Freakgirl posted an Internet meme over on her blog, which I decided to take part in. Here are the rules:
Here are the rules!
You must have your own blog. And I will be limiting my own interviews to the first three requests. You have to link back to the original post and also to your Interviewer’s post and include the following:
Want to be part of it? Follow these instructions:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Here are the questions Freakgirl asked me, along with my answers. Enjoy!
1. You have a secret identity as a celebrity gossip writer. How did you get that job?
I’d barely graduated from college with a degree in English – while my diploma says “honors,” that doesn’t mean my grades were good, just that I completed a four-year degree instead of three. There was really no way I was going to grad school, not that I wanted to – I was pretty burnt out when it came to school.
I spent a few months waitressing, which was easily the most soul-sucking job I’ve ever had. (Sports bar + Italian neighborhood + the World Cup = KILL ME NOW.) I managed to save up some money and, after a particularly horrible week at the restaurant, I decided to quit and just figure something else out.
Of course, deciding to do something doesn’t mean it happens right away, so soon my days were filled with being bored at home, reading celebrity gossip on the Internet. Very luckily for me, a friend of mine (who is an actual journalist) heard that there was an opening in the “celebrity gossip” field and hooked me up with an interview. I managed to disguise my inherent hate of everything long enough that the editor gave me the job, and BAM! Suddenly I had half a cubicle and an appointment to interview Lauren Conrad. And now it’s two years later and… well, actually, I have an appointment to interview Whitney Port.
2. Do you ever lose your composure interviewing someone you really admire (or really despise)?
Sadly, yes. Interviews terrify me, which is ridiculous, considering my job. No matter who it is, for the couple of hours leading up to the interview, I am filled with a horrible sense of dread because I am really not good on the spur of the moment. (This is why I am a writer – I have time to revise.) Luckily, I’m pretty good at hiding when I think someone is a complete idiot (which is most of the time), but every once in a while, I’ll interview someone from Friday Night Lights or How I Met Your Mother and I’ll get very giggly and gushy. I’m almost over that, but that still doesn’t stop the two hours of “OH, CRAP, I AM GOING TO MAKE AN ASS OF MYSELF” before the interview happens.
3. What is your dream job?
I’d love to be a writer on a TV show, but I completely lack the motivation to do so. Plus, I really don’t like the idea of having to search for a job every time a show goes off the air, and the whole process of dealing with Hollywood politics turns me off completely. If someone wants to give me a bunch of money to create my own show, no strings attached, then fine, but given my personality, I think I’d be more suited to writing novels than convincing other people to give me millions of dollars to create a TV show. Of course, I’m far more suited to sleeping until three in the afternoon than I am to writing novels, so you probably won’t be buying any of my stuff any time soon.
4. What’s your best story to tell at cocktail parties?
Aw, it’s sweet that you think I go to cocktail parties. When I’m at the pub, more likely. I don’t really have a favourite one, but my most recent one is interviewing 50 Cent about his (now cancelled) reality show. His overbearing publicist spent ten minutes telling me what I was allowed to talk about (the show) and what I was not (his music). Then she told me that I was only allowed to call him “50 Cent.” Not “Fiddy Cent.” Not “Fiddy.” Definitely not “Curtis.” She was so intense and insistent about this that when I came time for me to talk to the guy, I was so freaked out that I called him “Mr. Cent.” On the bright side, he found it funny.
And I realize how sad it is that my job takes up so much of my life that it’s the only thing I talk about at social get-togethers, but… yeah.
5. Tell us a favorite memory from your childhood.
For my parents’ 25th anniversary, I was about ten and my sister, Jean, was 16 or 17. There was a big party at our house with many of our parents’ friends and business associates, and Mom and Dad asked that we children come up with a presentation of some kind.
So Jean and I decided to do “The Top 10 Reasons Why We Love Our Parents.” Except we did not treat it seriously at all. Reason No. 10? “They buy us stuff.”
In our family, this kind of humor is very appropriate and appreciated, but, of course, not everyone my parents associate with know that. Or think it’s funny when young children are doing it. So when we got to Reason No. 1, we’d pretty much lost the entire room.
So imagine the reaction when we read out the top reason: “They snort cocaine with us and buy us booze!”
Silence. Well, silence except for our parents losing their shit laughing. And then, slowly, everyone politely laughing along with them – they didn’t think it was funny, no, but at least they knew that Jean and I hadn’t ruined the party. And then, finally, we had the good grace to leave the stage.
Our parents later told us that they thought it was hilarious, but that it probably wasn’t a good idea for us to do speeches like that in the future. Fair enough.
Just as I’m getting ready to leave work for the day, this comes out.
Usually, I have a sixth sense for this kind of thing. Heath Ledger? Dentist appointment. Lindsay Lohan heads to rehab for the [whateverth] time? Somehow managed to be my day off every time. Paris Hilton heading back to jail after initially being released? In the hospital with a broken femur. (Long story, but thanks, company health insurance!)
But I guess that just means I was due, because lo and behold, just as Us Weekly is revealing the EXCLUSIVE! ONE TIME ONLY!! Speidi wedding photos, everyone was gone for the day except for one of my bosses and Gina, the girl who covered the Emmys for me so I could go get laid. So I owe her a favour.
Remember when I said the people who write the earnest, “golly gee, celebrities are awesome” stories are full of shit and self-loathing? Well, that’s not entirely true. It’s very, very rare, but occasionally there are college graduates who are, like, so psyched, y’all, that they get to talk to all the people they see in them there magazines and are 100% amazed by all of them. Even rarer still is that kind of person who understands spelling and grammar.
Gina is one of these people.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a sweet job, but my appreciation is mostly of the “I’m not stressing out all the time, it gives me money for vodka and at the end of the day I can go home and watch Sports Night without worrying about shit I have to get done” variety. While I got B- or C+ on my college essays because I think a lot of that shit speaks for itself and found it unnecessary to spell out what is really frickin’ obvious (especially the one on Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Propostal”), Gina was acing everything by treating the reader like they’d suffered through several severe concussions. (While I am bitter about this, it’s mostly because it took me far longer than it should have to figure out how to write college essays.) But Gina was also the girl who was only in college because she thought she was supposed to go and if there had been a course in criticizing celebrity fashion, she would have passed with flying colours.
Have I mentioned she’s 23? She’s 23.
