Courtney Enlow

In the past week, we lost a feather-follicled angel, the second banana to end all second bananas, the effing King and the effing King of getting your clothes as white as can be. I think I speak for everyone when I say, “What the fucking fuck is going on?”

And that’s just in the last week. In addition to Michael Jackson, Ed McTheMan, Farrah Fawcett and Billy Mays, we’ve also lost Bea Arthur, Natasha Richardson, David Carradine, Bea Arthur, Jay Bennett of Wilco, Dom Deluise, John Updike, Ricardo Montalban, Bea Arthur, Ray Dennis Steckler (a loss for bad movie lovers), the last living voyager upon the Titanic, Danny Gans and Bea Arthur. Mostly Bea Arthur, really. You don’t even know the heart attack I had when I saw a Tim Curry having died April 24th, though luckily it was a different Tim Curry. Well, not luckily for that Tim Curry, his family or his fellow Texas attorneys … sorry.

I think we can all agree that 2009 has been a bummer year as far as celebrity deaths are concerned, unless you’re in a high stakes celebrity death pool. And no one is safe. The 2k9 Death March is ceaseless and unwavering. That is why I plan to fight it. In a barbed wire cage. With fire and bats. FIREBATS.

Death is stupid. I mean, I’m an actual proper adult now, and I still don’t understand it. For the most natural thing in the world, it seems wholly unnatural. And that is why I’m going to make a special request from Lord Unicorn Jesus. Please, let us just keep the below five people.

The Five People I Must Respectfully Request Never Die

1. Elizabeth Taylor

One of the most beautiful women who ever lived, an American legend and a world-class maneater (which is old timey speak for seriously classy and fancy slut, which I respect in a lady), Liz has become crazy-awesome in her twilight years. If you need proof of that, just watch this clip. It will change your life.

The lady has had more heartache in her life than ____, and that line is blank because she is the gold standard and there is no one to whom we can compare her life of sadness. But she’s soldiered on and lived her life with grace and general awesomeness. Our lady of perpetual manslinging is up there in years at 77 years young, and it’s widely understood that she’s quite ill and weak. But I would be totally comfortable with her living another twenty, thirty years if that’s okay. Anything to put off the awkwardness of eternity with all of her ex-husbands (although that would be the hottest reality show I’ve ever heard of).

We also share a birthday. Don’t ever leave me, birthday buddy!

2. Cloris Leachman

Phyllis Lindstrom herself has had quite a career resurgence in the last few years. She used to be the Leslie Mann of her time, the hot funny lady. Then she had fancy spiky hair on Facts of Life when Charlotte Rae quit that bitch. Now she’s my favorite form of actress - the crazy old lady. Eighty-three years old, she is now known to the young bucks as the wacky old chick on Dancing With The Stars, and from roles like the school nurse in Sky High (I love that movie more than your life). But I know her best from growing up on the Mel Brooks movies and The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Phyllis reruns on Nick at Nite. She was neurotic, she was a bitch and she was hilarious. She was everything I wanted to be, and was already a third on my way there. Profane and amazing, I hope that Cloris is the proverbial cockroach and that she outlives us all, still dancing (terribly) well into her hundreds.

3. Mel Brooks

When Anne Bancroft sadly passed, my fear was that her husband of 40 years would be quick to follow. I have always had quite a fascination with this couple, and the story of their courtship, marriage and enduring friendship was always something that touched me and became my own personal marriage ideal. My love of Mel Brooks’s movies need no explanation or description, but I love them all, even the ones that no one else does, and when Young Frankenstein didn’t do so hot on Broadway, I felt really sad and angry towards theatergoers. “Go see the adorable old man’s play, you assholes!” is what I yelled out my window, hoping the sound of my voice would carry to New York (I like to think it did). People may judge, but I say the man has earned his right to turn his properties into whatever he wants. If he made High Anxiety: Degrassi High, I’d watch it in adoration. He’s given us enough laughs that he’s earned that.

