![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]()
Madonna "Sorry" video. Watch Madonna's new video for "Sorry," second video of "Confessions on a Dance Floor," below. Opinion blog. Sometimes I can't believe Madonna's actually wearing those leotards but then I look again and check it out -- she really is wearing those leotards. Okay, cool.
|
Features
Past updates March
2006
Sites I enjoy: Entertainment
Weekly That's
right.
I know only four people who have blogs. Lame. Ask
Why Not
|
Annie Barrett is a writer living in New York City. Annie Barrett. Annie Barrett is probably insane. Annie Barrett doesn't care. TH |
Okay.
2.5)
I remember being really impressed by a girl in my fourth
grade class who said her favorite vegetable was eggplant.
I immediately started glaring at her because I assumed
she was lying -- I'd never heard of eggplant and I knew
everything. I think she was a Jehovah's Witness. My answer,
I sort of recall, was "carrots," which wasn't
even true. I just needed to say something and have the
teacher move on. I used to be shy (and apparently unconcerned
about showing bad taste in veggies). I obviously need to move on to a less complicated show.
That's what Jay Manuel, right, is in the process of saying to a girl on Top Model who is swingnig around while wrapped up in in a dirty net with dead fish, over a "harbor" that may or may not really be in Thailand. The jury's still out on whether the models were magically transported (via an appropriately trippy plane with their headshots in the windows) to a foreign country or just a giant bamboo-infused set in the greater Burbank area. Anyway, I hate Jay, but appreciate his existence if only for moments like this, when he insists on fanning himself with a doozy from the box marked "ETHNIC PROPS" while verbally torturing the models. Hmmm. Is it doozie, doozey, or doozy? It's probably not even any of those.
It's
the details that make this joke of a show bearable and
often delectable. Above, a makeup artist who (we're to
believe) impersonates Tyra in his free time came in to
talk to the girls as "Ty-ra Banks (Sutan in drag)."
Five seconds later, the actual Tyra (omg!) sauntered in
to claim her rightful identity as "the real deal."
Okay, here's the part where readers who don't care about this show but are still reading this post because I refuse to put it on a separate page...hey guys! should tune in again. Look at how excessively large the text of "thailand" is. No capitalization, no emphatic punctuation. Who was the tool in the graphics meeting saying "Let's make it take up half the screen"? There's no need for this. I really think the country's name is that big simply because Tyra deigned to associate her name with it.
To spice things up, I'll go off on her in the style of a junior-high essay contest: --- Q: What is Tyra Banks, besides pure evil? Use a form of the word "metaphor." (300-500 words.) A. Tyra Banks is more than Tyra Banks. Tyra Banks is a thundercloud-like persona which has metaphorically swallowed up Hollywood, the "modeling world," and recently an abundance of bon-bons. Having digested and converted these various realities into something more up her omnipotent alley, the cloud squirts out small Tyra-shaped pellets every seven days. Just like rain. Tyra's
shit don't stink, so we get access to it. The pellets
are the weekly episodes, which supposedly have to do with
a modeling contest and the girls involved with that. Ha!
People can be so naive. --- I sure hope I win! Also Merry Christmas. I'm seeing Stick It! as soon as possible.
I
went to Boston this weekend and apparently forgot I owned
a camera about an hour in. Our takeout food must have
arrived and completely clouded my brain with its deliciousness
and low cost. My friends also had an on-demand karaoke
channel. That threw me a little off. The
yogurt and mix-ins list, usually on the back page of a
fold-out menu, makes me so happy. It's something so random
and unnecessarily gratuitous, but whose existence I appreciate
so much. Like olive oil on the table right when you sit
down, or the movie Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's
Dead. This yogurt/mix-in phenomenon comprises a significant
portion of my affection for Boston. I love Boston! So
I must like the yogurt a whole lot. If you've ever stored something in something wacky, please do share.
I'm gonna wake up in the morning and be so disappointed in this post.
MY
DVR/LIFE PARTNER DID NOT TAPE TOP MODEL.
