Recently in What in the What What? Category

There are many things I'd expect Beyoncé to endorse. Hamburger Helper is not one of them. And so marks the most amusing Beyoncé commercial since her bizarre Directv spot.

I'm now looking forward to the inevitable Solange partnership with Past-a-Roni.

This enrages me. The lovely Liz at Food, She Thought sent a simple email to the publicist for Kogi's Taco Truck (a Korean-BBQ-on-wheels thing here in Los Angeles), and the response was absolutely outrageous. Even if everything this PR person had said was true, there's no good reason for he or she to have actually said it. Memo to publicists: when you have to do damage control for your damage control peeps, that's a bad thing.

Check out the ridiculousness here.

Great news! After shamelessly baiting Blair Underwood to follow me on Twitter, my hopes and dreams were realized! Yes, at 2:46 PM this afternoon, I received this email:

Hi, B-Side Blog.

Blair Underwood (BlairUnderwood) is now following your updates on Twitter.

SUCCESS! Thanks for following, Blair. I promise it will be worth your while! You are already the coolest person I am currently associated with, and as such I plan to backdoor brag about this to many friends for the next four to six weeks.

There's been scandal brewing in IndianJones's apartment building. First a letter went up from the manager Tatyana complaining about a bunch of irascible gay youths in the pool after hours. Then a second letter went up from Tatyana, saying that the first letter was a fake and that her name should not be used in vain. So which cold and calculating person could possibly be setting up Tatyana for the fall? Meet Suspect A: an oiled-up lass in a candy cane (!) bikini that IndianJones spotted by the pool from his window. Sure, she looks all innocent and melanoma-ready, but I'm starting to think she could be at the heart of this scandal. Take a look at the evidence:

1) She's got the motive! Clearly this woman likes her pool time. The last thing she needs is a bunch of loud gay guys ruining her peace. Besides, what if they spread their AIDS in the water? Not cool.

2) She and Tatyana are clearly enemies. It's basic girl principle: heavyset older women simply cannot be friends with younger attractive women. Tatyana most likely resents this girl for her youth and figure. The girl resents Tatyana for charging her rent and giving her nasty looks.

It's all so obvious: scare the gays off, claim the pool for herself, and let Tatyana take the blame. A perfect crime.

Or, of course, there's the other explanation: she's just a girl by the pool who has nothing to do with anything. I choose not to believe that. Either way, IndianJones got his jollies today, and that's all that really matters.

Putting the "frau" in "fraud."

Some people will do anything to get on the Real Housewives franchise — even if that includes $38 million fraud. That's the case with a Laguna Hills woman, Devon Kile, who with her husband was just busted by the authorities for engaging in one of the largest insurance scams in California history. Turns out Devon and her man, Michael Petronella, ran a shady roofing business that skimped on taxes and employee compensation. This led to an old-fashioned raid by investigators, who found amongst the jewelry and Ferraris an application for Devon to be part of The Real Housewives of Orange County.

Clearly these minor criminal activities will undermine any shot she has to be on the show, but honestly, I think she'd be perfect. What better way to rankle Vicki than by sticking a FAKE business woman into the mix? The amount of sneering and eye-rolling would be sensational (especially if Devon were forced to wear vintage prison stripes every episode). C'mon, Bravo. Do something bold: cast a lying fraud! It's like you haven't done it before.

For more information, check out the full story at KTLA.

And in other news: there's gonna be a new housewife? Won't seven be too many? Or is someone getting the ax? It better not be Lynn, the world's greatest foil to Vicki...

A few days ago, I posted a letter from IndianJones's landlady to all the tenants, complaining about a bunch of "jack ass" (sic) gays who had besieged the pool late at night and had made loud, unsettling gay noises — clearly a result of having been thrown out of local gay bar The Abbey. Well, turns out the note was NOT from the landlady, who posted the above statement.

So who in IndianJones's building is pretending to be Tatyana? And will this impostor be caught?

Developing...

Spotted in IndianJones's building this weekend: a memo from his land lady that strikes just the right balance of hilarity and offensiveness. Well done!

Feel free to discuss — but keep it mature. Juvenile behavior is unacceptable on MY blog.