4. Betty White

So help me god, the first thing I thought Thursday afternoon after half of Hollywood died was “get me on a goddamn plane to LA so I can create a human shield around Betty.”

Screw Rhode and Mare. My favorites on The Mary Tyler Moore Show were obviously the bitches. And between Phyllis and Suann, I had more than enough neurotic bitchery to handle. And don’t get me started on The Golden Girls. Seriously. Don’t. I will talk for days about the episode where Rose thought she’d died and moved out, or how I used to cry during scenes when the others were mean to Rose because she reminded me of my Grandma Audrey, or how I couldn’t get enough St. Olaf stories. This mortal coil already lost Estelle Getty and Bea Arthur. You’re not taking Betty. Seriously. Betty stays. The Proposal has shown that she’s still got it. She has years left of scene stealing and geniusness. And more St. Olaf stories. Please, more St. Olaf stories.

But as hard as it would be to lose Betty, there’s one person who I truly cannot handle losing …

5. Patrick Swayze

I’m dead serious. If for some reason I haven’t managed to prove my love for Swayze yet in my roughly 8,000 mentions of my affection, let me lay this out there: you take Patrick, you take me with him. And I will join him at the big Double Deuce in the sky, and we’ll dance and I’ll totally nail the lift. And there will be surfing and bank robbing and throat ripping and cross dressing and so much more. Ironically enough, there will be no Ghost references. Mostly because if he goes, I will be unable to watch Ghost for years. Swayze showed us during The Beast that even facing certain death, he can still kick your ass, my ass, anyone’s ass at anything. The world will be a worse place without him and we need him around. He’s like a bear fighting Santa Claus who delivers amazement and good times. Unless you’re too stupid to have a good time.

Ideally, starting next week I’ll be able to be funny* again. But there’s been too much death this week, and I’d very much like it to stop. So bright-side seeker I am, I will chalk these recent deaths up to necessary sacrifices for the harvest and hope this is it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to fit Betty for her chain link dress and pepper spray hat.

* Assuming you find this ridiculousness amusing.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.

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Courtney Enlow

In 1989, something happened that would change the world as we know it. Something that would influence generations of children into following their dreams. Something that taught young girls how to love. Something beautiful and delicate and wonderful. That something was Saved By The Bell.

Saved By The Bell was more than just FUPA jeans and hypercolors. It was integral to the formative years of everyone born between the years 1979 to 1986, with a plus/minus of a million extra years because it had something for everyone. It gave me a feminist icon in Jessie Spano. It gave me a picture to clip onto every treadmill I run on to this very day in Kelly Kapowski. It gave me a strong gaydar in A.C. Slater. It gave me a sweet board game and two Barbies I wish I still had. More importantly, it gave me my first love in environmental advocate and probable X-Men mutant with the ability to stop time, Zack Morris.

But there is one thing that SBTB gave me above all else which haunts me to this day, and that is countless questions. The whys and hows and general what the motherfucks. So in honor of the show’s 20 year anniversary, and the valiant effort of Mr. Jimmy Fallon to reunite the whole cast (watch this and weep and think vague and confused dirty thoughts involving tongue kissing even though you’re not sure what exactly that is yet), I decided that now is the time to ask these questions and search for answers.

Any fan of The Bell knows that it wasn’t exactly a bastion of continuity. Numbers of siblings changed by the episode. On-again/off-again relationships were mostly due to whatever the writer felt like having that day. Loves of lives came and went like ghosts. If you go to the “List of minor characters in Saved By The Bell” and do a shot every time you see the words “s/he was never seen again,” you will vomit the entire length of your intestines out of your body and die on the floor like a junkie hooker at the Mark Twain hotel. And then there’s the infamous “Tori Paradox” (copyright, object of minor hero worship, I’m not worthy, so I won’t even bother, 2003). But these are just the tip of the cherry stem atop the chocolate shake from The Maxx. There are so many more questions in the world of Bayside High. A seedy underbelly of darkness and confusion, and we must get through this together, people.

