Tod Goldberg

Letters To Parade: I Bet You're A Fucktard

Generally, I think wagering on things is a fine way to spend your free time. There's something particularly American about placing undo value on stupid things. For instance, as a college man, I recall betting on whether or not someone could drink 100 shots of beer without throwing up. It was something called the 100 Shot Club. As I recall, there was a set amount of time to drink these 100 shots -- maybe until the girls showed up, or maybe until we realized there had to be something on television more entertaining than watching other people drink, or maybe it was just until the first person vomited, though I could be wrong. It might have just been about the shots. I never bet on this myself, feeling like my money was better wagered on things like, you know, whether or not someone would hook up with a particular Tri-Delt. It wasn't a very exciting college experience, in retrospect, but at least it was filled with games of chance.

Later, when I lived in Las Vegas, I learned to not bet on too many things since the opportunity presented itself everywhere you looked -- I always liked watching people smoke and play video poker at the grocery store and Rite Aid, personally  -- and, plus, once I had money, I didn't really want to lose it on something trivial. Better to bet metaphorical things. Like we'd see Vern Troyer at Cheetah's and I'd say, "I bet he grabs that stripper's ass," and then, five seconds later, sure enough, Vern would have a handful of a stripper's ass and everyone, except probably the stripper, would view themselves as winners. Today I beg more than wager, like  with God -- "Please, god, don't give me any more student manuscripts in second person about cancer!" -- and with my email -- "Please, don't let this email be from some fucktard asking me to review their self-published book in the LA Times!" -- and occasionally with Wendy -- "Please, can't we watch The First 48 marathon? I'll totally clean the backyard if we can!" -- or, today, with romance author extraordinaire HelenKay Dimon -- "Please, tell that title stealing whore she's a title stealing whore!" and, usually, it comes to no avail. I get 2nd person manuscripts about cancer, someone emails me to review their horror novel about an infected laptop that holds the devil inside of it (really), Wendy opts for E! and HK chickens out and just sits nicely beside said title stealer at a BEA signing.

Living your life on bets and wagers and even prudent reasoning is no way to exist. Why? Because you end up taking it too far. You end up sending in some letter caked in the jizz of fucktardery to Parade. You end up NAME REDACTED DUE TO GOOGLING SELF AND REALIZING THE HORROR, FOLLOWED BY A KIND EMAIL ASKING FOR REDACTION of Sanford, FL. Actually, you end up as SEE ABOVE and her fiance:

I say R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe has romanced women. My fiancé insists he’s gay. Weekend chores are riding on your answer. Who wins?

Who wins? No one. No one win. Hope dies. Russia gets stronger. Bin Laden laughs. The Minutemen lay down their weapons and our borders are flooded. Who wins? Fucktards, that's who. I think it's sad that your fiance insists he's gay and you put that in a national magazine. Is that any of our business? I mean, I think it's great that he's gay, I'm totally in support of that, but why did you feel like you had to put that in the question? Oh...wait...I think I misread that...well, never mind, the point is still the same: What the fuck is wrong with you and your fiance, SEE ABOVE? Do you guys really sit around betting household chores on Michael Stipe's sexual persuasion? How fucking nasty must your house be? I can see it now: "I'll wash the toilet, honey, if you can tell me whether or not Neil Diamond likes to be on top when he's making a girl a woman soon."  "I think Rick Springfield has had a dirty sanchez performed on him. What do you think? I'm not doing the dishes until we have definitive proof!" "So, what do you bet that Neanderthal looking guy from Nickelback wipes back to front? I'm not folding the whites until we know!" I mean, SEE ABOVE, what the fuck is wrong in your household that this is how you guys conduct life? Who wins? Satan. Jesus dies again and Satan rises up. That who fucking wins. You have brought on the end of days. I hope you're fucking happy.

Nevertheless, it is of vital importance that this is settled so you and your fiance can finally clean up after your 34 cats, so we'll let Walter Scott have his say:

Share the vacuuming. Stipe, 48, has taken lovers of both sexes and once described himself as “an equal-opportunity lech.”

Well, that settles nothing. Who wins?

