Worst Media Trend: YouTube. I realize I'm in a tiny, cave-dwelling minority here, but when I'm reading a blog entry discussing how, say, Clay Aiken put his hand over Kelly Ripa's mouth and then Rosie O'Donnell called Kelly homophobic, I don't wanna have to watch a dozen (OK, one) YouTube videos to see what happened. Those things are MINUTES long! Since when does the MTV generation attention span accommodate that? I want SCREEN CLIPS, people! (Plus, the sound tends to blow one's cover at work.)

Worst fashion trend: Obvs, no underpants. Britney, whatev, but Linds, you're breaking my heart.

Worst speech trend: Unnecessary shortening of words. This one is even more pernicious than the vortex that was "izzle," because it actually saves time and thus could accidentally become perm. Anent.

Worst Presidential Candidate Launch: It pains me to say this, being from Iowa and all, but Governor Vilsack's appearance on The Daily Show. His takeaway line: We're creating a "culture of dependency" in Iraq. Are we giving them excessively generous welfare benefits? And shouldn't you be criticizing, oh, say, the President whose deeply unpopular policies you are presumably running against rather than the victims of his geopolitical folly?

Worst switcheroo in Blogland: Above the Law replaces Underneath Their Robes. Probably AtL is more lucrative and David Lat doesn't have time to do both, but wahhhhh. Where UtR was so snarky and bitchy that I was able to nearly ignore its raging Federalist Society undertones, Above the Law has a fairly boring, lawyery voice and is all about how big the bonuses are going to be at various big firms. Bring back Article III Groupie!

Worst movie: X-Men 3. OK, possibly not the absolute worst--I didn't see Lady in the Water--but the most disappointing. It didn't even know what its overarching metaphor was: is the cure for mutation the Holocaust, abortion, or the ex-gay movement? Because, nooooot the same things. Also, SPOILER ALERT the ending is a blatant rip-off of the Buffy-has-to-kill-Angel-even-though-she-loves-him-in-order-to-save-the-world thing, except not touching and with a thick overlay of misogyny.



Best

Best Top 10 Lists of 2006: Best Week Ever's lists o' Movie Cliches, Reasons to Hate Singing and Dancing, and, most of all, Celebrity Body Parts. 100% awesome.
Best movie: The Departed. This surprises me, because Cops, Gangsters, Boston, and Father Issues are not normally my movie topics of choice, but it approached The Godfather (Part 1) levels of greatness. I haven't been as impressed with Leonardo DiCaprio since he was a child, and Matt Damon convinced me he's really an actor. Also, Martin Sheen just broke my heart. Also, Marky Mark. Mmmmmm.

Best sign for the future of mankind: The election. :) :) :) :)

Best new (to me) blog: ApartmentTherapy. It inspires me to want to paint! wallpaper! un-clutter! entertain! Not to say that I have actually done any of those things, but hope springs eternal, and looks very attractive in the meantime.

Now I will cop a tactic from Scrubs, and swerve disjointedly into Very Sincere Mode. Cue the strings.

Best personal development: Getting married! Awwww. Not that I've become a big booster for heterosexual hegemony! But it was just unparalleledly great to have so many of our friends and family all in the same place being happy for us. So, thanks, guys. :) Also, married life is pretty much the same as living in sin life, which is as I had hoped, EXCEPT! It seems to have turned our BoyKitty into . . . a lapcat! At first when Mr. T&A advanced the hypothesis that BoyKitty felt more secure knowing he was in a stable home, I told him he was batshit crazy. But. The cat who previously spent most of his time skulking, sneaking, lurking, and glowering has, since October, become an actual cuddler. Of course I know that correlation is not the same as causation, thank you very much. But. He sits in your lap! Awwwww.

New stylist, same electorate

I don't want to call myself The Biggest Genius Since Einstein, or anything, but may I humbly point out that I totally, 100% called it: Britney's filing for divorce was a sign that the electorate was going to kick the bums to the curb. Go BritneyMerica!

