The Malcontent

I'll Pretend If You Will

Oddly enough, I saw this the other night: Teen Fatally Stabbed at Oak Forest Party

Well, saw in the sense that I mosied past the scene, watched the crowd, wondered what happened as an ambulance pulled away. It's a quiet burb, and something like this doesn't happen very often. I've even been in that very house, many, many years ago at a classmate's third grade birthday party.

The story, of course, is the usual rundown you often get. Nice kid, well-liked, killed tragically. Fairly cursory media coverage.

Then there is the comments section on the newspaper's website. They've since done some scrubbing, but it was kind of amazing that the commenters were explaining what happened in far more depth and detail than the reporters. The deleted comments laid out a story of drug dealers, cocaine, and money gone wrong. What's stranger is the editorial choice to clean the comments about the victim while leaving intact the one about the suspect.

It's just interesting how we report these things. Assuming the deleted comments were truish (and they seemed plausible to me from what I know of the situation), it seems we often scrub the bad out of any seedy story, pretend as if these events are random and unexplainable. As if a drug deal gone wrong is as unavoidable as a bolt of lightning falling from the sky. With Chicago sunk deep into an epidemic of youth murders and violence, the local media seem to have elevated this sort of papering over to an art form. One story last year detailed a twelve or thirteen year-old kid murdered for cash. The coverage was the usual "My baby was a nice boy and never did anything wrong." Flowers, vigils, the victim well-liked and friendly, smiling in school photos.

And partially running an illegal gambling ring with ties to drugs and gang violence.

But they'll get to that. Eventually. After everyone has moved on to the next tragic story.

Isn't part of solving a problem admitting you have one in the first place? If the media can barely bring themselves to mention the causes for the violence, why do they keep pretending to ask what they are in those banal, soul-searching editorials about the horror and mystery of it all?

I'm all for sensitivity to victims, but at some point the constant, pitying whitewashing starts working against uncovering what is wrong with this city.

Simple Explanations, Etc.

I've long thought the criticisms of Sarah Palin were always far more about her detractors than about her. Listen closely to the people who hate her most, and it doesn't take long to find their insecurities and bigotries bubbling to the surface.

There's quite a bit of that happening in the wake of her resignation, and countless experts are certainly spending entirely too much time on this inconsequential figure explaining why their neuroses are justified entirely by the vaccuum of knowledge they seem to have accrued about the woman.

So naturally, I must give this sort of speculation a go. Here's why I think Palin resigned.

She had to pay to go to work. Seriously. $500k in attorneys fees for frivolous ethics complaints by petty, vindictive political opponents? If I had to wake up every morning, stumble into the office, and then pay them $100 an hour for the pleasure of dealing with any of my co-workers, I'd be out. Hell, out? I'd not have shown up at all. My alarm clock would be met with a middle finger and a baseball bat.

It wouldn't be strange or bizarre or erratic or <insert mystery synonym degrading to women here>.

It would be the commonest of common sense. All of us would do it.

See? There's my explanation. And it didn't even require a imaginative, hallucinatory journey up her birth canal brought on by heavy doses of steroids and other assorted, uhm, medicines from demented barebacking lunatics.

I'm pretty sure I win.

God Love Her

I still adore Sarah Palin. I can't help it. Not for her political brilliance, mind you, but for her curious ability to drive certain misogynistic, anti-semitic lunatics right off a cliff.

It's like standing in the grocery store, watching a small child fling cans of soup from shelves while dangling off the cart. The parent is fuming and would very much like to beat the child right there in the aisle. But they can't because you're staring straight at them with an expression of barely suppressed glee while the voice in your head is chanting, "Please lose your shit, please lose your shit," like a nascar fan praying for a car crash.

Sarah Palin is my supermarket superstar. She drives all the right people crazy in all the best ways. Her politics are awful, her qualifications for office non-existant, but anyone who can make so many self-puffed douchebags go that shade of scarlet cannot possibly be all bad.

