Review Spam or Nefarious Plagiarism?

So I was on Netflix this morning and saw this:

So is this some sort of review spam?  Or do we have a Kaavya Viswanathan sitch on our hands?

“Oh, dear!  ‘I wasn’t aware of how much I may have internalized [the other reviewer's] words’!”

Forever Typecast

I know that actors and actresses always claim that they fear being typecast because they want to stretch their emotional limits or  explore their psyches through their characters or whatever nonsense they’re spouting now.  Some actors and actresses can pull off a variety of characters (classic example: Meryl Streep), but unfortunately, most can’t.  See, e.g., Tom Cruise (plays “Tom Cruise” in every movie), Meg Ryan (one-note), Julia Roberts (don’t try to feed me some bullshit line about her “amazing” portrayal of Erin Brockovich).

I’m not really that fussed about typecasting the Tom Cruises of the world – in fact, the fewer movies he is allowed to ruin, the better (see Valkyrie).  No, I feel guilty about the actors and actresses who did such an amazing job in whichever performance of theirs that I saw first that I will forever remember them as that character.  Biggest example for me – Lilly Ka–I mean Amanda Seyfried.  Her delivery of “I’ve got a secret – a good one” from Veronica Mars is burned in my memory, but she was totally different – and equally great – as Karen the ditz in Mean Girls and as Sarah Henrickson, eldest child from a polygamous family, in Big Love.  I dislike Catherine Hardwicke as a director because of the frantic overemoting she loves to capture on film, but I’d see her upcoming Red Riding Hood just because Lilly Kane is in the lead role.

I mean, Amanda Seyfried is in the lead role.

Useless Phrases, Chapter 923

I have been reading an incredibly entertaining blog for the past few days – www.myveryworstdate.com – that, surprisingly enough, chronicles submitters’ very worst dates.  The blog has been around for a while (in internet years), so it has a huge archive of bad date drama which has provided me with hours of entertainment.  I cannot stress how much I’ve enjoyed reading this site.

However…if I read the phrase “needless to say” one more time, I’m going to lose it.  Why does this phrase exist?  The utterance that was supposedly unnecessary never flows logically from what came before it.  Let’s ease into it with this example:

My date got up and went over to the bachlorette party table and was started talking to the topless bride-to-be. After a few mintues, they went into the bathroom. And had sex. Two days before her wedding. While I was on a date with him. After they did it, he just came back to our table, sat down, said “Yea, I fucked her” and acted like nothing unusual had just happened. Needless to say, my friends and I were not impressed and I didn’t see him again after that night. (2/25/10)

Well, I’m not impressed with that either, but maybe you’re into that sort of thing.  I don’t know you.  I’d like to think that no one would be impressed by that, but there are a lot of easily impressed women out there.

She said she wanted to stay the night. Naturally, I asked if she was sure, as I was unsure whether or not I wanted to see her again. But needless to say, the sex was incredible. …Instead of waiting to hear from me, she began to call me, showed up at my house, called me while she is drunk driving and went as far as calling me whilst on another date with another poor soul likely to get duped into the same thing I did.  Needless to say, my number was changed and after running into her months down the road I decided to move. (4/14/10)

Twice in one paragraph with neither used correctly!  Why would ambivalence towards a potential sexual partner necessarily lead to “incredible” sex?  I understand why the submitter thinks it obvious that he changed his phone number, but it’s a necessary part of the story.  Without it, I would imagine that this batshit crazy behavior continues to this day.  It’s a little sad to think that it’s all over between them and we’ll never hear more, but so it goes.

Finally, my favorite:

Finally, the bill arrived and he asked me for half of it. As we leave, he picks the receipt up and says, “I’ll take this, I can expense it!” Needless to say, I let him make a profit out of the date. (11/11/09)

Huh?

Needless to say (c wut i did thar???), I will continue reading this blog.

Cee Lo: Here from the 90s?

For the last five years or so, I’ve thought that Cee Lo was riding a second wave of fame…the first being in 1994 following his hit single “I Wish.”  Turns out that was Skee-Lo.  I guess I never saw a picture of him, since they look nothing alike.  I’ll admit – I’m a little disappointed.  I imagined that he had thrown off his clean-cut image and just gone all-out for his vision.  It’s like finding out that you misheard a favorite crazy lyric.

N.B.:

I Like Joyce and Run-On Sentences, How About You Let’s Sing Tra-la-la

Here is a wonderful review for a movie about James Joyce, the man who wrote sentences like this:

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo…

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, p. 1.

This is certainly a fitting tribute to Joyce, although there is altogether too much punctuation to be a perfect pastiche.

I think the last sentence sums it up, really.

Side Note: The movie, according to the Netflix description, concerns the “erotic correspondence” between Joyce and “the passionate and sexually outgoing Nora Barnacle.”  Who would read that and think, “Family movie night!”?

Katy Perry Is So Adorbs

OK, I really hate reversing my opinions, since it would require that I be wr…wrrrr….

Anyway, Katy Perry is kind of adorable.  I wrote her off as a flash in the pan because I really disliked her first song.  But I really like her new song and she’s adorbs in the video – she comes across as playful and fun.  Much like the song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwE-SLnLkqY

See?  Gummi bears can flip her off, but she’s a lady.

AND she’s playful while naked, so the straight boy demographic has been soundly won over.  Well-played, Katy Perry!

The Tea Party and “Eternal Fascism”

A friend of mine sent me an old article by Umberto Eco called “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt” (available at http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html).  It’s kind of scary to see how Eco’s discussion of fascism – published in 1995 – relates to today’s Tea Party:

Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering’s fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play (“When I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” and “universities are nests of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

But the repeated condemnation of the “liberal media elite” probably doesn’t fit in that category – right?

Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

No, heh – the Tea Party totally welcomes differences!  I mean, there’s no evidence that it doesn’t, right?  Oh, yeah – that one study.

[O]ne of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.

Um…yep.

For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against “rotten” parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.

O HAI, Glenn Beck!

Hedgehogs Apparently Make Me Cry

Four tiny orpahned hedgehogs are snuggling up to the bristles of a cleaning brush – because they think it’s their mother.

The four inch long creatures are being hand-reared by staff at the New Forest Otter, Owl and Wildlife Park in Ashurst, Hants.

Workers say Mary, Mungo, Midge and Slappy get comfort from playing with the centre’s cleaning brush and enjoy rubbing against it.

The smells on the brush, which is used to sweep a yard, remind the hedgehogs of their natural habitat while the texture reminds them of their mother.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-478026/Orphaned-hedgehogs-adopt-cleaning-brush-mother.html

The texture reminds them of their dead mother.  They’re alone!  *sobs*

47 and Still a Child

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Following a very intimate and revealing appearance on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live” on Monday night, speculation swirled that “Real Housewives of New Jersey” star Danielle Staub might be dating a woman – something she told Access Hollywood on Tuesday is “possible.”

The controversial reality star and mother of two debuted her new song, “Real Close,” with songwriter Lori Michaels and after their sultry duet, host Andy Cohen asked if Danielle and Lori were an item – something the “Housewife” would neither confirm nor deny on Monday night.

http://omg.yahoo.com/news/real-housewife-danielle-staub-on-lesbian-romance-rumors-anything-is-possible/42753

Seriously?  I thought people got over that whole OMG-let’s-be-fake-lesbians-to-get-attention thing by their mid-20s.  I’m going to stand up and admit I was wrong.  Then I’m going to go cry for her daughters.  And, what the hell – for humanity too.

Now You Look Like an Ugly Jenna Jameson

Congratulations, Heidi!

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20336472,00.html