This goes out to all the people who are stuck at work on Christmas Eve Eve. May these delightful GIFs bring merriment to you all. All of these are more or less safe for work, unless you’re being watched by CCTV cameras or something.

A scene from Elton John’s dreams: a Skinny Dip Rocket Man

Hockey player in your face (wait for it…)

Spartans love Bananas!

Mark Sanchez rides the exercise bike but quickly tires:

Bean Bag Blowout

Skate trick gone groin-splittingly awry…

Worst victorious ball spike of all time.

Robot tosses granny into traffic:

My hands are talkin’ to me, man!

The ultimate Roo-Venge!

Gunplay 101 with Lee Van Cleef:

Dumbasses and their Exercise Balls, Volume III:

Frog v. Fly:Winged Victory

Jame Gumb and Precious are watching you

What did this guy do to earn such a pungent stinkeye??

Fingerbanged by Goldblum: An experience you’ll never forget.

Mild NSFW Warning — Poop, Pet Barf, Super Fake Violence to Super Fake Boob. (Roughly arranged from most safe to least, and I will warn you before they get gross.)

One of the most delightful online trends over the past year is the rediscovery of the animated GIF, an old technology that has recently been employed for all manner of comedic uses. It’s now Interwebs Standard Operating Procedure to take a great piece of video and turn it into a GIF, or to use good GIFsmanship to take a series of photos and make them hilarious.

ROTI knows of no greater authority on the topic of amusing GIFs than famed tipster C. Dave.

He’s collected a crop of great GIFs that have caught his eye over the past month, and we are proud to present what will hopefully be a recurring feature in this space:  This Month in GIF.

Leave Your Dog Alone, Dumbass:

Yoga Ball Faceplant:

Yoga Ball Joust:

I Hate Sisters!

Wipeout at the Goal Line:

Commuter Nap Disaster:

Where’d The Evidence Go?

MJ Loved Popcorn:

Blonde Steel:

Bela Declares Bullshit:

Taping Yer Face:

Slappin’ a Child (from the Danish film “Terribly Happy”):

Look Before You Leap:

Her Air Hockey Skill Depends On Your Sexual Preference:

Whassup wit yo microphone?

Baba Booey Caught Sleeping on the Job:

Riker Transforms into Badass

Okay, faint of heart, click away from this page now!!

POTENTIALLY NSFW/GROSS BEYOND THIS THRESHOLD.

And now for the final hilarious items for the most stalwart among you…

Getting Too Cute with the Horse Farm Report:

Boob Chop

And finally…

The Nastiest GIF Ever Made:

Well done, C. Dave! I, for one, am looking forward to many future installments of this series!

The Indianapolis Colts are a legendary NFL team for so many reasons…

The midnight escape from Baltimore. The years of futility. The renaissance under Lord Pey-Pey. The Rules Committee machinations of Bill Polian that changed the league into an offensive fireworks display. The Dungy-led excellence and self-righteousness. The domed perfection of Tom Moore’s offense. The Super Bowl triumph in the Purple Rain.

And the ongoing tradition of loud-mouthed, drunken kickers.

Poor Peyton Manning.

For years he was tormented by the antics of Mike Vanderjagt, the place kicker who was never shy about running his mouth, taunting rival teams’ fearsome defensive players that he would never have to face on the field, and even questioning Manning’s qualities as a QB.

Peyton finally had an outburst and said, “Here we are, I’m out at my third Pro Bowl, I’m about to go in and throw a touchdown to Jerry Rice, we’re honoring the Hall of Fame, and we’re talking about our idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off. The sad thing is, he’s a good kicker. He’s a good kicker. But he’s an idiot.”

A few years ago, the Colts dropped “Vanderjerk,” and it looked for a while like Peyton could enjoy peace and quiet from his special teams unit.

Enter Pat McAfee, the plastered punter.

He’s a second year player out of West Virginia (that’s a red flag right there) who recently became the Colts’ punter after handling kickoff duties in 2009.

The Shot of Ginn blog reports that “the Ex-Mountaineer stays in top shape for his heavy kicking duty by puffing on them cancer sticks.”

Recently, McAfee decided it would be a good idea to play Armchair General Manager, and made public statements on Twitter questioning the wisdom of Bill Belichick’s trade of Randy Moss.

Colts’ fan blog Stampede Blue ripped McAfee in a post entitled “Colts Punter Pat McAfee Thinks Bill Belichick is Dumb.” And they were right to do so. A second-year punter has no place publicly calling out a coach/GM who has won more NFL games than he has attended.

McAfee, continuing his quest to be the new Vanderjagt diarrhea mouth, blasted back:

Stampedeblue.com is completely false and a horrible piece of “journalism” I said nothing about anybody, all I did was compliment Randy Moss.

That’s horseshit because as anyone with a fifth-grade reading level can see, McAfee publicly declared that the trade “doesn’t add up.” That’s a lot different from simply complimenting Moss.

Never mind the fact that Moss was acquired for a fourth round draft choice in 2007, so what part of “Randy Moss is worth a mid-round draft choice in trade” does Pat McAfee not understand?

(pic via)

Anyway, Stampede Blue quickly backed down from this confrontation, publishing an apology of sorts entitled “Pat McAfee Is Not a ‘Liquored Up’ Kicker.“

Blog scribe Big Blue Shoe wrote:

Having met Pat, interviewed him, and spoken to him recently, I can say without question he is NOT Mike Vanderjagt. If anyone stated or wrote that we quoted Pat as calling Belichick ‘dumb,’ they’re wrong. Pat never said that, and just as my Tweet was not intended to get Pat into any type of silly situation, Pat’s Tweet wasn’t intended to call out Belichick. I, personally, saw that angle in his Tweet, but that wasn’t what Pat intended, in my opinion.

Pat McAfee is most certainly not Indy’s ‘liquored up’ kicker, and if any of this silliness got him into any trouble, or put him in the uncomfortable position of having to answer for something he did not say, I am sorry.

Not so fast, Big Blue Shoe!

The Indianapolis Star reported this morning…

Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee has been arrested on suspicion of public intoxication this morning after he reportedly took a predawn swim in the Central Canal in Broad Ripple.

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police were called to the canal at Broad Ripple and College shortly before 5 a.m. after a report of a man swimming in the canal of the popular nightlife district.

A 911 call was received about 4:45 a.m. this morning from a woman who said a wet, shirtless man tried to get into her car at a traffic signal at Broad Ripple Avenue, according to WTHR (Channel 13). The woman said he had “blond, shaggy hair wearing jeans,” and that he “looks like he’s freezing.”

“I think he’s out of it,” the caller told the dispatcher.

McAfee in earlier, carefree days…

It gets so much better.

When an officer asked McAfee where his shirt was, he replied “It is in the water,” police reported, according to WISH-TV.

Asked by police how much he had to drink, McAfee said “A lot cause I am drunk,” according to the report.

McAfee told police he had been waiting for a ride home, but had decided to take a cab instead. He then asked if he could walk home, according to the police report, WRTV-TV reported.

“I know I am drunk, but does that mean I cannot walk home?” McAfee asked police, according to the report.

Yes. That is “Prostitution Whore” Danielle Staub.

Almost as hilarious as the quotations he uttered in the course of being arrested is the fact that he was drunk Tweeting shortly before he took his soused dip in the canal:

Now, despite what our track record might suggest, ROTI does not frown on an epic drunkathon now and again. That’s the privilege of every American. You should see the recycle bin at ROTI headquarters, it’s chock full of spent Silver Bullets and empty boxes of wine.

Trying to carjack an innocent woman while soaking wet is another matter altogether, however.

Not to mention the fact that McAfee ought to keep his roster-management opinions to himself. Who cares what some punter from West Virginia has to say about Bill Belichick’s roster moves?

(My opinions, on the other hand, are incredibly valuable. Obviously.)

Peyton Manning must be shaking his head in disgust and anguish today. Once, he had to contend with The Liquored Up Kicker. Now he has to deal with the Plastered Punter.

What did poor Pey-Pey do to deserve this legacy of drunken special teams shame?

We recently held a screening of the latest Lifetime made-for-TV movie, “The Client List,” at ROTI headquarters. Let me be the first to inform you that it is a masterpiece.

