Letters To Parade: Yo, Gawker, Step Off!

It's been brought to my attention that the fine folks at Gawker have decided that they will devote part of their Sunday coverage to Parade magazine as well, which either means that my work here has finally, you know, spawned imitation (which is both the sincerest form of flattery and, arguably, the best way for me to avoid a cease and desist from Advance Magazine Publishers, Parade's parent corporation and the embodiment of fucktardery on a corporate level) or that I must now demand Gawker pay me for the hard work I've pledged to continue in the face of mounting frustration that I'm just not getting through to the fucktards of middle America, the editorial assistants at Parade who can't manage to come up with ways to re-phrase press releases a bit more elegantly than "I've got a steak dinner riding on this: Is Randolph Mantooth dead or is he now starring in transvestite porn under the name Randolph My Ass Is A Toll Booth?", and Edward "For My Next Book I Will Actually Exhume Jackie Kennedy's Corpse And Document The Good Times I Had Dragging It Around  With Jonathan Silverman And Andrew McCarthy" Klein, Walter Scott's alter ego. Or true ego. Or just the weird looking fucktard who comes up with interesting bon mots on the life and times of nominal celebrities for people who read the paper on the toilet each Sunday. 

And while it's true that Gawker seems more interested in the feature stories and That Smug Bitch Marilyn Vos Savant  than they are with my favorite pet project, the dark force of the Illuminati that is Walter Scott's Personality Parade, I nonetheless would appreciate at least a grudging hat tip in my direction, maybe even an honest job to get me out of this grind of being, you know, a midlist author. Something with health benefits. Maybe two weeks of vacation. Maybe a couple of 21 year old NYU hotties who'd like to do my filing (and, yeah, my wife's) in the nude while singing Neil Diamond tunes and Tri Delt anthems ("Tri Delta moooooonnnnn....") under their slightly drunken breaths. For it is I who have suffered fucktard Australian journalists with an inability to discern between my rants and the madness of Parade for this cause. It is I who have received weird emails from men trying to get in touch with Parade staffers I've mentioned here. ("I knew a Rebecca Geroulo about ten years ago and have recently tried looking for her. There is a good chance she wants nothing to do with me (and don't trust her family enough to try going that route). Anyway, a Google search brought up your blog "Letters To Parade: My Dog Versus The Intellect Of Walter Scott" where you mention an editorial assistant by that name...Could you pass this email on to her?") It is I who receives emails from my mother telling me who to anoint as the fucktard of the week. It is I who bleeds for you, America, each and every Sunday morning that Parade comes stuffed in between the flier for Black Angus and the flier for Kohl's.

Do not forget, America, that I've been here for You each and every Sunday (or, you know, Monday morning sometimes, but, hey, someone around here has to write fiction, too; if I didn't have to spend any time creating characters and could just use ones from Star Trek and Lord of the Rings and Xena and then make them fuck, well, it would all be so much easier...but alas, no outlet exists for that...), showing You the folly that is Parade, inviting You into my home to witness the Ebola of my intellect as I deconstruct, reconstruct and furiously beat off (I mean this metaphorically in that I don't actually beat off while doing this. It's more gentle than that. More dainty. Imagine a bukkake film done in stop motion. That's me.) to the wisdom of Walter Scott, the idiocy of the real fucktards who actually write to the magazine to ask if the corpses on CSI are real and the facts surrounding Parade's secret information regarding Osama Bin Laden's death and Barbaro's recent resurrection. I do it for You, America. I love you. Well, I mean, I really like you. You're cool. I think you have a great selection of hats and if this were 1987, I'd make you a tape.

I suppose there's enough to go around -- one man cannot read and cover the vagaries of a periodical like Parade all on his own -- and in truth I welcome the help, though naturally I'd be remiss if I didn't note how sad it is for me that Gawker has yet to refer to Marilyn Vos Savant as That Hot Piece Of Brain Ass or The Woman With The Largest Face And, Behind It, A Substantial Brain Pan or even That Smug Bitch or any of the other nicknames I've bestowed upon The Woman Who Can Cure The Gay, as I'm hoping one of those names sticks and is noted at the bottom of her column each Sunday, right after she solves a complex word riddle.

Alas, this isn't what you came here for, is it? You want the outing of a fucktard. You need the outing of a fucktard. You demand it. I give you Chris Graziano of Detroit, Michigan, who hasn't seen a movie in 51 years (which is odd, since the only Chris Graziano listed in the whole of Michigan was born in 1971) and who, inconceivably, did not have any sort of bet riding on this query:

My favorite film, The Ten Commandments, featured Debra Paget. What is she doing these days?

I think there are three reasonable answers to this question:

1. She's dead.

2. She's not dead, but she will be soon.

3. She's looking for that one fucking person who remembers who played Lilia in The Ten Commandments.

There are also three reasonable things to suspect about Mr. Graziano:

1. He misses the old days when TV dinners came on aluminum plates.

2. His second favorite film is probably Caged Heat.

3. Anyone who truly loved Debra Paget -- who hasn't appeared in anything in over 40 years -- would know that her performance in The Ten Commandments had earned her a place in God's charity and that no one close to God would read Parade magazine, lest their eyes bleed at the heresy spouted by The Smug Bitch.

Let's see what Walter has to say:

"About 30 years ago, I became a born-again Christian," Paget, 73, told us from her Houston home. "I think my evangelical work was foreshadowed when Cecil B. Demille chose me for The Ten Commandments and said, 'I feel the hand of God has been on you.'" Paget has one son, Gregory Kung, 42, a businessman.

This all sounds very dubious. One would think that if you'd already been touched by the hand of God that you wouldn't need to be born again. Or, if it were simply a light touch, that it wouldn't take you another 20 odd years before you decided God wasn't fucking around and that he demanded a little fucking service. Which leads me to think that  perhaps Debra misheard Cecil. Maybe he said, "I feel the hand of Zod has been on you."

Comments

[Joshua James]

John August has taken to answering Walter's questions as well on his blog, and my first thought was, hey . . . that's Tod's gag!

[JDRhoades]

Don't be hatin' on Caged Heat, now. Or for that matter. Caged Heat 2, or the apotheosis of the CH series: Caged Heat 3000. That's some good cinema, right there.

[Mike Barer]

Your Fucktard Cousin Mike misses the old days when these were shorter and simpler!
cheers!

[Jim Winter]

Answer me this, Gawker. How many fucktards can dance on the head of a pin?

[Danny Barer]

Face it Tod, you want to put down that heavy emotional story you're writing, and start whipping up some hot fanfic about what happened between Zod, Ursa and Non while they were trapped in the huge cosmic silver album cover. You could even write Non as an emotionally-damaged young man whose angst renders him unable to speak except in grunts. Go ahead. Write it. No one will ever know.