Godfather and the Pacino/De Niro switcheroo

I have flipped by The Godfather Part II a couple of times in the last month or so, and it has helped me realized why I am always confusing Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. It's because somewhere along the way, possibly starting during this movie, they started to switch bodies. To wit:

Pacino (now): Frizzy-haired, craggy, gaunt, looks exhausted.
De Niro (now): Kind of pudgy face, looks amused.

But! In the Godfather II days, it was all bass-ackwards:

Pacino (then): Smooth-haired, smooth-faced, looks like he used to have inner peace but now it's under siege.
De Niro (then): Good cheekbones, attractive, looks like a moral man forced by circumstance into a life of crime.

If you were going to pick which young guy would grow up into which old guy, you would totally switch them around. See, I'm not just ignorant about classic actors (or Italian-Americans)--it's just that my understanding of them is deeper than everybody else's.

Reminder: Prince Harry is mine

I totally called him back in October. Lord, I'm wise.

Ranking the candidates

The process of carefully considering who to vote for in EW's Ultimate Hotties contest has led to me consider which candidates to support in other areas of my life.

For a long time, my Celebrity Crush List stood as follows:

1. Marky Mark
2. George Clooney
3. Bill Clinton
4. Snoop Dogg
5. (blank--so as to allow for flexibility)

Loyalty is all well and good, but the CCL is one area in which it does nobody any good, because if you hang on to old choices out of sentiment, inevitably you will find yourself being propositioned by Clive Owen in some smoky club, only to realize you're shit out of luck because Clive's spot on the list is being occupied by Marky Mark because of Three Kings, but that was in 1999, for Chrissakes.

(One of the major rules of the CCL is that it must consist only of the current incarnations of actual people--so no 1999 Marky Mark, no Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, and no Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights, unless you want the actor who plays him, whose name is Taylor Kitsch and who used to be an Abercrombie model, tragically.)

So, yes, Marky Mark, I'm afraid it's time for you to go. I'm happy for you that you're becoming a respectable actor, but to the underwear models go the spoils, my dear.

Similarly, when did Bill Clinton get so old?

Snoop Dogg . . . I don't know, at one point I found you Oddly Alluring, but now you seem to have passed over into Mostly Disturbing.

OK, so here is my revised list:

1. George Clooney
2. Clive Owen (If you haven't seen Children of Men, you should. I do like me a good depressive antihero in a dystopian setting.)
3. Rahm Emmanuel. (See reason from #2).
4. Prince Harry. (This is my first foray into younger men. What can I say, I'm 30.)
5. (blank--don't want to tie myself down)

Perhaps next week I will think about those other candidates.

Derek Jeter, Man of Mystery

I understand baseball about as much as I understand gay Republicans, but usually I can spot me a hottie. However, the supposed allure of Derek Jeter alludes me. First of all, what I do know about sports is what my mama taught me: the Yankees are evil. (Please don't kill me, Amy Blair.) Also, and I realize the contradiction here, but I often confuse Jeter with that supposedly gay guy from the Mets with the terrible facial hair.

But apparently a number of people disagree with my assessment. Word on the street is Jeter's dating Jessica Biel, who according to some is the Sexiest Woman Alive. (I don't think I'd go that far, but I'd give her Top Two Hottest Jessicas, and Hottest Former Seventh Heaven cast member, for sure.)


Jessica isn't Derek's first brush with massive hotness, either. According to this, he's also dated Mariah "Crazy But Hot" Carey, Lara "Miss Universe, Need I Say More" Dutta, Jordanna "C-List, But Yale-Educated" Brewster, Vanessa "My Appeal Is Also Somewhat Mysterious" Minnillo, Jessica "Yeooooowww" Alba, and Scarlett "Even Younger And Bigger-Lipped Than You Might Think" Johansson.

My explanation: groupthink. Jeter is the Bay of Pigs and the WMDs in Iraq all rolled up in one pudgy, oval-headed package, and these women are a bunch of scared foreign policy advisors working with doctored intelligence. Somebody get an outside expert in here, stat!