"Hey Toots. My name's Joanne, and I work at Hertz. Now get me a coffee, would ya?"

Courtesy of Socialite Life

God Bless human errors. The local ABC News affiliate for Los Angeles just tweeted a weather update (http://twitter.com/abc7weather), complete with a link to the station's website. One problem: whoever runs the Twitter account accidentally linked to PORN instead. Talk about a hairy forecast (zinger!).

There's a good chance all will be deleted soon, but don't worry, I have both a screen grab AND the offending link, which is VERY NSFW (that means not safe for work).

To see where ABC News just directed its readers, click here: http://tinyurl.com/8jrgm (don't say we didn't warn you...)

UPDATE: It appears as though ABC has removed the offending tweet. Still was pretty funny though for the few hours it was up...

UPDATE 2: Franklin Avenue seems to have isolated the problem: for whatever reason, ABC accidentally dropped the "4" at the end of the tinyurl. You see, http://tinyurl.com/8jrgm4 directs to the very safe for work KABC webpage. Lose the "4," and, well, you get a whole lot of anus. The perils of a poor executed cut-and-paste...

Philadelphia viewers tuning in for an Easter service from the Vatican on Sunday came across quite the surprising programming glitch. Comcast accidentally aired a commercial for Girls Gone Wild, and according to a press release just issued by Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis, sales spiked immediately. "It seems that many of the same people interested in the Pope’s message are also interested in ours," he wrote, later adding that he was "happy to have shared an audience with the Pope."

We shall now brace for the ensuing march upon Joe's castle, replete with pitchforks and torches.

The full press release after the jump...

Over the weekend, I headed to Las Vegas to celebrate the joint 30th birthdays of IndianJones and J-Unit, and as is likely to happen in Sin City, we promptly came upon some hawt girl-on-girl action right on the strip. Needless to say, our cameras caught all of the action.

To see a few more pics, as well as the hotties who were locking lips, follow the jump...

If things look a little different around here, it's because I added a third column to the right of the page. The one sidebar was getting a bit unwieldy, and with limited premium space at the top, too much important stuff was getting shoved too far down (ie. advertising). As a result, I've bumped "Hot Posts" to the right, as well as a few other items. Over the next few days, I may be moving stuff back and forth between the columns; so enjoy the excitement as some of your favorite sidebar features migrate like a pack of Canadian geese in the winter!

Of course, the downside of adding this column is that the blog has grown to be super wide. I really didn't want to sacrifice the main content area's width because I'm a fan of large reading space and big photos. However, please tell me if the right-most sidebar is a) being cut off and b) if this new design is annoying or impeding the functionality of the site for you. According to my stats, the majority of users employs computers with resolutions large enough to accommodate the wider size; so I imagine this shouldn't be too much of a problem (and yes, stats really do track that sort of data!).

While I fool around with things (including new banners), feel free to visit my sponsors as they are what keeps this blog alive!

Thanks for your patience...

My friend Greg posted this seemingly harmless status update this weekend. Needless to say, he should be very careful when mentioning certain wholesale clubs. I think he learned his lesson.

When it comes to mashups, there are two ways to look at them: either as a cynical commentary on the generic, interchangeable state of modern music... or as art. I prefer the latter. Along those lines, this video completely blows my mind. It's a mashup of twenty-five songs, all carefully pieced together by DJ Earworm, and here's the shocking part: barring a few fleeting, awkward juxtapositions, it all works remarkably well. Who would have thunk it? Apparently DJ Earworm has been doing these large-scale mashups for a while, but this was the first I'd heard of him (not that I'm Mr. Mashup genius or anything). I'm not sure I'd actually sit and listen to the track on iTunes, but as a viral video, it's insane. I particularly enjoy the T.I. and Chris Brown interludes later in the song. See if you can pick out all the songs. If you need help, I've got a full track list after the jump.

Thanks to IndianJones (and his brother) for the heads up.

Late last night, I received a curious email. The subject merely stated "herman rosenblat. holocaust hoax book attached." Spam perhaps? However, upon opening the cyber missive, I saw that it wasn't spam. This was an actual "leak" of the controversial manuscript, Angel At The Fence, which was recently killed by publisher Penguin Group after it was revealed that the whole thing was a sham. Well, even though I didn't really care about any of the surrounding hoopla, I was still mighty excited to get my hands on such a hyped document. I mean, there it was: the entire manuscript for my eyes to feast on!

