Ah, the innocent days of 2008. When recession, war and high-profile celebrity deaths became the glue to bond us together like societal Siamese siblings. But now it's 2009, a whole new era, a whole new ballgame. And not just for Washington, who will call Barack Obama their overlord, or the New York Yankees, who will take the field with C.C. Sabathia and Mark Texeira and still manage to lose the pennant to smaller-budgeted organizations.
It is the final stand for celebrity land in a decade that has alternately enthralled and repulsed us. It is a time for Hollywood to make its mark on culture and the planet at large, and really give 'em the good stuff we all cream for in the tabloids.
And we got off to an intermittently intriguing start, thanks largely to the birth of what could have been the First Granddaughter-in-waiting, and a certain wayward actress' parent who may love his share of his daughter's spotlight more than the woman herself. So without any pregnant pauses, here's the top 5 things NCDSUV learned this week.
4. Paul McCartney may have had to navigate Heather Mills' body sexually despite her prosthetic leg, but at least he didn't have to stick around till midnight to ritualistically spray-tan the thing.
They say Levi Johnston, soon-to-be-husband of Bristol Palin, son of recent drug-ring arrestee Sherry Johnston and future-son-in law of Alaskan Governor/never-would-have-been-VP candidate Sarah Palin, is an apprentice electrician. Sounds more to me like the only apprenticeship he'll never graduate from is being indentured in the Palin family for all the rest of his eternally damned days.
As you likely heard through the apple-blossom-vine, the Palin/Johnston child-bearing tandem gave birth this past Sunday to Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston. Which means their son has two options: Become a stately senator who spawns generations of same-named kin, or a racecar driver. But the only one behind the wheel of poor Levi's life is his socially Satanic (er, I mean conservative) surrogate mom, Sarah, especially now that Levi's matriarch somehow trumps her in hypocritical irresponsibility.
In a s statement, Sarah and her husband Todd referred to Levi rather coldly as "the young man," and remarked that he and Bristol are "going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child."
Which is code for, "You fucked up and impregnated our underage daughter with your demon dick, and because of our puritanical value system and misguided run for major governmental candidacy, you're stuck owning up to that decision by raising this kid when you're barely old enough to have voted for me and John McCain, and then marrying Bristol and sacrificing all your individual hopes and dreams."
Sucks to be you kid. Well, both Levi and Tripp that is.
Ah, the last week before the Christmas-time blitz of abusive commercialism and schmaltzy, ceremonial sentimentality. A time for celebrities to get one last headline blast before the world pretends to care about religion and family more than the dogma of tabloid culture for a few days.
Fortunately for us, there was no shortage of boob-flashing, divorce scuttlebutt and rehab-hyjinks. So without further prolonged pause, here are the top five things we here at NCDSUV (and we hope you as well) have learned this week:
4. Tara Reid, not to be outdone by her more youthful underlings Lindsay Lohan et al, finally went into rehab for undisclosed reasons. We're guessing it's because she's been chronically addicted to an illicit co-dependent substance, but what the heckfire do we know?
Pop quiz: What's more gratifying? Finding out that Levi Johnston's mother, Sherry Johnston, was arrested on six (!) counts of felony, narcotics-related misconduct, or reading about on FOX News' website? Trick question. They're equally heeeelarious.
So wait, you're surprised that the mother of an underaged Alaskan teenager who tattooed Bristol Palin's name on his ring finger would be white trash enough to get embroiled in a massive drug stakeout? I mean, with the hundreds of thousands of dollars his mother-in-law-to-be, Sarah Palin, spent on classing up her wardrobe and, by proxy, the reputation of her Hills Have Eyes-worthy extended family, this was no doubt a shock to several unsuspecting citizens.
Man, oh man, if only this news emerged during the election. Would have been pretty fascinating to see the conservative spinmeisters turn this into further evidence for Palin's persistence in the face of constant personal turmoil.
Ugh, I just got post-election hangover douchechills.
After exhausting my spontaneous observational blogging energy last night, I decided to experience Obama's victory, and John McCain's concession, among the masses.
And while there were a fair share of thoughtlessly reactionary, self-satisfied young lefties hurling mean-spirited insults at McCain at my designated watering hole, it was hard to obscure the tact and authentic passion with which the somewhat disgraced Arizona Senator delivered his speech.
