Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learneded to Stop Shit Talking and Ambivalently Tolerate Taylor Momsen

So the "surprise" face of Madonna & Lourdes Maria's clothing line, Material Girl, is Taylor Momsen. The hints that were dropped over who it would be were supposed to be um, well, hints, or something, but they were actually pretty blatant and obviously geared towards Momsen. WWD hinted the spokes model was "on a hit teen drama series and is known for her frayed, rocker-tinged style off-screen." Oh gee, that doesn't exactly scream Shanae Grimes, does it?

I think Madonna's camp was on point with this pr stunt. The whole Who's-That-Girl going to be scheme regarding Momsen's identity was probably cleverly calculated. Taylor Momsen gets more attention than most teenage celebs out there right now, and I think without the buzz of her being attached to the project, I don't think anyone would really care about Madonna's clothing line. I can't remember the last time her fashion sense was relevant. If I had to wager a guess I'd say her Blonde Ambition/Like A Virgin era was the last time she was styled well, and coincidentally that's the exact look Taylor Momsen emulates.

It's too bad Lourdes Maria isn't in the spotlight more. Madonna has her in check. Lourdes is adorable and pretty and could probably be a major starlet if she wasn't raised with these restrictions:

Above: the rules for child visitation rights Guy Richie must adhere to when his kids see him according to Madonna


Anyway, back to Momsen.




I read a lot of pop culture blogs/gossip websites and Taylor Momsen is pretty much hated by the readers who take the time to post comments about how much they can't stand her. I don't have a solid opinion of her, really. However, in three short seasons of Gossip Girl, her character of Jenny went from being the most awful little snot on the screen to the only person on the entire show I didn't want to kick repeatedly in the crotch, so she has that going for her. Also, popular criticism of her is that she smokes (gasp!) and dresses like a Cherie Currie/Courtney Love hybrid. The latter just annoys me. I firmly believe that if The Runaways hadn't just come out, 95% of blog commentators would have no clue who the hell Cherie Currie was. And since I have known who she was since I was 16, I feel more entitled than those people.



However, even though I get more annoyed by Taylor's haters than I do by Taylor, it's easy to pick on her when she is known for saying some really bonehead things during interviews... like this tidbit when asked about the earthquake in Haiti this past Januaray:

"Um, right now I’m trying to just finish my record and getting through the last season of Gossip Girl for right now. So not so much thinking about that."

Added Taylor, “But it’s awesome that everyone is ya know working towards a good cause.”


The next quote is actually one I agree with completely almost completely. Apparently Taylor doesn't like to be compared to Miley Cyrus:


"I’m not looking to be Miley fucking Cyrus. I don’t care about the fame. I do it because I love music. I like making records and if people like them, then we’ll go along for the ride. ... I’m not dissing Miley personally. However, I do think the Disney bubblegum shit that the world is living right now is pathetic. I thought we passed that repression. I don’t know Miley, but musically we’re different. To compare us because of our age is silly."

Oh Taylor. Taylor, Taylor, Taylor. Don't use big words you don't understand. Recording bubblegum top 40 pop music is hardly repression. And Miley is sort of doing her own thing these days to distance herself from the Disney image. Also, you'd sound more convincing and less like a little girl trying to sound mature if you didn't swear so much when the press is getting quotes from you. I couldn't care any less that you have the mouth of a drunken sailor, but it's pretty obvious thoughtless quotes like these fuel the fire of your haters.

Not that I think you even remotely care.




Usually when I see pictures of her, I think she looks good. But before I defend her slightly, I have one tangent I need to go off on...




These shoes. I don't hate them on her as much as I hate the fact that they exist. Stripper Chic is a style I will never get behind. The stripper shoe rage hit the runway last fall big time. Lanvin has plexiglass stripper shoes. Prada has plexiglass stripper heels. Fendi has them (holy hell, while searching for designer stripper heels I found these, and hello, I love them. Overt and over the top, yes, but I am a sucker for tulle) and I am sure a billion other designers has them. I find this laughable. I doubt any woman who would wear these would ever entertain the idea of actually becoming a stripper, but buying some cheap hooker heel from BeBe or the Jessica Simpson line from Victoria's Secret is not at all out of the question. These are the same kind of chicks who claim pole dancing is something they want to try because "it's great exercise." Uh, so is yoga, and yoga merely requires you to stretch and breathe simultaneously, not have a pole installed in your house.