When it comes to Lifetime movies, the bar has been set pretty high. Perhaps the network’s finest film to date is “Sex, Lies & Obsession,” the brilliant 2001 flick in which Lisa Rinna plays the victimized wife of a sex-addicted Harry Hamlin: the scene where she finds his secret porno stash and recoils in horror is one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen.

I would be remiss not to mention the terrific effort that was “Who is Clark Rockefeller?” — a recent film in which Eric McCormack [Will from Will & Grace] gave the performance of his life as the German-turned-WASP con man. The scenes in which he portrays the blond, teenage, Kraut-accented Christian Gerhartsreiter are beyond marvelous.

And who could forget Tori Spelling in the classics “Co-Ed Call Girl” and “Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?“

But despite this sterling track record of making amusingly dramatic films that never fail to deliver unintentional comedy value, Lifetime has clearly outdone itself with “The Client List.”

I don’t know about you, but a film that stars Jennifer Love Hewitt as a former Texas beauty queen down on her luck, forced to turn tricks to put food on her family’s table…and who then gets addicted to the attention of flabby johns who fly in from all over the world to sample her delights…only to be arrested and jailed, her secrets broadcast all over the city by the insatiable media, threatening everything she holds dear…well, that’s a film that I am not going to miss.

If you can’t handle TV movie spoilers, read no further!

So here’s the situation at the beginning of the film: JLH and her husband, portrayed by Teddy Sears, are unemployed, flat broke, and behind on their mortgage. She’s a former beauty queen who married the local football star, only to see her dreams shattered when her hubby blew out his knee.

Now he’s unable to work construction due to his injury, she’s been laid off from her job as a massage therapist, and their three ungrateful little kids keep demanding that food be put on the table.

It doesn’t help that her judgy mom, portrayed by Cybill Shepherd, has filled J. Love’s head with nonsense about how a woman should always get by on her looks.

The first indication of this film’s awesomeness comes when the Hortons (for that is the name of this fictional clan) head to the local bank to negotiate an extension on their mortgage.

Foreclosure is looming, but Sam Horton (J. Love’s alter ego) has a brilliant plan: dangle her massive mamm-globes in the face of the banker to persuade him to bend the rules.

When this shockingly fails to work, J. Love goes to Plan B: describing in precise detail the conditions under which they’d signed off on their mortgage, including some shady dealing by the banker.

It seems Sam Horton has an incredible memory for specifics, and she uses it to intimidate the scalawag into granting them a one-month extension.

Having foreshadowed the shit out of the rest of the plot, “The Client List” quickly cuts to the chase.

The story accelerates as J. Love scores a miracle job at a health spa located in a distant town. She’ll be able to use her massage therapy skills to pay the bills! Crisis averted!

At first, the job at amusingly-named Kind Touch Health Spa seems like the answer to the Horton family’s prayers. The owners welcome Sam with open arms and tell her she can start right away.

But as Sam observes one of her new co-workers tending to a client, she quickly realizes that there’s more to this job than therapeutic massage. Though the Lifetime audience does not care to see any details, and thus we’re only treated to the most tasteful camera angles and cutaways, she watches in horror as a barely-legal teen gives a hairy old man the most expensive beej of his life.

J. Love is traumatized and flees the spa. It seems her dream job isn’t going to work out after all.

But as she drives home, she gets a call from her best girlfriend, who tends a local bar. Hubby Horton is passed out drunk after spending a depressing day standing outside the Home Depot with the rest of the no-good day laborers. She picks him up, only to discover that they’re out of gas and don’t have more than a dollar to fill the tank.

That’s when Love knows what she has to do. She calls Kind Touch Health Spa and begs for her job back.

She’s going to take her talents to Sex Beach.

[Standing ovation in the ROTI screening room.]

Sam’s first time turning a trick doesn’t go well at first. It seems she’d rather dispense marital counseling than deliver a sex job. She even takes a phone call from her daughter, which is just gross. But just as the john is about to bail and starts pulling up his pants, she bites the bullet and disrobes, displaying her magnificent assets. Let’s just say he has a change of heart.

When she heads home that evening, J. Love has a wallet full of cash. She brings home gifts for the kids and pays the mortgage. Her husband can’t believe his good fortune — he can afford to send his awkward son to play flag football. She confides in her bartendress bestie, who warns her not to get addicted to the sex trade.

Nonetheless, J. Love is getting accustomed to boofing the businessmen and bigwigs that patronize Kind Touch…and the money and attention that come with the gig. She justifies her actions in amusing soliloquies delivered in a woefully inconsistent Texas accent to the little angel statue on her dashboard.

Through an outstanding montage, we see how Sam gains confidence as a hooker — she comes through the door in a series of titillating outfits, her visage slowly transforming from anxiousness to sultriness.

It turns out that Sam has a special talent for the world’s oldest profession. Using her superpowers of memory, she always remembers what the johns like — oatmeal cookies, rusty trombones — and what they’re stressed about in their home lives.

Not to mention her superpowers as a sexual dynamo turning a dozen tricks a day (tragically, this is never actually shown onscreen). She fields marriage proposals and a parade of old, flabby, hairy dudes fly in to town on private jets just to bone her. The other girls at the “health spa” are getting jealous!

The money is rolling in now, and she showers her family with gifts at Christmastime. J. Love herself is decked out with jewelry showered upon her by worshipful clients. She buys her husband a new motorcycle to celebrate his new job as an extermination company trainee. Even her critical mother is silenced by an expensive holiday gift.

Whoring a ton is the best thing that ever happened to the Horton family!

Sadly, though, Sam is boning so many dudes that she barely sees her family, missing her kid’s first flag football touchdown. She’s falling asleep at the wheel, even driving into a ditch to avoid an accident. Worst of all, she’s too tired to give her husband any V on the side.

That’s when this otherwise obvious movie takes a twist that I honestly didn’t see coming.

Noticing her fatigue, one of her clients offers her a baggie of fine Columbian. She refuses at first, but he insists on tucking it inside her purse.

Later that night, all J. Love wants to do is crash, but her daughter needs her to whip something up for the big bake sale at school. She can barely keep her eyes open as she strains to read the cook book.

Suddenly, she notices her purse, tantalizing her with its powdery contents. A slow zoom in on the handbag depicts the tantalizing lure of the bad shit.

This moment didn’t have any dialogue, but the interior monologues of J. Love and her purse were abundantly clear:

The bake sale is saved, but the dark side of hooking has emerged.

Once J. Love starts sniffing blow, her life quickly begins to unravel. She’s turning more tricks than ever before, but she’s falling apart. Her mom notices that she’s gotten freakishly thin. When her daughter innocently asks her “Mom, are you going to get more Coke?” she freaks out before realizing the little girl means soda. While she once serviced clients with a personal touch, she now gets right down to business.

Worst of all, she’s turned into an all-out coke whore who will “make it worth your while” for a baggie of happy powder.

The movie demonstrates her downfall by making her look like a hardened drug addict mere weeks after she begins her habit. It took Lindsey Lohan YEARS of snorting and boning to achieve the deterioration in her looks that Sam Horton accomplishes in a month or so:

But the worst is yet to come…

Sam encourages one of her co-workers to leave the business and seek refuge at a nearby Christian Fellowship center. The ex-hooker quickly dimes out Kind Touch Health Spa to the bible-thumpers, who in turn put the local police on speed dial.

This has no effect, because the crafty folks at Kind Touch have been giving the coppers free bonetime for years. But when the Christian Fellowship crew get the mayor’s office on the line, they get results. It’s an election year and the mayor is looking to get some good publicity. She orders a crackdown on Kind Touch!

J. Love gets arrested for hooking and blowcaine possession, and hauled out in front of a bevy of television cameras. Her husband is watching the Cowboys game at the bar when the breaking news is splashed across the screen!

Here’s where Teddy Sears, in the role of the husband, really steps up his game. The look on his face when he sees the mother of his children hauled out of a Texas whorehouse in prosti-garb is Daytime Emmy-worthy:

After this shocking turn of events, J. Love is facing two years in the slammer. Her husband takes the kids away and her mother won’t take her calls. Total humiliation in the community follows. Now she’s not just talking to the angel on her dashboard, she’s pretty much talking to herself non-stop. She’s lost everything, including her sanity.

But J. Love still has a trump card to pull — her ridiculously good memory. With help from the other hoes at Kind Touch, she puts together a list of all the upstanding pillars of the community who patronized their services…if they’re going down, they’re going to bring down all the johns in Texas with them.

