Away In A Mansion

Away in a mansion,
With a bedazzled crib for her bed,
The little baby Simpson,
Laid down her enormous head.

The eyes on the websites,
Cringed at the news,
That little mini mogul,
Must've left quite a bruise.

Move over, Jesus.  A baby whose anticipated birth may have eclipsed your own has finally been born. 

That's right, people.  On Tuesday, Jessica Simpson finally gave birth to a line of shoes for Macy's daughter.  Then the nation breathed a sigh of relief and the Guinness Book of World Records raced to the presses.

Poor J. Simps just survived the longest, most obvious pregnancy in the history of mankind.  Or at least people.com.  For crying out loud, her pregnancy was longer than:

• Her sister Ashlee's singing career;
• Her "good Christian girl" phase; and
• Her time spent receiving a formal education.

People have theories.  Some believe the baby realized Jessica is not fit to care for a newborn, so the baby just waited until it became a kindergartner and then skipped out of the womb.  Others believe Jessica didn't recognize the signs of labor and got caught up in the fun of heavy breathing while she tried to blow up a balloon.  I personally think she was the innocent victim of a Benjamin Button scenario, in which she was impregnated with a grown person and she had to wait for it to shrink to a size suitable for birthing.

I'm not here to judge.  Whatever your belief system, the bottom line is we all end up at the same place.  The baby is born.  And if that alone doesn't make you find religion, then you, my friend, are what I like to refer to as a loser.

There were two things that made this pregnancy feel like it took up so many calendar days (other than the fact that it actually did).  The first was Jessica's appearance.  The second was Jessica's mouth.

Let's just call a spade a spade.  Jessica looked like a spade.  Her mid-section was huge, and only her feet and her head were somewhat tinier. 

Now everyone hold on a hot minute.  Pregnant women should not be judged for their shape.  Pregnancy takes ahold of your body and then expands it to a degree you never thought possible.  I was in no way shape or form a pregnant lady in any shape or with any form.  I considered pregnancy jeans a cruel challenge and anything with any cinching at the waist a form of self-flagellation.  I would never remark in any demeaning or derogatory way on the physique of a pregnant woman.

Until I saw Jessica Simpson.

This girl looked 9 months pregnant right around the time she noticed the first pangs of morning sickness.  Her attempt to keep her pregnancy under wraps ('member how she made a big deal of holding out so she could sell the story to the top bidder?) was the most hilarious thing I've seen since Bridesmaids.  Jessica!  Honey!  I can see your baby waving at me through your shirt.  Give up the act!

She had a baby shower in March.  At that baby shower, she said she felt like she was ready to pop.  Which might explain why everyone at the shower came dressed in a hospital gown and brought warm towels.  It looked like she actually might pop out all over the 25 pairs of shoes she was gifted for the baby that day.  AND THAT WAS ALMOST TWO MONTHS BEFORE SHE ACTUALLY HAD THE BABY.  We should find the name of her ob/gyn and put it on billboards across our country's highways.  No one should trust a man or woman who would let his or her patient carry something inside of them that Wal-Marts everywhere looked at and said "Holy shit!  That thing is H-U-G-E!"

While your eyes tried to compose themselves, your ears took a beating.  Because Jessy Jess let some of the craziest shit fly out of her mouth during these past 251 months of pregnancy.  That's saying a lot for the girl who made herself famous with a request for clarification on chicken-or-tuna.  She made over-sharing seem junior varsity, and made TMI wonder if WTMI (WAY TMI) sounded too much like a radio station.  Hell, I will send her this just to give her ideas of other things to talk about.  I'd so much rather hear about how her daughter was saying "Dukes of Hazzard" at 3 months than hearing about Jessica's sexual urges during the second trimester.

Jessica's dad, Joe, really put the whole thing in perspective.  As he always does.  He said the birth of his grand-daughter was a miracle.  Indeed, Joe.  Indeed.  It's a miracle that baby didn't have to send a ransom note for its own life after having been seemingly kidnapped inside the womb.  It's a miracle that baby turned out to be a baby and not a waiter at a Mexican restaurant that Jessica confused for guacamole.  It's a miracle that baby didn't exit the birth canal, throw its swaddle on the ground like a football, and yell into the camera "Boooooyaaaaahhh, Nick and Vanessa!  We.  Win!" 

