Dear God, These Celebrities Have Feet

By: Ben Johnson

Look, I don’t have a foot thing. I don’t. Feet are normal. Feet are a regular human part of the human body. I’m not super into them, like foot fetishist into them, and I don’t recoil in horror at the mere mention of them the way some people do. They’re feet. They’re just feet. Nothing unusual about them. Some feet are grosser than normal, some feet are cuter than normal, and most feet are just regular normal feet.

You know who has feet? Celebrities. They have feet. Two of them. One on the left and one on the right. Just like most of the rest of us. We’re used to seeing celebrity faces. Sometimes we see celebrity boobs and butts and pecs and abs. Sometimes we see celebrity genitals, and we go “wow man, look at that.” Sometimes we see celebrity feet, but we’re usually too busy thinking or even just not thinking at all about the whole rest of the celebrity. We don’t often think about celebrity feet.

But what if we did think about celebrity feet? What Pandora’s Box would that open? I bet Rosie Perez has cute regular not a big deal feet. I bet Anderson Cooper’s feet are sturdy and masculine and feetlike in the regular American foot-having way. I bet… oh Dear Holy Christ, Donald Rumsfeld has feet. Oh my God I am going to puke. Just regular Donald Rumsfeld’s face sticking out of a conservative suit makes me want to puke, but imagining Donald Rumsfeld’s feet? No way, guys. Nuh uh. I’m sweating and my teeth hurt. This is horrible.

And fascinating.

There is such a thing as Googling “worst celebrity feet” and having answers and visual confirmations pop up on your computer in front of your very own eyeballs. I did it. I do not recommend it. I typed that phrase in and then I saw a picture of the malformed bone bags Angelina Jolie refers to as “my feet,” and I thought “well, this is no fun for anybody.” I don’t actually want to know what real life celebrity feet really look like in real life. I want to use my imagination. I want to think of celebrities on my own and then insert the thought “has feet” at the end, and see which imagined celebrity feet make me cringe the most.

Why? You tell me, you’re here too. You need a why at this point? Because it’s crazy and weird and great, that’s why.

I submit the following celebrity feet as the worst possible feet to imagine:

Steven Tyler

Tyler is the reason this whole celebrity feet thing has been happening to me. I typed his name into Google to check the “Steven” or “Stephen” spelling, and autofill suggested I might want to Google “Steven Tyler feet.” I DO NOT WANT TO GOOGLE “STEVEN TYLER FEET.” EVER.

Even thinking about Steven Tyler feet is a bad move. Why is that a Google autofill? I do not want to know. I feel like there’s a rumor or even an actual fact going around that Steven Tyler has webbed toes, which is just no, fuck that, I can’t and I won’t. I will stop living. I will die and become a ghost.

Look at Steven Tyler’s face. You’re telling me this guy, with this face, also has feet? Feet that are Google autofill-worthy, no less? That is horrible. That is horrible, horrible information.

Michele Bachmann

Politics aside, Michele Bachmann is a plastic-faced witchmonster with dead shark eyes. I mean, you can’t really put politics aside, because she also very much runs on the deadeyed witchmonster policy platform. You know, the one where you don’t get to abort or even morning after pill your unwanted rape baby. I just took a quick detour into Michele Bachmann policy stance land, and that’s just exactly what she wants me to do. It’s a classic “be terrified by the actual things that an elected leader of other humans can profess to believe in order to not think about the real issue” tactic. The real issue is that Michele Bachmann has two whole fucking feet at the ends of her legs, and they’re out there in the world being feet.

What does Michele Bachmann even do with those two pure evil feet of hers? I imagine she likes to paint her toenails at night, squinting in approval, saying “pretty pretty pretty” over and over like that spooky woman from Barbarella. FYI her favorite toenail polish is the blood of other women.

Kenny G

It’s not so much that Kenny G’s feet are probably gross, it’s how much he’s Kenny G in them. Like his favorite foot-based activity is probably to stroll up and down the Malibu coast in an expensive linen tunic and weather beaten khakis rolled up to the knee, overtly enjoying the full lush sensory bareness of his two fucking total Kennny G feet, bleating out smooth jazz from the soprano sax he’s brought with him. When you look at Kennny G in such a state, he is in soft focus. It doesn’t matter how much you rub your eyes, he will still be in soft focus, playing that damn saxophone, walking towards you. At first you’ll think “I’m having a small stroke, this can’t be right,” but then you look in any other non-Kenny G direction and everything is normal. Later you will assume this memory must have been an unusually vivid dream. But Kenny G’s feet are real, and this is how they really are.

