Not satisfied with the disproportionate amount of acclaim and wealth shoved at them by drooling zombies otherwise known as the human race, celebrities manage to lock themselves in titanic struggles with each other over perceived slights.
They will make public statements, release stinging responses on their respective blogs, and basically act like spoiled children bickering for attention. Personally, I give it to them, because I find them funny. Not intelligently funny, or even funny on purpose. Their entertainment value is very similar to that of the video where the monkey doesn’t like the taste of his own pee, and then he falls off the branch.
However, I’ve picked out a few of the more salient current cases in which celebrities are brawling with each other. Using my brilliant analytical skills, as well as my flair for sensational insight, I have prepared a study on each conflict:
Paris Hilton vs. Lindsay Lohan:
The strangest thing about this spat is the fact that the two idjits involved are practically interchangeable. Both of them are known for their rampant lack of underwear, a fact that has scorched the eyes of the planet. Further similarities and points of interest:
Lohan is dating a girl that the average man couldn’t be attracted to even if he got a top hat and wand, and put on a magical show of illusions to trick his own penis. Hilton, on the other hand, is dating Benji Madden, a boy-man whose hobo-esque facial grooming is matched only by his inability to write a single good song.
Both are terrible actors. Putting either one of them in a movie is like putting glasses on a hippo and watching it try to take the MCAT. I will grant you that Lohan has done better at the box office, but if it weren’t for the exploitability of girls under 15, she would be rubbing nickels together in the hopes that they’d mate and reproduce so she could buy some cigarettes.
Hilton, to her credit, at least had the dignity to be born into obscene wealth.
It would really be funny if either of these girls got a plunger stuck on their face, and then they staggered around while trying to get it off, and then maybe they slipped on a banana peel or stepped in a bucket. I like that kind of comedy.
I know, from my insanely clever use of Google, that they have had their share of catfights. One of their more notable episodes was at the Grammies, where Lohan called Paris a “bitch,” and Hilton responded by calling Lohan a “bitch” also. …This is the sort of blistering, drawing room rhetoric that both celebrities are known for.
I honestly don’t know much about what their feud is based on. My guess, if I’m allowed one, is that both realize that, on some level, they are competing for the same pathetic fan base.
It’s childish, petty, and almost certainly based on the fact that both of them have giant egos. Or, to put it more succinctly: it’s hilarious.
Winner: Lindsay Lohan, for being in that movie with Herbie, the living car. I think Herbie and I would be friends. We’d go to drive-in movies together and only pay for one ticket, but we’d both be watching the movie. We’re clever!
Guy Ritchie vs. Madonna:
If you’re like me, it took you a long time to realize that Madonna was even married. And it probably took you an even longer time to figure out that the relatively attractive looking “Marilyn Monroe rip-off” Madonna from the early 90’s is actually the same person as the grim, angry “thirsting for the blood of the innocents” Madonna we see today.
I will confess my ignorance, though – I don’t really know that much about her career. I’ll list what little I am aware of:
I know that she played a useless side character in a James Bond movie – a movie which, incidentally, sucked. Also her character wasn’t even memorable enough for Bond to chauvinistically bang for no reason.
Somewhere along the way, she adopted a horrid British accent.
Something about Kabbalah and magic water.
Her music makes me try to figure out the best way to messily destroy myself as a nonverbal form of protest. Maybe swallowing some lit fireworks, or eating 10 jars of grape jelly and then dropping a safe on my own head.
I know even less about Guy Ritchie, though. I know he’s responsible for making a few enjoyable movies – though once he got married, he gave his wife the leading role in “Swept Away,” a movie that literally snuck into your brain and prison-shanked your eyeballs from behind.
As for these days, I’m happy to report that he seems to be back on track, and is directing a remake of Sherlock Holmes, which is actually a pretty great idea. I’ll be honest, at this point, I don’t want to learn much more about him. It’s novel and refreshing to have somebody in one of these celebrity feuds that I actually like a little. Let’s hope “Sherlock Holmes” doesn’t suck.
Winner: Well, one of these individuals directed “Snatch,” and the other one is apparently getting it on with that paragon of humility and greatness known as A-Rod. You tell me.
Successful Britney Spears vs. Inner Britney Spears:
I’m sure you’ve all seen Ms. Spears recently, what with all the coverage she’s been receiving. MTV handed her a few awards that she probably didn’t really deserve. But at this point, she was no longer completely insane, and MTV obviously wanted to reward her slow recovery, lest she backslid into being the celebrity version of you secret twin brother that lives in the attic and feasts on fish heads.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t find this all a little disappointing.
For the last two years or so, Britney Spears has been one of my favorite train wrecks. It was not a matter of schadenfreude or malice; rather, I honestly enjoyed the spectacle of a somebody going utterly batshit on a regular basis.