Letters To Parade: "Keep The Bastards Locked In The Attic" Edition

I'd like to believe that most people are fairly decent, that if given the chance to get away with killing a puppy or strangling an infant or defecating on Dick Cheney that they'd take the high road. I'd like to believe that in this day and age, in this enlightened society, that even fucktards might be able to look charitably towards, at the very least, defenseless humans (so, Cheney is out in this equation...but Dr. Laura is fair game...) and realize that whatever station they were born into was not, categorically, their fault.

I'd also like to believe that periodicals such as Parade, which purports to be all about the American family, would perhaps take a sensitive angle to the plight of poor, defenseless kids who've had the temerity to be born out of wedlock to actors.

But alas, I've also always believed that if Gwen Stefani had the chance to see me in real life that she'd probably want to have a threesome with me and Wendy...but then I literally ran into her at Target a few weeks ago and she totally did not seem down for the three way (nor did Gavin or their kid -- Apple? Suri? Fullerton? Levon? Seven? -- who was just, you know, a poor defenseless kid being held by his hot ass mom in Target) and, thus, my entire belief system was thrown into flux. So it didn't come as much surprise to me that a fucktard named Mario Bartoletti of Valdosta, GA would pose the following clusterfuck of fucktardery in this weekend's issue of Parade:

In Hollywood’s Golden Age, stars like Loretta Young kept their out-of-wedlock children a secret. Why do today’s unmarried stars feel free to flaunt such babies?

That's a great question, Mario. Here's your answer, you insufferable piece of shit:  BECAUSE THEY ARE THEIR CHILDREN NOT SOME FUCKING DISEASE THEY PICKED UP FROM A TRANNIE HOOKER IN THAILAND, YOU FUCKING MORON! This isn't some VC Andrews novel, Mario, you miserable fucktard, so children are allowed to leave the house and everything these days. Even if they are born out of wedlock, they are still given all the rights of a human being. That means they don't need to be hidden in some back room and fed porridge out of a dog bowl...they actually get to live! Yeah, I know, it's crazy. Children whose parents aren't married should be hidden away. They should be stigmatized. They should be looked down upon by people like you, Mario. They should periodically be pelted with rocks and garbage and be forced to watch the 700 Club while being spit on by gila monsters.

"Flaunt such babies." Jesus. Mario. Really. You're a fucktard. If you send me your address, I'll send you one of my "One Planet. One People. No Fucktards. Please." shirts free of charge.

Now, then, I think we can expect that Parade would greet this question with the same level of scorn that I have, right? I mean, particularly since they are all about serving AMERICA. So, they'll tell Mario to suck it, right? Right? Right????

Uh, no.

In Young’s day, film studios often had “morals clauses” written into contracts to ensure that stars maintained acceptable standards of behavior. Young’s contract could have been terminated if it was learned that she was pregnant by Clark Gable, her Call of the Wild co-star. (For years, her daughter, Judy Lewis, thought Young had adopted her.) Today, Hollywood has no such standards —“acceptable” or otherwise.

So, I'm curious. What is unacceptable about being a successful person and having a child that you can support and love, even if you're missing one of the parents? What is unacceptable, morally, about giving birth? I always hear about how immoral abortion is, so I'm wondering where giving birth falls into the morality debate. I'm also curious about how many single mothers work at Parade. How many find their lives to be unacceptable? Take the myth of Hollywood out of the equation -- because, really, all actors are are people with jobs, just like any of us -- and once again Parade is relegating women to second class status. It's a pretty rampant thing in the pages of Parade -- specifically in the intellectual bukakke of Personality Parade -- and so I wonder, yet again, what must it be like to be a woman and in charge of a magazine that hates you and thinks you're nothing more than a cum vessel (really -- they had a story all about it a few weeks ago...)?

Letters to Parade: And Why Do Golfers Wear Golf Shirts?

