A Couple Of Heroes

Hayden Panettiere and Masi Oka attend the G.M. Fashion and Car Show in L.A. What the hell has Masi so astonished? The guy has a 180 I.Q. (allegedly) so I know he's not just staring at shiny objects. And what's with his tie being all loosened up? Has Hiro hit the sauce? Oh, and Hayden - do you think you could can the Lindsay-style peace-sign? You ain't no Lindsay hon. You ain't even a Michelle Trachtenberg yet. Damn, I wonder how big a woody Oka has there. "Hey baby, I'll erase your brain for you. And I ain't even Haitian." (You have to watch Heroes to get that one).

Mills Gets A Kick Out Of Dancing With The Stars

The line-up for the next Dancing With the Stars has been announced. Somehow I managed to miss all the previous installments of the program. I meant to watch when that little bow-tie-wearing sissy Tucker Carlson was on too, but it slipped my mind for some reason. Anyway, here are the "luminaries" scheduled to appear:

Heather Mills - Yup, it's official - the boil on Paul McCartney's ass is going to be stumping her way through the competition. Oh, how heroic of Heather. What a positive role model she is to other people with disabilities. And people whose dream is to one day smear the good name of a musical icon and become utterly reviled for it.

Billy Ray Cyrus - Don't tell my Achy, Breaky Heart that Billy Ray Cyrus is actually going to be on television. Don't tell my stomach either. Or my bowels.

Leeza Gibbons - Well, look at the bright-side - it could've been Nancy O'Dell.

Joey Fatone - The fat, ugly member of N'Sync everyone made fun of. The other day I went to Wendy's for a bacon cheeseburger and I swear I saw a guy working the counter who looked just like Joey...

Laili Ali - Muhammed Ali's butch boxer daughter. Maybe she'll punch-out Billy Ray Cyrus. That I wouldn't mind seeing.

Vincent Pastore - The guy who played Big Pussy on The Sopranos. This is what happens when you get bumped off on that show - you wind up on Dancing With the Stars. Of course, the show is winding down now, which means most of the cast will be on shows like this next year. I can't wait until Bobby Bacala appears on Celebrity Fit Club.

Apolo Anton Ohno - The speed-skater guy? I guess Bode Miller was too drunk.

Paulina Porizkova - The chick who was once married to that ugly, skinny guy from The Cars, right? Or maybe they're still married. Or maybe it was some other model from a former Eastern Bloc nation. Maybe it wasn't the guy from The Cars. Ah Christ, who cares?

Clyde Drexler - A basketball player, apparently. What, no Rick Fox? Too bad - I wouldn't mind looking at him for a couple of nights.

Ian Ziering - Ha ha, Steve from Beverly Hills 90210. The last time I saw this doof he was lampooning his own loserness in that shitty Keira Knightley movie Domino. I guess he brings the Mario Lopez factor to the new season. You know, a former teeny-bopper icon who is now lurching uncomfortably toward middle-age.

Shandi Finnessey - Miss USA 2004. What, no Tara Conner? I guess they were afraid Tara would get all coked up and start ripping her clothes off. Then Trump would have to come out and forgive her again. And no one wants that.

Hiro Searching For His Soul Mate

On Heroes, adorable little Jap Masi Oka plays Hiro, a man on a quest. And in real life, too, Oka is searching for something - not a mythic Samurai sword with magical properties but a person to spend his life with. Emphasis on word "person." As in, no gender specified. Man or woman - he doesn't say. Here's the kind of stuff he does say though:

I've been going on dates a lot, [looking for] my soul mate here and there ... I make it a point to get out and just meet people. Hopefully I'll find someone I can share the rest of my life with. ... I'm not a big club person. I don't go clubbing per se, especially to pick up people. ... Most of the people I meet through these kinds of functions, or friends of friends I get set up with. ... I'm kind of playing the field. There are some wonderful people I've met, that I hang out with. I'm just taking my time and hanging out, getting to meet a lot of great people.

Am I reading too much into the fact that he specifically avoids referring to "people" as "women?" Is he toying with us, the scamp?

(This is how rumors get started. In fact, Oka has referred to girls he's gone out with in other interviews. Of course he could've just been saying that to avoid having to deal with gay questions. It can be tough sometimes. Easier to just pretend you're straight. Unless he just hasn't found himself yet. It is interesting the way he consistently avoids mentioning females, referring only to "people" he's met.)

