Chewed Up and Spit Out

You know your music career is in jeopardy when even a collaboration with Lil Wayne is a radio flop. Perhaps wisely, former Creole Lady Marmalade Mya Harrison has turned her attention away from self-loathing teen girls and her yet to be (officially) released fourth studio album to the plight of the pups.

Teen girls? Oh yes. Mya's last philanthropic tour was the Secret to Self-Esteem, a mall-hopping brigade of back-patting health care specialists sponsored by Secret antiperspirant. Sadly, it appears that the only ones still interested in Mya is dog food companies and the producers of sweat inhibitors.

The Semen Tree

Every spring, I smell semen—or spooge, baby batter, love mayonnaise, the sometimes viscous, mostly watery (and fingers-crossed, never chunky) male juice that has been the bane of many a' girls' existence since the dawn of the blow job. The culprit? An efflorescent tree blanketed in odorous, white blossoms.

At times I chalked up the thick stink to an olfactory misunderstanding rooted in my tendency to eroticise everything—even botany. That is, until the most recent issue of The Onion cemented my observation in cold, hard fact (as The Onion is known to do).

Frida of the Yearn for Zion Ranch

The Dutch Oven

The other day I received this voice mail message from my friend: "You probably won’t listen to this message, but if you do, know that we desperately need your help as we are trying to discern what language the people of Holland speak, and whether or not they are both speaking Dutch and they are Dutch. And if they are from Holland, why are they Dutch? Why aren’t they hollandaise? And how do the Netherlands fit in there?"

As a product of the Colorado public education system, I am no more qualified to answer these questions than, say, Miss South Carolina, but I was once employed by a Dutch man. He was unusually tall and had an affinity for milk pudding. Unfortunately, that just about exhausts my knowledge of the world's wooden shoe-clad populace, so to answer these questions I will resort to Wikipedia, whose wells of unreliable information ne'er run dry.

Holland: Although ill-educated Americans (and some Dutch) use Holland and the Netherlands interchangeably, Holland is actually only a portion of the Netherlands. In fact, North and South Holland in the western Netherlands are only two of the country's twelve provinces. While Holland may have sticky greens and sailor-stuffed hookers, the Netherlands' outer provinces are populated by languid windmills, virginal milkmaids (see dildo below) and polychromatic fields of buttercream tulips.

Hollandaise: First described by chef François Pierre La Varenne in his 17th Century cookbook, hollandaise sauce has been making buttery goodness of unsavory comestibles for hundreds of years. Comprised of a piss-yellow powder from one of those Knorr sauce packets in the spice isle and a splash of milk, hollandaise sauce is indubitably delicious. It is not, however, the word used to refer to the occupants of Holland, nor the language that they speak (more on that later).

Netherlands: The Netherlands is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which consists of the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba in the Caribbean. Yes, Aruba. Who knew?

Dutch: Resembling the sound of a German death metal band getting ass-raped by a Viking, Dutch is inarguably the ugliest language in the world. With this is mind, it is of little wonder why the Nazis killed Anne Frank (zing!).

The Keyword An(n)als

Through some XXX-rated force of panty-sniffing fortuitousness, I recently learned that an Internet peruser was led to my website after Googling, "www.woman naked with man having sex while pooping." It's good to know that I'm attracting my target audience: perverts and poopofiles.

Elizabeth Berkley is SO EXCITED!

When super gay entertainment channel Bravo tapped Elizabeth Berkley (better known as Jessie Spano) to host its new reality/competition show, Step It Up & Dance, they seemed to forget one important thing: no one cares about the towering talent-monger unless she is naked. Cue one of my favorite videos from You're The Man Now Dog, a community of nerdy video hacks with just enough time on their hands. It is a work of staggering genius, spliced together by a true visionary: my roommate.

YouTube Wunderkind

If emerging pop sensation du jour Marié Digby (as in Mary-ay, as I just learned) has taught wannabe artists anything, it's that covering billboard hits and broadcasting them on YouTube can actually launch a professional singing career. Sure, Marié might've been signed to Hollywood Records even before she became a DIY video star, but her real-life fairytale gave anyone with a keyboard and a camera hope—perhaps, even, too much.

Take Tiffany Jo Allen, a world class yodeler from Arizona who recorded a twangy cover of "Apologize" by OneRepublic last December. Interestingly, her video has gotten seven times the hits than the winner of the Myspace"Apologize" Cover Contest (chosen and announced by OneRepublic themselves). One can only hope Tiffany Jo will be performing her dipthong-heavy rendition during this summer's state fair circuit.


Or Britney Nicole, a Green Day-loving teen who belted a heartfelt acapella version of Leona Lewis's "Bleeding Love." What I want to know is why she didn't just come up with the stage name Britney Nicole Paris Lindsay. I think it's rather catchy...and very SEO friendly.


And then there's Chris Comisso, an aspiring Christian pop impresario who covered Sara Bareilles's "Love Song," not because you asked for it, not because you needed it, but because he thought it was about Jesus.

Hot VF on VF Action

While Vanity Fair, with its superlative design and carefully arranged celebrity spreads, tops my list of monthly must-reads, the magazine section of VF.com (reporting almost solely on operations at the mag itself: we just shot a new cover—hooray!; VF.com interviews a Vanity Fair reporter about writing a story for Vanity Fair) seems, well, vain. Perhaps Condé Nast's prodigal cultural digest has a right to be, but if this is where respectable news-blogging is going, give me Drunken Stepfather.

Reed Caught by Urban Eye

Of all the people featured on the New York Times's Urban Eye vlog—yeah, I said it: vlog—at SXSW, I of course know the one who looks the most toasted.

That's Reed. What the videographer might (or might not have) realized is that he was tripping on acid, thusly rendering him a somewhat overwhelmed and hilariously slack-jawed subject. Back in Denver, Reed is best known for two signature moves: tearing his shirt off after last call at the bar he works at and yelling "shirts are for work," and "metal face" in which he brandishes his half-clenched hand in the air and makes a pained expression. Both often involve growling.