Can they sing or not?
The subject of our gang’s talents varied by episode. In the “Glee Club” episode, the Core 6 join the badass GC (along with Scott Wolf; Bailey Salinger forevs) despite the fact that none of them but Jessie can sing. Now, Lisa, Kelly and Jessie already had minor pop success with their amazing song “Put Your Mind To It, Go For It, Get Down And Break A Sweat” as performed by their girl group, The Hot Sundaes. They most likely disbanded due to Jessie’s serious drug problem, but it would be strange to assume that they’d lost their ability to sing in a season or two. And mere episodes later, we see the first appearance of The Zack Attack, featuring a tear-inducing Jessie/Slater duet to a Michael Bolton song, and Zack and Lisa holding their own on backup.

And speaking of their “singing,” our beloved six lip-synched to different singers literally every time they had to sing in an episode, but one of them ALWAYS sounded like Olivia Newton-John, without fail. Just an observation.

How big is Bayside?
In the episode with Rad Rod Belding (they never called him this, but they should have), O.G. Belding mentions that our group’s class contains thirty kids. THIRTY KIDS IN A CLASS? A public school with thirty kids to a class, even? That’s just a level of surreality I can’t handle.

But let’s say I relent and allow my suspension of disbelief to be weighted almost all the way down to the floor. If their class is so small, and it is, because the same extras are used nonstop, then how is Zack always meeting new lust interests? My high school was apparently thirty times bigger than Bayside, and I knew at least a working knowledge of everyone in my class. And I certainly would have known who the girl in the wheelchair was, as Zack didn’t when he started dating her (take it, Wiki: “she was never heard from again”).

Come to think of it, for the most popular kids in school, our group really only ever spends all that much time with the other non-Screech nerds. In fact, when Slater gets up to Bolton it up with Jessie during the Zack Attack’s gig (while Zack and Kelly are breaking up outside, sniff sob), the best nerd of them all, Ollie, the black one with the frog voice, takes his place at the drums.

Why wasn’t something done about Belding?
Seriously, Belding was inappropriate to the max (and at The Maxx, no doubt). For starters, if we’re going back to the Miss Bliss days, he apparently takes Screech, Zack and Lisa and moves from Indiana with them. That’s weird enough. In one episode, Kelly kisses him on the cheek. Even if my principal hadn’t been a somewhat intimidating and slightly mannish nun, it still never would have occurred to me to get anywhere near or around her bubble.

And that’s not even the worst of it. He shows up at Zack’s house to hang out, he follows them to The Maxx and lots of stuff like that. There’s just a lot of awkward. And, let’s face it, the other 24 students who weren’t in our Core 6 really should have revolted because the man didn’t even try to hide his favoritism. I wouldn’t be surprised if the nickname “Bad Touch Belding” wasn’t thrown around here and there.

He also sometimes taught classes. This is strange and weird, too.

And speaking of pedophiles …

Whatever happened to Jeff?
Jeff was, of course, Kelly’s manager boyfriend at The Maxx, which already brings up all kinds of HR issues I don’t have time to deal with. It is stated that he’s a sophomore at USC, most likely making him nineteen or twenty. Now this episode takes place immediately before Lisa’s Sweet Sixteen, meaning Kelly is at most sixteen, probably fifteen. Ew gross perv. What do twenty year olds and fifteen year olds have to talk about? In 1992, probably Saved By The Bell, but they couldn’t talk about that BECAUSE THEY WERE LIVING IT.

Making matters worse, the gang catches him macking on some generic blonde (downgrade) at 18+ dance club The Attic (and by the way, I was really saddened at eighteen to learn that those pretty much don’t exist). What I’m saying is that he was engaging in a non-monogamous relationship with an underage child. Poor Kelly probably had all manner of sores and itchy redness, and probably couldn’t afford topical creams because her family was poor. Jeff was a fucking douche.

