low culture
Looking for Comedy in the Gawker Media World
Boy, this “Wonkette for a Day” gig has left me winded! Who knew so many readers avidly missed Ana Marie Cox with such fervent passion? I’m telling you, the ol’ inbox is filled with missives decrying the site’s lack of wit and wisdom in weeks past. Well, folks, you’re all set for a welcome change, then, cos this hilarious fella is here to stay!
Just look at our revised corporate photo spread from this month’s issue of Vanity Fair:
Hair by Kiehl’s, image manipulation by Adobe
That’s me in the beautiful green dress and vibrant red hair, in case you’re wondering. Me, the newest asset to the Gawker Media empire, with my sexy little tattoos! I’m so pretty, so carefree, so fucking male!
UPDATE: OK, I clearly am prone to mess-ups and sundry other misinterpretations. This is my third “update”, you’ll notice. It seems that when they offered me this daylong gig, they did, in fact, mean just that. One day. Not some sort of trial implementation where as the afternoon waned, my temporary site supervisor would offer me the fulltime Wonkette gig. Nope, it just wasn’t meant to be. And you know what really smarts?
I even quit my day job for this! Anyways, that’s goodbye, I guess. For good. Farewell to my newfound fans and friends! Monday’ll have a new “Wonkette for a Day”. And it won’t be me.
(Confidential to Assistant Regional Manager Jerry: Can I pleeeeease come back to work? I’m sorry about the diaper comment, for reals.)
READ MORE: ana marie cox, low culture
It’s Mullah Time! (A Toast to the Endless Holy War)
A Muslim beer stein?
Is that like French deodorant?
Kosher pork?
Catholic birth control?
Hahahaha! I am a comic genius!
RELATED: Halal Beer?
READ MORE: islam, low culture, war on terrorism
News Round-Up: My Heart is an Occupied Territory
Samuel Alito’s slated to be confirmed by the Senate to a seat on the Supreme Court next week, barring some astoundingly unforeseen news that would bar his judicial ascendancy.
Jack Abramoff? Bipartisan scandals? Old news for old people.
The State of the Union? It’s yet to be stated.
Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, and the lies they say? Out of play.
No, the only issue that has really taken hold of our nation’s capital is this: my one, true partisan political passion for a certain rightwing hottie.
Michelle Malkin. That’s her over there on the right. So luscious, her lingering gaze…the ways in which her lanky blond hair falls across her shoulders as she tosses her readers a “come hither” glance. And her linguistic skills!
When she rips into the ACLU, as she does on her website today, Ms. Malkin’s smoldering prose knows no bounds. It’s as though she’s ripping open her bodice, unveiling her pert, middle-aged breasts…enticing me to nuzzle my constitutionally-disinclined head between her heaving bosom.
I love her. Her quizzical smile as she strokes my arm, longing for me to pop the question. She wonders to herself, “When will this beautful boy ask me? Ask me, already…” That’s it, the big question.
“Michelle, leave your husband, leave him be. Marry me,” I proffer.
And tears pour forth from her eyes. Never before have we clutched one another with such intensity.
We’re totally going to honeymoon in post-tsunami-ravaged Bali.
UPDATE: OK, I messed up again. My temporary site supervisor just IMed me to alert me to the fact that the woman with whom I am in love is not, in actuality, Michelle Malkin, but Ann Coulter. Apparently, Michelle Malkin is of Asian descent. Totally not my type. Those people, I mean. Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, whatever…I don’t discriminate in my dislike.
But to further lighten my mood after this confusion, I did however learn from several helpful tipsters that Miss Ann Coulter (she of the blond locks) is, in fact, quite single! So the matter still stands, love…Marry me!
(Though I also learned that Bali has Asian people living there, so me and my blond darling probably won’t be honeymooning there. Sorry, Balinese people!)
READ MORE: ann coulter, low culture, michelle malkin
This Particular Postcard Came from an Undisclosed Location
The editors at Newsweek, always known for their ability to break a story and shape culture as they see fit, have once again deigned to show us — the internet-using populace — what matters in the online universe.
Confessional postcards! Reporter Jessica Bennett covers the phenomenon of PostSecret, a gallery compendium of user-submitted postcards that anonymously convey a series of abstract, personal secrets. Job secrets, love-affair secrets, and, occasionally, state secrets. And some seem to cover all these bases and more.
