This Weeks Video Blog!
by Alana Joy
This might be our favorite video blog so far:
Missy, Rambo, and Reagan bust a move at SGHQ… as they take the Old Spice/Blade challenge. No seriously, Rambo puts one on each armpit and Missy and Reagan have to figure out which they like best: and say what they would do to the man wearing each.
Get updated on Missy’s Operation Oprah: and she announces the winner from last weeks request for suggestions on how she can get Oprah’s attention. Someone won a YEAR membership to SuicideGirls.com! That’s what’s up.
Oh, and Rambo teaches you guys another dance: this time it’s the “sprinkler”.
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I Won't Say Va-Jay-Jay. You Can't Make Me.
I'm watching Oprah the other day and before you start yelling at me, hang on! I was not home twiddling my twat at 3 p.m. on a weekday. I'm a functioning member of society with many jobs. I was watching her show, on my time, on the DVR. Anyway, I recorded this episode because the topic of discussion was about intersex folks, or hermaphrodites if you want to be old school about it. There was a girl who was born as a woman with male hormones. She had breasts but not her period. She was born with testicles that were inside her body, lodged up near her bladder. Ouch.
Obviously the testicles were removed and she lives a normal life now. She's married to a man and has always identified herself as a straight woman. I found myself wondering, "Does she have a...?" Then Oprah broke the ice and said, "So, do you have a va-jay-jay?" The audience squealed with delight. Wheeee! Our sassy black friend said, "Va-jay-jay" and cocked her head! Tee-hee! We're all old enough that penises have entered our vaginas and babies have come out of our vaginas but we fully support the term va-jay-jay! Let's applaud!
I decided that I was being a snob. Who am I to judge Oprah's audience? I'm watching the show too, aren't I? If these ladies want to get loose and giggle at Oprah's slang, well then fine. Perhaps Oprah's producers dont want moments to get too tender or technical. Perhaps Oprah is encouraged to say silly words that infantilize the way women talk about their bodies to lighten the mood and ease into commercial.
And then I stumbled across an article in the New York Timescalled, "What Did You Call It?" Oprah's va-jay-jay moment was not just some weird one-off thing that I happened to see. Apparently, this is like a huge thing. Oprah says "va-jay-jay" every chance she gets.
Just in case that clip was unclear, Oprah said, "My va-jay-jay is paining me."
I dont really have a huge problem with that particular clip. Oprah is doing some stunt and trying to be funny. I'm not the comedy police. My issue has nothing to do with whether or not this clip is funny. (For the record, it is not funny.)
The problem I have is that Oprah uses the word "va-jay-jay" when she's not joking. She looked in the face of a transgendered person, who has had enough shit to deal with regarding her sex organs, and referred to this woman's hard-earned vagina as a va-jay-jay. What is wrong with the word vagina? Is it too clinical sounding? They were just discussing penises and testicles in that intersex segment. Why does the word vagina need to be cutesified?
"It began on Feb. 12, 2006, when viewers of the ABC series, "Grey's Anatomy" heard the character Miranda Bailey, a pregnant doctor who had gone into labor, admonish a male intern, "Stop looking at my vajayjay." The line sprang from an executive producer's need to mollify standards and practices executives who wanted the script to include fewer mentions of the word vagina. The show's most noted fan, Oprah Winfrey began using it on her show, effectively legitimizing it for some 46 million viewers each week."
My beef is not with "Grey's Anatomy." I've never seen the show. It's absurd that adults can't say vagina twenty-thousand times an hour if we want to but whatever. Oprah has done countless shows with Dr. Oz about men's health where the word penis is said over and over. She's done shows where she had someone describe to her what "tossed salad" means. You know there are no censors telling Oprah what she can and can't say.
In fact, I remember back when Howard Stern was fighting the FCC he often brought up that Oprah was allowed to talk about certain body parts without getting fined and he wasnt. Stern couldnt say "anal sex" but Oprah could because her show is considered educational. Why this refusal to say vagina? Oprah was sexually violated as a kid. She fought the odds and grew up to be a billionaire, trend-setting philanthropist and this is what she wants to do with her power? She wants to build schools for girls in Africa and say va-jay-jay?
Gloria Steinem weighed in on this issue:
"I'm hoping that the use of this new word is part of the objection to only saying vagina since it doesnt include all of the women's genitalia, for instance the clitoris, in the way that the vulva does."
Oh Gloria, you optimistic, slightly out-of-touch first wave feminist. Of fucking course that is not the reason Oprah and her audience object to saying vagina. Oprah and her drones think that they are the epitome of irreverent and adorable with their slang. Maybe it's stupid of me to be up in arms over a word. But not saying the word is a subtle implication that there is something wrong with discussing your body and something inherently wrong with your body, especially when there really isnt a male equivalent to va-jay-jay. I suppose there is pee-pee, but who says that after age eight? In my opinion, embracing the term "va-jay-jay" as an acceptable way to refer to the vagina in an otherwise serious conversation is the equivalent of arguing that taking your shirts off for Joe Francis is a form of feminism. We can do what we want with our bodies! We can talk about our body parts like we're little kids! Now, if you'll all excuse me, I have to go tinkle out of my front bum.
