Three Random Funny Things

1. James Lipton, charmingly sycophantic host of Inside the Actors Studio, used to be a pimp in France. This is quite possibly the best news story ever written. From the article: "This was when I was very, very young, living in Paris, penniless, unable to get any kind of working permit...I had a friend who worked in what is called the Milieu, which is that world, and she suggested to me one night, 'Look, you'll be my mec...' We would translate it, perhaps...as pimp."

At another point in the article he says that the johns were young American boys who were nervous and unsure, something that was surely not helped by seeing Lipton grinning at them and winking salaciously. He’s always been slightly creepy — Will Ferrell’s impression captured his tractor-beam stare, uncomfortable pauses, and tongue-bath style of ridiculously hyperbolic praise — and somehow it’s hilariously perfect that he used to be a pimp. I can just imagine him asking the john his preferences: “I like to start with a questionnaire invented by Bernard Pivot. What turns you on, excites you? What turns you off? Moi? I enjoy tattoos and being shamed.” And as the nervous but sated john emerged from the seedy hotel room: “Your enthusiastic lovemaking sounded scrumtrulescent. I have never in my twenty years heard such wild and energetic enthusiasm. You, sir, are truly a remarkable genius of the fleshly realm.”

2. Shamelessly stolen from The Lake Street Get Down (but it's okay because Adams took "Goldfinger," plus she's a Cillian Murphy fan. He'll eat your soul with his creepy blue eyes, Adams!!!), the best Jeff Goldblum impression ever. I now love Elon Gold, whoever he is, almost as much as I love Jeff Goldblum.



[ETA - I just looked on Elon Gold's Wikipedia page, and whoever edited it last has said that Gold is known for his "adequate" impersonation of Jeff Goldblum. Adequate??!?! Can someone get that PDA out of Lindsey Lohan's booze-soaked mitts, please? That impression is superb - Admiral Neck]

3. The Guardian weekend magazine's "Experience" column. This is supposedly a column where an everyday person (as opposed to a professional writer) tells an interesting story about his or her life, usually anonymously. You’d think we’d get a fair mix of stories — some sad or gruesome, some funny, some about strange coincidences or interesting anecdotes. Instead we get a weekly parade of unending misery. It’s always a tasteful but eye-catching all-caps headline, accompanied by a shot of the week’s author, usually with his back turned to the camera or part of her body artfully draped in shadow. The layout of the page is so ridiculously mournful-looking and the subject matter so unrelentingly bleak that you have to wonder if the magazine’s editors have some kind of bet going on. This week it was I Had To Choose Between Two Mothers, which told of a woman’s struggle between her adoptive mother and her biological mother; the former was jealous of the latter, and the latter became too affectionate, and eventually the woman had to agree to never see her biological mom again so her adoptive mom would be happy. The capper on this story was that the article was supposed to be anonymous, but they ran her name in the magazine, and have only corrected it in the online edition (and when you search for the story, her name still shows up. Good work, geniuses!).

Other recent headlines we’ve had included I Am a Narcoleptic, I Lit My Father’s Funeral Pyre, I Don’t Regret Giving Away Every Baby I’ve Had, My Best Friend Drownded [sic] While We Were on Holiday (nice misspelling there, ever-vigilant Guardian subs), I’ve Made My Home With Monkeys, I Had Cancer of the Penis, My Brother Was a Pimp (a Lipton sibling writing under a pseudonym?), and my personal favorite, Herpes Brought Us Together (the perfect Experience love story).