One Week in Entertainment

By Glenn 

Writing about entertainment is almost as easy as being an entertainer. It takes no formal education or special skills, just a pretty face and a willingness to sink lower than any of your competitors. Every week the goal of my column is to make Perez Hilton look like The Economist in comparison. Tell me if it's working.

As the most fitting segue, Kings of Leon the band were forced to cancel a show in my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri last week because a pigeon pooped in the lead singer's mouth. In New York, that's the nicest thing a pigeon can do to you and even in Missouri it's taken as a "good sign." You can't stop creating art because something shits in your mouth - some of the best art involves shit!

Speaking of, King of Queens was a television show about the NYC Borough I'm moving to. One of its more talented stars, Leah Remini (who plays the Queen of Queens, in a manner of speaking), has completed or will complete at least two different comedy projects in addition to appearing CBS's "The View" knock-off with the love of my life Sara Gilbert. Leah Remini is the new hardest working woman in show business.

Another hard working person in show business is Jim Belushi. He has a new show called "The Defenders" with Jerry O'Connell, who I've always liked. Since David Cross was a special comedian to me during my formative years, I hate Jim Belushi just like he does. Ultimately I hope the show fails but maybe Jerry can move onto something better. It is about lawyers in Las Vegas.

Ellen DeGeneres quit American Idol, much like Michael Jordan retired from basketball in 1997. She will be focusing on her talk show and a little minor league baseball. Why she felt the need to take on another project in addition to her very popular talk show is beyond me. I guess she likes money too! Just like Sara Gilbert.

Now some positive news: Rob Lowe will be joining Parks and Rec full-on as a cast member when the show comes back. He was previously playing a Indianan bureaucratic version of his character in Thank You For Smoking, but hopefully it will be sussed out. Also, the October 14th episode of 30 Rock will be filmed inside 30 Rock. I worked briefly in Rockefeller Center earlier this summer and should be making a cameo on the show.

There is a new DVD-selling strategy happening on Amazon. Amongst some of our favorite stars and directors, you can get 4-movies-in-1 packages, such as this one by Sylvester Stallone. I never thought I would be able to get Stallone movies for $1.88, including Demolition Man - the movie he did most likely to come true. Even more so than Rambo or the one about his mom shooting you.

Finally, the wedding event of the SEASON is today in Rhinebeck, New York. It's an old-money town two hours north of NYC and the perfectly secluded spot for the daughter of two former US Presidents to marry someone she met in college. I don't know if weddings are right or wrong, but I know there is nothing more exciting than watch two younger-ish people getting married in front of their friends and the watchful eye of the political-entertainment media. One day when my nephew marries one of Obama's daughters, I hope I am invited to the wedding. I will use it as an opportunity to speak out on robot rights and why we should recognize our moon colony's declaration of independence.

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Summer of Hillary

By Keelin 



I.

After I finished my junior year of college in Paris, I packed up the English-language books I bought at W.H. Smith, my new flea market jewelry and the ten pounds I gained eating pastry every day and went back to New York City. I moved in to a rent-controlled apartment with my boyfriend at the time, who had graduated the previous year and was still vaguely trying to forge ahead with a career in the "arts." This amounted to taking occasional television production jobs, writing soap opera scripts on spec (ask me how many episodes of the now-defunct "Guiding Light" I've seen), and keeping up a nocturnal schedule of chain-smoking and brooding. I had two jobs. The first was an unpaid internship at a well-known magazine. The second was a work-study job on campus, checking tapes against transcripts for an audio archive my college library was compiling on September 11th. We were broke.



Friends encouraged my boyfriend, John (not his real name -- obviously), to take a temp position, a Wall Street job, wait tables -- basically, anything that might bring in some regular income and possibly offer health insurance. He dismissed these suggestions. For one, a "real job" might prevent him from getting his big break. Artists don't spend their time filling out Excel spreadsheets or something. He also slept from 8 AM to 4 PM, which severely limited his opportunities to find the kind of cubicle-based employment that keeps most people elbow-deep in lattes and khaki pants. So no office job.

