Beauty is Imperfection

Los Angeles (API) – Millions of shocked Michael Jackson fans today remembered him as an inspiration—namely as an inspiration not to become wealthy and famous.

“I remember when I was little I wanted to be just like Michael Jackson and I took dancing and singing lessons,” said Wes Miles of nearby Riverside. “Then as he got stranger and stranger I realized, ‘Wow, who would ever want things to go so horribly horribly wrong?’”

Jackson’s surprise death on June 25 shocked millions of people all over the globe, throwing the world into both mourning and a tut-tutting disavowal of Jackson’s life and the surreal, alienating effects of his all-consuming celebrity.

“There but for the grace of God go I,” said 12-year-old Sheila Stevens of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“I always remember Michael Jackson saying follow your dreams. But I got something completely different from that: ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ You just might get it and start talking to monkeys and dating 12 year old boys.’”

Daniel Lewis, a 42-year-old accountant from Omaha, Nebraska, said that when he was younger he wanted to be a comedian, and tried to get jobs in the entertainment business. After watching Jackson turn into a muttering elfin recluse, however, he realized he really ought to just go back to college.

“My mother always said, ‘You’re good with numbers. Don’t be a schmuck.’ I told her, ‘Mom, I want to be a star like Michael Jackson. A person’s got to follow his dreams.’ But boy was my mother right. You look at Michael Jackson three years after Thriller and you start to think, ‘Why am I being such a putz?’”

Paige Norman, a psychologist from Austin, Texas, said that the worldwide mourning over Jackson’s death shows how people not only celebrate pop musicians, but also how they slavishly ape them and identify with them, almost to the point of neurosis.

“People need heroes in these troubled times,” said Norman, “Especially people without good role models, who tend to need affirmation of their value and goodness from agents outside themselves. They very often turn to celebrities to provide that reflection of their worth.

“Probably Michael Jackson’s biggest contribution to human progress—more than his historic music—was that maybe he got people to stop doing that. Because he got pretty weird, you have to admit.”

Dorothy Totterman, a waitress from Glasgow, Scotland, said she once met Michael Jackson when she was an aspiring dancer. He told her after seeing a bit of her steps that she had real talent, and she said her heart was bursting with joy.

“But then I realized: This guy is wearing a mask and his nose is falling off into his dinner. What in the hell would I listen to this guy for? And that instinct helped me avoid a life of unrealistic expectations and emotional pain.”

“Thank you, Michael Jackson,” Totterman added. “Thank you so much for giving me that.”

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–*Busy mourning Farrah Fawcett.

–*Busy mourning Ed McMahon.

–*Going through Michael Jackson’s garbage.

–*Continuing your longstanding Courtney Love suicide vigil.

–*Visiting the petting zoo with your kids when you saw Abe Vigoda and stalked him around the yard until you thought he was going to run away.

–*Sending a death threat to one of the Jonas Brothers because you love them so much and can’t live without them.

–*Trying to get a look inside Michael Jackson’s house.

–*Trying to break into Michael Jackson’s house.

–*Trying to curl up in Michael Jackson’s house.

–*Giving Axl Rose special anal-tongue contact called the “Munich Police Force.”

–*Having a bowl of niacin and riboflavin enriched Wheaties.

–*Tracking blood through the snow to see dying Uncle Vanya in St. Petersburg

–*Trying to make some sense of my life and having it occur to me all of a sudden that Michael Jackson might have the answer.

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Christians Face Rapture Crisis: Will We Be Wearing Anything During Judgment Day?

Nashville, Tenn. (API) Teams of theologians and ecumenical councils have lit upon this leafy city in the past two weeks to discuss a critical matter to Christian thought, one that threatens its very underpinnings:

“When the day of rapture comes, what will we all be wearing?” asked Pat Robertson at an opening plenary session last Saturday. “We all know that our spiritual angelic souls can’t take our Chanel and Brooks Brothers clothes to heaven.”

Robertson left that thought hanging in the room for a few moments as several clerics and laypeople realized what he was implying, and then several audible gasps rose.

“Oh my God,” said Roman Catholic Bishop Tomas O’Reilly of New York. “We’re all going to heaven naked.”

Since that opening day, the world’s foremost Christian thought leaders, bishops and scholars have banded together in groups and breakout sessions at the Sommet Center in downtown Nashville to discuss the terrifying ramifications of the imminent rapture and the sinful prancing around of naked humans, newly be-winged and sumptuously, erotically naked to the world.

The following several days have seen the most heated debate in Christianity since the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican closed in 1965.

“Women will be flying through the air, their fulsome and white buttocks and breasts shuddering nude for all to see,” said Robertson. “What does this mean for modesty? What does it mean for temptation? I’m at a loss.”

