Take a load off, Fanny

Hello, Ducks!

Starzina Starfish-Browne here with your Eric’s! Daily! Horoscope! for  JustAnotherManicurist’sMonday, February 11, 2013.  Our goodness Us!  (That’s like “my goodness me!”, except with The Royal We, for you newbies.)  It seems as though everyone and his Great-Aunt Fanny had a birthday this weekend! (Has anyone ever actually HAD a Great-Aunt Fanny?  And what is “Fanny” short for, anyway?  We know what it means when Aunt Flo comes to visit, but that has nothing to do with Fanny.  Or at least We hope it doesn’t, or Maxi might just not be Maxi enough. (Who the hell is Maxi now?  Lordy, YouPeople have peculiar relatives.))

What were We talking about?  Oh, yes, birthday wishes!  Happy Belated Birthday first of all to John, who turned twenty-four this past weekend.  (One wonders, inspired at this juncture by the many johns who have passed through Our life, whether it has ever occurred to any of YouPeople that if you had a friend named John who had had a birthday this weekend, you could pass this horoscope on to him and say, “I had Starzina wish you a happy birthday in Eric’s!Daily!Horoscope!   You’re welcome.”  Probably not.  You don’t strike Us as being very bright.)

Happy Belated Birthday also to Annette, who also turned twenty-four this past weekend On The Street Where We Live.  Happy Belated Birthday also also to Pam, who turned twenty-four this past weekend in Pennsyltucky’s capital, also also also to Nick, who also also also turned twenty-four this past weekend right here in The City Of Brotherly Love (Handles) and with whom We must sometime soon share an adult beverage, and also also also also to Donald, who also also also also turned twenty-four this past weekend on a Vespa somewhere.

And last but not Lee Strasberg, Happy Unbelated Birthday to Chris and to Keith, each of whom turned twenty-four just this very day, making them a day or two younger than all of those people in the preceding paragraph.

But enough of all this levity and frivolity…Starzina has things to do!  We must update Our résumé, brush up Our Shakespeare, and polish up Our tap shoes.  Oh, Our dears, have you heard the news?  There is a brand new opening in the show business firmament!  They are casting a new Pope, and Starzina is going to audition!  And We are just the woman for the job, too!  Why, We have practically and unlimited supply of glitzy ballgowns and costume jewelry, We hate any number of people (not, of course, the same people that the current Pope hates, but that’ll make a nice change), and We can fuck an altar boy with the best of ‘em.  (Although We do insist that they be over eighteen…We’re funny like that.)

Oh Our dears, We can see Us now!  And the icing on the communion wafer?  The POPEMOBILE!

You love Us for Our pink Popemobile

Plush velvet seats

Us behind the wheel, cruisin’ down the street

Wavin’ to the boys

Feelin’ outta sight

Spending all your tithings on a Saturday night….

Ooops…sorry.  We got carried away.  We’ll get off the Pope now, and give somebody else a chance.  But first, Our favorite reaction from the WorldWideInterWebNetz to the Pope’s abdication of his throne: “I did Nazi that coming!”

Speaking of old men in dresses and ruby slippers,  We shall be playing The VD Match Game on Friday and Saturday, February 15 and 16, at 7:30 at L’Etage.  You can obtain tickets here http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/331562 and find more info here
http://www.facebook.com/events/279672565493605/  Our Sistah Ovella, for those of you who know her, will be playing also.

Here is a little Aquarius fillum, for Our birthday Aquarians:

And here are the HorrorScopes:

Taylor Lautner is twenty-one today.  Twenty-one is older than eighteen.  We intend to spend the rest of the day mentally dressing him up like an altar boy and smearing birthday cake on him.  YouPeople do whatever  you have to do.

Things are starting to get serious (Oh, We KNOW!  It just occurred to Us that, while We certainly have all the glitzy ballgowns a Pope could ever require, We are somewhat lacking in the Big Gay Hat department.   We have, as it (subjunctively) were, a chapeau shortage, a sombrero scarcity, a derby dearth, a porkpie paucity…should We stop?  Get Us a hatter, before We get mad!  Get Us Martin Milner’s milliner!  Quick, before We flip Our lid!)