This didn't leave a lot of other options for money-making. John occasionally tried to earn a little playing poker, but his skills were mediocre at best and he smoked so much while playing that any winnings went directly to Philip Morris. (The fact that he had a gambling-addicted millionaire best friend did not help things. The best friend's favorite story to tell was of when he brought the family Monet to school for show-and-tell without his mother's permission. No joke.) Every now and then, John would sell off something of moderate value on eBay -- some books, a piece of unused audio-video equipment. He once noted wistfully that his family owned some valuable artwork, but that it was tied up in a legal dispute between his father and his aunt and uncle. (It was a Max Beckmann painting. I saw it once, in Los Angeles. Sometimes I still wonder what happened to it.)

One early summer day I came home from my internship in Times' Square to find John smoking and typing with purpose while reading an article on the New York Times website. It was the middle of June in 2003, oppressively hot, three months into the war in Iraq, half way through the Bush administration. Everyone in Manhattan was wearing those awful mesh slippers from Chinatown and acrylic ponchos. What a time for the world.

"We should buy a bunch of Hillary's books and get them signed and then sell them on eBay," he said.

"What?"

"Like, tomorrow. She's signing downtown. We can go to Huntington on Saturday too."

"Where's that?"

"Long Island."

Hillary Clinton’s memoir came out on June 9, 2003. She was then the junior senator from New York and the majority of her book signings were scattered throughout the state’s most populous, electorally-friendly corners. The book was, in publishing-speak, “hotly anticipated” and there were questions about whether it could sell enough copies to recoup the eight million dollar advance Senator Clinton received. (It did and it did: the book sold over 2 million copies and made a lot of money.)

“Why?” I asked.

“I looked into this,” he insisted. “Thirty bucks a book. Then we sell them for two or three hundred each.”

“What if you can’t sell them?”

“They’ll sell.”

“What if you buy the books and you can’t get her to sign them.”

“It’s easy to get. We just need to wait in line.”

“Can’t you go yourself?”

“One book per person.”



I didn’t want to wait in line. Summer days in New York City regularly top 90 degrees, not to mention the fact that I was perpetually sleep deprived because John’s bizarre schedule kept me awake most nights. But I wanted to be supportive. (He was constantly accusing me of not understanding his “adult” problems because I was still in school.) And besides, we did need the money.



II.

Our first book signing was in Manhattan. We arrived two hours ahead of Hillary’s appointed arrival time and crowded into a line of Westchester matrons and young moms corralling ice-cream smeared kids. John had convinced his friend Sam to tag along and provide another book-bearing body. I couldn’t believe someone else was willing to stand in the sun for hours just to spend five seconds exchanging banalities with Hillary Clinton (and he wasn’t even going to get to keep his book!).


At the set hour, a black town car pulled up to the curb and disgorged the senator, who was hustled in through a back entrance and handed a pile of Sharpies. She had a blue pashmina around her shoulders to keep off the over-air-conditioned chill. (Oh, I’d see that scarf again.) All at once the line leaned forward like the wind bending a blade of grass, one smooth, straight movement. Hillary waved and pushed her sunglasses off her eyes.

The rules of the signing were specific and hilarious. Hillary would only sign the title page. Hillary would only inscribe your name if you wrote it on an index card first. Hillary was very busy, so please move away as soon as she hands your book back to you. (One time, John asked her to sign her "full, complete name," She scrawled out Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton over two lines. That book sold for an extra $50.)



Slowly – so slowly – the line snaked forward. After twenty minutes, we were in the door. After another ten, we were close enough to hug her secret service contingency. As we stepped forward, one of these stalwart agents asked us to open our book and flip the pages (to prove we weren’t concealing who knows what) and then keep the book open to the pre-approved, soon-to-be-signed title page. Then, at last, Mecca.

She said hello. I said hello. Her nearest secret service looked straight ahead. I’ve never had very strong feelings about Hillary Clinton (though I’ve become more of an admirer in the last two years), but meeting her was more exciting than I would have thought, mostly because the pulse-thumping of my fellow autograph seekers was so apparent and overwhelming. (I think some of them would genuinely have stoned us if they knew were there for purely commercial motives.) These people – women, mostly – loved Hillary, saw something of their own destiny in her college transcripts and her hairdos and now her ubiquitous (and ubiquitously noted) pantsuits. She handed back my book and thanked me for my support.







