Boo Hiss

Sometimes, I really love Roger Ebert [on Hilary Duff's Latest flick]:

"The Perfect Man" crawls hand over bloody hand up the stony face of this plot, while we in the audience do not laugh because it is not nice to laugh at those less fortunate than ourselves, and the people in this movie are less fortunate than the people in just about any other movie I can think of, simply because they are in it.

Cold War Redux

The Evil Empire may have been hobbled, but their base treachery continues unabated.

New England to declare war on perfidious russkies within one week.

Later Still

Have ya'll seen this movie Fatal Attraction? Is Glenn Close supposed to be sexy? I'm not watching this.

Better Late

Man, have ya'll seen this show, Felicity? It's pretty good. I bet if they had a show like that several years ago when I was starting college, I would have really liked it.

Con-valescent

We have a new problem on U St. And this one has nothing to do with Joe. There's no delicate way to put this. It seems this little corner of our nation's capital is, of late, and wherefore I know not, infested with a gang of motorized wheelchair thugs.

I say thugs because they look like thugs, and because Kriston's crazy German neighbor confirmed that at least one member of the gang earned his wheels in a shoot-out out back, some time past. They're young, they're mean, and they all have matching motorized wheelchairs in which they haul ass down the avenue, occassionally twirling around, 80s breakdance style, except um, parapalegically instead of on backs. And when they get together, it's like the Hell's Angels on Medicaid, because there'll be six or seven of 'em blazing a path down the middle of the road (sidewalks can't hold that kind of bad), matching Atari joystick controllers full throttle ahead, and only trouble behind. I am terrified of them. Perhaps you find it insensitive to be terrified of wheeled persons, to which I can only say, you have not seen Return to Oz.




(There's supposed to be a photo up there. I can't imagine why it's not showing. Foiled again!)

The Piano Man

I must have missed this story when it broke seven weeks ago, but it has the makings of an absolutely bone-chilling, creepy movie.

To sum: seven weeks ago, this man was found aimlessly wandering an Isle off Southern England. He wore a drenched tuxedo from which all labels had been removed. Even his shoes had identifying brand marks taken out. He appeared to have lost his memory, or at least, he didn't speak a word. Nobody knew who he was, where he came from, or why he was wandering the shores, soaked, anonymous, mute.

He was taken to a hospital where the staff gave him a pen and paper, hoping for some identifying mark. A name, a nation's flag, anything. He drew an intricate rendering of a grand piano.

So the hospital staff took him to an upright piano where he shocked them with a four-hour virtuoso performance.

The whole thing gives me the heebie-jeebies. I hope somebody's working on a movie script, and I also kind of hope not because it will make me wet my pants. Look at him! If he came out of a well and said "seven days" I would disintegrate.

You Cruise, You Lose

Ah, Tom Cruise's galactic meltdown almost makes me want to start going to Pub Quiz again, if only to hear the team names. Anyhoo, I knew from the following intro sentence that I was about to read some great stuff. And so I did.

Now officially dangerously insane Tom Cruise was on the Today Show this morning and what began as a typical media tongue kiss about War of the Worlds quickly ramped up into the greatest interview ever...

Enjoy!

UPDATE:
I see the gossip mavens at Unfogged beat me to it; complete with more juicy quotes!

Internet, Internet on the Wall

Let it not be said that I let you down on your vain solipsistic needs. Always wondered if blonde would make you more "Grace Kelly" or "stripper"? Wonder what chopping it all off would do? Now you don't have to go to a skeezy mall kiosk to find out! All you need is something like a headshot of yourself and a boring job. My new toy.

In case you were wondering, the answer to the above questions for yours truly are:
1. Stripper
2. Make you a dead ringer for Liza

Raven hair and iron straight is the winning look for me. And no you can't see. I'm shy, internets!

I Watched Basketball

Well hurrah for San Antonio.

A few quibbles.

1. Holy sweet mother of our lord Jesus Christ, can we KILL THE QUEEN MUSIC. Better yet, will somebody else PLEASE pen a catchy tune that includes the word champion, and deliver us from evil?

2. How does Tim Duncan still look sad even when he's smiling? I get all guilty-feeling when I look at him, like the weight of the world's sorrows are on his shoulders and he's about to die for my sins or something. (also: why does he speak like Richard Pryor's white guy impression?)

