It's the week after Easter, and the Hater podcast has some great ideas for storing your Easter decorations so they'll be bright and Easter-y when you "resurrect" them next year.  Well, it's really just one great idea: take all of your Easter decorations, throw them in the garbage, and then listen to Amelie Gillette and Videogum's Gabe Delahaye as they discuss Mr. Mariah Carey, Dame Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicholas "I'm exactly like Hemingway" Sparks, and more.

Hatecast #39: Gwyneth Paltrow Should Be Sent To The Tower

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From PR Newswire:

Oprah Winfrey, chairman of OWN: THE OPRAH WINFREY NETWORK, today announces new original programming for the channel's January 1, 2011 launch to members of the advertising and media communities at New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center.  Five new series are joining the 10 previously announced, for a total of 15 original series coming to OWN.

 "My vision for OWN is to create a network that inspires our viewers and makes them want to be who they are on their best day," said Ms. Winfrey.

And obviously the best days are spent sitting around watching hour after hour of OWN, right Oprah? Of course right. OWN: Because Oprah owns the entire concept of inspiration.

Still, OWN is much subtler than Oprah's original names for her network: MINE ALL MINE: Oprah TV, and GOD: The Oprah Winfrey Network.

So how will OWN totally own its viewers?

"We want to provide our audience with the tools to awaken, become more alive, and connect to what really matters to them in a fun, engaging, and entertaining way," said Christina Norman, chief executive officer, OWN.

You see the description on the back of a bottle of Neutrogena Morning Burst ...

Holding a press conference to publicly apologize for your sex life is gross for several reasons—it's wildly insincere; it implies that the public is part of your sex life; it encourages Dr. Drew to "analyze" the apology on CNN; etc.—but in the case of Tiger Woods it's also completely unnecessary. I don't want an apology from Tiger Woods for his sex life. I don't want to be involved in any way in Tiger Woods' sex life. 

But after seeing this new Nike commercial, in which the voice of Tiger Woods' dead father admonishes the uber-repentant duh-face of his son, I do want an apology from Tiger Woods, Nike, the cameraman, the sound guy, the "creatives," and everyone else involved in making this repulsive attempt to sell swooshes. 

Nike Ad Exec #1: We've got to find a way to use this whole Tiger cheating on his wife with dozens of women thing to our advantage. He's already apologized, but I think it's important that people think he's really, really sorry. You know, for the Nike brand.

Nike Ad Exec #2: Right. Nobody wants to buy golf polos from a guy who ...

Obviously, the first rule of mind control is don't talk about mind control—especially with the human shells that house the minds you're attempting to control. The second rule of mind control is don't brag to news outlets about how great you are at mind control. No one told NBC about these rules, though, which is why they boasted to the Wall St. Journal about their hilarious "behavior placement" scheme:

The tactic—General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal calls it "behavior placement"—is designed to sway viewers to adopt actions they see modeled in their favorite shows. And it helps sell ads to marketers who want to associate their brands with a feel-good, socially aware show.

Unlike with product placement, which can seem jarring to savvy viewers, the goal is that viewers won't really notice that Tina Fey is tossing a plastic bottle into the recycle bin, or that a minor character on "Law and Order: SVU" has switched to energy-saving light bulbs. "People don't want to be hit over the head with it," says NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker. "Putting it in programing is what makes it resonate with viewers."

While I applaud ...

Movie acting, on a very basic level, is advanced make-believe. The good movie actors can temporarily make you forget that you're just watching a group of skilled pretenders playing dress-up with bad wigs on a grand scale. The bad movie actors never let you forget that they're acting.

Then there's Angelina Jolie in the trailer for Salt who seems like she's desperately trying to convince you that she's just Angelina Jolie pretending to be a Russian spy by playing dress up in a series of bad wigs. The title of the movie should have been Make-Believe With Angelina Jolie:      

Considering that Angelina Jolie looks as if she is being crushed by the weight of that backpack, she's not really convincing as an accused Russian spy who can hoist a man from a motorcycle with one arm (especially since her arm happens to be the width of a carrot stick). But Angelina Jolie would be believable in several roles, namely:

--Angelina Jolie

--A model that looks like Angelina Jolie

--The nemesis in a Jennifer Aniston movie

--A black widow spider (voice-over)

--The personification of smoke

--A 1930s version of Angelina Jolie who just wants HER ...

