Is there anyone better equipped at capturing the beauty of a young woman drenched in sunlight than Sofia Coppola? In the wake of catching a bit of “The Virgin Suicides” on cable this weekend, I think nyet. And because it had been a few years since my last viewing, your Uncle Grambo only just now realized that A.J. Cook is TOTALLY revealed as one of the doomed Lisbon sisters. Want. To. Touch. The. Heinie!

• Ok, who watched Acceptable TV this weekend like your Uncle Grambo instructed you to? While I’m not sure which of the five shows will be returning this week, I cop to placing my two votes for Joke Chasers and Homeless James Bond. Regarding the former, “Joke Chasers” seems to be the one that the critics dug the mostest (see: Troy Patterson @ Slate, Virginia “Dont Call Me Vagina” Heffernan @ The NYT); tune in on Friday night to see if America agreed!

• “By the end, all one’s left with is unanswered questions. How did I listen to this album 3 times? Why did I listen to this album 3 times? Will I be able to delete this album from the iPod (in my mind)? And of course, who can I talk to about refunding the 3 hours of my life that were wasted listening to this album?” — Damore skewers the new Bad Charlotte record in a review posted today on RecordReviews.org

• While we’re speaking of the old skool, it seems that long-time whatevs (dot org) nemesis SpaceMonkey is back up to his old tricks! Banished from this site eons ago, he has taken his brand of aggressively durst comment-foolery to the Freep.com message boards. And, from the looks of it, his reception there has been equally cold. User 123456 puts it best: “Spacemonkey. Please, stop reading Freep.com. For something that costs you nothing you sure complain A LOT! If you hate it stop reading it. I mean really use your brain.” Poor grammar and punctuation errors aside, I think this qualifies as a ZING!

• Get serious like crazy! Despite the fact that it sports the least sing-a-longable chorus since Liz Phair’s infamous “H.W.C.”, the new Natasha Bedingfield jawn is catchy as all get-out. I wanna have your babies! [via Idolator]

• Dateline Ann Arbor! The Michigan Daily reports that a masturbating trespasser recently invaded the PIKE house. Mind you, said masturbating trespasser was actually a FEMALE masturbating trespasser. How come shit like this never happened at 910 Greenwood? [via JP McKrengels]

• And BOOM goes the dynamite! And by “dynamite”, your Uncle Grambo really means Meredith Viera’s melon. Ouchers McGee!

• And the review is in! Jeffrey Wells (mostly) hearts “Grindhouse” … while he snubs Robert Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror” entry as “tired, gloppy and mostly groan-worthy”, Wells waxes ecstatic as only he can about Quentin Tarantino’s entry, “Death Proof.” Witness the quickness:
  
  

  “It’s a foxy, half-crazy, smirky B-movie wallow with nary a thought or a theme of any kind, but it’s a complete fuck-all pleasure to just rock and ride along with, and the car-chase finale (the star of which is New Zealand stuntwoman Zoe Bell, who stunt-dubbed for Uma Thurman in ‘Kill Bill’) is the absolute shit.”

  
  Huzzah! When “Grindhouse” opens April 6, I will SO be there.

And, in closing, your Uncle Grambo and The Senator were fortunate enough to attend an event on Friday night honoring President William Jefferson Clinton (or, as his friends call him, Bill). Held at the Hilton New York Grand Ballroom here in Midtown NYC, the first annual Salvation Army Spring Gala raised over $1MM for Emergency Disaster Relief funding. Aside from the evening’s one shining moment (which, obvs, was seeing Bill Clinton live and in the flesh¹), the evening’s best laugh came courtesy of The Senator (natch).

As we were working our way through our first course, we noticed a woman walking into the venue a good 20 minutes late. The slenderish, dark-haired woman was a good 100 feet away from our table when The Senator leaned into me and whispered, “Is that Julia Allison?” I craned my head around to take a closer look and then IMMEDIATELY burst out laughing. Not because it WAS Julia Allison, but because the person in question was none other than Fran Freaking Drescher!!! Up until that point, I had never really noticed that there was a such a strong resemblence between the two, both in their visages and in their figures. After taking a look at photographic evidence presented below, I’m sure you too will find the resemblance to be uncanny!

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Say your prayers! Eat your vitamins! And wear your eyeliner!

Wait, wear your eyeliner? I don’t remember The Hulkster advocating eyeliner to the likes of “Mean” Gene Okerlund. But now that The Black Parade has merged with an army of Hulkamaniacs in the astoundingly tigs mashup below, nothing will ever be the same. Obvs, this comes courtesy of The Grizz and his excellent Wrestlemania 23 Blog on Detnews.com. Carry on, Hulkster, carry on!