3. In sum, though, Duncan came up huge in the second half after having the worst playoff series of his career, and Manu Ginobili had another breakthrough performance Thursday night to lead the Spurs past the Detroit Pistons 81-74 in a Game 7 that was as thrilling as it was rare.

Ha, ha, just kidding. I only watched the last 4 minutes. Oh ho, ho.

There's a Tear in my Beer

Jim Henley is cataloguing songs that make him cry.

I don't think that a song has ever come close to making me cry. There are songs to which I turned for empathy when I already happened to be crying, but a song has never triggered that kind of reaction from me of its own accord.

But then, I am kind of a robot. I am moving out of my apartment this weekend; granted, I've only lived in this one for two-and-a-half years, but that is the longest I've stayed in one dwelling since I lived with my parents in high school. I love my little apartment and I'm sad to leave it. As I gather the spillings of my life from the last few years and shove them into boxes, I keep waiting for the melancholy. It never comes.

I'm just not really much a cry-er. (With some exceptions, as chronicled previously.) But I have nostalgia like a motherfucker. I think I gird myself in the moment to resist sentiment, and store it all up for later. I confess that I am already devastatingly nostalgic for the year in Georgia that I have not yet had. That's right, I begin reminiscing events before they happen. In times like that, I think of Galway Kinnell and the advice he gave to people like me:

[from Little Sleep's Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight:]

If one day it happens
you find yourself with someone you love
in a café at one end
of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
where white wine stands in upward opening glasses,

and if you commit then, as we did, the error
of thinking,
one day all this will only be memory,

learn,
as you stand
at this end of the bridge which arcs,
from love, you think, into enduring love,
learn to reach deeper
into the sorrows
to come – to touch
the almost imaginary bones
under the face, to hear under the laughter
the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss
the mouth
which tells you, here,
here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

The still undanced cadence of vanishing.

She Said, She Said: Police Abuse Edition

Today I learned yet another life lesson that should be crushingly obvious: don't complain about DC cops to your Turkmen intern.

I told her the story of how I was stuck on V St. behind two cars that were stopped in the middle of the street so that their owners could yell at each other. They wouldn't move out of the road, they ignored my honks, and I couldn't back out. Then, a cop car pulled up in line behind me, also needing to pass along V St. He started his sirens, trying to get the two cars to move out of the way, but they wouldn't. The cop stormed out of his patrol car, and then rather than go and clear out the blockade up ahead, knocked on my window and demanded my driver's license. He ignored me when I asked what I'd done. Then his radio called in a shooting and he had to run, so I never found out what, exactly, I had done wrong in getting stuck behind some short-tempered road hogs. The injustice! The corrupt, bullying arrogance!

She nodded sympathetically, then told me of the time she was robbed of $1200 in a Turkmen market by a cop. She was trying to buy a computer, and the cop got away with enough to live on for months. Indignant, she went to the police station to complain, and they threw her into a cell in the wall that was the size of a dog kennel. She couldn't stand, and it was cold, and she doesn't know how long she was in there. Eventually they took her to an interrogation room and bragged of the things they could do to her as punishment for her wild accusations. Her Dad is a higher-up in the interior ministry, so she replied that she didn't care what they did, they would all be fired and their sons would spend their days in prison, and they could take the money and shove it up their asses.

They figured out whose daughter she was, so they let her return to the capital, where she lived. But not alone. They sent an escort with her, who told her that he had no problem killing her, he'd done it plenty of times before. She knew that when she landed in the capital, the escort would not just let her go happily on her way. He was shadowing her for a reason, and it wasn't to see her safely home. In the small regional airport where she waited her flight to Ashgabat, she noticed a businessman that she'd met once before. She approached him and asked if she could sit with him, while her escort hovered nearby. He was happy to have a pretty young girl to flirt with, and she entertained his overtures in return for what protection he could give. When they landed in Ashgabat, the escort grabbed her arm and tried to drag her bodily away, but the businessman barked and shoved him off and took her home safely. The police started calling her house and leaving threatening messages, and she put on her heaviest coat and laid down on her bed and didn't move for a day and a half. She left the country illegally and she's not sure if she can go back.

So, right. I suppose almost getting a traffic citation unfairly isn't the worst thing that can happen to you.

UPDATE: On the other hand, if the best that DC's finest has to say for themselves is "we're better than Turkmen security services," then we've already lost! Is this the standard we set for ourselves? Seriously. If I told you my V St. story, and didn't tell you that it was perpetrated by DC cops, you would think that this outrage took place on the streets of Tashkent or Kabul, would you not? I mean, if I threw in a line about false imprisonment and death threats, anyway.