Recently, Howard Stern and Jamie Foxx, two titans of radio (which is a thing that your grandparents used to watch instead of television, or, if you're a proud TV shunner, it's the thing that houses the NPR) have been engaging in zoo crew rumbles, which are the worst kind of rumbles. They're basically just a cacophony of wacky noises, and someone named "Crazy Connie" giggling, and what sounds like a roomful of about 20 people talking at once. No one wins. Everyone with ears loses.

As far as I can tell, what happened was this: because he is an adult, Howard Stern implied that Jamie Foxx was gay. And, because he is also an adult, Jamie Foxx took great umbrage with this implication. Normally, those of us on Earth wouldn't hear about Jamie Foxx vs. Howard Stern because this particular zoo crew rumble, like most zoo crew rumbles these days, took place far, far away from human ears on satellites floating in space. But in his completely and utterly unnecessary denial of Howard Stern's gay joke, Jamie Foxx said something so astronomically absurd that his comment shot back through the atmosphere and landed here on ...

A warning for people who own Crocs: Those children's sand pails masquerading as footwear love you. Too much. They're lying in wait in the back of your closet listening for the familiar click of your key in the lock so they can run out and attack your feet with their tiny hands and their unrelenting, slobbery kisses. You can try to fight, try to kick them off. But those tiny hands are surprisingly strong, and the rubber sieves that serve as their brains hold only one thought, "FEET!", and no member of the growing army of living Crocs will take no for an answer.   

Great job, Crocs. As if Croslite, the grubby, grabby sentient piece of footwear who also happens to be a foot-fetishist, wasn't creepy enough in still photos.

Where will you be when the Croc d' Etat happens and millions of previously immobile rubber clogs come to life and head straight toward any and all human feet?

One thing's for sure: Mario Batali is probably very, very nervous. It's no wonder he never takes off those bright orange Crocs. He knows that if he relaxes and slips off his Crocs, even for a ...

You might remember We as the network that used to run promos featuring just the "We" part of Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" on loop. You may also remember We as the as the network that is seemingly always airing The Truth About Cats & Dogs (somebody has to, right?). Basically, We feels like something you would only watch if you were in the hospital and sick of staring at the walls. 

So what better place for a reality show about a bunch of "wild" geriatrics living in a retirement community than a network perfectly tailored for hospital viewing?

Behold WE's Sunset Daze:

(via LA Times)

Old people skydiving! Old people hugging! Old people shooting clay pigeons for an interminable amount of time! Old people rehearsing a play! Congratulations, We. You've somehow made a reality show about retirement that is infinitely more boring than retirement itself. Hopefully there's a scene where Gail "The Actress" talks about how hard it is to find a good parking spot at the Whole Foods. Retired People Problems, you know?

Making a reality show version of a scripted TV show is, sadly, nothing new: Laguna Beach was the "real" The O.C ...

On this week's Day After April Fool's Day edition of the Hater podcast, Amelie Gillette and friend of The Onion Caroline Creaghead discuss Kelsey Grammer's social networking site; "kitchenistas"; Demi Moore's co-opting of Prince-speak; Madonna's daughter's clothing line, and a few more terrible things that in a just world would be pranks.

Hatecast #38: The -istas Must Be Stopped

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To date there have been 4,035* Shrek films and TV specials. (*estimated) After so many, you might think that the creators of Shrek would eventually return to that well to find a small pile of crumbling bricks and swirling dust, but no. Shrek, you see, is eternal. He exists now, then, and always. He is the constant, glimmering, green blob wobbling at the core of everything. I am Shrek. You are Shrek. The world is Shrek—and Shrek is the world.

The latest Shrek film, Shrek Forever After is the first film to really delve into this omnipresent entity known as Shrek, and how through him we are all connected. In other words: Shrek is the nexus of the universe. When we ask, "What just happened?" what we mean is "What the Shrek just happened?"

Either that or "Shrek" here should be read as "fuck." Edgy!

Edgy! And I think we all know who to blame for the terrible, groan-inducing, edg-ification of kids movies: Noted coprophagia enthusiasts, Alvin and the Chipmunks.

The Hills is a pretty plastic hummingbird that for years MTV producers have been tossing back and forth through the air all while pointing at it and shouting, "Look! It's flying!" But the bird wasn't really flying. Nothing was really happening. The show just gave the illusion of movement, the illusion of life. We all knew that. 

Now, after seven seasons, the MTV producers have grown tired of playing with the pretty plastic hummingbird, so they've thrown it, hard, into a sliding glass door. The hummingbird, being a stupid hunk of plastic, never saw it coming. It broke its little hummingbird head upon impact—which would be sad, you know, if it had ever been alive in the first place.