Sometimes, the problem with Parade magazine is not that it is filled with questions by complete and utter fucktards, but that the people who write for Parade (and, true, most of the questions in Parade are written by Parade staffers, but let's just play along like we didn't know that for at least the duration of this post) are complete and utter fucktards who have all of the journalistic ability of the editor of Palm Springs High School's yearbook (and again, let's pretend I wasn't the editor of that yearbook in 1989...nor that when I was editor, it was banned). A perfect case in point comes this week in the form of an answer to an exceptionally fucking stupid question posed by Richard B. of Westfield, NJ, who, I have to imagine, spends most of his days wandering the streets of his hometown looking at the prevailing state of men's fashions, otherwise, why would he ask:

Why are most basketball players such sharp dressers, while football players look like slobs?

Now, in the pantheon of stupid fucking questions, this one hardly even ranks in the top 100 (it's no "Are the corpses used on CSI really dead people?"), apart from the fact that it portends a level of interest in athletes beyond what one might naturally expect (fantasy sports, posters, naming your child Peyton, that sort of thing), it is fairly innocuous. It's the answer that vexes me and casts a pallor over the journalistic ethics of Parade. Here's what Walter Scott has to say:

Because it's easier for tall, slim dudes to look stylish than it is for guys who are built like refrigerators.

Tall and slim? You mean, like a 6-6, 235 pound wide receiver? Or like a 6-5, 215 pound QB? So, on that account, it's clear Walter Scott doesn't know what the average football player looks like (well, I suppose that's not entirely true, since OL and DL players are, you know, built like home appliances), but the real issue here is one of simple research: The reason NBA players dress so much nicer is actually really simple: They have a dress code and the NFL does not. Since 2005, the NBA has required its players, when appearing under guise of the team or league (which would be whenever Richard sees them, since I assume he's not presently chilling at Shaq's house watching Blue Chips for 156th time), to dress up.

It's not a huge fuck up on the scale of proclaiming Barbaro fit and healthy or that Bhutto was America's best hope against terrorism or even that Lindsay Lohan was now clean and sober on the very weekend she was arrested with a strange white powder on her person. But it does underscore a larger and more insidious problem: Parade simply fucking sucks and has Abu Graib-worthy editorial oversight. I feel a letter to my fellow Chosen Person and Parade editor Janice Kaplan coming...

Letters To Parade: The Zombie King Walks The Earth And In His Wake He Leaves Hardboiled Eggs Edition

Easter Sunday is a special time in the Goldberg home. Normally, the night before, I put out a tray of cookies for the Zombie King, in case he stops by our house to drop off chocolate covered marshmallows shaped into the form of bunnies, or commemorative jewelry featuring his body nailed to a cross (which, really now, is a little gratuitous). In the morning, I check the perimeter of the house for muddy footprints featuring a noticeable hole in each foot and then Wendy and I spend the rest of the afternoon hunting for hardboiled eggs on the off chance the Zombie King has graced us with the aborted fetuses of chickens to let us know he cares about us and wants us to glorify his zombieness by making deviled eggs.

What's great about the Zombie King -- and in my opinion what makes him better than Santa -- is that even though most children would find the idea of his existence questionable ('Wait, hold up, he died and then he came back? Didn't he see Torchwood this season? Coming back from the dead fucking sucks! Dude, go rent Pet Semetary!") adults buy into the story of his resurrection like their very afterlife depends on it. Is it more reasonable to believe in a jolly fat elf who lives in the North Pole and who delivers presents to everyone or to believe in a fellow who died, fought the powers of darkness, came back, and then shot up to heaven? I mean, really now: All of this in 3 days? And now he walks the earth passing out hardboiled eggs and chocolate covered marshmallows. Which is more believable?

I suppose the issue of coming back shouldn't be too surprising, after all, at least not after reading this weekend's issue of Parade, which, in true Parade fashion, features a unique resurrection of its own: The return of a fucktard from a previous issue, this time asking an equally stupid fucking question. I speak of one Clark Catelain of Scottsdale, AZ. Only a few weeks ago, Clark graced the pages of Parade with a question so fucking stupid that I was forced to wonder if he really even existed -- a thing I wonder most of the time when reading Parade, naturally, since they make up most of their questions -- and, truly, hoped that he didn't because if he lived, the world was substantially more fucked up than I could have imagined. You see, on February 4th, he asked:

As a fan of Shirley Jones since her goody-two shoes days on the Partridge Family, I've always wondered: How has she managed to stay married to a brash comic like Marty Ingels?