Included below is our personal favorite, which purportedly hails from “an undisclosed location” but was mysteriously signed, “D.C.” Is that District of Columbia, or Dick Cheney?
Only Cupid knows, but, fuck if this isn’t the most timely mailing ever?
(If you actually started scouring the PostSecret website looking for the original postcard depicted above, you’re probably questioning its authenticity by now. Which, sadly, means you’re more qualified to work for the State Department than anyone currently in their employ.)
READ MORE: dick cheney, low culture, osama bin laden
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Super-Serious Somalian Synopsis
OK, a guilty admission on our part: this site has never been known for being a hotbed of intelligent analysis of the day’s events re: “all things political”, so much as being a hotbed of who’s bedding Washington hotties (The answer? Me, of course. A sex-laced shout-out to Nicole W. in Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s office (D-IL). See you tonight, babe!). With that in mind, then, we thought we’d take a stab at being solemn, as opposed to sex-obsessed. Ain’t that noble? Here goes.
East Africa, it seems, is on the verge of crisis. According to today’s Guardian (UK), the Food Security Analysis Unit, an agency working on behalf of international aid agencies is now warning that the region “could be on the brink of catastrophe as food stocks in Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Burundi, Eritrea and Tanzania also dwindle.”
Kenya’s president has appealed for £85m in aid on the matter. Though, seriously, let’s be honest…unless your regional plight is well-documented by a film starring Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes, you’re as good as fucked.
Hmm.
See what just happened? We just broke out and made light of human suffering and the indignity of starvation by invoking film terminology, a trashy staple of pop culture. It’s almost as though it’s part of the “Blogger’s Coda”, this inability to take seriously any plight grounded in poverty or political oppression. But a sexual plight, however…let’s get talking!
Rachel Weisz: hotter in “The Mummy”, or as an activist in “The Constant Gardener”? Ralph Fiennes: hotter as a John le Carré character in the aforementioned film, or as the cheating “other man” in Neil Jordan’s spectacular take on the “End of the Affair”?
The answer: it’s all so hot, even food deprivation! At least according to this jaded, post-academic, trust-funded urban hipster. Really, folks…from the comfort of my million-dollar pad overlooking the Potomac, give me a copy of InTouch over Congressional Quarterly any day.
READ MORE: africa, celebrity weeklies, debt relief, low culture, somalia, united nations
Libertarian Sports Corner: Finally, Big Government Removes its Vaseline-Covered Hands from My Split-Fingered Fastball
Hiya, folks. It’s me, special guest opinion-page writer and superstar pitcher Livan Hernandez of your world-famous Washington Nationals. I’m writing here with a renewed vigor here, people. Big news to report.
I’ve got some hot information that’ll surely effect myriad people of the Miami-based persuasion, I’m telling ya…the U.S. Treasury Department has announced that it’ll (finally!) let Cubans play in the upcoming World Baseball Classic, ending what had heretofore been some sort of elaborate standoff against Castro’s island nation. Or against the International Baseball Federation. I’m not really sure. I mean, I’m trying to get ready for spring training, and this big news drops in my lap? What’s a budding pitching-superstar-turned-sports-pundit to do?
Report the news and spin it from my unique perspective, I guess. Like my killer curveball!
All I know is that this overturns a decision from this past December, when the State Department had declared Cuba ineligible to participate in the sporting contest, a verdict that was probably tied to the U.S. embargo against the nation currently playing host to our own little World Championship Prison Series, the Guantanamo Bay Koran-Flushing Tournament. Let’s be fair, huh? My former people let you guys play your games on our soil, so it’s time you let us play the sport we so love on your land!
Oh, and the AP’s news release on this matter quotes a few Cuban “locals” for their thoughts on the matter:
“Oh, magnificent! Tremendous!” exclaimed Osvaldo Herrera, who was standing on a street corner in Havana with three other sports lovers discussing Cuban baseball.
Let me just use this outlet to let the world know that Osvaldo may think this is “magnificent” and “tremendous”, but he wasn’t saying that when I faced him down many many years ago when I still resided on Castro’s island lair. In fact, I recall in the midst of a dramatic pick-up game, I faced this particular Osvaldo character down…and he flailed his bat like a Little Leaguer, as you Americans might say, and the only “magnificence” I encountered from him that fateful day was the great whiffing sound of his wooden bat as my fastball soared right by him.
I am a champion, you see. And I just so happen to be Cuban.
Anyways, I got off point there. Here’s to the likely end of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba! First baseball, and then native crops, and finally, semiconductors!