Keith Morrison of Dateline NBC

I imagine he looks at his feet incredulously, like “you can’t really be my feet, though, can you?” And they’re like “we’re really your feet, in real life.” Cut to slow zoom on a family photograph. “The initial investigation determined that my feet are real feet on a real person. But then the feet police uncovered a hidden clue which revealed a shocking secret…”

Paula Deen

Paula Deen probably just has regular sunken arch sad old mom feet with swollen ankles. But she’s Paula Deen, so she probably puts them anywhere she wants with complete entitlement and impunity. I imagine she likes it when her feet are being licked by a small dog.

Papa John

Oh dude, come on, my imagination. I’m trying to live a life here. He’s probably… no. I… no.

  

Adam Carolla

WORST POSSIBLE.

@itisbenjo

Blast My Nethers, But Don't Mess Up My Bangs While I'm Not Looking at You

By: Kelly McClure

Recently Cosmopolitan Magazine, the go-to source for realistic life info for young mothers and soon to be ex-wives, published a thing on their homepage called "28 Lesbian Sex Positions to Blow Your Mind." After seeing this title come up in my Twitter feed the first thing I thought was "count down to something about scissoring," and then my brain became flooded with curiosity over just what sort of sex Cosmo thinks lesbos would have, and further ... what kind of lesbo sex they would find to be MIND BLOWING. 

As a full-time "one of those" myself, I've had all manner of lesbo sex ranging from "I'm not sure you've been here before, can I help?" to "Here's a kit of dental tools that I bought at a dollar store off the highway, do something with them." So I felt super prepared to read their list and make at least ten minutes of fun of it. I was almost disappointed to find that the MIND BLOWING sex positions they offered up weren't too bad. Vanilla, level one, or not really a thing, sure. But they didn't say anything about sensually braiding hair, which somehow I thought was for sure going to be in there, along with erotically talking about horses.  The illustrations  for each position though ... we need to talk about. 

I see you, Cosmo trying to work out some hot pink version of a femme/soft-butch dynamic. I can almost taste your "That girl's hair is so short though ... should we add some bangle bracelets?" afterthought. 

This to me looks like two ladies who had one too many $3 beers at happy hour, but then I'm like "What is she licking?" 

They switched to blue in their color scheme here because blue is the color of business. I don't know what kind of business is happening in this picture. This kind of looks like a naked blonde lady helping a drowning victim.

Back to pink again because oral is just so LOL silly. Look at everyone's hair. Notice how their eyes are drawn so tightly shut that they practically look like those X's used in comics to tell us that a person is dead? They're like "I'm never opening my eyes about this. This is so mind-blowing that I'm a lesbian now."

Creeping up on a naked girl and shouting "HOOTY HOO!!!!" Into her butt cheeks is for sure funny, but it's probably gonna result in that thing where the girl playfully slaps you in the head and calls you a goof while giving you side eye and having an inner monologue about how she's gonna stop answering your texts.

Not sure what they're doing here, unless the blonde girl is wearing a ... no ... Cosmo isn't ready for those. This is about horses isn't it? Pro tip: I could think of something way better she could be doing with those heels. 

This just looks lazy to me, like "Get off that chair and eat this. I know you worked eight hours today, but my arms are tired." Also ... look at her bangs. She's like "Oh God, I don't want to have to wash my hair again tonight. I'm annoyed?" 

Are we in a fight?

I'm noticing a pattern here. Most things that have something to do with a butthole have a blue background. Blue is for butthole. This particular position is new as it has never personally occurred to me to rub my butthole on someone's ribcage intentionally. I'm sure it's happening accidentally, but not as a sex act. More like "Oh, sorry, I just rubbed my butthole on you while I was reaching for this thing." 

This is just a wasted opportunity. Also I think her heel is lodged in the other girl's shin. 

Okay, so Cosmo IS ready for strap-ons. They also, apparently, have a fantasy about using one on Ronnie Spector? 

This one is called "My boobs hurt because my period is coming. Let's watch Gossip Girl on the couch. Can I lay on you?" 