Gina is also getting married in three months. To her boyfriend of six years. She has been dating Patrick, the accountant (no, seriously), since they were both 17 and they’ve never dated anyone else, and oh em gee, you guys, she has dreamt about her perfect wedding since she was just a little girl playing with her Barbies. And lord, does Gina love to read about weddings, to talk about weddings, and to surf the internet for wedding dresses even though she bought hers six months ago.
So why didn’t Gina cover the story about Heidi and Spencer getting married? Because tonight is when Gina and Patrick have to go to the golf club to select their reception menu. They’re thinking of going with the smoked salmon, but you know, her mother-in-law really likes filet mignon and it really depends on how good the food at the golf club is.
Kill me.
So Gina, with intense disappointment, left to go to her food tasting bullshit while my boss instructed me to stay late to write up our story about the Speidi nuptials, and I wasn’t allowed to leave until the night editor had OKed it. Except the night editor was going to be a bit late because she had her own dentist appointment.
It’s like fate conspired to give me a day of crap.
The thing is, I can’t even be angered or disgusted with the Speidi wedding. Because even though Heidi and Us Weekly are practically blowing each other (with reach-around action) on a daily basis, I have had the chance to interview the twit, and while she’s definitely dumber than a half-eaten Hot Pocket, I’ve been in her position before. I’ve been in love with the guy who adored me but definitely saw himself as being on a higher level than me. And he knew what was good for me better than I did, and I was just so amazed that someone as great as him was interested in me that I assumed my instincts were wrong. And I let him dictate everything that when on in my life, from who my friends were to how well I got on with my family to which jobs I could take.
And the sad part is, it took years after he dumped me for me to realize how sad and pathetic he was and how much better I was without him. And as much as I dislike Heidi and hope she fails at everything in life, I wouldn’t ever wish that kind of relationship on anyone… And she’s just committed her entire life to it. She actually thinks it’s a good idea to blame her wedding on her family; she doesn’t realize that your wedding should be credited to a happy, healthy relationship. So while I should be pissed off about staying at the office until 7:30 p.m. (hope you enjoyed your root canal, nigh editor), mostly I just feel sad for Heidi.
…But then, the fact that I feel sad for her actually makes me angry, so I guess it all evened out in the end.
Yes, look at clever pun in the title – but, no, seriously, he sucks. Sure, he is very good-looking and he’s quite delightful on True Blood. And seeing as the season finale of True Blood airs this Sunday, he’s been giving some interviews. Specifically, one to me. And he was very charming and cute and all that, and I left the interview having a bit of a crush.
So why does he suck? Because he also talked to the New York Post‘s Popwrap blog, which posted the interview today.
What he told the Post:
“I’ve just thrown the textbook of everything I knew out the window, which I think is the best way to play Jason. I just don’t think he’s the kind of guy who plans anything, he just jumps off the cliff without thinking, whereas I tend to be more cerebral and analytical when it comes to things so it’s been a great release for me to throw caution to the wind and fly by the seat of my pants.”
What he told me: “Jason’s the kind of guy that, if you’re at the top of a cliff and you tell him that there’s a million dollars or a beautiful woman at the bottom, he will jump off the cliff with no hesitation. It’s that type of mentality that I have to always have in my head. I’m very cerebral and I tend to over-analyze things far too much, so it’s been great for me to just throw away the text book of what I know about myself and acting and just fly by the seat of my pants.”
The most tiring thing you hear as an entertainment “journalist” is when the person you’re interviewing says, “As an actor…”
Yeah, no shit, Calista Flockhart, it’s not like I’m interviewing you for your opinion as a math teacher. Do you have any other job other than acting? Is there any other reason I would be speaking to you if you weren’t a famous actor? No? Then you can just omit “as an actor” from your lexicon because amazingly, I can fill in the blanks.
This happens with musicians and directors and writers as well, but for the most part, I spend my days talking to actors, or at least people who consider themselves actors. (But you better believe I’ve heard my fair share of “as a director” or “as a musician” or “as the third assistant to the guy who wipes Tom Cruise’s ass.”) And it’s really the most pretentious thing you can say, because it’s one step away from saying, “I’m honing my crawwwft.” Acting isn’t easy, no, but you’re not exactly inventing the Internet, are you?
Before I got into this job, I thought the whole “honing my crawwft” pretention of actors was a cliché, but it’s far more prevalent than I ever expected. And sometimes it’s with actors whose work I actually like and who actually seem reasonably normal otherwise! I just don’t understand it. Maybe that’s why I never seriously considered acting as a profession – well, that and the fact that in all the school plays I was ever in, I couldn’t stop mouthing the lines of the other actors as they spoke them. (True story.)
Actors who have pulled the “as an actor” crap on me in the last few months:
– Sarah Wayne Callies from Prison Break – not that I particularly liked her in the first place, but she is definitely one of the more pretentious people I’ve ever interviewed. Actually, she was even worse than just the normal “as an actor” people; I believe she said something like, “As a profession, I’m a storyteller.” And then she went on and on and on about how important Prison Break is to the “cultural lexicon” right now – like, is she watching the same ludicrous, mediocre Fox action show that I am?
– Tate Donovan – wow, you really think highly of your acting ability for a guy who starred in Love Potion No. 9.
– Meaghan Jette Martin from Camp Rock – Get back to me when you learn to fake cry with actual tears, honey.
– One of the women from Knight Rider, with no sense of irony or self-awareness whatsoever.
– Rex Lee – oh, this one made me sad. I love him on Entourage and he really does seem like a lovely person, but the entire interview was about his intricate thought process that goes along with every scene and how hard it is sometimes to get his emotions in the right place. He said “as an actor” at least ten times. At one point, he actually said, “As a human…” Later on, he said, “So I made the decision in my mind…” Oh, in your mind? Not in your spleen?
– John Barrowman – except I actually didn’t care because I was too busy picturing him naked.
– Tila Tequila – WTF?
See, the “as an actor” thing isn’t limited solely to people who take acting seriously – it’s even used by people who just think they’re supposed to take acting so seriously. And maybe you should, if you’re John Malkovich or Meryl Streep, but you know, if you’re mainly commanding a group of men and women to eat pig vaginas for a chance to go on a date with you, maybe you shouldn’t be so worried about honing your crawwwft.
And I don’t mean that in the schmaltzy, “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you!” kind of way. I mean that a lot of the readers are crazy.