Her lawyer uses that to get the ladies a get-out-of-jail free card, and the publication of the list in the local papers turns the scandal back on the horndogs.

Not only that, but she’s able to capitalize on her newfound fame as the finest sex machine in Texas. A mob of betrayed women converge on her house, but instead of tearing her limb from limb, they beg her for tips on how to please their men!

The ever-resourceful Sam Horton thus rebuilds her social capital by instructing her neighbors on the finer points of dude arousal:

And just like that, she gets her life back together. Her mom finds some sympathy in her cold, brittle heart. J. Love kicks the habit and gets her Narcotics Anonymous 60 days clean badge. Even her husband seems to be open to a reconciliation.

Unlike the last film I shared with y’all, this one has a happy ending! How apropos for a film about HJs for pay!

If you’d like to watch this brilliant piece of cinema for yourself, I have great news. It’s available on demand at Lifetime’s website!

According to TV by the Numbers, “The Client List” pulled down very respectable viewership numbers. Hooray for Lifetime original movies!

It’s time to give props to the MVP of this fine film. Jennifer Love Hewitt is simply magical in the role of Samantha Horton. I think this may be the best performance she has ever delivered.

You know, some people like to make fun of JLH for being a little chunky in the hip zone. There are rumors about her being wicked uptight sexually that seem pretty plausible. Her perpetually failing relationships with dorks like Jamie Kennedy and the singer from LFO (may he rest in peace) do her no favors. And her career has clearly sputtered, why else would she be headlining a Lifetime movie?

Regardless, J. Love’s performance in this film is spot on. (Yes, it would have been a thousand times better if she showed boob or had a sex scene, but that’s just not what you get from the Lifetime genre.) Few other actresses could have nailed the combination of goody-two-shoes pageant queen and cleavage-for-miles Texas whore that she achieves in this movie. You could chalk it up to natural sexiness and charm, or perhaps a lifetime of experience in the acting biz…

But I’m inclined to think her secret is a vajazzled no-no. It just spreads its sparkle throughout J. Love’s entire being and throughout this film itself.

Shine on, you crazy diamond.

]]> http://rumorsontheinternets.org/2010/07/22/jennifer-love-hewitt-prostitution-whore/feed/ 1 Alpine McGregor client poster client list family client1 client2 client-a client-b client3 client4 client-scene client6 client7 client8 client-c jennifer love hewitt http://rumorsontheinternets.org/2010/06/04/take-to-the-sky-on-a-natural-high/ http://rumorsontheinternets.org/2010/06/04/take-to-the-sky-on-a-natural-high/#comments Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:28:21 +0000 Alpine McGregor http://rumorsontheinternets.org/?p=2658 ]]>
22-year-old Yasmine Villasana tossed back at least one vodka and cranberry before heading out of Dallas-Fort Worth Airport at high speeds!

Unfortunately, she wasn’t prepared to stop at the toll booth.

What happened next was a magical, fiery flight that we can all enjoy via Youtube.

The Impala bursts into flames as it takes flight! Johnny Storm, eat your heart out.

One of the best parts of this story is Villasana’s attempt to explain her way out of the situation…

Here’s a report from The Sun (UK):

This driver chose the wrong way to fly out of an airport when she launched over a toll booth — in her car.

Yasmine Villasana, 22, was arrested for drink-driving after ploughing into a barrier and taking off at Dallas Airport, US, on Tuesday.

Her Chevy Impala launched over the 30ft barrier and landed on the road on the other side before bursting into flames.

Cops said when they arrived on the scene Villasana was trying to get back into her still burning car.

Despite this she insisted she had only had “one vodka and cranberry” the night before the crash.

She said her car had been rear-ended before the smash.

Cops inspected the vehicle but they found no evidence of any collision from the rear.

The scene made for some amazing photos:

DListed called her “A proud graduate of the Duke Brothers school of driving,” and added:

“Surprisingly, Yasmine only broke her wrist during the crash and nobody else was hurt. Yasmine told police she only drank one cranberry and vodka the night before. Yasmine also continued to roll out the hilarious lies when she claimed that someone rear-ended her. I believe her. The spirit of KITT tossed her over that toll.”

Many Youtube commenters thought this story couldn’t be real after viewing the video. It’s legit, skeptics! Here’s the police report!

I personally get the giggles when someone embarrasses themselves in this manner and then turns out to have an accessible Facebook account.

Yasmine Villasana did not disappoint! Her employment is simply perfect.

Here’s Yasmine “ON THE WAY 2 THE RKELLY CONCERT”: note the telltale mole under the right eye…

My favorite is probably this series of photos in which she triple- and quad-teams a homie while protruding her rump as much as humanly possible…

UPDATE: OK, I take that back. My favorite is this picture discovered by a commenter on Jalopnik:

No doubt you’ve heard the expression, “Why drink and drive when you can smoke and fly?”

Yasmine says eff that noise. Buy her a drank and hitch a ride, and you’ll find yourself airborne soon enough.

#     #     #

Have a nice weekend, everyone.

For his work directing Back To The Future and its sequels, as well as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? the 10-year old me considered him the greatest helmsman in the history of Hollywood.

The Academy shared my high esteem after Zemeckis masterminded the epic Forrest Gump, marshalling totems from four decades of Americana into one gigantic Hanksathon that thrilled viewers and critics alike. He was named the Best Director of 1994.

Unfortunately, Zemeckis’ career soon began to turn for the worse.

Maybe it was some kind of alien signal that infiltrated his mind while filming Contact, which was pretty good except for the totally implausible McConaughey character. His next film, What Lies Beneath, was probably the most cliche-ridden film I’ve seen in all my days, and what’s worse, Zemeckis was fronting like he could hang with Hitchcock. Then came the grueling Cast Away, a desperate play for Oscar glory with FedEx ads plastered all over it.

All this was merely prologue to the horrid turn his career would soon take. Zemeckis decided that motion-capture technology was the future, and used it to adapt The Polar Express. The result was a melange of creepy looking figures prancing about on the screen, destroying my childhood memories of the classic Christmas book and replacing them with uncanny valley nightmares.

Despite the tepid critical response, Big Z then doubled down on the technology, using Disney funding to build his own studio. His continued his appalling rampage by cranking out the blasphemous motion-capture edition of Beowulf and then moving on to last winter’s Christmas Carol adaptation with a bizarre Jim Carrey-alike in the role of Scrooge.

Zemeckis then hit rock bottom when he went public with demands that Oscar create its own category for the horrible motion-capture films that he and only he is interested in making.

Mere weeks later, Jim Cameron’s Avatar not only beat him at his own game, it completely wiped his studio off the map. Cameron re-invented the special effects that Zemeckis spent a decade beating into the ground — Cameron insisted on calling his technology “performance capture” to distinguish it from Zemeckis’ abominations — and embarrassed him at the box office.

Now, Disney has shut down Zemeckis’ studio and sent him packing. The arrogant manner in which Zemeckis squandered his talent has long enraged me, but today I smile.

Finally, justice has been served.

The beginning of Zemeckis’ downfall was the aforementioned What Lies Beneath. This movie’s twist was that Harrison Ford was the bad guy, despite the fact that we have been conditioned to trust him over the first two acts of the movie, not to mention two decades of filmgoing.

That’s fine, but Zemeckis pooped all over the audience by giving the twist away in the theatrical trailer. His theory? People WANT to know the ending before they go to see the movie. Fuck you, Zemeckis!

Don’t even get me started on his pretentions to make a Hitchcockian thriller, all the while copping out with a supernatural plot that neatly ties up the loose ends of a preposterous story.

Ebert executed an excellent takedown of this turd of a film:

There’s a bag of tricks that skillful horror directors use, and they’re employed here by Robert Zemeckis (“Back to the Future,” “Forrest Gump”), who has always wanted, he says, to make a suspense film–”perhaps the kind of film Hitchcock would have done in his day,” according to his producer, Jack Rapke. Hitchcock would not, however, have done this film in his day or any other day, because Hitchcock would have insisted on rewrites to remove the supernatural and explain the action in terms of human psychology, however abnormal.

[...]

I’ve tried to play fair and not give away plot elements. That’s more than the ads have done. The trailer of this movie thoroughly demolishes the surprises; if you’ve seen the trailer, you know what the movie is about, and all of the suspense of the first hour is superfluous for you, including major character revelations. Don’t directors get annoyed when they create suspense and the marketing sabotages their efforts?

