Little Prince George Prince William and Princess Kate, who incited mass hysteria amongst the international media for doing something that will occur 133 million times this year throughout the world: crapping out a baby. The arrival of the future King George VII was blissfully off my radar until the umbilical cord was cut (and presumably enshrined in a jar of pickle brine at the British Museum) and every media outlet from Hobart, Tasmania to Severnaya Zemlya went ape shit with excitement. I was unclear why the birth of this particular baby was any more a cause for rejoice than was the blissful arrival of, say, little Itzhak Heilbronner Jr. in Queens, New York. At first I thought it might be because the kid looks remarkably like Winston Churchill, signaling a resurgence of the greatness of the British empire. Then I realized that all babies look like Winston Churchill, so that didn't quite pan out. I do think of an obsession with the Royal Couple as being primarily a chick thing since it seems that most little girls' earliest ambition is to be a princess, drummed into their heads by a childhood of bedtime fairy tales and Disney movies played at an ungodly volume while Mommy and Daddy are trying to sneak in a nooner on the other side of the house. It seems like a dream job to be dressed in gowns of the finest fabric, live in a castle-full of surfs catering to your every whim and have attention constantly lavished on you; all the while never having had to achieve jack squat for all the perks you get. As the little girls grow older they realize that princess gigs are few and far between and the only ways they can be eligible for the highly sought-after positions are to be born into them, marry into them or be cast into a twenty year sleeping spell by an evil witch that can only be broken by the kiss of a effeminate young nobleman with a Beatles haircut. With such long odds, young women comfort themselves by concluding that it's actually kind of nice to be recognized for their accomplishments rather than for what vagina they happened to first crawl out of. But the aspiration of being a princess always lurks hungrily beneath the surface so when they are confronted by a chick who has actually beaten the odds to become a bona fied junior empress, they lose all composure and revert back to their five year old selves watching Cinderella and thinking how smoking hot those glass slippers would look on their pudgy little feet.
Royal Wedding 2033:What the guys are rooting for But it would be sexist of me to conclude that hysteria over the royal birth was reserved for women alone, although the only dudes I've seen who were genuinely excited about it all seem to be in the employ of CNN. Perhaps they're putting themselves in the place of Prince William, a balding guy with over-sized teeth that dresses like a Christmas nutcracker yet managed to snag a disproportionately good-looking wife by virtue of winning the genetic Super Lotto of being handed the sovereignty of the British empire simply by crawling through the right birth canal. Maybe the men were excited about the arrival of Prince George because that means that yet another royal hedgehog is going to make life miserable for a representative of all the hot chicks who turned the common hedgehogs down in high school, hoping that a prince would come along to make their girlhood fantasy of being a princess come true. Disney didn't tell her that her dream came along with putting up with a dude laden with genetic mutations acquired from centuries of inbreeding who lived in a cocoon of self-indulgence from the moment he popped out of the egg, so that's a discovery she gets to make a year or two after the scales that have grown over her eyes at the idea of being the center of her generation's Royal Dream Wedding have fallen off. And when we lowly male commoners see that once-unapproachably beautiful woman sporting a bitter scowl the likes of which Queen Elizabeth has had planted on her puss at every public appearance since her coronation, 1200 years of subjugation will have all been worth it
Geraldo Rivera proving that 70 is the new 16 Professional buffoon Geraldo Rivera, who decided to prove that he's still "got it" by posting on his Twitter account a photograph of himself taken by himself with only a thin towel covering his nether regions, adding the caption "70 is the new 50." I'll go Mr. Rivera one better in saying that 70 is apparently the new 16 because that's the age I would expect a dude to be who's posting half-naked photos of himself on the social network to impress the chicks. At 70, I'd like to think that we're impressing those around us with our wisdom and experience; virtues that can't be sufficiently expressed in a 140-character tweet. My advice to Mr. Rivera is the next time he gets a bright idea to try and convince his adoring public that he's 20 years younger than he is, he might want to set aside the photographic evidence for a while and sleep on it to determine if it's really that good a scheme before pulling the trigger. If he needs a place to stow the evidence while he thinks it through, there's plenty of room in Al Capone's vault.