See ya on the mound this spring!
READ MORE: baseball, low culture, state department, treasury department, washington nationals
This Just In: The Daily Show’s Samantha Bee has Unfunny Baby
Livejournal’s Daily Show bulletin board has great, great news: the affable faux-news program’s Senior Pregnancy Correspondent, Samantha Bee, has finally given birth to her very own Wee Bee.
After meeting with the show’s Rob Corddry recently, the poster reveals that:
Sam and Jason had their baby! Piper Bee-Jones. Rob thinks Jason will be back at work in a few weeks, and Sam is expected to return in a few months. I didn’t ask for any more details regarding when she gave birth, or the specs of the kid. Or even what country she was born in. (Sorry!) Also, Rob and his wife are expecting in the summer and had their first ultrasound yesterday; they don’t know the sex, but Rob says “it appears the kid is hilarious”.
OK, but Bee-bee’s baby, the poor little lass? Stacey Grenrock-Woods’ baby is cuter, certainly. And Rachael Harris’ has to be funnier.
And Lizz Winnstead and Madeline Smithberg’s baby? So full of itself now that it has Emmys and is hosting the Oscars.
(Please, spare us the obligatory “All babies are cute” routine. We assure you, this child most certainly will not fall into that realm.)
READ MORE: daily show, low culture, rob corddry, samantha bee
Paris, darling, you’re awful…but we love you
Oh, Paris! On this, the day that a transcript of your defamation-based deposition with lawyers for Zeta Graff has hit Page Six, we finally, truly understand the difficulties inherent to the life of an heiress. Namely, the lack of a good, old-fashioned enrollment in finishing school.
Girl, the transcript they’ve posted shows you’re simply, delightfully full of that caterwauling bitchiness they slowly but surely beat out of us in our years at Brearley, and we’ve got nothing but a newfound respect for your ability to claw your way out of any entanglement! Good luck with the lawyers! (Here’s a hint…we hear they all live on the Upper West Side.)
UPDATE: Shit, OK, wait. I just got an IM from my temporary site supervisor saying I wasn’t, in fact, guest-blogging for Gawker, as I thought was the case earlier this morning, but rather, Wonkette, the more political-oriented gossipy website. Shit. Shit. All of a sudden, I feel like a bitched whale without a mooring.
So…introduction time. My name is Jean-Paul Tremblay, and I honestly have little-to-no political awareness, the best I can tell…though there is my experience as a novelist. Some of you may have read my most recent tome, the thrilling political pot-boiler Checks, Balances, and Balanced Checkbooks, which is, as longtime fans will surely know, another in my long-running series about rogue tobacco lobbyist Jason McCabe and his attempts to do right by his industry…by any means necessary. I’d post a link to it on Amazon, but, well, it’s a vanity press, and Jeff Bezos seems to have a thing against self-publishing.
Which is what makes this blogging thing so great! After my initial disappointment about not being asked to do Gawker, I did learn that I’m apparently here today as the first of six “Wonkettes for a Day”, each of us appearing over the next six days, in advance of the new Wonkettes starting the following Monday, January 30th.
Maybe next time, then, I’ll do something clever like switch the contents of the Paris Hilton deposition mentioned above with the taped threat issued by that Osama Bin Laden guy. That could work, right? Right?
READ MORE: gawker, low culture, osama bin laden, paris hilton
Cue the Boyz II Men - We’ve Reached The End of the Road
Well, that’s it for us. On January 30th, the permanent Wonketeers David Lat and Alex Pareene take the helm full-time. Until then, there are still six publishing days to be filled. In what must surely be a Wonkette fantasy realized, six steady hands will take turns on this dirty bitch, one day each. First up, tomorrow: Low Culture’s Jean-Paul Tremblay.
I’d like to thank everyone who gave this warmongering libertarian a shot at making you laugh. We’re not sure what they were thinking either. But as my favorite writer Harlan Ellison is fond of saying, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
We’d also like to give special thanks to the Washington Canard, our co-editor Felix, the girlfriend and Lockhart Steele for all the help this week.
I don’t blog outside of this site; so if you like what you’ve seen, keep your eyes on other publications around DC naïve enough to put my name to print. Who knows, like that inexplicable burn you’d rather forget, we may just show up unexpectedly in your life sometime soon.
READ MORE: Alex Pareene, blogging, david lat, eric pfeiffer, low culture, thanks, wonkette