It's a miracle that baby hasn't held a press conference yet. 

There are already too many Simpsons talking.

Skinny Girl, Fat Head

It pains me to have to write this. 

Bethenny Frankel is driving me nuts.

For my OCD audience:  First, stop dusting the keyboard, it's clean.  Second, you're right.  I didn't watch a Bethenny show last night, so I'm kind of cheating at my own rules for Reality TV Week.  But see the part about "my own rules"?  Shut up.

Some of you may not know Bethenny.  Not that I "know" her.  She doesn't even answer my tweets.  It's probably just because I moved out of New York before she got famous.  Otherwise, I'm sure I'd know her because we'd be doing yoga together and vying for the same competitive play-date circles.  But I know about her because I have watched her show, I have visited her website, and I have even read one of her books.

For those of you that aren't enlightened, Bethenny started off as a natural foods chef -- a trade she picked up after looking for something to keep her occupied while her super-duper-rich fiance was super-duper-busy raking in the dough.  After she became runner-up on Martha Stuart's Apprentice, a/k/a Pity Party, she was cast on Real Housewives of New York.  (Even though she neither owned a house nor was a wife.)  I couldn't watch RHONY because my brain circuitry got all pissy when I even considered it, and would throw a hailstorm of eyelash twitches my way.  But apparently of the all the nitwits on that show, Bethenny was the least nitwittish and earned herself a loyal set of fans.  The Bravo network smelled potential, gave Bethenny her own show, and her popularity exploded right around the same time I told my brain circuitry to eff off, I was going to start tuning in.

Bethenny Ever After followed ...  well, Bethenny ... as she tied the knot at 40ish with her baby-daddy, Jason Hoppy.  It documented the birth of their baby, Bryn, and it rolled hours of tape on her steady and then meteoric ascent to global domination.  Bethenny started cropping up everywhere.  She "wrote" how-to books on everything from how to be "naturally thin" to how to succeed in business without even really trying.  Nope, the last part is a musical.  Bethenny's version was how to succeed in business while busting your hump and making sure everyone knows how much hump-busting you're doing.  Then she combined two of her life's passions -- being thin and being drunk -- and she came up with a line of cocktails she named Skinnygirl.  The low-calorie solution for getting a buzz without getting a bum.  The drink that makes the skinny girls feel self-righteous and the heavier girls appreciate that the product that makes them cry with shame also allows them to drown that shame in at-the-ready, artificially-sweetened liquor.  Beam, Inc. bought the line, kept Bethenny on as a consultant or something, and now she wears a diamond ring that has been classified as a lethal weapon and lives in an apartment in the same building as Jay-z, Beyonce, and their baby plant, Blue Ivy.

When Bethenny spun off from RHONY to do her own thing, she had me.  I thought she was witty and self-deprecating.  You know those "confessional" moments every reality show does now, where the star narrates or reflects on what we just saw them do in "real time"?  Hers were actually entertaining and usually pretty funny.  I admired how hard she worked.  I respected how she showed us that even though she was pretty, was doing quite well, and had the world's most good-natured boyfriend-then-husband, she had vulnerabilities and insecurities just like the rest of me-all-of-me.  And I REALLY LIKED that despite the weird version of the fame bubble she was living in, she didn't seem to take anything -- including herself -- too seriously.

Now she says shit like "building my brand" more often than I sneeze.

Now she is drunk on her own Kool-Aid.  Seriously, it's amazing what a sudden influx of millions of dollars will do to you. She is trying to get her veiny little hands into every market: shapewear, cleanses, body products, yoga DVDs, and of course the wines and the spirits.  She's even getting a talk show this summer, which Ellen DeGeneres is producing.  This season of her reality show has tracked her every apartment-renovation decision, and highlights big moments like the one where she wonders whether she really is THAT big-time that she's going to plunk down thousands of dollars on one silly little table.  This is her new version of a cliff-hanger.