(It’s been a long time since We’ve had this much excitement around here.)

— so make sure that you’re treating them with the care and respect they deserve!  (Why is Kelli still talking?)

You may find that your people don’t see things the same way you do, (Indeed.  Because apparently, We are seeing things that aren’t there.  Starting with “Our people’.)

but that is sure to change. (Everything changes.  Except for the fact that everything changes.  That doesn’t change.  So everything, apparently does NOT change. (This is why We can’t have nice things.))

 Any bad news you get today is really not going to be bad news at all — (Oh. Our. God.  Shut. Up. Kelli.)

 and it won’t cause a real problem for you or your people.  (Well, of course not.  Imaginary people can’t have real problems.  Can they?)

The person who will be telling you the news thinks things are different than they really are, so they’ll be happy when you set their mind at ease.  (How nice.  For THEM.)

All in all, you can expect this day to be neither totally fun  (We’d pretty much figgered that out already.)

nor utterly frustrating (On the plus side, Dallas is on later.  (On the plus SIZE, Our ass.))

 — it’s a kind of gray day (Spooky!  How did she know that?)

where nothing is going to get finalized but nothing can really get started, either.  (Also, nothing is going to get simonized but nothing can really get farted, either.)

(What?)

Luck isn’t exactly working for you when it comes to the love department now.  (Gee…ya think?)

In fact, the smartest approach might be no approach at all!  (The same cannot be said of cockroaches.)

Let them approach you, (Oh, sure.  Like Taylor Lautner is gonna show up on Our doorstep all of his own volition.)

or let the situation evolve naturally.  (Evolution?!?  Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat!  Like We’re gonna sit here with an amoeba and a paramecium and wait for them to turn into Taylor Lautner.)

(Your Your-O-Scopes:

http://www.humorscope.com)

(Meanwhile, why We didn’t think of this sooner, We’ve got no idea, but better laid than necking, as they say (and how right they are!).  For real live actual ass(tromlaogical) ho(roscopular) advice, please visit Our good friend AstroGeek here:  http://agskylab.blogspot.com/.  Our Own epistular musings are of use to you only insofar as making you feel better by comparison, but he will give you actual pertinent advice for your very own lives, based on upon the positions and transitations of all manner of planets, planetoids, asteroids, Altoids™, hemorrhoids, and other heavenly flotsam, jetsam, and Jetsons.  Plus, he knows all about Uranus!)

*****************************************************************************

Starzina Starfish-Browne was born in the wagon of a traveling show…well, okay, not really. She was actually born in Lowake, Texas, the daughter of a beautician and either a garage mechanic or the town mailman. At sixteen, she escaped her humble beginnings by running off with Doctor Browne’s Traveling Medicine Show and, more to the point, Doctor Browne. Following the dissolution of this unfortunate entanglement (Doctor Browne was a Virgo and Starzina is, of course, an Aries), which produced a daughter, Starzina entered a contest in Soap Opera Digest and won a scholarship to Oxford (yes, in ENGLAND), where she earned her doctorate in the newly-created dual major of Astrology and Human Sexuality. There is absolutely NO TRUTH to the rumor that Starzina’s second daughter has Royal blood, despite tabloid photographs allegedly depicting her cavorting on the Italian Riviera with Princes William and Harry, clad only in Prussian helmets and armbands of questionable taste. Starzina currently resides with her daughters in Philadelphia, the City That Loves You (On Your) Back, where she enjoys Double Coupon Day at the local SuperCruise and “encouraging” the coxswain of the Penn rowing team.

                                                                                                                                    

This girl is on fire

Hello, Ducks!