As I'm sure you can imagine, I responded with rage, derision and general disdain for the human race, as once again someone was incapable of distinguishing the difference between television and reality. So when I saw the following question Sunday morning from Sir Fucktard of The Greater Scottsdale Area, I nearly went outside and re-killed the Messiah, just to show how upset I was about the world He left in His wake:

You recently said Paul McCartney denies that he has a serious heart problem. But don't you agree that something must be wrong with him?

I think we can all agree -- me, Walter Scott writer Ed Klein, Parade editor Janice Kaplan,  editorial assistant Anita Goss, assistant copy editor Allison Takeda -- that there is something clearly wrong with you, Clark. But who are you? Who is so talented a reader of Parade that they get to appear in its exalted pages twice in the space of just over a month? According to the internet, you're:

A Republican

Possibly the former vice president of engineering of Broadvision

You're actually making you THIRD appearance in Personality Parade! From the November 17th, 2007 issue:

Q.  With Steve Irwin gone and Jack Hanna turning 60, who is TV’s next wildlife advocate?
—Clark Catelain, Scottsdale, Ariz.

That's right: Clark Catelain has appeared in Parade more than Barbaro did during his final, awful, uh, you know, six months of constant dying. Do I smell a conspiracy here? How is it possible that a magazine with as many readers as Parade has (71 million...really...) manages to print three letters sent into Personality Parade by the same person? And could there be three dumber fucking questions? Do the editors of Parade call Clark every couple of weeks and say, "Hi, yeah, Executive Editor Lamar Graham here. Listen. Uh, we're a little short on dumb fucking questions in the Personality Parade today. Would you mind terribly if we used your name again? No? Great. Look. If someone asks, you're a huge fan of Shirley Jones, the Beatles and Jack Hanna and the late Steve Irwin. Yeah, I know, they seem incongruent. But listen, you don't complain and we'll send you a nice Star Trek sculpture. Deal?"

I suppose it could just be dumb luck on Clark's part. Maybe he is the social barometer of the American public. Maybe he really asks the questions people must have answered. Maybe. But I'm voting for a conspiracy. Who here thinks there is something dark involving Marilyn Vos Savant lurking along the edges of this story?

Letters To Parade: BB King Might Be My Father

You take a few weeks off to tend to important fictional business and what happens? Parade just turns to shit. Well, okay, it's not like it turned to shit, it just remained shit. This weekend, however, is a perfect example of why Parade is not just the worst magazine in America, but also the most patently sexist, which I find upsetting now that it's being edited by a woman, Janice Kaplan who, you know, loves the kugel. But perhaps that's just being too simple, particularly since I can still see, in perfect, awful clarity, the look on my wife's face when my Nana told her that doing dishes is a great way to finally have some thoughts of your own after servicing your man and your brood. I suppose there is a rich history of being subservient to men in almost all of our great religions -- Christianity, Judaism, Dave Navarroism -- so maybe I'm being too rough on Parade's editor.

But, fuck, woman, stand up! Rise! Stem the tide! Ask yourself: What would Associate Editor Joanna Prisco do? We know Joanna would do the right thing. We trust her. Janice? Not so much.

So what's the fucktard kerfuffle? Of course it's all found in Walter Scott's Personality Parade. First, and only marginally fucktarded -- though, to be fair, pretty fucking stupid in general -- Edward Koziol of Aynor, S.C., whose day job must be setting up comics with straight lines, asks:

Why does George Clooney date women half his age, like Sarah Larson?

Oh, gee, I wonder what the answer will be?

Because he can.

Oh, the hilarity. Somewhere, Larry The Cable Guy is cursing himself that he didn't think of that line. Imagine, however, if Edward Koziol, who must have been terribly vexed by this issue, who must have been losing sleep nightly in his doublewide wondering about the dating habits of Hollywood stars, asked this question instead:

Why does Estelle Getty date men half her age, like Matt Dillon?

Walter Scott would have crapped himself with sanctimony. I suspect it would sound a lot like:

Our sources tell us Getty has long suffered from a desire to recapture her youth. When dieting didn't work, when plastic surgery failed, she finally turned to a younger man to pull her back to respectability. We find it an ugly trend. Women should only date age appropriate men. But Getty tells all this Tuesday when her new memoir, Golden Showers For This Golden Girl hits stores -- we think it will be a hit!