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The reviews of “300″ are in. From the looks of it, “300″ is one of those films that gets critics worked up into such a frenzy that they have to go out prove the old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword. Slate’s Dana Stevens (a person who, for the record, I absolutely adore) calls it “a mythic ode to righteous bellicosity¹”, The New York Post’s Kyle Smith imagines that Hitler Youth will be “heil-fiving each other throughout” and A.O. “Call Me Tony” Scott rips it as being “about as violent as Apocalypto and twice as stupid.” Ouchers!

But despite the critical onslaught, your Uncle Grambo will probably pay to see the movie twice this weekend. Once because I’m a fanboy who LIVES for big screen cinematic spectacles like this, but TWICE because my boy Eric Gillin sent me the following review after attending a screening on Monday night: “Tits. Violence. Anger. Repeat. It’s the shit.” Hallelujah hollaBACK, witches!

• For those of you who haven’t been following All Things Uncle Grambo as closely as I have, it’s important to note that I have been in the middle of not one but TWO beefs on Gawker Media sites this week. First, Ben Mathis-Lilley took the opportunity to close his 2007 Detroit Tigers preview by rehashing a particularly nasty comment I made about him way back in 2004. Although he wrote that my actions “disturbed some people in my family when they Googled my name”, it turns out that they did NOT, in fact, ever see this². Because, as I pointed out that day in the comments (which makes me a Deadspin commenter, I suppose), Google didn’t even RETURN this search result until the publication of his piece. So, Ben, I would like to take this opportunity to let you know that I don’t have anything personal against you. I just hope, for your sake, that your employers at Slate employ better fact-checkers than they do at Deadspin. Wouldn’t want to see you wind up back in Midland because of some some Jayson Blair type shazz!

  The second beef involved a petty little piece that Idolator wrote about Stereogum’s decision to make fun of Celine Dion. Apparently in Idolator’s eyes, poking fun at the “vaunted” 33 1/3 book series and their decision to release a book about Celine Dion is tantamount to crossing a line in the sands of coolness. Blogga PLEASE! Your retaliation post would’ve made a lot more sense if you would’ve at least disclosed that someone at Idolator is apparently friendly enough with Carl Wilson (author of said Celine text) to have invited him to participate in their inaugural 2007 Jackin Pop Critics Poll. Now don’t get me wrong, I can respect the fact that you want to defend your friend, but next time why not just preface your post by admitting as much? To borrow a phrase from long-time Stereogum (and Klosterman!) fave Billy Joel, “Honesty is hardly ever heard. And mostly what I need from you.”

• The Onion recently launched a new blog called The Hater. Its tagline, “The pop culture blog for people who can’t fucking stand pop culture blogs”, is probably the best tagline for any website since “PHCFYSB.”

• This just in: Winona Ryder is NOT dead. I repeat, NOT dead. Phew. Your Uncle Grambo spent about 20 minutes yesterday mourning her loss, glad she’s still with us.

• Your Uncle Grambo isn’t normally one to spend much time watching E! … Aside from Catt Sadler and “The Soup”, there’s nothing even remotely redeeming about the network. But thanks to The Senator, I’ve found myself watching “The Girls Next Door” on more than one occasion. I don’t know about you, but I’m of the opinion that Holly is quite the catch for an old cad like Hef. Well, it turns out she hasn’t always been the girl next door. Before plastic surgery, she was more like the hideous wretch down the street.

In closing, your Uncle Grambo would be lying if I said that I wasn’t missing The Blowout. In an email exchange last night, JTL put it best: “Go ahead. Tell me you miss it. The Molson sweats on the morning commute. The cable-knit sweater mouth as you go through your work day. The bulge of a crumpled-up Blowout lineup in your front pocket. The ‘Hamtramck Stumble.’ Go ahead.” You’re god damn right, I miss all of those things and more. After all, your Uncle Grambo has some very fond memories of Blowouts past. But just like it will for my beloved Betty Marie Best (who is rumoured to have moved to Chicago), a time will come for your Uncle Grambo later this evening in which I’ll be walking down some dark street, wishing it were Joseph Campau. At that point, the nostalgia will begin mixing with the booze and I’ll decide that it’s time to begin making my way back to Murray Hill. When the M15 drops me at home, I’ll fire up The Internerd™ and check out what Loftus has to say on The Metro Times Music Blahg. And what Jasper is raving about on WebVomit. And I’ll even fight off the slumber long enough to log onto Motor City Rocks, just to find out how many Molsons Big Matt drank that night. Have fun at The Blowout, kids. Your Uncle misses you tons. Pound a few for me.