Sure, he awkwardly tapdanced around the racial aspect, bumbling through references to Obama being "African-American" and congratulating America's minority population. Yes, the waning moments of his words were wrapped in a fair amount of naively hopeful jingoistic rhetoric.
But it was genuine, humble, thoughtful and profoundly moving, and an incredible serve to his victorious counterpart that further enabled Obama to volley back with equal grace and conviction.
OK folks. No more conjecture. No more tomfoolery. No more advantageous list features and daily commentary exploring the cultural shrapnel of the buildup to Election 2008. Consider all that the featherweight undercard to the heavyweight main event between Barack Obama and John McCain; the foreplay to the candidates' electoral tango; the peaceful Native American residency before the slaughter of Christopher Columbus and his fellow explorers; the... yeah, you get the idea.
By the end of tonight, only man will stand alive atop the steaming shitheap of economic recession and international entanglements that is the U.S. government, and the media (god bless 'em) are here to give us blow by biased, results-happy blow on the path to their poll-determined fate.
And thankfully, NCDSUV is here not so much to complement their skewed stab at proper journalistic scrutiny, but to take a magnifying glass to the larger tangential proceedings over the next four or so hours. So sit, back, enjoy, and say a prayer for democracy. Unless you're a Commie liberal. Then just count the hours till the almighty is resurrected and smites all you heathens anyway.
7:00 p.m. Testing, testing, one, two... is this thing on? Ah, excellent. One small step for blog kind.
7:01 p.m. Woah, woah, woah, let a guy get his footing. Charles Gibson's already calling Kentucky for McCain and Vermont for Obama on ABC. Which is sort of like boldly projecting a life of loneliness and despair for a high school class' biggest nerd and unwarranted success and endless casual sex for its homecoming king.
7:05 p.m. I intended to make a comment about the absurdity of NBC's regal "digital studios," but got sidetracked perusing red carpet pictures of their green-screen queen Anne Curry. Anyway, they're ridiculous.
7:11 p.m. I shall only refer to CBS analyst/former Bill Clinton Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers by her given name of Margaret Jane. At least until it's clear that any references to Margaret Jane don't translate to the readers and I undermine my larger point.
7:13 p.m. Wow, only 13 minutes in and CBS just lost audio on two of Katie Couric's correspondents. Haven't they spent the last several hours preparing to at least be solid gold right off the bat? I mean, it's not like you see me sandwiching multiple posts at once and pretending as if it's in real time because I can't keep up with the pace. Yeah, it's not like that at all.
7:19 p.m. Let the gimmickry begin! Take that, NBC's digital studios. CNN's beaming Jessica Yellin in from Chicago via a motherfucking hologram. It is, as Yellin suggested to Wolf Blitzer, very a la Princess Leia being transmitted to Luke Skywalker via R2-D2. And good thing Wolf and Jessica just wasted two minutes giggling over their nifty technology and talking about Star Wars. This is going to only get more inane per minute.
7:24 p.m. Shepard Smith (who knew he'd be anchoring MY9 in New York?) is calling a one percent lead for McCain in Indiana with nine percent of districts reporting. Yeah, that's a really relevant update. These things are like basketball games, where you may as well just tune in for the last five minutes. Also, his co-hostess (working on the name folks) just referred to these early poll results as being an "inexact science." Skeptical inexact was exactly a word, I Googled it. The sixth result was "the inexact science of penis measurement."
7:30 p.m. Interesting that both NBC and its sister network, MSNBC (its brothers and cousins were unfortunately stuck at nearby airports with weather-related delays) are furthering this whole "virtual" election coverage M.O. with tickers that almost look three-dimensionally clickable. Is this supposed to subliminally compel me to visit their websites during the evening so I can boost their page views? Mmmm, clickable.
7:34 p.m. OK. Some mystical syndication programmer (damn you, TBS!) is challenging my political diligence by showing a Season 3 episode of Seinfeld, incidentally the lone season I don't own on DVD and have ostensibly committed to memory. Hey, hey, put that remote down. If I can't watch it, neither can you.
So, here we go folks. A day that will live in infamy for some segment of the American population, and either way will signal a decline in page views for national blogs that should make the Dow dissent seem like a manageable point-dip.