“Frankly this is much worse than the Y2K problem,” said Roman Catholic Archbishop Leopoldo Jose of the Archdiocese of Managua. “Because this is like, God we’re talking about. I don’t want to go to him naked. I don’t want anybody to see me naked. I’ve got a few moles and I haven’t been to the gym in a while.”

“Don’t you think he knows what you look like naked?” answered a Greek Orthodox bishop, His Grace Demetrios of Nicomedia. “There’s no way we can hide it. He knows already.”

Many of the sessions degenerated into such squabbling as the scholars tried, in many cases fruitlessly, to come up with different solutions to the problem. One Jesuit who asked that his name not be used suggested making albs and robes out of ectoplasmic material.

“And where are we going to get that,” snapped Bishop Obando of San Salvador. “I suppose you’ve got a bunch of it at home with a drum of No. 2 gasoline.”

“Well you don’t have to get flip about it,” retorted the Jesuit who said he had 20 degrees and demanded a little bit of respect.

“Well it was kind of stupid,” said His Eminence the Metropolitan of Montenegro. “But I guess there’s no reason to have a Great Schism over it,” he tittered.

“Is that some kind of pun?” said Obando.

“How about a Great Cleave?”

“You ought to be taking this more seriously.”

“Well we’re all going to be naked when we go to heaven. I’m sure that God had some funny reason of his own for that. At least I’m trying to have a sense of humor about it.”

A few of the Catholic priests in one Spanish contingent suggested that perhaps it would be all right to be naked on the day of rapture because the righteous would no longer know shame. But Robertson dismissed this.

“Everybody knows Spaniards are all communists.”

John Quoiner, a Calvinist minister from nearby Kentucky, asked, “And besides, shouldn’t some robes be different from others?”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Grace Demetrios.

“Oh nothing, just throwing some thoughts against the wall. I don’t want to be naked either.”

Theology professor Bram Stewart said that many of the attendees had simply decided that this was a matter of personal faith.

“Faith in the sense that we have to have faith that our God is a righteous and loving God, not a retributive Pagan God who delights in perverse jokes like having us all go to heaven with our bubble and squeak hanging out.”

“Who knows,” says Stewart, “Maybe God is less offended by nudity than by camel toe.”

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What cryptic status updates are we leaving on Facebook and Twitter to the confusion of our friends?

–*Jamie isn’t going to take this anymore.

–*Peggy wishes some people would just grow up!

–*Rod says you haven’t heard the last of fucking me.

–*Sally just wishes the fist blows to her legs and stomach would stop!

–*Bill says Hamster? Duct tape? Any ideas?

–*Vanna says get a clue!

–*Heather: You wish!

–*Jody: In your dreams, butt lick!

–*Hillary: Only if you make more money than I do.

–*Jamie-Lynn: The nerve of some people!

–*Carmela: Am I looking at that guy’s nuts?

–*Rudy: You win this time, German government!

–*Angelina alone will decide who replaces Angelina.

–*Luke: That’s no moon. It’s a space station.

–*Charlie M: A bizzle bizzle bozzle bozzle!

–*Tom C: You are a thetan who has forgotten his true nature. And if I meet any suppressed people …. a bizzle bizzle bozzle bozzle!

–*Sam is not just a pedophile, he’s a rebel.

–*Dehlia says it’s just not the same without The Gimp here anymore.

–*Tommy this is not Tommy this is his grandfather and these people are holding me hostage and making me take my medication and I just want to die with a little dignity.

–*@Tammy is a sniveling slug who will lick your boot, says Master, and she must tell everyone on the Internet that she is such a slug and she may only eat three peas today, thank you Master.

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What are the biggest mistakes that job seekers make?

–*Bad-mouthing former employers–more specifically, attacking them for their raging mange and staph infections.

–*Opening with the “sit on my face” joke.

–*Boasting about how you let the company you oversaw, Bear Stearns, collapse while you blithely went off to a bridge tournament in Tennessee because that’s just how big your dick is

–*Failing to admit to your own shortcomings. And no, demanding that you deserved more Grammys and that you were “robbed” at the MTV awards does not count as admitting a shortcoming.

–*Applying for work that it’s not apparent from your resume you are cut out for. For instance, by applying for the job of CEO at JP Morgan Chase because you’re tired of being screwed by small-account fees and you’d like to see what it’s like to screw over helpless people yourself once in a while.

–*Wondering out loud in the interview if hemorrhoids are ever psychosomatic.

–*Telling the story about how in prison you were always afraid to go to the bathroom

–*Making your expertise too generic. Don’t just admit that you hate working with other people. Make a point of saying that it’s really the presumptively arrogant douche bags on your company’s analytical team who are really on the top of your shit list.