No, Stupid, That Guy Can't Talk to Ghosts
While searching desperately for something to write about I found the following snippet regarding Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Hewitt claims she regularly is approached by people who confuse her with Melinda Gordon, the character she plays on Ghost Whisperer.
"All the time. I'm constantly having people ask me to cross over people, or stopping me and saying, 'Would you just tell my grandmother blah, blah, blah,' " said Hewitt, who will be front and centre this evening as the third season of Ghost Whisperer gets under way
Not the most exciting bit of information. But, it stuck with me for awhile... before exploding, like a Russian nesting doll, into a series of hard to swallow realizations. Though, unlike the dolls, the realizations got larger and more ridiculous as opposed to smaller and more dainty.
- People - actual living, breathing people - confuse Hewitt with her TV character?
-They think she can talk to ghosts? Like, for fucking real?
- They believe anyone can talk to ghosts?
-They believe in ghosts?
- They honestly think, having been freed from both the Earthly realm and their constant, overwhelming stupidity, that any of their dead relatives would want to talk to them?
- People watch Ghost Whisperer?
- Ghost Whisperer is still on the air? In America?
- I bet that somewhere, there exists a Ghost Whisperer t-shirt or embroidered polo shirt, and I bet someone owns it.
- Occasionally that person will put this shirt on, choose not to start their car in a closed, locked garage but, rather, to drive it out and into the world, which as we all know, is filled with people.
"Well, so what, people are dumb," I can almost hear you saying. "This is an isolated situation, not indicative of the majority of people," I again hear you screeching. I agreed with you for a second and then recalled that psychic scam-artist extraordinaire, John Edward was recently on Oprah, where he wasn't outed as a fraud, kicked in the neck and rolled into traffic. Nope, he was celebrated. Oprah, this titan of our times, this kingmaker, this person dictating the behavior and purchases of thousands of middle-aged dolts the world over, endorsed a snake-oil salesman.
James Frey pads a couple of days onto to his so-called prison stay and is publicly crucifed by her Oprah-ness, meanwhile, John Edward claims to talk to ghosts, witches and robots from the future, and she doesn't bat an eye.
I'm sure all of this will lead, some time down the road, to us having to watch a shocked Oprah on national television say to John, "I can't believe you were lying to me, when you pretended to talk to those dead people."
Neither can I, Oprah Neither can I.
TheCoolerKing enjoys getting drunk with his pals and running around with ghosts of the minimum wage variety, at the supremely awesome Knott's Scary Farm.
Apoca-Lit, Oprah, and the End of the World
Though not a sign of the apocalypse, many were shocked when Oprah Winfrey chose Cormac McCarthys The Road as the latest selection for her book club. Oprahs Book Club, perhaps the biggest force in publishing (non British boy wizard division) today, is usually the domain of the uplifting memoir or, more recently, a classic of the past. This time, however, Oprah has chosen one of the bleakest (albeit best-reviewed) novels of the past few years.
In The Road an unnamed man and his son travel across a landscape empty of any comfort or sustenance as they hide from roving bands of cannibalsthe only other humans left after the destruction of nearly everything . Not exactly light reading . . . and there is little chance that the notoriously media-shy McCarthy will be appearing on the Oprah show any time soon.
Publishing's leading hitmaker has chosen Cormac McCarthy's "The Road,'' a bleak, apocalyptic novel by an author who rarely talks to the media.
"It is so extraordinary,'' Winfrey said today.I promise you, you'll be thinking about it long after you finish the final page.''
McCarthy, 73, is known for novels such as "All the Pretty Horses'' and "Blood Meridian,'' and has been widely cited as an heir to William Faulkner for his Biblical prose and rural settings. Critic Harold Bloom, famous for his discerning taste, has called McCarthy one of the greatest living American writers, along with Don DeLillo, Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon.
So what is behind the surprising choice? Does it reflect Oprahs angry mood following the James Frey debacle? Perhaps, but The LA Times Scott Timberg also sees a trend centered on a growing fascination with eschatological themes in literature and film.
They're all recent or upcoming novels with literary heft: Cormac McCarthy's solemn and elegiac "The Road," Chris Adrian's ironic-religious "The Children's Hospital" and Matthew Sharpe's black-humorous "Jamestown," respectively.
