Random Fug

So, That Movie Of Which You Might Be Faintly Aware premiered in Rome last night, and this Italian actress decided to attend in... well, see for yourselves:



I don't even know what to say, except:

a) I think my best friend in eighth grade owned those shorts;
b) I am pretty sure that is not actually a real blouse, but in fact a jacket that's being misappropriated;
c) this is what Bai Ling is going to wear to her wedding reception someday;
d) PLEASE GOD don't let Tara Reid see this. Putting that much pressure on one solitary button really seems like her kind of party, and if her puppies get to barking, I don't think it would be strong enough to fight them off -- if you get my drift.

And of course NOW a really filthy Milkbone pun is running through my mind, and I have to put it aside because Intern George wants to make Breakup Gimlets to toast his renewed bachelorhood and there is no room for any mental image of Tara Reid in this scenario. I'm not even sure how this became about her. She is everywhere, yet nowhere. Kind of like the direction of this post. George, make mine a double, please.

When I saw this dress from afar, in a wee photo thumbnail, I expected that when it enlarged I'd see a wig-wearing Phoebe Price in it:

Because if there is anyone in this world likely to wear a gown one of the nominees would sport at the Circus Animal Tamers Banquet and Awards Gala -- or CATBAG -- it is our girl P-Squared, who has never met a cutout she thought was too small. Or maybe Bai Ling, whom I imagine actually does wrangle leopards in her spare time. This does not bode well for Corinne Touzet, whose reasonably long resume indicates she might be an actual working actress, and therefore would probably prefer to avoid speculation that she is secretly operating an old-timey brothel -- which, if you think about it, is not that different than lion-taming, but possibly with a smaller whip. Then again, she did wear the dress, so maybe she WANTS people to think she's about to run off and publish a salacious semiautobiographical novel called Petting Zoo.

This girl was on a really funny episode of 30 Rock, which I adore, so it pains me to post this photograph.

However, it pains me MORE that she's wearing: a splotchy denim skirt with what MIGHT be an old nylon around the waist; the same cardigan I kept on the back of my old day job's office chair for those occasions (read: all day) when the air conditioning was on full force and couldn't be turned down and I had no other option for keeping my blood flowing; the boots that Robin Hood wears when it's his turn to muck out the Sherwood Forest outhouse; and what looks like a leotard a gymnast would wear during a routine set to the Little House on the Prairie theme song.

So really, it's all about which is the greater agony. Apparently the fashion anguish won.

Actress Skye McCole Bartusiak is only 16. Therefore, she wasn't even ALIVE in the 1980s, so I will take a deep breath, empty a bottle of moisturizer on my crow's feet, ad try to give her a pass for not understanding that nobody should ever yearn for that decade except for maybe Andrew Ridgeley.

Being a teenager is a tough in front of the flashbulbs. Clearly Skye is trying some kind of self-expression, so I will be restrained and simply note: Her parents are hosed. No, seriously, their authority is totally compromised. In a year or two this girl is going to want to quit school and backpack through Western Europe for six months with her life savings and a Swedish bartender named Ulf, and when they try to stop her, she will scream, "OH YEAH? WHERE WAS THAT RED LIGHT WHEN I LEFT THE HOUSE LOOKING LIKE A CRACKED-OUT EMOTICON?" And they will be speechless, and off she'll go, returning a year later than expected with a wicked crepe habit and a tattoo that says "BITTE, BABY" on her left boob. I just hope they're prepared.

All right, I suppose if you have seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Hostel: Part II, then actress Lauren German technically is not random to you (assuming you could see anything through the blood). And presumably, since she got invited to LA Fashion Week, she's a familiar face to the good people at Mercedes Benz as well.

She also seems to be on a first-name basis with the entire staff at Nordstrom's juniors department.

I hear they have developed a sport out of throwing any old thing over her dressing-room door and awarding a bonus to the salesperson who convinces her to buy the dumbest ensemble. This one, prominently featuring pants that I'm pretty sure my friend Becky wore to sleep over at my house when we were in fifth grade, has to have been worth at least a $50 prize to one such cruel genius. I guess Lauren is milking the ten months she has left in her twenties, but seriously, even my nine-year old friend did better with those things -- and this was at a time when we were madly, blindingly in love with the lead singer of a-ha, wore a minimum of two Swatches at once, and wrote things like, "Stay sweet! Have a great summer and I'll see you next year! BFF 4EVA!" in each other's yearbooks. I am not sure what Lauren's excuse is.

So, I tried to figure out who this Eureka person is, but Wikipedia could not help me -- unless I am mistaken and she IS, in fact, Dorothy Gale's cat from The Wizard of Oz, a large-scale business-plan competition in India, a town in Nova Scotia, or a WWII paratrooper beacon. Otherwise, it's never a good sign when you are a performer but you don't have a Wikipedia page. Surely she has a friend who could get on that, or a few hours in her schedule.