When exactly did they find time to be in every single club in the school?
It is the key plot point of the entire series that Zack is lazy and cruises on charm and general blondness. So why then was he in every single extracurricular available? Radio DJ, basketball team, yearbook, glee club, student council, the school play, the goddamn ballet club for one episode. That’s the busiest child I’ve ever heard of. No wonder he didn’t have time for homework. Now, all that said, he most likely got kicked out of all of the above for a plethora of reasons. Insulting team members, managing to tear the cartilage in his leg by falling down in the locker room (is he made of rock candy?) and constant sexual harassment.

The most logical explanation? Each Bayside club had eight open spots, and Belding ensured that his precious favorites were given six of those positions. Fucking Belding. Pervert.

Why does Los Angeles only have one movie playing for five years straight?
The same audio was used nearly every time the gang went to the movies. Tire squeal, gun shot, gun shot, woman scream. It’s LA, I’m pretty sure other movies were out, guys.

Was Jessie not the most wavering feminist ever?
Okay, Jessie Spano was a Betty Friedan worshipping womyn who rejected all things patriarchal. And yet, she dated A.C. Slater, pinnacle of macho jock machismo (emphasis on the “cheese”). Now I’ll let that slide as it was an opposites attract kind of thing. But one thing I cannot forget is that Jessie, cheerleader hating Jessie, was a damn cheerleader for at least two or three episodes. JESSICA. You goddamn turncoat. Sometime-cheerleader, and swimteam member who obviously posed for her calendar photo even while being all outraged that the picture was taken … don’t even pretend, Jess. And where does all this get you in life?

Exactly. More like femin-fisting, amirite people?

Why did Zack have such abysmal taste in women?
With the exception of Kelly, Zack only ever showed interest in women that were a) functionally retarded, b) his best friends’ sister/cousin/love interest, c) a raving bitch (Staci Carosi) or d) a lesbian (Tori Scott).

While normally he was seen with his barrage of bimbos in skintight floral numbers, when he ventured out of that comfort zone, it was always for a really wrong match. He went for Slater’s sister, his ex-girlfriend AND JESSIE, lest we forget. He went for Screech’s cousin, and then he randomly decided he was madly in love with Lisa, destroyed poor Screech’s heart and then never spoke of it again. He dated Staci Carosi, who was fucking evil (I can only assume she was using him to gauge his thetan count) and then Tori, who, god bless her, was probably about a year or two away from realizing why she didn’t seem to like it when Zack touched her all that much.

On the other hand, the eternal romantic in me thinks this proves the point that there is one person for everyone, and for Zack, that person was Kelly. And thank god, because seriously, his other options were ridiculous.

Despite all the questions, the ceaseless questions that keep me awake in the night, the show is something I love deeply and care for like a family member. I watched all the way through The College Years AND The New Class. I support almost every cast member in their recent and present endeavors (I say almost because OH HELL NAW poo-based Dustin Diamond sex tape). And always, till the end of time, my heart belongs to Zack Morris.

Saved By The Bell. Icon. Time capsule. Thing of beauty and joy, forever.

Becky the Duck. Never forget.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.

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Courtney Enlow

In my job here at the Bum Receptacle, I’ve taken on the duty of reporting to you what exactly it is that makes people horrible. Whether it be people judging others’ taste in music or movies, me judging your taste in music or movies or why exactly certain people are allowed to exist (I’m talking to you, Spencer, you flesh-bearded cockbag), I’ve joyously bitched and snarked and it’s been rewarding and lovely.

But now, I must turn to you, gentle reader. I have questions that require answers. I wonder and I need to no longer do that because it’s very time consuming and makes my eyes go all crossed and wonky. So I need you to tell me, once and for all, why exactly it is that I’m not supposed to like Coldplay.

There are things in this life that are hated. Believe me, I have hated and I’ve hated good and hard. And I’ve made a good solid case against everything I’ve presented. Twilight = cheese with a fucked up and damaging view of teenage relationships. Jon and Kate = terrible parents, one of whom possesses a heart as dark and cavernous as her terrifying womb. People who don’t appreciate Patrick Swayze = just so wrong … so, so wrong.

