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.

Breaking news: Lat is the new Wonkette!

In possibly the biggest bloodless coup ever to hit bloggerland, David Lat, formerly Article III Groupie, is going to take over for Wonkette! Interestingly, the scoop showed up not in either of those blogs, but in an old-skool paper source, the Washington Post's Reliable Source.

My gut reaction is that this was a smater move for Lat than for Ana Marie Cox, the original Wonkette. She's getting out of blogging in order to promote her new book, but its reviews have been pretty poor so far, so you have to worry that she's pulling the writerly equivalent of a David Caruso, who tried to ditch his succesful gig on NYPD Blue for the greener pastures of the movies, only to come crawling back to TV when it turned out that he couldn't hack it in the big times.

Anyhoo, I hope this doesn't mean the end of Article III Groupie! The shenanigans of D.C. in general (Wonkette's subject matter) may appeal to a (slightly) wider audience than do the goings-on of the federal judiciary, but when you've gotta know who the hottest federal judge is, ain't nothin' else gonna soothe that monkey, if you know what I mean. If Lat could keep up UtR whilst vigorously prosecuting baddies and hapless drug addicts AND concealing his secret identity, surely he can do two blogs at once, no?

The insinuation that dare not speak its name: A3G and Anderson Cooper edition

So Article III Groupie, the blogger-queen of the federal judiciary, re-emerged recently, removing the password protection from her website, Underneath Their Robes, and announcing that he is leaving his job (which he holds under the code name David Lat) as an assistant U.S. attorney in Newark and moving to the sparkling city of D.C. Welcome back, A3G! And welcome to my list of D.C. quasi-celebrities who, if I see one of you, I think to myself, Where do I know that guy from? Did I go to college with him? I'd better look away in case he talks to me and I can't remember his name.

But my point is, what is the story with the title of the AP article about Lat's return: Spicy Blogger Leaves Attorney's Office? Spicy? Is David Lat a menu at a Thai restaurant? Is he a Latina trope on The Real World?

In other news, have you seen the ads for Anderson Cooper 360? (Try to stay with me here, people.) They quote somebody noting that Cooper has "a newness" about him. A newness? Has Anderson Cooper molted? Is a review of a performance art installation?

A new year and a new boatload of linguistic innovations I don't understand: I must be almost 30. Perhaps I'll feel better if plan to do something fun tomorrow. I hear there's a great movie about some spicy cowboys who have a newness about them.

Oh yeah: Happy New Year!

article iii groupie david lat anderson cooper

This post is like a box of chocolates

This week has been one of those times when I worry that I've gone dumb. Not Helen Keller dumb, like can't talk. More like Forrest Gump dumb, like not thinking good and anything I do right is just luck. It's been the kind of week in which I expect any day could be the day when when my boss comes into my office, sits down, sighs, and says in a kindly but firm voice, "T&A Lady, I think you know why I'm here. It's nothing personal, but we've finally figured out you're a fraud. Please leave quietly." In that spirit, this post has no overall message, but is composed of random thoughts. Here goes:

Lindsay Lohan looks pretty good lately! The brown hair is a huge improvement over the nasty blonde, and she seems to have gotten at least in the same general vicinity as some food. (Observation borrowed from Go Fug Yourself).

What is going on with Article III Groupie, a.k.a. David Lat? I haven't heard anything about him/her at all since the Great Outing of Mid-November 2005. I sort of imagine that he's cowering under a desk somewhere, unable to reconcile his overachiever upright citizen lawyer self with her overachiever fabulous blogger self. Tough break, sweets. Good luck.

Mariah Carey has her assistant hold a straw to her lips so she doesn't have to pick up a glass herself (breaking news courtesy of A Socialite's Life). Interesting. I can't even imagine that that would save much energy. If I had a personal assistant, I would definitely have her take out the trash, and maybe drive me around and stuff, but I really don't think I'd get into the whole feeding-me-fluids-like-an-infant thing. It's a little too close to ass-wiping, if you know what I mean. Although if I keep it up with this dumb thing, I might have to consider it.

