Update: Jessica Simpson is a Wreck (But Not as Big a Wreck As First Reported)

There was a time when Jessica Simpson was considered the most likable, well-adjusted of all the blond pop-tarts (not a huge accomplishment considering her competition was Britney and Christina, but still). But now Simpson would seem just as sad and hopeless and headed for the scrapheap as any of the others

The latest debacle in the on-going disintegration of Jessica Simpson took place last night at the Kennedy Center Honors, a hoity-toity Washington affair attended by the president and other luminaries. In tribute to honoree Dolly Parton, a quintet of performers, including Simpson, was to do a medley of her songs. Jessica's tune was 9 to 5, a big hit for Dolly back in the '80s (and also the name of a hideously lame movie almost saved by Lily Tomlin). But halfway through the number, Simpson simply gave up singing, muttered, "So nervous," and slunk away from the stage to the audience's silent amazement. Later, when the performers came back to take their bows, Simpson was said to be visibly crying.

Here's the problem kids: Jessica Simpson is not a professional performer. She's a product of studio trickery and marketing and music videos and her creepy, incestuous father's insistence that she be thrust into the spotlight. Real professionals, like Dolly Parton for example, pay their dues in the business, and are toughened by their experiences. Even if they fucked up in the middle of a song (and I'm certain Parton has done it many times in her life), they would never just crawl away and cry like babies. They would smile bigger and keep on plugging (and in Dolly's case, just show a little more boob).

Jessica and her even-less-talented sister Ashlee are perfect examples of the modern-day pseudo-performer - people who are sold to the public as entertainers, but have no real chops as performers, and don't even have personality to fall back on (and personality has saved a lot of people who were otherwise mediocre). These people are androids - someone programs them and they saunter out on-stage, but the first time something goes wrong their circuits freeze. That happened to Ashlee on SNL, and she reacted to it by getting a nose-job. One little failure and the girl resorted to self-mutilation - I mean, Jesus Ashlee, develop some fucking fortitude. If you're an entertainer then take your lumps like all the great ones had to. If you're not, then get the hell off and let someone on who is.

And the same goes for Jessica too - and Lindsay Lohan, who couldn't handle a few boos at an awards show, and threw herself down a flight of stairs so she'd have an excuse to run away like a sniveling child. Record companies and TV networks have to stop trying to pass these hopeless nitwits off as performers. I mean, honestly, Kennedy Center people - why did you hire Jessica in the first place? So you could use her name to sell your dumb telecast? And now you'll have to cut her out anyway, won't you (hopefully the excised footage will make it onto YouTube, cause I really want to see that)? Don't these dumb-asses do their due diligence on the people they're hiring for their shows? Or do they hear the name, "Jessica Simpson," and think, "That'll grab that 18-35 demo all right." Stupid.

I almost feel sorry for Jessica, actually. I mean, here she is, laboring under the sad illusion that she's a pop-star when all she really is is a joke. All we care about when it comes to Jess and Ashlee and Brit and Lindsay is the carnage. We want them to fall on their faces because we resent them. And we resent them because we know how phony they are, and what dupes people have been for making a big deal out of them in the first place.

Update: Well, they showed the footage of Jessica's alleged "meltdown" on CNN just now. And I for one am a tad pissed. First of all, the crowd was not sitting in silence as was reported this morning. They were clapping. They seemed to feel for Jessica. Yes, she did stumble and mess up while singing the song, and did say she was "nervous" once she got finished. But it was not nearly the belly-flop it was portrayed as.

Nevertheless, I stand by my ranting comments about Simpson not being a real performer. She isn't.

Say It Ain't So, Lindsay-O

Even as Britney Spears ascends to the pantheon of drunken, cooter-flashing skankhood, it appears another world-champion shameless skanklet is trying to tone down her own wild lifestyle, and maybe even get off the sauce altogether.

Yes kids, it's true - Lindsay Lohan has begun attending AA meetings. Hard as it may be to believe, Lindsay actually appears to have at least a modicum of sense. Or maybe she started having those dreams about her liver.

You've had those before, right? The ones where you're lying in bed, all covered in sweat, and suddenly you see something moving under the blanket, and you peel it away to discover your own dying liver poised on your chest, staring into your face with those beseeching eyes...

All right. So maybe Crabbie's the only one who ever had that dream.

We're getting off the subject. The point here is that Lindsay realized, at last, that you can only keep it up for so long. You can only punish your body to a certain point, and after that it starts to rebel.

And all I can say about this development is...please Lindsay, say it ain't so.