I thought about posting it, but then I realized that that would probably land me in a litigious mess (note the case of the blogger vs. Guns N Roses). Then I thought I could read through the book and post excerpts of the most noteworthy moments, but that would entail actual work, and honestly, I didn't care enough for that. Besides, I knew it wouldn't be long before Gawker would have its own copy and would be doing the same (Sure enough, about two hours later, they posted this). It just leads me to ask one question: who's been leaking this manuscript, and how many bloggers did they send it to? I mean, if I got it, many others must have as well. Granted, I like to consider myself a VERY influential blogger (ahem, "Speidi" coinage), but even so, I wouldn't necessarily think I'm high on the totem pole when it comes to literary scandals. Nevertheless, to whoever it was — whether it be one of the Rosenblats or their agent or publisher or assistant — I'd like to say thank you for legitimizing my blog that much more. Sorry I can't post the PDF, but I just don't feel like getting arrested or sued or waterboarded.

While I was at Macy's this weekend shopping for a belt, I came across this interesting mannequin display. It seems as though someone certainly got to indulge in their S&M fantasies a bit. For a moment I wasn't sure if I was in Burbank or Silver Lake. This would never fly in Real America.

Every year, half a million people descend on the West Hollywood Halloween Carnivale to drunkenly cavort and show off silly costumes. The looks range from simple and innocent to elaborate and bawdy. It's nothing short of an eyeful. And it's super fun. This year, a group of us headed down into the fray, and of course I brought my trusty camera. A large assortment of photos after the jump.

BE WARNED. There are a few pics that might not be very safe for work (partial, disturbing nudity!!!!)

While most celebrities and quasi-celebrities have been urging citizens to get out there and vote this election, along comes Trishelle (The Real World: Las Vegas, Ninja Cheerleaders) with these special words of wisdom, courtesy of her Facebook page:

Trishelle Cannatella thinks if you haven't watched the debates or know about the election and plan on voting for who your "daddy" votes for, do your country a favor and DON'T VOTE!

Well, that settles that! Thanks to Jash for pointing this out to me.

After six years of unbridled adoration, my gentle stalking of Julie Chen has reached a stunning and wonderful milestone. That's right. Tonight, I had the pleasure and joy of meeting the one and only Chenbot, thus filling the void in my Big Brother viewing experience. Julie was like the Holy Grail of Big Brother for me. I'd met all my favorite players, I'd gone to the live show, I'd freakin' tasted slop, but the one thing I had never done was meet Julie Chen, and now I can say that just short of actually going on Big Brother and winning, my BB experience is complete.

All the gory and awkward details after the jump...

Traveling Pants Shall Travel No More

Over the past week, two pairs of my shorts and my favorite pair of cargo pants have developed large, menacing holes in their pockets. I don't know exactly what brought it about (heavy keys, no doubt), but yesterday afternoon, I resolved to take my ailing garb to a tailor to get this small but inconvenient problem mended, quite literally. The plan was to go into effect yesterday, but thank goodness I waited because I would have full-on wasted my money — at least as far as my cargo pants were concerned.

C'mon, Crate & Barrel. It's 2008. Corkscrews are for ALL waiters.

I just felt the earth move under my feet, but nothing came tumbling down, thankfully. Like a good citizen, I immediately sprang from my chair (which was already swaying) and firmly ensconced myself under a door frame for a good ten seconds while everything rattled around me. Nothing fell or broke though. I didn't even lose power. Huzzah! Still, kind of scary.

This just in: it was a 5.8 5.4 magnitude quake. More info here.

Think it's fun to ride in a bike race on a highway near the Mexican border? WRONG. It's not fun, especially when a drunk driver up and runs you over. That's exactly what happened yesterday when Juan Campos of Brownsville, Texas fell asleep at his wheel and plowed into this poor mass of soon-to-be airborne bikers. Sadly, one of them died.

Check out the full story here (via LAist)

P.S. Don't drink and drive, kids.