The You Lucky Bastard! I Hate You! Post.

My online friend Brandon, pictured here with Baby V. Fortunately he lives in California and I live in England, or I'd be throttling him in a jealous rage at this moment.

The Good Idea, Bad Idea Post.

It's time for another Good Idea, Bad Idea. (At this point what with it being all over the Internet, spoiler alerts are a case of closing the door after the horse bolted.)

Good Idea: Putting two of modern cinema's most Callipygian performers, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson, in a prestige project (The Killer Inside Me), thereby giving the former a chance to get taken something close to seriously for once and the latter a break from endless comedies (oh, and criticially and commercially disastrous all-star musicals).

Bad Idea: Having their characters get fucking beaten to death (Kate Hudson's first screen demise since The Skeleton Key [her body's intact but the character she plays is transferred into a soon-to-be-gone Gena Rowlands, remember] and Jessica Alba's first screen demise ever).

The End.

The iWant To Buy This Post.

The incredibly gorgeous Miranda Cosgrove's contribution to the soundtrack for the remarkably good-looking (as in "Hey, this looks pretty good") Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. Said song is also the first track on the soundtrack album, which blessedly is mostly made up of Mark "Who'd have thought the guy from Devo would go on to do the music for all three Rugrats movies and loads of Wes Anderson stuff?" Mothersbaugh. More irritatingly, the album - like other movies released through Sony of late (Columbia's Julie & Julia, TriStar's District 9) - is one of those manufactured-on-demand, CD-R only deals. Thanks, Amazon.


1. Raining Sunshine - Miranda Cosgrove
2. Swallow Falls
3. Introducing Flint
4. The Latest Invention
5. The Mayor/Earl Warns Flint
6. Sam's Big Break
7. Powering Up
8. Failure Again
9. Meatier Shower
10. A Father's Love
11. Ice Cream Wonderland
12. Snowball!
13. The Mayor's Big Plan
14. Activation And The Jello Dome
15. Sam and Flint Bond
16. Doubting Dad/Mutations
17. The Spaghetti Twister
18. Aftermath
19. Flint's Determination
20. The Food Storm
21. The Mission Begins
22. Outside The Meatball
23. Inside The Meatball
24. Earl Takes Charge
25. Sentient Chickens
26. Worldwide Chaos
27. Anaphylactic Love
28. Attack Of The Gummy Bears
29. Here's The Cheese
30. The Heart of the Meatball
31. Spray-On Triumph
32. Flint Returns
33. Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows - Lesley Gore

The Twitter Post.

There is at least one thing I have in common with Denise Milani - neither of us is on Twitter.

Submitted for your approval: someone claiming to be Denise. Look at the website listed and the location, realise that she actually has her own freaking website, and think about it for a moment. And now Chickipedia's list of searched-for ladies in August, with particular cheers to ones in bold.

1. Megan Fox
2. Kim Kardashian
3. Emma Watson
4. Sienna Miller
5. Vanessa Hudgens
6. Lucy Pinder
7. Denise Milani
8. Jessica Alba
9. Rachel Nichols
10. Gina Carano
11. Scarlett Johansson
12. Katy Perry
13. Keeley Hazell
14. Mila Kunis
15. Christina Hendricks
16. Pamela Anderson
17. Hayden Panettiere
18. Beyonce
19. Bar Refaeli
20. Shakira
21. Ashley Greene
22. Jessica Simpson
23. Jenna Jameson
24. Jennifer Aniston
25. Britney Spears
26. Angelina Jolie
27. Jessica Biel
28. Jennifer Love Hewitt
29. Taylor Swift
30. Lady-Gaga
31. Lindsay Lohan
32. Mariah Carey
33. Erin Andrews
34. Kristen Stewart
35. Vida Guerra
36. Adriana Lima
37. Ashley Tisdale
38. Rachel McAdams
39. Olivia Munn
40. Salma Hayek
41. Carmen Electra
42. Heidi Montag
43. Marisa Miller
44. Kate Beckinsale
45. Paris Hilton
46. Diora Baird
47. Fergie
48. Jennifer Lopez
49. Keira Knightley
50. Eva Mendes
51. Rihanna
52. Gemma Atkinson
53. Elisha Cuthbert
54. Zooey Deschanel
55. Kate Mara
56. Kristen Bell
57. Miranda Kerr
58. Hilary Duff
59. Olivia Wilde
60. Katie Price
61. Natalie Portman
62. Milla Jovovich
63. Monica Bellucci
64. Heather Graham
65. Christina Aguilera
66. Katherine Heigl
67. Kelly Brook
68. Kendra Wilkinson
69. Blake Lively
70. Lacey Chabert
71. Audrina Patridge
72. Kat Dennings
73. Halle Berry
74. Diane Kruger
75. Emmanuelle Chriqui
76. Eliza Dushku
77. Anne Hathaway
78. Kourtney Kardashian
79. Sarah Chalke
80. Leighton Meester
81. Alyssa Milano
82. Amy Adams
83. Padma Lakshmi
84. Nicole Scherzinger
85. Tila Tequila
86. Alexis Bledel
87. Heidi Klum
88. Joanna Krupa
89. Malin Akerman
90. Nigella Lawson
91. Amanda Bynes
92. Penelope Cruz
93. Avril Lavigne
94. Tyra Banks
95. Anna Paquin
96. Brooklyn Decker
97. Ali Larter
98. Jessica AKA Miss Rabbit
99. Eva Longoria Parker
100. Cameron Diaz

The Double-Edged Sword Post.

