Last night, I spent about 6 hours finding and customizing a new WordPress theme for Trashwire. After a lot of browsing, I fell in love with One Designs’ Cover WP theme. This theme is not only way easier to use from the administrative back-end, but also for readers because it puts more content on the front page and makes it a lot easier to find archived content. It also incorporates Facebook and Twitter so it’s easier to connect with Trashwire writers through social networks or personal blogs (like this one).

I still need to do a few small tweeks and adjustments, but it’s up and running now. Check it out at Trashwire.com.

Anyway, there’s all kinds of debate raging on Twitter and other sites as to weather Marbury’s just an out of work athlete who’s fueling some kind of ego-driven desire for attention or a completely insane person who’s having a mental breakdown live via webcam. I won’t weigh in either way because, honestly, I’m not really sure.

After checking out the “show” for about an hour today, the only way I could describe it was with a quote from Seinfeld. In the episode “The Letter” a snobby older couple analyzes the portrait of Kramer saying…

“I sense great vulnerability. A man-child crying out for love. An innocent orphan in the post-modern world.”
“I see a parasite. A sexually depraved miscreant who is seeking only to gratify his basest and most immediate urges.”
“His struggle is man’s struggle. He lifts my spirit.”
“He is a loathesome, offensive brute. Yet I can’t look away.”
“He transcends time and space.”
“He sickens me.”
“I love it.”
“Me too.”

Skip forward to 1:30 on this video:

Read the rest of this article on Trashwire.com

But my favorite take on the “Bale-Out” is the Tracy Jordan TGS rant.

After the dispute over her age, the next big topic was her relationship with the father. It was reported that he was an Iraqi native, then a war vet, then a contractor hired to work in Iraq–either way, people were giving him an Iraq connection. Well the latest news seems to be that it’s not the father of the babies, but rather the father of the mother (or the litter’s grandfather if you need clarification) that’s heading to Iraq, allegedly to earn money to raise his daughter’s 47 million kids.

Of course, there is also the revelation that the mother already had six kids, so the addition of the new eight brings her total to 14. There have also been reports that a few of the six were twins/multiple births, but I’ve only seen that on one or two sites, so it doesn’t seem to have gone through the rigorous fact-checking that the rest of this “news” had to pass.

There are now reports that the whole thing happened via sperm donor and that the mother could be a mentally ill woman who tricked a doctor into helping her get pregnant because of her obsession with children.

I’m writing all this down to illustrate the way that the internet spins things completely out of control. Whoever has the most recent post is the most credible source and everyone can write something different, saying they don’t want to reveal their sources. Just take a look at some of the gaping holes and complete inaccuracies in Wikipedia, the supposed repository for all knowledge, and you should start to think twice about the “facts” on the internet.

I don’t know why the world is so fascinated with this woman in the first place, let alone to the point where everyone needs to make up the most amazing breaking news about her.

As I was getting ready to go to bed last night, I saw that a few people had already responded and even had a couple messages in my inbox about the review.

Apparently Cody is a sacred cow in this crazy series of tubes that is the interweb because people were downright pissed that I’d described her writing as anything less than stellar.

I think the big misconception was that I was talking shit about her personally. I like her. I (usually) like her writing. I like that she represents chick writers and the relatively unknown person becoming superfamous and all that American Dream stuff. I have no beef with her. I just don’t think her series is good, at least the pilot episode, anyway.

I think her writing is a lot like those Vote for Pedro shirts where everyone loved them so intensely and then they were completely overexposed.

Juno, like Napoleon Dynamite, was a phenomenon when it came out, a stellar film with fantastic writing, direction, and performances all around. But soon everyone had a hamburger phone or wanted to learn to play songs by The Moldy Peaches with their boyfriends. After the cultural smothering that ensued, it was hard to watch the film again and still appreciate all the stuff you thought was rad before every 18-35 year old hipster jumpped on the bandwagon.The film is still awesome, but it’s like hearing Chamillionaire’s song “Ridin’” after hearing the Weird Al version a zillion times. You can’t help but laugh and think about the parody, so you just can’t take the original seriously in the same way as you did before.

So to all the Diablo Cody fans who think I’m trying to dis your goddess, I’m just putting in my two cents like I always do on Trashwire. If you love the show so much, I welcome you to write a review yourself and (if it’s good) I’ll publish it on the site. Use the contact form to send something in.