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unique visitors since July 27, 2005 |
124 of you have voted, but only five of you have guessed that the cranky celebrity of the day is ... OPRAH!:
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Her lawyer's email and my response after the jump – and I will update as warranted.
And yes, the threat came from an actual lawyer, not from a minge, although the two terms are virtually synonymous anyway, right?:
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Continue reading "Shot Through the Minge, and I'm Too Late" »
Descending from on high to a heavenly choir of keening housewives, earth mother and prophet, the Oprah, graced the jabbering monkey pit of the View to spread her wisdom and beneficence to all her adoring disciples. Starr Jones Reynolds rendered an almost eucharistic oral polishing. Buffy Walters stood, bowed, deferred, and wandered in tongues, as is her way in the face of deific celebrity.
Fresh off her ascension to the throne of the Almighty, the Oprah incarnated at 10 AM this morning to promote her upcoming ABC special, Legends Ball. If any of us mistakenly believe She means the title eponymously, She will forgive us. It has been several years since Our Lady of Godiva has walked this plane as mere mortal. She transcends legend, and should any doubting Thomases disbelieve, Gayle King will bust your knee caps. When Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu drew too close to the Oprah's secrets . . . let's just say they were found face down in the Chicago River, bodies mutilated nearly beyond recognition.
So, by multiple reader request, Oprah on the View. (the graphic, naturally, provided by Mal)
[Watch video – 13:08, WMV format, high bandwidth]
[Watch video – 13:08, WMV format, low bandwidth]
Given the sparkly bent of our genetic code, it goes without saying that we here at Malcontent are big fans of Kathy Griffin. Whenever a commercial airs promoting the upcoming June premiere of her Bravo show, My Life on the D-List, we're given to deep sighs and daydreams of one day earning an invitation to become one of her gays.
As a taste of things to come, everyone's favorite fagnet hits the boards with her latest stand-up special, Kathy Griffin: Strong Black Woman. In these highlights, Kathy dishes about her rapid pink-slipping from the E! Red Carpet Special, celebrity rehab, her feud with Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise's meltdown, who us gay folk lust after, Anderson Cooper, and the greatest things about Oprah.
Catching the entire show on Bravo is highly, highly recommended, if only for her total re-enactment of being locked out of a hotel room without any pants, and a backstage session with Celine Dion that includes autographs, photos, and light petting.
[Watch video – 11:57, WMV format, high bandwidth]
[Watch video – 11:57, WMV format, low bandwidth]
The cast of Will & Grace kicked off their week-long farewell tour on this morning's Oprah, offering up interviews, favorite clips, and a host of banter and secret sharing that isn't nearly as revealing as some people might wish.
The most awkward moment is absolutely Oprah's question to Eric McCormack about being a straight man playing a gay character, as the crickets chirp and the camera pans to a Sean Hayes who has no intention of touching the topic with a stolen Cher wig.
Instead we're treated to thoughts on defecation and other assorted things. While Will & Grace broke many barriers when it originally aired, I admit to have gone off the show as soon as the idea of Grace having a baby took over the running plot. The introduction of Leo and the increased pseudo-seriousness eroded the show's humor, tenor, and characters until I began to forget it was even on. Over the past four years, I might have seen three full episodes.
Still, it is worth remembering what the television climate was like when Will & Grace premiered. Ellen had gone off the air because of the concentration on her sexuality. We were living in the age before Queer As Folk and the L-Word.
If Will & Grace is stale and has run its course, the cast and crew still deserve to take their bows. When people are looking back at the age of the gay rights movement and how open gay culture finally entered the mainstream of American society, this is a show that will rightly belong on our little pink wall of fame.
Video clips deleted at demand of Jeffrey Friedman, attorney for Oprah Winfrey
Oh Oprah, how I adore her. She is the woman of a thousand inappropriate moods.
With the tantalizing episode title, "A Pro Football Player's Secret Shame," I tuned in this morning to see whether or not this was perhaps a decloseting of some kind. In fact, the entire show was themed life-long secrets.
The football player's shame? Being raped when he was young. After a tortured, tear-filled confession, "Dr. Robin," Oprah's stand-by pop psychologist, appears to give contorted, barely perceptible "advice." The audience stares and shifts awkwardly as the "psychologist" waxes poetic about damaged souls. Finally, the football player smiles uncomfortably, having just disclosed on national television the painful secret that he was raped by another man.
Then - I swear to God - Oprah smiles, punches the air, and "Wooos!" her way into commercial.
The next guest's secret shame? She grew up poor. Tch, sister, take a number.
Update: We apparently have the clip. Uhm, I was on vacation that week?
Returning both to his roots and the story that made him a household name, Anderson Cooper once again graced Oprah's Court this morning in a quasi-reunion with fellow Channel One alumn Lisa Ling. The pair followed up on the victims of Hurricane Katrina six months after the storm, finding people living in conditions little better than Third World refugee camps.
Here, Anderson has wisely decided on solid reporting that speaks for itself, rather than the unmuted hysteria and rumor-mongering of his original, error-filled Katrina freak outs - where unchecked emotionalism became the new objectivity in national media circles.
It's a depressing, poignant piece of cross-marketing (hey, folks may be homeless, but the boy does have a book to sell, people).