I don’t mean the disparage the readers of gossip magazines or gossip sites – obviously, I’m in no position to judge, and anyway, I read all that stuff anyway. It’s how I got my job in the first place. I love celebrity gossip just as much as the next person, as long as the next person can’t even go five minutes without hoping someone famous flashed a boob at a fancy even so they’ll having something to focus on for the next hour.
But, like most things, there are the normal fans and the not-so-normal fans. (And then there are the terrifying Margot Kidder emulators, but they’re actually not so terrifying and kind awesome in their craziness, that that’s not really what this is about.) And, unsurprisingly, most of the normal fans either don’t feel inclined or have better things to do than pop off a letter to a gossip magazine.
This was certainly a smaller issue 20, or even just 10 years ago. But, now, with the Internet and with 12-year-olds insisting on typing things even though they have no idea how to spell anything or even how to move their fingers in relationship to the actual keyboard, we get emails and comments and, I kid you not, fricking YouTube responses. And I know that not all 12-year-olds are crazy and that not all crazy people are 12, but let me say this: there is a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram.
Which is why we get many – many – letters and emails and comments that are addressed directly to the celebrities a certain article is talking about. With letters, this isn’t so much of a big deal – most of our readers don’t know how to directly contact the favourite (or not-so-favourite) celebrities, so they send their letters to us. And, actually, we do our best to reroute those letters. Occasionally, we will pass on emails to the proper publicists, but this is rare because if you think celebrities get a lot of mail, you should see the email inboxes of their publicists. It’s like the court scene from A Miracle on 34th Street except a million times more belligerent.
But the comments on our website? What, do they think that the celebrities we write about actually troll our site, looking for stories about them and then scanning the comments? I mean, sure, Corey Feldman might do that, and some bigger celebs might do that for the super giant celebrity news sites (People, TMZ, Us Weeky, etc.). However, while my mag is prominent, it’s not that prominent, so I’m really sorry, T!fanneee!!1! from Ohio, but I don’t think your message to Zac Efron about how you would love to take him to your prom is going to get to him.
I’m not joking. It’s all the time. I’ll write something about Britney having a new workout routine, and not 15 minutes later, Kortni from upstate New York is all, “Hi Britney!!!! I tink u lok SOOOO gud, 4 REALZ so dont let these h8rs gt u down, u no?? Com 2 NY so I cn c u!!!! xoxo Kortni.”
That is not an exaggeration AT ALL. If anything, I cleaned up the spelling and grammar a bit.
As if Britney Spears even knows how to use a computer and even if she did, I sincerely doubt that she is desperately searching through third-tier celebrity gossip websites in order to develop a healthy body image and to hear suggestions about her upcoming tour.
Usually, though, that’s it – a couple of lines that one of the gossip writers reads aloud to everyone in the office. We all laugh, we come up with a few hypothetical responses on Britney’s behalf, and then we move on.
But then… we get a letter. We get an epic. Not in letter or email form, no, but a die-hard fan of whoever we’ve been talking about has decided that they don’t want to send their 10,000-word ode to love and joy and insanity to Bop or Tiger Beat. No, they want to post it directly into the comments section of our website. And you know, as stupid as most of the comments are, we have to read through all of them. In their entirety. Before we can delete anything, company policy dictates that we read through it all.
We could get an intern to do this. We usually get an intern to do it. Our intern was out sick today, and when we don’t have an intern, everyone has to pull their weight when it comes to completing the bullshit tasks we normally pretend don’t even exist.
And that is why, today, I had to spend an hour – AN HOUR – reading through the crazy fan mail equivalent of Ulysses. Except it was even more dense and torturous. Oh, and unlike Ulysses, I actually finished it. And that is why I am still in the office, past 5 p.m. on a Friday, finishing up my goddamn story about Kevin Jonas turning 21 and how totally awesome that is, when I could be home, watching my Mystery Science Theater 3000 20th Anniversary box set, drinking mojitos and throwing darts at Kevin Jonas’s face.
And that, my friends, is why if I ever meet a certain Paulina H. from Minnesota – even if she is, as I suspect, a mentally arrested 11-year-old whose idea of typing inolves merely mashing the keyboard with her fists – if I ever do meet her, I will fart in her soup.
Wow. I certainly haven’t been updating a lot. How are you? You look good. I like your hair.
I think I’ve figured out that blogging is kind of like going to the gym – you have to set a schedule to stick to it, because if you skip one week, the next week you are about a million times more likely to say, “Eh, another week of rest won’t hurt,” and, before you know it, you’re 4,000 pounds and you’re not even sure what HTML stands for anymore.
But I figured, what better day to get back into the habit of gossiping about gossiping than on the one day most people are occupied with something else? Let’s go! (Oh, and I certainly hope you voted today.)
On the bright side, my absence has allowed many, many things to happen, so I’ve got a giant pantry filled with catty comments about celebrities that will last for a while. Today, though, here’s a little behind-the-scenes story that doesn’t involve any celebrities. (She said, ensuring 90% of her 5 person audience closes the window.) Actually, no wait, there is some celebrity stuff, but it doesn’t come in until most of the way through and all the actual details about that particular celebrity will be saved for another entry. (She said, alienating the final 10%.)
Obviously, this isn’t a great time for business. Working as a writer, it’s not like I don’t worry about money, but at the same time, most of my day is focused on writing for my job. I don’t look at sales figures; I don’t know how much ad revenue we make. All I know is that I make a few comments about Lindsay Lohan’s vag and, every two weeks, my sweet journalism paycheque is deposited into my account and I spent about 30% of it on booze.
Now, believe it or not, the gossip rag I write for is not autonomous. Brace yourselves – we are owned by a much larger media conglomerate. I know, you’re so shocked, but stick with me. Now, this media conglomerate also owns many other non-gossip media things, most of which are vaguely to resonably respected in the journalism industry. The best part? A bunch of the businesses the media conglomerate owns all operate within the same building. Which means that while I’m arriving to work in my keds, my hoodie and my “too lazy to use the straightening iron” ponytail, I’m passing by people with business suits and high heels and briefcases. At first, I found this intimidating, but as time went on, my reaction has shifted to, “I may look like ass, but I got to sleep for an extra 25 minutes this morning, sucker.”