Now she takes herself as seriously as monkey pox or a slow Internet connection.  She tweets like a maniac and it's always about how she works her butt off so that she can be with her "peanut" (Bryn, the baby).  Or it's about how she just wants to know what her fans want, so she can fight tooth and nail to hire someone to deliver it to them.  Or it's about how she's trying so darned hard to polish her penthouse so that we can all be jealous and wowed this season and not have to wait until next.  I honestly think she might believe she invented mothering, working, and maybe even indoor living.  Her new definition of sacrifice is just not expecting a thank-you for those inventions.

The moment that really pushed me over the edge was a tweet she had the balls to send yesterday.  Remember Madeleine McCann, the little six-year-old girl that disappeared from her family's hotel room in Portugal several years ago?  Well, police now seem to have a break in the case and think she may be alive.  This is what B-Frank tweeted yesterday in response to this news:

They're re-opening that case about madeleine (the girl missing from portugal). Breaks my heart now that I have a peanut.

NOW THAT YOU HAVE A PEANUT?!?  Pre-peanut, you couldn't be bothered to have emotions about some poor child crying for her mother and some poor mother crying for her child and the days, weeks, months, years they've spent worrying and wondering what the other was doing and thinking and feeling?  But now post-peanut, you've suddenly sprouted a heart and can fathom the depths of this tragedy?  And you want to tweet about it in a non-genuine way, because really you want the focus to be on YOU, your broken heart, and your peanut?  (Who, by the way, you named Bryn.  Rolls off the tongue pretty easy.)

I think that was the moment Bethenny jumped the shark on her own life.  She's lost all sense of scale, perspective, and humility.  I guess every empire-builder eventually does.  I mean, look at Donald Trump.  David Koresh.  Napoleon.  The Donald married a gal who doesn't even speak English and showed up at their wedding dressed as Carmen Miranda.  David Koresh ended up on the wrong side of a Branch Davidian bonfire sponsored by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.  Napoleon met Russia and then was exiled to the one island France could find that sounded unappealing: Elba.

Maybe Bethenny's talk show will flop because the only person she lets talk is herself.  Maybe she will be outed as a walking, talking skeleton that escaped from a 7th grade science classroom.  Maybe Bryn will go through her goth phase early. 

I don't know how it's going to happen, I just know that the demise of Bethenny is 'nigh.  She is walking a line that is as thin as the one around her waist.  And I'm not going to stand by and watch.  (Until the end gets very bitter.  Then it will be fun.)

She's a FacTORI

It's as if Hollywood moms knew I was starting a blog.  Maybe at their most recent Million Dollar Mommies meeting they had Bonnie Raitt's "Let's Give Them Something To Talk About" on repeat.  Maybe those compliant little mom-bots left Angelina's compound fist-pounding and giggling about the ways they were really going to unleash their Mommy Moments for all the world to see.

Or maybe an errant crop-dusting plane flew over the Hollywood Hills and let some crazy spray into the lower atmosphere.

I prefer to credit Angie, just like she wants us all to credit her for everything involving a parent and child.  So I will.  And I did -- her Edible Arrangement is in the mail.  (FYI: they DO deliver to castles in France!  And yes I know France is not in or near Los Angeles, but Angie's a globe trotter and I like to send her fruit to wherever her bony ass is sitting down for its next empty plate.  Otherwise the fruit goes stale and Angie goes another 24 hours with a single calorie intake.  For God's sake, woman, eat the cubes of kiwi fruit.)

I'm getting off track. 

Whether Angie was involved or not, I just want to thank the Hollywood community for giving me these gifts.  (Not coincidentally, this is the same introduction I will use at the Oscars when I win my first golden sidekick.)

The starlet turned momlet on my radar this morning is that Mangler of M-nouns, that Doyenne of Dean, the girl who put the bleach in blond and the zero in 90210: Tori Spelling.

After the nation spent years cheering for her to shut up about her virginity already and figure out a way to fix the indentation in her cleavage, Donna Martin did graduate.  She graduated to a life as Tori Spelling, purveyor of self-titled books and television shows, as well as a line of something or other on QVC. 

