Like A Virtel

LIKE A VIRTEL returns!

2010-03-09T22:37:00.000-08:00

(That's me on the left giving you Christmas-morning-toddler realness.)

Babygirls, it's been a year since I wrote here. Why did I stop again? Ah, yes: Extreme wealth and popularity entered the picture. It all started when I turned pro with my freakdancing. Then I married several Vanderbilts at once, and now Milton Bradley is releasing my new religion next week. "Blogging" (if that's what this is still called) is for thetans, and I have thetans in my bile. And so can you, for a FEE.

Ugh, no. I'm not a billionaire. I didn't even become the Grand Poobah of a cool anorexia cult like I promised. But much has changed since you last waltzed with Louis. Not his dapper use of the third-person, thank God.

The long and short of it: I'm a "TVLine" contributor at Movieline.com, where I dissect American Idol, Project Runway, and other third-grade recreational material. I've had this job since August, when I stopped working for Hollywood Life, my company's other entertainment journalizzum venture. (J-izzum for short, if you catch my drip. Heh-Ha! Lick you.) It's a great gig, and I write with marvelous people who understand that Glee is fucking horrible. Who is watching this unruly barf cotillion? It's more cloying and uncomfortable than anything else on the tube, and yes, I know who Kara DioGuardi is. Someone spare Jane Lynch and have her play all the parts in a Night Court revamp. The rest of the faculty and student body can turn their somersaults on Satan's award-winning jazz hands. In a light-and-sound spectacular! Forever! "Do-on't STOP!"

I've also moved from Inglewood (where I lived for eight months) to Hollywood. There are subtle differences. For one, Magic Johnson feels less obligated to own every business here. You don't see his picture on all the walls like Chairman Mao. Also, Hollywood is located next to Los Feliz, West Hollywood, Silver Lake, and Echo Park -- all happenin' neighborhoods of assorted stripes. Inglewood shares borders with a highway and clues to your upcoming death. Not as happenin'. Not as cool. Not as dotted with Entourage locales or lesser Kardashians named, like, Kjennifer. (Speaking of which: I went to traffic court in Beverly Hills, and Rob Kardashian's name was called. He didn't show up, but I gave myself a low-five under the bench, because fame is like a distant aunt I might meet at my First Communion party.)

My roommate is my friend Leonard, who writes Ryan Seacrest's American Top 40 radio show and continues to claim that Ryan is normal. Leonard is also a sociopath, so you never know. I keep a few friends outside the apartment too, including a mega horde of homosexuals and enough straight people to make the application process appear fair. My dear confidant Erika went to j-izzum school at Iowa with me, and she lives just up in the street in giddy Glendale. I have cousins in Culver City. I have a Lemont, IL native in the hills, and she wrote that movie Jennifer's Body about my dick. (Well played, Megan Fox!) I'm forgetting others, and unfortunately that is glamorous of me.

After a year of living in LA and working roughly the same job, my standout issues remain the same. Prepare thy grumbles for the humorless bitching graf! 1) I write every day, and it is difficult to like everything I write. Subject matter is the least of my concerns; I'm talking about what I contribute -- the punch, the impact, the meaningfulness of my work. That's hard to get over, the dread that I'm not representing myself with my best writing, or my funniest writing, or my funniest bestness. Being funny has been my paramount concern since middle school, when I'd work on my Judge Judy impersonation until I peed on my leg and had to inform myself it was raining. Now, sometimes I like what I write. On other occasions I don't have enough time to edit and re-edit thoroughly, and I think the work sounds clumsy, juvenile, or wordy in retrospect. I admit, I sometimes think I'll never win my Pulitzer in the category of Making Fun of Heidi Klum Three Times a Day. I just think Bob Woodward's going to take it all sometimes. I really do.

Oh, wait, that was a list. Uh: 2) I can't cook. That's always hilarious and tragic. 3) Clementines were on sale today, and I ate 35. All while mumbling made-up, psuedo-Stephen Foster "clementine" lyrics as the scurvy antidote stinkfisted me raw in the feelings. 4) Facebook has this delicate quality where I want to find every fucker who wronged me on it and nail their gay lips to a bulletin board over this great nation. I spend too much time on it, I mean. 5) I'm also on Twitter too much. (A theme is building here!) Do you know what this Twitter carnival is? Everyone's barking on it. Follow me! I try really fucking hard at it, which is neither endearing nor the point of Twitter. If you don't understand a couple of the Ruth Buzzi references, that's fine. Just don't tell me, or I'll explain them before FUCKING YOU UP.