Actually, Zemeckis boasted about his trailer technique in promotional press for the film!

This arrogant “I understand the moviegoing public better than the critics” attitude led him to fart his career away over the following decade. After his failed attempt to recapture Oscar glory with Cast Away, Zemeckis went down the motion-capture rabbit hole, into a dark place…and dragged movie viewers down with him.

The beauty of Chris Van Allsburg’s “The Polar Express” is its magical realism, epitomized by its famous concept of a bell that can only be heard by those that believe in Santa Claus. The illustrations in this Caldecott-winning book are superb and evocative. In short, it is a genius piece of storytelling, enhanced by tremendous artistic talents.

Zemeckis took this masterpiece and decided to innovate it using the motion-capture techniques shown above. The result was a horrifying, skeevy sideshow of technology gone wrong.

i09 hit the nail on the head when they described this film as “A world of Tom Hanks faces, shudder and mutated children. When those kids smiled they looked the demons from Devil’s Advocate, which probably isn’t what this Christmas film was going for.”

The reason why this technology goes beyond lame to a place that’s frankly frightening is an effect known as the uncanny valley. Wikipedia explains it thusly:

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics. The theory holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.

Maybe the crowd-sourced encyclopedia isn’t the best scientific evidence, so here’s a little reinforcement from Scientific American:

The flop of the 2004 animated film The Polar Express is largely blamed on the “creepy” feeling people get when they look at very realistic-looking robots or human animations. These too real facsimiles fall into the so-called uncanny valley, between acceptably fake-looking human representations and real, healthy humans. Psychologists have long wondered whether this aversion has an evolutionary basis, and new research on macaques suggests that it does.

Princeton University researchers presented images of real monkey faces, unrealistic animated faces and realistic animated faces to five monkey subjects and recorded how long they gazed at each. Similar to the human response to objects in the uncanny valley, the monkeys avoided looking at the most realistic animated faces.

Even MONKEYS understand that this technology is monstrously bad!

If you want to make a Pixar-like computer-animated cartoon, then by all means, have at it. If you want to use effects to enhance a live-action film, awesome. But when you lean on an FX crutch that leads you to create imagery like this…

…you are crafting a cinematic nightmare.

Zemeckis’ next project was an adaptation of the classic Norse epic poem Beowulf. This ancient masterpiece is fascinating on literary and anthropological levels and inspired such modern classics as “The Lord of the Rings” – Tolkien was an Oxford don who was considered the foremost Beowulf expert of his time. His essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” called for an understanding of the film not only as a historical document but also as a literary work of genius.

Naturally, Zemeckis couldn’t wait to get his hands on this legend and transform it into a motion-capture atrocity. The Wiki entry contains all sorts of horrifying nuggets on this front:

Zemeckis did not like the poem, but enjoyed reading the screenplay. Because of the expanded budget, Zemeckis told the screenwriters to rewrite their script, because “there is nothing that you could write that would cost me more than a million dollars per minute to film. Go wild!” In particular, the entire fight with the dragon was rewritten from a talky confrontation to a battle spanning the cliffs and the sea.

[...]

Robert Zemeckis insisted that the character Beowulf resemble depictions of Jesus Christ, believing that a correlation could be made between Christ’s face and a universally accepted appeal.

[...]

Southern Methodist University’s Director of Medieval Studies Bonnie Wheeler is “convinced that the new Robert Zemeckis movie treatment sacrifices the power of the original for a plot line that propels Beowulf into seduction by Angelina Jolie—the mother of the monster he has just slain.’ What man doesn’t get involved with Angelina Jolie?’ Wheeler asks. ‘It’s a great cop-out on a great poem.’”

I think I would rather watch a video of the performance above than the final result run through the motion-capture meat grinder.

Since Robert Zemeckis knows better than anyone else what makes great cinema, he immediately began looking for another literary classic to disrespect, tarnish and adorn with effects straight out of Ghost Rider and Spider-Man 3.

Joe Morganstern of the Wall Street Journal hit a critical grand slam with this explanation of why Zemeckis’ “Carol” is such an unmitigated waste of celluloid.

To put it bluntly, if Scroogely, Disney’s 3-D animated version of “A Christmas Carol” is a calamity. The pace is predominantly glacial—that alone would be enough to cook the goose of this premature holiday turkey—and the tone is joyless, despite an extended passage of bizarre laughter, several dazzling flights of digital fancy, a succession of striking images and Jim Carrey’s voicing of Scrooge plus half a dozen other roles. “Why so coldhearted?” Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, asks the old skinflint. The same question could be asked of Robert Zemeckis, who adapted and directed the film, and of the company that financed it. Why was simple pleasure frozen out of the production? Why does the beloved story feel embalmed by technology? And why are its characters as insubstantial as the snowflakes that seem to be falling on the audience?

A catch-all answer—and by now an all-too-familiar one—lies in the unnature of that technology. Like “The Polar Express” and “Beowulf,” which were also directed by Mr. Zemeckis, “A Christmas Carol” employs a motion-capture process that translates the movements of live actors into fantasy images. For its advocates, the process is cost-efficient and good enough. For its detractors, including me, motion capture has become synonymous with a special sort of semi-lifelessness—body language that is vaguely impoverished, faces with limited mobility and dead eyes.

In the global marketing push for his new film, the director has dismissed such problems as essentially solved. But they haven’t been solved at all; they’ve only been mitigated, and partially masked by the novelty value of 3-D. Motion capture remains an impediment to capturing emotion.

FilmDrunk ran this hilarious transcript of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew blasting Zemeckis’ filmic atrocities:

Kevin Murphy: I’ll just start the bidding with the entire Robert Zemeckis Christmas movie library. [A Christmas Carol and The Polar Express.] He’s really tried, with his dead, doll-like eye animation that he does, to destroy Christmas for children all over the world.

Mike Nelson: Smack dab in the middle of the uncanny valley, aren’t they? You just don’t know whether to scream or be delighted.

KM: Just to warm myself up for seeing [A Christmas Carol], just to amp up my hate a little bit, I watched the Christmastown/Nuremberg-rally scene in Polar Express. The end, when the elves are marching in formation, and Hitler—oh, I’m sorry, Santa—comes out…

Bill Corbett: [Laughs.] Hitler Claus!

KM: It’s severely backlit behind him, and everyone is just sort of…

BC: [evil voice] “Ho Ho Heil!”

KM: [Laughs.] Yeah. I can’t get on board with Roger Ebert about A Christmas Carol. I think he’s one hundred thousand percent wrong.

BC: Did Roger Ebert like it? Wow. What’s going on with that man?

KM: I don’t know. Maybe he likes misery and horror for children.

The fact that Robert Zemeckis, the guy who directed fucking Back to the Future, flushed his career down the motion capture toilet is offensive enough. That he felt he deserved laurels for this “achievement” is truly staggering.

This article from La Tercera, also discovered by FilmDrunk and translated from Spanish, reveals some quotes from Zemeckis that betray amazing arrogance. He compares his achievements in motion-capture to the animation innovations of Walt Disney himself and suggests he should not only win an Oscar, but a SPECIAL Oscar acknowledging his unique talents.

“I would say it would be appropriate to create a new category, as when Walt Disney made the first animated film. He was given a special award because no one had done that before,” said the pioneer in applying new technologies to cinema.

Zemeckis’ henchman Jack Rapke is also quoted in the article saying that Carrey deserves an Oscar for his performance. Why don’t you jokers (a) stop toppling masterpieces of Western culture and (b) stop awarding yourselves Oscars for at best mediocre, and at worst blasphemous, cinematic diarrhea.

Luckily for me, the market intervened. Disney watched in horror as James Cameron greatly surpassed Zemeckis’ “achievements” in motion capture technology.

Avatar has its critics, but one thing that’s universally acknowledged is that it is a technical masterpiece that manages to bridge the uncanny valley. The Na’vi were believable figures on the screen, rather than horrifying dead-eyed monsters. Not only that, but Avatar’s massive box office gross completely wiped the floor with Zemeckis’ “Carol.”

So let us stand and applaud as Disney drops the guillotine on Zemeckis’ reign of terror.

Walt Disney Studios pulled the plug on Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture company on Friday, the latest in a string of cost-cutting moves. ImageMovers Digital, which is based near San Francisco and employs 450 people, will slowly wind down production over the next few months.