I'm so much sadder now than I was in the library. And look how sad I was there! There wasn't even water in that bottle, and all my snacks were gone. Don't you just want to feed me iceberg lettuce and discounted Reese's eggs? For some reason, "sadder" is striking me as possibly not a word. But that's crazy talk. I'm going to leave it. Of course it's a word. My perception of what a word is is effed-up right now anyway. If I have to read over-inflated academic words like "metastable" and "disequilibrium " all night, I'm sure as hell going to say "sadder." Also "funner." So instead of the Top Model Ten, I'll leave you with a prime example of those pesky Grad School Sentences Annie Pretends She Totally Gets: "Immanentist, de-individuating, posthumanist ontologies might be said to enact their own paralyzing rhetoric of addiction: deterritorializing responsibility, they ensure the transnational consumption of compulsion." Exactly. I coudln't have said it any better myself. (Because I don't know what thirty percent of the words mean. Right. Supersmart!)
I'm mildly obsessed with iceberg lettuce. I like the sound it makes in my mouth -- it's as if I'm accomplishing a great deal just by crunching down on it. If I buy it in "head" form, I'll cut it in half, wash it, sprinkle salt all over the cross-section, and just go to town. It feels like my face just decided to take a dip into the ocean, independently of the rest of my body. Maybe this paragraph should end. Here's the point: Around 1 a.m., when it was clear no one else would be coming back for seconds (in my case: fifths) of the iceberg lettuce salad, I decided to take matters into my own apartment by stealing all of the remaining salad mix. I couldn't find a plastic bag, so I settled for the paper bag the plastic silverware had come in. That is disgusting. I knew this at the time, but try to guess whether it stopped me. Spoiler alert: Don't look down! I'd give anything to see security camera footage of me pouring the salad into the paper bag. Actually, first I used the plastic scooper, then I lifted up the tray and attempted the pour (harder than you'd think!), and finally I just started grabbing the excess leaves with my hand. Add to this my glamazonian frame and complete inability to be stealth at anything, and it was a pretty funny scene. "Funny" meaning "I should be fired."
This verdant treat, in addition to the 40,000 chocolates sent by Dee, made Sunday a very Happy Easter indeed. Bonus points for the shredded carrots and withered cabbage, two things I enjoy looking at in salads but never bother to buy. Why do the colors of these items matter more to me than their tastes? I'm like a little kid. Ever stolen any food from work? Coffee creamer doesn't count. Unless you lifted the whole bottle and brought it home. And if that's the case: Bravo!
What is the point? Why do gloves with holes at the fingertips and/or bandages wrapped around the majority of the hand make said hand look tougher? Do guys wearing some type of HA prefer sharing high-fives with other pro-HA specimens, or does that get weird? If you have more layers of hand accessories, are you cooler than the guy with just a wristband? And seriously, is there any part of the body at this point for which one cannot purchase an accessory? If anything was sacred enough to be relatively safe from trends, I'd think it would be the meaty part of the hand. It has so much character already. Duh. You know? If you haven't caught on yet, the reason Annie never gets anywhere by leveling with the teens is that all she's actually doing is asking them questions they won't answer. Because they're teens. They're so surly. It's obnoxious. This edition of "Annie Levels..." has been brought to you by Rohypnol, a gnarly drug featured on this week's episode of The O.C. All the cool kids are doing it.
Get yer Top Model Top Ten right here. The short blog entries for Jane are on this page under Music and Celebs. They say "Annie." As you know, I adore celebs. Music's okay.
Last night I watched the most amazing show in the world: The Secret Life of... Brownies on the Food Network (right). I can't even focus on that photo for longer than a second without losing my breath. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I could live without the possibly styrofoam Michigan State-related atrocity in the middle, but oh my god, look at the rolling plains of plain brown to its right. I just want to shrink down, do a cool track-start dive, and go swimming in there for a while. I don't think anything could make me more happy. So it's settled. Before I die, this is what I want to do. If you love me, make it happen. Thanks.
PLEASE be patient while it loads. I promise it's worth it! At least I'll be able to sleep at night: someone found this site by searching "I want a drink that taste like marshmallows."