I have a few acquaintances in some of the more respectable areas of the buildings, including one guy who I think I’ve met once and immediately added me to Facebook. For the sake of this post, I will call him “Butt.” A couple of weeks ago, Butt sends me a one-line message on Facebook.
“Have you heard anything about [your department]’s immediate future?”
Oh, good. This should be fun.
Of course, my boss has left for the day for a dentist appointment.
So I write back, “No. Do you know something that I don’t?”
And Butt, a wonderful specimen of a human being, writes back that he has heard from two different sources that everyone in my little department is getting fired on Wednesday and the whole operation being shut down. Oh, but he won’t tell me who his sources are and he doesn’t want me to bring it up to anyone else in the department.
Oh, and Butt sends identical emails to almost everyone else in my department, asking them all not to mention it to anyone else.
What Butt apparently forgot is that all of us are, you know, gossip writers. We can’t keep secrets. A gossip writer with a secret is like Violet Beauregard turning into a blueberry. Within ten minutes, all of us are freaking out to each other, looking up other job prospects and sending frantic emails to our boss. Who is out of the office until tomorrow. I’m looking on Monster and wondering if I’d be willing to be a copy editor in Pittsburgh. Or I could move in with my parents? Shit, movers charge way too much money.
I leave work early because I’m going to interview a certain leggy Hills star who will soon be getting her own show. The whole way there, all I’m thinking is, “I don’t have enough money saved. I’ll be out of money within two weeks. I don’t know how to do anything else! All I know is how to ruin people’s lives with gossip! Aaaagh!”
Well, actually, every five minutes or so I think, “I am on my way to interview someone for an article I will probably never write.”
Which is why, when you listen to the audio of the interview with that certain leggy Hills star, you can clearly hear my “Don’t Give a Fuck Anymore” voice as I ask her a lot of inappropriate questions about her fake romances and her value as a human being. Several MTV publicists and at least on MTV VeeJay don’t like me very much anymore. (But, again, that is a story for another post.)
On my way out of the building, I think, “Fuck it; if I’m getting fired on Wednesday, I’m gonna smoke.” I go buy a pack of cigarettes and smoke three of them in five minutes. Even though there is a liquor store nearby, I know from experience that it is not a good idea for me to be drunk in public.
I pull out my Blackberry to see what time it is – there is an email from my boss. My boss has just spent a bunch of time on the phone with her boss, who had actually spent the whole day in a meeting with the president of the media conglomerate. A meeting in which the president talked about how happy he was with my department and all the things we’re going to do over the next year. I’m not getting fired. I’m NOT getting FIRED.
My boss goes on to say that rumours come up at least once a year that our department is getting shut down – it’s been practically an annual thing since the whole business started. Nobody’s getting fired and there is no reason to panic.
This is such good news, I smoke another two cigarettes.
The next day, we have a meeting with our boss’s boss just so he can reiterate that nobody’s getting fired. Out of curiosity, he asks, who was it that told everyone we were getting shut down?
When we tell him, he laughs.
“His department lost $20 million last year,” he says. “You guys made a profit.”
This is such good news to all of us that, the next day, we take turns staking out Butt’s desk in his department. The moment he leaves for lunch, the person on stakeout duty emails everyone in our department and we gleefully go and steal all of his office supplies. And tape a fish to the underside of his desk. And steal his chair. And, because he was dumb enough not to lock his computer before he left, we changed his password. To “Butt.”
Immature? Yes. But then, there’s a reason we weren’t hired for the respected departments to begin with.
Sorry I haven’t written in the past couple of weeks – there are people out sick, there are people with babies, there are people with leprosy or something and the office is basically falling apart at the seams. Awesome.
In fact, it’s the fault of one of the sick people and one of the baby people (one of the people with a baby, not an adult-sized-baby, which would be terrifying) that I had my latest painful interview.
See, when you think of the staff of a magazine – a fairly prominent one, anyway – you’d think that there would be a lot of writers. Not a lot lot, but enough that if two people in the same department weren’t able to work for a few days, that department wouldn’t threaten to crumple into a ball a die a pathetic, disgusting death.
This is not true. For each “department,” it’s at most two people. Well, maybe three, if they have an intern. And the word “department” is used in the loosest sense of the word, because it’s not like each department has their own wing of office, or their own floor. The music department doesn’t have their own studio. The movie writers don’t have a personal movie theatre. You don’t need to make an appointment to talk to senior television editor. You look over your cubicle wall and say, “Hey, Janice, Lost last night was fucked up,” and then she has to stand up to say, “Don’t even get me started on Lost.”
So… two people were gone from the music department this week. One has been gone for about a month and will continue to be gone for quite a while, what with the small human that came out of her vagina a short while ago. The other one has… the flu? Something? It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that I had to help pick up the slack.
Specifically, I had to interview Tokio Hotel.
This is a band, I am told.
“They’re super huge in Germany and they’re pretty big here now,” my Carrie Underwood-loving cubicle mate told me. She sent me a YouTube link to one of their videos.
First, it is beyond disturbing that someone who loves Carrie Underwood knows about Tokio Hotel. Second, she then spent a long time convincing me that the lead singer is, in fact, a dude.
“No, it’s not.”
“It is!”
“No.”
“He and the guy with the dreadlocks are twins.”
“That’s a guy?”
“Yes!”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“…How sure?”
“It’s a GUY.”
“Are you telling me this as a goof so that when I interview them, it’ll turn out that it is a girl and I look like an asshole?”
“It’s a guy.”
“It fucking better be.”
“…You know how I feel about cursing at work.”
This is all made much worse by the fact that I am not a music journalist. I like music and, I think, I have pretty good taste in music, but I find it very difficult to put into words why I like or dislike a particular song or band. I’m more of a “You have to hear the song to really get it” kind of girl.
Actually, scratch that. I can explain pretty well when I hate a band.
My boss knows this.
She sent me to interview Tokio Hotel.
Seriously. This happened.
I was given strict instructions not to upset them, which is really difficult when lead singer guy (just Googled him – Bill, apparently) has hair that DEFIES THE LAWS OF GRAVITY AND COMMON SENSE. I wanted to ask him why – WHY – he would want hair that endangers everyone else’s eyes but I was so entranced by refusal to obey the laws of physics. How the hell does it do that? How long does it take? Is that his actual hair?
Now that I think of it, he might have the hair just so people like me don’t have the presence of mind to ask any hard-hitting questions. Not that I’d be allowed to anyway, but still.
