A new episode of Greek, an awful music video and a busy polygamist

- Being a scummy, dirty, talentless, leach loser is expensive work. Kevin Federline can’t go around looking like he lives in a trailer park and showers once a month on a few measly dollars of income, according to documents filed by his own lawyer in his custody battle with certified nut job and underwear avoider Britney Spears. Among the interesting figures in those papers are the following expenses between May 2007 and January 2008: $1,145 for clothing at Gianni Versace, $3,863 at TAO nightclub, $3,008 at the Hard Rock Beach Club in Las Vegas and $2,000 for a $365 meal at Scores strip club. All told, K-Dirt spent about $43,000 on hotels, dining and shopping over nine months - AND HE’S THE GOOD, RESPONSIBLE PARENT HERE! He’s out blowing money on strip club meals, where the food isn’t even edible, and yet he’s in need of child support payments from his ex-wife? What, did he take his kids with him to the strip club so they could eat? But he most egregious expense on K-Dirt’s ledger is the cash he wasted, er, spent trying to prop up his pathetic music career.  During the aforementioned time frame, K-Dirt spent $74,102 in “music production” expenses. But the best part is that for the same time frame, he raked in a whopping $9,849 in music-related income. Some quick math would tell us that for every $7.53 K-Dirt spent on his music, he earned $1. I’m not a certified accountant, but I will go on the record as saying that that is not a good return on investment.  That’s only slightly more productive than lighting your money on fire or using it to line the bottom of your bird’s cage. I’m not sure how these figures are supposed to help K-Dirt win custody of his kids, but to be fair he doesn’t need much proof other than the über-public meltdown of B. Spears. Best wishes for their two kids, I’m sure their decades in therapy will be a lot of fun.

 

- Who says polygamy is dead in America? Not Warren Jeffs, that’s for sure. You may know Jeffs as a polygamous religious leader who has been quite unpopular with the non-polygamous segments of our culture for his, um, perversion and unsavory corruption of young girls. Chief among those non-polygamous segments of this country are the law enforcement agencies in places Jeffs lives or has lived in the past. Count the police in Eldorado, Tex. as one of those groups not really on board with Mr. Jeffs and his act. State authorities took custody of at least 18 girls who had been living with Jeffs at a secretive religious compound near Eldorado. All told, 52 girls between the ages of 6 and 17 were put on buses and taken from the compound. Each girl was interviewed by the authorities, but contrary to what you might think, I’m glad I don’t know what was said in those interviews. I really am not down for hearing tales of sexual abuse and deviance, both of which most likely went on at that compound. When you have a polygamous leader and he’s got a lot of young girls sequestered like that, they aren’t playing hopscotch and playing with dolls, if you catch my drift. Warren Jeffs is a creep of the highest degree, so let’s all hope that the authorities in Texas are able to find crimes to pin on him that will send him to jail for a good, long time.

 

- On their own, Madonna and Justin Timberlake are forces for evil in the world of music on par with few we’ve ever seen. The Material Skank has been churning out crappy pop music for decades, an endless string of synthesized, dance-beat-laden, thematic garbage that could easily be used to torture terrorism suspects more effectively than waterboarding ever could. Timberlake has made a career out of frosting his tips and dancing in unison with four other dudes while wearing matching outfits. Actually, he stopped doing that a few years ago and began unapologetically ripping off that confirmed pedophile Michael Jackson’s act. Either way, he’s sounded like a weasel that’s just ingested an entire tank of helium for his entire career, either as a man bander or a solo hack, er, act. All of that being said, I’m not sure where I stand on JT and the Material Skank teaming up for a music video for the song “4 Minutes.” On one hand, combining two terrible artists into one video is guaranteed to produce an unwatchable piece of musical nuclear waste that could surpass anything Right Said Fred ever put out. On the other hand, if you are able to avoid ever having to see this video or hear the song, then this could turn into a tremendous positive. How? Look at it this way: if Timberlake and the MS were on their own, recording solo efforts, there would then be twice as much bad music coming from them. With the two of them together, that cuts the amount of horrible tunes in half. Ideally the FCC would condemn this entire project, seize and burn all copies of the video and song and we’d all pretend that it never happened, but in lieu of that I’ll settle for avoiding this thing like the plague.

 

- Welcome back to true piratey-ness, Somali pirates! If you remember back a couple of months, the pirates in Somalia were of particular concern to me because they were apparently going soft, surrendering, kowtowing to law enforcement and basically acting in very un-piratey fashion. If you’re going to call yourself a pirate, there had better be plenty of looting, pillaging, plundering and wenches in your daily schedule, no doubt about it. Thankfully, a group of pirates operating off the coast of Somalia have heeded my call and they’re looking to restore their kind’s flagging reputation. Best of all, they struck out at rich, privileged French people, which I love. Now attacking French people is a bit like lobbing medicine balls at a house made of wet toilet paper, but let’s look past that for now. These intrepid pirates seized control of a French luxury yacht on Friday, taking the 30-member crew hostage. Yes, the boat was big enough to have 30-member crew. If that isn’t the prime example of ostentatiousness and arrogance, I don’t know what is. You sail around a boat like that, you’re asking to be attacked by pirates. No sympathy for you, Frenchies. As for the Somali pirates, I salute you and I hope more Somali pirates show your intrepid, brave, entrepreneurial spirit…..