Tori Spelling is amazing.  Despite evidencing little talent at anything beyond spray-tanning, she keeps the book and TV deals coming in steadily.  She can be found giving an interview at any hour of the day, somewhere.  And she is the Kung Fu Panda of mind games: listen to her during an interview, and you think wow, she's relatively well-spoken and actually seems pretty down to Earth.  I misjudged her.  Then you by mistake stop at TLC or Lifetime or Oxygen while you're channel-surfing and you catch her in her natural habitat.  Which results in your three-year-old dedicating her dinner time to giving you a pep talk about how you're not actually an idiot when it comes to character estimation.  Tori is just a ninja in the art of self-promotion.  Please get up off the floor.

Well, Tori has worked her voo-doo magic again.  She got another television show.  This time the title doesn't involve some kitschy rewrite or misuse of a noun, like the former Tori & Dean: Inn Love or Tori & Dean: Storibook Weddings.  It also doesn't involve the word "Dean." 

The show is called Craft Wars.  Because, really, who doesn't look at Tori and think, "Man, I bet she'd be fun at a quilting bee!" or "Hmmmm.....is it knit one, pearl one, or pearl two, knit two?  I should call CrafTori."

The one question I have about this show -- I am otherwise supremely confident it is a ratings bonanza -- is this: do the words "craft" and "wars" ever belong side-by-side, in any context or medium?  And if they do, why isn't SmarTori putting her keen insight to greater use and cajoling Martha Stewart on the first plane to Iran?

PromoTori knows how to get a show off the ground, though, even one with a seemingly bonkers title, premise, and hosTori.  She has a baby.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you keeping score at home (I know no one is, but pretend): this is baby number 4 chez Tori & Dean: Parenting One Oh One More Baby!  THIS little bundle of joy will join older sibs Liam, Stella and baby Hattie.  When I say "baby Hattie," I don't just mean "baby" as in the youngest of the currently living McDermott offspring.  I mean "baby" as in just-learned-how-to-roll-over baby.  'Cause little-big-sister Hattie is five MONTHS old.  By my math....hang on a second.....still subtracting....carried the one....okay, by my math this means FacTori got preggers when Hattie was around three months old.

Far be it from me to advise Tori on her family planning.  Follow your Prophet Angie's lead and go for enough children to field a soccer team, I don't care.  But I have a sneaking suspicion Tori might not actually be trying to do this (although she'd probably love jazzercising the unis and it might get her an intro with David Beckham).  I worry that Tori actually thinks press junkets are just conversation starters and publicists are journalists who talk instead of write.  I worry that every time she wants to do a product launch, she also thinks she has to do a progeny launch. 

I worry that when Dean told her there's only one thing to do when you're in a prone position between a sheet and a duvet cover, RealiTori didn't set in.

Clueless About Kindness

I am trying to eat healthier.  I am trying to cook more.  I am trying to pay better attention to what is in the food I eat and give to my family.  For crying out loud, my kitchen cupboards now house things like Agave Nectar and unsweetened coconut flakes.

I am also trying to improve my children's eating habits.  I call it a successful day when I get my daughter to eat a vegetable and limited sugar, and when my son doesn't spit all of his avocado out at me as soon as the plastic spoon passes his lips.

Other prongs of my food credo: I believe in utensils.  I believe in serving my children's food on colorful, plastic dishware.  I believe that the food in my mouth should stay in my mouth.  I believe that my children should chew their own damn food, and if they can't, then they shouldn't be eating it in the first place.

This is where Alicia Silverstone and I part ways.

Apparently Ms. Silverstone took a hiatus from acting after her smash hit Clueless to become the World's Weirdest Foodie.  She has embraced the vegan lifestyle -- a diligence I actually admire her for.  When Well-Informed didn't get greenlighted by Warner Brothers, she decided to make a career out of veganism.  She wrote a book called The Kind Diet, which according to Ms. Silverstone is a "simple" guide for "swearing off meat and dairy forever."  Then, so that the whole plant-based dieting thing can be more "fun" and "interactive," she started a website called The Kind Life.  It's the electronic kitchen table you can sit down at with Ms. Silverstone while she "shares all kinds of tasty morsels with you."