I take it back. Taylor Momsen wearing stripper heels with crumpled up dollar bills in the "tips" toe annoys the shit out of me. She's 16 and she looks absolutely idiotic.



I don't agree with teenage celebrities developing a striper girl personae in order to segue in to adulthood, but I do understand being 17 and saying completely ridiculous things that I thought sounded provocative when I was growing up.

What I agree with even less is how she gets trashed so much on the internet. The most common insult hurled at her is that she is "trying to be different" when she isn't. Well, I dare you to find one quote of hers where she makes this claim. Not only that, there is nothing different about her look. Maybe if she dressed like a wench at a Renaissance Festival and was in to LARPing instead of fronting a rock bad, the whole "trying to be different" claim would make sense. But it doesn't, she's just a teenager who likes to dress like a ho. That's not so different than most little skags I see walking around New York City.

Taylor Momsen is 17. She may be a little wanna-be Courtney Love lookalike, she may say retarded things to the press, but she's a teenager. If there is any time she is supposed to be making mistakes and learning from them, it's now. Plus, she is legitimately making some pretty decent music. I don't expect celebrities to be saints because they're in the spotlight. I do think they should be talented in their craft though, and as far as singing goes, I think she does that really well.

Decide for yourselves...

Pillsbury Dough Face

There are exactly two things I like about John Mayer.

1. Reading interviews he has done or quotes he has quipped that validate my humble opinion that he is a raging dickwad.

2. His guitar face.



I have never liked John Mayer. I remember when "I wanna run through the halls of my high school, I wanna scream at the toppa my lungs!" came out and I thought it would be the pop song of the summer that adult contemporary fans would love. You know, a song along par with "Breathless" by the Corrs. "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis. Or something edgy, like "Clocks" by Coldplay! I figured he'd be a one hit wonder, at best, and that would be that.

Then that atrocity "Your Body Is A Wonderland" came out and all bets were off. My revolting roommate at the time who was a raging slut loved this song, and would play it every weekend while she reminisced about the last random dong she had taken inside of her. So that's one thing. The other is the lyric "your bubblegum tongue." I'm a very visual person, and I tend to see imagery in a very cartoonish style at times, so imagining John Mayer chewing on my slutty roommates tongue like a wad of Hubba Bubba grossed me out, to put it mildly.



So his first record comes out, we get the class reunion song, bubble gum tongue song, and maybe one other single on the charts and it's decidedd: this dough boy is the king of easy listening. No big deal. A lot of musicians make a decent living this way. Barry Manilow, for example. Or Peabo Bryson.

But NOOOO! John Mayer now has to tell the world incessently from that point on in 2002 until about 5 minutes ago that's not his deal. That's not his sound. This man is a blues guitarist! He swears to God!!

I ponder this and I wonder about those other people from the celebrity past who has insisted to be known as one thing when we, their public, know them as what they really are.

Perfect example: Jennifer Love Hewitt.



How many articles did you read on her in the late 90's or early 00's where she'd swear that people only referred to her as "Love?" I can think of several dozen. The journalist would be like, "We met up with Jennifer Love Hewitt inside the lobby of the Chateau Marmont (but really, those closest to her refer to her as only Love)..." and seriously? No they did not. This was a poorly executed publicity thing where you know Jenny's agent was confirming an interview with Sassy or something and saying that her rider included diet coke, sun chips, and a mention in the article to please please please call her Love.

I'm not buying it!

Another example: Puff Daddy.



First he was Puff Daddy, and to his friends, Puff. Then he was on trial for attempted murder and J Lo dumped him, and to make the public forget that he somehow got off without a scratch while Shyne took the heat for him, he changes his nickname to P. Diddy. He claims it's because that is what Biggie called him, but hello? Nobody asked you where the origin of the nickname came from, we merely wondered why you changed it. It's not going to make us forget you were on trial for attempted murder.

Then he switched it to Diddy. How do I know this? I think he held a press conference about it or something. Or he made an announcement before an episode of Making The Band, I'm not sure. Anyway. You're name is Sean Combs. Stick with that, it's the nicest sounding name of all.




