I’m Not a Cat Lady

Cliché Watch: You Have Got To Be Kidding Me

In the trailer for The Bounty Hunter, Jennifer Aniston delivers two lines in under three seconds that resonate with as much subtlety as a klaxon. As she's being bundled into a car trunk by Gerard Butler—a scene that the studio allowed to be photographed when it was being shot way back in August and then leaked for some cheap-and-cheerful tabloid publicity along the lines of  "Jennifer Aniston Gets Dumped In Car Boot By Costar Gerard Butler!"—she yells, "You have got to be kidding me! You are not serious!" (Check it out at 00:38–00:41.)

It is the most disingenuous movie reaction to being thrown into the boot of a car that I believe has ever been committed to film. And the most desperate attempt to seem "current" and "cool."  For some reason, sometime in the early 00s, young folks started rejecting the contraction and began channeling John McEnroe circa 1981: Everything became "do not!" this and "you have got to" that. Once upon a time, people were content to say  "You're kidding" when they couldn't quite believe what they were hearing. Then that morphed into "You're kidding me!", as if all that kidding had suddenly become, like, personal—You're not just KIDDING, but you're kidding ME! 

Now, however, you're not just kidding me, but you have GOT to be KIDDING me. You're not simply not serious anymore; you are NOT serious (alternatives include You canNOT be SERIOUS and its nervous cousin, Seriously?). The emphasis and the attitude often involve an arched eyebrow, a straight face and, according to my informal observations, were pioneered by Chandler Bing. With his trademark deadpan delivery, Matthew Perry imbued his lines with a slightly off-kilter sarcastic twist—"And I'm supposed to care... because?"—that swept through the mainstream like H1N1 and that we now hear echoed ad infinitum on The Office and Saturday Night Live and ads for Verizon. The language has repeatedly come out of the mouths of babes on The Hills and Gossip Girls alike, and contestants on Project Runway, and the likes of Seth Rogen and Michael Cera, and every stock stroppy teenager and disaffected hipster featured in any current sitcom or TV commercial you care to name. And as the years go by, the trend keeps growing stronger.

Maybe it's an affectation of the now-universal Valley Speak, or post-ironic posturing, but whatever it is and wherever it came from, it has simply got to stop. Lines like "You have got to be kidding me! You are not serious!" are a poor excuse for dialogue by now—especially for a 41-year-old like Jennifer Aniston. They are officially old-hat. And they need to be retired, along with "You got that right!"; "Let's do this!"; and the old chestnut, "That's what I'm talking about!" (aka "That's what I'm talking about!") It was cute when Will Smith popularized it in Men in Black. That was way back in 1997. It's time to move on. Seriously.

I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here Day 13: The Rise of Long Tall Salley

Well, the already-low numbers for IACGMOOH are slipping, but audience viewership was down last night across the board. Could it be all those poor wretches who weren’t ready for the big digital conversion on Friday? Whatevs, it’s a week since the departure of the Desperate Duo, Heidi and Spencer, and IACGMOOH’s numbers haven't plunged all that much. Last night's two-hour extravaganza begins with drama: The set is besieged by a major tropical storm! Damien and Myleene's cushy little studio location has been flooded! Everyone's hair is frizzy! In this weather, Damien promises us, literally anything can happen. Literally!

But not till we've recapped what happened waaayyyy back on Thursday night: Daniel Baldwin was voted off. We get a post-mortem of his brutal execution. His little bro Stephen  is so choked up about it, he can't even swallow right now. Just like LouDi back in that nasty food challenge. They need to do a swallowing trial; that's one Janice Dickinson would totally take.

And here she is, with her kabuki eyebrows again, rasping to camera, "I couldn't be happier that Daniel Baldwin is gone because he's a big bully." We cut to everyone in camp wringing their hands over Big Bad Daniel's absence. Everyone but a jubilant J-Dick, of course. Stevie B. says he'd better not catch anyone going through his big brother's things. J-Dick barks, "I already did!" "You went through his stuff?" gasps Stevie B. "Hells to the yes!" she ripostes.

Okay, off topic for a minute: J-Dick has to be the only person in the land who is still using Whitney Houston's cracky catchphrase from Being Bobby Brown way back in 2005. I don't know about you, but I've noticed that catchphrases don't have the same shelf-life as they used to. Everyone was saying "Hell to the no" when BBB came out. When's the last time you heard it? That's four relatively short four years ago. Expressions like "way... no way" and "...not!" from SNL's Wayne's World were all over the mainstream for almost two decades; variations on Jerry Maguire's "you had me at hello" are still being written into scripts. But remember when everyone was saying "high five!" and "sexytime" after Borat just a couple of years ago? Wouldn't you feel like the proverbial douche saying them now? And wouldn't you feel like an even bigger douche uttering any single line from Juno, like the execrable "honest to blog"?

