Jumping the Hammer-Shark

Dolls Depicting Real People, How is This Legal?

It has been all over the news, a company has been making sex dolls in the likeness of real life people--celebrities including Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. While the look-alike dolls are given a slightly different name, the intent is crystal clear.

Other products like pornography are general sheltered by being works of satire.  But can a static product claim a genre?

And while the gossip has focused on teen idols looking at other listings in the celebrity section include Hillary Clinton and Mariah Carey.

I am guessing the actual product would be a disappointment to anyone wanting to actually use it, and he main market s gag gift.  But still...  I am surprised that profiting off  person's identity in this way has not been shut down by a team of lawyers.

In the end any likeness is very slight, so anyone who has a fantasy about a celebrity is going to be better off (so to speak) using their own imagination.

On Meryl Streep not being a Feminist

When asked whether she was a feminist Meryl Streep reportedly said.  “I am a humanist, I am for nice, easy balance.”

Which is all very clever but also some Grade A bullshit. Why does supporting equal rights for people of any gender have to be the philosophy that dare not speak its name... for fear of sounding "unbalanced" (dare I suggest: "hysterical"?).

The removal of bigotry does not leave a person unbalanced. 

There is no degree of equality that upsets the balance of the world.

There is nothing at all that prevents a person from being a humanist and a feminist--nor any basis in which these are semantically interchangeable terms.  The attempt to make them so is just a very sophisticated why of saying that old piece of nonsense: I'm not a feminist, but....

Celebrity Sprite

LeBron James Sprite

Last years flop movie, Syrup (based on a book of the same name), included the idea of marketing a carbonated drink by linking numbered cans to specific celebrities. Almost on cue, Sprite releases their first celebrity-inspired special edition drink.

• LeBron gets own Sprite drink

Oh celebrity mags, you so original

This is the cover of the Billy Joel memoir that is now not going to happen. Joel said:

"It took working on writing a book to make me realize that I'm not all that interested in talking about the past and that the best expression of my life and its ups and downs has been and remains my music." 

Apparently one of the things he didn't want to talk about was his three marriages.  generally the press referred to them as "failed" marriages.  But if everything that ends is a failure we are all pretty much destined to be mammoth failures eventually.