It's not just Mel Gibson, Feral House and the "Left Behind" books anymore. Long the province of the paranoid left and Christian right, apocalypse has moved indoors, and it's going highbrow. Literary novels with end-of-the-world settings these books and others by respected writers such as Daniel Alarcon, Michael Tolkin, David Mitchell and Carolyn See are surging at the same time as serious filmmakers engage a subject most often left to B movies.
Why the sudden high-art obsession with end times? Is it because of our fears after 9/11 and the war in Iraq? Is it even something new? One thing is for sure: with Oprahs pick, the future is a lot brighter for McCarthys publishers than it is for his protagonists.
Oprah Goes Road-Tripping and Encounters the Real World
Well, as real as it can be when you're Oprah Winfrey. To kick off the 21st season of her show, Oprah and just-friends best buddy Gayle King are driving cross-country in a Chevy.
So far, Oprah has encountered such puzzling phenomena as gas station pumps, supermarkets and hotel check-in desks.
The pair are seen pumping gas, something Oprah admits to not having done since 1983. Then they go to, in Oprahs words, "a place called Albertsons." Albertsons is a supermarket chain. A huge supermarket chain featuring "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Patricia Heaton as their spokesperson. And Oprah has never heard of it.
Another good one was, "Im used to being met at the door" (after not being able to find a hotel check-in desk). And, best of all, "Im not a people person."
Yes, fans and acolytes - Oprah doesn't really like you.
Check out the five-part series (so far) and watch Oprah eat in a diner, sign autographs from pesky fans and get on Gayles last nerve.
Where's the magic liquid that makes the car go?
Outkast Officially Still Not Broken Up, Still Not on Oprah
Andre 3000 guarantees that Outkast is still together. Trying to finally put the noisome rumors to rest, Dre told MTV that though Big Boi and Andre's schedules are completely incompatible, the band is still together. And despite the fact that Big Boi calls him occasionally to ask him about internet headlines of a breakup, there's no truth to the rumors. 3000:
"Yesterday I got a phone call from Big Boi and he said that on some hip-hop Web sites that the headlines were reading something to the effect of, 'It's Official: Outkast Is Broken Up,' or something like that," Andre said. "And man, we're looking at it like, where is this shit coming from? I was on 'TRL' today to release a new video, and I meant to say something [about the situation] on the air. But the way they had the questions set up, I didn't have a chance to do it."
Apparently, word on the street is much the same as online:
"Niggas hit me in the street like, 'Yeah man, I heard the bad news. Sorry to hear about that,' " Andre continued. "I'm like 'Man, what are you talking about?' Everything is still tight, most definitely."
... you know, as long as they're not in the same room together...
Despite the fact that the two do not perform together, and with dual solo videos scheduled to promote the Idlewild soundtrack, in addition to a cancelled appearance on Oprah, Andre says its all just scheduling conflicts. I say if you don't go on Oprah something is up. You can make time for Oprah.
There are no plans for the two to perform together again, either. Andre again:
"But that's not even new news," he said of his lack of interest in performing live. All that has been going on for years. ... Big Boi knows I'm in no position to be thinking about hitting the stage. ... I'm just more focused on producing and writing like I been doing and staying in the studio."
If, however, the next single from the Idlewild soundtrack were to be "Hollywood Divorce" which features Snoop and Lil' Wayne, then you'll see Outkast reunited for the video.
As for music for the sake of music, so to speak, Dre says there is still potential for an official studio album from the duo:
"We're holding it under wraps," is all he would say. "We want to keep it on the low so expectations won't be a certain way. But we're still doing music."
No word on whether the writing is a collaborative effort or separate à la Speakerboxx/The Love Below.
I'm not forgetting that the two are in fact together quite a bit in a little movie called Idlewild, coming soon to theaters everywhere:
August 25th.
Last Week of the World eBook Fair
The days are counting down. You have until Friday, August 4th to download all the eBooks your hard drive can handle. After that the month long World eBook Fair will come to a close and youll have to pay the annual membership fee of $8.95 for access to a library of over 300,000 books.
The creators of the World eBook Fair hope the invention of eBooks will advance the world as much as did the invention of The Gutenberg Press, and look forward to the Neo-Industrial Revolution following the advent of eBooks, just as the invention of The Gutenberg Press undoubtedly led to the first Industrial Revolution...
The fair is co-sponsored by Project Gutenberg, a non-profit that has been working for 35 years to increase the creation and distribution of eBooks. Just remember, the organization is run by volunteers and many of the eBook submissions are made by volunteers, so the database is not the most consistent or accurate. Your best bet is to stick to the classics (or search at random for independently published eBook gems).
Two books in the collection:
On the other hand, to hear a few words against the eBook revolution, scour the newsstands for remaining copies of O, The Oprah Magazine's July Reading issue and read Harper Lees rare and brief letter on her love of reading (Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, stopped giving interviews in the early 60s and rarely ever, ever publishes anything in print.).