At this point it's safe to say Yoko Ono will never live it down.  It being the downfall of The Beatles.  These days, Yoko is less of a first name and more of a verb.  We've all heard it...hell, we've probably all said it at some point in time.  "[Insert Band Name Here] got Yoko'd by [Insert Band Member's Girlfriend/Wife Here]."  It's always the woman's fault, but is that really fair? 

Think back to the golden days of Winona Ryder...after Johnny Depp, before Matt Damon, before the shoplifting...there was Dave Pirner.  If you were into the grunge scene you know who Dave Pirner is, he was the lead singer of Soul Asylum.  Runaway Train was a huge hit, they were going somewhere (supposedly)...then Dave started dating Winona.  The grungy rocker dating the Hollywood starlet.  Dave started going to Hollywood events...even had a cameo in Reality Bites...but the band started falling apart.  Do they blame Dave?  No, it's Winona's fault.  When the band broke up, rumors start flying that Winona Ryder Yoko'd Soul Asylum. 

What does it say for your band when the presence of one woman can ruin everything?  Winona  doesn't have any musical talent to speak of...how much could she have possibly been interfering with the band's daily functions?  Sure Dave Pirner was off doing other things, but she wasn't forcing him.  The band's bond couldn't have really been that strong if it was destroyed so easily.

This post wasn't inspired by Winona though, it was inspired by an article with Unwritten Law's former drummer, Wade Youman:

http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=1870

Scott Russo, the lead singer, is dating singer/songwriter Aimee Allen.  You probably don't know Aimee Allen, not many people do...but to jog your memory, her song Revolution was the theme to the short lived but hilarious show Birds of Prey.  Youman is claiming that Allen Yoko'd the group (which doesn't make sense considering the band is still together, it's just him who's been ousted).  If you read the article you'll see he talks all this crap about how the group was a tribe...blah, blah, blah.  Granted Aimee Allen is musically inclined, and Scott Russo trusts her opinion and likes to involve her a lot...but how strong was your bond if her presence broke it?  

Not only that, but Aimee Allen co-wrote a lot of shit on this album...which contains their biggest hit to date, so it's not really fair to say she Yoko'd the group, if anything she helped them.  The real key information here is that Scott Russo has a side project with her (Scott and Aimee, album tentatively titled 'Sitting in a Tree').  With Winona, with Aimee Allen...it all sounds like a bunch of jealousy and boy's club crap to me.  "Oh no, she's a girl!  You can't let a girl in the secret club house!"  Bah, whatever. 

Why couldn't the Riot Grrrl scene have lasted longer? 

I first started this blog right after my goddaughter Asha was born.  Well not even three months later her mother, Ryan, is pregnant again.  Saturday morning she appeared at my door doe-eyed and teary and told me that she thought she was pregnant.  She hasn't even gotten her period back yet, so there was no real reason to think so other than the way she was feeling (nauseous, achy all over, exhausted).  Well, it turns out she's really in tune with her own body because she is definitely pregnant.

Normally she would have been ecstatic, she and her husband (James) certainly want more children, but it's much too soon.  She had a really difficult pregnancy with Asha, and she hasn't completely recovered from that yet and she's faced with this.  She thought James would be upset when she told him that she didn't think she wanted to have this baby, but he was really supportive...with words anyway.

She's really tearing herself apart about this whole thing.  She knows she's not physically ready to go through another pregnancy again so soon, but she loves the idea of being a mother again.  She always said she wanted three children, and in some way she feels like if she terminates this pregnancy she somehow might be destroying her chance at having the family she always wanted.  So she's really struggling with the decision to either go through with the pregnancy or terminate it.  Either way it will be an extremely traumatizing experience...it's a tought decision.  Yesterday, while James was at work, she had freaked herself out so much she couldn't stand to stay in her house alone because with no one there...all she could do was think about the situation.

She came over to my house to wait for him to leave work.  Well, this idiot didn't show up until close to midnight.  I understand that he needs to make money to take care of his family, but part of taking care of his family is being there when they need him.   They're not hurting for money and the only day of work he's missed since I've known them was they day she gave birth.  Would it really have killed him to take one day off to just hang out with her and ease her mind a little?  If you know your wife's not feeling well, it is NOT ok to leave her all alone to take care of your daughter while she's also faced with the hardest decision of her life.  He just assumed that since she was at my house she was fine.

He's so clueless sometimes.  She doesn't need me, she needs her husband.   She wants him to hold her and tell her it's going to be ok even if it's not.  They just worked through the problems they were having with his parents interfering in their marriage, if he keeps this up they're not going to last and I think that would kill them both.  He's a good friend of mine, we talk a lot, so I convinced him to take a day off and just spend the day with her today.  Hopefully they get this worked out.