Starzina Starfish-Browne here with your Eric’s! Daily! Horoscope! for  ThankFridayIt’sGod, February 8, 2013.  Well, it is An Historic Day here at Eric’s!Daily!Horoscope! (If you had (subjunctively) heard Us say that out loud, you’d’ve been shocked…SHOCKED, We tell you…at how much We sounded exactly like Maggie Smith.)  Our review of Les Miserables  yesterday got Our highest-ever single-day hit count of actual readers.  Now, mind you, the day with the picture of the naked fat man with the ginormous belly, and the day with the picture of Prince William in a Speedo™, and the day with the picture of Justin Bieber in the leather harness, and the day with the picture of Charlene Tilton all still have much higher hit counts, but they were accrued over time, and are not, We suspect, representative of perusal by Gentle Readers.  So yay, Us!

What this would seem to indicate is that YouPeople prefer when We have an actual topic.  To which We say, fat chance, and good luck with that.  Or maybe you just enjoy it when We have a miserable (heh) artistic experience.  But what the hell makes you think it’s all about YOU?

At any rate, We didn’t expect to be mentioning Les Miz again so soon, but We were minding Our Own business last night, watching Glee as One does, when suddenly and without warning two of the characters burst into a Les Miz song.  What the hell We had ever done to THEM, We haven’t got any idea.  To the credit of the Glee production staff, however, at no point were We forced to observe a single nose hair belonging to either Chris Colfer or Lea Michelle.

Immediately following this trauma, they cut to a commercial in which M&Ms sang a Meat Loaf song.

Then We went to bed and had a dream about light bulbs.

We can see you all rushing to send the URL for this e-pissode to hundreds of your closest friends this very minute.

Speaking of Glee, that is one of the few avenues via which We find out anything that is happening in the world of pop music.  We are old.  We don’t know much, ‘cause We don’t get out much.  We rarely listen to the radio, and, when we do, it is to an alternative station.  Why, just last week when Beyoncé sang at The Football Pageant, you could have knocked Us over with a feather when someone told Us that McDonna is still alive.

So, later in the Glee episode, here comes Miss Naya Rivera, singing some pop tune We are certain We’ve heard before…but where?  We Googled the title phrase on Wikipedia…it is an Alicia Keys tune.  We are vaguely familiar with her oeuvre…We know “Fallin’”, for instance, because they used it to shill CBS’s daytime soap line-up back in the day.  But this tune…We cannot quite pinpoint what commercial We might have heard it on.  (The M&Ms, after all, were singing Meat Loaf.  From twenty years ago.)

The song?  “Girl On Fire”. We are truly, truly NOT the brightest bulb in the marquee.  The  reason We know it?

Meanwhile, as if this e-pissode were (subjunctively) not already jam-packed, fun-filled, and fudge-packed (ooops) enough, you may recall that, almost exactly one year ago today, We trundled off to Greater Bostonia to witness history being made, Our friends produced their very own television show.  Well, here, a year later, as Greater Bostonia prepares to find Nemo dumped all over they asses, it is, for your viewing pleasure.  (Don’t say We never gave ya nothin’.):

Speaking of things that are on fire on the bottom, We shall be playing The VD Match Game on Friday and Saturday, February 15 and 16, at 7:30 at L’Etage.  You can obtain tickets here http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/331562 and find more info here
http://www.facebook.com/events/279672565493605/  Our Sistah Ovella, for those of you who know her, will be playing also.

Here is a little Aquarius fillum, for Our birthday Aquarians:

And here are the HorrorScopes:

On top of everything else, it is Mary Steenburgen’s birthday.  Our cup runneth over.

You have to take advantage of this big opportunity!  (What, there’s a sale at Lane Bryant?)

If you don’t see it, then start looking (This assumes (thereby making an ass of Uma Thurman) that We didn’t see “it” (whatever “it” is) because We didn’t look.  Also, you are an AssHat.)

— by the end of the day, (You’re another day older (Stop it, STOP It, STOP IT!!!!!))

you should have stumbled across a great chance to advance your interests.  (What if We’re not interested?)

Without even realizing it, (Realizing what?)