In some ways, the ghost of Christmas past paid Mr. Zemeckis a visit. His hugely expensive “A Christmas Carol” was a big disappointment for Disney, especially considering how much promotional muscle the studio put behind it. And despite his pioneering work in motion-capture technology, Mr. Zemeckis has been leapfrogged in the genre by James Cameron and “Avatar.”

[...]

Mr. Zemeckis said in a statement, “I’m incredibly proud of the talented team that we assembled.” He added, “Their pride and dedication to making quality movies is evident in everything we have produced.”

If by that you mean, your studio was obsessed with plastering crappy special effects over everything, besmirching great works of art in the process, then I completely agree.

Were I to obtain a DeLorean with the ability to go back in time, I would have to consider heading to the mid-90s in order to slap some sense into Robert Zemeckis.

He used to be such an awesome director. Now he’s an delusional joke dwelling deep within the uncanny valley. I’m just thankful that his corporate parents realized what many of us have known for years – it’s high time to pull the plug on his operations.

I guess the fallout from the economic apocalypse isn’t ALL bad.

This morning’s Cape Cod Times has a delightful wedding story that I simply must share with you.

It seems that Timothy Keene, 37, and Marissa Putignano, 22, shacked-up lovers residing at 77 Winter Street in Hyannis, MA, decided to make their love match official yesterday. So they headed down to the Barnstable town hall to get themselves married.

The ceremony went off without a hitch — Ms. Putignano changed her last name to Putignano-Keene — and the happy couple celebrated by splitting a bottle of champagne.

But as they made their way back to 77 Winter Street to consummate, still tipsy from the bubbly they’d quaffed, the new Mrs. Putignano-Keene spotted a woman and her son crossing the parking lot that fronts Alberto’s Ristorante.

Unfortunately for this woman, she was an ex-lover of Hyannis’ own Don Juan, Timothy Keene.

Despite the fact that T. Keene liked it enough to put a ring on it, Putignano-Keene flipped out at the sight of her new husband’s former flame. According to the published report:

The woman told the police she had just left work and was cutting through the parking lot, accompanied by her son, when the newlywed couple drove by. The woman told the police Putignano-Keene rolled down the driver’s side window and began swearing and using sexually charged language.

The bride’s bathroom mirror Facebook picture.
Note the telltale towel rack in background…

As they walked away, they heard tires squealing and an engine roar!

Hell hath no fury like a Putignano-Keene!

The woman said she and her son were walking away when she heard a car engine roar then saw Putignano-Keene’s car heading directly toward them, causing them to jump out of the way. She said Putignano-Keene then backed the car up, turned and in the process crashed into a fence behind Alberto’s Ristorante, which backs onto the parking lot.

The scene of the crime (was on the other side of this building)

Both Putignano-Keene and her husband were caught red-handed at the scene by police officers who noted that they were both wasted off a couple of glasses of bub. Learn how to hold your liquor, Cape townies!

The Cape Cod Times also noted that this isn’t Mr. Keene’s first brush with the law. Back in 2000, he was convicted of “lewd and lascivious behavior” and is now a Level 2 Sex Offender in the State of Florida. His sex offender information webpage lists this amazingly long series of aliases:

Timothy John Keene, Timtohy J Keene, Timothy Keene, James Tillman, Stephen Brenner, Tim Obell, Timothy Lee Keene, Timothy Lee Zeh.

My favorite is “Timtohy”. “What’s Tim short for?” “Timtohy.”

It also features this mugshot, which would fit nicely in Gene Weingarten’s ongoing “Guilty based on mugshot alone” series:

Yup, looks capable of lewd and lascivious behavior to me…

The newlyweds spent their wedding night segregated in separate cells.

Mr. Keene was charged with disorderly conduct, while his wife was hit with two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, a count of disorderly conduct and a count of vandalism.

Every year, the nation’s staunchest conservatives gather together for a conference that joyously promotes the values of old white dudes and the women who love them.

It’s called CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. News from CPAC dominated the political wires last week, as one right-wing luminary after another held forth on our nation’s inalienable rights and the evils of the Obama/Reid/Pelosi triumvirate of doom.

Dick Cheney was there, snarling at all the harm that’s been done to national security since Obama took office…well, actually, since GWB stopped obeying his commands sometime during the second term. Marco Rubio, preferred conservative candidate for Senator from Florida, lit up the stage with some fiery Nobama rhetoric. The Massachusetts moderates, Mitt Romney and Scott Brown, were there looking like the fashion magazine studs that they are. The irrepressible Newt Gingrich gave a great speech, wowing attendees with his intellect and political chops.

My personal favorite of the headliners was Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who hoped to burnish his 2012 presidential chances with a speech outlining his principles. Principle Number One: “God is in charge.” Yeah, take that, heathen Deists who wrote the Constitution! Jesus for the win!

Then there were the wackier speechgivers: crazy Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, unhinged Internet troll Andrew Breitbart, terrifically honest but demonstrably bigoted Rep. Ron Paul, and former Senator Rick Santorum, who thinks gay rights are a slippery slope to man-on-dog loving.

And who could forget the inimitable Glenn Beck, who closed down the conference by hammering, of all things, the Republican Party?

But despite all these big names and highly-publicized moments, the greatest parts of CPAC were mostly under-the-radar. As Salon’s Gabriel Winant put it, “It’s only when you look beyond the headliners that CPAC starts to get fun.”

There was the conservative rapper who represents for Sean Hannity, a presentation called “Abraham Lincoln: Friend or Foe?”, and perhaps best of all, a speech by a self-described “rabid heterosexual.”

Yup, CPAC was awesome this year.

Ron Paul: honest on foreign policy, wicked off base with his views on race

As a bit of an introduction, let’s get a conservative take from Mickey Edwards, a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation who chaired CPAC for five years:

I was asked yesterday whether I would be going to CPAC, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, which is currently being held a half-hour’s walk from my office in DC…

But the answer to yesterday’s question was “no.” No, I’m not going to CPAC. And, truth be told, most of the folks there wouldn’t want me there…I don’t begrudge these activists their views and they are entitled to use the term “conservative” to describe themselves if they so choose. But the views many of them profess have little in common with the distinctly American kind of conservatism that gave birth to CPAC and the modern American conservative movement.

[...]

Today there are few things that set a “conservative’s” teeth on edge more than a defense of “civil liberties;” yet that is what American conservatism was all about–protecting the liberties of the people. It was a system designed to protect the people from an over-reaching government, not to protect the government from the people. American constitutionalism was a historical high-point in recognizing individual worth. Stop at CPAC today and you will find rooms full of ardent, zealous, fervent young men and women who believe the government should be allowed to torture (we condemned people at Nuremberg for doing that), who believe the government should be able to lock people up without charges and hold them indefinitely (something Henry VIII agreed was a proper exercise of government authority). Who believe the government should be able to read a citizen’s mail and listen in on a citizen’s phone calls, all without a warrant (the Constitution of course prohibits searches without a warrant, but nobody cares less about the Constitution than some of today’s ersatz conservatives).

CPAC, ya burnt! Not exactly the ringing endorsement you’d expect from someone with Edwards’ conservative credentials.

In fact, CPAC is less of a serious gathering of citizens committed to conservative principles than it is a morning zoo of Fox News types, all jockeying for the “Most Wacky” ribbon.

As Ezra Klein put it, it’s the right wing’s chance to “let slip the dogs of tea!”

For instance, Christina Bellantoni brings us the tale of Hi Caliber, the purveyor of our nation’s finest conservative hip hop flows:

Don’t call Hi Caliber a Republican rapper.

He prefers conservative hip hop artist, and has lent his rhyme to the tea party movement.

Cal, who wouldn’t give his full name because he says he’s been threatened by “liberals,” starred in a FreedomWorks-produced video called “Patriotic People.”

He rhymes: “Politicians need the truth, it will set you free, and I hope you paid attention to the march on D.C. …Liberalism is like a cancerous tumor, just look at Harry Reid, Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.”

The article also contains some more of Hi Caliber’s tight lyrical genius:

I’ve been called a wigger, a cracker, a poet, a rapper, a racist,
but to me race is not a factor…
Don’t care if you’re white like Snow or much blacker –
all I want to hear is the sound of my children’s laughter.
And guess what, they are racially mixed!
So you could call me a bigot, I’ll call you a hypocrite!
I’ve been arrested for being white and hanging with blacks,
I’ve been robbed by brothers for being white and that’s a fact!