Gain Theory

Proposed:
There exists a direct correlation between the acquisition of an intern and dollars spent on internet shopping.

Corollary 1:
Damn you, Nordstrom.com!!!

Q.E.D.

Mama Mia

Yesterday, my Mother said a remarkable thing to me.

My Mother is a wonderful Supermom beamed directly out of a fifties sitcom. She sewed our clothes when we were young; we never had a store-bought halloween costume (including my sixth-grade turn parading as a barrel of oil to protest the first Gulf War - that took some ingenuity on her part); she was PTA president at least once at every school I ever attended; to my eternal horror she chaperoned our band trips to Colorado and Galveston, and she considers it a crippling indictment of her motherhood and femininity and a betrayal of her core belief system when she does not have time to make dinner and is forced to take us to a restaurant.

When she calls, the most pressing problem is one of the following:
"Do you have a round cake pan?"

or

"What food will you want when you're in town?"

Mother is an absolute Goddess of the domestic realm in a way that I could never hope to achieve. She raised three kids and half of our friends to boot. When one of my old pals gets a promotion or engaged, his/her own parents are notified, and then my Mom. She very nearly tried to adopt one of my friends with an unpleasant home situation, and instead settled for buying him a half-page ad in his senior yearbook. What I'm trying to say is, she's an amazing lady. She is not, however, particularly interested in politics or global events.

When I went to Georgia last year, I called to check in upon landing.
"Susan. I found Georgia on a map."
"That's great Mom! So, can you find Tbilisi? That's where I am, and tomorrow..."
"Susan. I don't like this."
"What do you mean?"
"Georgia is very close to Iran."
"Yes, but it's not exactly like going from Kansas to Nebraska. They don't have a ton to do with one another."
"Well, don't try to go to church because then they'll know you're Christian."
"Mom. Georgians are Christians too. They're not going to blow me up."

My Georgian friends got a kick out of this, but I merely cringed for my upcoming Tajikistan trip where she would see that small country nestled in a confluence of horror where Afghanistan and Pakistan and Kashmir and China all seemed to curl into one another.

But there isn't much that Mother won't do or learn for her little nestlings and so I was thrilled during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine when Mother reported the learning device she had shared with her trio of morning power-walking Moms to keep track of the key candidates.

"They both start with 'Y,' but the good one ends in 'O.' That's how we remember. We just laughed about how we wouldn't have any idea what was happening over there if you weren't going!"

A gaggle of suburban Dallas women power-walking and shooting the shit about Yushchenko and Yanukovych? I think that's pretty sweet.

This is where she started to really surprise me. And now mother, who doesn't like to leave suburban Dallas to go as far as Downtown Dallas; Mother, who when coming to visit me in Chicago one spring drove clear around the city, miles out of the way, to avoid any contact with the actual city; Mother, who has only left the country one time—to visit her other daughter who was studying abroad in Prague; Mother who loves her large grocery stores and her parking lots and her familiar, comfortable world; Mother is planning to visit me in Georgia.

She is excited about this adventure, and mark my words, come hell or high water she will bring me Gebhardt's chili powder and Adam's Best Vanilla Extract, and woebetide any customs official that stands in her way.

And finally, yesterday, while chatting with Mom about desserts and recipes and family illnesses, she let it rip:

"I hope you're not planning to go to Azerbaijan for their November elections. It's getting really heating up there and I don't think it's going to be safe."

Holy cow. Mom busting out the South Caucasus inner-turmoil-revolution-copycat knowledge. I was so floored that I forgot my usual reassuring devices and blurted out, "I know! It's probably going to be violent! I really want to go!"

And then I remembered it was Mom I was talking to, and I've now promised that I will not step one toe in Azerbaijan or she's telling Grandma. Last time I crossed Grandma and tried to return to Ukraine and miss Christmas, she shot me with her super psychosomatic Grandma power and gave me mono two days before departure. I have no doubts that the Atlantic Ocean and the whole of Europe will pose zero geographical deterrent to the reach of her powers, so I suppose I'll behave myself.

Neurotica

Strolling down U St. yesterday afternoon, Kriston and I passed by the grime-covered, dilapidated storefront of Exotic Pleasures—a depressing, lurid establishment that seems to have weathered a great deal, but never a customer.

