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.
The biggest connection I have to the event is that 9/11 just so happens to be both my father’s and my best friend’s birthday. I don’t go out of my way to have a conversation about politics or world events, and I readily avoid discourse on President Bush. In short, I am exceedingly apathetic both towards the state of the nation, and my need to enact change in the world. I just don’t care all that much about politics.
But in an effort to honor the enormity of the day, I will write what it is I am good at writing about. And that would be sarcastically making fun of celebrities! We’re kicking it obvious style today by doing a star roll call and taking a big old clichéd swipe at each one of them. No subtext, no cleverness, no subtle creative genius, just blatant stereotypical jabs at the public personas of all the celebs who grace those wonderfully patriotic tabloid rags.
I can’t think of a better way for me to memorialize this sad day in American History than by calling Britney Spears a paunchy trainwreck with zero vocal talent (Gimme More!). Let’s start the blatant “honoring”…
Ben Affleck – Was the bomb in Phantoms, yo!
Jack Black – He’s so zany! Can you believe how zany he was in King Kong? I couldn’t get over all the zaniness! This is a tribute.
Orlando Bloom – Bland as an episode of Seventh Heaven. And with the same acting range, too! Moted, Will Turner! Moted.
Nicolas Cage – Hit or miss. Also, totally cooky! Love his choice of women (Michael Jackson’s ex, Alabama Worley, that Asian chick who waited on him at Sushi Roku).
George Clooney – Likes to bang hot chicks. Oooh! Consider yourself pwned, Danny Ocean!
Dane Cook – IS. NOT. FUNNY. For reals, yo!
Russell Crowe – Uh oh! Russell’s on the rag again, watch out for flying Black Berry’s. Zing!
Tom Cruise – Short. (Other jabs redacted for fear of litigation.)
John Cusack – Ah man, so edgy and cool! He’s like the personification of indie cred. Also he totally ruled in Con Air.
Matt Damon – MATT DAMON!
Colin Farrell – Kind of a manwho-er.
Richard Gere – It’s a myth, people! Suck it hard, urban legends! (But yeah, it totally happened! I know a guy who has a sister who dated this dude who used to buy weed from this drug dealer who knows a lab tech that sleeps with the nurse who blows the doctor who actually performed the surgery. You can’t buy that kind of intel!)
Mel Gibson – Jews are bad! Rawr!
Ryan Gosling – He’s intense. Grrr!
Paris Hilton – Talentless! Herpesfull!
Samuel L. Jackson – Why does he always say “motherfucker” in his shitty studio movies? That muthafucka crazy!
Scarlet Johansson – If you’re gay, you’re allowed to grab her boobs. Start tossing some salad, gentlemen!
Angelina Jolie – She used to be all gothy weird, but hot. Now she’s all momerific and philanthropic, but hot. Upgrade!
Tommy Lee Jones – Craggly!
Nicole Kidman – Was much cooler when she had the wall of red hair. Bring back the red wall, Ice Queen!
Diane Lane – She’s hot…wait for the qualifier…wait for it… for an older chick. Ka-BOOM!
J. Lo – Her butt is really big! Have you noticed that? Taco flavor kisses for her Ben!
Lindsay Lohan – Does a lot of drugs, rocks the ginger pubes. In your face, Parent Trap!
Alyssa Milano – Has hairy forearms!
The Olsen Twins – Food is overrated! Space alien faces are underrated!
Keanu Reeves – He’s dumb, but makes great movies. Whoa!
Winona Ryder – She steals stuff! Sacre bleu, Heathers!
Charlie Sheen – Yay for hookers and blow!
Will Smith – Has big ears. Aw, hell no!
Ben Stiller – Looks like an ape! Is quite neurotic in a diminishing comedic returns kind of way. Do it! No no, DO IT!
Hilary Swank – Big teeth. Might be a dude. Encourages Paul Haggis. Ditched her beard when she won her second Oscar. Used to be Steve Sanders’ plaything. Excellent credentials… for me to poop on! (that joke courtesy of Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Thanks for the solid, NBC!)
Donald Trump – His hair is weird! You’re fired! Who-damn that’s topical!!!!1!!
Vince Vaughn – HahahahaROTFLMAO! He’s so funny with all the fast talking and the jerkiness! I ignore his expanding belly, receding hairline and Gucci luggage-sized bags under his eyes to appreciate his ribald humor and his nailing of Jennifer Aniston on screen. What a pretty slash funny couple they make. Golly jee!
Reese Witherspoon – Perky and not at all a total bitch. Snapadoo, Elle Woods!
Renee Zellweger – Her face is so scrunchy! Why is her face so scrunchy? Someone tell her to layoff those Lemon Bitch shots. Hiyo! What what?