Eat your heart out, J.J. Redick!

Hi Caliber drops lyrical flows for those who think Pelosi’s a ho.

Hi Caliber was slated to perform a conservative hip hop throwdown at CPAC, but unfortunately, “the crowd disbanded early,” to the everlasting chagrin of those who love both Sean Hannity and right-wing hip hop insanity.

Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo held forth at CPAC on the topic of Abraham Lincoln, a historical figure regarded by the majority of historians as America’s greatest president, and venerated by Republicans as the party’s foremost founding father and by Democrats as a heroically progressive statesman.

So naturally, DiLorenzo threw down on Lincoln as a proto-Stalin!

The Lincoln Memorial is a temple to the idea that government in America is not voluntary, and never will be as long as Lincoln is its primary symbol and as long as Lincoln mythology remains the state’s cornerstone ideology. Lincoln micromanaged the murder of some 350,000 fellow Americans, including more than 50,000 civilians, in order to “prove” his point that the central government is indeed not voluntary, the states were never sovereign (so he said), and that any group of citizens who contemplate leaving it will be killed en masse, their cities and towns burned to the ground, and their wealth and personal belongings confiscated by the U.S. Army. If we standardize for today’s population, Lincoln’s killing machine would lead to the death of more than 6 million Americans.

To me, it sounds like how Soviet Russia was “united” in its own “glorious union.” Do these men really believe that Southerners in 1866 felt “united” with their fellow citizens in the North?

[...]

Lincoln is praised by “Lincoln scholars” for having been an obsessive micromanager of the war. He knew everything. He knew that Southern civilians were murdered and plundered from the very beginning, even before the Battle of First Manassas commenced. He authorized the bombing of Southern cities and he was also apparently obsessed with experimenting with larger and larger weapons of mass destruction – to be used on fellow Americans. He profusely thanked and rewarded officers like Sherman and Sheridan for waging war on civilians, as they did during Sherman’s March, the burning of Atlanta and Columbia, South Carolina, and the burning of the Shenandoah Valley. General Sherman wrote that Lincoln “especially enjoyed” his stories of how Southern women, children and old men were terrorized by Sherman’s “bummers,” as his looting, pillaging, plundering, and raping “soldiers” were called.

That is tremendous. Jubal Early is cheering boisterously from his grave. Bringing WMDs into it was a masterstroke.

I completely disagree with DiLorenzo’s argument in every way, but I will defend to the death his right to be a complete jackass and make an utter fool of himself.

That’s why they call it America, Man!

Sherman’s economic destruction = the al Qaeda of the 19th century

One of the greatest heroes of CPAC 2010 was Doug Giles, a true genius who was first brought to my attention by ROTI operatives C. Dave and Nils Coq au Vin.

He’s an inspirational speaker and writer who preaches against the malign forces of gaiety, feminism and liberalism, also known as the wickednesses that are squashing America’s greatness. Can I get an amen from the old, straight white dudes and their docile wives??

Here’s a sample of his published work:

If metrosexual pop culture, feminized public schools and the effeminate branches of evanjellycalism lay their sissy hands on him, you can kiss his masculinity good-bye—because they will morph him into a dandy.

To counter the organized hatred of men and masculinity that your son is facing, it’s important that you, the parent, completely blow off all the smack our PC-addled culture is trying to sell you. You’ll need two things to do this: attitude and inspiration.

Giles provides the attitude while looking to the Bible for inspiration in order to help you raise your son to be a classic man and not postmodern metrosexual.

Doug Giles is so hard core, even some evangelicals are too fruity for him. Equal rights for women? Silence, you dandy priss!

How to Keep Jackasses Away From Daddy’s Girl is here to help fathers with daughters. In my new book, I table scores of road-tested, historically proven, can’t miss principles for raising girls with a fighting spirit, discernment, a winning attitude, and a holy vision to overcome this feces filled culture.

You will learn in the next 150 finger-burning pages how to teach your daughters to fight, shoot guns, sense BS, be classy, despise anti-intellectualism, be visionaries, party without going Britney, the value hunting and the outdoors, the importance of traditional convictions, and how to avoid the date from hell.

There’s more where that came from. No doubt, Doug Giles has the answers that every conservative parent needs, but read carefully, lest you burn your fingers from the licking flames of right-wing truth!

He’s at his best when pronouncing his animus for teaching kids about homosexuality. You see, Doug Giles is 100% man and 1000% straight man.

When his member becomes erect at the sight of a sexy woman — make that his sexy Christian wife — it’s like the flagpole on Iwo Jima, proudly waving aloft the American standard as his nuts thump out the beat of “The Star Spangled Banner. ” His seed is made in the USA and destined only for the willing embrace of a childbearing womb.

Why don’t I let him preach it:

I’m a rabid heterosexual. There, I said it. I’m outing myself. I know it’s not cool in this gay day to like the opposite sex. And I’m sure there will be those reflexively irate gays who will call me latent. As far as I can tell, however, I’m straight and wholeheartedly love the fact that God blessed us boys with girls. Yep, good job with the girlies, God, and muchas gracias, Señor Yahweh, for creating the chicas bonitas. In the immortal words of Borat, “I like. Very nice.” Call me weird.

As far as I am concerned, the lovely lady lumps, in all their shapes and sizes, trump a dude any old day. Yep, I guess I didn’t get the “gay gene.” (By the way, the only gay genes that I know of are the ones Versace makes.)

So … don’t ever look for me to switch teams, as I am completely and giddily content—yea, even prideful—about my heterosexuality.

Needless to say, if you missed his session at CPAC, why don’t you go burn your bra, you fey communist feces-face!

Glenn Beck closed CPAC out with an inspiring speech that identified the real enemies to America’s freedom and greatness. Dana Milbank reports:

“It is still morning in America,” Beck said. “It just happens to be kind of a head-pounding, hung-over, vomiting for four hours” morning. “The question is what made us sit there in the john vomiting for four hours?”

He scribbled “progressivism” on the board and said it afflicts Republicans as well as Democrats. “I’m so sick of hearing people say, ‘Oh, Republicans are going to solve it all.’ Really? It’s just progressive-light.

“It’s like somebody sticking a screwdriver in your eye,” he continued, “and somebody else pulls it out and puts a pin in your eye. I don’t want stuff in my eye!”

In an apparent reference to John McCain, Beck condemned a “guy in the Republican Party who says his favorite president is Theodore Roosevelt.” He then read disapprovingly the Roosevelt quote that “we grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used . . . so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.”

“Is this what the Republican Party stands for?” Beck demanded. He was answered with boos and cries of “no!” “It’s big government, it’s a socialist utopia and we need to address it as if it is a cancer.”

Obama, no doubt, will be delighted to learn that he has been joined in the conservatives’ ire by the Hero of San Juan Hill.

Beck went on. “It’s not enough just to not suck as much as the other side.”

The CPAC activists gave this line a standing ovation.

Before everyone headed home, they took a straw poll to see who the conference attendees thought should be our next President once the Kenyan “half breed muslin” is tossed out on his terrorist-loving keister.

The winner? Not Mitt Romney (23 percent), not Tim Pawlenty (6 percent) — not even Sarah Palin (7 percent). Ron Paul dominated with 31 percent of the vote.

USA! USA! USA!

Today brings news of a delightful lawsuit being filed by a disgruntled former employee of Manhattan billionaire Philip Falcone and his wife, the extravagant, luscious Lisa.

The Falcones have used their immense hedge fund wealth to become major players on the NYC social scene, but along the way they’ve garnered both good and bad publicity. This latest story is certainly the most unfavorable they’ve seen to date. While it’s too early to say how legit the employee’s claims are, it’s definitely not premature to announce that these people are hugely entertaining! Move over, Countess de Lesseps, because you’re about to be out-classed.

Philip heads Harbinger Capital Partners, a hedge fund with major stakes in the New York Times company and a variety of satellite operators. He bet big against subprime mortgages and made a staggering amount of money when the market collapsed. Hooray!

His wife grew up in Spanish Harlem, raised by a single mother on welfare — they met in 1992 when she was a fashion model/waitress and he was a young junk bond trader. Today, he’s one of the 300 richest people in the world, which has redounded to the benefit of Lisa’s ambitions to influence the fashion, culture and society of New York City. Together, they purchased the city’s foremost sex mansion.

