Wow… [Dlisted]

So, how long before Lindsay Lohan dyes her red leather jacket black? [Jordan Is Your Homeboy]

So Nick Carter didn’t actually abuse Paris Hilton in 2004? Congratulations Superman, you’re back at the top of the list again. [Hotrag.net]

If I was a gay man, I’d be attracted to Kathy Griffin too. [Best Week Ever]

Good News: Catherine Zeta-Jones will no longer cause my TV to bloom with those annoying white outfits of hers. [Celebrity Silliness]

Watching Tori Spelling eat a BLT is like watching a mother eat its young. [The Skinny Website]

Anna Nicole Smith may or may not be married. And I may or may not care. Go ahead. Guess which one. [Tabloid Whore]

Beyonce’s got milk…and her mother’s hand on her ass. Hey, shouldn’t they be drinking colored milk. It’s the law here in Kentucky. [Popbytes]

The Green Straw has no new gossip but you should visit it anyway. [The Green Straw]

I’d like to give a little shout out to Time Warner for continuously fucking me over for the past two weeks. It’s been a real pleasure to pay you guys sixty bucks a month for a service that’s constantly interrupted by heavy winds, heavy rains, and heavy cut fiber lines. Keep up the good work, assholes. [The Blog You Love To Hate]

I like to think that if a Martian ever approached me on the street and asked me to come with him for the good of mankind, I’d have enough common sense to scream “Fire!” before stabbing him in the eye with my house keys and running away. Not like “American Idol” RUNNER-UP Katharine McPhee, who obviously believes she’s a lot more important than any world leader or top scientist judging by her willingness to leave with someone who just lied to her about how her singing voice can bring peace to the galaxy.

It’s just too bad we can’t all be there to see the look on her face when she wakes up in a cornfield two days from now with blood pouring out of her ass. Normally, I’d organize a field trip to see something like that myself, but why endanger my alibi just to teach a bunch of snot-nosed kids about the perils of self-importance.

Editor’s Note: Ladies and gentlemen, I think we’ve found our actor for the live action version of “Beavis & Butthead”.

I’m betting the moment Anne Hathaway stepped off the plane in Tokyo, someone immediately yelled “Godzilla!” and whipped the entire airport into a panic. Thankfully though – as this photograph suggests – there was at least one levelheaded guy in the crowd who noticed her hooker boots and quickly realized that Godzilla wouldn’t be caught dead in those things.

And it’s because of that guy and his enormous round spectacles that we are looking at a photograph of Anne Hathaway accepting flowers from a woman half her size and not one of her standing in front of a burning skyscraper with an understandable look of “WTF” on her face. They do that with hookers, you know, the Japanese. They give them flowers and treat them like royalty. I know because I’ve seen “Memoirs of a Geisha” eight times.

Ok, I lied. Make that zero times because I’m not gay. I think.

If you called up my mother right now and asked her, “Mrs. von Stroheim, what should I get little Erich for his birthday that was almost three weeks ago but I forgot because I’m a self-absorbed bitch?” – she would most likely respond “Anything that DOESN’T have to do with stand-up comedy.”

In fact, you could ask that same exact question to my father, my brother, my sister, my best friend, my doctor, my paperboy, my dance instructor, my gay high school art teacher, and the five thousand women I’ve slept with and you would still come away with the exact same answer. That is how legendary my hatred for stand-up comedy is.

Now I know what you’re thinking: What, Erich? You don’t like to laugh? You don’t like to feel good? Well, in short, no. I don’t. Feeling good sucks, and the minute I stop believing that, I’ll be back on the corner and back on the dope. And is that something either of us really wants, especially since you’re the one who’s going to have to take the time to step over my sorry ass on your way to work every morning? I didn’t think so.

I will admit though, however begrudgingly, that I didn’t always hate stand-up comedy. As a kid, I grew up listening to guys like Lenny Bruce, Bob Newhart, Jackie Mason, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Steven Wright. I listened to those guys because, well, they were funny and I liked the feeling of milk coming out of my nose.

Then something strange happened in the magical land of stand-up. A cocksucker named Dennis Miller appeared, followed closely by a douche-bag named Dice, and a sudden boom of young comedians with material so uninspiring, I couldn’t turn off my TV fast enough. And that, my friends, is when I first began to truly hate all forms of stand-up comedy and why I’ve currently racked up a pretty impressive list of misdemeanors because I can’t help but punch anyone I see standing in front of a brick wall. Yes, even pregnant women and children. You can blame bad stand-up for the monster I’ve become.