Lesbos just really are constantly scissoring in sports bras. (Scissoring isn't a thing. Scissoring is basically like humping a stuffed animal, but on top of a person who you could actually be humping.)

When I really love someone I put where my pubes would normally be right on them and then make them stare at me. 

I'd be mildly irritated if someone flopped their hairdo onto my head while we were doing "The Sexy Spider." I'd be like "Do you need a hair tie?"

Are you okay though?

"I used a new soap this morning and I think it fucked me up. Does this smell weird to you? Ow, my boob hurts."

Everyone always starts busting out this move after watching that episode of 90210 where Brenda finds a lump. 

She's got all these ties but only that one pair of heels. That's not real. Also, the blonde keeps re-applying her lipstick and the brunette whose pompadour got knocked down is like, "I don't care." 

"I bought some new heels!! They're black. Can you see them? OPEN YOUR EYES!!!!"

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE GETTING MARRIED THIS SATURDAY!!!"

No hair ties to be found so they can get their hair out of the way and get shit done right, but let's for sure put on some cat ears. 

"I love our femme/soft-butch relationship so much. New shoes?"

I'd like to imagine that she's whispering "Bitch, where are your pubes?" into her ear.

There have been so many not very different versions of this happening so far, and also, what kind of open relationship ass shit is going on here?

Cosmo gave this one a difficulty rating of three because not everyone owns a fringe vest, and they're kind of hard to find.

I would seriously just go home. 

"WAKE UP! IT'S TIME TO GO SWIMMING!!"

"Better put my cropped sports ringer on."

Mind = Blown.

@WolfieVibes 

(Illustrations by Jenny Yuen were used hoping she'll never find this)

The Sex Life of Walt Whitman: We Went to a Poetry Festival

By Kelly McClure and Lindsey Baker

 

I (Lindsey Baker) want to preface this by addressing something many of us can be ashamed of, at least most female "creative types" who were once 12-20 years old. We have secret stashes of highly embarrassing, and hilariously trope-y poetry that we wrote during really terrible dissolutions of 3-6 week relationships with our soul mates, etc. Recently Kelly went back to her family's home to clean out the garage for her Dad and she unearthed a poetry zine she made as, we're guessing a 20-year-old. She brought it back to share with me and holy fuck it was so amazing I could just shit. I had a fantasy of scanning the pages so she could write a commentary on each "piece" like, "This one where I keep saying the word 'cig' I wrote in the bathroom of a DQ," or something. Anyway, she must have stared at it shamefully for too long because it disappeared from our home and goddamn I'm really pissed. I guess that's why I thought it would be funny if we went to a fucking poetry festival on fucking Governor's Island.

A good thing to do at this point would be to get out the notebook we brought to the festival, which people definitely thought we were using to write actual poetry in, and tell you about all of the various thoughts we had. I'll (Kelly McClure) go first:

A lady in salmon pants was picking her feet on the ferry. 

Lindsey wanted me to remind her to look up pictures of plastic bracelets that EDM music goers like to wear (because there was definitely also an EDM festival happening across the grass from the poetry festival we were at, and they all came over on the same ferry, and one of them put his muffin top by us.)

We had a brief argument about this sexy acting hula-hoop girl, and whether or not she worked there, or if she just "does that." We joked about interviewing her and how we'd start by asking "How long have you been hula hooping at poetry festivals?"

At one point a band finished playing a song and Lindsey said "I'm not clapping."

Bitch crept up from around a tree and took a picture of me.

A man named Phillip came over and asked if we were poets. He was groping at his tie and Lindsey said that he had a wedding band. Then we saw his weird wife and I thought that they must be there looking for a third and a fourth for their weird poetry sex.

Lindsey described some girl as being the Lana Del Rey of poems. 

Okay, now it's Lindsey's turn:

Kelly reminds me every few months that Walt Whitman and her boy, Oscar Wilde, had gay homosexual sex. She told me this time while a Walt Whitman impersonator recited some real-Whitman poetry. I thought these things:

Did he have that stupid beard during their sexcapade? Did he get jizz in it?

What if there was a Sylvia Plath impersonator? I would just shit again. She'd have a petrified chunk of Ted Hughes' cheek jammed in her teeth for fucking eternity. What?

At our last  few cultural outings, Kelly thought that strange acting people (like the sexy hula hoop girl) were on acid, however I believe that they were sexual assault victims. Speaking of the hula hoop girl, my follow up question for her would be, "Why the fuck are you doing that like that?"

