This one is a no brainer. She is the kiss of death for films on top of being horsey, untalented and bitchy. Thank goodness that whole Tom Cruise thing is over, I was really getting sick of her whining. She was worse than Sharon Stone complaining about people making fun of her husband. Hello, easy target, he married you, didn’t he?
Nominated by me for reasons previously discussed, including but not limited to, lack of a sense of humor, excessive whining, and failure to make decent movies (not to mention her extremely annoying poor sap of a husband).
I always knew California existed on a completely different universe than the rest of us, but sometimes they out do themselves. Two recent school related stories have surfaced from the great state of confusion, both are equally disturbing.
One is of a stripper mom forced to choose between her job and her daughter’s school. You see, her daughter attends a “Christian” school, and when the school found out what the mom does for a living, they threatened to expel her daughter if she doesn’t quit. Let me get this straight, you, as a “Christian” school, would rather expel the daughter than keep her there and try to educate her in your “Christian” ways? Shouldn’t you be trying to keep her there to “save” her rather than turning her away. Call me crazy, but that doesn’t sound very Christian to me. Personally, I hope the mom doesn’t quit; the mom’s job has nothing to do with the daughter and if the school can’t see that, not only are they not very christian, they are not providing a very good education either.
The other story is of a new school policy requiring students to have proof they will be pursuing college, the military, or trade or technical school in order to participate in graduation. I am all for encouraging kids to continue on to college, but what if they don’t want to or they can’t? Why should they be denied an opportunity they earned. Graduation marks the end of an era and a beginning of your adult life, denying students who completed their course work the opportunity to graduate just because they don’t plan to attend college or join military service is wrong. What happens to single mothers or young families that need a job to support their household, or what if you are Mormon and you need to take a year off to fulfill your religious duty? What if you can’t afford it or you just don’t want to go? What if you just aren’t smart enough? Why should you be forced to lie and temporarily enroll in a school you don’t plan to attend just to be allowed to walk down the aisle with your class. The notion is outrageous.
In the spirit of fun and my universal disgust with everything, I have created a banishment category for my page. Any one, any where is eligible, all they have to do is annoy me or one of you. I will get us started, but you may submit your own request at any time by e-mailing me who you wish was banished and why. Of course, as always, you may agree or disagree with the choices by using the comment form, but please refrain from extreme flaming and excessive cursing or I may edit and/or delete your comments.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, Virginia is renowned for its advanced studies in Math, Science, and Technology. Its students are the best of the best, national merit scholars, top internships, cutting edge research, these kids are our future. Every year thousands try for enrollment in this magnet school, only hundreds make it. The curriculum is intense and fast paced. Students are admitted based on aptitude, interest, and ability to pursue the subject matter in college. Now the school board and some of the parents of Fairfax County want to make admission contingent on race or at the very least geography. They feel not enough African American and Latino students are admitted to the school; therefore, the students who currently attend are being educated in a vacuum. These parents are advocating the school’s current racially blind admission policy should be circumvented to allow a better ethnic and social breakdown of the school. I can’t think of anything more ridiculous or harmful.
Why do I care? I have never lived in Virginia and I don’t plan to, but to make a school adopt racially biased admission policies regardless of who it favors is insane. This school is for the smartest kids in the nation regardless of race, creed or religion. Yes, I am white; Yes, I went to private schools all of my life; No, I am not, nor will I ever be smart enough to attend Thomas Jefferson High. But I do find myself asking, “would you really want to go if you couldn’t meet the admission standards and your classmates could”?
I agree, something should be done to open up the school to a more ethnically diverse student body, but the solution is not to allow students with less academic ability into the school. The solution is to improve the education available to middle and grade school students to create a better, more diverse crop of students for tomorrow. You can’t raise children in mediocre schools with poorly paid teachers for 9 years and then drop them into a high tech learning enviroment and get results.
Regardless of the education the students receive, there will always be the natural ability factor, some people have it in math and science and some people don’t. It is simply a fact of life, no race or admission policy will ever change that, but we can improve the number of students with that natural ability who are taught to develop and use their skills fully by improving our school system as a whole. Education starts from your first day on earth, not when turn 14. The sooner we realize that the better our children’s world will be. We must continue to raise the bar, not lower it to serve the under-educated among us.
Forget “Must See”, NBC (now referred to as the Nothing else Better Channel) announced their “stunning” fall line-up today. Truth be told, I still haven’t forgiven them for cancelling The Pretender a few years ago, but exactly what market are they after, the one foot in the grave? I haven’t seen a less imaginative, less appealing line-up in years. They renewed all their stand by hits, but I am sure the story lines will remain uninspired, and they did almost no house cleaning for some fresh ideas (Just Shoot Me got renewed and Dateline is still on the air). The very, and I mean very, few new shows they did add are stock and boring; worse, they are cast with has beens, I thought he was dead, and who the hell is that guy actors? For god’s sake, 15 year-olds aspiring to be dancers on American Bandstand? Break out the Geritol, must see really is must flee. Just think, a mediocre freshman comedy (Scrubs) gets to take on the coveted post-Friends slot, and the kiss of death for all sitcoms, (think Conrad Bloom, Caroline in the City, and Fired Up) Mark Feuerstein, is getting his own Thursday night comedy (after Will and Grace). Again? Hasn’t he killed enough Primetime? What NBC exec does this guy have dirt on? He gets more chances to blow a series than the entire cast of Seinfeld! Let me close by saying Donnie Wahlberg in Boomtown? There are only two words remotely redeeming about this show’s description, Jason Gedrick, unfortunately, he has his own kiss of death curse to work out. Can you say flatline? Someone please send NBC a case of Vivarin, clearly someone has been sleeping on the job. On second thought, maybe they don’t need it afterall, I predict these guys have a lot a sleepless nights ahead of them.
