One-Hit Wonders: September 2009

apologies for being late with this month’s search terms, which now have countless variations of “i caught my wife/sister/mom fucking/screwing/sucking the dog.” that’s often the unintended consequence of posting these online: they multiply like rabbits, or maybe dogs in heat. as always, there are still a million variations of “milla jovovich nipples” and also quite a few “38DD,” but the best are below:

• adult nipple toucher


• does milla know grass trimmers in highland park? [ed note: no, just a great tree trimmer.


• mexican parents don’t know i have serious boyfriend


• essay about my big breasts, sexual


• apathy won’t attend parole hearing


• hives after ecstasy


• my buddy chucky poo the lil guy on campus


• does milla like tacos while on a hammock?


• taco drip in milla


• john 3:16 in different written language +jappiness


• sysiphus joke


• locked in their garage for 2 weeks until they came home from vacation and had to live on bags of dog food

Juice vs. the Killer Hand

Eat, Drive, See

not that anyone noticed, but i was on vacation the past two weeks — hence the lack of updates. Mo and i took a roadtrip that found us driving up, down and around the west coast, where we sampled great food, visited the best breweries and witnessed the many splendors that make the pacific coast so exquisite. we took scenic routes exclusively, with me driving the entire time. we went as far north as seattle, making frequent stops along the way in such places as santa cruz, san francisco, russian river, eureka and portland.

ultimately, portland was our destination, where we spent time visiting with my family and attending my cousin’s wedding. at the end of the two-week journey, the trip odometer clocked a total of 3,150 miles driven — and about as many bugs splattered across the windshield. in short, it was a fantastic vacation, amazing on every level, and i have many stories to share and pictures to post, which i will get to in the coming weeks.

now that i’m home again, of course it feels as though i never left and that those two weeks were just a hallucination. i’m trying to get it together and prepare for what will certainly be an arduous week of re-adjusting to post-vacation life. there is much to do, workwise and otherwise, a stack of unopened mail to rummage through and countless emails to read and reply to. i’m looking forward to exactly NONE of it, but i expect that a few nights’ sleep in my own bed will change my attitude.

i’m also hoping that i can keep perspective during the re-adjustment period and avoid the usual depression that accompanies such a return to reality. too many of my trips have been followed by an extended case of The Sads, which are full of pathetic lamentations of the “why can’t my life be a perpetual vacation” variety. this time, i’m going to take a cue from Billy Crystal’s character in City Slickers, who returns from his sabbatical saying, “i’m not going to give up on life. i’m just going to do it better. i’m going to do everything better.”

Dish-Interested: Searching for the Next Train Wreck

here's the latest entry for Dish-Interested (the name stays!), my celebrity gossip column that's published on Osmosis Online, which has a lot of other great articles you should also check out.

The goss hasn’t been the same lately. Truthfully, it hasn’t been the same for a long while. This goes beyond the standard summer slowdown and indicates a deeper, more troubling phenomenon plaguing the celebrity world. It hurts to even say it, but the truth is that celebrity gossip has gotten boring. It’s predictable and uninspired, overrun by wannabes and attention whores whose only goal is to be in the spotlight rather than shine in the spotlight.

This is a very important qualitative difference. It’s one thing to just whore yourself out to the media in every imaginable way (Heidi and Spencer, I’m looking at you). This is the way of the Octomom and the Gosselins, the otherwise common folks with no documented creative talent. Their goals are to be famous and make money by acting stupid in front of the cameras. Sure, this has some redeeming entertainment value and their contributions to the world of celebrity tomfoolery aren’t wholly unappreciated. But they will never have a best-selling album or blockbuster movie, relegated instead to the F-list with their reality TV brethren and known only for their multiple children and disturbing hairstyles.

To shine in the spotlight is a whole other dimension reserved for real stars who know how to create a real stir. I haven’t seen this dimension since spring 2007 when Britney was keeping the gossip interesting with her months-long personal meltdown. Every day, she gave us a new scandal to gawk at — good scandals, too, that produced scintillating headlines and unforgettable photos to make our jaws drop in that “can you believe this” way?

Shaving her head, going commando to clubs, the fake British accent, the custody hearings with KFed (a.k.a K-OVERfed — you seen that guy lately?), the fallout with her mother, the umbrella incident, the dubious relationships with the paparazzi — the girl put on a show far more interesting than anything requiring her to be on stage.

