My Tortures are Multiplying

It's Saturday morning, my city looks like a discarded emphysema-flavored popsicle and it's been barely twelve hours since I had to look Jimbo Wales in his cold, hateful eyes. So, why am I here and noticeably not asleep like I ought to be? Because some spiteful, forgotten chthonic deity has deigned it necessary to curse me with another blog chronicling the dregs of pop culture.

The only mercy of this wretched assignment is that it isn't three times a week like my usual purgatory at Net Insanity. My time here at The Ticking Tabloid is less of a consistent, reliable torture and more like being a convict in a communist prison. At random intervals, whenever some celebrity does something exceptionally stupid or untoward, I will be assaulted by their offensive heartbeats and be forced to report every vapid detail of the event.

Speaking of vapid, is anyone up for some corporate pseudo-hippie revival fashion? You are? Really? Well, if you're going to San Francisco be sure to wear one of Mischa Barton's ridiculous headbands on your way to hurling yourself into Fisherman's Wharf. I'd advise you to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge but they recently installed a net.

That's right, folks and folkettes. If you feel like dropping a cool hundred on the most gaudy, distracting fashion accessory possible without making yourself a fire hazard, that girl from that show your 12-year-old cousin really liked back in 2004 is here to meet your needs. Never mind the fact that Barton herself can't wear one of her own headbands without looking like an ill-fed dog with gigantic floppy ears.

The only good thing to come from Mischa's stupid, stupid headbands are the product descriptions on the website. "Toss this on for your holiday party, or a night out with the girls or date. Get the glow!" Yes, get the glow indeed. Maybe I just run with a more judgmental crowd, but if there is a man who could stop himself from bursting into mean-spirited laughter upon seeing his date wearing one of these things, I have yet to meet him. I hope beyond hope that Barton herself wrote the copy for that website.

See, now my imagination has gotten out of control and I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I never want to see another celebrity try to start a spontaneous fad by slapping their name on a product nobody in their right mind would wear. But, on the other hand, I'm delighted by the image of Mischa Barton sitting in a gigantic Manhattan apartment personally hand-crafting each and every Stacy Lapidus headband in the desperate hope that it will make people love her.

All that being said, it all comes down to the three-point Bloid Bomb scale.

Immediate Laugh Factor: 7/10- It's not David Hasselhoff drunkenly eating off the floor, but the sight of anyone trying not to collapse into mortified tears while wearing one of these headbands is still pretty priceless.

Overt Ludicrousness: 5/10- It's stupid, sure, but when you haven't eaten anything since the balmy days of April it's hard to tell a good idea from a disaster.

Depth of Cultural Wound: 3/10- Unless she starts airing a constant rotation of awful commercials, Mischa Barton's little fashion outing will be fast forgotten. With luck, our great grandchildren won't even have to compensate for landfills choked with these headbands.

Total: 15/30- When the timer on this Bloid Bomb reached zero, it'd bust out a storefront and shatter some car windows. There might be a few casualties, depending on where everyone is standing.