I don’t usually write on Sunday’s, but today I will make an exception for two very special people in my life.
First, Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! Even though you don’t have a computer, and you wouldn’t know how to turn it on if you did, I just want to say thanks for always believing in me and never giving up on me. You may not be the perfect mother all the time, but you are always the best mother anyone could ever ask for. I love you.
Second, I want to say congratulations to my baby sister on her “official” graduation from college (technically she graduated in December, but who’s counting?). I know you worked very hard for this day, and if you ever get discouraged, just look at yesterday’s rant and think about the good things in your life. You are a beautiful, young, “college-educated” woman who is about to open the door to the rest of her life. Close this chapter, leave the past in the past, but cherish this moment. You will look back on it fondly. Most of all, have fun and remember how strong you had to be to come this far. Never forget, the measure of true success is happiness. Way to go, Weezie! P.S. tell Mom what I wrote, I want brownie points for internet sentiment!
This really isn’t a rant, more of an observation, but I saw something today that should cheer up anybody having a bad day. I’ve been a little depressed lately and kinda feeling sorry for myself, but this definitely helped put things in perspective. I was headed to the movies with my husband, and since we seldom go to the movies on Saturday night, we decided to try out a new theater. On the way there, we passed a trailer park (scary, I know), but in this trailer park, right on the someone’s front “lawn” was a Dead End Street sign. How depressing is that, you live in a trailer in Parma, OH and every day you come home from a hard day at work and there’s that sign staring you in the face? Talk about a downer. How can you live like that, knowing you’re on a dead end street? Come on, hitch up your trailer and drive it somewhere else, that can’t be good for the children. The universe is clearly trying to send you a message and you ignore it every day of your life?
While I’m on the subject of trailers, why does every trailer park in America have a street called Sunset in it? Is there some code I missed? What’s up with that? I have a lot of experience with tornado magnets, I grew up in Alabama, but I just don’t get the Sunset thing. If anyone out there has a theory on this one I’d really like to know.
P.S. Yes, I did go see Spider-man again, but it was for a good cause, my husband hadn’t seen it yet. Alright, I admit it, I was going to go anyway, but it sounds better if I had to take him. When does it come out on DVD?
P.P.S. Props to the excellent civil servant aka cop who pulled us over after the movie, he didn’t give us a ticket, but he did make sure we weren’t driving drunk. You know us wild old people, give us 2 hours of Spider-man and we’re erratic for days. Seriously though, way to keep the streets safe officer.
More than 1,200 morons from this great planet have visited petitiononline.com to sign a request asking Lord of The Ring’s director Peter Jackson to change the name of the next installment of the trilogy. Apparently, these bottom feeders feel The Two Towers is too remniscent of the Twin Towers disaster and the movie should be renamed. Some of them go as far as saying New York should be renamed or the words “world”, “trade”, and “center” should be removed from our vocabulary. What? Maybe they should look in to getting a padded cell because that jibberish isn’t going to get us anywhere. How can you re-name a book written and conceived years before the World Trade Center was even built? I am not even going to address the utter stupidity of petitioning to change the name of a city or words in our vocabulary. There is no way an intelligent, rational human being who currently resides in reality can address such a ridiculous notion.
Even if we never saw another picture or uttered another word about September 11th, we would never forget, and we shouldn’t, but we should move on. Certainly, we have to be realistic about the appearance of these “reminders”. Everything can be a reminder. Should we ground all airplanes and switch to traveling by bus or train so no one is reminded of that terrible day? Be reasonable, some things are in bad taste, others things simply exist in the world. You can not change them, so stop trying. J.R.R. Tolkien’s book just is, get over it. It has nothing at all to do with September 11th, the World Trade Center or anything else except a series of really entertaining books which it might do your brain some good to READ. If you signed that petition, trust me your brain needs some exercising. I guess this proves the old addage about losing what you don’t use true. Brain cells are a terrible thing to waste. Step away from the computer, rejoin society, and you will get your mind back in time for the movie, I promise. Otherwise, please don’t crawl out from your hole again, frankly, you are scaring the rest of us.
Anyone who knows me, knows there are two sure things in my life, I have no use for Sharon Stone OR Nicole Kidman. This week I have done two things I never thought I would do-I willingly bought a magazine with Nicole’s face on the cover (People), and I am about to talk about her on my web site. Well, her “stalker” anyway.
Matthew Hooker the man she alleged was her stalker and obtained a restraining order against is suing her and over 80 publications for character defamation. It seems Mr. Hooker is planning to run for president in 2004 and having the moniker “stalker” isn’t helping his image any. He also claims Nicole made the whole thing up to revive her fledgling career. He seeks damages totalling 200 million dollars including the profits from her movies The Others and Moulin Rouge. Also named in the suit are the L.A. Times, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates (get in line), Microsoft, 20th Century Fox, Miramax, and many, many others. He claims Nicole’s restraining order along with the media’s descriptions of him makes him seem mentally unstable or disturbed and a threat to women and children, not good presidential material. Hey buddy, I hate her, and I’ve got news for you, you’re not good presidential material. You are a wacko. Stop wasting the court’s time with absurd lawsuits because all you are doing now is proving her point. It is not funny, it’s sad. Clearly, you need to seek help, Mr. President. Good luck finding that great love with one woman before you get elected. I’m sure both of those things are gonna happen any day now. Keep holding your breath!
Who’s got the Prozac?