K: Guh, how does that place stay in business?

Me: I know. Who would want to fulfill their pleasures there?

K: Wasn't there one of those by your old house in Austin? It was all hip, and...

Me: ...earthy, and "Oooh, I'm so comfortable with my sexuality." [pause] Although, I imagine it would be strange to have an exotic pleasures store that was not comfortable with sexuality.

K: That would be pretty great. A repressed sex shop.

Me: Yeah, your toy could come with flagellation devices so you could go "Oh God, I hate myself!"

K: And the videos they sell would just show a man and a woman sitting on a bed, and him going "I swear this never happens."

Me: And she's all, "Oh, it's really okay! It's normal!"

K: And then that's the end.

Me: The name of the store could be: Crying While Masturbating. For Catholics.

Vacuous

If the bacon post below wasn't clue enough, I hereby confirm that I've nothing of interest to say. I apologize for the bacon question, but at the time, I was really very curious. I used to be curious about Russian literature and quasars and social organization, but now? I just think about bacon and worry that the Katie Holmes/Tom Cruise debacle will not be resolved by the time I leave the country.

Poll

The topic is bacon sandwiches. Who had them as a youngster? And were they served by your mother or did you make them as a snack for yourself?

Ringwraith

Last autumn, Clarissa announced the date of her wedding. It would be October 1 of the following year. She'd selected her cadre of bridesmaids, the site of the service as well as the reception, and while certain details remained—colors, officiant, honeymoon destination—it was all very well in hand.

But perhaps that overstates the case. In fact, there was one more detail: her boyfriend had not proposed.

As autumn chilled into winter, and the question remained unpopped, Clarissa steamed. "These places book early!" she wailed. "Should I just go ahead and reserve them?" The tactics became more creative, the intent less subtle. She told him how romantic she thought it was to be proposed to in a horse-drawn carriage. Not because she thought so really, but because carriage rides are a winter thing to do. Her direst fear: he would wait until Valentine's to propose, and with so little time before the big day, she would be forced to reschedule everything.

In late December, Clarissa's man packed up his car, kissed her on the cheek, and then drove straight into Texas oblivion. When he returned a week later, his head was clear and he asked her to marry him.

Nowadays, interspersed with the usual e-mails from friends coordinating the logistics of the day's beer-drinking are the e-mails from Clarissa. Clarissa e-mails me about strange things like down payments, showers, decisions made jointly, and lately, the timing of her future children. Offspring! Jesus, ten minutes ago this girl and I were passed out in a public park with crusty Guinness moustaches because we'd forgotten to book a hotel room in Ireland on St. Patrick's Day. And now she's procreating? Heavens. Worse still: she's sorting through potential names and promised me that she wouldn't use Audrey. She knows that's mine.

Mine? Name? What? She seems to be confusing the alias I used while working as a 21-year-old bartender for a cherished hypoethical fetus burbling up spit bubbles in sepia-toned daydreams. No! No girlchilds for me!

Clarissa, you always be my dear friend, but you simply must stop harshing on my extended adolescence.

Text/Subtext

On my lunch break, enjoying a savory empanada at an outside table where seating is tight. Eating slowly so I can linger longer and enjoy the book in which I am immersed. A young man walks up and asks if he can use the extra chair at my table, as no others are free.

Text:
ME: Please, go right ahead. [back to book]
HE: ...so. What are you reading?
ME: [is he serious?] Um. Just some essays. [back to book.]

[2-3 minute pause]

HE: So, may I ask what it's about?
ME: What?
HE: The book. What's it about?
ME: Just essays. About writers and historical figures and stuff. [back to book]
HE: Oh. So, like short fiction, huh?
ME: No. Non-fiction. [back to book]

[I finish the last of my food and get up to leave.]

HE: Okay, great talking to you. Have a nice day.

Subtext:
HE: May I pull up a chair?
ME: Sure, but I will clearly signify, by intent reading and furrowed brow, that I am not interested in conversation. Enjoy your lunch.
HE: I will flout all rules of common decency by intruding upon your table and rather than respect your politeness with silence, I will distract you from your obviously fascinating reading with inane, irrelevant questions.
ME: Are you blind? Are my clipped, curt responses too ambiguous? Is it not obvious that I have zero interest in any verbal interaction whatsoever? Do you fancy yourself more interesting than Saul Bellow?
HE: I am insouciant and mannerless! And persistent!
ME: I have very little time to myself in a day, and I would just like to read in peace and not pretend to be interested in anything you might have to say for yourself. Anything you might say or do today will be forgotten by me seconds after you say it or do it, whereas this essay is pretty interesting, so the cost/benefit ratio of speaking with you is not in your favor. I am an enormous fan of Humanity and Mankind as an abstract concept, but I detest individual human strangers, particularly those with a self-righteous, bohemian, free spirit air. I'm from Austin, pal, I can spot that act from 1000 yards away.
HE: Hey man, I'm just trying to be real and I feel sorry for you uptight DC suits that can't handle a simple conversation.