Just be careful when you decide to take a seat.  Homegirl has some really interesting perspectives on "sharing."  They're as interesting as her take on naming offspring.

You see, Ms. Silverstone recently shared a video on The Kind Life of her feeding her son.  Her son named Bear Blu.  It's a post that makes every other mother and every other vegan out there look like total Junior Varsity players, or that makes Ms. Silverstone look utterly, completely off her recycled wood rocker.

Here's the scene: Ms. Silverstone and Bear Blu are getting ready to share the most important meal of the day.  But Mama Bear isn't about to give Baby Cub oatmeal or grape nuts or some other semi-relatable super-duper-healthy everything-free kickstart to his day.  Oh no.  Mrs. Berenstain Bear has whipped up some of her world famous "miso soup, collards and radish steamed and drizzled with flax oil, cast iron mochi with nori wrapped outside, and some grated daikon."  Winnette Pooh's review?  "YUM!"  What's more, Baloo trumpets that little Mowgli just LOVES the mochi and the veggies from the soup -- he crawls across the room to "attack [her] mouth" to get him some Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice. 

I'm sorry, but what else is Fozzie Bear being offered at meal-time such that rice and veggies make him kick the crawl into high gear?  Is lunch seaweed with grated serrano peppers sprinkled on top?  How many pieces of lentil loaf does he have to choke through at dinner?

And if this kid truly is gleeful about eating white pasty rice, where did I miss the product recall for my kid's taste buds, which recognize bananas as "too slimy" and broccoli as "hurting my mouth"?

More troubling than this palate versus palate smack-down is the manner in which Fuzzy Wuzzy Was A Bear chooses to deliver the mochi-veggie moosh to her Furry Wunderkid.  Get ready.....

She CHEWS IT UP FOR HIM and DELIVERS IT FROM HER MOUTH TO HIS.

Every time I think of this, my brain does a stutter-step.  Then it crashes from question overload.  Before I have to reboot, here are some of the queries I'd like to pose if given a guest spot on The Kind [Of Bat-Shit Crazy] Life:

1.  Does she not own a fork or a spoon? 
2.  Does she have something against cutlery? 
3.  Even if she neither owns nor appreciates cutlery, did she amputate her fingers?
4.  Does her son not have teeth?
5.  If he doesn't have teeth, why is he eating things you need teeth to eat?
6.  If he does have teeth, does he not know how to move his jaw up and down to get those teeth a-chomping?

But then I get to the worst thought/question of all: how, mechanically, does this food delivery system work?

And then I have to lie down to take a nap or dry-heave.  Because there's only one way you can do mouth-to-mouth feeding like a frisky couple with cherry-string tongue-tying abilities -- she must basically have to french kiss her son. 

I'd say this is a pretty good example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.  I'm as supportive as the next gal when it comes to trying to be as healthy as you can and to teach solid health habits to your kids.  But Alicia, let's talk big picture here, honey.  In your bid to get uber-nutrition into your son's digestive system, you're breaking the laws of most states and ignoring all those lessons Shakespeare's tragedies taught us.  It's just not cool for your tongue to be in such continued contact with your son's.  People are going to get the wrong idea.  And while little Boy Bear Blu might be a walking, talking (apparently not chewing) health pyramid, it's tough to make friends on the playground when you're swapping spit with mom every time your tummy grumbles.

Even if you think I'm a judgmental Earth-killing meanie armed and dangerous with my spork, Alicia, for the love of all that is holy and pure, take a step back.  If you really want to keep your breakfast activities at a PG-13 level, fine.  Good luck to you and yours.  But please realize that you're a kind-of celebrity, and when you videotape yourself doing things like this, it's gonna get out.  I think embracing your general reputation as the girl from Clueless is an improvement on being the woman who confuses herself for a bird.

I mean, like, duuuuuhhhhhhh!