If there's a random show you enjoy, or can't stand, or feel guilty about watching, or discuss every week with the only other person you know who knows about it, I should probably take a look. Hmmm... I'm all set for so noTORIous and Footballers Wive$ for Sunday. And keep in mind I would probably delete your comment if you suggested that I try this awesome show called Desperate Housewives. This paragraph sure is doing a great job at motivating people to leave comments! Of course, The O.C. doesn't count. I'm already on it. Thanks!
Early faves in the South Slope include a deli and supermarket, both named "Royal," right across the street from each other. The supermarket has a throw rug near the register that says "The Deli" and features accompanying cartoons of sandwiches. There's also an extensive selection of Soft Baked. I can honestly say I don't think I'll be shopping anywhere else.
Find out why she's evil. Or just take my word for it and move on. You're way too cool to care about this show.
You're welcome.
But then a friend gave me some store credit and so I decided to go. I mean, I wanted to get a not-too-expensive dress for my friend's wedding and so I decided to go. I mean... a teenager dragged me off the street and into the store so I decided to go... Fine. I just decided to go to Forever 21. Rebecca had told me the clothes were cheap and "basic enough, if you can get past the bullshit." I liked the sound of that! So I went. Shoot me.
FOREVER 21 MAKES YOU FEEL OLD. I went into this store taking its name pretty literally. "Oh, that's cute, I'll feel 21 again if I shop here," I thought. "Nostalgia! Yes!" No.
All of the under-21s in the store were so tiny and perky and smushable! I seriously thought I could stomp all over them and clobber them to death, and not because of my towering height. I'm used to feeling more elevated than people. This was different. I imagined the sheer force of my 25-and-higher hagitude casting a wicked spell on the kids. They'd lie there, wriggling like tiny cockraoches under the steady stream of my Mature Woman disinfectant spray. The nozzle would be set to the shower-like setting instead of the jet dagger, so I could get to more of them at once. Still, I didn't necessarily want to kill the teens. It was more the type of situation where I felt guilty for existing in such a ridiculous space with creatures like them in the first place. This was their natural habitat, not mine. I didn't belong! Who was I kidding, thinking the store's name was all-inclusive? The teens were laughing at me on the inside! Is this how parents feel, all the time? Gross. For some reason, I hadn't considered the teen overload as a possibility. Except for ubiquitous NYU undergrads, I don't see too many youngsters around my 'hood. Now I know why: they're all in this store. Maybe they live there. .
Now Forever 21 has two reasons to want to ban me: that comment and their apparently not so strict anti-photography rule, which a disinterested salesgirl outlined to me near the register. She was like, "There's no pictures." I said, "Okay," the long version of which was, "First of all, you're wrong because I just took 32 shots elsewhere. But okay. You didn't say no photos, so I'm going to dart around you in 30 seconds and photograph the inexplicable atrocity hanging from the ceiling."
I don't get it either. They could be going for a number of themes. --Uncalled-for Kitsch. (You're going to stare at different-sized fetuses floating in a puke-green ether, and you're going to enjoy it. Love, Management.) ANNOYING. --Youth. (Shop here and you'll feel younger.) WRONG. --Infancy. (Your presence in our store has reduced you to the level of a newborn. You lose.) DING DING DING.
The Wall of Words further downgrades the clientele. If they're not infants, then they must be quasi-literate grade-schoolers who more often than not take things "for granite." The words and phrases appear in the escalator area, so that customers can squeeze in a quick vocab lesson (containing imaginary words) on the way up to formalwear, most of which is polka-dotted. I must have stared at this wall in shock for maybe three entire minutes before thinking to take a pic. Yes! Journalism!
And yet... I'll probably go back.
I've just gotten around to watching last week's House and Boston Legal. I don't know why I watch these shows. They record themselves independently of me at this point. I would edit my list of series-to-record (it's now up to 34) but I just don't have the time. My time could be much better spent... watching one of these 34 series.