His twin brother is a little shit who took every opportunity to talk about how many chicks he bangs on a regular basis. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me not to say, “Are they all imaginary?” I think I strained a muscle.
Oh, yeah. Did I mention that our entire conversation was done through a translator? This guy was talking about banging tons of chicks and then WAITED FOR THE TRANSLATOR TO RELAY HIS MESSAGE TO ME. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to miss a gem like that.
Well, actually, I live for gems like that, but the fact that he actually took the time to make sure I had that quote for print was pretty ridiculous.
I got back to work and immediately called the sick music guy at home and told him that I was going to pee in his soup once he got back to work. He laughed, which dissolved into a massive coughing fit, which made me feel a little bit better.
When I got to work the next day, the label had sent over a press kit – which usually we should be getting one or two days before the interview, but whatever – which included a Tokio Hotel photograph. Which my cubicle mate fished out of the garbage and hung up in our cubicle. She finds this hilarious. I think I’m going to have to start hoarding my pee for all the soup I’ll have to put urine into.
Until the sequel, anyway. Which will probably come out in, like, two weeks.
Did you guys watch it? Did you? Did you squeal at the Jonas brothers doing… nothing of particular importance?
Let me make it clear that even though I hate the Jonas brothers and their shitty music, I was completely prepared to like Camp Rock. I like cheesy stuff when I have a healthy buffer of vodka in my system.
But seriously, how the fuck did four different people write Camp Rock? How did one person write something, show it to three different people, and each of those people said, “Nice! No need for a second draft of THIS baby”?!
I actually ended up watching Camp Rock again when it aired. With my sister and brother-in-law. It was actually pretty great watching it with them, because things would happen in the movie and one of them would say, “Oh, that’s obviously a set-up for later,” and I’d say, “Actually… no. That never comes up again.”
First off, Demi Lovato needs to stop smiling. For serious. It hurts.
Anyway, she plays Mitchie, this girl who is poor but yet IS SOMEHOW STILL TALENTED (I know). I love how she makes this big deal about how she only has one friend at school, yet she is undeniably pretty and doesn’t appear to have any problems talking to new people. The movie starts off with the world’s lamest wardrobe montage – really, there are two different outfits, one of which is shown twice – and with her singing and trying on different pairs of sunglasses and… I guess she’s just a really fun girl who loves life. Except that she has no friends. Yes, because so many unpopular 14-year-olds are totally thrilled about everything.
So Demi really wants to go to Camp Rock, but her parents can’t afford it, except WAIT THEY TOTALLY CAN if her mom becomes the camp cook and forces her daughter to perform menial labor for no pay. THANKS, MOM!
Then we see – from a conveniently-placed news report, like, way to use intelligent plot devices, guys – that some guy (played by Joe Jonas, and his character has a name, but please, we all called him Joe Jonas) has pissed off his band members by storming off a music video set, so the rest of the band… cancels their tour? And forces Joe Jonas to go teach at Camp Rock? Are they allowed to do that? I don’t think their music label would be like, “Yes, we fully support not earning millions of dollars while Joe Jonas spends several weeks not really doing anything.”
Mitchie arrives at Camp Rock and while she initially makes friends with the sassy, independent Caitlyn, Mitchie instead tries to fit in with the cool-girl group. Except the cool girls only like girls from rich parents, so Mitchie LIES and says that her mom is the president of some music company. Yes, the same mom who is EMPLOYED AT CAMP ROCK AS THE COOK. Yeah, I can’t see that biting her in the ass. At one point, Caitlyn says, “Well, my parents are – ” and then is cut off by one of the cool girls.
Brother-in-law: Oh, so it turns out Caitlyn’s parents do something really cool?
Me: No.
Brother-in-law: What do they do?
Me: We never find out. This never comes up again.
Brother-in-law: I think you’re wrong. You just forgot.
Me: I will bet you a billion dollars that I’m right.
Brother-in-law: …No.
I think the funniest parts of Camp Rock are the songs, because I can’t figure out if their tactics were smart or stupid. The only time anybody sings in the movie is when they’re actually performing for other campers, which means that, sometimes, people are singing songs that have nothing to do with the plot. I honestly have no idea whether this works for or against the movie. I do like that every song comes complete with back-up dancers. At a CAMP for ROCK.
Joe Jonas finally shows up to teach his class, which is… hip-hop dancing? The fuck? Isn’t he a guitarist/singer? I have no idea what’s going on. He shows up and just says, “Everybody grab a hat and a mic,” because there are randomly boxes of trucker hats and microphones just standing by. And then comes the wonderfully intricate dance number, because all these kids already know how to dance in sync. Wow, Joe Jonas is a good teacher.
Oh, but there’s a drummer guy in the dance class – we know he’s a drummer because he has his drumsticks with him all the time, EVEN IN DANCE CLASS – who is a bad dancer. So Joe Jonas, even though he was a jerk five minutes ago, is all, “I’ll help you get the rhythm from your sticks and into your feet, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.” And you know what? WE NEVER VISIT THIS PART OF THE STORY AGAIN. We never see drummer guy dance – or, if we do, it’s in the background with all the other kids as part of a different storyline.
Now, even though they make a big deal about how shy Mitchie is onstage (except we don’t really ever see any evidence of this beyond her saying “oh, I’m nervous” and then doing it anyway, LIKE EVERYBODY DOES), she apparently has absolutely no problem flirting with Joe Jonas. At all. She’s all stammering in front of the cool girls and then Joe Jonas shows up and she’s like, “HEY BABY GRAB MY BOOBS.”
Also, am I wrong, or is Joe Jonas an INSTRUCTOR AT THE CAMP and yet still FORMING A ROMANCE WITH A CAMPER? I don’t care how close in age they are – there has to be some kind of rule against that. Well, there would in normal life.
Oh, yeah, so earlier, Joe Jonas was hiding in some bushes (go with me on this) and he hears Mitchie playing her shitty song on a piano, but by the time he gets inside the building, she’s gone (which makes even less sense since he was literally hiding RIGHT BESIDE THE DOOR – in fact, if he had simply TURNED AROUND he could have seen her through the window). So he spends the movie trying to find “the girl with the voice,” like, maybe you want to be a little more specific, there, Kojak.