However, according to their former house manager, they are also homophobic sex-harassers who won’t leave a gay man be.

The best source for background on Lisa Falcone is a fairly glowing profile in the New York Times that somehow fails to mention that her husband owns a huge piece of the company.

Here’s the strangest passage, in which the exuberant Lisa just can’t help but make a scene by throwing money around at a gala event…

Who is that woman and what is she doing?

That is what seemed to be going through the minds of many guests at a gala dinner in early June atop the High Line, the elevated downtown railway that has been transformed into a landscaped esplanade.

The long, elegantly decorated tables were packed with luminaries of the New York social circuit, including Oscar de la Renta, Martha Stewart, Harvey Weinstein and Jerry Seinfeld.

Joshua David, a founder of Friends of the High Line, which had saved the structure from demolition and spearheaded its revival, had just announced a $10 million challenge grant to the project from the media mogul Barry Diller and his wife, the fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, prompting a standing ovation. Suddenly, a leggy brunette in a cropped bob, flouncy Roberto Cavalli minidress and slingback, peep-toe heels by Christian Louboutin (who was in attendance) rose from her seat, approached Mr. David in the middle of his remarks, whispered in his ear and took over the microphone.

She was Lisa Maria Falcone, she said, and she and her husband, Philip A. Falcone, were so excited about the High Line and so moved by Mr. Diller and Ms. von Furstenberg’s gift that they decided to match it.

If that isn’t the work of a Grade-A Upstager, I don’t know what is.

DVF played it cool, but you just know she’s up in her weird penthouse buckyball plotting revenge on Lisa Falcone.

Arts institutions around the city took notice of Mrs. Falcone’s impulsive generosity, and as Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan put it, “suddenly recognized Lisa’s unique insight into, you know, culture.”

When City Ballet asked her to be on the board last June, Ms. Falcone said she asked: “‘Why me? Do you really want me on the board? Is it about my husband or is it me?’”

Peter Martins, City Ballet’s ballet master in chief, said Ms. Falcone had brought a breath of fresh air to the board. “She’s unlike anybody else,” he said. “She is young, generous, has lots of ideas.”

I’m totally sure that the Ballet honchos were sitting around trying to decide who to invite to their board, they all said “You know who is a complete ballet GENIUS? Wacky hedge fund wife Lisa Falcone! I heard her husband is wicked rich but that’s no concern of ours.”

The Falcones next made headlines with their purchase of Penthouse founder Bob Guccione’s sex mansion in the East 60s.

Let’s just say this was a very special residence; this money quote from the real estate agent tasked with selling it sums it up perfectly.

Speaking about features like the first floor’s massive, shimmering Roman-style pool, she said: “It’s odd to talk about houses like this, but that house had an odd energy to it.” So, were experts brought in to remedy Mr. Guccione’s energy? “Certainly… I hired two different feng shui people to look at it, and we had quite a few clearings on it. But that never stopped people from having odd feelings about it. Whenever people brought in children, they were ready to leave.”

The house featured honest-to-God 100% marble toilets:

To say nothing of its unparalleled collection of many-titted sculptures:

Unfortunately, this cultural landmark was promptly slated for destruction by the Falcones, who decided to gut it completely and rebuild from scratch.

For shame!! How dare they desecrate Guccione’s Caligulan perfection?

In an email to Gawker, Philip Falcone protested that he’s merely restoring the mansion to its original greatness, running some game about bringing the 1890s back. I ask you, would you rather see the 1890s brought back — or SEXY brought back? I think that question answers itself.

Then again, when you are married to Lisa Falcone, you bring sexy back every damn day.

Thus far the only real scandal associated with the colorful Falcones has been Gawker’s accusation that she draped her tittay balls around David Schwimmer in the movie “Breast Men,” but that proved to be a specious claim.

However, the accusations hitting the tabloids today are both explosive and juicy, like the time Rudy Huxtable and her fat white friend forgot to put the lid on the blender.

When it comes to tawdry Manhattan scandals, you need to go to the New York Post first:

A filthy rich Upper East Side couple treated their gay hired help like dirt, court papers charge.

In the Manhattan Supreme Court discrimination suit, William Gamble says billionaire Philip Falcone’s wife Lisa Maria subjected him to homophobic comments, repeatedly hit on him and struck him when he rebuffed her advances.

The couple also made Gamble work in a former pig-sty – literally. The suit says the previous occupant of Gamble’s office was the family’s pet pig, Wilbur, who was moved into more luxurious accommodations to make room for the help.

NY Magazine’s Daily Intel blog reports that Gamble ran into trouble the moment he started working for the Falcones, because he committed the twin crimes of gaiety and hotness.

Philip and Lisa Falcone will not abide it when you flaunt the twin crimes!

Upon his hiring to run the Falcones’ several houses, William Gamble was asked by Philip whether he was gay. When he said yes, this apparently sent both Falcones into a mad sexual shame spiral. “Falcone thereafter saw fit to utter homophobic comments directed at gay people in general and [Gamble] in particular,” the lawsuit claims…

Falcone’s wife couldn’t handle Gamble’s beauty any better, Gamble claims: According to the suit, she told him his “demeanor did not live up to her idea of what a stereotypical gay man should be, as [he] was not ‘effeminate’ enough.”

She teased him on a vacation for wearing bathing suits that weren’t skimpy enough, and then once, when she was drunk, “a visibly inebriated Falcone confronted and assaulted” Gamble, “forcibly pushing her hand down his pants to grab his genitals,” the suit says, as reported by the Post. “When rebuffed, Falcone struck [Gamble] three times with her hand forcefully enough to leave deep bruises on his abdomen.”

Quoting the terrifying straight woman from all gay men’s dreams, Lisa Maria then allegedly told Gamble “all he required was ‘a good fuck’ in order to change him into a heterosexual.” When the gang returned to New York, Gamble claims things never went back to normal. At one point, Gamble says, Lisa Maria hissed at him: “If you weren’t so beautiful, you wouldn’t be here.”

Lisa Falcone is used to getting her way, and you’d better play along like a docile ballet company unless you want to get your nuts squoze…

The Daily News piles on:

His brief stint with the couple came to an end shortly after a March 2008 trip to St. Barts, when Lisa Maria Falcone allegedly suggested that he don a skimpier swimsuit and mused that strangers might think he was her boytoy.

“She treated him like a barnyard animal,” said lawyer Jack Tuckner of Tuckner, Sipser, Weinstock & Sipser.

For their part, the Falcones vehemently deny the charges leveled against them. They call Gamble a money-grubbing liar who’s still bitter about getting fired.

Furthermore, they allege that he’s a fruitacious pansy with WAY too conservative taste in beachwear who might learn a thing or two if he would just loosen up and boof a cougar.

Lisa Falcone refused to reveal her age to the Times, saying she wants to be an example to young people. So take heed, young billionheiresses!

When you hire a gay guy to work for you, don’t treat him like your own personal Stanford Blatch, ie. with respect and love. Instead, sexually harass the shit out of him and you too can live in a STD-ridden sex mansion.

It’s the American Dream that every little girl in Spanish Harlem clings to. For one, it came true.

—

UPDATE: All the Lisa Falcone aficionados out there should not miss the profile in BusinessWeek by the genius writer Alexandra Wolfe. It’s a seriously hilarious read.

I’ll tantalize you with the opening paragraphs:

Lisa Falcone is sitting at the head of a conference table, rapping to music by Swizz Beatz and waving her tanned arms above her head. She’s meeting with the two employees of her fledgling company, Everest Entertainment. Just outside the room, her husband, Philip Falcone, is running his $9 billion hedge fund, Harbinger Capital, but that doesn’t hold her back. She produced the song and sings along as it blasts from iPod speakers on the table: “Come on bitches, get your hands in the air, ugly bitches too, we don’t care!”

Harbinger analysts walking by barely look up at Lisa, 41, who is striking in a low-cut leather dress and a huge diamond cross pendant. They know she’s the boss’s wife. Harbinger’s young, blond British receptionist brings a tray with a mug of green tea for Lisa, who likes to point out that the space is as much hers as her husband’s. “This is our office,” she says. “Eighteen years and no prenup means family office.”

