I’m going to date myself by saying this, but I grew up watching Joey “Joseph” Lawrence, starting with the Nell Carter sitcom, Gimme A Break, which once featured him in blackface as a mini Al Jolson. We’re only three years apart (He’s older). His brush with overt racism notwithstanding, I have always loved Joey Lawrence. Loved him through Blossom, his ill-advised foray into pop music performance, and his hair loss.

I’m equally devoted to Melissa Joan Hart, dating back to Clarissa Explains It All–and though I haven’t caught that show’s Nickelodeon revival, it’s oddly comforting to know that it’s back on TV.

So when ABC Family paired them in their original movie, My Fake Fiance, I sat through it, certain it would suck. It kind of did, in that predictable way all ABC Family, Lifetime, and Hallmark flicks suck: the awesome way. But the film was effective in conveying how well these two former child actors work together. So when ABC Family started running promos for a sitcom featuring the pair, I knew I’d give it a whirl. It’s been a long haul, but I’ve managed to slog through the entire first season (broken up by an eight-month hiatus), which ends tonight.

I’ve found myself chuckling at the show a few times, mostly when Joe deadpans a punchline. He’s surprisingly great at sarcasm. His skin/”hair” combo can be a bit distracting–as can Hart’s frequent references to his baldness (though he’s almost always wearing “hair”), but it’s a passable sitcom in a way that, say, According to Jim or Yes, Dear were not. It’s as formulaic as they come and super-old-school, in that it’s recorded in front of a live studio audience and follows a very predictable trajectory, but it’s comforting in that way.

Okay, so this isn’t a ringing endorsement. But hey, there a few shows these days that deserve one of those. Amirite?

Oh Brittany, we had such high hopes for you.  You were Tai; we quote you at least once a week.  You were Luanne Platter (someone I also quote at least once a week).  And as far as bad B movies go, The Ramen Girl was actually kind of awesome (and available on instant Netflix).

Now you’re dead.

So today we toast to you.  See you around, Tai…hope not sporadically.

…people like Michael Cera and Seth Rogan are invited to join the ranks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences alongside people like Jeffrey Wright.

“These filmmakers have, over the course of their careers, captured the imagination of audiences around the world,” said Academy president Sid Ganis, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Jeffrey Wright=Oscar nominee. Cera and Rogan=eyeroll.

Just…no.

feministdonut: Winona…Whatever happened to her?

slb: Kleptomania.

fd: lol

slb: Is she ever gonna look old enough to start playing moms? Because that’s the only way I can see her getting hired these days. She’s over forty, isn’t she?

fd: That’s very true. Wait… she’s over 40??? Maybe she’s still late 30s….

slb: I’m looking it up. She’ll be 38 in october. I thought she was Johnny Depp’s age.

fd: Wow.

slb: … or Keanu’s age or something. Didn’t they all come out around the same time?

fd: That’s incredibly depressing that she’s 10 years older than me.

slb: I wonder if it’s even accurate that she was born in ’71…. IMDB is shady.

fd: Word.

slb: Anyway, while I’m here, I’m perusing her filmography. She has three films in the works, one of which should greatly (dis)please you. She’s in the “new” Star Trek.

fd: Sigh. Actually, I don’t know how I feel about that. I can totally see her as a Vulcan.

slb: Who is “Amanda Grayson?”

fd: *shrug*  Damned if i know.

slb: That’s who she’s playing.

fd: I’m not down with this new Trek. At all. Damn that Jaybrahms.

slb: She’s also in something called Stay Cool, where she plays the “old flame” of a dude who looks to be roughly… fifty years old? And she has to compete for his attention with Hilary Duff.

fd: Now that’s just sad. (But I’ll be seeing it, because you know how I love my bad Hilary Duff movies.)

slb: Oh, wait. The guy in this flick is Mark Polish. He’s actually just a year old than she is.

fd: She already did an old man movie. With our man, Richard Gere…. Oh. A year older? Okay, then. That’s better.

slb: And he’s cute, too. Well, to me. So, you know. Score one in the win category for Wino.