Eventually, one of the cool girls finds out Mitchie’s secret and forces Mitchie to tell everyone that her mom is just a cook. So Mitchie learned an important lesson about lying – DON’T LET ANYONE FIND OUT. Joe Jonas gets all mad at her for some reason and her life is ruined. RUINED.
Then, when Joe Jonas is by himself, he’s playing Mitchie’s stupid song, and the cool girl hears him and recognizes it as Mitchie’s. So cool girl goes and steals Mitchie’s song book. AND THEN THIS PLOT POINT IS NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. I’m not kidding. You think she’s going to steal Mitchie’s songs? No. No she doesn’t. Instead she frames Mitchie for stealing her bracelet. Yeah, I have no idea.
At the Camp Rock press junket, I was talking to one of the producers about this part, and he was like, “Nooo, you just misunderstood. She wasn’t stealing the songs, but when she saw that Mitchie had written the song that Joe liked so much, the cool girl didn’t want Mitchie to be able to perform the song, so she framed Mitchie in order to get her kicked out of the final performance.”
Oh. THAT IS SO MUCH CLEARER, THANK YOU. (Also, every single other person I talked to about this was like, “Oh, no, I thought they had just screwed up the storyline, too.”)
Anyway, when the cool girl performs, her rock star mom is in the audience, but then her mom takes a phone call in the middle of the song, so cool girl trips and cries and thus is totally redeemed. Actually, she doesn’t cry so much as do the most amazing fake crying you will ever see in your life. Even with the horror that is the rest of the movie, Camp Rock is almost worth the whole thing just for the fake crying. She apologizes to her lackeys for being so mean, and then she’s like, “Hey, Mitchie, I told the camp director you didn’t really take my bracelet.”
Gosh, that certainly sounds like something WE WOULD HAVE LIKED TO SEE.
Yeah, anyway, Mitchie performs her stupid song, Joe Jonas realizes that SHE’S THE GIRL, and then they all dance together and don’t kiss.
Did they just write this script when they were high on shrooms? After all that and THEY DON’T EVEN KISS?! What the fuck, Disney channel? WHAT THE FUCK?
Oh, wait, I forgot my favorite part of the story. The reason that Joe Jonas is such a jerk? It’s because his label wants him to play this lame, cookie-cutter music that will sell. But now that he’s at CAMP ROCK he can finally make the music HE wants to make. So he comes up with the LAME, COOKIE-CUTTER MUSIC OF THE CAMP ROCK SOUNDTRACK. And he’s all, “Oh man, this music is SO RAD! But the label will NEVER go for anything THIS edgy! CURSE MY AWESOME EDGINESS.”
And, of course, the label does go for it. It’s not even an issue.
So, in conclusion, I thought Camp Rock would be cheesy but entertaining, but it was cheesy and DIDN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE. Every time you thought they were setting up a hackneyed plot device, it turns out that if they were, they completely forgot about it later. AND THEN THEY FILMED THE ENTIRE THING.
Come on, guys! Just show the drummer guy dancing a solo at the final performance! Have the mean girl perform Mitchie’s song and have Joe Jonas all disappointed because he doesn’t actually like her! Then have Mitchie get over her stage fright (and actually have her have stage fright to begin with) to sing her song properly and Joe Jonas realizes that she’s really the girl of his dreams. Then have Caitlyn’s parents show up, and it turns out THEY ARE THE PRESIDENT OF EVERY MUSIC LABEL OF ALL TIME and they’re all, “We’d like to make Mitchie super famous and rich, while Cool Girl will be blacklisted for the rest of her life.” Then Mitchie and Joe Jonas kiss and girls all over the world faint.
Seriously. I just wrote that in two minutes. Good lord, Camp Rock. Two minutes of rewrites! Could you really not postpone your daily 2 p.m. trip to the bar for TWO MINUTES?
…Okay, I can kind of sympathize with that. But STILL. Camp Rock serves as proof that if you’re desperately trying to recapture the success of something else, slow down a little bit to make sure you’re not screwing the whole thing up. Or, failing that, throw a bunch of money at a subpar boy band and hope that people don’t notice your crappy script.
…is interviewing celebrities I like. Because in addition to my regular interview jitters, I also get the “please don’t let me act like a jerk in front of one of my idols” jitters.
And then I act like an asshole.
This happened to me a few weeks ago when I had to interview a comedian who I love. I’m not going tell you who it is (I do not need you guys to seek that interview out, thank you), but for the purposes of this entry, I’ll pretend that I interviewed someone slightly similar: Patton Oswalt.
Not only do I think “Patton Oswalt” is one of the funniest people alive (I think this about the real Patton Oswalt, too), but he’s also clearly a brilliant guy who does not put up with bullshit or idiots. I am a writer of bullshit who acts like an idiot during interviews. I was terrified.
So, of course, the difficulty I usually have when trying to come up with questions was made so very much worse, because every minute that I couldn’t think of a question added another level of “Oh, dear God, Patton Oswalt is going to think I’m an asshole” terror to my psyche.
Oh, and have I mentioned that I’ve actually met Patton Oswalt before? I acted like an asshole then, too. I gushed and giggled and my body actually shook – bad enough that Patton was like, “Why are you shaking?” – and then I ran away like a freak.
No, that didn’t help, either.
On the bright side, this was a phone interview, and when I met Patton Oswalt, it was years ago before I even had this job, so the odds of him connecting my voice to my ridiculous-but-brief encounter with him were slim.
But that didn’t stop my brain from being an asshole.
You cannot act like an asshole when you talk to him this time.
Yeah, I know.
No, seriously. Do you have any idea how stupid you looked last time?
He’s not going to be looking at me this time.
You’re missing the point.
No, I am willfully ignoring the point.
You mean the point that if you act like an asshole this time, you stop being the dorky, overexcited fan and begin being the incompetent journalist who can barely function yet is somehow still employed?
Yes. I am willfully ignoring that point.
So I tried to prepare as best I could.
Or, at least, I had planned to prepare as best I could.
And then his publicist called me half an hour early.
Shit.
Shit shit shit.
Now, I’d love to tell you that when finally faced with the sink-or-swim situation, I overcame my fears and pulled it off and that Patton Oswalt will now always think of me as the sassy, capable journalist who was a delight to talk to.
God, how I’d love to tell you guys that.
I blanked.
Horribly.
At least twice, I actually lost my train of thought and there was about 30 seconds of silence.