But really, when compared to the question submitted by Don White, a fucktard who currently resides in Atlanta, but lives in a world where fathering 15 children out of wedlock makes you fickle -- because if you can play a guitar, I guess spreading your seed like you're a dandelion in the wind, is somehow less vile and irresponsible:

BB King has fathered a lot of children by a lot of women. Why is he so fickle?

Don White of Atlanta, GA, you're a fucktard. No, really, I mean it this time. You are a fucktard. People pass you on the street, point, laugh, shake their heads in derision and wonder how things went so terribly wrong in your upbringing that you think a man who fathers a lot of children by a lot of women is somehow fickle, as if poor BB just can't find love. If, say, Estelle Getty had popped out a bunch of children from a bunch of men, would she be fickle? No, she'd be bow legged. She'd be a harlot. She'd patently not be a golden girl (and before the hate mail comes in, yes, I know, she's got dementia and is in a home...I mean no disrespect to Estelle Getty, she's a hero, she's a star, all that, I'm just using her as an object lesson) and would be known as a soiled whore. Or something like that. But let's see what the women hating people at Parade have to say. Let's take a bet or two, shall we? How many people say BB will be called for his wanton dick swinging? Anyone? Anyone? Janice? Joanna? C'mon, don't leave it to Walter Scott...oh...crap...

"About 15 times, a lady has said, 'It's either me or Lucille [his trademark black Gibson guitar],'" King, 82, told Parade. "That's why I've had 15 children by 15 women." He also said being on the road has ended many relationships.

Other things that might have ended BB King's relationships:

1. He's fucking his guitar. Not metaphorically. I mean he actually fucks his guitar.

2. Women have realized that fucking an 82 year old man with 15 children by 15 women is fucking disgusting.

3. Anyone who names their guitar, names their penis, and if you name your guitar Lucille, what do you name your penis, Dolores?

4. He's fickle...and by fickle, I mean he likes to fuck BB King groupies at every stop along the road.

5. Women have finally decided that if they're gonna hook up with an ugly man who can play guitar, they'll do that guy from Nickelback, who, in the latest issue of Playboy, admits to sucking his own dick for a case of beer. Really.

Anyway, the point here is this: I yearn for the day when Parade treats promiscuous women with the same glancing blows they do with men of similar ilk. Janice, can I have your word on that?

Letters to Parade: Khaaaaaannnnnn

I feel like Captain Kirk: ...Am almost done...book is torturing me...must stop writing...so...I...can...get..back...to blogging...fucktards are festering...must...stop...the fucktards...Spock...Bones...Khaaaaaaaaan...

In brighter news, I will actually finish The Fix this week. How do I know this? Because my editor told me I would. So. Yeah.

Letters to Parade: And When She Gets To Heaven, Will She Let Ike Burn Her With His Crack Pipe?

[I was frankly stunned to open Parade this week and not find a cover story on how well Heath Ledger's been sleeping lately, how Britney seems to be on the path to get her kids back and how it looks more and more likely that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee...alas...foiled again...now, onto the fucktards...]

I'm sure Mike Waldo of St. Paul, Minnesota is a perfectly nice fellow. He probably has friends and family who adore him, a pet who licks his face each morning, a job her loves doing something personally edifying, a car with enough room to store all the hockey sticks a man could need during the course of a long Minnesota winter, a #3 sticker on the window, deep thoughts about ice fishing, a collection of rare coins, a little touch of the arthritis in his toes, a few feelings about Jesse Ventura, a distrust of Hilary Clinton, a couple shanks of frozen venison in the ice box, a DVD of "The Cutting Edge" purchased at Target for $9, glow hooks he swears by, more than one relative who pronounces Diabetes as DIE-UH-BEAT-US and a healthy admiration for interesting cheeses.

And God bless him, you know. God bless him.

The problem with Mike Waldo is that he's a complete fucktard, as witnessed by the amazing question he posed to Walter Scott this week in Parade:

Ike Turner died of a cocaine overdose. Did ex-wife Tina attend the funeral?

