Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

They say she’s an heiress, but I say she’s more like trailer trash. She wears a lot of Pepto Bismol pink and prances around like an innocent little doll, but make no mistake about it, Paris Hilton is a naughty girl. Before the age of thirty, not only has Hilton served time in jail for a misdemeanor DUI, she has produced a pornographic video, been busted with weed at an African airport, and most recently, been charged in Vegas with felony possession of cocaine. She is claiming the handbag the drugs fell out of belonged to somebody else. Who does she think she’s fooling? The bimbo act is fine if you’re hanging out on the Sunset Strip with Brandon Davis, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, but in the real world, not everybody is as idiotic as Barbie.

The year’s third romantic comedy about artificial insemination, The Switch, turns out to be a pleasant surprise amidst the movies being dumped in the dead weeks before Labor Day. Pitched at a higher level of wit than either Jennifer Lopez’s The Back-Up Plan or the critically-slathered lesbian sitcom The Kids Are All Right, The Switch is a low-key, wry, poignant relationship film self-consciously modeled on Annie Hall and When Harry Met Sally. Although hardly as funny as its progenitors, The Switch turned out better than its on-the-nose trailer portended.

While Jennifer Aniston is top-billed as Kassie Larson, a television producer intent upon single motherhood the scientific way, Jason Bateman plays the central character, Wally Mars. He’s a neurotic, nebbishy Wall Street quant who has been platonic best friends with Kassie for a half-dozen years. Bateman portrays Wally as a handsomer, less overtly hostile, and less ethnic version of Woody Allen’s anhedonic worrywart Alvy Singer.

I like to watch the Yankees on TV. I used to like visiting the stadium until they built the uber billion dollar baby and the ticket prices, food and drink soared.

What I also don’t like, at home or at the stadium, is the extra hour of commercials, advertisements for the “feel good” society’s goods and services, urging perennially happy, smiling consumers to buy more cars, rebuild their houses at Home Depot, Live Better at Wal-Mart, drink more beer (hotties will love you) and in general keep chasing the hedonistic, pleasure-seeking dream of endless plenty. It’s over, kids. Get back to earth. Mom’s looking for you.

Translated by MEMRI, Mossad's free misinterpretation service for Middle-Eastern languages.

Tonia and I didn’t have much in common. She hadn’t heard of Prague, lobotomies, or The Da Vinci Code, which, I thought, pretty much covered all of Western culture. But we had to talk, because we were two unemployed Army wives, living together in a one-bedroom apartment in Germany with our infantrymen as we waited for my husband’s housing paperwork. After a couple days of awkwardness, Tonia and I finally found a topic we could bond over: German sluts. German sluts would try to steal your man. German sluts would go after any soldier, they didn’t even care if he was married. German sluts wore a lot of ugly spandex. We discussed German sluts and watched Seinfeld and drank pickle juice together. I had never done that before. It was like drinking a cup of bottom shelf vodka. It was like drinking a cup of death.

 

In these rough times of brutal crimes against our people, economic uncertainty, lots of talk about doom and despair, it’s good to take a break, clear the mind and soul and enjoy some simple music – music that isn’t about politics or anything really serious at all.

Here’s a pop music group ABBA – from the 70s, but really immortal – lots of blonds being a bit a dumb, but always in a fun, positive way. These are our folks and this is our music – and maybe some of our young lads should stop arguing over racial politics and give a local White gal a…

Four decades into the feminist era, the number one movie at the box office is Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables, in which Eighties action heroes blow stuff up. Right behind is Julia Roberts’ Eat, Pray, Love, in which a divorcée expensively feels sorry for herself in Italy, India, and Indonesia. (Iowa, Indiana, and Idaho presumably being all booked up.)

I don’t think it’s too scandalous in 2010 to point out that these films are aimed at disparate audiences. Today, in fact, it’s hard to remember how nervous such observations made the bien-pensant as recently as the early 1990s, in the wake of the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas brouhaha. Back then, it was almost mandatory to add after any subversive notice of sex differences, “But, of course, that’s all due to dressing baby boys in blue and baby girls in pink; if it weren’t for society, everybody would like the same things.”

Designed by the critically acclaimed architect Carmody Groarke, this exhibit takes a retrospective look at the twisted stream of consciousness forms that came to encapsulate Surrealism. Every Thursday features talks, performances, and films by those artists at the forefront of the Surrealist movement—Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti, René Magritte, Man Ray, Joseph Cornell, and Maya Deren. More contemporary figures such as Rebecca Horn, Edward Kienholz, and Rem Koolhas are featured as well. If you’ve ever wondered what its like to step into the bizarre disquieting worlds that came to encapsulate Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s seminal avant-garde film Un Chien Andalous, then the Surreal House should be at the top of your list.

It has been a month since that chilly Johannesburg evening when 85,000 spectators at Soccer City - and over a billion people around the world - watched Spain's slow, patient, honest passing and build-up prevail over their opponents' direct and aggressive football to win them the Fifa World Cup.

The other, more valuable, victory was the successful staging of the World Cup by Africa's first hosts, South Africa. There were no nuclear attacks by al-Qaeda, no mortars fired by al-Shabab, no wild animals invading the pitch, no wholesale robberies and killings of foreigners and the stadiums did not crumble under the weight of those who sat in them.

August is in full swing and it’s the Hottest Summer on record, Ever, so anyone who’s anyone is either on a boat, up in the air, or two feet from a beach. The First Lady is no exception—she’s been vacationing in Spain this week with nine-year-old daughter Sasha. Not everyone welcomed America’s first lady to Marbella with open arms, however, as some residents were complaining over special treatment for the Obamas and their 70 Secret Service agents. Apparently, roads were paved and one local beach closed to the public in case Michelle and Sasha wanted to take a swim.

Also seen out in Spain this week were Princess Letizia and daughters Leonor and Sofia. The adorable trio were spotted in Mallorca before visiting Crown Prince Felipe during his yachting competition. Somehow, reading about others’ vacations isn’t as depressing when they look so happy. Is it too much to ask for a play date with the Obamas?