Now that Britney is officially the oracle of our national consciousness, though, I must admit that I am having a little trouble sleeping at night. For one thing, we can tell ourselves 'til we're blue in the face that Britney's a legal genius for filing for divorce before she owed K.Fed a year's worth of alimony at "Britney's touring" rates rather than "Britney's reproducing, eating Cheetos, and walking into public restrooms without shoes on" levels. But if she's so insightful, why did she marry her slack-jawed backup dancer to begin with? And what's to stop her from doing it again? The possibilities are non-encouraging:

1. She finds white-boy cornrows dreamy.
2. She's a traditional girl who believes in "staying the course" despite all evidence that the enterprise is doomed, at least for a couple of years.
3. She thought Iraq had something to do with September 11.

And then there are the ta-tas. The soon-to-be-former Mrs. Federline hired a stylist to give her an "I'm back" makeover, to which I say, smart move, doll . . . but then why, in every public appearance she's made since her big announcement, do her ladyparts appear to be engaged in a desperate, primal struggle to escape from her clothing, from one another, from this gravitational plane? To wit:


















Britney's breasts clearly have something to say about our nation. "You may think your electoral system is bouncing along nicely now, nurturing other fledgling democracies and all," they say, "but if you don't address the structural inequalities here, your hopeful-young-nation bubble is gonna start to deflate, and you're going to be left with a sagging, wrinkled husk of a republic."

Britney has convinced me: in 2008 I won't be hiding under the couch with a bottle of wine when the election results come in. I'll be out in some actual state, volunteering for a get-out-the-vote drive: The support bra for the electoral college!

As Britney does, so does the nation?

After many long years Britney Spears is finally throwing her moronic, self-congratulatory, incompetent bum of a husband out. Surely voters will be as smart as Britney and do the same on a national scale?

Out of the mouths of K Feds

You might have read about Kevin Federline's proclamations to Entertainment Weekly that he's the most underrated artist in his field, and that he used to be embarassed to buy tampons, but now that's "all past tense," and "once you make it through that, you're good."

Miraculously, those actually aren't the most earth-shattering thing Mr. Britney says in the interview (which isn't actually an interview, it's a "pop culture personality test" consisting of 11 questions, all along the lines of "The A-Team member I most relate to is ____," and none of which have wrong answers . . . or so it seemed until Kevin answered them.)

Here is the highlight of K Fed's quiz:

Q: Diaper genie or diaper champ?

A: I don't know which one we have. All
it says is genie on top.

Words fail.

Excuses, excuses

If you've been worried that my nearly month-long absence means I'm pulling a David Lat and abandoning my blog for greener pastures, never fear, I'm not going noplace. What's my excuse this time? Well, I'm passing over my usual "I'm lazy" in favor of the bolder option: I've been busy! Shockingly, I even have something to show for it: Mr. T&A and the T&A Kitties and I are joining the propertied class by buying a house. Consider yourself warned: In the future you can expect to see discussions of such issues as paint colors and patio furniture (if things go well) and second jobs and foreclosures (if not so much).

Contemplating which excuse to use to explain my absence has led me to reflect on what makes a good excuse. Popular culture, in its endless bounty, has recently provided us with several impressive examples:

Zidane: The French soccer star who headbutted the Italian player and got kicked out of the World Cup final says he doesn't regret it because the other guy insulted his sister and sick mother, made a comment about getting with his wife, or called him the "son of a terrorist whore," depending on who you talk to.
Discussion: The mother/sister/wife combo captures the the ultimate trifecta of unforgiveable disses, and Zidane's savvy refusal to say exactly what the insult was allows our imaginations to cavort about in a filthy mess of sexual/religious/racial possibilities. On the other hand, he screwed up a game that I understand a lot of people care a lot about. I give it an B+.

The Italian guy: Said he couldn't have provoked the head-butt by calling Zidane a terrorist because "I'm ignorant. I don't even know what the word means."
Discussion: Huh? There may be some kind of different-cultures-how-can-we-possibly-understand-one-another explanation for this, but that's lame--a good excuse should transcend our differences, if you will. This barely gets a C-.