Here are ten equally stupid questions Mike didn't ask, but could have:

1. I recently heard that Joseph Mengele was found alive in Argentina. Are the Jews going to go hang out with him to see how he's held up all these years?

2. Barbaro recently died. Did the staff of Parade attend his funeral or do they still think he's alive?

3. I recently heard that OJ Simpson was arrested again. Did Fred Goldman post his bond?

4. Roy Scheider died this week. Will he be buried in shark invested waters?

5. I've written some really innovative Chico and the Man fan fiction. Do you think Lee Goldberg would be interested in reading it?

6. I've recently purchased a pit bull. Do you think Michael Vick would teach me how to get it ready for competitive dog fighting?

7. I recently heard that when Clinton left office, the nation had a huge surplus. Is there anyone stupid enough to turn that into a huge deficit?

8. I really think subprime loans sound like the wave of the future. I'm thinking I'll just make the interest payments only, is that a good idea?

9. I don't think anyone can beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Should I invest all of my savings or just 75%?

10. A steak dinner is riding on this bet: I think Charles Manson was framed. My wife says he's guilty. Who wins?

There are, of course, 1000s of questions just as fucking lame as Mr. Waldo's, but few show the simple lack of real world observation skills as Waldo's. Let's see, Mike: Say someone you were married to beat the shit out of you for years, so that your face didn't even look the same anymore, so that the relationship and the beatings became so notorious that they made a fucking movie about it, do you think you'd go to that person's funeral? (Oh, and pretend you're a woman. If it helps, put on some heals, a little skirt, and sing "What's Love Got To Do With It" while shaking your ass through the streets of New York...okay...done? Great.) What kind of absolute fucktard would even ask that question? What kind of fucktard could imagine she would go? I mean, Mike, really, what the fuck is wrong with you? In twenty words or less, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Parade, ever sensitive to women, captions a photo of Ike & Tina with "Ike and Tina in 1975: Rhythm and bruise," and then answers the question:

No. Her rep says, "Tina had no contact with Ike in over 30 years" and no desire to reopen the book on that painful period of her life. Ike discovered Tina, but now he's mostly remembered for abusing her.

Seriously, if you're a woman, and say you gotta write the captions for Walter Scott's Personality Parade, aren't you just a little sick after? Don't you want to get in the shower like Pia Zadora in the Lonely Lady, after she was raped with a garden hose by Ray Liotta, and just shower in all of your clothes? Don't you sometimes flip open Oprah Magazine and wonder what it might be like to not write captions that denigrate women?

As a bonus to all of this fucktardery, I also present this question posed to That Smug Bitch Marilyn Vos Savant by one Kevron P. of Williamsburg, VA:

Is there less oxygen in winter air due to fewer leaves, or is it just me?

I pray to all that is holy that it is only you, Kevron. And could the stupid people please stop breeding?

Letters To Parade: The Super Bowl Of Fucktards

Around the Goldberg household, the Super Bowl is treated like the national holiday it should finally be declared. Wendy cooks up the traditional Super Bowl turkey and wild boar while I go out to the backyard and play touch football with our five boys Ralph, Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky and Mike. Before kick off, we head off to church to get a little Jesus for the team we're rooting for, and then come home in time for an early dinner and four quarters of anabolic man crushing. Sure, Eli Manning looks a little retarded, but retards are so in this year that it's sick. After the game, Wendy and I crawl into bed and read Parade magazine to each other while the boys softly cry from their mats they share on the floor with the two dogs.

Or, you know, I sit alone in the living room and watch quietly by myself. Because, typically, I don't like watching football with other people. They tend to scream. They tend to talk. They tend to annoy me. This year, however, I actually ended up in the living room of Rob Roberge, hitting the bottled frappacinos and carrots-into-the-ranch-dressing-dip with great acuity.

And then, upon returning home, well, then I read Parade. What I learned is that the true Super Bowl wasn't played in lovely Glendale, Arizona (and, lets be honest, Glendale, Arizona is a shit hole. Scottsdale? Not so bad. Phoenix? There's a reason so many episodes of The First 48 take place there). The real Super Bowl was played on the pages of Parade, ladies and gentlemen, and it was super bowl of d-list celebrity obsessed fucktards, fucktards stuck in a time machine, and fucktards who simply cannot understand that, surprise, people are not like they are in the TV shows they star in!