I waited a few feet away for John, who was behind me, to finish up.

“Let’s get back in line,” he said.

“Is that allowed?”

“Yes, I just asked. Hurry. Careful with the book, too.”

We didn’t make it back to Hillary a second time, but we did at the signings on Long Island and Harlem, where the crowds were thinner and things moved at a weekend pace. On each occasion, John invited as many friends as he could and an astonishing number of people good-naturedly joined us in line and then surrendered their books after their audience with Hillary. Once, John’s former roommate and a half-dozen of his dental school classmates came with us to a signing far up town and talked about tooth decay during the long subway rides back and forth.



I probably had about eight encounters with Hillary over the course of that summer. Each time I'd search her face for a sign of recognition. I never found any. Politicians meet thousands of people, shake a million clammy hands. It can't be easy to distinguish after a while. Then again, maybe she did know. We can’t have been the only opportunists she saw, cycling through the lines, polite but not passionate. In a word, impostors.

A month later we weren’t broke anymore.

III.


One August afternoon I came home to find a note on the stove – “Gone to Foxwoods with Pedro” (the rich best friend; Foxwoods is an Indian casino in Connecticut). I was rarely alone in the apartment and I felt, for a moment, the solitude of the place and of that hour of the day and that time of the year. Outside a child on a tricycle shrieked and pedaled a furious escape from his nanny. Before long, the street lights of the Upper West Side went on and the kids were all in bed.

Around midnight, the syncopated honking of a car brought me back to the window. Below John and Pedro sat in an idling red convertible, a disconsolate half-moon hanging overhead. I grabbed my keys and went downstairs.



“Where’d you get the car?” I asked.

“Rented it,” Pedro said.

I reached for the door handle, but John put his palm over it.

“We need you to look up where the nearest gas station is,” he said.

“What?”

“Can you go in and google the nearest gas station?”

I went back upstairs and looked up the gas stations on the Upper West Side, then shouted down my findings from our third story apartment. (This was before the era of smart phones; in fact, I don’t think I even owned a cell phone.) I saw a light go on in a building across the street and ducked away before the neighbor could tell me to keep it down. Out of sight the convertible revved and disappeared into the night.

In the morning, when I woke up, John was sleeping beside me and the red convertible was back in the rental lot. We broke up at the beginning of the next summer. I never got to ride in the red convertible. I never met Hillary Clinton again.

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The Truth About Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

By Jake 

When Katy asked me to fill in for her weekly movie preview column I was a bit hesitant. Then fate tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a ticket to an early screening of "Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore." I knew by the subtitle of this film that I was in for a wild ride, but even I could not have imagined just how crazy this movie would be.

Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
In the sequel to the sizzling 1996 hit "The Truth About Cats and Dogs," Kitty Galore returns from his long vacation in Siberia. Uma Thurman returns as Noelle, the character that made her famous, and Kitty Galore will stop at nothing to get revenge on her for running him out of the country.
Janeane Garofalo once again plays the shock jock radio star DJ Abby. While Kitty Galore was away, Abby became the number one radio personality in Wisconsin, the picturesque setting of this film. Abby invites Kitty to stay with her in her Milwaukee penthouse. Abby still has ill feelings toward Noelle due to the events of the first film.
What about the dogs? There are so many dogs in this film you will not believe your fucking eyes. Especially since this movie is in glorious 3D. That is one whole dimension better than the first film. When Noelle hears of Kitty Galore's plans to take her out in an interview on Abby's top rated show, she enlists the help of every dog she has ever met. The dog from Beethoven even makes a cameo, but the dog from Beverly Hills Chihuahua wanted too much money for his brief appearance.
I will not ruin the ending to this film, but it is quite possibly one of the most exciting climaxes committed to celluloid. I thought I was going to have a heart attack from all of the excitement, and the three chili dogs I got at the concession stand did not do me any favors either.

I give this movie a 9/10. It would have been higher, but knowing that the dog from Beverly Hills Chihuahua was asked, but did not appear, kind of took me out of the fantasy world created by this hilarious action/comedy.

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In the Heart of the Heart of Hypothetical Combat Scenarios

By Scott B. 