Ryan had a miscarriage early yesterday morning, so she no longer has to make the decision to terminate the pregnancy.  However, she's still really upset about it because she does want more children.  She has this silly idea that by the time she's ready to have another baby she'll be too old for it.  She's only 28, she has 7 years left before she's over the acceptable age limit.  By the time Asha is 1 she'll be ready, and she'll still have time for lots more babies.  I'm so not babysitting all those little jerks.

But I am babysitting Asha until Ryan's sister gets here tonight.  That way she can rest in a nice quiet house and James can give her his undivided attention.  Asha's much too happy for me...but I guess I would be too if I got to suck on a fantasic pair of boobs with a magic endless supply of food every few hours or so.   

Speaking of James, he's learning.  He told me he was going to take the whole week off next week so he can be there for her.  I was shocked...but finally he gets it.   

In other new, I've been awake for more than two days straight.  I hate when this happens, but there's nothing I can do about it except wait until I pass out.   

I have recently rediscovered my love for Carly Pope.  I originally developed this love way back in the glory days of Popular.  Popular...the most genius teen drama/comedy to ever grace our unworthy television screens.  I still hate the WB for killing it in its prime.  Carly bears an uncanny resemblance to Gina Gershon...something about the eyes and mouth, but Carly has a more traditional beauty whereas Gina has a quirky kind of beauty.  There's more to it than just her looks though.  Popular was equally about Sam (Carly's character) and Brooke (Leslie Bibb's character), but there was something about Carly's acting abilities that always allowed her to steal the scene. 

Something in her eyes, her facial expressions, the raw emotion that flitted across her face...she has an amazing amount of talent and it's a shame that she's so underappreciated.  After Popular was cancelled she all but faded from my memory.  Despite her random appearances in TV movies and sucky ABC Family fare co-starring David frickin Silver aka Brian Austin Green (yes you, "This Time Around")... I didn't see her for years...that is until I discovered this little underrated gem called Nemesis Game.  It's not the greatest film I've ever seen, but it was above average for what it was (a low budget Indie).  More importantly Carly Pope does an amazing job with it. 

So armed with Nemesis Game and both seasons of Popular on DVD, I have found Carly Pope again.  I hope someone in Hollywood finally sees what this woman has to offer.  I'm tired of having my screen flooded with talentless beauties (*cough* Jessica Alba *cough*).  I want the whole package and Carly is one of the few who are just that, but something tells me she will most likely suffer the same or worse fate than her doppelganger.  On the cusp of fame but never quite getting that big  break.  At this point I'd be happy if she became and Indie queen like Gina Gershon...Canadian TV just isn't cutting it. 

Ryan and I are currently sitting around asking ourselves that question.  What the hell did we do before marriage?  Funny how easy it is to forget.  We vaguely remember being fun at some point in our respective lives.  Scott's off to Wimbledon and after staying home with her for  a whole week, James is catching up on work over the weekend. 

So here we are...no kids (Asha's with Ryan's parents, J and Caden are with mine), no husbands...and nothing to do.  Going out partying isn't really an option...she's still cramping from the miscarriage, and really we're both just too lazy/tired to deal with the club scene at this point.  I guess we could have gone out to dinner, but again, we're lazy. 

We're two young, attractive women...it seems so wrong for us to be stuck in the house, glued to the television, and lounging in my bed with a crapload of snacks.  This wouldn't be a half bad situation if there were some hot stripper chicks spinning around my pole right now, but we're not that lucky.

...maybe we should go hunt down our former glory.   

Does anyone else know about Evil Remains?  It's an ultra low budget indie horror directed and written by James Merendino (of SLC Punk fame), which is the reason I was intersted in it in the first place.  I originally came across it about a year ago and I thought it was a pretty interesting idea.  The premise is that a graduate student garners the assistance of a group of his friends to help him with his research.  They go on an expedition to a Louisianna plantation that is rumored to be cursed...and well, you can guess the rest.

The not so subtle politics behind this thing have turned out to be more interesting to me than the movie.  When I originally found out about this movie it was called Tresspassing and Clayne Crawford had top billing.  At the time he was a hot, rising star in young Hollywood.  He was just coming off of Swimfan and A Walk to Remember and he was expected to start really blowing up.   Estella Warren and Ashley Scott were also attached to the project, but there wasn't a word being said about them.  The cover art/posters were all Clayne Crawford.

Well, cut to 2005 and the DVD release.  All of a sudden the movie has a new name and Estella Warren and Ashley Scott have top billing.  Hmm.  Why?  Clayne hasn't done anything worth talking about since Swimfan, but guess what...by now Ashley Scott has a cult following from Birds of Prey, had a starring role in Walking Tall, and gained some buzz from her almost-role on Joey.  So where does Estella Warren come in?  She hasn't done anything worth talking about since Planet of the Apes, but she's the resident eye candy so she gets slapped up there too.  