In other words, here's the trailer for the final season of The Hills:

Well, there you have it. The show about polished air and subtitled fights in nightmare clubs is over. And now we know that when Heidi Montag cries her new vinyl face crinkles in such a way that it perfectly resembles Chucky's kill face. 

There probably isn't a good way to sell Crocs, the brightly colored children's sand pails masquerading as shoes, because there's nothing appealing about Crocs. If the most enticing selling point of an article of clothing is that it's "odor-resistant," it probably shouldn't be an article of clothing. "Crocs: They're ugly, but at least they don't smell"? That's not exactly a persuasive slogan. Neither is:  "Crocs: Because You Just Don't Care Anymore," or "Crocs: Shoes So Aggressively Ugly No One Will Notice Your Constant Tears," or "Crocs: Because You Want Everyone To Think You Have A Garden." 

Still, any of those campaigns would be a better idea than Croslite, the neon-green, sentient Croc who molests unwilling feet:

(via Racked)

Facts about Croslite:

--He has a mouth, eyes, and grubby little hands

--He is the color of snot from someone with a sinus infection

--He is apparently the Buffalo Bill of the shoe world because he is a Croc wearing Crocs that are made from the skin of other Crocs

--He wants your feet.

Obviously, when the inevitable Mucinex mucus family sitcom (Meet The Boogers!) happens, Croslite will make a great creepy next ...

For years now Teri Hatcher has been standing in the middle of a field, her arms outstretched in T formation, her button eyes watching Gwyneth Paltrow's success as an impractical advice website impresario, and Teri Hatcher's straw head has been seething with jealousy. "Why can't I have a useless advice newsletter or an insipid website for women? Is it just because I'm a scarecrow?" Teri Hatcher would think, because Teri Hatcher is a scarecrow. "I'm on Deseperate Housewives, dammit. I have so many anecdotes that are applicable to women everywhere."

One day, Teri Hatcher relayed her lady-advice website ambition to a field hand, who then relayed it to the farmer, who then contacted Disney, and now Teri Hatcher's dream of making the next Goop has been realized. 

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Teri Hatcher has teamed with Disney to launch a Web site for chicks.

The "Desperate Housewives" star has a tease of her GetHatched.com site set to begin Monday, but it launches in earnest in the spring.

Nicknamed "a chick's guide to life," the site is produced by Disney Family.com, with creative and editorial insight from Hatcher and a small team ...

Battlefield Earth is a movie about aliens with adenoid problems. Or something. No one's really sure. The critical consensus on the movie seems to be, "This movie is an incoherent pile of inter-galactic nasal tubes." Apparently even the guy who wrote Battlefield Earth, a screenwriter named JD Shapiro, agrees that it's a terrible, terrible movie. He appeared in person during this year's Razzie Awards to accept Battlefield Earth's "Worst Movie Of The Decade" trophy, and this weekend he penned an apology for writing it. Unfortunately, JD Shapiro's apology for Battlefield Earth is somehow worse than Battlefield Earth. 

From The NY Post:

It wasn't as I intended -- promise. No one sets out to make a train wreck. Actually, comparing it to a train wreck isn't really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.

It started, as so many of my choices do, with my Willy Wonker.

It was 1994, and I had read an article in Premiere magazine saying that the Celebrity Center, the Scientology epicenter in Los Angeles, was a great place to meet women.

Willy convinced me to go check it out.

Thank you, JD Shapiro. The disaster ...

Marmaduke is, obviously, a movie for children—children who apparently will only go see a talking-dog movie if the dogs are voiced by big-name actors like Kiefer Sutherland and Owen Wilson, and also by Fergie. Kids love Fergie. She taught them how to spell "glamorous."

But what will Marmaduke teach your children?  What impressions will it leave on their adorable, silly-putty brains? After all, live-action talking dog and/or baby films are some of the most important educators of our children, and their lessons last a lifetime. (As a child, Look Who's Talking taught me what artificial insemination was, the defining characteristic of a Russ Meyer movie, and that all male babies think in Bruce Willis's voice.) So what lessons does Marmaduke have to impart to our children?  The trailer below holds a few clues:

Marmaduke will teach kids:

--Dogs!

--What bad CGI looks like

--Important high-school movie clichés

--How dogs kiss

--that Chihuahuas are hilariously Mexican

--The song "California Love"

--What it looks like when William H. Macy has the dignity knocked out of him. Twice.

--That all comedies must end with the hideous spectacle of a group line dance