fd: She needs to play a mom or a really hot lesbian drug addict. Like Ally Sheedy in High Art.  I kind of love Ally Sheedy after that movie.

slb: Lesbian! Yes. But not drug addict. She can’t pull that off. She should play a hot cat burglar.

fd:  Yeah, I’m inclined to agree.

slb: She should play a hot cat burglar. Or a klepto…

fd: LOL

slb: … with a flat affect like Gwyneth–and she should star opposite Clive Owen, because he lives for that kind of thing. He should wear glasses in the film, and she should wear crimson lipstick. At all times.

fd: What good is Clive if she can’t jump his bones? She’s a lesbian, remember? She should play the new Batwoman, who, apparently, is a lesbian.

slb: Ugh. I actually don’t need to see him sleep with anyone else after he grossed me out in that lactating stripper movie.

fd: God, don’t remind me of that disgusting crap. I’m also mad at Paul Giamatti for participating in that.

slb: Meanwhile, get outta here. There’s a Batwoman, for real? And she’s a lesbian? She’d be perfect for that. Although… I think we’re forgetting the elephant in the room here. (She can’t really act. At all.)

fd: lol. True.

slb: (Love you, Wino. But still.)

fd: But you know, if George could be Batman, Winona could be Batwoman.

slb: Whatever she plays, it has to be angsty and overwrought in that way she’s comfortable with, and it can’t be anything else.  Because that movie where Angelina won the Oscar, even though Wino was the star?  That was a bad movie.

fd: Yeah.  And I didn’t think Angie deserved that Oscar, either, truth be told.

slb: If anyone should’ve had an oscar, it should’ve been our girl Brittany Murphy.  Didn’t she hang herself?

fd: Yup.

slb: Weren’t there baked chicken carcasses involved?

FD: Yup. Hidden under her bed.

slb: She is so disturbed.  I love it.

fd: Yeah. She’s Luanne, so I’ll always love her for that.

slb: If Winona could play that disturbed, she might have a comeback in her. Ithink maybe she could go reality TV.
A reality show about theft…or a HBO show. About sex. And theft.

fd: LOL!  I’m thinking HBO.  It’s a little more high brow than FOX, you know?

slb: Yes. Yes, i know. I mean, I feel like this: If Eliza Dushku can have her own show?  Winona can totally have one.

fd: Lol, very good point.  But you know, Winona’s Winona. I’m convinced she has a comeback left in her.

slb: I’m not entirely sold, but i’d give her a shot if she were ever to turn up in something that didn’t promise to be crappy and actually got a wide release.

fd: Yeah.  Okay, so lesbian Batwoman would give her wide release and guarantee the comic book crowd.  She should also do a movie starring opposite someone hot.

slb: Hmm. Hot…hot.

fd: lol

slb: I’m at a loss here…lol. Hot as in popular, or hot as in good-looking?

fd: Both, preferably. lol

slb: Heh. Okay, then.

fd: If she did a movie with Brad, she’d get an audience.  The movie would suck, but she’d have an audience.

slb: But Brad sucks, and she wouldn’t have chemistry with him.  The thing is?  She never has chemistry with her male costars. Has she ever had a hit movie? Besides Heathers?

fd: She had chemistry with Edward Scissorhands.  But that was then.  This is now.  She needs to be a lesbian, I’m telling you.

slb: Oh, yeah.  She should reunite with Johnny. Do you have any idea how many people would show up for that? Just to see if they’ve still got it?

fd: Yeah, I know I would.  Also?  She should not do any movies containing Hilary Duff.

slb: At least onscreen. I think that goes without saying.

fd: LOL! Yeah. Anyway, as much as I love Hil’s bad movies?  They always suck hard.

slb: That’s because she’s one of the worst actresses of all time.

fd: Heh. That was way harsh, Tai.  The bad screenplays they give her don’t help Hil’s situation, okay?  But back to Wino Forever…

slb: I wonder if they’re on speaking terms?  I bet they’re not.  When you get someone’s name lasered off your arm, y’all don’t really speak afterward.

fd: True.  Okay, so…Tim Burton will theoretically offer her a role in his and Johnny’s next pic.  And then it’ll happen. lol

slb: We should just stop.  Winona’s case is kind of incurable.  Or terminal. Because after the infamous reunion with Johnny, there’ll be nowhere else to go. That is her ceiling.

fd: Lol, yeah.

slb: Tim Burton is, like, her only friend at this point.  She should go to him.  And grovel.

fd: Yup. Case closed.