–*Trying to save a bad interview by telling the interviewer you have fallen in love with her.

–*Asking the interviewer what his favorite album is and then shouting out “Are you kidding? That band blows!”

–*Admitting that you know this interview is just a sham to fool the compliance people at the company you’re applying to, which was going to hire internally all along anyway, probably some Ivy League yutz who was still sucking on his momma’s titty when you got your degree from the University of North Texas with honors.

–*Admitting that this job will probably not make you happy even if you do get it. Nobody ever gets what they really want. Nobody.

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2 CBS

48 Hours Mystery: Our fourth episode in a row about a woman killed by her husband, who had a secret identity, and other things to make every woman in America paranoid

4 NBC

A quick shot of Gwyneth Paltrow’s slime covered legs on Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show reveals that she is actually a recent alien seed hatchling and body snatcher–right before a large purple tendril shoots out of her mouth, stuns Conan and consumes him.

5 ABC

The Bachelorette: tonight, a cliff-hanger, as the bachelorette tries to choose among the toe-sucker, the coprophagist, the racist ventriloquist and the attorney at Covington & Burling

6 Fox

America’s Most Wanted: Tonight, state police in Kentucky are running out of good serial killer nicknames as they pursue “Benadryl Harry.”

13 PBS

We stir the pot on “Antiques Roadshow” as guest host Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols calls bullshit on this sumptuous bracelet and says that since it is covered with a nickel base metal, it is not true vermeil and so the dealer is likely being a bit disingenuous.

15 History Channel

D-Day is remembered with new reco photographs, film stock, anecdotes, calendars, buttons, commemorative plates, weaponry, knives, bayonet and every last violent fetish object that you might ever need to help you relive every grotesquely violent moment that your traumatic stress disorder requires.

16 TV Land

Or you can watch “The Brady Bunch.”

17 AMC

Why is it taking forever for “Mad Men” to get to the inherent promise in the show’s famed opening credits that Don Draper will jump out a window and die?

18 MTV

“The Hills”: the cast of this “reality” show is surprised to learn that the writers “really” have them all catching herpes this season.

19 TLC

After a scandal, a kidnapping, an intervention by the department of health and human services and an electrical accident, “Jon & Kate Plus 8” is whittled down to a more manageable “Jon & Kate Plus 5.”

20 Lifetime Movie Network

“Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead”: Thinking she’s talking to a deceased grandmother, famous clairvoyant Lisa Williams is actually getting a signal from a living 90-year-old woman in South Florida who wants Lisa to hide her money so she’ll get Medicaid benefits … and other horrifying tales of American health care bureaucracy.

21 Vh-1

A show so awful that just saying its name out loud would debase me and you and the people involved and anybody who has dared love them.

22 Vh-1 Classic

Pink Floyd: Music, Madness, Arbitration

23 E! Entertainment Television

This documentary will get you so close to Jennifer Aniston you will likely start to believe you ARE Jennifer Aniston … the psychotic, murderous version of Jennifer Aniston who speaks in tongues.

24 Cartoon Network

Adult Swim: This cartoon is moody. You can tell because there are extra cross-hatchings under the eyes.

25 Fox News

“The Boy Who Cried Racist.”

25 Fox News

Fox News boldly combs through stacks of documents about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib in search of the truth.

27 MSNBC

General Motors, Remembered

28 Bloomberg

Chrysler, Remembered

29 Spike TV

Automobiles, Remembered

28 Playboy

Consensual Hate Sex, Remembered

29 Hallmark

Wow, when you look back at it now, “Little House on the Prairie” seems actually dumber than “Three’s Company,” if that were possible.

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What Completely Made-Up Traffic Violations Have The New York City Police Cited You For?

–*Violation of the 24-hour moving rule

–*The standing room only rule

–*The no standing within an inch of where you shouldn’t be standing rule

–*The failure to make a hedge around the Torah standing rule

–*Violation of the 24-hour too-sexy rule

–*Violation of the “too many hot babes in a car” rule

–*Violating the moving and shaking rule

–*Standing at a commuter van stop longer than necessary to pick up passengers, blow your nose or laugh at approximately two paragraphs of material from beloved humorist Dave Barry

–*Driving while dead

–*Driving while intoxicated … with love

–*Driving without agreements with General Motors’ senior bondholders about their rights in a forced liquidation

–*Driving with a stick of butter up your ass

–*Violating the rule against driving while PhotoShopping John Kerry into a handshake with Ho Chi Minh

–*Driving a “car,” which according to French literary critic Roland Barthes is nothing but a meaningless semion

–*Driving a car in New York City, a large built up environment which clearly has no room for such activity

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