MONDAY, MAY 17
Calling all Retin-A Rangers! Cameron Diaz is under another acne attack! Send more Clearasil, STAT! It was another horribly humiliating week for the dermatologically challenged Diaz, who experienced a skin-care crisis at the Cannes Film Festival at the opening of her animated movie, Shrek 2. As regular readers of this column know, poor Cammy is often plagued by the scourge of acne, particularly during stressful situations–though she must have done something really awful in a previous life to deserve zits of this magnitude. Nevertheless, according to an inside source, a team of beauty experts were rushed to her hotel in an attempt to repair the damage. “It was a case of ‘all hands on deck’ to make her look like her normal self,” said the snitch. “They worked for ages to give her a perfect complexion.” The Bush Administration has also reportedly enlisted the help of Cammy’s beauty team to put a better face on his situation in Iraq, but according to the dermatologists, “Hey… we’re not miracle workers.”Meanwhile! If Cammy wasn’t already having enough problems at the Shrek 2 screening, her boy-toy Justin Timberlake and aging heartthrob Antonio Banderas were holding hands during the movie and sobbing uncontrollably. Banderas was sitting between the twosome at the screening, and… oh, let’s just let him explain it. “There’s a very romantic moment at the end of the movie,” Antonio said. “My character [in the movie] says, ‘I want to cry,’ and I was crying. Justin was to my right and said to me, ‘I’m crying, too!’So we held hands for a while. Cameron was just looking over like, ‘These guys, what are they doing?'” In a related story, today Massachusetts became the first state to allow same-sex couples to marry.
TUESDAY, MAY 18
Today stage and screen actor Tony Randall died in his sleep at the respectable age of 84. Leaping into the public eye with roles in classic ’50s sex romps like Pillow Talk, Let’s Make Love, and Lover Come Back, Randall made his biggest mark in the ’70s with his role in the television adaptation of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, as fussy Felix Unger. Randall continued acting all the way to the end, with regular performances alongside the National Actors Theatre and a cameo in last year’s Down With Love–which by the way is absolutely darling, regardless of the fact that it stars Renee Zellwegger. However, Randall’s greatest accomplishment was when he amazingly managed to impregnate his wife (who was 50 years his junior) at the ripe old age of 77. WOW! Watch your ovaries, ladies. Though his body may have left us, there’s a very good chance his sperm lives on.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 19
You’ll be happy to hear that the campaign to continue kissing the ass of former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani is alive and well among members of the 9/11 investigative commission. After grilling top members of Giuliani’s fire, police, and emergency management officials on Tuesday, for their failures during the tragedy, commission members flipped the script and played it strictly nicey-nice with the former mayor. Commission chairman Thomas Kean stopped just short of tossing Giuliani’s salad when he said, “New York City, on that terrible day, in a sense was blessed because it had you as a leader. A great, great leader to take charge of a terrible, terrible event.” When family members of 9/11 victims who were sitting in the audience began to heckle, Kean shouted them down. “You’re simply wasting time at this point,” he said. “No, YOU’RE wasting time!” the family members shouted back. Never one to waste a patronizing remark, Giuliani expressed sympathy for the family members who made the outbursts. “I knew that would happen,” he said. “I attribute it to the stress and trauma they’re going through.” See? Sometimes even great, great leaders have terrible, terrible days.
THURSDAY, MAY 20
And speaking of terrible days, it was reported that Paula Abdul, American Idol judge and author of the greatest song ever (“Cold Hearted Snake”), almost lost her thumb in a tragic manicure accident. The former singer is suing her manicurist, claiming the woman botched her nail job, causing such a serious infection that the thumb was in danger of being amputated. Reportedly, doctors at the famed Los Angeles Cedar’s Sinai Hospital (Nail and Cuticle wing) were forced to surgically remove the entire thumbnail. Abdul voiced her woes on the TV show Celebrity Justice. “I’ve had manicures forever, and I’ve never run into any problem like this, so it’s kind of frustrating.” Frustrating is right! Not only is the salon denying they did any damage, but it could seriously damage Abdul’s career as well! How is she supposed to give a thumb’s up to every American Idol singer while wearing Lee Press-On nails? Meanwhile! Nobody panic, but half-twin jailbait Mary-Kate Olsen was in a car accident today, after her own bodyguard rear-ended her (not as dirty as it sounds). Forced to slam on her brakes thanks to construction on an LA freeway, her bodyguard, who was following a bit too closely, rammed into the back of Mary-Kate’s Range Rover. Though she suffered no apparent physical injury in the fender bender, Mary-Kate was in a state of shock and was revived only after a passer-by gave her a Diet Dr. Pepper. Thousands of miles away, at the exact same moment in New York City, her twin Ashley Olsen weirdly reported feelings of being “overly caffeinated”–though that could have been the cocaine talking. KIDDING! KIDDING! JUST KIDDING!
FRIDAY, MARCH 21
See if you can solve this exciting ethical story problem! Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia was court-martialed today for refusing to return to Iraq because he opposed the abuse of Iraqis at a holding facility in al-Assad where he had been stationed. Mejia went AWOL in October and hid for five months before turning himself in to the military. Keep in mind that the administration has put the onus of the prisoner abuse scandal on soldiers who should have spoken up against the abuse but didn’t. Keep in mind also that Camilo Mejia did try to speak up against the abuse before he went AWOL, only to be rebuffed by his superiors. Q: What was Camilo Mejia’s sentence? A: The maximum! One year in prison, reduction in rank to private and a bad-conduct discharge once he’s out of the big house!!! For extra credit, write a five-paragraph essay on the nature of hypocrisy.
SATURDAY, MARCH 22
Today, in an event troublingly analogous to current foreign policy, President Bush took a header off his mountain bike. The Associated Press reported that he scratched his chin, upper lip, nose, right hand and both knees, and that he would be wearing a bandage on his chin for a day or two–so don’t freak out when you see it in pictures! He was wearing a helmet so it is believed that his stunning intellect remains intact. Despite his tumble and against the advice of his secret service agents who practically begged to give him a ride back to the ranch, the President insisted on getting back on his bike and continuing his wrong-headed journey into the annals of historical fuck-ups. Whee!
SUNDAY, MARCH 23
The New York Times reported today that several teachers across the country have been suspended for showing video of the beheading of Nicholas Berg to students as part of current event curricula. Shh. People don’t actually die in wars. They just go to a resort in Oahu where they wait out the war in three-star luxury. Really, kids. President Bush doesn’t want you to worry. Nicholas Berg is fine. He never actually had a head. It was all just a very silly misunderstanding.