I love me a good motto. I love mottos even better when I can steal them from pop culture. Whether it’s Nicolas Cage’s “B.A.D. – Balls Attitude Direction” from Kiss of Death, “A.A. – Attitude Adjustment” from Rad, or my personal favorite “F.U.B.A.R.” from Tango and Cash, I like to yoink them all for my own personal abbreviated vocabulary. And I’m always on the lookout for a new one; which is why I was only too happy to see Britney Spears recently get in on the motto act.
In one her recent trips to court (for her kids, or her hit n’ runs, or her drug problems, or her communism or whatever), she inexplicably walked up to a reporter and yelled out “Ride, Lick it, Snort it, Fuck it!” and walked away. Now we could go on ad nauseum aover what possessed her to take focus away from her losing custody battle, her possibly getting her license suspended, her maybe getting jail time (which she probably should do at some point), to serve up some juicy grist for her trashy celebritard mill. But we’re not going to. Least of all because I promised not too, but mainly because, who cares? She’s retarded. And not in the mentally handicapped way, I mean she’s an idiot. You can’t put logic or reason behind the actions of an idiot. She dated Criss Angel, for chrissakes, how can we take anything she does seriously? We can’t. But what can do is laud her for awesome motto construction.
Those four words perfectly encapsulate her every waking moment, thereby making the motto a spot on phrase for the way she should live her life. For just one moment, she might have been the most clear, prescient celebrity in a three block radius (assuming Hasselhoff wasn’t around the corner getting drunk and spilling his Whopper Jr. everywhere.). If more celebrities took the time to create a motto about their particular brand of celebridom, it would go a long way to making us like them more. Not that that’s actually going to happen.
Since Britney (bitch!) is the only celebrity with the crazy stones to break themselves down motto-listically, I’ve taken the time to come up with some choice abbreviations for some of the biggest names in Hollywood. With any luck, they’ll be coked out of their minds at the county courthouse one day soon, yelling out the motto I created for them, and then retreating back inside to have their life ripped apart while they worry about when they’ll next get the chance to hit up Taco Bell. An internet humorist can dream…
Other Celebrity Motto’s (in Britney-specific format)
Lindsay Lohan: Drink it, Drug it, Rehab it, Repeat it!
Mel Gibson: Slur it, Jew it, Blame it, Sugartit it!
Tom Cruise: Ensnare it, Contract it, Publicize it, Fake it!
Angelina Jolie: Act it, Homewreck it, Adopt it, Pouty-Lip it!
Bruce Willis: Yippe it, Kay it, Yay it, Motherfucker it!
Keanu Reeves: Whoa it, whoa it, WHOA it, Whoa it?
Orlando Bloom: Act it, Bland it, Bore it, Snore it!
Jennifer Aniston: Oprah it, Vanity Fair it, People it, Milk it!
Ben Affleck: Date it, Act it, Fail it, Direct it!
Kiefer Sutherland: Scream it, Torture it, DUI it, Christmas Tree-Jump it!
David Hasselhoff: Hassel it, Hoff it, Drunk it, Record it!
Nicole Kidman: Curly it, Straighten it, Botox it, Shrill it!
Will Ferrell: Naked it, Baby Jesus it, Cowbell it, Burgundy Done it!
Michael Douglas: Lift it, Tuck it, Botox it, Zeta-Jones it!
Neil Patrick Harris: NPH it, Legen it, Wait it, DAIRY it!
Matthew McConaughey: Crunch it, Tan it, Lance it, Gylleenhall it!
Kiera Knightley: Lemonface it, Lionface it, Bitter Beer Face it, Bitch Face it!
Morgan Freeman: Narrate it, Gravitas it, Charisma it, God it!
Jennifer Lopez: Act it, Sing it, Spanish it, No One Likes it!
Scarlet Johansson: Lip It, Cleavage It, Blonde It, Is That It?
Bangarang!
Better words will come from better writers today, and as such, I will not attempt to editorialize on the impact of 9/11 nor its unending societal reach six years later. I am not a newsman or a pundit, I’m not a D.C. blogger nor a member of a political party. I lost no one in 9/11 and I know very few people that were even remotely affected by the tragedy. 
In many ways celebrities are exactly like Transformers. They may walk through the day in their “civilian” form, but when the time comes they transform into all manner of characters (doctors, lawyers, cowboys, the pervert from Happiness played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman; which should not be confused with the pervert he played in Boogie Nights. Or Capote.). Their livelihood is predicated on the audience believing their transformation. And their ability to do so convincingly is what makes us love them. This is why the success of Michael Bay’s Transformers is not at all surprising. Audiences want to see transformation, whether in celebrity or robot form (it also helps that in robot form they blow a bunch of shit up and fight each other. Also, long lingering shots of Megan Fox’s abs doesn’t hurt.). We want to watch an epic spectacle of people overcoming obstacles, growing up in the face of adversity, finding love, becoming better people, and long lingering shots of Megan Fox’s abs. Transformers has all of those things, plus occasionally big fucking robots fight each other.