That outburst is wrong for a lot of reasons, including 1)
it implies that everyone watching is already obese No matter what your diet is, there will always be "something else" that may be responsible for obesity -- yours or anyone else's. You don't even have to be eating it at the time. But it definitely couldn't hurt. The really crappy part of this promo, for me, was that I was eating my way through a giant box of Kirschbaum's tea cookies (translation: "cookies with frosting") when I heard it. I was actually so focused on the cookies that I wasn't even watching the screen. I started laughing just from hearing the words, and little crumbs (of the cold hard truth) scattered all around me in my bed. It was sexy. This was at 8 in the morning. I'd been up all night working, and now a commercial on ABC was telling me that something else in my diet -- give or take the box of cookies perched on my right knee -- may be responsible for my obesity. This is getting morbid and sad, so moving on to House...
Check out Dr. House's list of previously recorded programs:
Of course he watches The O.C. He's quirky, and quick-witted, and a doctor. NEWSFLASH: DR. HOUSE IS AWESOME! This is beginning to sound a lot like my April Fool's post. I'm a little perplexed as to why The O.C. recorded on two Fridays instead of Thursdays on House's DVR device. These Fridays also seem to be 17 days apart. This is because House lives in a fantasy realm where he sounds like an American and has to use a cane. It's so much fun! During the scene, zany House and his friend made fun of how many episodes of The New Yankee Workshop House had stored. They never alert us to the fact that zany House has also taped The O.C., and the screen was only shown for two seconds. Viewers with keen eyes had to discover this bounty of Fox-being-cute on our own. I just realized that I have finally provided an actual service to readers. I watch 34 television series so you don't have to, and take low-quality photos of the screen when I think something that in all honesty is only funny to me will be of great benefit to others. Some would call that magnanimous. I would call it... Monday?
I've been meaning to get some things off my chest. --I think I should become a more healthy eater, so I'm turning vegan. No more candy! And thank god no more cheese. Cheese is just nasty, especially when it's smothered over nachos. --I wish people would just say what they mean. --Sometimes, when no one else is around, I find myself thinking that hipsters are cute. They're so small, and skinny, and colorful. They're like Colorforms. I loved those things. We intellectual snobsters just have trouble admitting to ourselves that hipsters are the most creative people in this city. --Why does everyone keep hating on Ryan Seacrest? I think he's kind of cool. Just a normal guy, trying to get by in a Hollywood that doesn't give him nearly the attention he deserves. We should stop making fun of him, because who are we? We're not better than him. --You people who download music illegally need to stop doing that, because it's wrong.
--Uptown Manhattan is awesome. I should hang out there more. So many fun bars, restaurants, and the people! Ah, the people. It's a rockin' part of the city. --McDonald's has mozzarella sticks now, and I for one think that's gross. I've definitely never ordered them in the two-story branch on W. 44th and 8th Avenue. --iPods are overrated. I'm not obsessed with mine, and it's sick if you are with yours. Get a life. Click here to solve the puzzle.
On The O.C., Seth and his alcoholic mother mirror Arrested Development's series of "Motherboy" jokes, likely without ever realizing it. Check it out. This week: humorous photo captions! Next week: the world. I'm much more thrilled about the captions.
Yes, I still refuse to use any pictures on this site except for low-quality camera phone ones and ones I take of my own TV screen with a real camera, but sans flash. So aesthetically and content-wise, this site is pretty much a lose-lose. But this makes sense. Note the title. I'm just trying to adhere to a theme.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
© 2006 Annie Barrett and Diminishing Returns.
NYC writer and blogger. Annie Barrett is a writer in New York City. She does morning-after commentary for The O.C. and The Real World on EW.com
Annie
Barrett ... when I was interning at Entertainment Weekly. Annie Barrett.
ishing Returns. Annie Barrett. Diminishing Returns.
Annie Barrett and Diminishing Returns. Annie Barrett and Diminishing Returns.
Annie Barrett and Diminishing Returns.
Annie Barrett. --Annie Barrett. Oh Annie Barrett, you're diminishing, Annie
Barrett.∑
Annie Barrett is a graduate student and writer living in New York City. Nachos iPod danish entenmann's blog boston college