Sweet Christ, people. You're fucking killing me. And on Super Bowl Sunday, no less. First, there is JB of Evansville, Indiana, who wants to know:

Is it true that Carrie Underwood has never had a pedicure because she's too ticklish?

What...the...fucking...fuck? Where on earth did JB hear this? And lets just assume JB did hear this somewhere, why would he (or she...though this screams he) write into Parade to find out this very important question? What other questions must vex JB? Is is true that Carrie Underwood has never had sex with a dwarf because she is freaked out by the dad on Little People, Big World? Is is true that Carrie Underwood once saw Simon Cowell's erect nipples through his tight black shirt and developed an aversion to raisins? Is it true that Carrie Underwood once had too many dates and found out she can't eat dates because they are tough on her constitution? All I know for certain is that I am not the only person concerned by this frightening bit of questioning by JB. No less than Carrie's Fans and the Tickling Forum [not terribly work safe, but then if you're reading my blog, I suspect being work safe isn't all that important to you...but for the folks at Advance Magazines, don't lose your job over this, just trust me] are befuddled and somewhat aroused by this as well. Arlen Specter should look into this.

But it's not just Carrie Underwood fetishists who've got me concerned. No, it's a fucktard named Clark Catelain from the aforementioned Scottsdale, AZ who really has me wondering about why people cannot distinguish between TV and reality. And, well, who the fuck is a long time fan of Shirley Jones. Shirley Jones fetishists, I suppose. You see, Fucktard Clark asks:

As a fan of Shirley Jones since her goody-two shoes days on the Partridge Family, I've always wondered: How has she managed to stay married to a brash comic like Marty Ingels?

Well, you see, Clark, Shirley Jones wasn't really the character she played on TV, or else you'd be hearing stories about how she used to blow Ruben Kincaid in the back of that fucking bus and that child protective services had questions for her about how at one point she had one child playing the drums and then, inexplicably, there was another child playing the drums and no one bothered to make note of the fact that, well, she'd obviously murdered her child and replaced him with a child she kidnapped or bought off of the black market!  And the thing about comics, Clark, is that they aren't really like the people they portray on TV, either. So, when Marty portrayed fucking PAC MAN on television, he wasn't, you know, like, a real video game character. Likewise, whatever role he played in an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that, at no time, did he do anything that would require he be roundhouse kicked by Chuck Norris. You see, Clark, these people are actors playing roles. It's not real life. It's make believe. Like how sometimes I make believe the world isn't people by absolute fucktards. The bubble invariably bursts each Sunday when I read Parade.

Letters To Parade: Please Tell Me What I Think

I'd like to think that most people know what they think. For instance, this weekend I went to a luncheon and a woman asked me if any of the stories I've written were based on real people. I thought about it some and decided to say yes, that my story "The Jesus of Cathedral City" was based on a real person. This made the woman in question very happy. She said, "So you believe Jesus is the son of God?" And I said, "No, but I believe Jesus was a real person." This didn't satisfy the woman. She said, "But that's not true," and I said, "What's not true?" And she said, "He's the son of God." And I said, "I don't think that's true." And the woman, well, she didn't buy my book, but I left the conversation confident that I knew what I thought and that the woman now knew what I thought as well, even if she didn't believe it.

That's not to say I'm always positive that I know what I think. Sometimes I have to ask Wendy what I think about particular cheeses, since I can rarely remember which cheeses I like. Take Gorgonzola, for instance. I like to think that I like Gorgonzola, but that fact is that I don't like Gorgonzola, but for some reason can never remember this simple fact and thus I end up ordering salads featuring hunks of Gorgonzola, or steaks topped with Gorgonzola, and the end result is disappointment. So I admit that I periodically ask Wendy what I think of particular cheeses if it seems like I'm about to make a poor culinary choice. But, in general, I know what I think and most of the people I know have a pretty good handle on what their own thoughts are, because, well, I try to avoid knowing as many fucktards as possible.