The Sun's Page 3 Idol contest (oh dear) was won this year by a very lovely girl called Kelly Hall. The paper says the eighth winner (eighth?) will follow "in the glamorous footsteps of Keeley (Hazell) and Nicola T." (Short for Tappenden.)

Hopefully she won't follow in the footsteps of last year's winner, mention of whom is notably absent from the appropriate section of the paper's site.

The A Picture's Worth A Thousand Bloggings Post.

The above shot from Cindy's Allure spread is undoubtedly the Battle of Helms' Deep of said spread, based on reaction on the 'Net. I can't imagine why.

About the only really negative aspect of it is the "MILFs > 20-year-olds!" crowd, which is a bit unfair. Don't get me wrong, Cindy's claim that she looks "pretty good for 43" is an understatement (and combined with early reviews of MTV's new House of Style unfavourably comparing new host Bar Refaeli with her, this must be a great week for Cindy's sense of self)... but while Cindy is definitely more attractive than loads of women younger than her, she's also more attractive than loads of women her own age and older. Cindy Crawford's always been a load more fetching than the norm, so in a sense this is business as usual. Making it probably the only time that one of my fantasy women being pictured naked and creamed up (not the first dream-come-true musing this has brought up) can be described as "business as usual."

The point is, as fine as 40-plus women like Cindy, Halle Berry and Jennifer Aniston are this doesn't mean ladies an even longer way from Freedom Passes should be knocked. Besides, back when Cindy was in her 20s you can be assured she was on the receiving end of the same "older is better" treatment... my view is, everybody was younger once. (Plus there's always a time limit, but that bridge can be crossed when we come to it.) That said, would Scarlett Johansson have gotten such a reaction in a similar situation?

Quite possibly.

But would Agyness Deyn?

The I Demand A Recount Post.

Second place? Second?

I don't like Elle Macpherson that much. And I don't like Debenhams at all.

The Christine Mendoza Spot Post.

Butch claims that the spot over yonder (which, if you're reading this on or after September 14, was occupied for the seven days beforehand by Christine Mendoza) could be improved.








You decide. (Stuff it, he's right.)

The Cindy Like Sunday Morning Post.

Any questions?

The Carla Effect Post.

The wonderful Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times:

The French are different from you and me.

Yes, they have Sarkozy.

And they have Carla.

And they have “the Carla effect,” as it’s known in Paris.

If an American first lady, or would-be first lady, described herself as a “tamer of men” and had a “man-eating” past filled with naked pictures, Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, sultry prone CD covers, breaking up marriages, bragging that she believes in polygamy and polyandry rather than monogamy, and having a son with a married philosopher whose father she had had an affair with, it would take more than an appearance on The View to sweeten her image.

It’s hard to imagine the decibel level on Fox News if Michelle Obama put out a CD this summer, as Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is, with songs featuring lyrics like “I am a child/despite my 40 years/despite my 30 lovers/a child”; and this song, “Ma came”: “You are my junk/more deadly than Afghan heroin/more dangerous than Colombian white. .../My guy, I roll him up and smoke him.”

Or if Michelle gave an interview, as Carla did in a new book, La Véritable Histoire de Carla et Nicolas, revealing that she fell in love with her husband for his many fertile brains.

“I didn’t expect someone so funny and so alive,” she said, recalling their blind date at a dinner party.

“I was seduced by his physical appearance, his charm and his intelligence. He has five or six brains which are remarkably irrigated.

“I didn’t go out with cretins before I met him. That’s not my style. But he is really, really quick.”

One chapter of the book is called “Le Diable s’Habille en Carla,” or “The Devil Wears Carla.” And the most repeated anecdote is the one where Carla slyly teases the French justice minister, Rachida Dati, a Sarko protégé, as they pass by a bed in the Élysée: “You would have loved to occupy it, wouldn’t you?”

But somehow the French — who are “polymorphously perverse,” as Woody Allen admiringly called Diane Keaton in Annie Hall — have become so enamored of their new first lady that they’re starting to like her husband more.

At the funeral of Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, Sarkozy got some catcalls when he got out of his car, while Carla, a former model for the designer, who calls herself “nothing more than a folk singer,” got applause and oohs and aahs.