But I digress; back to J-Dick. She's lying on her back and rasping out orders from her sticky glossed lips non-stop. She's aged yet another five years over the weekend; the perma-scowl is not helping, nor is that cooking oil she's got slathered all over her face. It's all about J-Dick and her vile temperament tonight. This is bad. The producers are clearly having a problem eking out a storyline if this is all they can come up with two weeks in.

And then, more wind-baggery. In an effort to lecture sweet innocent Holly on the pitfalls of celebrity, LouDi harkens back to his heady heyday on La Bamba. Which he pronounces "Lammaammmbaaa" in that way people tend to over-emphasize Lad-tiiiiino names or words of any kind. J-Dick chimes in about TMZ going through her trash and robbing her of her privacy, which she pronounces "privvacy"— she probably picked that up from her British ex-husband Simon Fields. Patti rabbits on about her deadbeat husband again… She really wants that sympathy vote.

Out comes the scroll and LouDi's reading glasses. It's a luxury trial, and the reward is a massage. LouDi says he fancies getting a rub. I'll bet. Long Tall Salley wants one two. It's the two old guys versus the alpha chicks, Torrie and Patti. Muscle queens LouDi and Torrie go head to head cranking a lever to pull an ever-shortening plank out from underneath Patti or Long Tall. Long Tall tries the charming courtside trash talk on Torrie but he drops like a sack of bowling balls, yelling "Mutha—!" on the way down. 

Back to camp. J-Dick's lifting dumbbells. Word to the ladies: Want good muscle tone in your 60s? Take J-Dick's lead. Suddenly, she opens up to LouDi about her lousy marriage and her messy past. He's honored. Such a good daddy.

Again with the scroll and the reading glasses. Another trial. My mind wanders for a millisecond and I miss the details, but it's some kind of a scavenger hunt. Everyone has to find a particular item, all of which seem to be in J-Dick's bag: tweezers, hand-mirror, brillo pad. J-Dick sets off to find her item while clutching her crotch for some reason. They win smores.

Suddenly Long Tall is talking about leaving the game. He's too proud to lose and being on the bottom two last week shook him up quite a bit. "I'm not the white girl with the pretty face and the blonde hair," he grouses. Wow, bitter much? And also, by the way, do either LouDi or Sanjaya or J-Dick—none of whom has hit the bottom two—fit that description? I'm sorry but that is lame.

Sanji feels bad that Long Tall is down, though, so he offers to do the cooking and decides to fry some chips. Chips of what, it's not clear. J-Dick chides his one-chip-at-a-time frying style. He loses his temper for the first time and threatens to throw hot chips in her face. Well, she's already got the oil! Holly stands by her little man: "These are sowww good, Sanji. Soooowww goooouuud." Bleh. J-Dick takes a bite and announces, "You are Lord of the Fries." Every now and then, the old girl hits one out.

Coming up: What’s wrong with Janice? We see her doing something unspeakable. Has she got the crabs?

And... back. Long Tall retracts his idle threat and decides to stick it out and "man up". About time. Then old lady Dickinson waddles into the woods. Seems she's all clogged up. "I haven't had a shit in 7 days!" she rasps. Everyone but LouDi exits camp in disgust. She doesn't miss a beat: "I sure know how to clear a room, don’t I Lou?" She shows off her distended belly. She scarfs down the papaya and the prunes. Nothing works. " I’m surprised she doesn’t have some yoga pose that doesn’t make it come flying right out," yuks Stevie B.

Ooh! An iguana on a log. Finally, some new stock creature-footage. Patti's rabbiting on about Blago issue again. Fast forward. We’re an hour in. Let's get on with it!

The public voted Torrie and Sanji into the Tunnel of Terror. Sanji thinks the public want to see his breaking point. That's what you get for being so damn competent, Jungle Boy. Actually it's a joy to watch him kill it every time. So, we have  stars hidden in all kinds of scary places in an underground tunnel. Myeene warns: "You won’t be alone in there." Reeeerrreeeerreerrrrrrr! There's that screechy-violin noise from Top Chef and Kitchen Nightmares and every other reality show again. A few critters await, alright already, we know the drill, please stop that noise! In goes Sanji. And: spiders, iguana, snakes, oh no, a tarantula on his back, crayfish. Wait, crayfish? In the jungle? And then the weeny baby crocodiles. Watch out Sanji! They might bite your pinky toe!

Sanji, of course, kills it again. How anyone could crawl through an underground tunnel full of water and mud, in the dark, is beyond me, critters be damned. It's Torrie's turn. We hear her wimpering and gasping and breathing heavily.  I’m worried the neighbors will think I’m watching porn. She does extremely well but Sanji wins. The camera pans slowly up Torrie's mud-soaked frame, a loving journey from feet to face. Subtle. But I have to say, she looks as gorgeous coming out of that filthy tunnel as she did going in. She is stunning.

Unlike J-Dick. She's not looking so good. The campmates are worried about her and choose their words verrrryyy carefully. Patti: "She looked... really... frail." Torrie: "She looks....horribly sick." Stevie B. gets to the point: "She's sick, dude." Long Tall concedes that "she's not crying wolf today." Eat your words, mean campers.