I’ve always felt Terrence Howard was a jackass, but this one takes the cake:

About the Chris Brown/Rhianna matter: “It’s just life man,” Howard said of the situation. “Chris is a great guy. He’ll be all right. Rihanna knows he loves her. They’ll be alright. Everyone has just got to get out of their way.”

Go choke on a pile of used baby wipes, asshole.

Anyone who really knows me knows what a huge Alias fan I once was. I have all five seasons on DVD. I will still watch bad Jennifer Garner movies on the strength of her work on Alias. And I mean really bad things. Like Elektra and Catch and Release.

My Alias love knew no bounds, which means anyone who appeared on that show during its run endeared themselves to me so much that I tracked (and supported) their career for years thereafter.

Said all that to say: Bradley Cooper used to be my homeboy.

As Will Tippin, the bespectacled reporter-friend of Sydney Bristow, Cooper was equal parts probing and patient and paranoid (and rightfully so, Sydney’s dad had to shoot him up with heroin in order to get him fired from his newspaper gig, after he snooped too much into their CIA double-agency and made SD-6′s assassination list…).

He was also in love with Jennifer Garner’s character and regularly said things to her like, “I don’t love you because of what you do or don’t do. I just love you.”

Bradley Cooper used to be awesome.

But then he left Alias and it was like one wrong move after another. (Mind you, I didn’t know his work before Alias. I hear he was great in Wet Hot American Summer or whatever, but that’s kind of beside my point here.)

Here are a few of the reasons Cooper’s racked up for induction into our infamous Tool Shed:

1. Leaving Alias in the first place–especially since he kind of did it on slightly pretentious terms. Let’s look at this IGN interview real quick:

“Cooper says that his departure from Alias was a mutual decision. “It was me, actually. It was a combination. We just decided that the character was going in a sort of corner and there was nowhere to go. So we [decided] the best thing to do was to not be on the show anymore and maybe come back and be able to do a lot in one episode as opposed to, you know, peppered throughout 22 episodes just fixing ketchup bottles and flipping pancakes with Francie. You know what I mean? And just saying, ‘Hey, how was your trip?’”

Um, here’s the thing, Brad. It wasn’t like you were a highly-sought-after, deeply well-respected thespian like, say, Chiwetel Ejiofor. Or Ryan Gosling. It wouldn’t have killed you to stay on a gig, collecting a steady check, being part of a convoluted and campy, yet deliciously entertaining spy family mythos, okay? You may as well have stayed and “flipped pancakes” if you were gonna be forced to take:

2. Kitchen Confidential as your next steady gig. This Fox dud about “a bad boy chef running wild in his NYC eatery” disappeared faster than Sydney Bristow after a completed mission.

3. Then, somewhere in there, you decided to take the role of Sack the uberjerky jock boyfriend of Rachel McAdams in The Wedding Crashers. You were starting to play tools, back to back. I sensed a pattern. Art imitating life, perhaps?

4. Somehow, you found time to meet, woo, and marry actress Jennifer Esposito all in the space of two years. Then you two divorced all in the space of four months. She filed.

5. I kind of stopped paying attention to you after that. But suffice it to say between She’s Just Not That Into You, where you play a husband cheating on Jennifer Connelly with Scarlett Johansson (of all people) and your unwarranted hosting of Tool’s Paradise: Late Night, also known as SNL, it’s really not lookin’ good for you, buddy.

6. Now we hear you might be dating Drew Barrymore which, if true, would make you the second costar she’s dating from that ridiculous-looking film, which seems to be set in a “Baltimore” where only three people are Black.

