Bad Advice

You should listen to this

"Venice" is the latest album from Billy Hough, as Scream Along with Billy. It's available on Valentine's Day and I think you'll love it.

I realize it's February and I haven't blogged since December. Why is that? Am I depressed? Bored with blogging for no money? Or just burned out on churning out words? I'm not really certain, though a lot of the urge to share is satisfied by Facebook.

I've been thinking about how much I used to LOVE and HATE things as a kid. LOVED the Clash, HATED the Beatles. Black and white, there were no shades of gray. That fervor is mainly gone from my life and while that's sad, I guess a person just gets tired by their mid-forties. So anyway, this record is the first thing that really got me excited in a while. Well, that and Cynthia Carr's amazing David Wojnarowicz bio, Fire in the Belly. Oh, and How to Survive a Plague. Amazing documentary about AIDS activism that will most likely win an academy award this year. Oh, and Oscar, the latest kitten addition to the McGuire-opoulos home. I love that little dude like crazy too.

What's exciting you?

101 Things I Love, #101

Because I'm borrowing (stealing) his essay idea from Crackpot, it only makes sense that John Waters and his incredible body of work is the lead-off item in this latest attempt to return me to blogging.

John Waters is the wind beneath my wings. His movies influenced me more than anything else in the world, besides Clash records. From The Diane Linkletter Story to Polyester to Pecker, I loved them all. Especially Female Trouble . . . oh, Dawn Davenport, how I can relate to your Christmas disappointment!

And his books—so uniformly hilarious, insightful and engaging, I can re-read them over and over again and still find new gems to marvel. His stand-up is flawless, his art, surprisingly serious at times (in a good way). But perhaps my favorite thing about John Waters is his ability to find the beauty in the unusual. Though he has employed traditionally good looking actors like the Johnny's, Depp and Knoxville, he also nurtured and the fantabulous Divine. He gave Edith Massey a career despite her gnarly teeth and chunky butt. He brought Tab Hunter's career back from the dead. He let Stiv Bators play the sex god role he was born to play. And you never get the sense that Waters is making fun of them either; nope. He embraced and sometimes even seemed to envy these characters.

OH, and if that weren't enough to love, we share the same favorite holiday, Christmas!

The best presents, it’s not about spending money; it’s about something so perfect that you never even knew [it] was there in the first place. That’s the very best present you can get. And it could cost a nickel; it has nothing to do with what it costs. The worst present: fruit gift baskets. I can buy a fucking pear! You open it and there are six pears! That outrages me.

For these reasons and many more, John Waters is the 101st thing that I love. More TK tomorrow!

Check it out!

Dating Dont's from Judy McGuire on Vimeo.

My friend Richard and I did this video to illustrate my Frisky column. Turner didn't bite, but we think someone will, because we're awesome.

The Inevitable SATC Review

I have been a writing fool this week. It's been good, but very busy. So yesterday I decided that after I finished my column, I was going to do something completely mindless and go see the Sex and the City movie. I mean, it's not like I have a choice—I write about dating and sex. It's practically a job requirement.

My review: meh. Sex and the City has always been one of those shows that I watch compulsively, but am inevitably annoyed by. Part of this might be because anytime I meet someone new, upon finding out what it is that I do, they chirp, "OMG—just like Carrie Bradshaw!"

My answer: "Exactly. Except fat and poor."

So yeah, I didn't have expectations of anything more than a mindless, two-hour diversion and that's what I got. The thing I liked best about the flick was that the audience was exclusively female. How often does that happen? (Okay, that and the poop joke—that was hilarious.)

The thing I liked least was Big. I've always had a wet-on for Chris Noth—that big, puffy, hunk of alkie Irishman. . . Admittedly, I was more fond of the Law & Order Noth than the SATC Noth, but here, he really bugged me; not sure if it was his character's unlikely evolution into a wuss or the fact that Noth and his IRL girlfriend just had a baby, thus cementing the fact that he'll never be mine. But for whichever reason, he was a disappointment.

Shockingly, the clothes weren't completely atrocious. Well, except for Samantha's. Oy vey. Those brightly colored suits and animal-print pants? Yikes. Her wardrobe looked like leftovers from Working Girl. SJP is normally the one with the idiotic outfits, but Patricia Field really kept herself in check this time around and managed to be mostly tasteful.

In the interest of avoiding spoilers I won't go into any of my various problems with the plotlines, but overall it was heartening to see a movie about women, starring women, and made #1 at the box office by women.

Oh Happy Day!!!!

John Waters fans, rejoice! He's not only making a new movie—but it's a Christmas movie!!! If you know John Waters, you know he loves Christmas! This is going to be great.

Called Fruitcake, it's sounds gaytastic, but it's actually for children! While I would normally look forward to a kid's movie with the same anticipation I would hemorrhoid surgery, I'm betting this is way more Pee Wee than Care Bear. Can't wait!