But J-Dick isn't running for the jungle door. "I've made it this far," she whimpers. Girl's a trouper in her own messed-up, scowly, angry way. But she's sent to the medico. She’s got a virus. They're keeping her there for the night.

It's night at camp, and we've got on our night-vision goggles. Everyone's sleeping. Ooh! A snake slithers into camp. Some men in camouflage stealth-creep in. They're identified: "onsite security."  They’ve got sticks, they’re prodding in the bushes, Patti wakes up. They sneak off wordlessly with the snake. It's a bizarre little pantomime, completely surreal. Patti tippy-toes over to Long Tall's bed. He wakes up just long enough to exchange a word with her. "Did you see those ninjas over there?" she asks. "Snake?" he goes. "Snake," she confirms. He sinks back into his jungle coma, leaving Patti alone and awake in the dark.

Morning. The camp talks about the Great Snake Invasion. It finally hits Stevie B. like a mallet to his low-hanging brow that he's not on a movie location. Holly's hair is in a full-on frizz, she should have used her sister's dry shampoo. J-Dick comes bounding back. She must have had an enema: She is walking on air. The old-lady droop is gone, too. Amazing what a good movement can do.

Time for a new camp leader. LouDi's reached his term limit. We have a eulogy for him that goes on way too long—yeah, yeah, he's Obama, he's been cool, we get the point. We have a quiz stolen straight from Survivor—match the adjective with the player as voted by America. So we learn that America thinks John Salley is the hardest worker, the most famous, the best team player, has the best strategy and is the smartest. What was it you said about pretty white blonde girls again, John?  Plus: I'm not sure what show America's been watching, but it's definitely not this one. I'd have thought LouDi would take the vote for smartest, what with the reading glasses and all. Strangely, the majority of the campmates thought Patti was the smartest. And as if to prove it, Patti's vote for the most vain is "Stephan."

Long Tall voted for himself in just about every category so he wins. Ever humble, he declares, "I was already a leader in so many ways."

The camp plays "who's your best friend?" It's a lovefest between Stevie B. and LouDi. John's BFF is Patti, and she's all "right back atcha." Torrie and Stevie B. have bonded because they're both—take a guess—Christians. Holly and Sanji call each other out all googly-eyed. J-Dick, the gooseberry, declines to call out anyone... and goes off to take a dump. Which, under the circumstances, seems completely appropriate.

Immunity trial. But first, an IACGMOOH promotion. Get jungle gossip on your phone! There’s Heidi and Spencer. They’re still using them for the interstitials? More proof that NBC was bankng on them, hard.

Back to Damien, who shares shares a lot of irrelevant information about things we can't see, and... out.

photos courtesy of NBC

Word Watch: All of the Sudden

Call me old fashioned but I'm a stickler for good spelling and proper use of language. I was a copy editor for years and old habits are hard to break.

It's ancient history, of course, that the blogging/texting/Twitter generation don't care to be bogged down by such petty concerns. They need to get their messages out tout suite, and if that means a their instead of they're, or a your instead of you're, or a then instead of a than—you know, whatevs, who cares? Only old people, right? Not to mention the whole "leetspeak" culture popularized sometime last century by gamers along with texting abbreviations that even the mombloggers use now, like ur and LOL and pwn and srsly.

But every so often, on a blog or in a forum or among some comments or other, I come across the casual flaying of an extremely common word or phrase that is just too egregious to ignore. Like per say. Which, I guess, is a little like here say. Or low and behold. That's a good one. Because, you know, when you wish to draw extra attention to a certain fact or observation, you shall gaze upon it and low like a cow. Lo and behold is such an archaic expression, it really doesn't belong in the realm of casual online conversation at all. Why is anyone under 85 saying it? Yet I see it all the time.

Another one I see constantly, and have done for years, is all of the sudden. Not all of just any sudden, you see—it's got to be all of a very specific sudden. I mean, sheesh! Whoever uses this phrase probably should have stuck to using suddenly in the first place.

Like Cindy Sherman. Unbelievably, I saw this error very recently in old media. New York magazine, to be exact, in the cover story My First New York. I was curious to know all about Ms Sherman's first impressions of New York City back in the day, so I settled in to read. Here's what I saw:

It was the summer of 1977, and I was terrified of the city. The Son of Sam was going around murdering couples, the city blacked out for 24 hours, the transit strike stopped all the buses, and all of the sudden women who used to wear little pumps to work now started wearing sneakers. I don’t remember leaving the apartment much. I was just like, “Oh my God, here I am in the city!”

This is forgivable when a random blogger or commenter commits this kind of language abuse. A mature,  celebrated artist? Well, maybe Cindy's more of a visual person. And that's okay. But New York? I'm sure everyone there is overworked and stressed out there, like anyone in the dismal world of magazine publishing right now, but this is, in my view, super sloppy. New York, you are not just a blog yet. Bad New York! 

Consider this the first part of an occasional series. I'll be watching...