(Heh.  SWWDT?)

you have quickly ascended to the top of a powerful person’s list. (Because We were naughty, or because We were nice?)

Just by doing the right thing in the right way, you are succeeding!  (Wouldn’t that be the exact definition of succeeding?  (Unless, of course, One was TRYING to do the wrong thing in the wrong way, in which case, by doing the right thing in the right way, One would not have succeeded.  (If One does the wrong thing in the right way, does it become the right thing? (It’s like a Chinese phone book up in this place…what do two Wongs make?))))

If you are looking to accelerate in your career, (Wait…We have a career?)

this could be the beginning of a very active phase.  (Oh…We’re yeast.)

It’s not yet clear how things are going to change for you, but the changes are coming soon — so get ready. (How is it supposed to be clear how to get ready if it’s not clear how things are changing?)

Your reputation is your top concern, (All together now:  This. Boy. Is A Bottom (Bottom (Bottom…)))

so it’s a wonderful thing (Also, It’s A Wonderful Life.)

that you’re only going to shine right now.  (A little pressed powder will sort that right out.)

 (Your Your-O-Scopes:

http://www.humorscope.com)

(Meanwhile, why We didn’t think of this sooner, We’ve got no idea, but better laid than necking, as they say (and how right they are!).  For real live actual ass(tromlaogical) ho(roscopular) advice, please visit Our good friend AstroGeek here:  http://agskylab.blogspot.com/.  Our Own epistular musings are of use to you only insofar as making you feel better by comparison, but he will give you actual pertinent advice for your very own lives, based on upon the positions and transitations of all manner of planets, planetoids, asteroids, Altoids™, hemorrhoids, and other heavenly flotsam, jetsam, and Jetsons.  Plus, he knows all about Uranus!)

*****************************************************************************

Starzina Starfish-Browne was born in the wagon of a traveling show…well, okay, not really. She was actually born in Lowake, Texas, the daughter of a beautician and either a garage mechanic or the town mailman. At sixteen, she escaped her humble beginnings by running off with Doctor Browne’s Traveling Medicine Show and, more to the point, Doctor Browne. Following the dissolution of this unfortunate entanglement (Doctor Browne was a Virgo and Starzina is, of course, an Aries), which produced a daughter, Starzina entered a contest in Soap Opera Digest and won a scholarship to Oxford (yes, in ENGLAND), where she earned her doctorate in the newly-created dual major of Astrology and Human Sexuality. There is absolutely NO TRUTH to the rumor that Starzina’s second daughter has Royal blood, despite tabloid photographs allegedly depicting her cavorting on the Italian Riviera with Princes William and Harry, clad only in Prussian helmets and armbands of questionable taste. Starzina currently resides with her daughters in Philadelphia, the City That Loves You (On Your) Back, where she enjoys Double Coupon Day at the local SuperCruise and “encouraging” the coxswain of the Penn rowing team.

                                                                                                                                    

Everybody raise a glass! Raise it up the master’s ass!

Hello, Ducks!

Starzina Starfish-Browne here with your Eric’s! Daily! Horoscope! for  Thursday, February 07, 2013.  We have just this moment learned that the last of the people who worked at Our old company prior to its acquisition by the Evil Acquiring Company (EAC) and who subsequently caused Us to lose Our position in the new regime has now been “made redundant”, as They say.  How do you spell “schadenfreude” and, more to the point, can you put it under “Special Skills” on a résumé ?

Meanwhile, from The Happy News That Actually Affects Us Department, We learned yesterday that the murder mystery We wrote for a local dinner theater has been accepted, subject to very minor revisions, and that a contract (and, subsequently, a blessed, blessed check) are imminent.

Which brings Us to the subject which is going to comprise the bulk of today’s e-pissode:

Our review of Les Miserables.