John Mayer decided to show us all that he was a heavy rock 'n roller with his second album so he cleverly named it Heavier Things. Singles included "Bigger Than My Body" which is a dorky song to say the least and "Daughters" which is a ballad about birthing babies. Heavy.

It was about this time around that the John Mayer Is A Cheeseball backlash began. I would hear all these people, fans of Mayer, argue that he is really not a pop star. He is really a blues guitarist. And allegedly a really good one. And for a second I believed it, in fact I almost left an FYE with a John Mayer LP because the guy who worked there helped me find a Pet Shop Boys import which led to a really smart discussion about new wave bands I'd never heard of and wanted to download when I got home was a JM fan and he almost convinced me to buy Heavier Things. Almost. Sorry for that run on sentence. Onward.

Then I start reading John Mayer articles and I see the same thing I saw with Jenny Love; the writer always bringing up how the dude is a balls out thrashing riffing rip roaring blues guitarist.

His third record gives us the single "Waiting on the World to Change" which won a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocalist. Quite petulantly I rest my case.

Then he disappeared for awhile, and started dating Jessica Simpson Sexual Napalm and hanging out with Pete Wentz and he emerged with Travis Barker style full sleeve tattoos and Tyler Durden hair. It was then my dislike turned in to downright loathing, but two things very quickly made all the animosity go away. One was the preposterous things he said in interviews. I didn't read the Playboy one, but the Rolling Stone article was enough to make me want to choke him sadistically.

The second of course, are his guitar faces.

Systematic Tomfoolery

After Kelly Bensimone's meltdown in the Virgin Islands I thought it was in bad taste to make fun of her because she is clearly not mentally stable and it's not right to make fun of someone in that position. I've never really liked Kelly, she seems like a spoiled bitch. Originally, I thought Kelly had a Rx pill popping problem. Then I thought maybe she had Asperger's because she is the most awkward person on TV. Then I thought maybe she had some sort of psychological disorder. I was under the impression she needed professional help. Now after seeing her on the reunion show, I just think she absolutely sucks and plays dumb as a defense mechanism. I'm leaning toward thinking she's a stupid asshole.




Andy Cohen basically put the smack down on Ramona and Bethenny's interruptions so Kelly could voice her side of the story. Then she vehemently insisted that Bravo "forced" her to go on the trip, and tried to infer her agent encouraged her to go, too. With the networks reputation at stake, Andy—the Senior VP of Production and Programming—had to cut her off to tell her that what she was saying was completely untrue. Kelly, wack job that she is, kept insisting that she was, in fact, forced to attend Ramona's girls only vacay. This was uncomfortably debated back and forth for a minute or so. Now, while I am sure the network holds its personalities to contractual obligations, I do not think anyone was forced to go to St John. LuAnn and Jill both did not go on the trip, this indicates that there was no coercion on Bravo's part.



The more she babbles the less sense she makes. It's so frustrating to hear her speak because she makes no sense. None whatsoever. It's got to be infuriating to the people who are obligated to be on TV with her.



Moreover, she's one of those women who whines like a little bitch when things aren't going her way. She pretends to be innocent and shy and attacked all the time. What's worse is she's one of those infuriating women who brags about not wanting to be friends with woman, like that's a good thing.



Oh oh! Despite being a misogynist, she keeps saying that she expects the other women to "celebrate who she is." Ehh, what does that mean? Basically she wants to be the center of attention, but really has no way to grab the attention because the demographic for this show isn't "straight men who think she's hot."



I happen to be Bravo's target demographic for this show, so allow me to fix the mess they've created.

1. Kelly & Danielle Staub need to go. They need to protect their inevitably screwed up children, these shows are getting a little too TLC Intervention for my taste.

2. Hold back on the psychosis a bit. No one is really watching the show to see complete psychotic breakdowns from deranged sociopaths or really haggard and tawdry stripper pole antics starring someones 50 year old mother.

3. Get Dina back into rotation.



4. Give Ramona and Sonja their own show and spin it like a real life AbFab. This certainly doesn't seem difficult to accomplish, as they have very vibrant, nutty personalities anyways. They are the most entertaining two and definitely are the best to watch.



"Turtle time..."





Kelly, I know you're reading this, why wouldn't you be? If you don't like the position you're put in on the show, by all means, LEAVE! Do us all a favor.