It’s been a week filled with comeback stories, miraculous landings, and merciful endings, and as the weekend approaches we’ve entered that final countdown toward a dawning of an era of smug good feelings. Yes, as the maestro William Joel once opined, we’re truly floating on a river of dreams—but chances are you’ve been too enraptured by our nation’s thrilling new voyage to notice that we’re still floating in the same stagnant waters infested with bottom-feeders, threatened at every turn by economic whirlpools and, um, tragic tributaries flowing into brooks babbling with nonsense. Grab hold of the oars and let’s paddle up the never-ending shit creek that is Friday Buzzkills. Don’t forget your towel.
– Strange as it sounds, not everyone got the message that we’re supposed to be all about brotherhood and bear hugs these days: Street crime still rages on, and not even increasingly irrelevant hip-hop stars are safe, as evidenced by this week’s assault and robbery on Bone Thugs-N-Harmony syllable sodomizer Bizzy Bone. The rapper with one of the saddest backgrounds in music—a history that includes being abducted and sexually abused as a child, plus a self-imposed stint of sleeping in bus stations in a quest to “find himself”—was recently jumped in L.A. by several men who saw him at the crossroads, then brutally beat and choked him before stealing his money and jewelry (most likely leaving him lonely). The sad, ironic twist in all this is that the lead suspect in the investigation is a member of the anti-gang intervention program Unity One, which was designed to reduce inner-city violence. Guess he was off the clock. Seriously, we can’t wait until Obama’s inauguration speech, when our new President finally beams a ray of pure love from his heart, Care Bear-style, and everybody’s guns and knives turn into periwinkles and marshmallows. Won’t that be nice?
– Unfortunately, Obama’s redemption song will come far too late to save his diehard fan Boy George, who made headlines last year both for reviving his singing career with the Obama-inspired single “Yes We Can” and for wrongly imprisoning Norwegian male prostitute Audun Carlsen. (For some reason, the latter story got far more play.) This week, George arrived in court sporting a massive head tattoo, presumably already prepared for the inevitable shower room showdowns he’ll have during his just handed-down 15-month jail sentence, a prison term that far exceeds the norm for the old “handcuffing a guy to a wall because you think he hacked into your computer after a cocaine-fueled photo shoot, then beating him with a chain as he flees naked into the street” oopsy that we all find ourselves in from time to time. Actually, we’re not sure if this counts as sad news or not—considering George clearly has no problem with either restraints or a little roughhousing, this might be just another long, lost weekend for him—but it was certainly a watershed moment for painfully obvious puns, as seemingly no one could resist the oh-so-clever allusions to the handful of Culture Club songs that everyone remembers: CNN went with the classic “Karma caught up with Boy George” lede, while apparently even the prosecuting attorney (“accidentally”) asked the jury of George’s assault on Carlsen, “Did he really have to hurt him?” Well played, everyone. Of course, we might have gone with “Dangerous Man, “ Crime Time, “Mistake No. 3,” or even “White Boys Can’t Control It,” but that would probably reveal too much about our record collections.
– While the length of the sentence is a tad harsh, we’ve really become so inured to the innate moral rot of fallen ’80s stars that not even Boy George brandishing a box of dildos is enough to shock us. Similarly, we were hardly surprised to learn this week that velvet-robed raisin Hugh Hefner is old and tired and not as interested in sex as he used to be. This stunning revelation came courtesy of Girl Next Door defector Kendra Wilkinson, who used a recent Us Weekly interview to put the cold kibosh on all of those hot men-of-advanced-age-a-trois fantasies you’ve been warming yourself with by admitting that boyfriend/benefactor Hugh Hefner barely had the energy to stay upright, let alone fuel her Electra complex with any actual icky intercourse. No doubt between fits of snorts and giggles, Wilkinson brayed:
“I had to have sex every now and then, so I had to kind of sneak it. Besides the nights we went out, I only saw Hef, like, once a day walking through the halls to his office. There were never solo dates. The most we kind of say to each other is, 'I love you,' 'Love you too,' 'I hope you have a good day,' 'Did you have a good day?'"… Bridget told me that she's been faithful all these years, and I was like, 'How the hell can you do that?' I had to have [sex] so I could feel my age, like a healthy human being."
Life at the Mansion was "way more strict than my life has ever been," according to Wilkinson. Staff members would keep track of when she, Marquardt and fellow girlfriend Holly Madison left and returned to the Mansion in a book, Wilkinson says – and Hefner would pour over it every morning, which made her "insane." Spending holidays away from the Mansion were also big no-nos, Wilkinson says, and the girlfriends received a $1,000 allowance once a week.