The band that I didn't want to clap for rhymed quandry with laundry and that's one of like 800 reasons why I would never clap for them. (** I saw the guy in the cowboy hat from this band at the beer table and he was saying a thing about how he just wants everyone to be happy ** - KM)

After the hula hoop girl accidentally smacked someone with her hula hoop she was photographed probably like 900 times by a 70-year-old photography creep. I guessed that she was somehow flattered because she got even more real with her hoop. OH! and a less creepy and way younger photography man was carrying a damn ladder around to get better shots of Walt Whitman and hula girl.

Governors Island feels like the apocalypse happened or some zombie shit. No one lives in any of the buildings, there's weird security guards, EMD bass is thumping in the background, and you have to crowd onto a ferry to fill a usually deserted island from 10-6pm. It's closed after 6pm. Does that mean it's haunted with aliens or something? The moral of the story is this wouldn't have been weird if it was in Prospect Park, in fact we definitely wouldn't have even gone. SIKE! We love cultural events.

@WolfieVibes

@PuppiesonLSD

Petty-Counterpetty: Tom Pointy and the Heartboinkers

By: Corey C. and Ben Johnson

After not actually reading the always hilariously overwrought Steven Hyden's Career Arc: Tom Petty piece in Grantland, Total Bozo Youth Correspondent Corey C. had a few thoughts about the "underappreciated genius" of Tom Petty. Total Bozo co-editor Ben Johnson disagreed with those thoughts in the way that reasonable minds can, and so what emerged was a point-counterpoint about Tom Petty. A Petty-Counterpetty, if you will.

Point: The Quiet Genius of Never Listening to Tom Petty’s Music

By Corey C.

I’ve never listened to Tom Petty’s music before. I never got dragged to a Petty concert or dated a girl who had Petty fever or roomed with someone who would subject me to such torture. Recently, my friend asked me if I was going to the Petty show at Fenway and I laughed and said, “Who? The ‘Free Fallin’ guy?” 

That’s right, I have heard that song, but it lends itself to such easy mockery that I forgive it. ‘Free Ballin’ is still a phrase that makes me chuckle. In fact, I was forced into my first extensive free ballin’ experience this summer when I moved to a new apartment and I couldn’t find my underwear (boxer-briefs). It was hot that week and I didn’t feel like unpacking and I secretly liked the lack of underwear. I was almost disappointed to find my underwear on the 4^th of July, but it was cold and rainy out, so then I understood the point of wearing underwear again.

I bet Tom Petty needed a new pair of underwear when he was allowed to play in the Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Roy Orbison. They were like the Wu-Tang Clan of aging 60s pop icons. Bob Dylan = The GZA (best flow, wordsmith), George Harrison = The Rza (organized it), Roy Orbison = ODB (his verses are the greatest), Jeff Lynne = U-God, and Tom Petty = Cappadonna (I don’t notice Lynne and Petty’s contributions). 

The Traveling Wilburys’ first LP is underrated. That record is so belligerent and relentless that it transcends the corniness to a point that I find acceptable. How can you go wrong with Bob Dylan writing a song called “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” that is blatantly Dylan trying to channel Bruce Springsteen? Wait, was Springsteen asked to join? Was he mad that he didn’t get asked to join? Wouldn’t he have been a better choice than Tom Petty?

I guess I have heard a little Tom Petty here and there, but overall, I’ve avoided him like I avoid Catholic priests. I owned “Damn the Torpedoes” once because it was in the dollar bin and after one listen I respectfully returned it to the dollar bin. Think about it: Petty’s partly responsible for “alt-country” and “Wilco.”   

So join me in not-listening to Tom Petty. We can make a day of it: “Don’t Listen to Tom Petty Day.” We could add it to the Chinese calendar: “The Year of Not Tom Petty.” On Halloween, don’t dress like Tom Petty. And if you are at a party and someone starts playing the chords to one of Petty’s songs, please smash the guitar, like John Belushi in Animal House.

@whatgoesonline

Counterpoint: What The Fuck Are You Even Talking About?