Wonkette hotties contest demonstrates democracy's failure

The whole Bush v. Gore, Grandpa-Abe-voting-for-Buchanan thing made you wonder, but now we have definitive proof that democracy does not work. Behold David Copley, the male* winner of Wonkette's recent White House Hotties competition:

19.5% of the vote, people. I'm not questioning the assertion by one of his flunkies that he's a "gentleman" to the ladies, which, I do not agree that simply not being a date rapist qualifies you for praise, but the point is that this is a hotties contest. Mr. Potato Head in an off-the-rack Republican Senator wannabe getup is not a hottie. By contrast, behold Jeb Mason:

That cowboy hat and those teeth . . . only 17%. Where is the justice, people? Where is the eyesight? I pose to you that feudalism is due for a comeback.

*The winner of the female half of the competition, Taylor Hughes, I have no quarrel with. She is undeniably hot, with her smirky smile and her tall volleyball player/prom queen vibe. The fact that she's Karl Rove's aide also highlights her likeness to the Evil Queen in Snow White, who objectively speaking was the second fairest of them all. That goes pretty well with DC's not-quite-as-cool-as-New-York-or-maybe-even-Philly complex.

Wherein George Clooney loses, but quickly regains, my eternal love

It was just a normal Saturday afternoon--Mr. T&A watching the Olympics; me barely paying attention, wondering when Turin changed its name to Torino; whether luging is really all that hard, involving as it does mostly lying down; whether luging is a verb--when all of a sudden a Budweiser ad snapped me back from my reverie.

Whose oh-so-familiar voice was narrating? Deep but not too deep, gravelly but not too gravelly, sultry but not in a Fabio way--OMG, George Clooney, why have you bartered your soul to a peddler of pee masquerading as beer?

Mr. T&A foolishly thought I might be wrong about the identity of the narrator, but a quick Google revealed I was right.

However, before my shock could harden into disgust, Georgie started to work his magic charms to win me back. First, he distracted me by directing my ire elsewhere. The article about the Budweiser ad mentions that Russell Crowe has dissed George and other actors, including Harrison Ford and Robert DeNiro, for appearing in ads, saying they had broken their "social contract" with audiences. Oh yeah, Annoying Russell?, I thought. Au contraire, I think you had already broken that particular contract with the phone you used to hit a hotel clerk in the face. George then suavely completed the task of putting me back on his side by joining in my anti-Russell jeering:

Clooney hit back with a jibe at Crowe's band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. "I'm glad he set us straight. Harrison, Bob and I were putting a band together called Grunting for 30 Feet, and that would also fall under the heading 'bad use of celebrity'. Thanks for the heads up," he said.

Ahh, George, you're so funny. And hot. Can somebody get me a Bud?

Proposed new celebrity feud: Scarlett and Soon-Yi

Apparently Scarlett Johansson and Lindsay Lohan are having a catfight, or perhaps we could call it a Bathroom Wall Scrawl Brawl. The evidence, as reported by Gakwer, is that someone says Lindsay wrote "Scarlett is a bloody cunt" on the bathroom wall in some bar. You can even see photographic evidence that, in fact, someone once wrote that on a wall-like structure someplace. (Go Gawker with the intrepid reporting! Perhaps they should have put you on that weapons of mass destruction dealie).

Defamer speculated on the reasons for this apparent animosity, and come up with two possibilities: jealousy over Jared Leto, whom both actresslets have dated in the past, and generalized "professional competition."

Which, um, LAME? Re: Jared Leto, please see the pictures in my last post. If Ugly New Jared is enough to spark a Sharpie battle, then Jen and Angelina would be justified in launching full scale nuclear war over Brad Pitt. And who wants the world to end over Brad, no matter how hot he looks in this picture? Mmmmmm, Brad.

And professional competition? Am I going to write "Wonkette is a filthy ho-bag" on bathroom walls because I'm jealous that I'm still a clock-punching lawyer while the erstwhile Article III Groupie has taken over my dream job? I mean, maybe I am, but that doesn't make it any less lame.

Anyway, I propose that we, as a society, move on from this stoopit beef and turn our attention to a new one: Scarlett vs. Soon-Yi Previn.