Could it have been any MORE miserable?  We don’t think so.  First of all, lettuce just say, whoever allegedly “directed” this fillum should be horsewhipped, then drawn and quartered, and all the pieces shot.  Since when is “Extreme Closeup” the answer to everything?  Especially when, with a few notable exceptions, none of the stars are wearing any makeup.  Not that they couldn’t have found a few spare hands to apply some, since, if you skip ahead to the credits, you will note that the entire populations of both Hollywood and France worked on this picture.  Of course, with the constant Extreme Closeups of people simultaneously singing and crying, half of those workers were clearly on permanent Booger Check Patrol.

Now, We are not going to attempt to tell you the entire story (which, as near as We can tell, was longer than the French Revolution), but We shall sketch in the salient points.  It concerns Hugh Jackman, who can sing, and Russell Crowe, who hits the same “note” over and over again and sounds as though someone were (subjunctively) kicking him in the balls.  Russell is the sheriff or some such of Paris (France, not Texas, which you can tell because everybody has British accents and calls each other “Monsieur”) and is in pursuit of Hugh, who is some sort of criminal. Russell’s pursuit is hampered by the fact that, although he looks exactly the same throughout all nine hours of the movie (except for a succession of varying Smart Gay Hats), he can only recognize Hugh when Hugh shoulders some heavy object a la Christ carrying His cross.  Hugh adds to this difficulty in recognition by disguising himself more and more as Marty Feldman throughout the course of the fillum.

Once the Hugh-Russell rivalry is thoroughly established, about thirteen hours into the fillum, Anne Hathaway turns up.  Of course, she only looks like Anne Hathaway for a few seconds before she starts selling off her hair, and her teeth, and her coochie.  She then treats Us to Our first Up-The-Nostril Extreme Closeup of the fillum as she sings the soul-stirring ballad, “Where Is My Oscar™ For Best Supporting Anorexic?”  Then she dies, because (A.) there were really no good roles for women in the French Revolution and (2.) if you play a whore AND you die, you are practically guaranteed an Oscar™.  Plus, as she said in a subsequent interview, “Judi Dench won an Oscar™ for eight minutes in Shakespeare in Love.  I am in this fillum for eight minutes that seem like an eternity; engrave my little gold statue NOW, bitches.”

It should be noted that, in a bizarre coincidence, once they cut all of her hair off, Anne Hathaway looks uncannily LIKE an Oscar™.  Except when she sings; then, she looks like the Reach™ toothbrush guy with the flip-top head.  (Did We mention that she only sold her BACK teeth?)

Once Anne is dead, about eighteen hours into the fillum, the director decides that, in order to wake up the audience, he will resort to the tried-and-true device of a fillum with a fillum.  So, when Hugh goes off to find Anne’s now-orphaned daughter, Crumpet, We suddenly find Ourselves in BizarroWorld, with innkeeper Helena Bonham Carter, who has apparently never bathed or changed her clothes since she made Sweeney Todd, and her husband, Jerry Lewis, as the guardians of the child.  They sing “The Worst Pies In London”, even though it’s Paris, while putting a prosthetic leg through a meat grinder.  Once they finish singing, about nineteen hours later, We discover that Jerry Lewis inexplicably has a quasi-French accent, while everybody else at the inn, and, indeed, in the entire fillum, has a British accent.  Except for Helena Bonham Carter who, as usual, never speaks above a mumble, so We never find out what kind of accent she has.  Apparently, Jerry Lewis is from a different part of France.

Helena and Jerry have a daughter who is Chinese.  Or a Mongoloid idiot…We may have dozed off somewhere in here; the fillum had been going on for three days at this point.  At any rate, their little China girl becomes important (much) later on, when little Crumpet grows up to be a pretty blond girl who can’t sing, and little China girl grows up to be Xena, Warrior Princess.

Some time the following week, a few strapping young tenors turn up in the fillum as a small perk for those of Us who are not into daddies, Hugh being in full-on Marty Feldman mode by now, and Russell having been kicked in the balls more times than We can count.  The main tenor, plot-point-wise, is a freckle-faced youth whom We imagine would be quite attractive under other circumstances, but (A.) many of the strapping extra tenors around him are more attractive and (2.) those freckles are very distracting.  Seriously, you couldn’t slap a little CoverGirl™ on that?