That'll do it for now! Maybe some fun-size (read: SMALLER) updates are in our future. I'll try to not rewrite St. Augustine's Confessions for a suburban gay youth group next time. At any rate, thank you for reading. And tolerating. And calling poison control when the words started turning upside down.

Love,
Louissss

The Password Is: Inarticulate

2009-05-09T17:45:00.000-07:00

Every time I read a word I don't recognize, I fucking feel bad. I turn to the dictionary, snatch up the definition, reread it, use the bastard word in a sentence like the Scripps' National Spelling Bee is at stake, and pray I retain it. Like many unhinged crossword sycophants (read: Gloria Virtel) and utterly hinged copy editors, I dig the unexpected adjective, the overly technical noun, the heightened odds for finesse one enjoys with fast access to a fat lexicon. If anything, the big words offset my chronic sailormouth and suburban cul-de-sac slang. They're tangy, tarty things to top my Wheat Thin articulation.

Unfamiliar words make me feel like I messed up, and not just with Scrabble prep, but with my whole life, honestly. You'll see that I'm right. I spent my high school career assuring myself I'd attained Brahman-level writerliness, and each time I read David Carr or Ginia Bellafante (<3 and <3, respectively), I gaze at my overpriced homo boots and realize I'm squatting in the shallow end of the Ganges. Or maybe a damp sandbar in the Indus. Or maybe a puddle in Lemont, IL, next to my old business economics teacher who claimed "Castle" was one syllable. Wherever it is, it's enlightenment-bereft and a spiritual world away from critical authority. Lemont sounds kind of right.

Words, to me, connote status -- defined not by that fickle bitch called "intelligence," but experience. A thesaurus can keep you from hobbling when propping up a last-ditch research paper, but it won't help you convincingly own the fancy verbiage. You simply need to live, read, realize, and regurgiate in order to cultivate a well-integrated system of $2 dollar words and personal style. The more of both sides you hone, the more the system swells and percolates and pops golden eggs. If other writers are working with more, they're winning.

Ah, yes! Winning. You didn't think this wasn't about winning, right? You'd be a dear and a fucking idiot to dismiss competition from the world of writing. In an age where news conduits and forums of stylish prose shrink and dissolve with parabolic, comic escalation (you have to laugh! Yah-HA! The tears won't stop.), the trustworthy, longtime, most experienced writers maintain gigs. If you haven't been writing nightlife for The Village Voice for 25 years or nailing deadlines at the Grey Lady for generations, your job is at stake. The best way to fake your importance is to convey experience, indispensable authority. And here we rearrive at big, cool words and a reservoir of experience. You see -- because I looked up "entropy," I'm that much closer to losing my job, my paycheck, a roof over my head, livelihood, self-esteem, and the confidence of my dance moves. It's all teetering.

So just know that when you outclass my vocabulary with an umlaut-bedazzled nugget of prowess, it's personal, I can't handle it, and I might be dead tomorrow. But also know that I'm inclined to improve, for my own self-worth and for y'all too. Fuck philanthropy. My charity is collecting poetic ammunition and sharing it before our greatest wordmasters disappear from national publications and resign themselves to clandestine personal blogs -- the kind of shit you can't trip over on Google while you search for the fuckers who blocked you on Facebook. The greatest vanishing act of all.

Lesley Ann Warren, wake the fuck up.

2009-02-24T22:39:00.000-08:00

From EW:

'Clue': Gore Verbinski to direct new movie adaptation of board game

Feb 24, 2009, 09:27 PM | by Joshua Rich

Categories: Film, Games

Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) has been tapped to direct and produce a new adaptation of the game Clue, Variety reports. Like the previous 1985 movie and the classic Hasbro board game on which both films are based, Verbinski's project will be a murder mystery. It's the latest Hasbro property headed to the big screen, after Transformers and this summer's G.I. Joe. Earlier this month, a Candy Land film was also announced.

I'm clearly hyperventilating. I don't know how one improves upon the likes of Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, and Eileen Brennan, but -- oh wait! -- you can't. The hard sobbing begins... now. COMFORT ME, MAWMA, THEY'RE DRIVIN' OVER OUR MEMORIES WITH THE TRACTOR.

Love,
Louis

Diamonds on my (highly journalistic) grill

2009-02-24T21:50:00.000-08:00

At work today I Googled myself (oh yeah, up and down, baby) to figure out how to link to my Hollywood Life articles. Hmmm. This came up.

I still have the fucking vapors. UN-FUCKITY-REAL.

