Funny Friday

In celebration of the Academy Awards, which is often called "women's version of the Superbowl" by men who must find football extremely tedious, Funny Friday will feature some entertainment-industry humor. Experience has taught me that you should skip the entire Oscar broadcast because it is so long and insufferable. Inevitably, you will fall asleep and only know that Best Supporting Actor is Christoph Waltz or whomever. If you want to know who looked good and who Joan Rivers will be lambasting on Fashion Police, consult People Magazine on-line during the red carpet. As a bonus, you can preview what dresses will be shortened and tarted-up for prom this year. The actual Oscar winners? The next day you can read the list of winners, promptly forget all but Best Picture, and watch a five-minute recap from your favorite morning news show and you are done. You now have enough time to catch up on the last season of "Homeland" that's been sitting on your DVR for three months.

Who knew that statues even had hair?

Television Actors of a Bygone Era

Ever hear of Kevin Brophy, star of the 1977 television series "Lucan" in which he played the title character who was raised by wolves? No? How about Peter Barton who played Dr. Scott Grainger on "The Young and the Restless" for six years? No, me neither. Well, lucky for Brophy and Barton, Ray Fulk, a 71-year old Illinois man not only remembered them, he made them the main beneficiaries in his will. Fulk died last year, leaving an estate of up to $1 million to the two actors, who actually knew each other because they appeared together in the 1981 movie "Hell Night." 

If I became a recluse and disinherited my family, I would have to leave my estate (currently valued at up to $387.45) to my favorite obscure television stars, Robbie Rist and Lara Jill Miller. You probably know Rist best from his work as Cousin Oliver on "The Brady Bunch," while Miller played Samantha Kanisky on the 1980s series "Gimme a Break," with Nell Carter. Currently, the two do animation voice work and both appear on the Baby's favorite show, "Doc McStuffins" in which Rist voices a dragon named Stuffy and Miller voices Lambie, Doc's chupacabra. Oh wait, no. Lambie is a lamb. 

Isn't that the cutest farm animal slaughtering, blood-draining cryptid you've ever seen?

Too Many Celebrities

I wonder if when Andy Warhol said, "in the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes" he could have had any idea of the accuracy of the statement. Thanks to youtube and reality television this has come to fruition and we must be approaching a point when everyone is some kind of celebrity and then we'll all go back to being the same. It's kind of like that Dr. Seuss book about the Sneetches in which the Sneetches with stars on their bellies were superior to the ones without stars, until the ones without stars had stars put on their bellies. The point is that we think there are famous people everywhere and sometimes we misidentify them because there are just too damn many of them.

Okay, obviously not Obama, but for the life of me, I can't figure out if that's really Bush, a cut-out of Bush, or an impersonator. Thoughts?

What's more insulting to Carson Daly: that she doesn't know who he is or that she thinks he's Conan O'Brien?

To me this is like a law school exam where there are so many things wrong in the fact pattern that you don't know where to begin to identify them all. Clearly the old guy is not da Bob Hope, but I'm kind of stumped. Is it Peter Graves? Also, where did she encounter famous old celebrities, Godzilla and The Simpsons?   

Indications that this is not Jesus: 1. It's a photograph. I'll just stop there. And, yes it is Barry Gibb. 

Even the people at Starbucks think that they're in the presence of fame:

Spelling aside (after all, who am I to disparage bad spellers, ahem, ophthalmologist), I'm wondering what on earth the customer did to the barista to get Voldemort written on his cup. Muggle genocide? Seriously, what?

Et tu, Stride Rite?

Because I pretend that my actual job is reading Us Weekly, People Magazine, and, if I'm feeling particularly intellectual, TMZ on a daily basis, I have learned a few things about the folks who frequent these sites. They love stories about celebrities, but what they love even more are stories about breeding celebrities. They loove pictures of pregnant celebrities. They looove pictures of them with their babies. They looooove pictures of celebrities debuting their "bodies after baby" and secretly hope they are the doughy, lumpy, spit-up encrusted messes that most women are two weeks after giving birth. 

So, it should really be no surprise that a children's shoe store should try to capitalize on the public's obsession with the trend-setting children of celebrities with this advertising campaign:

Do you think that these celebrity parents okayed this? Surely Stride Rite would contact them before running this campaign, don't you think? Maybe Stride Rite offered them a bunch of free shoes. Because what rich people need are free shoes for their children. I do appreciate the fact that these kids are wearing Stride Rite shoes because, literally, you might as well throw money out the window as spend a lot on children's shoes, because they often outgrow the shoes before you get home from the shoe store.

Also, WTF Will Arnett, get pissed that you are being entirely ignored by Stride Rite and your wife is getting all the credit for your children. Darren Le Gallo aka Mr. Amy Adams, I'm sorry but no one has heard of you, so I understand your omission in the ad. Also, don't Archie and Abel Arnett look like kids you'd see at Wal-Mart having a tantrum in the toy aisle because their mom won't buy them some Ninjago Legos? I mean this in the best way: they look like real boys not little accessories like some celebrity's kids.

What's in a Name?

Celebrity children suffer in so many ways, but possibly one of biggest burdens are the names that their whimsical, artistic parents bestow on them. It seems to me that celebrities are getting better about this, but maybe, like the Sneetches, we're all giving our kids increasingly weird names, too, so weird is the new normal and we're just desensitized to everything. Also, my own name hasn't cracked the top 50 names in popularity since the 1860s, so I'm in no position to throw stones. But, guys, I came across this article on Prince Harry's new girlfriend and I almost cried the names in this girl's family are so amazingly fabulous. I took the time to transcribe this all, so enjoy:

• Harry's new girlfriend's name is Cressida Bonas. She also goes by "Cress," "Small," or "Smally." And she has the most normal name in the family.
• Her mother's name is Lady Mary-Gay Georgiana Lorna Curzon and she was described as a "60s it girl."
• Her sisters are Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe or "Bellie," Georgiana Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, and Pandora Cooper-Key or "Baba."
• Her brother is Jacobi Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe or "Cozy." 

Makes me miss Downton Abbey. I have a feeling that if I lived in England I would be just like Madonna and annoyingly adopt a British accent. Dad pulls this Zelig stuff all the time. When he's in Maine, he drops his "r's" like nobody's business. Speaking of New England accents, last night the Boy complained that the water in his shower was, "wicked hot." What? Where did he learn that?

Token Tattoo Story

Oddly, it seems like I always have something about tattoos in my Funny Friday posts, so here's this week's story. Have you all seen this?

This is the "World's Worst Portrait Tattoo." The poor man who carried this around on his body wanted to get the tattoo in remembrance of his wife who tragically died in a house fire one month after they were married. He brought a picture of his late wife to a tattoo studio and the result was the horror show you see above. 

Fast forward five years and the guy goes to another tattoo studio and shows the artist the mess on his arm. The artist takes pity and fixes it...for free:

A vast improvement, wouldn't you all say? It doesn't have anything to do with celebrities, but I thought it was a nice story with a happy-ish ending. Perhaps the tattoo artist could do something about this:

 

Oh, the irony!

Hope you all have a great weekend!