Hahahaha. This picture is also a gem:

It’s only February, but the 2010 elections are heating up fast…

In fact, ROTI has already chosen its favorite candidate of the upcoming election cycle. It’s Carly Fiorina, a California Republican who hopes to challenge longtime incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer in November. Fiorina may not be the most wise or deserving candidate out there, but she has one thing going for her that I personally find irresistible…a knack for enraging her opponents, entertaining onlookers, and setting fire to everything she touches.

What’s not to love?

Carly Fiorina first made headlines as the extraordinarily high-profile CEO of HP, and during her stint at the head of the electronics giant, she managed to turn the company’s most devoted loyalists into her mortal enemies, destroy HP’s legendary corporate culture, and ram through a massive merger that went awry. But no worries, because she scored a lucrative golden parachute!

She then became the high-profile economic spokesman for John McCain, propounding the economic ideas that carried him to victory in 2008. Oh whoops, actually flip that and reverse it. Her straw-grasping defenses of Sarah Palin were so effective, they ultimately led to the campaign dumping her altogether.

Now Carly Fiorina is running for Senate, despite the fact that she has skipped most every election she has been eligible to vote in during her lifetime. It hasn’t taken her long to electrify the Republican primary with an unbelievably stupid website and an instantly-classic viral campaign video. This lady is awesome!

One thing that even her mortal enemies have to give Carly Fiorina credit for is that she truly was a trailblazer in the world of business — one of the first women to become a power player in corporate culture.

After the former Cara Carleton Sneed (wouldn’t C.C. Sneed have made for an amazing political name?) graduated from Stanford in 1976, she worked as a secretary, assistant and temp at a number of corporations, including HP. After she joined AT&T in the early 80s, she worked her way up the corporate ladder, taking a jackhammer to the old glass ceiling and playing a critical role in AT&T’s spinoff from Lucent.

By the turn of the century, Carly Fiorina was considered one of the world’s foremost businesswomen. That’s when HP tapped her to lead the company into the new millennium. Unfortunately, what HP found out is that legendary status as a gender trailblazer does not necessarily entail the possession of top-notch corporate skills, especially when taking over a company as a complete outsider.

Fiorina’s main problem was that she busted into HP with guns blazing, hell-bent on transforming a company that had prospered for years through the “HP Way” established by its founders, Bill Hewlett and David Packard. Long before Apple Computer, Hewlett-Packard was the original tech company started in a suburban garage, and it grew into a megacorporation by obeying the following maxims:

1. We have trust and respect for individuals.
2. We focus on a high level of achievement and contribution.
3. We conduct our business with uncompromising integrity.
4. We achieve our common objectives through teamwork.
5. We encourage flexibility and innovation.

As an informative article called “10 Reasons People Hate Carly Fiorina” on the site Business Pundit explains, Fiorina bombed at HP because she completely failed to respect any of these principles.

After the tech bubble burst, Fiorina started swinging the axe, canning 18,000 employees. Meanwhile, she was an outspoken proponent of globalizing the workforce (ie. outsourcing), and didn’t hesitate to buy herself a corporate jet so she could make her many, many speaking engagements. HP employees asked themselves, “We should trust her…why?”

Fiorina implemented a top-down management structure, shattering the collaborative processes that had served HP well for so long. While she was off launching new marketing initiatives with Gwen Stefani, her hand-picked cronies bossed around the department heads that had long been given latitude to run their own shops. Instead of pushing for innovation, she relied on market dogma and marketing platitudes. HP could have been the company to design the iPod or otherwise revolutionize the tech industry, but instead it simply milked its printer-ink profit center and hyped up its CEO.

Perhaps most insidiously, Fiorina pushed the company to crush leaks at all costs, initiating a program that ended up violating a number of federal laws, including wiretapping and “pretexting.” So much for Hewlett and Packard’s “uncompromising integrity.”

The HP Way was meaningless to Fiorina, who makes a point of trashing it to this day. In her world, the genius of a marketing executive far outweighs the technical chops of an engineer. That’s why some have called her the “Anti-Steve Jobs,” by unfavorable comparison to the brilliant engineer-marketer who has driven innovation AND business success everywhere he’s gone.

All this explains why when Fiorina made a push to acquire Compaq, one of HP’s main competitors in the personal computer market, the move was fiercely opposed by many shareholders and employees, leading to a massive public showdown that Fiorina barely managed to win. The deal led to some short-term hemorrhaging and ultimately to Fiorina’s dismissal.

While the purchase of a deflated Compaq ultimately proved to be a decent move on Fiorina’s part, it was nevertheless the impetus for her ouster. Fiorina had so utterly failed to lead HP, and had burned so many bridges along the way, that the company’s board and employees simply did not trust her anymore. Her willingness to continually shake up HP, ostensibly for her own glorification, proved too much for the company to handle. They sent her packing with a $20 million severance package and closed the book on the disastrous Fiorina Era.

Portfolio named her one of the Worst American CEOs of All Time. So naturally, her next move was to join political life.

Here’s Carly with her homeboy Johnny Mac. Ironically for someone with a reputation as a job-slasher and outsourcer, Fiorina carried the economic banner for McCain with an emphasis on job creation. But during the summer of 2008, McCain was still preaching that the US economy was basically sound and that the only real threat lay in an Obama victory. At the time, he clearly didn’t realize what a liability Carly Fiorina was to the campaign.

He found out soon enough, when Fiorina mentioned that Sarah Palin didn’t have the expertise required to run an American corporation, and then by way of clarifying her remarks, stated that NONE of the presidential or vice-presidential candidates had the chops to be a CEO, including McCain! Hilariously, all this occurred in the context of Fiorina’s attempt to defend Palin from “sexist” attacks.

The fact that what Fiorina said was pretty much the truth (and besides, the government is NOT like a corporation, no matter how many candidates with private-sector careers may claim that it is) didn’t keep the McCain campaign from flipping out in rage at Fiorina’s loose talk. She was quickly shoved off of the stump and not heard from again.

As we all know, McCain went down to a huge defeat, thanks largely to his tone-deafness on economic matters.

Another brilliant success story from the life of Carly Fiorina!

For the small band of Fiorina-watchers out there (I’ve personally been entranced by her incompetence since 2001), the prospect of her challenging Babs Boxer in 2010 was electrifying.

She has not disappointed thus far, either, launching a political campaign that has caused jaws to drop and eyes to roll.

It all began with the preview/launch of her absurd campaign website, preserved and savaged by this YouTube video:

Carlyfornia Dreamin’?! It wouldn’t take a lot of effort to work up some song parody lyrics comparing her horrible website to poop and deriding it as “gay,” but that would be an unforgivable insult to the color brown and gay people — oh and by the way, Fiorina is a big fan of sexual orientation bigotry, being a staunch supporter of Proposition 8.

The LA Times busted her for skipping dozens of elections throughout her time as a California resident, and she gave some lame excuse about not feeling “connected” to politicians. The CA Democrats were only too eager to paint her as a corporate fat-cat and failed CEO, while her Republican opponents blasted her as a Juanita-come-lately in search of another powerful perch from which to preen.

But Carly’s no dope. She recently retook the offensive with a political ad so amazing, it’s gone massively viral and entranced even the most disinterested of political watchers.

Behold, the now-legendary Demon Sheep Spot!

When it comes to negative political advertising, it simply does not get better than this.

This ad has it all — intellectual dishonesty regarding government spending, comparison of the opponent to swine, amazingly damning voiceover guy, weird acronyms, and the elusive “WTF” factor. (This could only be the work of the weird and wonderful Fred Davis, who also created the Obama Celebrity spot and the King Roy ad.)

No wonder the “FCINO” ad has captivated the attention of even disinterested political watchers. I’m obliged to give a hat tip to ROTI contributor C. Dave, who first noticed this amazing spot, but since then I’ve seen it shared on Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader. It really is a masterpiece.

This version is amazing:

Then there’s this amusing Twitter page that purports to be from the Demon Sheep himself:

Carly Fiorina has done it again — taken an otherwise boring, pedestrian moment and transformed it into something combative, dramatic, and extraordinary.

As far as ROTI is concerned, she makes a superb candidate for office. If she finds a way to get elected, she’ll only continue her record of spectacular disasters and high-profile blunders. Yes, this will be unfortunate for the people of California, but think of the material she’ll bestow on our little corner of the Internets!

I guess she’s not the only one who’s “Carlyfornia dreamin’.”