7536189_2It’s been quite a week of celebrity scandals. One for the books, you might say. What a sad story is the life and death of Anna Nicole. If you’re interested in my thoughts, check out the Ape Culture blog.

 

This Ryan O’Neal family drama is particularly ridiculous. If you haven’t heard, apparently there was a brawl between Ryan and his sons and a girlfriend or his son and a girlfriend or his sons with him intermediating. Everyone has a different story but long story short: girlfriend has a black eye. In any case, one son is accusing Ryan of battery, Tatum appears to be is supporting her brother who is, for some reason, telling her to bug off. And meanwhile, the step-brother was allegedly tied up in a basement at one part of the fracas and Farrah, his mother, is just a mess over it. And that last part is the only thing that’s not news.

   

I saw the E! True Hollywood Story on Ryan which, if it is to be believed, suggests he has banked up a dastardly large amount of bad karma in his life…which is probably what is kicking him in the fracas right about now. Whether he did anything or not.
 
Which inevitably brings us to Faithful, that painfully slow and unbelievable Cher movie that came and went back in the mid 90s. Why-oh-why did Cher get tangled up in a Ryan O’Neal movie thereby forcing me to suffer through his awful, charismatically-challenged, whiney performance? Much like his performance in front of the paparazzi this week. Is there a wailing wall for situations such as this?Chertatum_1

I have never in my whole life understood the hoopla over Ryan O’Neal. I’ve always seen him as a over- rated Playboy, skinny (now bloated), pasty-faced, white bread, absentee father near-do-well who has skated by his whole life all too easily like some asshole high school sports hero from some Americana small town. To add insult to injury he carried around some air of Hollywood entitlement and I just don’t get it. On top of that he raised dysfunctional kids. Remember Tatum on The Cher Show? Awww…poor little white-trash rich girl. She’s a mess now. And she’s the good one!

    

Ryan is one of those people who remind me of that great scene in The Color Purple when Celia’s sister Nettie is running away. I see Nettie staggering back along the outside of the fence sobbing, “Until you do right by me, everything you do is gonna fail!”…except it isn’t Danny Glover she’s cursing at, it’s Ryan O’Neal.

    

By the way, my iPod shuffle feature continues to be an education in juxtaposition. Yesterday, I heard back-to-back Sonny’s ode “Laugh at Me” (S&C Live Vol. I version) followed by Neil Diamond’s “Captain of a Shipwreck.” And a most interesting, groovy shipwreck it was.