She beat cars with umbrellas, started talking in a crazy faux-British accent, and shaved her head – ostensibly so that she could look like one of the bad guys from Wolfenstein 3-D. She also developed an uncanny appetite for Starbucks Frappucinos, and started to guzzle them by the tankerful. In fact, I heard that the day she started dieting and exercising again, Starbucks’ stock plummeted by almost 30 points. True story.
Spears was in such sorry shape that the judge actually ruled her to be a less fit parent than Kevin Federline. Now, as you know, Kevin Federline is a complete disaster in his own right, and those kids would have been better off if the judge had decided to tape fuzzy, black ears to their heads and leave them in the panda exhibit at the zoo.
Upon losing custody to somebody like K-Fed – somebody whose career highlights include a) owing money to the guy that does “Girls Gone Wild,” and b) appearing on WWF – most people would realize that the only thing left now was to commit hara-kiri and hope to be reincarnated as a pair of Halle Berry’s pants.
Britney Spears, however, was lucky. Her father saw the 30-car pileup that his daughter’s life had become, and decided to take the reins. He literally dictated her entire life. It must have been hard, when he told her she could no longer spend her afternoons doing drugs, or banging gross men she met at Waffle House. But over time, his regimen worked, and Britney Spears is once again a model of success for any girls that decide reading or writing is just way too much work.
But no matter how successful or healthy Britney manages to stay, I have seen her for who she is – or, at least, who she can become again. She’ll have to fight a daily inner battle not to freak out on camera men, or start talking like she’s been inhabited by a poltergeist.
Of course, the successful version Britney Spears may very well win. She could remain predictably successful, blonde, and bland for the rest of her career. But me, personally, I’m looking forward to the day when I pick up the morning paper, and the headline reads “Former Mouseketeer Now Eating People.” So I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Winner: Britney Spears’ agent, Jason Trawick, for a) having the guts to sign her, and b) actually managing to make money off of her again. If she had walked into my office back in those days, I’d have produced a harpoon from my desk and grimly told my assistant, “Call me Ishmael.”
Heidi Montag vs. Lauren Conrad:
I can honestly say that I know next to nothing about either of these girls, other than that they are both on “The Hills.” I literally cannot form a mental picture of either of them. I’m assuming they are both:
Tan, because I think The Hills takes place near the ocean.
OK at reading, not great at writing.
Generically attractive, if you like listening to bug-eyed white girls talk about shopping and mimosas.
The truth is, I’ve only seen part of one episode of The Hills, and that was while I was at the gym, and it was fucking horrible. The girls just sat around in nice houses and talked about their friendship.
At one point, Spencer Pratt showed up, and I nearly murdered myself out of sheer anger. Not suicide, mind you. Actual, real murder. You see, there are probably people that need to be beaten up and locked into a girls’ bathroom more than he does, but it’s a short list.
There’s something terribly smug and infinitely annoying about Spencer Pratt; he is a living example of what happens when parents continually lie to their children about how smart and special they are. The only fitting response to Spencer Pratt is a sort of all-consuming, pure rage. If you ever see a picture of him, black out for a few seconds, and wake up to find that you’ve put your fist through a cement wall, you’re doing it right.
Google seems to be telling me that Lauren and Heidi’s feud started over this walking, talking melanoma. I can’t imagine any females actually arguing over who gets to have Spencer Pratt – unless, of course, those females are starving junkyard dogs. Unfortunately, learning anything more about their spat turned out to be impossible.
All of their quotes are complete drivel and make no goddamn sense. This is literally the best I could come up with when I tried to start writing about it: “Problems between the two continued when something something Lauren Conrad sextape oh my God I think I have the bends.” It’s not just impossible to care about either of these girls, it’s painful.
If a foreign government captured me and forced me to watch season 1 of T”he Hills” at gunpoint, I’d break before they even got started. I’d be signing confessions I hadn’t even read in my cell by the end credits, as long as they just left the Weather Channel on and threw some gruel at me twice a day.
So you see, due to my adverse natural reaction towards these girls, I can only really make guesses as to their situation. So my hypothesis is that both girls are very similar to Lohan and Hilton, in that they are both competing attention-whores.
However, they do seem to dimly realize the fact that they aren’t really celebrities, rather, they’re a pair of acceptably attractive girls that have found a niche on the outer edges of Hollywood, where their target market consists of a) idle dumbasses, and b) everyone who doesn’t get The Spice Network.
They both share the lowest-rung of the A-list totem pole, and they have to compete for that spot – no matter how much it might smell like piss – because the loser will simply fade into obscurity/probably end up sleeping with Billy Zane.
Winner: There are no winners here. Neither of these girls, nor Spencer Pratt, will never win at anything.
None of the viewers, who are committing moral crimes simply by watching “The Hills.”
Certainly not me, since I couldn’t find these two girls less attractive or interesting if they started weeping blood and crawling backwards down staircases.
The only way to fix this show is to introduce lions and raptors into the next season.
I think I would be willing to watch, provided that all the current characters get eaten in the first episode, and the rest of the show is devoted to the budding friendship between baby Simba and little Razortooth.