NOT-SO SUPER NOVAS

 I try to avoid news that makes me upset. That's why I try ticking to stuff that makes me feel better than whom I'm reading about. And that usually involves stupid show business figures or their fans. 

She was late because she had
to use a bicycle pump to blow
up the mouth.

Michael Fellowes and Jonathan Hadden are suing Madonna for her recent concert in Brooklyn. Not for lip-synching, but starting the show at 10:30 p.m., two hours later than it was supposed to. They were, in their words, "left stranded in the middle of the night" with limited public transportation and higher Uber fares. The disgruntled fans are looking for a class action suit for her previous late appearances on her current tour, despite Madonna having previously won similar suits.

So let's get this straight. Madonna makes it a habit of showing up two hours late -- on work nights! -- and yet these two fans bought overpriced tickets this time around, believing... that she'd make an exception for them? Please. Anybody who shells out good money to see this geriatric, 21st-century Mae West wannabe not only deserves what's coming to them, but anything else that makes them mad.

It's been a while since Alec Baldwin has appeared on my radar, but he recently made it twice in two weeks. First, in an effort to sell his Amagansett mansion that's been on the market for two years, he recently posted a video letting his fans know that he's knocked $10-million off the sale price; now it's only $19 mill. It was probably Baldwin's most watched screen appearance since 30 Rock.

Trading his big house for the Big House.

I wondered why he was so desperate to sink to an even lower level than the B-movie junk he's been turning out for years. But a week later came the news that he was being indicted by a New Mexico grand jury for involuntary manslaughter on that movie set killing a couple of years ago. 

Aha! Maybe Baldwin had the inside skinny that he was going to face the music, and realized that lawyers don't come cheap. Yet those lawyers are actually spinning the indictment as good news, telling reporters, "We look forward to our day in court." Oh, really? Like Baldwin prefers a manslaughter trial, possibly leading 18 months in the slammer, than being a free man? Yeah, I'm sure Baldwin is rubbing his tubby hands with glee. His lawyers are right up there with Trump's in trying to spin feces into gold.

How did he tell them apart? Or
maybe that was the point.

Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself by Crystal Harris is yet
another (likely) ghostwritten memoir by a former centerfold who found life as Mrs. Hugh Hefner to be "traumatic". The details are the same as the other books -- you can Google the details -- and I admit life in the mansion wasn't what I'd want for my daughter.

I wonder, however, why the then-26-year-old Harris married a guy 60 years older than her. Why did she, or the others, stick around? This was not a prison; they weren't chained in the dungeon video game room; they were free to leave at any time. In fact, they never had to live there to begin with. 

What was the lure? The idea of wild sex with a guy born when Calvin Freakin' Cooldige was president? Luxuriating in a household that hadn't been updated since the mid-1970s? Scraping mold off the bathroom wall? Or -- and this is just a wild guess -- marching to Hefner's office every Friday to get paid $1000 cash to put up with this lifestyle? Don't say they're callgirls, though -- they were requested in person to get paid for lousy sex.

Let's face it. These bunnies weren't good looking enough to be regular models or smart enough to be cashiers, yet wanted the good life anyway. By willingly putting up with Pac-Man machines, old movies on Friday nights, and group sex involving a man nearly a century old -- who used so much Viagra he went deaf in one ear -- they cheapen the lives of real wives and girlfriends who have no way out of bad relationships, and often wind up dead at the hands of psychos. When Crystal Harris asks herself, "How did I end up there?", the answer is, You found it preferable to marrying an ordinary but dependable guy and living in a two-bedroom house. And who's not going half-deaf any time soon, either.

Hey, did you read the Oscar nominations? No matter, they're pointless to anyone outside the industry. Of course, not everyone got the Academy's laurel and hearty handshake. In the old days, such a thing was referred to Way it goes. But now, your favorite actor or movie not getting the nod is now called a "snub".  Like Greta Gerwig snubbed for Director. Leonardo DiCaprio snubbed for Supporting Actor.  Margot Robbie snubbed for Actress. Origins snubbed for Best Movie.

Not enough to go around.

Snubbed? How about, maybe, perhaps, the Academy voters didn't think any of them deserved it? OK, so fans did. They're disappointed -- but why is their happiness dependent on multi-millionaires getting another trophy? The same people who groan about how pointless the Oscars are suddenly riled up when their favorites aren't in the running. 

You know what's better than an Oscar? Directing and producing the highest-grossing Warner Brothers movie in its 100-year existence, as Gerwig and Robbie respectively did for Barbie. Gold-plated awards mean nothing compared to green cash flowing to the box office. Gerwig and Robbie are going to do just fine, as will DiCaprio and everyone else who made hit movies. We should be so snubbed.

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