The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Watch the Flight of the Conchords Season Two premiere right here and right now! Plus, topless women shill washing machines while American Gladiators rub you down.
Freberg, Donavan, born April 6, 1971, Los Angeles: actor; best-known as spokesmodel for Encyclopedia Britannica; wore glasses, pageboy hair, and bad '80s red-button-down; said things like "I always wondered where my mandibula was!"; has been dubbed "Annoying Encyclopedia Britannica Boy"; son of satirist Stan Freberg; voice-actor for Peanuts, The Littles, and The Weird Al Show; maintains weird blog; online bio says, "I am an alchemist of the surreal stumbling through the dark. . . an artist, healer, actor, ad man, mad man, puppeteer, photographer, filmmaker, writer, painter, pirate, poet, sit-down comedian, alternapornographer, vintage futurist, rule-breaker and recovering hypochondriac/narcissist who is looking for his sixteenth minute of fame"; loves boobies; still annoying.
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4. Bee Girl
Blind Melon was a mid-level band in a crowded genre but, thanks to a bespectacled fat girl in a bee costume, they ascended the ranks of stardom. In 1993, ten-year-old Heather DeLoach tapped her way into the hearts of grungeheads as the apian leotard- and tutu-clad star of Blind Melon's "No Rain" video. A pitch-perfect emblem of the era's nerds-win ethos, DeLoach sent the band into multi-platinum terrain. (Sadly, she couldn't save their dud of a follow-up album.) DeLoach went on to cameo in Weird Al Yankovic's "Bedrock Anthem" video and took bit parts in assorted films — I'll Do Anything, Camp Nowhere, A Little Princess and Beautician and the Beast, to name a few. For the most part, though, the, er, buzz, has quieted down. "I'm the one and only Bee Girl," DeLoach boasted to People magazine in 1993, presumably unaware how right she would be.
3. Miss Cleo
Miss Cleo — aka Ree Perris, Youree Cleomili, Youree Dell Harris, Youree Perris, Rae Dell Harris, Cleomili Perris Youree and Cleomili Harris — was the $4.99-a-minute telepsychic and shaman who spoke to couch-bound insomniacs in a lilting Jamaican accent ("Caaahl m'naaaow") that she apparently picked up in her native Los Angeles. Cleo was the face of the Spirit Pyschic Network (later the Psychic Readers Network), a lucrative business operated out of South Florida that, according to one investigation, employed a number of script-reading associates whose main task was keeping the mark on the line as long as possible. The network was brought low by a volley of lawsuits — the FTC charged the company's owners with deceptive advertising, billing and collection practices — and Cleo (real name: Youree Dell Harris) went into private shamanistic practice. She also did a few used-car commercials, and in 2006 she came out as a lesbian and launched a campaign to raise awareness of domestic and physical abuse in the GLBT community. Not even Miss Cleo her ownself could've seen that coming.
2. "I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up" Lady
Who fell and couldn't get up? Was it Dot McHugh, the former Ziegfield Follies dancer who died in 1995? Was it Edith Fore, who at the end of her life was swindled out of $200,000 by a sleazebag lawyer? Or was it Bea Marcus, whose death of natural causes in 2000 got a write-up in Variety? Or, not to blow your mind, but was it all three? The story, as best we could tell, goes roughly as follows: It was McHugh, a Philly resident, who got $60 to first fall off a chair for a Camden medical-alarm company called LifeCall America and deliver the immortal line, "I've fallen and I can't get up"; the commercial ran locally, but McHugh was reportedly such a pain in the ass that she wasn't invited to reprise her role when the spot went national. Enter Fore (a true Method actor, she drew from a real-life experience with LifeCall) and Marcus. Wikipedia surmises the two may have played "Mrs. Fletcher" in different markets. But why? Perhaps there's geographical variance among clumsy old biddies? Who knows? The truth is somewhere out there, lying on the ground, needing desperately for someone to help it up.
1. Lorena Bobbitt
Lorena Bobbitt, you'll recall, was the wronged Manassas wife who, fed up with her no-good, womanizing sot of a husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, took an eight-inch blade to his penis, leaving police to recover its shriveled, bloodied mass in a nearby field. Doctors reattached it after a grueling 9.5-hour operation, and Lorena, who had alleged years of verbal, sexual and physical abuse, pleaded not guilty to "malicious wounding" due to temporary insanity — and won. The incident occasioned two significant cultural milestones: one, a frank discussion about domestic violence. (To hear some feminists tell it, Lorena Bobbitt did more for the women's movement in one stroke of a kitchen knife than Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem combined.) Two, and more lastingly: a prolonged making of jokes. So many jokes! (Q: What were John Bobbitt's first words after the operation? A: Lorena, that's not what I meant by "trial separation.") John Bobbitt went on to do the sort of things you'd expect from a guy who had his penis chopped off: a couple starring roles in porn films; an ill-fated band called "The Severed Parts"; numerous trips to jail for, among other things, domestic violence. A man who got famous for being dickless extended his renown by being publicly brainless. And Lorena? She kept her head down, went back to her maiden name (Gallo), and got herself pinched in 1997 for punching her mother as they watched television, which is as concise a summation of fin-de-siecle America as you'll find. Word is, she now makes her living in Virginia cutting a very different part of the human body: hair.n°
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
