1. But if you're a screaming, snot-faced, seat-kicking baby with a yappy, indifferent mother, welcome aboard!
Filmmaker Kevin Smith ( Clerks, Zack and Miri Make a Porno), a big guy, but not huge, was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland to Burbank on Saturday night, for being "too fat to fly." Since then, Smith has been burning up his Twitter page (he has 1.6 million Twitter followers) with direct references to everyone involved, and has devoted one of his infamous "Smodcasts" to the incident. One can hardly blame him: He says he fitted in the seat and was not the "safety risk" that "Southwest attendant Suzanne" said he was. Why would they humiliate him like this? "What, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?" he rails on his page.
His page is hilarious on the subject: In mid heave-ho, he writes, he makes eye contact with a bigger passenger than him, but was "not about to throw a fellow Fatty under the plane." He simply reads the man's terrified eyes that seemed to signal "please don't tell." Both his remarks and his picture of himself distending his cheeks and declaring he is "too wide for the sky" are very funny, but it is not a reach to feel the pain under this screed.
For years, tidy little stick people in velour travel suits have been writing advice columnists about what to do about "being seated beside a fat man on a plane, why, it hardly seems fair!" Sometimes, the calisthenic-addicted, heartless celery-lovers actually moralize furiously that the big folks should have to buy two tickets. Somewhere along the line (and I am looking at Kirstie Alley, on the National Enquirer cover again for being heavy - pretty, funny, bright, but heavy), we started to confuse thinness not only with style and health but with virtue, thereby enabling self-righteous whippets to storm around deriding and hurting Frankenfatsos. I never met a fat man I didn't like, and I never met a stewardess that I did. Southwest has messed with the wrong man this time: I am glad I am not them, and I hope "Suzanne" finds true love at Krispy Kreme until she hears some sky-tramp yell, one fine day, "We're gonna need a seatbelt extender over here!" Meanwhile, Smith will shout for all the people actually ashamed of themselves, as if having a larger body type is the same thing as igniting your shoe at take-off.
2. Sit down and enjoy the ride
With the swaying, thick-tongued and mesmerizing Paula Abdul gone, this season's American Idol was doomed. Fellow judge Simon Cowell clearly took note, announcing he is leaving at the end of this season. Now, there are rumours of clearing out Randy Jackson and replacing Cowell with Howard Stern, which is something like replacing Regis with Rush Limbaugh - an exciting, disastrous plan.
Look at the show now! A non-entity like guest judge Katy Perry shows up and is openly rude to judge Kara DioGuardi. This week, it is reported that Perry snubbed and insulted her at an event, leaving her in tears. Imagine her doing that to Paula? Abdul's sobbing, her kung fu moves and nervous breakdown would have destroyed Perry. And there is the dumpy, cheerless Ellen DeGeneres sitting there this week in bifocals and a frown, looking like a mean forensic accountant, and having nothing to say about music, dance or performance. The contestants are horrible: They all sing Lady Gaga songs about wanting "disease," while making big, stupid jazz smiles. I am enjoying this shipwreck a great deal: it is so slow and so awful. And I have decided Gaga cannot be a genuine artist, axiomatically, if American Idol contestants can and want to sing her songs, "again and again, again and again." This simply does not happen to, say, QueenAdreena. Not even Peaches. Maybe they should replace the contestants with animated trolls and the judges with small, fiery robots. You tell me.
3. I was born to compete, and I trained every minute of every day for the Vancouver Olympics … And I made this bod perfect by eating at McDonald's every day? When the event announced the fast-food giant as its "proud sponsor," I was sickened by the whole meretricious mess: What athlete, ever, eats factory-farmed, greasy, high-in-saturated-fat meat? Why are they ennobling this food, as if it isn't just urban poverty bait? As the song might go: Ba ba ba ba ba, I'm hating it.
4. Do you know what's out on video this week?
Love Happens, with Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart. And do you know what happens in it? A big motivational speaker and self-help guru (Eckhart) thinks he has all the answers … until he meets this really pretty florist (Aniston) and figures out he has to help himself. Delicious.
5. Is the new Vanity Fair cover totally racist?
Or is the "New Hollywood" so white, as to be translucent? I guess that including Precious's Gabourey Sidibe would have added too much of an Entartete Kunst vibe.