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Nellie McKay releases her first album of new material in 13 years

Hey Guys Watch This is the New Yorker’s first album of new original material since 2010.

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Marge Simpson in Playboy

Marge Simpson in Playboy

Scurrilous Ephemera Oct. 12 2009 – Marge Simpson in Playboy. Plus: Rachel Marsden, Karl Lagerfeld in the news.

– by Stephanie MacDonald

So Playboy magazine has been in financial difficulties for quite a while now – something about this newfangled “Internet” thing which gives people the magical ability to look at nudie pictures for free without having to spend large amounts of time concocting verbose yet unconvincing explanations about the cerebral qualities of the accompanying articles. Ironically, back in the day, the articles in Playboy were often very engaging and progressive, and the girls were often very cute, and upon this successful amalgamation of high- and low-brow Hugh Hefner became very wealthy and achieved the status that he had popularized, despite being rather homely and drippy in person.

Alas, poor Hugh has outlived his usefulness as a person, his magazine is a sad shadow of its former self, pornographic publications in general have gone the way of the dodo, and the poor 83-year-old man in satin is left to moulder away on reality TV being giggled at by his three increasingly idiotic and generic “Girls Next Door.” Evidently Hugh must be attended by twins, this time Karissa and Kristina (19), who admit they basically have exactly the same personality and do every single thing together, and a lonely-born, this time Crystal (23), who insists ad nauseum that she’s not “the next Holly,” whoever that is. All this is not as gross (and having sex with your sister and an 83-year-old man is really, really gross, don’t get me wrong) as the simple fact that Marge Simpson is going to be on the cover and naked inside the next issue of Playboy. Matt Groening, what is wrong with you, and more importantly, what is wrong with the kind of people who want to see poor, sweet Marge defiled on the pages of a sad, obsolete soft-core rag? Yucky on so many levels.

This is probably a bit obtuse, but for some reason I have always been a bit obsessed with Vancouver’s own Rachel Marsden. Now she’s managed to make Olympic headlines with her insane obnoxiousness again. In case you couldn’t care less, it started ways back when she accused a Simon Fraser University swim coach of stalking her and got him fired amid an enormous feminist and human rights kerfuffle, while all the time it was her stalking him. Then she was charged with criminal harassment of a Vancouver radio personality and a few other folks and then somehow ended up dating Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, and starring on right-wing Fox late night TV. No, I have no clue how! The Tyee has an excellent biography of Canada’s own Ann Coulter here.

In any case, she’s now spouting off  on her UK Telegraph blog about how awful Vancouver is for recognizing First Nation heritage in the symbology of the games. She describes our city as “pretty third-worldish until the English, French, and various other Europeans arrived and started planning and building infrastructure and government, and teaching the natives discipline, order, and capitalism,” and wonders to herself, “So how are the Vancouver 2010 Olympics paying tribute to these increasingly marginalized European immigrants and their defining contributions to Canada? By ignoring them completely, it seems.” This woman just keeps on improving, doesn’t she? Next up: Rachel Marsden, Prime Minister of Canada (except those lame territories filled with lazy Indians).

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Formerly fat fashionable fan-holder Karl Lagerfeld fights back against those who would push for more body-diversity on the runways. Says Karl, “No one wants to see curvy women. You’ve got fat mothers with their bags of chips sitting in front of the television and saying that thin models are ugly.” Since the man has admitted to being pretty much asexual, this should bother no one, he has no clue what he is talking about. Still, in the fallout of this meaningless drivel, it will be fun to watch all the parties on both sides go ballistic snarking on skinnies or sniping about fatties for pages upon pages. The winner? Dear, disgusting old Karl, reminding people that he’s still alive making useless expensive stuff.

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Finally: good news! Two young, rich, legitimate hotties, Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy, have reportedly gotten back together. Not sure why this is such good news? It is adorable when young, entitled cuties live the good life, no? Soon enough they’ll be grizzled, cynical old crusties lining up for the plastic surgeon and the divorce lawyer, so let’s cut them some slack and wish them the best.

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