 

- With Greek once again the only show I have an interest in watching that is also airing new episodes this week, I can focus all of my attention on last night’s show. Thankfully it was a good episode, otherwise it would have been an abysmal week of TV that’s only just begun. This particular episode was all about challenges and rising above them, although it wasn’t as sappy as it sounds. Rusty found himself in a tough spot, on the outside looking in when it came to his pledge class at Kappa Tau. All of his fellow pledges had bonded together but he’d been left out because he was wrapped up in his drama with ex-girlfriend Jen K. and also because the other pledges perceived him as a teacher’s pet for frat president Cappie. When the pledges were assigned to come up with a special project designed to benefit the fraternity, the problems Rusty was having were exacerbated. The challenge for the project came from Cappie and an unexpected source….the mythical Egyptian Joe, inventor of Kappa Tau’s own mini volcano, Vesuvius. Egyptian Joe came back with words of wisdom to inspire the pledges, but as it turns out his words about unity and bonding weren’t really his own. Cappie asked him to talk about those things to inspire the pledges, but all they did was inspire the pledges to try and come up with the easiest possible project so they could be done with it. They built a lame tire swing that broke in its first use, leading to Cappie sending them back to the drawing board. Rusty wasn’t on board with any of the plan and wanted to design a Kappa Tau video game for the project, an idea that was rejected by his fellow pledges. When the tire swing failed, he sought advice from Egyptian Joe, who was temporarily living inside of Vesuvius, located in the Kappa Tau basement. While Egyptian Joe dispensed advice and made a grilled cheese sandwich using an iron, Rusty listened and was inspired to follow through on his video game idea. However, when he completed it and was ready to turn it in, his pledge brothers still wanted nothing to do with it. As they were about to walk out of the room, Rusty asked what he could do to be included as part of their group. hey all told him their beefs him and they then sat down and worked together for a truly great pledge project idea: Kappa Tau’s own brewery. The idea was a big hit with the brothers, even though the brewery isn’t exactly functional in terms of producing drinkable beer. Still, it allowed Rusty to get back in good with his fellow pledges, which is what he wanted all along. Over at the Zeta Beta house, life is still miserably Leave It to Beaver-like thanks to the annoying, wet-blanket Lizzie. The sorority’s national rep remains at the ZBZ house, enforcing rules to the letter and raining on everyone’s fun. Part of Lizzie’s reign of terror is shepherding the sisters into community service at the local animal shelter as part of national ZBZ Big Sister-Little Sister week. The “Littles” (pledges) got to spend much of the week with their “Bigs” (members), with Rusty’s sis Casey and nemesis Rebecca forced to hang out more than either would like. Things were further complicated when Cappie revealed to Casey that he and Rebecca are now dating. That lead to Casey “accidentally’ squirting Rebecca with a hose at the shelter, then asking a guy who works at the shelter out for ZBZ’s double-date night at the local bar, Dobler’s, as a way of dealing with her irritation over Cappie and Rebecca. Seeing them together still drove her crazy though, causing Casey to 1) get drunk, and 2) sleep with her date, which led to the horror of her waking up in his bed the following morning with his mom coming into the room and him revealing that he’s only 16 years old. Casey had her own walk of shame back to the ZBZ house, but later in the day she did another walk of shame for a meeting with Cappie at a local café. There, she tried to talk him out of dating Rebecca, but without success. Casey is forced to accept the pairing but she also threatens Rebecca that if she hurts Cappie, Casey will hurt her. Speaking of hurt….it is becoming painful to watch scenes with Clark Duke’s character, Dale in them. I hated it last season when the writers made Dale a one-dimensional, religious fanatic who basically embodied every negative stereotype people have about people who are religious. But that trend continues this season, this week in particular. Dale is set on “converting” Rusty’s homosexual buddy Calvin back to being straight, using all sorts of idiotic tactics and throwing around Bible verses in an attempt to “convert” Calvin. Calvin plays along, but only to prove a point to Dale that he believes being homosexual isn’t a choice. In the end, Dale agrees to accept that Calvin is gay and that he’s happy being that way. Next week should be a fun episode, if for no other reason than it’s going to involve lots of pranks between Kappa Tau and the pretentious Omega Chi fraternity, including but not limited to duct-taping guys to walls, water gun battles and letting farm animals loose in other people’s frat houses. It should be a good one, so don’t miss it….