TBTS TalkRoach™: Gossip That Refuses to Die (Week Ending September 18, 2010)

(The Brown Tweed Society’s TalkRoach™ highlights mundane, ridiculous, and outright unbelievable pop culture stories that should have fizzled after a day—or should never have been news in the first place—but have somehow survived.)

1. Jon Voight Loves His Grandkids:

Seriously.  This is an article in People.  A famous dude loves his grandkids, which is the stance most grandparents take towards most

TBTS welcomes all stories about how your grandchildren won ribbons at the county fair.

grandkids.  This wouldn’t even be news enough to get into local papers that still publish school lunch schedules.  But it’s Voight’s poignant words that really caught People’s attention: “Shiloh, oh boy, she’s a smart one, but she’s four years old, you can never tell what she does, her face lights up.  They’re all smart.  Z’s smart, they’re all smart I’ll tell you. Maddox, Pax, Z … I gotta get all their names, because you can’t cheat and I’m not going to.  Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne, they’re all very smart kids, beautiful too.”

Good work, People.  I know you’re not trying to be Woodward and Bernstein, but these are just the scattered, nearly incoherent thoughts (read Voight’s first sentence again—does that make any sense?) of a guy who was asked something like “Mr. Voight!  Mr. Voight!  What do you think about your grandchildren?” by some stalkery paparazzo at a restaurant.  We learned that all six grandchildren are brilliant and beautiful and sweet and funny and fast and clean and articulate and good at mazes and…all the things that a normal grandfather would think even if his grandkids were merely pulsating brains in a jar.  We here at TBTS are sincerely happy that Voight has gotten to know his grandkids and loves them.  We’re just not sure that the world ever needed to know that.

2. Kim Kardashian Buys Expensive Stuff:

So KiKa (does she have a good nickname, like LiLo?) reportedly drops $100,000 on ultra-luxe designer handbags at Hermes in Paris, and TMZ is on the motherscratcher like pies on floop.  The shocker here is supposed to be that someone paid a hundred G’s for seven handbags.  That does shock me, because I had no idea they even made a $30,000 handbag.  Probably because I don’t typically think about handbags.  The three cars I’ve ever owned didn’t cost me $30,000 combined, so paying that much for something that will carry a few cubic inches of stuff does, in fact, baffle me.

However, I do not have the wealth or spending priorities of a Kardashian.  K-K would probably be disgusted by the amount of money I have spent over my lifetime on Milwaukee’s Best Light.  She may even be disgusted by Beast Light itself.  Too each her own.  If I had that much cheddar and a care-free attitude toward spending, TMZ would catch me coming out of a costume shop with a full-sized Darth Vader outfit customized by Rob Zombie.  While this would be way cooler than a stupid crocodile-skin purse, I think I made my point, which is that neither Kim nor I should be blessed with “fuck you” money.

3.  Kid Rock Gets Sued For Assault:

Hold on to your hats, folks, because it appears that the guy that sings about being a huge redneck and drinking beer out of cans appeared in court to address assault charges from a 2007 incident at a Waffle House.  And surprise, the two parties differ in their recollections of the fracas.  The plaintiff says, essentially, that he was just minding his own business after getting high and having three shots of cognac at a club when poopy old Kid Rock and his posse started whaling on him for sort of no reason.  Kid Rock ‘n Crew, however, claim that dude was rude, stewed, and lewd, and started the whole thing.  They defended themselves with appropriate, but not excessive force, as the story goes.

Now, I can’t imagine that the prospect of getting a little money from The American Badass himself never entered the plaintiff’s mind.  I also can’t imagine that a bombed Kid Rock and Co. (he admitted to drinking “more than a six pack,” which means between seven and infinity beers) celebrated his album hitting #1 sat primly in a Waffle House after a concert, discussing Israeli-Palestinian relations.  Both parties should realize, and probably did realize, that if you’re looking for a quiet, uneventful evening, hammered at a Waffle House at 4am should not be high on the list.

4.  Elections, or Something:

Campaign ads, everywhere.  My god.  Please make the stupid stop.

Thanks, entertainment media, for letting the world know that Jon Voight probably carries around pictures of his grandkids!