Say you aren't going to stop going out to Hyde every night, and the rest of those hip night-spots where people like Brandon Davis yell insults at you. Say you aren't going to stop driving recklessly, smashing into things, and generally being a menace to pedestrians. Say you don't intend to stop making friends with Paris Hilton every other day, only to get mad at her again ten minutes later. Say you are not going to hereafter abstain from wearing short dresses that allow us to see your woman-parts. Say you have not lost your desire to make a pitiful spectacle of yourself in ways that make us both hate and feel sorry for you in almost equal measure.

Pardon us if we seem selfish Lindsay, but we need you drunk and stupid. We have no interest in seeing a sober Lindsay who realizes there's more to life than just partying it up. We want you to stagger around at three in the morning, bellowing like a crazy old woman. We want you behaving like a psychotic, saying one thing one minute, then contradicting yourself completely the next. We want you writing long, rambling letters of condolence to the families of dead movie directors, so that we may bask in the sense of superiority that only comes when one encounters true stupidity.

In other words, Lindsay - don't clean up. Whatever you do. Don't listen to your liver, no matter how much it complains. And for God's sake, please, don't start wearing underwear. A world where Lindsay Lohan covers her cooch is not a world I want to live in.

Elliot Mintz Lives in His Own Little World

There is no lower form of life on earth than the celebrity publicist. Those poor dopes whose job it is to explain away the actions of the stupid and self-destructive. And there is no more pitiful example of the sniveling celebrity rep than Elliot Mintz, the man who handles Paris Hilton.

Being a rep for a woman like Hilton, who is capable of doing just about anything at any given moment, requires an amazing talent for bending the truth. Actually, "bending the truth" may not be the right term - "twisting the truth into intricate pretzel-like shapes that would confound even Stephen Hawking" would probably be closer. And that's Elliot's gift. The ability to take a situation where everyone knows what happened and convince them that's not really what happened.

Now you take the recent publicity free-for-all Paris and her new BFFs Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan have been indulging in for the past week. Any normal person knows that these three sluts are in league with each other for the simple purpose of garnering attention, and may even suspect that they've been paid to be seen together. But that's not what Elliot Mintz wants you to think. Elliot wants you to think that the antics of his client and her two partners in skankery represent some act of female empowerment, possibly akin to Amelia Earhart trying to fly around the world. Just listen to what this dope actually said about the apparent Britney/Paris/Lindsay alliance:

What I've observed is that we have three extraordinarily powerful women who generate a tremendous amount of attention, money and adulation and they're tired of other people trying to ride on their coattails and creating false drama.

"What I've observed." Right Elliot. You're an objective witness. This is all something that just happened to occur to you. Could you be any wormier?

"They're tired of other people trying to ride on their coattails and creating false drama." So what are they doing now? Creating their own false drama? And what was that about coattails exactly? Is that a veiled attack against us, the bloggers? If I were you, Elliot, I'd be careful about going after the blogging community. Because the way things are headed, all this "new media" is going to be the main way for people like your client to get themselves out there. So you're going to need us.

Elliot Mintz - this guy makes George Bush look like a bastion of honesty.

The Gayness of Neil Patrick Harris

Everyone knows by now that Doogie Howser, M.D. star Neil Patrick Harris has come out of the closet. In an interview with People Magazine, he admits his gayness, and calls himself "a content gay man living my life to the fullest." Which is the sort of thing some people like to get up and applaud. Because some people just have this terrible need to demonstrate to everyone that they're cool with people being gay, and can handle even someone as iconic as Doogie Howser living on the ass-fucking side of the tracks.

Ha. That's all I have to say about it. Ha.

You phonies - yeah you. All the ones who're giving Doogie a hearty pat on the back for his courage in coming out. There isn't one of you who really wishes this guy well, you lot of two-faced fuckwads. If you people really had your way, Neil Patrick Harris and the rest of us homos would be turning slowly on a spit.

That's right, you'd kill us all if you had the chance. But not right away of course. First you'd waterboard us, or torture us in some other horrible way dreamed up by Dick Cheney. Then you'd make us sign a paper repudiating our gayness, and admitting to having lived sinful lives. Then you'd tie us up and put us on the spit and cook us like chickens. All the while swilling beer and singing college football fight songs or whatever the hell you hetero bastards sing when you're hanging out drinking and eating and farting and calling women "hot."

So save it, you straight assholes. Save your, "Isn't it great that Neil Patrick Harris is brave enough to come out and live his life in the open?" Because you don't really mean it. What you really mean is, "Wouldn't it be great to drug Neil Patrick Harris and toss him into the lion's cage at the zoo and watch the lions do to him what they used to do to the Christians." And then you'd high-five each other and crack open another Miller Lite and pass wind and say, "That Pamela Anderson is so hot," and then go off to watch a bunch of steroid freaks in tight pants fling themselves at each other in a blissful display of homoeroticism sometimes referred to as football.

Sick of you bozos.