“Preceded by a sulfurous reputation,” Le Journal du Dimanche reported, “Carla Bruni has improbably succeeded in a country so traditionally attached to conventions: in less than six months, the third wife of Sarko has conquered, after that of the President, the heart of the French: 68 percent of them, according to our JDD poll, appreciate their new first lady.”

In a recent survey in Le Figaro, the French president was back up at 37 to 41 percent favorables from a low of 32 percent last month.

“The president is better,” a close adviser to the mercurial Sarko told a reporter.

“There is definitely a serenity in his life now,” the French writer Olivier Royant told me.

“He has stopped behaving like a twit since the marriage,” a veteran observer of European politics agreed. “And unlike Cécilia, who seemed like a self-conscious pill who hated being at the Élysée, Carla is playing her role well. She is bien dans sa peau, happy in her own skin.”

Intuitively aware of the media, she handles both the French and foreign press with a down-to-earth aplomb. She has said she will keep her personality “while respecting the dignity of the position” and take her job “seriously.” She plans to write a diary, adding: “I write in French and dream in Italian.”

The magazine Le Point had a cover with Carla’s gleaming face and the headline “La Présidente,” with a picture inside of Sarko standing docilely behind his wife, as she sat at his desk and offered that assured feline gaze to the camera.
Just as Carla charmed the Queen of England and Princes Charles and Philip with her demure French schoolgirl look, she charmed George and Laura Bush on their visit, inviting Laura 30 minutes early for a girls’ tête-à-tête, and then sitting next to the American president and keeping him entertained with a spirited conversation in English, one of her three languages and sort of his one language.

At a press availability the next day, W. interrupted his own boring observation about “the importance of the Doha Round” to smilingly tell his pal Sarko: “It was a great pleasure to have been able to meet your wife. She’s a really smart, capable woman, and I can see why you married her. And I can see why she married you, too.”

It is true that the last US president with any real ties to glamour was JFK (not counting Ronald Reagan's daughter posing nude for Hefner, obviously). But It's hard to imagine any British politician's wife in a similar capacity, either (Cherie Blair's resemblances, for instance, have included Cruella de Vil, Nina Myers and Angela Petrelli). And let's not forget the Royal Family...

The Bring On The Delta Force Post.

But before I post, belated happy birthday to Paula Abdul - 46 yesterday. It seems like only yesterday I was swooning over her in the videos for "Opposites Attract" et al; if only "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow" wasn't so lame. I'd still rather her than yet another playing of "Bleeding Love," however. And at least she's gotten back in the spotlight without stripping off for Playboy like Jody Watley, Belinda Carlisle, Debbie Gibson and Tiffany did (which really didn't do much for them in the long run, Ashley Harkleroad take note). Not that I'd complain too much if she did...

Okay, so in four weeks I'll be off in the Caribbean for Sharon's 40th and I'll probably have decided by then if I want to be there for my 40th next year. But in the more immediate future I've got to pack, and more importantly decide what to take to listen to. And, of course, get Gossip Girl and Ghost Whisperer on the Sky planner.

Listening to stuff... like The Delta Force when I manage to pay for it. Intrada's 1000-copy Signature Edition of Alan Silvestri's all-synth score for the '86 epic sold out like that from them and practically every other dealer, so I got lucky. What with that and my plan to order Iron Eagle next week (finally out, a mere 22 years after it should have been released!), it'll be a musical blast next month.

The Not That Cindy Post.

Switching on the TV this morning I saw the news about the fire at Universal Studios - no idea of how many parts of film history are lost forever, but my first thought was to be glad no one was killed. And if, as reports suggest, the Hill Valley town square (from the first two Back to the Future movies) is among those gone... it's still not quite the immediate bummer that seeing the end of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls this morning was. Watching a psycho gun down Cynthia Myers is a moodkiller if ever there was one.

The Nothing Wrong With Being "Boring" Post.

While on The View last week on behalf of a green initiative, Cindy told Barbara Walters and the rest of the bunch on the Loose Women prototype that she kind of missed out on living it up in her '20s what with being more interested in being level-headed than freaking out. Okay, youthful regrets are one thing... but if the price of being an "interesting" supermodel is to be Naomi Campbell, I don't think Cindy has much to regret. She might have more of a quiet life, but at the end of the day she's likely to rank a lot higher in people's affections than the wild and crazy guys (er, gals)... even though the videos of her taking her underwear off on Jay Leno's show and giving her husband a lapdance are two of her most-viewed clips on YouTube. It's the same thing with Louise Redknapp (the soon-to-be-mother of a second child might not be as in-your-face as that other wife of a blond footballer, but she's infinitely more appealing and attractive). I got no problem with that.

Comparisons to Janice Dickinson are another matter.

Here's Cindy in a 1986 Japanese TV ad:








much more recently with her husband:

and even more recently on TV. Sadly not The View.



And one more for my baby, and the road.