Korr Values » celebrities

Just don’t look! (at Julia Allison)

Josh Korr — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:22:54 +0000

There are any number of celebrities, pseudo-celebrities, and other assorted lebrities these days who are so harmlessly annoying that they’re beyond mockery. Beyond caring about, even in an ironic way. Every time I come across the exploits of this group, I want to sing Paul Anka’s song from a long-ago Treehouse of Horror:

Lisa: Hey, Springfield! Are you suffering from the heartbreak of … Monster-itis? Then take a tip from Mr. Paul Anka!

Paul Anka: To stop those monsters, one-two-three, Here’s a fresh new way that’s trouble-free. It’s got Paul Anka’s guarantee…

Lisa: [singing] Guarantee void in Tennessee.

Together: [singing] Just don’t look. Just don’t look.

[people turn away; the monsters turn to look]

Just don’t look. Just don’t look.

[more people turn away]

Just don’t look. Just don’t look.

[the monsters try to destroy things faster, but start collapsing]

Julia Allison is one of those people. If you don’t know who Julia Allison is, well done, and don’t start reading Gawker. (I myself now skip all Gawker posts about Allison and Atoosa Rubenstein.)

The more I see that being a part of the New York media world apparently means having to care (or pretend not to care) about stuff like this mediabistro profile of Allison (via The Plank), kal v’chomer am I glad I’m moving to D.C. instead.

I realize this post isn’t doing anything to ignore Ms. Allison. But consider it the first in a series about the modern media-celeb equivalents of the Lard Lad Donut and Duff Beer Cowboy monsters. Maybe if we can get enough people singing the “Just Don’t Look!” song when these folks pop up, then eventually Gawker et. al. will be blogging to an empty room.

Diablo Cody wins for Lamest Punk Oscar Statement

Josh Korr — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:57:50 +0000

Few things are more annoying than celebrities-slash-”artists” taking meaningless faux-stands against the celebrity and public relations machines that drive American pop culture. My all-time favorite example is Kurt Cobain wearing a “Corporate magazines still suck” T-shirt on the cover of Rolling Stone. Because, you know, that’s so much more punk than simply turning down requests for an interview and not appearing on the cover of the country’s biggest music magazine. He took a stand, maaaan.

Anyway, Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody joined these esteemed ranks when she totally refused to wear designer Stuart Weitzman’s diamond-studded shoes on the Oscars red carpet Sunday. See, she found out they cost like a million dollars — and there are people starving in Haiti, maaaan. I totally believe her when she writes things like this on her MySpace blog:

I must have somehow missed the part where my shoes cost a MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS and my “choice” of footwear would be publicized nationwide. I honestly thought they were just sparkly shoes. Mr. Weitzman did mention that the diamonds were real when I tried them on, but I’m not Nancy Rockman, Expert Gemologist. I didn’t, you know, bust out my miniature spyglass and assess the potential worth of my kicks.

She just thought that they were sparkly shoes, people! How could she possibly have known that Weitzman makes a special pair of shoes for one rising star every year?! Doesn’t every actress wear zirconia-encrusted shoes on the red carpet? It’s not like Weitzman told her how expensive the shoes were, right? Oh, he did? Okay, well at least she wouldn’t participate in any other over-extravagant red carpet traditions, right? Uh — wearing a Dior dress doesn’t count, does it? Surely those sparkly things at the neckline were just zirconia! And anyway, why would she have agreed to wear the shoes when she’s doing everything possible to stay out of the public eye? According to her blog,

I would never consent to a lame publicity stunt at a time when I already want to hide.

Really, folks, just leave her alone! She doesn’t want to talk anymore about how she was just a li’l stripper-turned-blogger-turned-screenwriter before Juno, or about her book, or her Entertainment Weekly column. She’s way too real and punk for any of that kind of self-promotion.

Just leave her alone and let her wear her Dior and act like she’s Avril Lavigne’s punker/realer big sister in peace. And then read her blog about it.

He looks like a cross between …

Josh Korr — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:04:00 +0000

One game I like to play is to figure out which famous people another famous person looks like. So I will make this a recurring blog feature: “He looks like a cross between…” (Hmm … probably deserves a pithier name.)

First up: Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords. (I’ve only just started watching, but it’s great so far. Like The [BBC] Office and Curb, but without the misanthropy and self-loathing!) He looks like a cross between Benicio Del Toro and Peter Gallagher, with a dash of They Might Be Giants’ John Flansburgh.