And, also, it was clear that Patton was more interested in talking about his comedy tour and his CD release, but because I was panicking, I kept asking about a TV show he was recently on.
He was on it once.
For about three minutes.
I kept asking him about details of the show that he had no knowledge of.
I kept looking at the timer on my voice recorder and I hadn’t even passed five minutes yet.
Also, I stuttered and stammered throughout the whole thing.
This is not an exaggeration. It really went this badly.
I finally made it to about ten minutes and decided to just cut my losses and get off of the phone. But it doesn’t end there.
I still had to listen to the recording again so I could type up a transcript.
Now, I didn’t notice this when it was happening because I was too busy FREAKING THE FUCK OUT, but you can actually hear Patton get more and more annoyed with me, mixed in with a bit of bafflement that I could actually be this bad. When I say, “OK, thanks for talking to me, bye” you can hear his surprise-slash-relief that the interview was over so quickly.
My Carrie Underwood-loving cubicle mate was witness to me hitting my head against my desk over and over again for about five minutes.
It was bad, people. It was BAD.
Like, bad enough that I have no doubt that the second Patton Oswalt hung up the phone, the first thing he said was, “What a fucking asshole.”
But there was a slightly happy ending. As usual, even though I am terrible with people, I was able to perform my writing magic with flair, and the article does not reveal just how badly I bungled the interview itself. While it’s not remotely Pulitzer-worthy (you know, as opposed to all the OTHER articles I write as a celebrity gossip writer), it was good enough to help me remember that there is a reason I don’t get fired.
Because I’m fucking my boss.
I kid, I kid.
No, the article turned out well enough that while I wouldn’t put the whole experience in the “win” pile, it had escaped the “huge, huge loss” pile, too.
So that was nice.
Then, after work, I went out and got spectacularly smashed, so the next day when I woke up, I was so focused on not throwing up at work that I didn’t have time to think about my Patton Oswalt humiliation. And now enough time has passed that I think it’s kind of funny.
Yes, I was in New York City this past week – for about 36 hours. In that time, I met one of my idols, one of my former idols, a group of teen idols who make me sad for the future, and watched a terribly cheesy movie that somehow needed four people to write it.
I’m not going to go into any detail of the Camp Rock plot in this entry – I’m going to wait until its television premiere next weekend. If any company would send out hitmen to kill people who spoil the secrets of a mediocre TV movie, it would be Disney.
I got into New York around noon on Wednesday, and already the street outside my hotel was filled with camera crews and press tents and scores of screaming girls. None of the “stars” of Camp Rock were even showing up until about 4, but that didn’t stop the girls from screaming. Oh, no. That would be smart. Instead, they strained their vocal chords for hours – I could hear them from my hotel room, on the 29th floor, with the windows closed. For the frickin’ Jonas Brothers. I was tempted to ask some of the girls if they’d ever heard of Hanson, but I knew that was unlikely.
It was also hot as balls in New York City, so I was very happy I wasn’t one of the journalists who would be working on the red carpet (or white carpet or whatever stupid color they had) for an hour before the movie started. I had an assigned seat for the Camp Rock screening, so I didn’t bother to get in line until about 15 minutes before it started – and the line to get in wrapped around the block. I was again surrounded by young screaming girls. Most of them were with their parents who, judging by their insane jewelry and Louis Vuitton handbags, had paid a pretty penny to get their beloved Muffy or Cookie or Priscilla into the screening.
In the theater, once again, the girls would NOT. STOP. SCREAMING. I mean, really, do you think any of the Jonas brothers is going to be like, “Heyyyyy, that girl is crying simply because I am a hundred feet away! I should invite her out for a milkshake”? I don’t even think Kevin, the ugly one, would do that.
I know I said I would save my comments about the actual Camp Rock movie until a later post, but I will say one thing about it, something I never, ever thought I would say: High School Musical is a much better movie. And HSM only took one person to write it, while Camp Rock took four. FOUR. I could have written Camp Rock while sitting on the toilet, and what ended up in the toilet would still have smelled better.
I will admit that the soundtrack is cheesy fun, though. I have been listening to it nonstop since I got back. I hate myself.
At the Camp Rock afterparty – which required special passes, for reasons I don’t really understand – I was expecting a dance floor filled with hyperactive 12-year-olds who were high on Haiwaiian Punch. Imagine my delight when I saw that there was an open bar for the grownups. Hello, Jack and Coke, how are you two doing? I haven’t seen you in a while, and I think tonight is the perfect night for us to become reacquainted. “Heyyy, after shix or sheven of theesh drinksh, thish mushic ishn’t nearly sho bad. Yesh, Miley Shyrush, you shertainly could be a rock shtar! HOLD ON TO YER DREAMSH!”
The party also featured a performance by the Camp Rock female lead, Demi Lovato. It was… a performance. Of music, I guess.
I met Stephen Baldwin at the Camp Rock afterparty, because that’s how he entertains himself these days. If this were 12 or 13 years ago, when The Usual Suspects had come out, I would have been well chuffed, but instead I desperately searched for something to say other than, “What the fuck happened to you, man?” I went with, “Nice to meet you. Where’s the s’mores stand? Don’t lie, I can tell you’ve spent a good chunk of time there tonight.” (There really was a s’mores stand. It was a bigger highlight for me than meeting Stephen Baldwin was.)
I was incredibly excited when I met Julie Brown, who is completely awesome for one reason: Earth Girls Are Easy. Case in point:
Of course, Julie Brown is not only in Camp Rock, but she’s one its four writers, but the goodwill she earned with Earth Girls far outways one little mistake.
When I left the party, there was a big group of girls at the entrance, begging people who were leaving to give them their pass to the party.
Me: Here you go.
Girl: OH MY GOD!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!! EEEEE!!!!
She hugs me.
Me: I’m going to take it back if you don’t stop doing that.
Thursday was the press junket, so I headed over to the hotel and enjoyed the delicious (and free!) buffet, including these wonderful mini-bagels, of which I had about twelve. Food always tastes better when someone else makes it and you don’t have to pay for it. The print interviews didn’t take place until after all the other interviews happened, so there was a lot of time spent waiting around, shooting the shit with the other journalists. We heard that one of the television reporters made the mistake of asking Nick Jonas about his breakup with Miley Cyrus – apparently, there was about 30 seconds of silence, and then Nick said, “I’m not here to talk about that.”