NCDSUV will be on the scene (i.e. on its channel-changing couch), reporting to you live with a collection of thoughts and observations from the coverage and culture around Election Night. Because who the fuck wants another brow-beating op-ed about their preferred candidate?
But in the meanwhile, here's a wish list of five things we can only hope will happen before the cameras to make the whole several-hour mess moderately less excruciating.
5. A la the Bud Bowl's supplemental Super Bowl programming, MTV will broadcast a special edition of Celebrity Deathmatch, in which Joe The Plumber and Tito The Builder battle on two pink elephants, wielding their trade's preeminent piece of equipment.
4. Wolf Blitzer, during a particularly pregnant pause of any electoral action, has a nervous breakdown and admits to being adopted, and having recently discovered that his birth name is "Itty Bitty Little Bear Cub."
3. Lots of preemptive declarations and manic bottom-screen tickers that remind us the networks' coverage is more of a competitive battleground for ratings than the candidates' struggle for higher office, nevermind a reasonable resource for accurate poll happenings. (Oh please, oh please, make this one happen, however unlikely and unfounded a notion it seems.)
So, big fuckin' deal, the Republican National Committee has spent $150,000 on Sarah Palin's wardrobe since she signed on to the ticket. You know how much money my mom spent on my Jerzees Super Sweats at Kid 'R Us when I was a kid? OK, probably about $15 cumulative dollars.
As anyone who reads NCDSUV knows, we've taken infinite potshots at the Alaskan, oil-drilling, campaign-killer (so many so where we fear we might be contributing to her demise, which would make this website a lot less entertaining in two weeks), but now it feels like the media's just scrounging for any excuse to be incredulous at John McCain and co. and reduce the VP nominee to a cariacture of conservative sex-potism. Which she is, of course, but I think at this juncture we can hand the baton of ballot-securing over to Barack Obama.
And as for campaign contributors crying foul over unwise expenditures of their donations, your money wasn't spent foolishly on a few tit-friendly powersuits, it was wasted on the old windbag standing next to their inhabitant in the first place.
Ya know, we've been trying to stay neutral amidst an avalanche of biased journalism and unabashedly announced opinions on the presidential election. I mean, c'mon, that isn't clearly evident in balanced, tactful articles like this and this? But fine, if Mr. Important Colin Powell is going to pull a Joe Lieberman-worthy fence-hopper on Meet The Press (see clip above) and Big Shot newspapers like the New York Daily News are going to get behind Obama, I guess it's time for NCDSUV to finally let the public know who they are in favor of.
So, without further ado, we are throwing our support (and a burlap hitchhiking sack on a stick) behind... Mr. Eric Elvis. And why not? He's got as thorough a sense of American history as John McCain, the disarming sexual magnetism of Barack Obama, has slightly less robotic motor functions than the former and has a song selection liberal enough to rival the latter's widespread demographic appeal.
Oh, you probably thought we'd get behind Obama. Well, we figure the way things are going, we no longer need to be the Switzerland of the blogosphere, but can complacently conduct ourselves like the Vermont in this endorsement electorate. But no worries, the second he gets into office, we'll resume our role as kneejerk liberal frontrunners.
Check in tomorrow morning for a list of the most surprising celebrity endorsements.
Unfortunately, I didn't not get to see Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live when it aired: I was too busy actually living my life, losers. Ya know, going to the club ripped to the gills on coke, dancing with tons of crazy-hot women, folding my laundry while watching last week's True Blood and then eating a fat-free chocolate pop.
However, thanks to the magic of this device called Computer II ("now with Internet Activation"), I was able to "hone in on" NBC's "webbed-site" with the use of a Uniform Resource Locator and watch til my heart was content, which incidentally was while the video was still loading. But in the interests of journalistic duty, I then forced myself to sit there and watch the Palin sketches, employing one of those devices from A Clockwork Orange to keep my eyes pried open.
As was written about earlier on NCDS after the VP debate, Palin's media performances have fit in quite well with the reigning paradigm of awkward comedies like Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office and the granddaddy of them all, the British series Peep Show, a program that is so wince-inducing that my body seizes up grand mal-style while watching. From her catastrophic interviews to her catastrophic photo ops, each new gaffe or desperate attempt to cover up her natural incurious intellectual torpor is met by a national grasping of our kishkas as we yell, "Oy vez mir! A shondah! A shondah!" This performance was no different.