By Ben Johnson

Look, you certainly don’t have to listen to Tom Petty. Your life is your own to live, I guess. And I kind of get where you’re coming from. It’s not like I spend a whole lot of time forking all my cash into whatever jukebox I can find just to listen to some Tom Petty. I own two Petty albums and plenty of Petty MP3’s. I never have a Petty emergency, though. I can get roughly the amount of Petty I find necessary from regular non-Petty living and atmospheric Petty. Hell, those oversturdy radios they use at construction sites play like 70% of the earth’s Petty. Everybody seems more or less fine with that arrangement. So I can understand why you’d want to say something like “I don’t technically need Petty, so not listening to any Petty is a smart way to live.”

But by that logic, everything’s just music. You don’t technically need any of it. It’s like saying “I don’t technically need underwear, so not wearing any underwear is a smart way to live.” Umm, how about if your dick and balls are a gross mess nobody wants to touch? Is that smart? No. It is not.

And it is also not smart to dismiss Petty out of hand just because you’ve heard “Refugee” more times than you’d prefer to. You can’t blame Petty for that. It’s not like he came to your house and forcibly duct taped you to a chair and played “Refugee” over and over again. That’s not how Petty rolls. For every unwanted repeat of “Free Fallin’” you’d prefer to take off your total tally, Petty also didn’t come to your house and forcibly duct tape you to a chair and make you listen to “Anything That’s Rock N’ Roll” even though that might have benefitted you greatly. He just plays the songs and leaves the rest up to you. He’s the world’s shruggingest rock star.

Are there underrated Petty albums? Hell yeah. You want to make rap game comparisons, 2006’s Highway Companion is Petty’s “Forgot About Dre” in an era when every Shins, Fleet Foxes, and Grizzly Bear were making precocious inroads into the Petty zone of singer-songwriter pop pleasantries and acting like hot little shits about it. Highway Companion dabbles just enough in mid-2000’s indiepop tropes to effortlessly mop the floor with those other acts. And I don’t really need to tell you about Wildflowers, do I? It’s the alternate universe follow-up to After The Gold Rush in case you ever want to put on an album that crushes you into nothing.

I think the big thing that’s missing here is context. Okay, yeah, parts of Full Moon Fever are a little dated. But look at the vast wasteland that was popular music and popular music delivery methods in 1989. It’s all this boo hoo hoo The Cure new wave goth shit, and that thing where you Midnight Oil Guy dance to “Roam” by The B-52’s without moving your feet from where they are on the floor. Even if you had the wherewithal to look past the pop charts, which few did back then, you get not much for your trouble but obnoxious metal and shoegazing Brits and American indie underground “art rock” songs about Monkeys Gone To Heaven. If you wanted straight-ahead unselfconscious pop rock songwriting you could sing along to in 1989, it was Petty and then off a cliff to the other guys. And if you listen carefully to the runout of “Runnin’ Down A Dream,” you can tell he was trying his best to include a healthy dose of guitar. Maybe not a The Gories amount or a Cosmic Psychos amount, but come on. Let’s be realistic here. Fucking nobody knew about those bands until like 20 years after the internet was invented. The people who were actually there know this. There were twelve of them at those shows, and three of those twelve were 50-something year old alcoholics whose native VFW hall was the venue. Petty might not move the needle much for you in 2014 when everybody knows everything, but in 1989 Tom Petty was downright helpful. He was out in the open; on the radio and everything.

And that’s more or less what we’re talking about here with Petty. You’re telling me you’re in a classic rock radio situation and you’re NOT cranking it when a Petty tune comes on? What are you turning up? Foreigner “Urgent?” BTO “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet?” God help us, are you out there getting stoked on Superfuckingtramp “The [Motherfucking] Logical Song?” I mean, really. Just how important do you think you are, you can’t listen to a little Tom Petty?

@itisbenjo

These 45s Are Making Me Thirsty

By: Kelly McClure

Ahhh, we see what you've done there, every website ever, and we like it! Here are pictures of 45s found in a garage with nonsensical words strung together underneath them. 

Little bit of something in a tooth crack.

Cigarette smoke on a humid window.

All manner of pubes.

Hairspray can rolling around in a plastic bag.

Hamster cage moist wood chips.

Cracker crumbs on a fleece blanket.

Stressful fart in a peanut shell.

Kool-Aid man reading the newspaper in bed.

Highway museum brochure collection.

Popcorn crumbs in your pants and eyebrow hairs.

All different kinds of dandruff. 

@WolfieVibes