How does this piece fit in with the OYIT Guide To Summer? It’s a direct consequence of being trapped inside of a climate-controlled corporate office building. Avoiding the heat doesn’t necessarily mean avoiding crypto-fascism. Or Strangeness.

The scene begins with my trainee, an older Israeli veteran with a penchant for laying vague and circuitous nuggets of wisdom about the evils of Islam down on your brain stem. I call these arguments “OK…but let me blow your mind for a second”. After they’ve been expressed, you can usually find yourself staring back into an empty moon-face waiting for you to admit how blown your mind is and how your life will never be the same after experiencing the counter-intuitive raw naked truth of whatever racist/sexist/cliché/banal/embarrassingly conspiratorial stand that has just been taken.

Guy: Say that you’re on guard at night.

Me: OK

Guy: And you hear someone coming.

Me: I see someone coming.

Guy: No, no…you can’t see them.

Me: Why not?

Guy: It’s night!

Me: It’s the United States Army, I don’t operate at night without night vision goggles.

Guy: No, because then I could just shine a flashlight at you and blind you.

Me: That’s why you always keep one eye closed at night.

Guy: Hm…

Me: Seriously.

Guy: OK, you don’t have night vision…

Me: Fine…

Guy: What do you say to the guy coming?

Me: Stop.

Guy: OK, and then?

Me: Identify yourself?

Guy: No, you ask for a password.

Me: Ok.

Guy: He doesn’t know the password. What do you do now?

Me: I tell him to get on the fucking ground and put his hands behind his head. Then I call it up to higher for guidance.

Guy: No…he could be one of you guys.

Me: ? So…?

Guy: You would quiz him!

Me: No…

Guy: Yes! You would ask him a quiz to decide if he was an enemy or not.

Me: No, I wouldn’t quiz him. But to help you get to your point, say I quiz him.

Guy: What do you ask him?

Me: Something really specific that only someone working on the base would know. What’s your unit and commanding officer…

Guy: No.

Me: OK.

Guy: You ask him who the president is.

Me: Really?

Guy: Yes…and he knows.

Me: Surprisingly.

Guy: Yes! And now is he the enemy?

Me: OK, lets get this over with. I’ll say that he’s not because he knows that Obama is President of the United States. And you’re going to tell me that he actually is.

Guy: YES! Because the Muslim enemy knows more about us than we know about ourselves.

Me: Of course.

Guy: They study us closely. Because they’re jealous of us. Especially Israel. So so jealous of Israel.

Me: Like a prom queen.

Guy:…yes….

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Good Morning Chelsea Clinton

By Keelin 



Good morning, Chelsea. And, OMG, I hear you're totally getting married tomorrow! First of all, congratulations. We here at OYIT have pooled our resources to send you a lovely ceramic bowl from your registry and a python. Feel free to use them together or separately. Whichever you prefer. Secondly, do not panic. Sure, these nuptials are as stressful as a raid on Fallujah circa 2005, but nobody likes a stressed-out bride. So keep that in mind when someone is taking your picture with a telephoto lens from half a mile away.

Today's Chelsea Weather


Chelsea is allegedly getting married in upstate New York, which is lovely this time of year except for those freak thunderstorms that strike at the most inopportune moments, leaving you shivering and wet and clearing before you can even find a bridal tarp to duck under.

Today's Chelsea Etiquette Tips



Some guests may be wondering how to behave at this kind of exclusive and rare celebration. Here are a few tips:

+ DO: Greet the bride and groom at the reception.

+ DON'T: Tweet your prediction of how long the marriage will last.

+ DO: Compliment Bill on rescuing those journalists from North Korea.

+ DON'T: Ask Hillary why her sanctions on Pyongyang have failed to produce any notable political or social changes in the region.

+ DO: Arrive on time and cooperate with all security procedures.

+ DON'T: Pull out a handgun and ask why liberals hate the second amendment.

Today's Chelsea Mystery Guest



That's right -- it's Kim Jong-Il! He gives the best presents.

Today's Chelsea Prediction



Chelsea and what's-his-face will have a wonderful life together. One day, as predicted, Chelsea will decide to embark on a political career of her own. In order to avoid the long shadow of her parents, she will relocate to Canada. After much campaigning and hard work, she will become princess of Ottawa.

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