Almost as if to blantanly prove how much bullshit Hollywood is on, they dramatically change the cover art.  The cover art is all Estella Warren and Ashley Scott now...now a single co-star in sight.  There's just a cleavage bearing Estella Warren in the foreground, and a BLONDE (she's brunette with some awful fake dreads in the movie) Ashley Scott standing in the background.   This is a prime example of why the movie industry sucks so much in this country.  Nothing is about talent anymore, it's all about whether your name can make any money or not.

I've ranted enough about politics, now on to my review of the movie...

First off, Estella Warren is worthless.  She's just horribly talentless and always has been.  If nothing else, horror movies should be full of emotion and it's like she just can't muster it.  She has this almost deadpan delivery no matter what's going on.  Even in the moments when she was supposed to be frantic it seemed like she just gave it a half-assed try.  As for Ashley Scott, this was far from the greatest performance of her life, but I've got to give her some credit.  She's not the best actress in the world but she has a knack for effectively delivering the required emotional response.  It's always in her eyes, I noticed that when she was on Birds of Prey.  Daniel Gillies and Clayne Crawford also handed in passable performances, but nothing spectacular.  I suspect that with the exception of Estella Warren, the sub-par acting had more to do with the script that the talent of the actors involved.

This movie is highly cliche, I really expected more from Merendino.  You can just pick off cliche after cliche throughout the whole thing.  There are way too many holes.  Clayne Crawford and Daniel Gillies play brothers, and there's some mention of an abusive father and some incidents in the past but the full story is never revealed...yet it has some bearing on why Mark (Gillies) is doing what he's doing.  The two female characters, Kristy (Warren) and Sharon (Scott), spend the majority of the movie walking through a minefield of animal traps.  Why are all those animal traps there?  Nobody knows.  I guess it's just supposed to be creepy.  Did I metion they're lesbians? Yeah. 

In requisite cliche horror movie fashion, everyone is picked off one by one until only the two females remain.   Sharon all of a sudden goes crazy, develops nervous ticks and starts talking out of her ass...who knows why.  There's a strange argument about who was seeing what.  Kristy says she saw a killer wearing a mask, while Sharon says she saw Tyler (Crawford).  Reasons for this difference in opinion are never explored.

The script is absolutely awful, but it did have a redeeming quality.  It's visually exceptional.  There are some great camera angles and the lighting is stunning at times.  

Bottom line, Evil Remains had the potential to be pretty good, but it just fell short.   

Ryan and I are no longer allowed to go to Linens 'n Things.  

We've been in this house since late December, early January...and I have yet to finish decorating.  Hell, I still have an unfurnished room.  I didn't feel the need to furniture shop, so I thought I'd go for the decorating.  Ryan hasn't put the finishing touches on their house yet either so we grabbed the kids (and the husbands' credit cards) and went to Linens 'n Things. 

Both of us are "see it, like it, throw it in the basket" shoppers.  Needless to say, we had to get a couple of the employees to help us get all this crap in the car.  Oh, did I say car?  No, no...I drove the Hummer.  A Hummer is a pretty big truck right?  Even with three children in the back seat, it's still roomy.  We had so much crap it barely fit...in a fucking Hummer.  Let's not even talk about the obscene amount of money that was spent.  The cashier/salesperson was very very happy.  Do they work on comission or something?

She had to call James and tell him to bring his truck so he could help her haul all her crap back to their house.  There was no way it was fitting in her car.  You should have seen his face when he saw all the stuff she bought.  I thought he was about to lose it...but Ryan is very good at that doe-eyed innocence thing.  She bats her eyelashes, calls him "love" and he's automatically putty in her hands.  She's good, very, very good.

Being the kind gentleman that he is, he hauled all my crap in my house for me...but not before banning us from ever going to Linens 'n Things together again.  Yeah right.

I'm so tired of hearing about the Oprah/Hermes situation.  Why the hell are people even talking about this?  This only fuels my already strong Oprah hate.  If it was after hours and they were setting up for a private event, they were justified in not letting her in.  She seriously needs to get over herself.  You have a fucking talk show (a horribly useless one at that), you didn't save the planet from impending doom.  What the hell makes her think she deserves special treatment?  Money?  Who gives a shit, plenty of people have that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah...celebrities get special treatment.  So what?  That doesn't mean every store is going to cater to that bullshit and they shouldn't have to. If it turns out that she was actually discriminated against, it won't lessen my hate any, but hey...she should sue until her little heart is content.  However, if the store was closed and she's just mad they didn't let her pneumo-cephalic ass in then I have one thing to say...

Oprah...Fucking Quit. Seriously.