I read his blog regularly too, so I'm shocked I didn't see the entry until today. What's funny is I met David Carr, the Carpetbagger and my hella-connected new Facebook friend, at a Beverly Hills event the night of his post. By that time he already linked to me, unaware of our near-future acquaintanceship. We're talking Cusack-level serendipity here, dear cunts. It's kinda gross. Anyway, upon spotting my mention in the blog, I did what I do best: Sing the chorus to "Bossy" nine times and enact extra-special choreography from the school of Caucasia. I still need someone to put the roof back down.

Here it is, my ebullience embodied in song, now embedded in yo' life:

Also, the "6-4 hoppers up in Crenshaw" are seriously up the street from me. My neighbors are jumping 808s.

Love,
Louis

Scholarly, comprehensive video analysis

2009-02-15T02:13:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX8MsyDHntk

I partitioned my original disquisition on this video into chapters, volumes, and eventually an anthology. Lighting cues, dialogue analysis, and greater social implications were all swiftly explored.

Then I summarized it all into the following extract. Ahem:

Fuck me upside-down and cross-eyed, Jorma Taccone, and don't stop until my goddamn grandkids are bowlegged.

Happy V-Day, everyone. Yep, you too, Mom.

Love,
Louis

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Blogged

2009-02-13T23:33:00.000-08:00

Colleen the Cueball up there has SPOKEN. Caterwauled, in fact. Today's theme: Raging Irish liberation that you can't even contain with a shelf-like halter top. You guessed it, this means I'm finally freed from cubicle confinement. Work ended at 5, and my 3-day weekend commences today. Onward to whining! Pope-ripping! Momentary lesbianism! Whining mostly.

So mmkay, how the hell do I forge a social life -- or any life -- around the fatigue of fulltime work? I'm afraid these entities called "employers" care nothing for my nepotism or quest to spend 80 hours a week in a cool anorexia cult. The nerve. I'm allegedly inventing a California existence over here, and I don't even care to leave my living room after going home. It's fucking frustrating. I'm not so homesick anymore, but I'm not teeming with new friends either. My life is simply occurring, though not gleaming with accomplishment and pool boys like I require. I pass the time with studio screener DVDs, Netflix, a couple books, and yuppie slush from Starbucks. In theory, it sounds kind of decadent. Careful, I may think about it too long and remember that I'm enjoying myself. Weird.

Christ Jesus, though, I'm underselling my boss Hollywood achievements: I attended TWO Grammy parties last week, befriended some scrappy US Weekly staffers, and interviewed Akon, Eva Pigford (ANTM Cycle 3, plebes), Colby O'Donis, and Tony Kanal from No Doubt. And you probably didn't, so I'm jazzed about that.

I'm getting used to this idea of short blog entries. I don't know how other people do it, but I'ma bust a badass closer right-effing-now. Errr, uhhh, yeah, um, gotta go stalk a preschool, haha, whatever, bye don't look at me.

In all seriousness, I want to pledge to update this once a day. For my own good. It's a lofty (not actually that lofty) goal, but I need to make sure I write for myself more often. Penning gossip column material at work is fun, but when I don't write about my own experiences, I forget to commemorate them at all. Here's to logging all my tripe with efficiency, wit, and a moratorium on references to game show trivia.

Love,
Louis

P.S. OK, but get this, the Director of Operations for Game Show Network friended me on Facebook last week. He knows backstage shit about Richard Dawson and Pat Sajak. I'm titillated and moist. Fine I'm done now.

All takin' and no givin'

2009-02-10T03:00:00.000-08:00

Without pursing my kisser into a Tomlin-style smirk, I can assure you that working 9-5 (which is my gig now) is perfectly doable. It just means I can't do anything else. Like update this properly. Or render a social life. Or sleep. Or be alive. Or worse, not think about Iman for hours. That's like prayer where I live.

But anyway, you do receive a free JPEG courtesy of a website that can sue me now. Oooh, that's kind of suspenseful! Chris Brown and his runaway rent-a-Bentley (ALLEGEDLY) have nothing on my shit.

-L

Louis Redux: Now Sun-Dappled and Methfaced

2009-02-05T21:47:00.001-08:00

Looks friendly, don't it?

So this is our new relationship: I write blog entries, embed videos, post pictures of myself gawking at any number of Kardashians, and you recognize. You "betta," as they say. They being no one.