A triangle quickly (“quickly” being, in this fillum, a relative thing) develops between Freckles, Crumpet, and Xena Warrior Princess, and just as quickly is resolved when everybody realizes that Xena is a lesbian.  Also, she dies, as do all of the strapping extra tenors.  (Hey, if she’d only sold her coochie, she could have competed with Anne Hathaway for that Oscar™.)

Nine and a half weeks (and an interminable crawl through the sewers of Paris) later, Freckles and Crumpet are married, Russell kills himself when a production assistant inadvertently shows him the dailies, and Hugh decides to die when he realizes that his metamorphosis into Marty Feldman is complete.   All of the dead people are reunited in the afterlife, except Russell, who may finally have learned to kick himself in the balls.

FIN

Speaking of the French Revolution, We shall be playing The VD Match Game on Friday and Saturday, February 15 and 16, at 7:30 at L’Etage.  You can obtain tickets here http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/331562 and find more info here
http://www.facebook.com/events/279672565493605/  Our Sistah Ovella, for those of you who know her, will be playing also.

Here is a little Aquarius fillum, for Our birthday Aquarians:

And here are the HorrorScopes:

Despite having given up thirteen months of Our life to watch that miserable fillum, somehow it is all made better by the fact that it is Ashton Kutcher’s birthday.  Our horoscope, meanwhile, is below.  We are too faint with hunger to answer it as usual; We must go steal a loaf of bread.  Please feel free to answer it in Our stead.  (Hey, that rhymed!)

You need to make an extra effort today — though that may come naturally. Your drive for success is fully activated, and you should find that your energy is pushing in the right direction.  Just because you have extremely positive feelings about someone doesn’t mean that everyone else does, so make no assumptions today. If no one is as excited about them as you are right now, don’t worry about it. You need to tone down your excited feelings anyway — and let other people see for themselves what’s so great about this person. Only then can they understand why you are feeling the way you do, and only then can they come over to your way of thinking. A stint of long, hard labor means that your social life falls by the wayside for a brief amount of time. It’s worth it. After all, you can’t live on love alone. Other projects and career prospects take precedence now.

 (Your Your-O-Scopes:

http://www.humorscope.com)

(Meanwhile, why We didn’t think of this sooner, We’ve got no idea, but better laid than necking, as they say (and how right they are!).  For real live actual ass(tromlaogical) ho(roscopular) advice, please visit Our good friend AstroGeek here:  http://agskylab.blogspot.com/.  Our Own epistular musings are of use to you only insofar as making you feel better by comparison, but he will give you actual pertinent advice for your very own lives, based on upon the positions and transitations of all manner of planets, planetoids, asteroids, Altoids™, hemorrhoids, and other heavenly flotsam, jetsam, and Jetsons.  Plus, he knows all about Uranus!)

*****************************************************************************

Starzina Starfish-Browne was born in the wagon of a traveling show…well, okay, not really. She was actually born in Lowake, Texas, the daughter of a beautician and either a garage mechanic or the town mailman. At sixteen, she escaped her humble beginnings by running off with Doctor Browne’s Traveling Medicine Show and, more to the point, Doctor Browne. Following the dissolution of this unfortunate entanglement (Doctor Browne was a Virgo and Starzina is, of course, an Aries), which produced a daughter, Starzina entered a contest in Soap Opera Digest and won a scholarship to Oxford (yes, in ENGLAND), where she earned her doctorate in the newly-created dual major of Astrology and Human Sexuality. There is absolutely NO TRUTH to the rumor that Starzina’s second daughter has Royal blood, despite tabloid photographs allegedly depicting her cavorting on the Italian Riviera with Princes William and Harry, clad only in Prussian helmets and armbands of questionable taste. Starzina currently resides with her daughters in Philadelphia, the City That Loves You (On Your) Back, where she enjoys Double Coupon Day at the local SuperCruise and “encouraging” the coxswain of the Penn rowing team.