Thanks, Gwyneth!

I've insomnia, I'm exhausted, and I hate her, so why not.

Gwyneth Paltrow speaks almost perfect Spanish - and she does it with an Iberian accent.

But no matter the language, Gwyneth Paltrow will still manage some fiercely self-obsessed bullshit.

The Oscar-winning actress says she traveled to Spain as a teenager, fell in love with the country, and embraces the culture to the point that she visits at least once a year and makes sure her young children, Apple and Moses, also speak the language.

Which is a good thing, because once they're free of your pointlessly eccentric grasp, Apple and Moses will realize their names look fucking ridiculous in English.

"When I was 15, I went to a small town outside Talavera de la Reina and I had the most wonderful experience. It really changed my life," Paltrow said in fluent Spanish during a recent interview.

"I'll never forget the day Santiago gave me madeira, and made a woman of me, and made me wear that ridiculous hat, and told me I was a really good actress."

"It is so different from the United States. It seemed to have a history, and the buildings are years and years and years old. Here in the United States an old building is about 17 (years old), and over there it's from 500 B.C., it's incredible," she said.

Eddie Izzard, call your attorney.

"Also, the way people live over there. They seem to enjoy life a little bit more. They aren't running around as much as in New York. They enjoy time with the family. They don't always have their Blackberries on."

Of course they enjoy living there more. Unlike Americans, they haven't been mercilessly subjected to your films. And I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I keep my Blackberry on just so I can be immediately texted the very instant that you finally go away.

Paltrow remains close to the family she lived with in Spain, calling them "my Spanish mother" and "my brothers" from Spain. Her success as an actress, she says, hasn't impressed them.

And you still aren't taking the hint! And who wrote this article, the national tourism board? A Spanish family from Spain who also live in Spain. Spain!

The 36-year-old actress, who is married to Coldplay's Chris Martin, says she talks to her children in Spanish.

Wait, she knows Spanish? I wish they'd mentioned this fact earlier in the article, otherwise I wouldn't be so adrift in this cold darkness where I'm somehow unaware of Gwyneth's dazzling linguistic abilities. Did I miss where she - or this reporter - were hired by the Rosetta fucking Stone?

"Moses speaks a little bit, but understands everything. Apple speaks a lot," she says.

Mostly to social services, in chilling tones of quiet desperation.

Paltrow shot "Spain ... on the Road Again" with chef Mario Batali, cooking expert Mark Bittman and actress Claudia Bassols. They traveled throughout the country, sampling traditional foods and praising the virtues of Spain, its people and cuisine.

But mostly they praised Gwyneth's amazing ability to stammer out an "hola".

She's also writing a book on U.S. cuisine with Spanish influence that is due out next year. " ... I love food, I love to eat," she says. "I can't go on diets. I have to do a lot of exercise."

Because that's who I turn to for cooking advice - bulimics.

She also enjoys Mexican, Italian and Japanese food.

Especially on its way back up.

Has she considered acting in Spanish?

You poor Spanish bastards from Spain. Run!

"I would love to. I haven't found the script yet, but the first (movie) would have to be a small role, not very important, because I imagine I would have to get used to acting in Spanish," she says.

Oh, fuck it, this is too easy.

Paltrow says she'd like to work with Spanish directors Pedro Almodovar and Alejandro Amenabar and Mexico's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. And she says she would like to work again with Mexico's Alfonso Cuaron, who directed her in 1998's "Great Expectations."

To low box office returns.

She is now shooting "Iron Man 2," in which she reprises her role as Pepper Potts. "We're all back together: Robert Downey, Jon Favreau, the director. And Scarlett Johansson is with us, Mickey Rourke. ... It's a phenomenal group, we are having a great time."

Forcing a recovering addict to interact with Gwyneth Paltrow is just cruel.

Anyway, this was wildly inappropriate and pointless, but a great deal of fun. I feel much better now.