Speaking of idiots who embarrass themselves on the Internet, New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner. Mr. Weiner was accused by the self-style muckraking website TheDirty.com of engaging in yet another "sexting" scandal, this time using the colorful pseudonym Carlos Danger. The Dirty's correspondent "nik" reported "Anthony Weiner is up to his old tricks again. I've been in contact with a young female girl who wishes to remain Anonymous. She was lured by Anthony Weiner post scandal via Facebook. They had a relationship for 6 months and she believed they were in love. Anthony Weiner like a true sex predator promised Anonymous many things like a job at Politico and a condo in Chicago (a place they could meet up and have sex). The relationship consisted of Anthony Weiner and Anonymous sending sexually explicit pictures of each other and having sexual conversations via phone. The best part was Anthony used an alias this time thinking this would protect him. Anthony Weiner used the name 'Carlos Danger' when he would email pictures of his penis via Yahoo. Which makes me believe Anonymous wasn't the only girl he was working." It's impossible to stand up to such well-written journalism (which I haven't read the likes of since William Randolph Hearst reported on the Spanish American War) and Weiner (like the "true sex predator" that he is) quickly caved and admitted to the scandal as his long-suffering wife stood by him. But I guess when you marry a man with a name like Carlos Danger, you have to expect a few bumps in the road. Mr. Weiner claims that this latest scandal won't derail his mayoral campaign and if that's true, I think he should be listed on the ballot under his sexual predator pseudonym. I'd be much more inclined to vote for a guy named Carlos Danger. At least it's a name that has more dignity connected to it than Anthony Weiner.
Ashworth being styled
Noted thespian of my acquaintance Tom Ashworth, who recently filmed an episode on the TNT series Lost Angels and discovered that he was working with the same hairstylist he had while dancing in the 1978 film Grease. I have no idea what service she would be to Mr. Ashworth on the Lost Angels set, since these days he has about as much hair on his head as your typical 7-ball on a regulation pool table. Mr. Ashworth did go on to give a heartwarming account of how he chose to depart the Grease shoot early to perform a ballet in San Diego, where he met his wife Christine. That turned out to be a good choice for him but a bad one for his stylist since three decades of married life would prove to be a key component to a man's thinning scalp. I can only assume that the stylist has changed her field of expertise to dermatology in the ensuing years to be of any use to Mr. Ashworth now.
North Pole Lake Jonny Award winner Jesse Merlin, who posted an article on his Facebook page explaining that the ice covering the North Pole has melted, creating a shallow lake at the earth's tippy-top. The article went on to explain that this has become an annual occurrence at the North Pole but that didn't dissuade Mr. Merlin from trying to make the news a bigger deal than it was by asking his loyal followers "So what were you doing when the North Pole became a lake? Picture taken Monday, 7/22/13."Since I have never lied to Mr. Merlin and I never will, I was forced to admit that I was masturbating when I was made aware of the photo, which is also what I was doing when the polar ice cap melted in 2012 and 2011. It occurred to me that the friction of my chronic self abuse was the cause of the global rising temperatures and if the North Pole was melting because of it, it might be time to admit I have a problem. But I took solace in the knowledge that the North Pole always freezes over again in a few weeks, doubtless because I calm down a little as the women who surround me wear less revealing clothing as Autumn approaches. If it turns out that my nonstop whacking off is the root of the problem, talking the chicks in my neighborhood into wearing berkas could virtually eliminate global warming altogether. We'd still need to have EPA limits on how often I could access Internet porn but at least it would be a start.
Jonny sweating it out at Grant's Tomb Speaking of rising temperatures, New York City. I went on vacation to The Five Boroughs last week, giving you people a week off from the justice of these pages. When I was there, the City That Never Sleeps was enduring a heat wave with humidity so high that I was sometimes forced to swim down West 86th Street. I've been to New York many times in my life but this was the first occasion that I had to visit Grant's Tomb and by the time I walked there (New Yorkers having still not adopted my home of Los Angeles' far more civilized practice of never allowing your feet to touch pavement unless it is covering whatever parking lot you are walking across to get to your car), I was so covered in perspiration that by the time I was standing in front of the general's coffin, I wanted to crawl inside with him just to cool off. I saw a few Broadway shows while I was in town and during the intermission for one, I was talking to a seasoned New Yorker who had never visited Southern California but who opined "We're experiencing real Los Angeles weather this week."I slapped him with my sweat-soaked playbill and told him that was like saying the sixth circle of hell was reminiscent of a balmy day on the French Caribbean. We then both slithered back to our seats to catch the second act, following a trail of our own ooze like two snails retracing their steps. It wasn't so much a Big Apple as it was a Stewed Prune and I must admit I didn't mind all that much returning to Los Angeles at the end of the week. The air conditioning in my car would never toy with me like that.