A bit obscure, you might say? And totally made up? Well, yes, but consider: Scarlett, age 21, is known mostly for her on-screen dalliances with much older men and her off-screen declarations about how awesome it is for older men to be with young women. (The 2003 interview in which she refered to menopausal women as being dead inside, stated that men need a "young, fertile, fruitful woman" to help them deal with aging, and professed that she "definitely believes in plastic surgery" because she doesn't want to be "an old hag" is still burned in my memory, and not in a pleasant Jared-Leto-in-the-mid-'90s way.)

Similarly, Soon-Yi is known for marrying her 1000-year-old quasi-father, Woody Allen. This shared, inexplicable proclivity for antediluvian fellas, by itself, would probably be reason enough for these two to dislike each other, because, you know, there are only so many zillion-year-old fish in the sea. But combine that with the fact that Scarlett just starred in Woody's movie, Match Point, as Le Incredibly Sexy Young Woman, and that she recently said Woody is the sexiest man in Hollywood, and you've got a juicy All About Eve-level bitchfest on your hands. Bring it on! (And let Lindsay go home and get some sleep.)

lindsay lohan scarlett johansson soon-yi previn

Goodnight, sweet Jordan Catalano

There are some things so painful that we shrink in terror from them, hoping that we can hide from the truth until TomKat annihilates the world and it won't matter anymore. But, dear readers, the only way to conquer these demons is to look them straight in the eye, to feel their hellfire singing our eyebrows and melting our eyeballs. And so:

This is Jordan Catalano, the beautiful, silent, unattainable boy Angela Chase yearned for and, in that one heartbreaking episode, kissed in the boiler room in My So-Called Life. He formed the basis for the romantic dreams of, one must assume, the majority of the girls and boys who came of age in the early 1990s. True, in recent years Jared Leto, the actor who portrayed Jordan, turned into kind of a lameazoid, acting very little and skanking around in an age-inappropriate manner with Scarlett Johansson and Lindsay Lohan. But Leto's indiscretions could do nothing to change the memories of Jordan, ah sweet Jordan Catalano.

Until now. Here is Jared Leto now. Defamer says he's gained the weight for a role, dedicated to his craft, Oscar bait blahblahblah, but the only thing that's impressing me here is how easy it was for all of our girlish visions of love to be crushed into a flabby little pile under the sole of a late-model Elvis impersonator who apparently ate Jordan Catalano for breakfast.

I know, there's an empty space where my heart used to be, too. But all is not lost: at least we still have Christian Slater in Heathers.

Baby Bennifer news: Not weird!!!!

I know what you've been thinking: "Where the hell has T&A Lady been? Surely she didn't yet again retreat to her bomb shelter after another TomKat press release convinced her that the End Times were here?"

Well, in a shocking turn of events, you're only half-right. Bunker, of course; TomKat, shockingly, no!! The only thing that Tom Cruise has gotten up to this week is getting Katie an illegal sonogram machine as an engagement present, all the better to perform frequent, medically unnecessary and potentially unhealthy scans of his alien Scientology demon spawn. Pretty standard, really.

No, the bizarre news this week involves another celebrity pairing: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, who got married earlier this year. Last week they announced the birth of their first child, a girl named Violet.

And. Um. That's it! They got married, and then had a baby. They did not give the child the name of a fruit, a 1950s physics textbook, or a cartoon superhero who moonlights as a porn star.* Jennifer did not throw Ben out of the house and look into the possibility of divorce, as Britney did shortly after giving birth. The whole operation appears to be very normal and even . . . nice. I am beside myself with shock. Please wake me when the world rights itself again.

*In case I am being annoyingly cryptic and you don't want to click, I'm referring to: Apple Martin, daughter of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin; Audio Science Clayton, the offspring of Shannyn Sossamon; and Pilot Inspektor Riesgraf Lee and/or Moxie CrimeFighter Gillette, which, omigod, the poor children.

President fired for substance abuse

Ooops, I mean Kate Moss, a.k.a. the poster girl for heroin chic in the '90s, was fired from modeling jobs with H&M, Chanel, and Burberry for allegedly using cocaine.

The President, who allegedly is hitting the bottle again due to his grief over his "handling of the Katrina crisis and troop losses in Iraq," a.k.a. his crappy poll numbers, still has his job of being the most powerful person in the world.