Baseball

“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.

Culture and Criticism

From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.

Donors Choose and Contests

Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.

Stories, True and Otherwise

Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.

The Vine

The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!

Home » Culture and Criticism

You can’t spell “GOOP” without “poo”

Submitted by on September 25, 2008 – 6:22 PM61 Comments

For the love of little Apples (or, if you like, “sweet fancy Moses”), Gwyneth Paltrow: SHUT UP.   Not that I’m confident I know what in the hell you’re on about with the “nourish the inner aspect” this and the “life is good because I’m not passive about it” that, but I’m pretty sure your life is good because you got lucky in the parental department, got really rich, and moved to another country whose financial system isn’t collapsing.

And good for you, I guess.   I mean, my parents have helped me out a ton; I can’t talk shit on that point.   But at whom, exactly, is your “lifestyle” advice aimed — the handful of other pretentious Oscar-winning stick figures who wear white jeans and periodically visit the hospital to recover from the bowel-razing effects of an all-pignoli-and-wheatgrass diet?   Who focus-grouped this watery horseshit, Brooke Astor?

You want to help, Gwyneth, bring your bony ass back here, put on an Obama button, and throw some money at the bailout.   Failing that, quiet down.

Share!
Pin Share


Tags:        

61 Comments »

  • Holly says:

    @MM – on “hasn’t had a hit movie in years”, possibly “Iron Man” counts; it wasn’t HER movie, and she isn’t remotely the reason it was a hit, but she *was* one of only two female characters in it.

    Reading over all of this, it just strikes me how good it is sometimes not to know anything about actors outside of their roles. Because the thing is, I’ve liked her in a number of roles, and I think she *is* pretty. (Which is a statement against any number of friends who like to insist, “I don’t know, there’s just something about the way she looks that I find off-putting”; see also: Keira Knightley.) Anything else, apparently, I really, REALLY don’t need to know.

    I also notice that it’s a very bad week for this thing to debut, coming as it does on the heels of Paul Newman’s death. Because hello, THERE’S a celebrity and actor who certainly won the genetic lottery, and is a bigger star than GP could ever hope to be, and who became an example of how to be a good person. Indeed, he didn’t even need to give “how to live” advice — just look at the way he lived his life, and emulate it. Gwyneth? Are you listening?

  • SteveL. says:

    “I love to…take care of my body and mind…”

    Does that include smoking? Just wonderin’.

    And Holly, re: Paul Newman: +1.

  • SteveL. says:

    Also, I think I’ve had a bad attitude towards GP ever since that fluff “Shakespeare In Love” beat out “Saving Private Ryan” for 1998 Best Picture.

  • MM says:

    And don’t forget the rumor that Gwyneth *allegedly* stole the Oscar-winning part in Shakespeare in Love from her then BFF Winona Ryder after seeing the script at Winona’s place and getting the part out from under Winona. I believe it — Winona would have been much more believable as a pixie-ish girl disguising herself as a man. Also, if Winona were in the movie, there would have been fewer firelit tracking shots of Gwyneth’s pretty yellow hair, and consequently no Oscar for Gwynnie. Because firelit pretty yellow hair = Oscar, if everyone else in the running is over 35 and/or British.

    Free Winona!

  • Cat says:

    @MM – While I agree that Gwyneth really didn’t deserve her Oscar and that the whole Winona rumour is yet another reason she strikes me as pretty scummy, I thought it was more along the lines of Conventionally Pretty A-List Actress pretending to be a guy/acting crazy or trashy/spending hours in hair and makeup so she *GASP* isn’t so pretty anymore = Oscar, *especially* if everyone else in the running is 35+ and/or British. I mean, that was pretty much every Best Actress win from Goopy Gwynnie up until Helen Mirren finally nabbed it.

    @Holly – Word. Fucking word. If Gwyneth REALLY cares about helping people, she could do like Newman and try, I don’t know, printing her retarded “advice” on overpriced coffee mugs, sell them to other people with more free time and money than common sense, and give the profits to charity. Or, she could scrap the product line and just give to charity, even though it might put a dent in her mansion’s seaweed pantry. (Hee!) Starting a website where she can use the excuse of offering self-help to smugly boast about her perfect life…if she thinks she’s helping anyone, she has no sense of reality at all. Yuck.

    RIP, Paul, the world needs more people like you.

  • Pegkitty says:

    Obviously, the acronym stands for Gwyneth “Olive Oyl” Paltrow.

  • Ellen says:

    A message from Gwynnie:

    The acronym stands for “I Am Better Than You” – yes, I know that doesn’t spell “GOOP” but one of my sages told me it was OK anyway. If you all weren’t so bloody passive you’d understand that. *heavy sigh*

    Thanks for visiting my site,

    GP

  • tigerlille says:

    You know, I have never found Gwyneth to be a particularly good actress. Nor have I ever been able to understand why she is considered pretty or even beautiful. I find her quite homely, always have.

  • secretrebel says:

    It’s almost endearing, like the sort of website a 9-year-old might build with Pagemaker. Except the 9-year-old would almost certainly have a back catalogue of stories and poems and artwork to go with her butterfly and slide icons.

    Why didn’t she wait until she had some actual content before going live? Or get some of her pals to contribute in Huffington-Post mode?

    That she can’t write and has nothing to say is woeful and the arrogance is not appealing but I feel sorry for her that she’s not got one friend with the wit to tell her “sweetie, no” when she came up with this idea.

  • Kristen says:

    @Jade – I only *wish* I could take credit for “fire of a thousand nuns.” But, alas, that is an old TWoP’ism invented a long time ago by some anonymous (and totally awesome) poster at the site. I am merely passing it along for others to enjoy.

    Oh, so I saw about 20 minutes of that weird “traveling through Italy with Mario Battali and a couple of other random people” show and … gah. Is the dialog supposed to be “spontaneous”? It felt even more scripted than “The Hills.”

    At one point she and Mario were walking and talking about food and she said something like “I absolutely haaaate diets. I think that they’re a horrible way to live.” Mario said something about her being hungry. (Honestly, don’t remember the context.) Her reply: “Oh, I’m *hungry* all the time …”

    Ok. So…diets = bad. But starving yourself into extreme skinniness = good? Got it. ITA with Holly: Send Gwynnie to a Developing Nation for a few weeks. Show her “passive” people who bust their ass doing manual labor 12 hours a day just to eek out a meager living. Then preach to them about how much better their lives would be if they were just less “passive.”

  • mels says:

    “I think Apple is a cute name for a girl.”

    I’m calling the police. I bet you think Banana is a cute name for a boy, too.

Leave a comment!

Please familiarize yourself with the Tomato Nation commenting policy before posting.
It is in the FAQ. Thanks, friend.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>