The second half of this clip is a bit of Malcovision schizophrenia. I was busy tapping away at work while recording, and I inadvertantly caught the intro to today's View. Look, it's a bunch of Chippendales dancers prancing around in Vegas. Enjoy the beefcake as a tonic for the soul destroying Katrina footage.
As Star Jones and the others tease producer Bill about his stripper credentials, I couldn't help but wonder if her questions might better be directed towards her nominally hetero hubby, Al "The Stallion" Reynolds.
Video clips deleted at demand of Jeffrey Friedman, attorney for Oprah Winfrey
XM Satellite Radio is paying Oprah Winfrey $55 million, AKA "Stedman's allowance," for what essentially amounts to a day or two of carpet-bomb publicity.
And what do they get in return for the channel to be known as "Oprah and Friends" and set to launch in seven months? They get half-an-hour a week, 39 weeks a year, of taped programming from Oprah herself.
The rest of the year's 8,760 hours will be filled with such notable radio personalities as Bob Greene, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Robin Smith, Marianne Williamson and Nate Berkus. In other words, "Oprah and Friends" will be 0.223 percent Oprah and 99.777 percent "friends."
So what will listeners actually hear from Diva O?:
Winfrey said during a Thursday teleconference that "we have until September" to figure out the format of her show, but she did say it will reflect her typical chats with longtime friend (Gayle) King.
"Gayle and I have said for years it's a shame other people couldn't be in on the conversation sometimes," Winfrey said. "It will be about what's going on in the world, and just us talking about it the way we talk about it, as girlfriends. . . . I think that Gayle and Oprah reality radio is going to be a huge hit."
The fact that Oprah has given essentially zero thought to her radio content hints that this is something of a panic move by XM. They had been riding high with more subscribers and greater profitability than their slow-off-the-mark competitor Sirius. But XM was outperformed by Sirius in the fourth quarter of 2005 in new subscribers, and its stock price shed nearly 40 percent in the same period.
Oprah's TV show bags a lot of A-list celebrities, but unless her guests write a fraudulent "nonfiction" book, her interviews somehow manage to leave us knowing less about the interviewees. That is, when she's actually interviewing her guests and not launching into her typically self-indulgent pedantry.
So what genius at XM thought that the most tedious elements of Oprah would also be the most entertaining?
The Official Anchorman of Gay America dropped by Oprah yesterday, a program that in recent days has also seen Her Worshipfulness grant her imprimatur to rose-stemming cowboys and cross-dressers.
I got the sense that Anderson Cooper was there at least partly in an attempt to out-compassion Oprah herself. Even when she tried to steer the discussion to his personal life, he immediately spun things right back into funereal sobriety.
The result was a relatively staid affair that I had hoped to post in its entirety but instead have hacked down to the barest of essentials. Of at least mild interest was footage of an already-graying 23-year-old Cooper covering the Balkans War for Channel One.
I'm pretty immune to cults of personality, so I never quite understood Cooper's incredible following in the gay community. Maybe it is as simple as, "One of our own makes good."
I deeply admire his dedication to overlooked causes like the plight of the African continent and his Everyman anchor persona. But his leaden self-seriousness and carpet-bomb overexposure make it seem that Cooper is a man who is beginning to believe his own press.
What I was hoping for, if not a Coming-Out moment, was at least some of his trademark ruminations on nail-biting or the bath he is taking on his condo sale. But what I got instead was a hearty helping of "Anderson Cooper, Crusader."
Video clips deleted at demand of Jeffrey Friedman, attorney for Oprah Winfrey
Living in Chicago, it goes without saying that Oprah is our queen. When not berating authors who've duped her highness, she's also airing her show in my hometown long before it reaches the rest of the country.
As a result, we get to bring to you something of a MalcoVision exclusive. This morning, the stars of Brokeback Mountain graced the most famous couch in America to discuss the movie, making the sex scenes, gay marriage, stereotypes, and working through homophobia.
See what Jake Gyllenhaal did the night before getting naked with Heath, and what Heath had to offer.
Video clips deleted at demand of Jeffrey Friedman, attorney for Oprah Winfrey
UPDATE:
In the show's second half, Oprah brought out Tyler Perry and his alter ego, Madea Simmons, to promote the upcoming movie "Madea's Family Reunion," which is scheduled for release on Feb. 24.
Video clips deleted at demand of Jeffrey Friedman, attorney for Oprah Winfrey
Much more on Tyler/Madea at Rod 2.0 ...
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Oprah "Cherishes" Dave |
After a 16-year absence, the grand dame of daytime television returned last night to David Letterman's show.
After making a Valerie Cherish-esque entrance (I will always associate that pose with her, even in cancellation) to a standing ovation, Oprah stuck around through four segments, at the end of which Letterman escorted her out of his theater and to the home of the new musical "Oprah Winfrey Presents: The Color Purple." (If the Broadway run is a success, I hear she will be "presenting" the rest of the colors of the spectrum.)
Despite a rumored feud – denied by both – the mutual up-sucking couldn't have been more deafening.
Favorite personal revelation: Oprah and I have the same favorite children's book, "Love You Forever
[Watch video – 9:11, WMV format, high bandwidth]
[Watch video – 9:11, WMV format, low bandwidth]
