dougv.com | The Web home of Doug Vanderweide

I crawl around on YouTube two or three times a month, generally watching music videos of songs I’m thinking about buying on iTunes.

Thanks to the “related videos” section on YouTube, I tend to wander off my intended path. Tonight, for example, I started at Jeff Buckley’s Sin-e performance and wound up, about two hours later, at Junior Senior.

As I checked out the video for “Move Your Feet,” I couldn’t help but notice this related video:

Which leads not to a discussion about teen-aged girls posting ill-advised YouTube videos without their parents’ knowledge — that ship has long since sailed, regardless of all the TV news stories during every sweeps week about “protecting your kids online” — but rather to a different question altogether:

What in the world would compel this girl, or anyone for that matter, to post a video of herself spazzing out to what has to be one of the gayest disco tunes ever recorded?

It is this phenomenon — the varying types of YouTube attention whore* — that I wish to examine.

Continue reading ‘A Non-Scientific Examination Of The YouTube Attention Whore Spectrum’ »

In my never-ending quest to find even the flimsiest excuse to post pictures of hot women in this blog, here’s the latest news from Mandy Moore, who’s pimping her film, “License To Wed“:

NEW YORK (AP) - Mandy Moore, the angel-faced actress and sometime singer, interrupted her recent concert in Manhattan to grumble for a moment about the men who did her wrong.

“You know, guys suck,” she proclaimed, her sweet facial expression diluting any post-breakup bitterness. “I don’t want to make a sweeping generalization, but some guys suck! And I’ve come across a few.”

That might well be because pigs like me can’t help but noticing first, and happily, that Moore doesn’t like wearing bras, and second, and even more happily, that she doesn’t need to.

Or maybe it’s the deluge of male critics who cannot find enough bad things to say about “License To Wed.”

In fact, the piling-on is so intense and creative, it’s hard to choose which is the best slight: “The sort of lobotomized, condescendingly lazy movie that leaves you resentful of Hollywood” is pretty brutal; “bad from top to bottom, front to back, and start to finish” is both repetitive and succinct, which is impressive; “the attempts at humor are hideous. They get hideouser” actually makes up words to plumb how awful it is, which should tell you something.

But producing good work — or even making wise choices when it comes to men — is hardly the measure of whether a celebrity female is worthy of attention; witness Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson or Denise Richards.

Continue reading ‘Mandy Moore May Hate Men, But We Still Like Her … Breasts’ »

Two news items got me to thinking about rich man’s justice: The federal takeover of the Michael Vick dogfighting investigation, and Paris Hilton’s probably short-lived release from jail.

I have no idea what Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca was thinking in allowing Hilton’s transfer to house arrest — for “medical reasons,” which the entertainment sites were saying was either a severe rash or a near-breakdown — after she spent only three days in jail.

And I have no idea what Virginia Commonwealth Attorney Gerald G. Poindexter was thinking in criticizing the federal government’s takeover of the Vick investigation, when he’s the one who prevented a search warrant taken out by local authorities from being executed.

What I do know is it’s nice to see that a little public backlash against otherwise popular celebrities knock some of the rust off the wheels of justice.

Continue reading ‘Thankfully, Celebrity Eventually Backfires’ »

Recently seen and reported at the Cannes Film Festival:

Photographers at the Cannes Film Festival booed Pamela Anderson after she showed up late for a photo session Friday and only stuck around to pose for a few minutes.

Last things first. Yes, Dean Hamilton, those plastic boobies are absurdly huge. And yes, when Pamela speaks, you generally need to stare at her chest to take your mind off the drivel emanating from her pie hole. Such as this gem:

Earlier in the day, she had complained to AP Television News about the paparazzi, saying that Cannes was “a frenzy, it’s crazy, it’s silly.

“Even watching it on television this morning, seeing these people, it’s like the actors are prodded through like cattle, ‘turn this way, turn that way.’”

Except, as Pam well knows, the cows get bolts shot through their heads at the end of the line. She gets a gift bag worth more than the average person’s annual salary in exchange for five minutes, looking her best, posing for the same people who camp out a mile away from her home with telephoto lenses, taking unflattering shots of her aging face and body.

Then again, anyone who would consider Kid Rock a trade-up from Tommy Lee clearly has problems with making associations.

Continue reading ‘Yeah, We All Have That Problem When Pamela Anderson Speaks’ »

F1ava-f1av recently took umbrage with my harangue against fat, ugly cheerleader wannabes:

Auditions or try-outs are nothing complicated. They are some type of filter that reduces X number of applicants to fill Y number of positions. Having said that, as long as she filled the basic requirements to audition, I dont see any issues with her going for it.

The problem is that she has no business being there and cannot possibly win. She could be reading a book instead. Or working out in a gym. Or back on the couch, eating doughnuts. Any of those would be more productive than wasting her time, and the time of people who are seriously attempting to fill positions, at this audition.

The fact that it’s an open call shouldn’t mean the grossly unqualified should feel free to humiliate themselves and impede the process for people who actually are prepared and qualified. Doing that is selfish.

The Broncos didn’t set the standards that let that cow try out by thinking, “Let’s hope some morbidly obese, hideous women that we wouldn’t hire on a dare show up.” They opened the rules up to that point hoping that women who actually have a shot at the squad, but who might not think themselves attractive or talented enough, would apply.

Continue reading ‘You Can Do Most Anything, But You Have To Actually Work For It’ »