Then there are things that at least half of everyone hates. Like Nickelback or Dane Cook. It’s about equal, the hate-dom vs. the fandom. And the fans can’t understand why anyone would dislike such a vibrant and creative comedian, or such an innovative rock band, whereas the haters can’t understand why these entities have fans, but the explanation is not very nice and usually involves a dismissive “well, there’s a lot of dumb people in the world” type of answer, which I’m sparing you, because I’m being nice and on this particular day, when it comes to this particular item of discussion, I’m on Team Dumb People.

Coldplay is one of the biggest bands in the world. Huge. Bombastic swelling choruses that just feel important. Lyrics that can appeal to everyone. Chris Martin’s palsy’d dancing and movements (seriously, is that new? I really don’t think he was doing that before this latest album. Is it part of his weird French Revolutionary thing he’s doing now?). And while it seems everyone loves them, thus making them so huge and popular, people HATE them. Note the capitalized letters. That means I’m talking serious business here. Because people HATE them. And yet, I’ve never really heard it explained.

Chuck Klosterman once wrote that Coldplay is a shitty ripoff of Travis, and Travis a ripoff of Radiohead. Now, Travis is my favorite band ever of all time. I know their every song inside and out, and I don’t get the comparison. That said, I’m not really good with musical comparisons. After Ben Folds mentioned that he ripped himself off and that “Mess” and “Ascent of Stan” are basically the same song, I listened to them back to back like 20 times and never heard anything remotely similar. It’s just not how my ears or brain seem to work. So you’ve already lost me there.

Is it the Braff connection? My first ever HoboTrashcan article was about this very phenomenon (memories, like the corners of my mind, you guys). Garden State, like Juno later and like I fear will be the case with Away We Go, was the big indie hit that just took over everything. It was a smallish cool movie that everyone enjoyed, so naturally people started hating it, because when other people like it, it somehow stops being indie. That, and word came that Zach Braff was a bit of a Creepster Magoo. The Shins still suffer The Braff Effect. Is Coldplay a victim of the same fate?

Is it the popularity thing? Is this just yet another case of people attacking a band because they’re super rich and popular and married to the mistress of GOOP? To me, that’s the most logical explanation. I mean, Coldplay has often been called the U2 for our generation (because actual U2 just isn’t cutting it anymore). My theory is that most of the people who hate Coldplay so much were too young when U2 got huge, and if they’d been around circa 1982 (and been of actual listening to and getting music age), maybe they’d have said the same thing about them.

I’m not a music critic, which I’ve shown over and over in this very article. I love music. I listen to it a lot, often in large quantities. But I can’t really “talk music” like other people can. I tend to not know what the fuck I’m talking about. I can’t describe a sound. I don’t feel the need to bust out vinyl or wax philosophical on obscure bands from the late 60s and how they led to all music today. I just know what I like and what I don’t.

And that’s kind of where you come in. I mean, Klosterman knows what he’s talking about. The man knows his shit, knows how to articulate it and like most things that that he says, I would love to just trust him on this one. But in this one instance, I can’t. Because I think they’re good and I want to know why they aren’t.

I’ve spoken before about my confusion regarding the guilty pleasure concept. I still don’t understand why people say things like “I love Nada Surf and I don’t care who knows it” because I kind of thought we all like Nada Surf, or when I see Travis on guilty-pleasure-pussy-white-man band lists with Matchbox 20, or why I rarely talk about how much I love Jimmy Eat World. If they were movies or actors, I’d be able to articulate my feelings. But I can’t do it with music. And as confused as I am when it comes to the guilty pleasures, I’m way more confused by the outright hate.

Help me be helped by you. Teach me.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.

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Courtney Enlow

In a recent interview, Winona Ryder made mention of there being a certain sequel in the works, and that sequel is a follow-up to one of my top five favorite movies of all time - Heathers.

My love for this film is deep and raw. It’s hysterically funny, as dark as can possibly be, has some of the most realistic characters I’ve ever seen and goddammit did it make smoking look cool and awesome. So while one would assume that my reaction would be an eye roll, perhaps a sarcastic “how very,” I am actually completely stoked.

