May 9, 2019--Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala

Rubbing elbows with Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Picasso were Demi Moore, Chris Rock, and Miley Cyrus. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala organized and hosted by Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour.

Lady Gaga and Titian, Katy Perry and Manet? Together at the Temple of Dendur, munching finger food and getting sloshed with champaign? 

If Titian and his artist friends had stayed home (which they should have) it would have been like an evening at the GRAMMYs or the Golden Globes (thus the champaign reference).

How much money could the Met have netted from the affair that would have (perhaps) justified selling themselves out to the highest bidder? I could even have gotten excited if Met benefactors Charles and David Koch (the rightwing Koch Brothers) had written a check to cover the yield.

Take a look at Lady Gaga sprawled on the steps of the Met who shed three layers of clothes before she got to her costume--bra, panties, panty hose, and six-inch heels.

And then check out Katy Perry who came as a big cheeseburger.

It's good to be in Maine and away from all this ridiculousness. 

August 31, 2015--MTV Video Music Awards

For some inexplicable reason I stayed up very late last night to watch the MTV Video Music Awards.

I am not the best reporter about things popular musical, so take take this for the very little it's worth.

To tell the truth the only people I ever heard of before the show were Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian. The later, Kim, isn't even a musical person far as I know except she's married (I think they're married) to someone named Kanye West, who seems to be important for various things except for what he was wearing---a rumpled outfit that was last seen on a hospital orderly.

They were sitting in the first row, seemingly side-by-side, which the host, or hostess, Miley Cyrus, who wore at least a dozen outfits with progressively less fabric, kept making a big deal about. There appeared to be bad blood between them though toward the end, with me more than half-asleep, Swift gave him, Kanye, what appeared to be an MTV lifetime achievement award of some kind.

Which led to him, Kanye, making a speech that lasted for what felt like at least half an hour, most of the time taken up with him scratching his shaved head with the microphone. Not one word of which I understood. But that's just me.

Now sitting side-by-side, wife Kim and bad-blood-new-best-friend, Taylor, seemed to be enjoying what he was saying since they clapped continuously and appeared to have tears running down their Cover Girl makeup (a sponsor along with Trojan ribbed condoms).

Then, toss Nicki Minaj into the mix, apparently more bad blood between her and Taylor Swift, and it all began to make sense.

The whole thing seemed to be about skinny white girls and more full-figured black girls with exceptionally large tushies.

It looks as if Taylor Swift doesn't go anywhere without at least a dozen such skinny-white-girl "friends." They reminded me of the midget Michael Jackson used to take with him wherever he went, including the MTV Awards, where, also ensconced in the first row, he would sit with the little fella on his lap.

Kim and Kanye and Niki, I forgot to mention, travel with possess of their own--bulky black guys.

It became clear that there have been all sorts of feuds with poor Taylor in the middle of them. Kanye, I think, was saying that he regrets having snatched an award from Taylor a couple of years ago that he felt should have gone to his Rubenesque best friend Beyonce. Racism he claimed at the time. Skinny white girls versus more voluptuous black girls.

But he sort of really didn't say that, Rona clarified for me (she too was for some reason was still awake). To her hearing he still sounded defiant. 

I also failed to mention that much was made of his, Kanye's, wife Kim's butt. This made things complicated because she's a white girl but has a butt about the same size as Nicki's. Posteriors being the show's sub theme. And it's not just because she's pregnant and Kanye smoked a reefer, he reported, before turning out of the show. Maybe that's why he didn't have time to change his scrubs.

Miley, on the other hand, is quite another story. 

Time for me to go back to bed. Right?

June 14, 2013--Miley and Ashton

I was reading a piece in the New York Times about how various celebrities are getting paid by companies to sneak advertisements into their TV shows, movies, and Twitter pages.

The 20-year-old pop star, Miley Cyrus, for example, tweeted the following after flying to northern California to promote her new album--

Thanks @blackjet for the flight to Silicone Valley

This seems innocuous enough except that Black Jet is a company that arranges for private jets for rich folks; and, though Miley refused to comment when asked if she was paid for this mention to her 12 million Twitter followers, the company's CEO said, "She was given some consideration for her tweet."

"Some consideration," I assume, means money or free private jet travel.

When Demi's ex, actor and star of Two and a Half Men, Ashton Kutcher, served as guest editor for the on-line version of Details magazine and wrote favorably about a dozen companies in which he is a major investor, Details' executives didn't seem to have a problem.

Nor did the producers of Two and a Half when he pasted a bunch of labels for other companies he invests in on the back of his character's laptop. Kutcher presumably benefitted by doing this but the producers of the show got nothing.

And like Miley Cyrus, he has not been shy about plugging companies in which he has a financial interest on his Twitter page as a subliminal way of advertising them to his 14 million followers.

When I told Rona about this she just shrugged, as if to say, "What else is new," but she did ask how someone like Miley Cyrus could attract 12 million Twitter followers and Ashton Kutcher 14 million.

"You got me," I said, "I occasionally look at our niece's open-source Twitter postings and admire her enigmatic, often poetic tweets; but about everyone else, the whole tweeting thing seems to me to be superficial and usually downright silly."

"Before you're too condemning," Rona pressed me, "You should do a little more research."

She was right, and so I looked at some of Ashton's and Miley's recent posts.

Here are a few of Kutcher's--

I don't like to b*tch on here but does anyone else feel like all they do all day is charge sh*t?

Wonder what wooly mammoth meat would taste like? RT @pritheworld: Russian scientists discover a wooly mammoth

But, to be as fair as Rona would want me to be, he also has a serious side--

In recent news there's new news about the news

Miley, on the other hand, sent out the following to her 12 million faithful--

When I was a little girl I used to run around saying "I ain't scurred of nuffin"

Booty Tweet. Oopsie Doopsie

I did NOT get a tattoo of wings on my as hahaha

When I reported this to Rona, she sighed and said, "I can't imagine who these 12 or 14 million are who read this stuff. It just feels sad."