And that is all I've got. For reals, nothing left to say. Going to bed now. Wish me luck on the whole brain-function thing, will you?

A fake anonymity is the hobgoblin of scared bloggers

The outing and subsequent disappearance of Article III Groupie has spawned a mini-boom in blogging about the impossibility of anonymous blogging.

But enough about other people, let's talk about me! It is extremely obvious that I'm not really anonymous--probably 90% of you know who I am because I told you, I give out personal information like candy to a baby, and until recently any obnoxious self-promotional emailing I did was from my regular email address. (No more, though! T&A Lady has her own email address! Woo hoo!)

Anyhow, the real question is, Why am I fake-anonymous? The answer is that I have some vague fear that I would get fired if I wasn't. Why? I don't know really, but it seems like this has happened to other people for somewhat difficult-to-discern reasons.

Of course I would expect to get booted if I were, say, working for a Republican Senator and blogging on my work computer about prostituting myself to high-ranking Administration officials, a la Jessica Cutler, or dissing my employer by name, like this ex-Google employee.

However, what's up with, for instance, Nadine Haobsh, who tried to console herself for the uneven distrubution of vowels in her last name and the fact that she was working as a beauty editor at Ladies' Home Journal by anonyblogging about celebrity gossip and such as Jolie in NYC? Everything was going swimmingly for her, and she had even been offered another job at Seventeen Magazine, until her identity was revealed, at which point she lost both jobs in one fell swoop. Her mistake, apparently, was revealing such earth-shattering information as the fact that her boss got free stuff from Marc Jacobs. The horror!

Admittedly some bloggers, like Harold Bashman and The Union Lawyer, blog with the full knowledge of their employers. But given that I am neither brave nor my own boss, is it really feasible to ask my boss if there's a policy on blogging? What's a vaguely scared, fake-anonymous blogger to do?

Tom Cruise, A3G, and the value of not showing too much

Last week, Tom Cruise announced that he was ditching Lee Anne DeVette, his sister/publicist, whose reign has coincided with TC's infamous recent bout of Brooke-Shields-dissing, Oprah's-couch-jumping, Scientology-hyping, and Katie-Holmes-brainwashing-and-impregnating. Presumably this means we can expect Tom to start to act more like a sane person, and that after a couple of months we with our teeny attention spans will have forgotten all about his looney tunes era altogether.

In another development, today Article III Groupie, the quasi-official gossip blogger of the federal judiciary, outed herself (or was outed) as David Lat, a prosecutor from New Jersey.* While I am all about the smackdown of people like these commenters, who called the information "yucky" and "disturbing," I definitely agree that knowing A3G is a fresh-faced man who puts drug users in the hoosgaw instead of the fabulous drunken Miss Hannigan-type character I'd imagined is quite a let-down.**

So what can we learn from these two seemingly unrelated events? Let me relate to you a little lesson I learned as a youth. When I was in high school (OK, middle school). I had a little phase in which I liked Skid Row and considered myself something of a rebel, and thus I used to sometimes wear somewhat scanty outfits. My wise father would address the issue by saying, "Aren't you going to be cold in that?," by which he clearly meant, "Stop dressing like a little tramp." It's too bad my dad wasn't around to gently berate Tom Cruise and A3G before they started showing their metaphorical titties all over town!

*Following the release of this information, Article III Groupie's blog, Underneath Their Robes, got all mysteriously password-protected, which seems to perhaps suggest that the outing has had some ill effect on the blog, and more importantly means my link is kind of useless. In lieu of that, here's what Wonkette had to say about it, and you can read a bunch of legally-tinged info about it on How Appealing.)

**True, when I first realized A3G was a conservative, I went through a period of mourning, but I have since gotten over it. After all, Miss Hannigan was a sadist who abused orphans, but she was still pretty awesome.