This isn’t Road House 2 (how do those people sleep at night?). It’s not going to be a total rehash with a new cast and more tits. Apparently ‘Noneskies and Christian Slater (who blew the hell right up in the first one) are both coming back, along with the original writer and director.

You might as well have just proposed to me, Winz. Because I DO.

Now, that is not to say I don’t have my reservations. Cameron Crowe could hold a massive press conference tomorrow and say, “Guess what, Enlow? I’m making a sequel to your other favorite movie of all time, Say Anything, and the entire original cast is returning and it will be epic,” and first I would say, “Why are you holding a press conference just for me? You could have just called.” Then I would say, “This could be really horrible,” as flashes of Elizabethtown exploded in my mind.

This is a movie that is all about the horrors of high school and starred two individuals at the pinnacle of their fame, who are now known for popping some pills and stealing shoes and … well I’m not really sure what happened to Slater’s career, but all I know is that it involved hitting a lady, guns and doing nothing actually good since True Romance (another top five-er for me). Director Michael Lehmann has done a number of a great TV shows, but he also helmed 40 Days and 40 Nights, which made me want to chug some Drain-O, Heather Chandler-style.

So while I have faith in all involved, I do have my questions. What will the plot be? Will we see the return of Heathers McNamara and Duke? Will we see once ubiquitous Glenn Shadix as the wannabe-hip priest? Will the themes and humor that made the original so great be toned down for these PC aughts?

Most importantly, can Heathers 2 exist in a world without scrunchies?

This is actually a serious question, a non-costume one even. Some movies are just forever enveloped in the decade during which they were created. Heathers 80s-ness defines it. The Heathers’ preppy money-focused lifestyle is very timely, and it’s something that more recent movies have tried to recreate and it’s never worked as far as I’m concerned.

Better a sequel than a remake though. I mean, high school violence isn’t exactly something people get super jazzed over these days. It might be too over-dramatic to say Heathers is a movie that couldn’t be made today, but I don’t think it’s too much to say that it would be a lot more sanitized and certainly not a studio film. But luckily the high school part, with Veronica now in her 30s and JD, ya know, dead, is something they probably wouldn’t have to worry about.

I’ve always thought Heathers got a bad rap by parents’ groups. Ironically enough, the parodies of out-of-the-loop adults seem to be incredibly accurate as it is those very out-of-the-loop adults who thought movies like Heathers would lead to suicide and blowing up the school becoming the cool thing to do, obviously never listening to how stupid that sounds. I for one think Heathers should be mandatory viewing in any and all high schools so that teenagers can see just how pointless suicide and violence are. It really is a strangely comforting film. High school is a terrible nightmare, but it’s like that for everyone.

In high school, I wrote many Veronica Sawyer-esque diary entries about my desire to turn a former BFF (BFF here meaning bitchy fucking fuckstick) we’ll just call Heather B., with her stupid-ass prom hair and upturned bitch nose and godIhatedhersomuch, into a human fireworks display complete with fiery limb displacement. But I was never going to actually DO it. I had this movie to show me the light, the futility of wishing your enemies into the proverbial cornfield. High school sucks, then you go off to college. This is the single best movie message ever. This movie could probably save lives.

And now the sequel has the chance to do the same for disillusioned twenty- and thirty-somethings, those same former teens that grew up on the original. We all learned the hard way that people don’t really get better after high school. We just get more used to them. High school is immersion so that we can deal with this horrid people later in life and be able to handle it because they’re spread out more. Done right, it could be a great movie.

And if it sucks? What a waste. Oh, the humanity.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.

Courtney Enlow

A few weeks ago, I waxed hate-osophical about reality television stars and how generally worthless they are. But I have wronged you, gentle reader, because I made no mention of the worst enemy to the thinking person, even worse than the scourge of scripted TV those Hills and Jon and Kate people could ever hope to be, and that is people who are famous for nothing. Literally. They are famous for doing nothing.