No More!

Dear Hollywood,
The next time you have a role that requires fucked-up teeth, a big nose, some weird bone structure and an extra ten or twenty pounds, could you just hire an actual ugly actress to play the part? I can't really think of any off the top of my head—because even extras in dog food commercials have to be stick thin and drop-dead beautiful—but I'm sure they exist.

I am so sick of these gorgeous women being lauded with Oscars for being "brave" enough to play ugly for a couple months of their lives. Feh. Tyra in a fat suit does not a Fat Tyra make, know what I'm talking about?

Plus, La Vie en Rose was really fucking dull. I had really been looking forward to it, which made this fact doubly annoying. I eventually had to walk away because Edith Piaf could not fucking kick fast enough for me. It went on and on forever. When you're shrieking "die!" at your TV, maybe it's time to turn it off. Which I did.

Charlize Theron's turn in Monster was unintentionally hilarious, but Oscar-worthy? Not even close. Sure, she did the Hollywood-unthinkable and gained twenty pounds, but really, all that did was make her not severely underweight for a couple months. Brave would've been hiring a real crackhead for the role. Not to mention that Charlize's retard drawl was an insult to white trash everywhere. I could go on but I won't.

Just do me a favor and consider hiring a genuine fugly person the next time you need one. Otherwise, just give the Oscar to the makeup department.
Yours,
Judy

P.S. John Travolta? Your "hair" is about as real as Kenickie's sobriety.

He's Lost Control

Around the time the Monaco CD came out, I got the opportunity to interview the extremely charming ex-Joy Division bassist, Peter Hook. Like I'm certain every other interviewer before me, I asked how he felt about Ian Curtis' suicide on the eve of the band's first American tour. I can't recall his exact words, but he was obviously still angry and got a little emotional about it before lapsing back into wise-assery. I can't even remember what rag I interviewed him for, but that's not the point anyway.

What I'm getting at is that it was like the eighties all over again last night at the Film Forum. Some pals and I went to go see Control, the new movie about Ian Curtis and Joy Division. I can't recommend it highly enough.

It's shot beautifully (as it's directed by Anton Corbijn, this is not a shock, but still—gorgeous) and though we all knew how it turns out in the end, every second of it was completely enthralling.

Though the movie was based on his betrayed wife's book, I honestly didn't expect to come out of it thinking Ian Curtis was, well, kind of a jerk. Not a complete scumbag, mind you, but a jackass in that way that certain musician types get once they get a little taste of fame. I am certain I heard a hissed "asshole" once or twice from the crowd. Though I found myself getting pissy at him, it was refreshing to actually see a fully-realized, multi-dimensional character on screen. Many shades of gray, all rendered exquisitely.

My (Other) Man

I don't know how this slipped by without me noticing, but today Gothamist plugs a three-day run of Crispin Glover's film, What is it? Though it was never theatrically released, I've seen the movie, because about ten years back, my friend Darius James did a feature on Crispin for Spin magazine and brought a video of it over to my apartment.

I'd reviewed Crispin's album and always found him deeply sexy, so I was super excited to get a sneak peek. Darius fell into a deep sleep pretty much as soon as I hit play. After ten or 15 minutes, another then-friend stormed out of the room, deeply offended because mental illness runs in her family (a fact no one who knows her would find at all shocking). This left me and Rose to slog through it. While I am a Crispin fan and desperately wanted to like it, I found the film kind of unnerving and overly long. I have a strong stomach, but the focus on slugs and dry-humping downs syndrome cases got to even me after a while.

But Crispin is making a night out of this screening at Anthology Film Archives. In addition to showing the film, he's doing a reading, with accompanying powerpoint presentation (!!), along with a Q&A and book signing. Not sure whether I'm going to make it, but I bet it'll be fairly fascinating.  Let's just hope he left the Peldon back home.

The Devil Wears Nada

As I absolutely loathed the book, I was kind of surprised at myself when I found that I was excited to see the movie version of The Devil Wears Prada. After one aborted sold-out attempt on the film's opening weekend, blogger Red Sauce and I finally caught it this past Friday.

While not nearly as reprehensible as the book, the movie is still fairly annoying—Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci aside. I had hoped the film would show the Lauren Weisberger character to be just as irritating as she comes across in the book—a whining child of privilege, upset at having to fetch some fashion bitch's coffee when anyone could see she'd be much better suited to writing "thinky" pieces at the New Yorker. Yeah, right. But instead, the directors opted for hiring the aggressively bland Anne Hathaway to portray a spunky gal with a heart of gold. Barf.

Hathaway has approximately two different facial expressions and both of them made me want to hit her in the head with a bottle, so in that way she was true to the book. Adrian Grenier plays her boyfriend, proving once again that while he's easy on the eyes. . .

R.I.P.

Poor Red Buttons!

Red Buttons, Syd Barrett. . . you know these things always come in three's.

Who's next?