(By the way, writers of Heroes - would you please stop twiddling your thumbs? Have something happen or stop wasting my fricking time. There are plenty of other shows for me to watch if I want to let my latent geek tendencies come out. Dr. Who for example, or Battlestar Galactica. I'm giving you another two weeks, but that's it (P.S. Hiro and Ando are totally gay for each other right? I mean, even if Ando keeps trying to pick up women like that ugly-ass showgirl who tricked them into stealing the bag from the guy's apartment - that's just because he's in denial, right? Pretty soon the two of them are going to be sucking face. Right?))

Jade Goody Having A Breakdown

I have been paying zero attention to the whole Jade Goody/Shilpa Shetty/Celebrity Big Brother dust-up, mostly because English things are boring (except David Beckham). But after reading this piece about villainess Goody's mental health problems in the wake of her racist remarks about Shetty and the subsequent media backlash, I'm sort of wishing I had been paying attention. Cause I'm obviously missing a hell of a row.

For those who haven't been paying attention either, here's the gist: England, like America, has these dopey reality shows, including a version of Celebrity Big Brother, a program in which a group of losers lives together in a house, and generally gets on each other's nerves until everyone's been voted out except one person (like Survivor but without the coconuts). Among the participants on this show, which is apparently wildly popular in Britain, were Bollywood It-girl Shilpa Shetty and professional reality-show-participant Goody (this bitch apparently literally makes a living just being on dumb TV shows). Goody, already reviled in Britain (a 2002 poll named her 4th Worst Person in Britain), further lowered herself in the public's esteem by participating in the racist bullying of Shetty on-air, mocking Shetty's accent, and calling her names like "Shilpa Fuckawala." Other cast-members, for the record, also had a hand in teasing Shetty, who was reportedly reduced to tears on several occasions. However, Goody became the focus of the public's outrage, and was finally voted off the show by the audience.
Afterward, Goody tried apologizing, and even spouted a few tears of her own for the benefit of the cameras. But the public backlash has been so intense that a "shocked and depressed" Goody has had to be put under the care of doctors.

This just goes to show what I've always said - reality TV is going to be the death of us all. I'm serious about this. Shows like Survivor, Big Brother and the rest - what do they do but foment discord between people? The whole point of these shows is to put people in situations where basic civility is tossed out the window in the name of meaningless competition. And when you put folks like Jade Goody, a woman who suffers from obvious social, if not mental, retardation in such a position - well, it seems to me like you're just asking for it. It seems to me that, if some kind of hateful, racist stuff doesn't break out, that would have to be considered a miracle.

I think the public is wrong to attack Jade Goody in this. She's just an innocent victim, too stupid to know any better. The people who deserve our scorn are the TV executives who greenlight this garbage. Because they want the turmoil, and are willing to absorb the bad publicity as long as it helps ratings. To me, people who claim to be outraged about this stuff, yet persist in watching it, are the worst kind of hypocrites. They should exercise their choice by changing the channel (or, to use another example, clicking to another blog). If enough people do that, then these shows won't be on the air, and the societal decay they contribute to will be slowed at least a bit. Then, after we've gotten rid of the crappy shows, we can turn our attention to the Jade Goodys of the world, and give them what they so richly deserve - a spot on The View right next to Rosie O'Donnell.

Grey's Anatomy Smackdown

Grey's Anatomy is another TV show Crabbie's never watched. Doctors having sex with each other - why does that not interest me in the least? Maybe it's just shows about doctors in general. I never watched ER either, despite George Clooney. All that medical stuff - people with boils and lesions and tumors and wooden stakes protruding from their necks. Life is filled with enough grossness as it is; why the hell would I want to watch it on television? I'm sorry, but thinking about George examining my infected toenail just doesn't do it for me. Now, if George were to play a proctologist...

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah. Grey's Anatomy. I have no interest in that show. I do, however, have an interest in the on-going soap opera surrounding the show. Because backstage squabbles are highly entertaining. Actually, the Grey's Anatomy unpleasantness has evolved beyond mere squabbling, and it certainly isn't backstage anymore. It's gone public. And it's getting uglier.

The antagonist in this little drama is the actor Isaiah Washington, who frankly strikes Crabbie as one of these nose-in-the-air types, the sort of guy who thinks being an actor on a dumb TV show somehow qualifies him as an artist to rival Da Vinci. Apparently, Mr. Washington doesn't have a whole lot of friends on the set of Grey's Anatomy. First there was news that he had gotten into some kind of physical altercation with co-star Patrick Dempsey, and then came the bombshell concerning his use of the word "faggot" in reference to another co-star, T.R. Knight, who is in fact homosexual. The trouble came because Knight, who hadn't revealed his gayness publicly at the time, overheard Washington. This set off a chain-reaction which saw Knight come out of the closet in an interview to People magazine (after being hectored for months by that pimple Perez Hilton), and Washington flatly deny ever using the word. That seemed to be it - until the Golden Globes the other night, when Washington reiterated his denial, pissing off co-star Katherine Heigl, who happens to be tight with Knight (in a strictly platonic sense of course because Katherine has a vagina and T.R. ain't down with that sort of thing).