Britney: In the midst of the gum-chomping, hair-not-combing, boob-flopping, mascara-clumping, maternity-hooker-clothing-sporting glory that was Britney's interview with Matt Lauer, Brit-Brit managed to explain that she drives with her baby in her lap rather than in a car seat because her family is "country."
Explanation: At first glance this might seem as inexplicable as the Italian guy's "ignorant" thing, but upon further examination you realize: No, it actually works, because you really believe it. I totally buy that Britney remembers sitting on her dad's lap as a little girl--albeit probably a 6-year-old, not an infant--and that she has ignored all the information about car seats that one might have picked up in the intervening 18 years. Also, the word "country" itself is great--it's relatively innocuous, but it invokes a rich tapestry of stereotypes about trailer trash that are reinforced by Britney's aforementioned appearance. Good job, Mrs. Federline--I give it an A-.

That's it for now, folks. Tune in next time, same bat-channel, couldn't say what bat-month.

The wisdom of the non-chart

Again it is time for a brief amount of thought which you should pretend is in chart form:

In: Pitying Britney
Five Minutes Ago: Worshipping Angelina
Out: Identifying with Jen

In: Reproduction
Five Minutes Ago: Renovation
Out: Reinvention

In: Anti-estate taxes
Five Minutes Ago: Anti-gay marriage
Out: Anti-sex

Brangelina starts Celebricapitalismhobby trend?

Brangelina is launching a line of African housewares--they're working with Namibian craftsmen to develop the rugs, pottery, and other household items, which will be introduced at an art fair in Paris in the fall, and they'll donate all the profits to charity.

After you get over the initial "whaaa?" reaction, you realize that this is the gorgeous, perfect offspring of Brad's interest in design and Angelina's dedication to humanitarian work. (OK, I didn't realize that myself, the article pointed it out, but I totally agree.) It's kind of like how David Arquette and Courtney Cox Arquette's show "Mix it Up" combined their interests in home decor and counterintuitive couples, except that's less an attempt to save the world via attractive microcapitalism, and more of a lame, cancelled WE: Women's Entertainment program.

Of course, this makes one ponder what new products other celebricouples could come up with if they combined their passions:

• Vince Vaughn does stand-up comedy, and Jennifer Aniston didn't speak to her mother for years . . . they could launch an Estranged-o-Gram service whereby a comedian would inform your former friend or family member(s) that you are no loner speaking to them. Convenient AND hilarious!
• Britney likes downward mobility, and KFed likes to irresponsibly impregnate lots of women . . . well, I guess that's not so much a consumer product.
• Hilary Clinton likes to kiss up to Republicans, and Bill Clinton likes to kiss women with full lips (can't find a tasteful link for that, sorry, but think about it, it's true). I'm envisioning Red State Restylane, a lip-enhancing injectable for the more conservative American lady. Genius!

Hmmm. It appears we've produced yet more evidence that Brangelina has cornered the market on celebrity couple awesomeness. Sucks to be everybody else.

Poor imitation of retired Entertainment Weekly item

One of my favorite things in the paper version of Entertainment Weekly used to be The Shaw Report by Jessica Shaw, a.k.a. the "In/5 Minutes Ago/Out" chart. Every week there were 3 columns and 3 rows of pithy, insightful, clever brilliance. Recently they've shrunk this to 3 rows, 1 column, and it's just not the same. Thus, here's my homage/cheap knock-off, sans rows and columns because charts are not Blogger's bag:

In: Warrantless wiretapping
5 minutes ago: Three-way call ambush
Out: Quietly picking up the phone in the kitchen

In: Britney as maternal ideal
5 minutes ago: Britney as Child Protective Services case
Out: Britney and Madonna

In: Lime
5 minutes ago: Celadon
Out: Moss

Britney's a mom

As Gawker told us, Britney had her baby today, and named it (I guess him) Preston Michael Spears Federline, which is at least better than the name Kevin Federline, her babydaddy (I guess husband) reportedly wanted (that would be "Vegas.").

Now seems an appropriate time to reflect on why Britney wanted to have children young. According to a letter to her fans she posted on britneyspears.com in 2004, it's because her own mom was a young "Supermom":

She would go to church every week like everyone else, but she always looked sexy in her black dress and she was the one all the other women would gossip about. She would come home and put on her size 2 shorts and a bikini top to wash the car & get a tan at the same time . . .

Sounds awesome. Best of luck, Brit!