I relocated to Los Angeles in mid-January, and I don't know what that means. Is this the beginning of a longterm California affair? Is that a good thing? Am I inhaling smog, coke, and Xenu's love gas as I traverse Melrose? I interviewed Akon the other day -- does that make me a bad person? Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? When will I be loved? Do you know the way to San Jose? What if God was one of us? Who killed Mr. Boddy? All these concerns I have.

You might recall this blog's older, decrepit incarnation. It's a brassy old cocksucker, but it can't broadcast YouTube splendor, which is my sole purpose in this life. Fuck, see:

When fate combines existence's two most precious assets, Wheat Thins and Sandy Duncan, that's my cue to unleash roving reportage. You want Wheat Thins now, my cyber-minion. The Duncanator commands you. You also want a scalding slab of Sandy herself, lovingly served on a posterboard-sized Nabisco cracker. Can I just say -- I thought she died 20 years ago. I just did a little research... and fuck the haters, SANDY DUNCAN LIVES. And she never had a glass eye! The wool over my eyes melts into a beautiful cardigan. I knew nothing until Wikipedia corrected the world's sorry dependence on documented fact.

And now for several seconds of coherence: I'm the newly appointed Associate Editor at Hollywood Life, an entertainment website and quarterly magazine. It used to be Movieline magazine, which was a frighteningly legitimate publication. Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Johnny Depp graced covers -- with frequency. If I ever meet anyone of this caliber, I will devolve into feral fanaticism and general Chris Crockery. See, he's the kind of person I usually interview. OK, no lie, I actually did one time. We don't have to speak about it if you don't want to.

Anyway, the HL job is real and salaried, so I'm stepping up my professionalism, wardrobe, and chronic hypersensitivity. I can't cry (visibly) when my work is heavily edited; that commandment starts today. My stake in learning the ropes of entertainment journalism looms everyday at my office, thanks to our mag's two other editorial staffers: The EIC is a New York Times travel writer; the Deputy Editor is a nine-year veteran of The Village Voice. The last editor is Louis Virtel from Lemont, IL, and he enjoys Game Show Network. Piece together this discordant jigsaw and you'll realize just how lucky my stupid, Little League-primed ass is.

Speaking of lucky: Three days into my cubicle cruising, the EIC commanded that I join him at the Sundance Film Festival. Flabbergasted and suffering from the gay vapors, I signed on. After unoffically serving as emperor of airport layovers for a whole fucking day, I spent a week pinching off blog entries about celebrity arrivals (Paris Hilton sauntered past me at the Hollywood Life party house, decked in what must've been Hello Kitty's actual skin), general Park City goings-on, and the occasional fete. I also interviewed the cast of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, three of Variety magazine's "10 Directors to Watch," Bethenny from The Real Housewives of New York City, a few Olympic snowboarders, and a couple indie documentarians. I don't rehash the experience, because the world of Sundance was unreal and tiring -- chilly, too, in its breakneck scheduling and suggestion that people care about skiing. I constantly worried if I blogged and documented enough during my trip, since the parameters of my position aren't concrete. I worried a lot, frankly.

But shitty self-doubts aside, I won the chance to attend Sundance, and I took full advantage -- even meeting up with The Advocate's arts editor Corey and dear movie critic Kyle. Flying to Utah so quickly after arriving in LA could've jetlagged and whiplashed me, but instead it felt right, like a validation that life can move as fast as I want. Fancy that. So far I'm afloat in a curiously cool job, though this industry remains allergic to permanence. Stay tuned as I hyperventilate every-fucking-day over this fact.

Fixating on my job alleviates some LV-signature neuroses, though, which is nice. The greatest hits: homesickness, loneliness, comfort-zone abandonment, questions of my life's proper trajectory. Collect them all, kids. Act now and receive a Pound Puppies POG slammer.

I'm fine for now, I think. Fucking fine.

Also, I fucking own an automobile, y'all, which is a mammoth joke that many pedestrians won't live to laugh about. I steer and rear a '99 Nissan Altima, rendered in a horny grapejuice hue. I might screw on my license plates today! That's a marvelous idea. So marvelous that I can get arrested for not doing it. K, I'm on it.

I'll talk about my slick new compadres soon, because I want my home audience to convulse with envy during every read. I need you guys aroused and clamoring around my fuchsia sweatpants. Like THIS:

There's a counter on-this-BALL! What's up with the lesbian tots hopping together and flashing hyena grins at the end? Scissor elsewhere, freaks.

Later, my fragile twats. This is the beginning of something. Maybe a couple things. Certainly an eating disorder.

The world's newest (Br)angelino, xoxo,
Louis