Truth is, even in what passed for my freewheelin' days, I was always pretty hostile towards strangers. My regular counterpart, Clarissa, was an unchecked torrent of verbiage so I usually just let her shoulder any conversational burdens with any chatty charlies.

One afternoon in Austin, Clarissa and I sat at a bar, and on the other side of us sat a man wearing the head from a giant chicken costume. I am not sure why, and it did not occur to us to ask, because this was Austin and such things just periodically happen. Chicken man was trying to strike up a conversation, in which Clarissa was only to happy to join. Assuming that both of them were well entertained, I turned back to the bar and sipped my beer and pondered the fine questions of life while they yakked away. But my reverie was interrupted when, from the corner of my eye, I saw a finger reaching over to wag in my face.

It was the chicken man. And the chicken man was saying, to Clarissa, "You're nice. She's cold. She looks like a librarian. You're warm."

I was so flabbergasted to receive personality guidance from a giant chicken that I literally had no response to this outrage.

Since then, anybody trying to strike up a conversation has just been a giant chicken to me. If it weren't for the internet, why, I'd have no friends at all.

Kat Fight

Okay I'm going to try my hand at a little internet argot: Brooke Shields is teh awesome. Is that right?
Here's why. Tom Cruise on Brooke Shield's post-natal depression:

In keeping with the precepts of Scientology, [Tom] Cruise, who condemns modern psychiatry and mind-altering prescriptions of any kind, said Shields should have used 'vitamins and exercise' instead. 'I care about Brooke Shields because I think she is an incredibly talented women, [but] look at where her career has gone,' he said.

Shields, who is enjoying a career resurgence, both on Broadway and as the author of a book about postnatal depression, retorted that Cruise, 'should stick to saving the world from aliens and let women suffering the condition decide what treatment options are best for them'. She then offered Cruise and Holmes two tickets - one adult for him, one child for her - to her London production of Chicago.

Burn!

[via openbrackets]

Nether Land

Bought my ticket to Tbilisi. Have 12-hr layover in Amsterdam. Have never been before. Am thinking I should get high with prostitute whilst riding charming bicycle, but probably will be true to form and glumly read in dark coffeeshop somewhere. With actual coffee.

Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Bored

Trolling for advice, I am.

At the end of this month, I'm doing the 20+ hour drive from DC to Texas, and I'm scouting my audiobook options early. Last time I did this drive, I went for Confederates in the Attic, and was completely satisfied. Entertaining, easy to follow while driving, and geographically relevant to boot. That's what I'm looking for. Not the best book ever, but a book that maximizes goodness with ease of listening, such that my mind will be engaged and I won't accidentally veer off track and slam my car into Dollywood en route. I don't think it's really the time to delve into the classics: fresh, modern prose is generally easier to follow on the road than the dense language of the more memorable writers. To calibrate the scale: Count of Monte Cristo or Confederacy of Dunces would be excellent driving books, had I not already read them. Ulysses, not so much, despite any other merits.

After browsing the audio selections, here are my leading contenders:
The Plot Against America (been meaning to read it, heard good things)
The Things They Carried (ditto)
Into Thin Air (not very jazzed about this one, but it probably keeps your attention?)
Killer Angels (Historical, gripping account of Gettysburg, which I just visited)
Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (already read Lying Liars)

I'd kind of prefer something that had geographical relevance to the Southland, as that's where I'll be driving, but it's not a requirement. Equally amenable to fiction/nonfiction/history/memoirs. Any thoughts on those contenders, or other suggestions? (Must be available on audio, unless you want to call me and read me a 20-hour story while I drive).

Dishonor Student

Before I finally throw my 1997 PC CPU into the dustbin of history, I decided to fire it up one last time and see if I could salvage some old papers and e-mails.