Now you may ask, “That’s all well and good, Erich, but what the hell does any of this have to do with the title of this post?” Well, I’ll tell you. Last week I was handed this package of Demetri Martin’s These Are Jokes on CD/DVD and told to watch it because it was funny. Since I had never heard of Demetri Martin before – and hey, did I mention I hate stand-up comedy – I pretty much assumed it was going to suck but went ahead and took it anyways because I needed a doorstop.

[Hey, buying doorstops can be a serious drain on your income when you live in 120-room mansion like me. Ok, a serious drain on Elizabeth Taylor’s income, but it’s not like it doesn’t affect me too.]

Anyway, flash-forward to this weekend with me locked in my room again with nothing more to do than to either hang myself for being a shameless man-whore or torture myself with the comedic stylings of Demetri Martin. Fortunately for me, I chose the latter.

As many of you may have already guessed, I actually found Demetri Martin – on both CD and DVD – to be pretty damn funny. Similar in style to Steven Wright, Demetri’s jokes are more like clever observations or blatant misinterpretations than your typical series of lame bits asking you to laugh because “you can relate” or because “it’s so true”.

Some of my favorites:

“I see cards that say ‘Get Well Soon.’… Fuck that. Get well now.”

“I like parties, but I don’t like piñatas because the piñata promotes violence against flamboyant animals. Hey, there’s a donkey with some pizzazz. Let’s kick its ass. What I’m trying to say is, don’t make the same Halloween costume mistake that I did.”

“I wrapped my Christmas presents early this year, but I used the wrong paper. See, the paper I used said ‘Happy Birthday’ on it. I didn’t want to waste it so I just wrote ‘Jesus’ on it.”

For those of you who laughed at any of these jokes, you can find all three in his Comedy Central special that highlights the DVD portion of the set. It even has an amusing audio commentary by Demetri, his mother, and his grandmother. As for the rest of the DVD, it’s nicely filled out with a few animated shorts and early gigs. While the animated stuff had me staring at my ceiling most of the time, the gig in which he talks about making his own deodorant was well worth the push a button.

For the curious, I’ve included a video of one of the animated shorts below. As I stated above, it’s really not that funny and possibly even annoying; but if you laugh at this, I guarantee that you’ll laugh at the rest of the DVD.

The real treasure in this set though is the CD. At over an hour long, it contains a stand-up routine which is actually a whole lot funnier than the one of the DVD. It’s just too bad they didn’t film that one instead.

So I guess in the end, what I’m really trying to do here is give a ringing endorsement to a stand-up comedian who actually deserves one. Because if a man like me laughed at this shit, a person like you is absolutely going to wet themselves over it. And really, isn’t that what life is all about? Laughing until you pee a little.

In stores now.

Special Note to Demetri Martin: Lose the guitar, hippie.

“Malcolm in the Middle” star Justin Berfield was heard complaining over the weekend about the demands made by Svengali Joe Simpson in regards to his daughter Jessica and her role in the upcoming Berfield-produced film “Blonde Ambition”. Apparently, the demands have been so excessive that Jessica may actually be bounced from the film, leaving her with no other option than to go back to her career as someone who continuously parades around in front of paparazzi in poor wardrobe choices.

From Page Six:

A rep for Simpson said, “Well, Joe is a producer in the movie, too, so that would be weird.” A rep for Berfield said, “Yes, his company is producing the movie.”

Out of curiosity, I went over to IMDB and typed in “Blonde Ambition”. As expected, nothing came up. This, of course, leads me to believe that there’s something fishy going on here in the Rue Morgue.

If you think about it, Justin Berfield is like, what, twenty-years-old? Now I don’t know about you, but when I was 20, I wasn’t out there producing films and living it up in the $3.75 million dollar mansion I purchased from “Newlyweds” Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson. Or was I? I guess only my bartenders and drug dealers could answer that question.

The way I see it, there’s really only one plausible explanation for all of this: Joe Simpson gave the house to Justin so Justin could help him run his colossal porn empire out of it. See? It all makes sense now, doesn’t it? The missing IMDB entry, the porn-like title, the mansion, the demands – it’s like a pornography conspiracy uncovered and I’m the fanatical right-wing zealot who brought them down, which also kind of explains why I fucking hate myself right now.

And just for the record, I totally agree with Joe. Jessica should definitely fuck two of her bosses in the office scene instead of just one. It’ll make her character look that much more ambitious.

Editor’s Note: Ok, now I remember. When I was 20, most of my time was spent scouring the university library for any information I could find on why it burns when I pee. Which, I guess, was a whole lot better than hanging out in my cramped dorm room all the time, threatening to call the INS on my foul-smelling roommate and his increasingly unfaithful Mexican whore-turned-girlfriend hiding out in the closet. Something I’m sure made me look like a real asshole at the time, but hey, you just can’t trust some people to wash themselves regularly without a little push.