Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? by Steve Lowe, Alan Mcarthur, Brendan Hay Page B

big or clever about pretending to swear. If you want to be big and clever, you need to call your shop Ass-Fucking Tit-Monkey’s Splooging Cockarama and Co. Now
that’s
swearing.
    FAX CHARGES
    In the Easiest Living Ever stakes, charging people for sending faxes has narrowly squeaked into second place behind being Stedman Graham, who has topped the poll every year since the late 1980s when he first went on a date with Oprah.
    At a dollar for the first sheet, followed by 50 cents for each subsequent sheet, a six-page fax sets you back $3.50. With the phone call to send the fax costing about 5 cents, that’s a markup of 7,000%.
    Your local copy shop or “fax center” Nazi would say that it’s not just the cost of the call; they also need the “infrastructure”—that “infrastructure” being a very shitty fax machine purchased in 1987.
    50 CENT
    In April 2005, Reebok launched a TV ad campaign showing 50 Cent sitting on a box in a burned-out warehouse, snarling at the camera and counting to nine while the screen turns slowly red and a crackly newscaster reminds us how “he’s been shot nine times.” Oddly, some thought the ad made getting shot look cooler than it often turns out to be.
    It’s certainly not his clever rhyme skills, so the fact that 50 Cent is now among the world’s biggest entertainment figures apparently derives almost entirely from having gotten himself shot up nine whole times—something he doesn’t like to talk about. Oh no, sorry. We were getting mixed up with the singer from Hoobastank. In fact 50 Cent loves talking about shooting and getting shot up; he’s regularly pictured wearing body armor, pointing massive guns at the camera lens wearing an expression saying
I’m gonna shoot you up.
He called one album
The Massacre;
he’s always starting beefs with other rappers about who is best at shooting and getting shot up. And so on.
    All his bullet wounds were actually attained in one incident, but his image rather portrays someone who has trouble visiting the local bodega without getting himself shot up: “Honey! I got shot up again . . . Oooweee, this one stings . . . got any Band-Aids left or did we run out after last week? Yowza!”
    Reebok responded to the complaints by claiming the 50 Cent ad campaign was a “positive and empowering celebration of his right of freedom of self-expression.” And not his “right of freedom” to get shot up.
    Of course, this is all null and void now that Kanye West beat Fiddy in first-week album sales. Before both stars’ new releases “dropped,” Mr. Cent swore that if his
Curtis
CD didn’t outsell Mr. West’s
Graduation,
he would never record another solo CD ever again. Shucks. Gone so soon. At least you’ll always have your gunshot wounds.
    FILM STARS
    Hollywood film stars on talk shows: You have to ask—would you let them near small children?
    Here’s Tom Cruise (see
Tom Cruise
): laughing much too hard, slapping his thighs, and hooting at stuff that’s not particularly funny. Who actually slaps their thighs when they hear something funny? Christ, now he’s rocking backward and forward . . .
    Oh, and here’s Kevin Spacey: talking and moving as though he’s been glazed, clearly having given the producers the brief that he will only appear as long as he can try to kill the audience to death by boring on about Bobby Darin instead of tackling any amusing anecdotes about his private life and pets.
    Oh fuck, here comes Paris Hilton for her brave, tear-filled performance on Letterman: Actually, Paris’s decision to appear on a chat show and not chat was at least fairly radical. She did depart from the whole everyone’s-loving-one-another’s-company form and become a whiny, crying victim instead. So well done, Paris. You big freak.
    FILM WARNINGS
    What’s a childhood without a few sleepless nights spent haunted by the memory of a grim celluloid bloodbath? Kids love it. Waking up in the middle of the night, sweating, feverishly recalling a