There are three ways you can approach your past: you can run, you can hide, or you can die. Oh no, wait those are the three choices for the survivors on Lost on the season finale. There are two ways you can approach your past: you can laugh or you can cringe.

I choose to laugh. And so I will share with you a discovery. A little gem from My Documents in creaky Windows 98. It comes from the time when I was in a creative writing class in college, and my professor had the audacity to give me my first-ever B-minus. It was mightily painful to swallow for a lifetime A-plus like myself. (Even my blood type is A+!) What's an angsty teen to do? Put into a poem of course. This particular ode strikes me as epic in its horribleness, but I'll let you decide for yourselves. Read, and weep:

36

#36,476 on the top seller list
and yet you sit in judgment of me
seated behind your oaken throne
you spit back the poison that has so long been cast upon you
And with a half-thought and a flourish
You brand my work with a scar

How can I now be proud
Of this rag that wears its label like a gleaming Scarlet letter
But not an A, mind you.
Hester Prynne never had the worse dishonor
Of displaying a Scarlet B-minus

Who Gives a Whitman

There is a danger, if you don't have a sense of humor, in being a magazine that's been around too long.

From The Atlantic Monthly's review of "Leaves of Grass" in 1882:

Fortunately, however, the chief damage done will be to the author himself, who thus dishonors his own physical nature; for imperfect though the race is, it still remains so much purer than the stained and distorted reflection of its animalism in Leaves of Grass, that the book cannot attain to any very wide influence.

Million Dollar Sue

You guys will never guess what I have.

I didn't even know that I had it myself until a few short hours ago.

Can you guess? There's no way.

I have a mean left hook.

Moreover, following my inaugural session with a boxing coach, I have learned the following piece of information: I am a natural.

This is the awesomest news I have ever received.

Now, normally when somebody tells me surprisingly flattering things about myself, particularly in arenas (sports) where I have heretofore shown zero promise, I would be skeptical. But I saw myself, and frankly, I have to agree.

My normal Thursday cardio kickboxing class was canceled, and so eager to work off my hot dog and cookie dough jiggles post-beach, I settled on a little boxing instruction from my gym's boxing coach, Russell.

Normally, in all of my fitness classes, I look completely ridiculous. Whether I'm stuggling with the flex-y ball or tripping over the step or flapping my gangly arms and legs about, I dread catching sight of myself in the mirrors. But when I put on those boxing gloves—I won't lie to you people—I looked bad ass. Russell showed me how to hold the gloves in front of my face protectively, how to jab and pull back all superfast, how to twist from the waist when I hook and use that momentum rather than muscle.

Then he held up the pads. "Gimme one! Two! Gimme one, two!" I worked up to left jab, right jab, left hook, duck!, right jab. Russell stepped back shaking his hand out. "Damn girl! You gon' mess somebody up. You sure don't punch like you look." (As aforementioned, I looked bad ass so I'm sure I don't know what he's talking about.)

Anyway, now I love boxing. Russell told me that the reason I found it fun was because the sport worked both sides of my brain. I told him that I think it's because I really like hitting things. And as I ducked my head into it towards the end of the hour, I could see on the periphery of my vision the next class waiting outside for us to finish, watching me intently. It was the yoga class, and as they gently shifted from one willowy, barefooted leg to the other, tenderly cradling their wound-up mats, I tucked in and jabbed and hooked and grunted with everything I had. I would have done anything, anything!, to have had a mouthful of blood to spit out as they placidly padded in. Sting like a bee, ya'll. Sting like a bee.

Celebrity

Write down a bunch of public figures' names, put them in a bowl, divide into teams, and mix liberally with alcohol. Fun for all!

Celebrity:
Ani DiFranco

Exact transcript of all the clues necessary in order for team B to guess the celebrity:
"Okay, uh, not a pretty girl. Musician."


Celebrity:
Richard Hatch

Exact transcript of all the clues necessary in order for team B to guess the celebrity:
"Oh, okay, uh, he testified before the U.N. on weapons of mass destruction. Oh wait. No. He won Survivor."


Celebrity (fictional characters allowed):
Long John Silver

Incorrect celebrity yelled by me:
Dave Thomas

Clue given:
"Um, it's a villain and there's a fast food restaurant."

(p.s. There was a charade round, and I can't avoid the topic of how I tried to get my team to go for "Jack Osbourne" by working the "First name! Sounds Like! Crack!" angle. Terrible drunken pantomimes, and time ran out as my team puzzled over whose first name sounds like "ass.")