Awkward.
Now, because the Jonas brothers are such a big fuckin’ deal (kill me, please), there were no one-on-one interviews with them. Instead, there were about 6 or 7 tables with a few journalists at each, and each “star” of the movie would spend about 10 minutes with each table. But the Jonas brothers are a package deal, apparently, so we had to talk to all of them at once.
That’s right. I MET THE JONAS BROTHERS. You may all kneel at my feet and offer me presents.
First of all, why are Joe and Kevin Jonas trying to bring back the Miami Vice look? It was a stupid look on Don Johnson and it’s even worse now that it’s 20 years later. I realize that they weren’t alive when it was on and, therefore, think they’re coming up with a look that’s fresh and hip, but Jesus, if you don’t want anything covering your forearms, wear a short-sleeved shirt instead of pushing your suit jacket sleeves up.
Also, Nick Jonas: a combination of Danny Zuko and Fonzie. A little sad, but actually pretty amusing when you lack a heart. So: hee hee hee.
I apparently made a bit of a faux pas when I asked the brothers about their purity rings. See, they wear the rings in Camp Rock even though they’re not playing themselves, so I asked if that was a conscious decision to have their characters also be waiting until marriage for sex.
Joe: No, it’s more like if I’d worn my favourite watch in a scene.
Me: But that means it’s also your character’s favourite watch. Or at least a watch your character would wear. Pause. Joe: I didn’t really put that much thought into it.
Me thinking: Having seen Camp Rock, I can believe that.
After they left the table, one of the other journalists at my table (who was from Malaysia) complimented me for having the guts to ask them about the purity rings, since she’d been told not to bring it up.
Oops.
Me: We weren’t supposed to talk about the purity rings?
Malaysian Journalist: Well, my boss told me not to mention it, since so many American teenagers wear the rings anyway and it’s not a big deal.
The journalists from Germany and the UK and I all burst out laughing before telling her that no, most American teenagers do not wear purity rings. The Malaysian journalist blushed and swore and we all enjoyed a hearty laugh at her expense. Mockery: bringing people together.
As for Demi Lovato, she’s a very pretty girl and is clearly trying to appear more “edgy” than she does in the movie. LOADS of black eye makeup, black nail polish, an ACDC T-shirt, and a bomber jacket with the sleeves pushed up. Way to leave Barney and Friends in the past!
I did hear a rumor about her at the press junket that she was in an elevator with her Disney handler and some of the other journalists, except she didn’t realize they were press, and she made a comment about how annoying it was to have to share the elevator with regular people and tourists. I have absolutely no proof that this happened, but it’s kinda funny, and I like talking shit about people, so GOOD ENOUGH.
I also ended up interviewing Julie Brown, and the look on her face when she realized that the crazy fan from the night before was an actual member of the press was priceless. You will be happy to know that I didn’t even have the sense to act ashamed. Instead, I was like, “Ha, you have to act like you like me so I won’t write bad things about you. Sucka!”
One of the other actresses in the movie, Alyson Stoner, was both lovely to talk to and incredibly depressing. She told us that she’d just graduated high school and was looking to start college in the near future. SHE IS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD. If you are ever looking to feel bad about how little you have accomplished in your life, spend five minutes talking to her. However, she won a lot of points by admitting the clothes she had to wear in Camp Rock were ridiculous and she was a little embarrassed about it. I was like, “This is on the record! Disney is going to send hitmen after you!”
In the lobby of the hotel, I met BRADLEY COOPER of Alias fame, and good lord, he is a gorgeous man. I was very, very suave, and said something like, “HEY! YOU’RE BRADLEY COOPER!” and then I blushed furiously, shook his hand, and ran away.
Every once in a while, I’d go down to the street to have a cigarette, and there were about 10 girls waiting on the sidewalk for the off chance the Jonas brothers would come down and say hi. They were there at 10 a.m. and were still there when I left at 5. Everytime I went down, they would hound me for information.
Girls: What are they doing? What’s going on? Are they done soon?
Me: I don’t know. We just had lunch.
Girls: What did they eat?!
Me: I didn’t eat lunch with them. I just get to interview them later.
Girls: OMG WTF YOU ARE SOOOOOO LUCKY.
Me: Sure.
Girls: So what do they do after?
Me: Listen. I sit in a room. The Jonas brothers come in, I talk to them, and they leave. If they’re not in the room, I have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.
Girls: If we give you a note, will you give it to them?
Me: No.
Girls: Why not?!
Me: That’s really, really unprofessional.
Girls: Why?
Me: Maybe if you weren’t skipping school, you’d learn why.
When I left, though, I did give the girls my bag o’ swag (minus the Camp Rock hoodie, because it was crazy comfortable). However, I only gave it to them on one condition.
Me: I will give this to you if you stop skipping school to follow shitty bands.
Girls: THE JONAS BROTHERS ARE NOT SHITTY.
Me: Fine, I’ll take my bag with me, then.
Girls: NOOOOOO OKAY FINE.
Me: I don’t believe you.
Girls: NO REALLY!
Me: I still don’t believe you, but lucky for you, I don’t want to take this on the plane with me.
Girls: WOOO HOOOO EEEEEE!!!
Me: Seriously, though, what is it about the Jonas brothers that makes it worth your time to spend hours upon hours waiting on the sidewalk on the off chance they will come down and talk to you?
Girls: They’re so sweet and their music is great and it speaks to us and they’re really nice and we know they’re going to come down and talk to us because they’re soooo good to their fans.
Me: But they’re probably just going to shake your hand and sign a few autographs. You’ll be happy with that, after standing around for seven hours?
Girls: YESSSSS!
Me: …Jesus. Good luck, guys.
And with that, I left to go cram as much sight-seeing as I could into my remaining two hours in New York City. I made it to the Central Park zoo, Time Square, and MoMA, all of which managed to get rid of most of the bad taste in my mouth left by all the Jonas brothers ass-kissing I witnessed.
I did have a fantastic time in New York – including seeing Camp Rock and talking to the Jonas brothers – and as bitchy and sarcastic as I was about the whole press experience, I was pretty jazzed that my job still allowed me to go to New York for free. Hell, I’d spend a week spooning with the Jonas brothers if it meant I got to go to New York for free. And then I’d probably make a few bucks letting their 14-year-old fans touch the parts of my body that touched the Jonas brothers.
Name Dropper 