Then her selfish father had to insert himself into her life and ruin everything by taking guardianship of our shining starlet, putting her back on the good meds and pushing her back into the studio. And we all know what happened next: Britney cleaned up her act, put on underwear and made a new album. And where is she now? On tour making scads of money. BORING!!

The summer of Britney’s meltdown also saw Lindsay Lohan making some waves of her own with headlines about her anorexia and drug use, her crazy stage mother and creepy ex-con father, that awesome car chase with her assistant that resulted in a DUI arrest and, of course, the classic photo of her looking totally wasted, with mouth ajar and lips purple, in the front seat of a car.

Then she went to rehab, got semi-sober, became a lesbian and probably got a cat. Then the stage lights went dim and the yawning began. She did offer a few goodbye shows by having some very public spats with her now ex-girlfriend, but what have you heard about Linds lately? NOTHING!

Wait, it gets better. The same summer of the Britney-Lindsay crazy train, Paris Hilton was going to jail for a DUI arrest. Remember that fiasco? How she was released early until the Great American Hero who was her judge ordered her back to the slammer, accompanied by a cavalcade of cops and photographers, one of whom captured that awesome photo of her crying her privileged blue eyes out in the back of a cop car while calling for her mommy.

Man, those were great days, a veritable Renaissance for celebrity gossip when each new day brought the promise of some good shit to read and wild photos to look at. But nowadays, when was the last time you read a headline about Paris Hilton?

COME ON, celebrities!! Forget those media training classes and go make some trouble, if for no other reason than to sell albums and movie tickets. Give us some scandals and meltdowns, some drama and racy photos. I’m tired of being entertained by ordinary people having multiple births, which is more sad than amusing when confronted with the fact that actual children’s futures are being compromised. That’s too heavy.

We need a big A-list shakeup, like Brangelina breaking up, or Jennifer Aniston getting married or knocked up. We need photos of Marc Anthony cheating on J.Lo; we need Oprah to come out. We need to pass the train-wreck torch to the next set of stars or starlets so they can make a splash in a big, above-the-fold way.

Preferably without underwear on.

Milla Goldenberg is an L.A.-based writer and editor. Visit her blog @ MillaTimes.com, or send her hate mail @ MillaGoldenberg@aol.com.

The 'Rents

the ridiculously good-looking couple above, who also happen to be my parents, celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary recently, which you would never guess by looking at their spry little selves. but in the old world, getting married at 19, like my mom did, was just how things went.

they met at a mutual friend’s wedding, where sparks flew after they locked eyes and continued to ignite once they got to talking. my mom even confesses to a little kissing action at this wedding — “but that’s all that happened, because this was a different time and we were not as permissive as your generation, milla.”

when they returned to their respective ukrainian towns, a long-distance relationship punctuated by love letters followed, as did a few meet-the-family visits. a mere nine months later they were married — still virtual strangers by their own admission — but married nonetheless and dedicated to building a life together.

they say that this dedication alone carried them through the last 40 years, many of which were lousy. just give my dad two shots of vodka and he’ll be happy to tell you about the first 10 years of his marriage, which were spent living with his in-laws in a dingy communist housing project in Lvov.

then came the big move to america when i was 3, my sister 9. more struggles followed. at first, we used food stamps to eat and watched sesame street to learn english. my dad drove a cab while my mom went to night school. i have very few memories of this time but i remember that we watched The Jazz Singer on betamax A LOT.

i also remember the day, just months after buying their first home, that both my parents lost their jobs. i must have been 6 or 7. mom served us dinner that night, and i remember sitting across the table and watching my dad eat silently as tears slid off his face and into his borscht. he never once looked up. mom stood behind him with her hands on his shoulders the entire time.

forty years later, they’re still standing by each other. through all the birthdays and the first days of school, the graduations and vacations, the arguments and illnesses in the family, the deaths of their parents and births of their grandchildren. forty years of personal and professional triumphs and tragedies. good times and bad, sickness and health, richer and poorer, they stuck it out because they said they would and, along the way, managed to stay in love and serve as an inspiration to everyone lucky enough to know them — me especially.

happy 40th anniversary, mom and dad.