All that may change soon enough, though. This mysterious "Eureka" person is performing at an NBA All-Star Weekend event, and based on what she's wearing, she may soon get her own entry under "Eureka (singer, Lil' Kim impersonator)":

[Photo: Splash News]

This is not an outfit. This is that page in the Victoria's Secret catalog that you come upon and the snort at, because normal people don't lounge around the house -- or a club, or a formal party, or any event that doesn't involve seducing the pool boy -- in itchy-looking sparkly sweatpants and a shiny, swirly bra that's barely holding in your goods. Only Lil' Kim, our favorite nudist sprite of yore, would have the tenacity to wear this outside and call it clothes -- and frankly, Latter-Day Lil' Kim, who got sprung from the pokey after spending all that time in full-coverage orange jumpsuits, would probably snort that this is "too obvious." So this is either a touching homage to the tiny exhibitionist we came to love back in 1999, or just Eureka's desperate attempt to get Diana Ross to grab her boob. Either way, we're pretty sure a Wikipedia page might be born today. Go stick a candle into a cupcake and celebrate with her.

However, I'm still not convinced the beacon entry wouldn't partially apply. You could probably see those pants from 30,000 feet, although they certainly would not make me want to jump toward them.

Relative newcomer Jess Weixler stars in an upcoming movie called Teeth about... well, there's no easy way to say this, so I'll put it simply: Her character's genitals have teeth. Her crotch is a Venus Flytrap, and it is no vegetarian.

Given that, maybe this all makes sense.

Maybe if one of us had to be associated forever with having little shop of horrors in our pants, we'd ALSO shave half the skirt off a Disney Pretty Princess costume and layer it like body armor over a black skirt. Maybe we'd WANT to distract from being The Pretty, Pretty Face Of Vagina Dentata by borrowing a color scheme from a particularly nasty bruise. Honestly, no one knows what the appropriate reaction is, because no one else has ever been faced with being so closely identified with an angry lady-maw.

Well, except for Disney, since I just dragged them into this. If Minnie Mouse starts wandering around Burbank in something similar, we'll be well on our way to a new, groundbreaking understanding. Also, we'll put in a warning call to her gyno.

In searching for information on actress Menna Shalabi, I accidentally stumbled through the looking glass: There is no Wikipedia page for her. How can that be? How is it that there is no self-proclaimed expert on all things Menna Shalabi -- not even Menna Shalabi herself -- who has devoted a free online page to the details of her career and salacious rumors about her personal life, or her pets, or the mysteries of her shoe size? All you get if you Google her is an unsatisfactory IMDb page, a comment on a blog entry that deems her "vulgar," and YouTube footage that indicates that she might once have been in some kind of car accident. Such is my life that when Wikipedia draws a blank, so do I; ergo, I have no choice but to infer from those fuzzy snippets that Menna is an actress who is passionately committed to swearing and has poor vehicular karma. And whose name anagrams either to A Blase Ham Inn -- which sounds unappealing, as there is nothing more disheartening than a bed-and-breakfast that is not fully enthusiastic about ham -- and Inane Lab Sham, which implies she might be prone to skulking around hospitals to pull DNA test switcheroos.

None of which has anything to do with what she was wearing. I just needed to share my frustration. Thank you, readers, for being a friend. But let's get to the point now, which is this:

Truthfully, I'm not sure how you're SUPPOSED to wear a dress with a sheer front. It's a bit like debating how high to pull up your legwarmers, or whether you should wear a turtleneck with the barrel you have poked your legs through -- is there REALLY a RIGHT way to do it? Indeed, having decided that a nude boobular contraption would blend right into nude gauze and fade away from sight, Menna appears to have strapped herself into a serious Bad Idea Bustier on this occasion. On the plus side: If Project Runway ever again asks someone to recontextualize the mighty shoulder pad, this makes for an amusing blueprint. Sure, it'll end up on a Mannequin of Shame, but it'd be worth it just to see Tim Gunn's brow furrow as he scrapes together the last vestiges of tact in his arsenal.

I can't decide if Carmen Lebbos here is AWESOME or out of her mind:

A cape! A corset top! Wide-legged pants! All in BLACK SATIN! It's like Dracula: Saturday Night Fever.

Being as she was born in 1988, Tamsin Egerton missed black mesh armwarmers the first time around. So I suppose I could give her a pass for resurrecting them, figuring she didn't necessarily know better.

Unfortunately, by virtue of the fact that they are black mesh armwarmers, she automatically should have known better. Her foremothers did yeoman's work in allowing themselves to be documented in things like that, so that future generations would live a wiser life. So unless Tamsin has been diagnosed with a near-fatal case of olecranondular hyposanguination -- the medical-sounding name I made up for what history will call Really Freaking Cold Elbow Syndrome -- then there is no Get Out Of Jail Free card available here. Indeed, this might be the photo equivalent of landing on Boardwalk with a hotel on it.

Well, maybe not Boardwalk. But at LEAST Marvin Gardens, which was always my favorite property name in that otherwise horrible, evil game that I cannot ever win. When Ridley Scott makes his movie of Monopoly -- if the apocalypse does not first arrive via a swarm of giant silver top hats -- I somehow envision Jim Carrey playing Marvin Gardens as a slightly filthier Ace Ventura who owns a combination saloon and flower shop.