Last week I encountered a fucktard who tried to tell me what I thought about something, even intimated that what I thought I thought I did not think, but I quickly diffused that situation by simply proving that what I thought I did, in fact, think, even if what said fucktard thought I thought I did not think. It gets complicated, certainly, but when in doubt, I say always think about things and see if it makes sense.

Sadly, not everyone has that ability and thus they turn to Parade to figure out what, precisely, is going on in their own minds. Take a fucktard named Shelby S. Shelby lives in Omaha, Nebraska, home to Sean Doolittle, a reasonable man, a smart man, a deep thinker. Omaha is also home to my friend Erika. Erika is a smart woman. She knows what she knows. So I cannot chalk up Shelby's problem to an issue of location. No, I can only think that Shelby's problem is that she's a fucktard:

Your item on Miley Cyrus made me wonder: Is the girl who plays her best friend, Lilly, on Hannah Montana as bad a singer as I think?

As far as existential conundrums are concerned, Shelby's doesn't seem all that severe, though of course it's hard to know with certainty since Shelby isn't really very clear about what she thinks. Because she doesn't know what she thinks. You see, she needs Parade to decipher her own thoughts, which I hazard to think is a job far beyond the talents of even Parade's most talented staffer, Associate Editor Joanna Prisco, and likely far too frightening for Walter Scott to truly investigate, though I suspect he knows a little something about how truly stupid people think, or at least has enough personal experience to ruminate with some clarity on the issue. What does Shelby really think? Oh, I think she thinks that, like, oh my god, I was all...and I was like...and it was, like, all, oh my god, and like, whatever, you know? And she thinks this deeply. Nevertheless, Walter gives us an answer that deserves proper investigation:

Not in real life. She sings badly for the role. "I've been singing since I was little," says Emily Osment, 15, sister of Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense). "My single 'I Don't Think About It' hit #3 on Radio Disney."

Hmm. Well, let's tell Shelby what to think:

Uh. Yeah. Well. Uh. Hmmm. Well. Okay: That was awful.

Letters To Parade: At Least They Didn't Say She Liked Barbaro To Win The Triple Crown

I interrupt my lovely residency in ass-fucking cold Vermont to report that Parade has redefined what ass-fucking cold really means. It wasn't enough that they resurrected the glue-bound Barbaro. It wasn't enough that they said, only days after she was arrested with, uhm, someone else's coke in her pocket, that Lindsay Lohan was headed for total sobriety. It wasn't enough that I've learned that next week's cover story is on how Britney Spears is finally getting her life back together and has an abject fear of locked bathrooms and the police. No, none of those things were enough. Instead, nearly two weeks after she was assassinated, they decided to not pull their issue featuring Benazir Bhutto's face on the cover with the caption "America's best hope against Al Quaeda?" and the quote "I am what the terrorists most fear." And really, they didn't have to pull the issue. They just had to pull the double-page spread of the cover, reprint it with something along the lines of "one of the last interviews with..." and no one would be the wiser that Parade is managed by a phalanx of fucktards so vast, so deep, and so entrenched that they rival only the Republican party in their inability to deal with truth in a timely fashion.

I understand that they go to press some two or three weeks prior to publication, but there's no good reason, apart from their general fucktardedness, that they couldn't have inserted a little slip of white paper, even, into the center fold that said:

Hello, my name is Janice Kaplan. I'm the editor of Parade Magazine. For the last two weeks, due to an accident beyond my control, I've had my head shoved into my own ass. During that time, apparently Ms. Bhutto was killed and, like, some shit went down in Pakistan (which is a country over there on the other side of the map, a few hundred miles from the Bronx) that was hella crazy. But like I said, I was otherwise disposed with my own asshole. Sorry. Stay sweet and have a great summer. K.I.T.!

Sadly, not even that was attempted. Instead, they just let the magazine run as is and once again the world sees why my dreams, nay, the very fabric of my life, is possessed by visions of Parade magazine being replaced in my Sunday paper (which, to be fair, I didn't actually receive here at lovely Bennington) by, you know, pictures of lost pets and missing children.

Say it with me, people: F U C K T A R D S