"No, I did not call T.R. a faggot," Washington is reported to have said. "Never happened, never happened." To which Heigl replied: "I'm going to be really honest right now, he needs to just not speak in public. Period ... I'm sorry, that did not need to be said, I'm not okay with it."

Wow. Katherine's got some fire in her guts. Basically telling big bad Isaiah Washington to stuff it. I'm really starting to like this broad. And as for Isaiah - you like throwing words around, don't you pal? Mr. Prudent with your, "No, I did not call T.R. a faggot." Making sure you said the word again in front of every one. Someone should wash your mouth out with soap (And no, I'm not going to sink to Mr. Washington's level by bringing up a certain word that starts with 'N.' I don't believe in using slurs to attack slurs. Besides, as far as I know, Mr. Washington is not and never has been a necrophiliac.).

And of course there's poor old T.R. Knight, sort of caught in the middle of the whole thing. In a new interview with Ellen Degeneres, Knight says being called a "faggot" by Washington was the impetus for him coming out of the closet (not Perez's goading). "It's an awesome word, isn't it?" Knight tells Ellen. "I've never been called that to my face. So I think when that happened, something shifted, and it became bigger than myself."

Yeah. It's an awesome word T.R. Way bigger than "ass-eater" or "cock-licker." Though not nearly as amusing.

Boring Chicks Abound At The People's Choice Awards

Heroes starlet Hayden Panettiere looks very cheerful. At least Tommy Lee isn't hanging off her like a drunk off a lightpost for once.

Grey's Anatomy's Katherine Heigl tones down the boobage for the night. Very classy. Yawn.

Another Grey's Anatomy star, Ellen Pompeo. Come on Ellen. Black? I mean, black is just so...black...

Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria flashes a somewhat maniacal-looking smile. Well, at least she got rid of that atrocious Posh-bob.

I guess we can shelve those rumors about Halle Berry being pregnant. This picture is almost enough to make Crabbie turn straight (she looks like a piece of delicious chocolate all wrapped up in gold foil; I don't know whether to feel turned on or hungry).

What the fuck? Cameron Diaz won a People's Choice Award? For what? Most fugitatious acne-ridden train-wreck? And what's with the arm, Diaz? Are you going Jessica Biel on us?

Yup, Aniston won one too. And look, she's making a funny face with it. That's the comic talent that made us love her in the first place. Seriously, this bitch is the Lucille Ball of her generation. Too bad her Desi Arnaz dumped her for Angelina Jolie (ha ha haaaa!).

Puking Dog Edition: Katie Couric at Women in Film and Television's 26th Annual Muse Awards

Haven't heard much from Katie lately. What's she been up to (besides being a tic-ridden little angry-faced rodent midget bitch)?

Kristin Cavallari is a Sports Fan

Kristin Cavallari hangs at a Knicks game with someone who may be Mahmood Ahmadinejad's cousin.

"The bouncy ball makes me dizzy tee-hee-hee..."

Rachael Ray is a Demon From Hell

What do you think Rachael Ray thinks about when she's chopping those veggies? I know what she thinks about. And John Wayne Bobbitt really knows.

Hug the Cheerleader. Get a Woody.

Heroes cutie Hayden Panettiere rubs Santa for luck.

What the hell was going on with Sylar and Eden in the woods, by the way?

Mischa Barton Goes Someplace, Does Something

Former O.C.-er Mischa Barton attends the Marie Claire Awards in Spain. What award did Mischa win? Most Likely to Wind Up Working at 7-11?

Evangeline Lilly Likes Authoritative Black Men

Lost star Evangeline Lilly and some other broad double-team a strapping young Mountie at the 21st Annual Gemini Awards in Richmond, British Colombia. Did I ever mention how much I love Canada?

Martha Stewart Has No Dignity

Martha Stewart dresses like a cat for her Halloween show. I hope somebody declawed her, otherwise she's liable to ruin the couch.

By the way, Martha - you're seventy years old! Stop!

Bob Barker Finally Yields to Father Time. Spayed and Neutered Pets Say, "Good Riddance."

Daytime T.V.'s answer to Methuselah, Price is Right host Bob Barker, has announced that he will be retiring effective next year.

Barker has been grabbing models' asses backstage of the wildly popular guess-the-price program for 35 years now, but has actually been in TV for fifty, beginning his career in 1956 on Truth or Consequences.

Barker will be sorely missed, especially by fat black women.