7. (Update!): Yesterday, we saw the trailer for your new film, where apparently you seem to be rejecting a pratfalling Sandra Bullock. Signing on for any film that requires the forty-something Bullock to behave the way she did when she was twentysomething, only *now* she has to cut her hair into an embarrassing blonde bob to do it, is a total tool move.

8. Did we mention Failure to Launch?

It is for these reasons and these alone that we warmly welcome you to the Tool Shed, my friend.

If you don’t know her yet, you will. She’s one of the few actresses we really like around here, so excuse us for setting aside our snark to draw your attention to her.

Maybe you know her as girl who claimed she could predict the weather using nothing but the power of her boobs in Mean Girls. Or maybe you came to love her in bloody-headed flashbacks as semi-skanky Lilly in Veronica Mars. Perhaps you think she’s the most sane member of the Henrickson family on Big Love.

But for those of you who don’t know her at all, know this: we’re almost willing to put aside our extreme hate of all things ABBA to see this girl do her thing opposite Meryl Streep (although feministdonut is probably gonna focus more on simultaneously gouging at her eardrums and swooning over Colin Firth the whole time. You know, priorities).

Anyway, we’ve been seeing a lot of her, looking starry-eyed and smiley in all these over-the-top ads featuring Meryl doing sky-high side splits or herkies and whatnot. And we’re hoping this will provide Seyfried with her star-making turn.

Trust us: she deserves it.

Why?  Why?  WHY?

Yes, there will be a Friends movie.  No, I will not be watching that train wreck.  I already got my fill of upper middle-class, white New Yorkers and their cutesy racist attitudes on the last go round, thankyouverymuch.

And honestly, what’s the point?  Do people really need to see what Ross and Rachael are doing ten billion years after the show ended?  Does Jennifer Aniston really need another shitty movie on her resume?  The woman attracts bad scripts like flies on poo.

Thank you, Sex and the City, for making every television show exec think they can take their crap show and milk frivolous American womenz for all the dispensable cash they’ve got.  (And according to exec producer Marky Mark, they’re mulling an Entourage movie as well…heads up.)

You know what I want to see?  A King of the Hill movie, I tell you whut.

Could you please hold off on announcing your pending new arrival until you’re starting to show? This is what normal expectant mothers tend to do. Aside from announcements to close family and friends, they like holding off on telling the general public that they’re expecting until the end of the first trimester or so.

See, if you wait three months, then we don’t have to spend a whole nine inundated with pictures of you buying really big frozen cappuccinos while some toolish journalist speculates on the possible effects of your caffeine intact on your unborn child.

It also means that, by the time you start showing, we aren’t already so sick of the “countdown to Baby Whatever” that we involuntarily gag whenever we see your Baby Bump.

To be fair, nine months really isn’t all that long a time for the lay-expectant mother. And under normal circumstances, it’s pretty easy to abide our pregnant friends’ blow-by-blow details and multiple sonogram pics.

But in Celeb Time, nine months is the equivalent of two years. And if you tell us within a week of you finding out yourself, when you’re seven months along, all we’ll be able to say is, “Ugh! She’s still pregnant???” and “HAVE THAT BABY ALREADY, YOU PAPARAZZI-BAITING HEIFER!”

Or, you know. Something along those lines.

We’re already there with these two:

This is just a general, preemptive request. We don’t want to have to get sick of the rest of you. And you know who you are.

Thanks for understanding.

Toodles!

P.S. Nothing is worse than being coy with the press about who the father is. So please don’t take your cues from Minnie Driver.

Another stupid celeb child name for the record books. 

Sigh.  Oh, Jamie Lynne…

Granted, it’s not as stupid as “Honor Marie” or “Apple,” but it’s stupid nonetheless.  It doesn’t help that Maddie’s the name of one of my favorite pit bulls ever, or that “Briann” looks dangerously close to “Brian.”

Other names that will scar celeb children for life:

*shakes head in disapproval*