¹Don’t worry, I had to look it up, too.
²He would later admit to this in the comments.

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Although it’s difficult to put a date of origin¹ on the most classic of all the classic playground putdowns, it’s fair to say that “Let’s not and say we did” was WAY ahead of its time. Not only did it predate the whole revolution of “Irony As Comedic Device” by a full five years², it had so much new school appeal and relevance to the children of the `80s that old-standbys like “Your mother wears combat boots” were wiped from the lexicon almost overnight. What this has to do with the price in China, I’m not quite sure. But I figured it was a good a start as any to get into my first bullet-stizz post in weeks. Snarls!

• Quick shout-out to John Carney … get well soon, holmes!

• “If you have it, you don’t need it. If you need it, you don’t have it. If you have it, you need more of it. If you have more of it, you don’t need less of it. You need it to get it and you certainly need it to get more of it. But if you don’t already have any of it to begin with, you can’t get any to get started which means you really have no idea how to get it in the first place, do you? You can share it, sure. You can even stockpile it if you’d like, but you can’t fake it. Wanting it, needing it, wishing for it. The point is, if you’ve never had any of it, ever … people just seem to know.”

• It’s been almost a full-month since it happened, but time doesn’t seem to be reducing your Uncle Grambo’s ire over Owen Gleiberman naming “Casino Royale” his #1 Film of 2006. It’s hard to go TOO ballistic on a fellow Wolverine alumnus, so instead I’ll ask him two simple questions: first, how high were you when you saw “Casino Royale”? Second, how can I get my hands on somma that stuff?

• Binky’s Girls — Easily the best SFW gallery of babes that this blogga has come across in `07. And when I say SFW, I mean SFW … but barely.

• If you haven’t yet experienced the highwire hysterics of Zarf, resident tranny on “All My Children”, your time is now. Your big, masculine hands will thank you for it later.

• Your Uncle Grambo would be lying if I said that I ever really got over the way that the 1993 NCAA basketball championship game went down. Nearly 14 years later, I still harbor a great deal of resentment towards Chris Webber. Not just because of the outcome of that game, mind you, but because of the way that his selfish actions decimated the entire basketball program at Michigan. But now that he’s a Piston, I’m torn. As much as I hate C. Webb, I heart the Pistons. This oughta be interesting…

• Lastly, I just wrapped up Special Topics In Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl’s mostly wonderful debut novel. I say “mostly” wonderful because the last 100 pages or weren’t able to match the level of intensity that the book’s earlier sections established, but then again, the real joy in reading this book has very little to do with what happens to the characters, plot-wise. For this reader, the conscious decision to focus less on plot and instead indulge on Pessl’s delicious phrasing resulted in an experience akin to eating a hot fudge sundae — the key to enjoying both rests in your ability to balance competing desires. Do you savor every bite, or do you finish it off quickly?

¹ For the sake of this argument, let’s just say that it’s been around since at least 1980, the year your Uncle Grambo matriculated into Brewster Elementary school.
² Dennis Miller became host of SNL’s “Weekend Update” in 1985.

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Let’s set the scene, shall we? It’s Saturday afternoon in Ann Arbs, back in the heady days of January 2001. In the [INSERT NUMBER HERE] block of Sig Vills, your Uncle Grambo and Peabs decide to take a momentary break from a marathon session of “Mario Party 3″ to make our way over to the Quality 16 Theaters. What could possibly rouse us from the delights of Bumper Bizzies and Eatsa Pizza? A chance to catch Marla Sokoloff on the big screen in “Sugar & Spice”, opening weekend stizz. Obvs!

Back then, Sokoloff was probably the most underrated bomb snatch on television. The type of chesty lass who, quite literally, put the “boob” to the Boob Tube. She may have only had a minor role on “The Practice”, but she played a major role in the fantasies of thousands (if not millions) of horny dudes at the time. But over the course of the next few years, she suffered a slow fade into obscurity — much like the show that introduced her to the mainstream in the first place. After being dumped by James Franco, this blogga was fairly certain that I’d seen the last of Miss Marla.

But over the last few weeks, seemingly out of nowhere, pictures of her started popping up on the Internerd. What gives? Turns out that Sokoloff is starring in a new show on ABC that awkwardly marries (literally) the preparation that goes into planning nuptials with the flashback structure of “Lost.” I know, it sounds fucking durst. But at the same time, it also means that Sokoloff will be bringin’ her redonkulous rack back to the small screen. Can’t wait to tell Peabs. Natch.

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