God Bless Celebrities. And God Bless America!
(Seriously on that second one.)
Bangarang!
I miss the days before every minute of every day was caught on film. When pictures like Brad and Gwyneth sunbathing in the nude were passed around in secret, and the possibility of a celebrity going commando and forgetting to close her legs wasn’t even a thought in our heads. I miss being shocked and amazed when a hot female celebrity showed her goods on screen. It’s gotten to the point now when it’s simply assumed that we will see every hot girl’s bathing suit area. Like it’s our inherent right to invade that privacy. Part of what’s keeping Scarlet Johansson in the limelight is her adamant refusal to just relent and whip her top off. She tantalizes us with side boob and mega-cleavage, seemingly fully aware that we males are on our tippy toes waiting for her to slip up (and slip out).
In honor of the most hectic day of the year for crazy, on-the-VT-edge postal workers (too soon?), I dug through the garbage bins of the Beverly Hills branch of H & R Block and found a slew of Celebrity Tax Forms. I’m ommitted a lot of the information (such as Paris Hilton listing her occupation as “princess”), but I will reveal some of the more, shall we say, ludicrous things that celebrities try to deduct on their taxes. You’d think for the all the money they make and free schwag they’re given that they wouldn’t need to even itemize their deductions, but apparently stars are just as stingy as us plebes.
Nicole Richie: $7.50 for food-related costs (she went to In-N-Out one time in June last year)
Ed Norton: $800 billion deduction for illegal, untested steroids to get into proper shape to play the Incredible Hulk. Apparently, as smart as he is, he didn’t realize the Hulk would be in CGI. Norton just assumed Eric Bana was that ripped (This isn’t so hard to believe).
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
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Hathaway Twins are actively pursuing projects for their newly finalized deal, and rumors persist that the first film out of the gate will be a big-budget remake of the camp classic “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”. Beyond the potential remake, the Twins look to return to their dramatic roots and are in discussions with director Curtis Hanson about an historical epic. Brokeback Mountain co-star Jake Gyllenhaal had this to say about talents of The Hathaway Twins: “They were terrific to work with. Just terrific. When you have performers of that caliber working with you, it just makes your job that much easier. To be honest, the biggest challenge for me on Brokeback wasn’t exploring a forbidden love with Heath or our sex scene together, it was my scene with The Hathaway Twins in the car after the rodeo. They were so fierce and so determined, I was blown away. When I think back on my experiences making that movie, the Twins are what I remember the most. Late at night. When I do my thinking and such.”
With a hot film due out soon, a new development deal with Paramount Pictures and an exciting slate of projects in the future, Hollywood insiders are hopeful that The Hathaway Twins could become as big as Angelina’s Jolies, and as profitable as Lindsay’s Lohans. 
We here at TheJay.com (and by we I mean “
Brad Pitt: Seriously, Tom, how do you get Katie to stay so quiet? I can’t get Angie to shut her trap for five minutes; always going on and on about starving Africans and poor Cambodian mine fields. I don’t care. I’m from Missouri, Tom! The most I want to say to a girl is “Where’s my bud?” And now we’re having the kid, who to be honest may not even be mine, in some country called Namibia. I don’t even know where that is. Where am I? Can’t I just go home? Is this really my punishment for leaving Jennifer. She wasn’t even that great to begin with. Always had this slight stench of… Ross on her. Help me Tom, you’re my only hope.
Scarlet Johansson: Poor Katie. 
Val Kilmer: You can be my son’s play date anytime.
L.Ron Hubbard: Tom, Katherine, Little Baby Zort, I mean Suri, warmest wishes from your beyond the grave Thetan leader. Now I have a bedtime story for little Suri. Many, many years ago there was a writer named Herman Melville, who wrote a book called Moby Dick. When the book was released it was a huge success, a bestseller for its age. Some time after the release of the book Oxford University invited Melville to speak at a roundtable discussion of the themes and elements of his book. The discussion was led by a slew of the finest minds in all of England. They instantly began peppering the writer with in-depth questions about the philosophical and metaphysical elements of Moby Dick. They wanted to know if the journey of Ahab was a meta-reference to the downward spiral of western intelligence. They asked if the color of the whale was a sub-textual representation of the ills of Mother England. And so on. The questions kept coming, and kept getting more deep and complex. After a time Melville raised his hand and silenced the panel. He gave a little smile, looked up and told the geniuses of the world: “Guys, it’s just a book about a guy chasing a whale.”
Things Overheard… On The Oscar Red Carpet
Jake Gyllenhaal – I gotta go kiss some more girls to prove I’m not gay. Where did Hilary Swank go?
William H. Macy – Did you see the dick on my wife in her movie? Yeah, that’s right people! I take her home EVERY NIGHT. 