I can fake a fairly solid explanation for why the Kardashians and the Duggars and all those other people have attained notoriety. But there are some for whom I cannot even muster that. These people show up places and are photographed, and I’m somehow supposed to know who they are and why they’re important and frankly it’s just not fair. It’s rude really.

It’s well known that I have a bit of an addiction to the celebrity gossip world. This shit is like sports are to you man-people. I’m fascinated by the whole circus in a deeply watching-the-aftermath-of-a-car-crash capacity. But I cannot read about what amazing new drops of sparkly knowledge Kanye West is spilling all over our lives in his blog, or what amazing new reason Katherine Heigl has given me to hate her, if the publications and websites must find the time to devote to these nothing-people.

It’s just hurtful and unfair is all I’m really saying here.

For those of you blissfully unaware and confused by what I am saying, I’ve helpfully selected by top three most hated nothing-people and why exactly they want us to believe they are somethings.

It should be noted that as much as I detest these wannabes and everything they stand for, I’d gladly invite them all into my home for milk and cookies if it meant Heidi and Spencer could find themselves in some sort of swampy alligator-filled area.

3. Victoria Beckham

I loves me some Spice Girls, as we all do, don’t lie, but that was 10 years ago now. What has Vicki B. given us since then? Nothing. She always seems to be at airports and walking around being unexpectedly photographed, and always wearing five-inch heels and perfect hair. Her husband seems to be the object of desire for 99 percent of all women, so she must have done something right. As weary as I get with Posh, the anger level is nowhere near what it is for the next two.

2. Katie Price, a.k.a. Jordan

Katie Price is what the Brits call a “glamour model.” That term basically means that she took slutty pictures and showed her big fake breasticles a lot. Other than her former modeling career, I don’t believe she does anything, except apply eyeliner and divorce her semi-obviously gay husband. I think she wrote a book. And yet, her picture is everywhere.

1. Pheobe Price

Phoebe Price has found a way to get under my skin the most and cause me to hate her with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Phoebe Price insists upon referring to herself as an “international model.” She apparently did so by looking exactly like a younger, gingerer version of this fellow. She can often be found at gas stations and walking up and down the streets of downtown LA desperately looking for someone to photograph her holding up magazine photos featuring her, usually in a terrible light and very mockingly. She just loves the attention of it all. And that makes me sad.

The vast majority of people in this country have never heard of those bottom two and that makes me happy. But not for their lack of trying. And in Phoebe Price’s case, she’s not really doing anything besides walking up and down Robertson posing like she’s at Fashion Week. And those are just the three that bug me most. I didn’t even include the really random people like professional hipster jailbait Cory Kennedy.

So obviously I’ve designed my own plan for fame.

Step 1: I shall adorn myself in tattered homeless people clothing and refer to myself as a model to anyone within auditory distance. No one seems to be able to prove or disprove the “international model” title of Phoebe Price, so apparently it’s really easy to get away with. I mean, James Frey can’t get away with lying about some fucked up rehab stories, but apparently anyone can totally fabricate themselves into being Kate Moss. So despite my hobbitt-esque stature, I am a model. I AM A MODEL, DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?

Step 2: I shall demand entrance into popular and exclusive locales and when denied, I shall pull the epic “Don’t you know who I am?” I shall do this often enough that someone will eventually passingly wonder who, exactly, I am.

Step 3: I shall stumble drunkenly around Los Angeles. What I’ve gathered is that if you’re dressed sluttily and you fall down a lot, it doesn’t matter who you are, someone will take your picture.

Step 4: I shall develop a trendy coke problem, maybe heroin, just for a while, have sex with superstars like the dad from Alf and that guy who sang “Key Largo”, get clean, and tell my story of redemption to everyone, while also dropping the word “model” and the sentence “Don’t you know who I am” mid-story, at least seven or eight times.

Step 5: Sex tape. I’ve chosen “Taking It To Court” as my title, now it’s just a matter of choosing the right partner. I’m strongly considering Steven Weber or Ian Ziering.

See you guys? It’s just so easy.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.