Whenever I pull a J.D. from Scrubs and start daydreaming absurdist pop culture scenarios (like really, where would I hide all my body hair if I transformed into Dakota Fanning? Precocious child stars do not look like tiny manscaped clones of Robin Williams.), I like to extend my imagination into the realm of celebrity. As soon as I started picturing myself becoming the tiny star of Uptown Girls, I was flooded with thoughts about what celebrities might transform into, besides the characters they play on-screen. 
The Celebrity Decepticons
When you’re dealing with Anne Heche you know what you’re gonna get, and in some respects, that’s kinda nice. You know you’re getting a very pretty, (in a slightly mousy way) above-average actress who at any time may decide to go walking in the desert for a week, speak all of her dialogue in a space language, or bang the script girl or best boy depending on what she had for lunch that day. Basically, you wager all of her talent against the risk of the crazy. A lot of people take that bet and do well. I thought she was great in Wag the Dog, Birth, Donnie Brasco, Volcano, Return to Paradise and Volcano (suck it, Dante’s Peak). But whomever puts their chips down on the Heche line has got to keep in mind what they may potentially lose, should they win (This contradiction is much like the Rosie Perez theory of winning and losing from White Men Can’t Jump, except Anne is infinitely less annoying.).
That got me thinking about other people who have no right to complain about their problems. For example, does Jennifer Aniston really have a reason to complain about her marriage falling apart? She married the sexiest man alive and then let him make a movie with the hottest creature on earth. What did she expect was gonna happen? That their respective hotnesses would be repelled like the plus sides of two magnets? She brought this on her self the moment she became Brad Pitt’s lady.
It’s not surprising that of the 120 columns I’ve posted on TheJay.com, “
I always give second chances to actors I don’t like. 
This month brings us The Prestige, a flick about dueling magicians, as well as being yet another in a string of movies released this year to star the dewy blonde fleshpot, Scarlett Johansson. And while many people will be going to see Batman and Wolverine duke it out to see who gets to kill David Blaine’s great-great grandfather, an even greater number of people will be going for one simple reason: to see if Scarlett finally, at long last, gets naked. Well, I’ll save you all some time. She doesn’t. And she won’t in any movie for the foreseeable future. And that sucks. Because as the reigning sex symbol in Hollywood she sells herself as the personification of adolescent male fantasy, yet seemingly refuses to bestow us the honor of showing us the chest pillows we men dream of laying our heads on. What kind of modern sex symbol would be so selfish? 
Getting naked doesn’t hold the same stigma it once did. It used to be that if you stripped onscreen you were branded, or typecast, as someone cheap enough to disgrace the acting profession with their evil jumblies. Case in point, Meryl Streep has never been naked in a movie (not that we’d want to see it). But now we don’t think poorly of someone who exposes her blouse bunnies. In fact, we commend them. We applaud their willingness to give their all, to bare their entirety, to us, the little people. That they grace us with their nude presence makes them heroes to a nation of men so overloaded with sexual imagery in advertising and pop culture as a whole, that the only thing that really holds weight anymore is classic movie nudity. Trust me, internet porn is all well and good, but it doesn’t compare to being pleasantly surprised by Katie Holmes’s Cruise-less boobies in the third act of The Gift. That’s Joey from Dawson’s Creek, those are her boobies, and the screen is sixty feet big! Tell me how you top that with a low res jpeg on your Apple iBook? You can’t! Movie Nudity has become the classiest smut on the market. It’s almost high class. And as anyone who’s seen Charlize Theron’s nude work in Two Days in the Valley can attest, it may even be art.
When an actress comes on to the scene, and is even remotely attractive, men across the world start an unofficial clock in their heads, that counts down to the moment they get naked onscreen. It’s why we buy those magazines like Stuff and FHM; we’re hoping to catch a preview of future naked goods to come. And when they finally do get naked, we rejoice and thank the girl for her generosity. And we become lifelong fans. Do you think the Cruise-Holmes ship would be so frenetic if she was merely the lead female in a crappy, now-canceled WB teen drama? I think not. But when you give like she gave, we give back. So you see nudity can help build a loyal fanbase. Nudity can help make you seem vulnerable in the eyes of critics and Academy voters. Nudity can buy you a house in Malibu (assuming you are as shrewd an extortionist as Halle). From where I, and rest of the male population stand, nudity has no downside.
WINONA RYDER
JESSICA BIEL
KATE BOSWORTH
BEA ARTHUR
