The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Wait a minute? What the hell is going on here? This is a "secret society" meeting at Yale?! Shouldn't Jessica be getting Eiffel-towered in a pool of goat's blood by dudes wearing Venetian masks or something? What kind of lame-ass "secret society" is this anyway? This looks more like a meeting of the Applewood Magnet High student council at the library than it does a meeting of any sort of "secret society." Dear God does Yale f-ing blow, as does the Ivy League in general, if this is their idea of a "secret society" meeting. Is it any wonder that the presidency of George W. Bush was such an abortion? Bush was a member of the Yale "Skull and Bones" secret society. Maybe if he had experienced a real "secret society" in his youth, the guy wouldn't have sucked so hard.

Seriously, how pathetically lame is this? And to think that all of you Ivy snobs were crying about how disgraceful it was for Obama to be speaking at a public school (Oh, the horror!) like Arizona State's graduation ceremony, instead of say, Dartmouth, or Brown. Say what you want about the twats at Arizona State, and they are twats, glorious, smelly, gaping twats, but I can guarantee you one thing—-If they were to conduct any sort of secret society meeting at that school, they'd do it right and have torches burning, the chantings of Gregorian monks blasting though the sound system, mounds of cocaine laying around all over the place, at least one farm animal being slayed, and people having sex all over the place, dirty, filthy, hedonistic, unprotected orgy sex, because that's how you do "secret society" meetings in the real world, assholes!

I saw Eyes Wide Shut, dammit!

Jessica Alba Visits Yale Secret Society, Members Panic and Leak Pictures from Inside the Hall [IvyGate]

"Yah, right," I thought. "You just haven't found the art yet."

Sadly, she was kinda right.

I got to the festivities early—9:30-ish, and like many locals, chose the bike as the evening's transportation. My friends starting showing up around 10:30, thus beginning the Text Messaging nightmare (which we will get into later.)

At first things seemed promising: the info booth was stacked with Glow-ing paraphernalia, yes, including glow sticks and glowing necklaces, glowing yo-yos, and the like.

There were throngs of people, not yet hordes. They were admiring the view. There was a sense of energy and anticipation in the air.

I parked the bike, and headed down the Pacific Palisades overpass (with a few hundred other people) to the beach.

People were certainly in the spirit of things. (Certain people seemed to be on another plane altogether).

One woman lit up her feather boa.

Another guy channeled Tron.

There was the old light saber effect.

These guys were at the Downtown Art Walk, too. I just called their work, "Glowing Penis."

After trekking through the darkness, we came to a white, bubble-looking object that was, yes, glowing.

Inside, children were jumping up and down. I thought, "Don't they have these at raves and amusement parks?" Except there, they are called Moonwalks, not Art.

A few feet away towards the ocean, there stood a moving tent of balloons and a crowd of people gathered around what appeared to be a glowing cobra-like figure. Everyone stood around, transfixed.

Moving on, we headed toward the Pier, toward Usman Hague's project, "Primal Source."

On the way, we found an interactive piece, which was essentially candles in paper bags aligned in a curvy fashion. We were encouraged to move them around.

Another, more elaborate, interactive piece was Nova Jiang and Michael Kontopoulos's "Moon Theatre." It was a riff on the old throwing shadows on the wall game. I saw the results, quirky cartoonish figures projected on a circular screen, first.

Then, only after stumbling away from it did I realize the origins of the shapes—a round light box where people could throw shadows.
This was pretty cool.

Next, I stopped in front of Usman's piece—which was remarkable.

A giant spray of water that shimmered and shifted with different colors, the piece was the most noticeable of those at the beach. It also got more impressive as the crowds grew—because it was interactive and reacted to the sound— the colors would shift more dramatically later in the evening, when 44,000 (20,000 more than the organizers anticipated) turned up.

Glow could have used more pieces like this—and could have benefited from putting more of the pieces closer together and tying them together thematically.

After slogging my way through the sand, which is always deceptively physically exhausting, I arrived at a huge line waiting to get in to something that was underneath the pier.

I asked a couple of girls what everyone was waiting in line to see.

"Um, it's like, an art show, called Glow?" said, one girl, gum snapping, eyes rolling.

"Um, omigod, I know that, the whole beach is an art show, but what is the specific thing you are waiting for?"

She stared at me blankly.

I did not add, "like, duh," though, I should have.

It turned out they were all waiting like cattle to see Shih Chieh Huang's ultra cool collection of light sculptures, which can only be described as a bizarre combination of being alien, jellyfish, and insect-like in their appearance. They shifted and changed shapes, whirled and blew upwards, and turned inward. One even had a pair of LED-screen eyes. Unfortunately, my pictures of these awesome creations are total crap. Apologies.

Upstairs at the Pier, breakdancers cavorted under a projection screen to the hip hop and dancehall beats of KCRW's Garth Trinidad.

But good luck finding anyone in that crowd.

It was around this point when various friends started arriving, resulting in a Brechtian text messaging nightmare.

"This is confiding and weird."

"Pink balloons."

"OK. Meeting friends at DJ screen."

"Aborting. Crazy here. Going to find friends at DJ."

"If you're wearing a long skirt, we just passed each other on the sand. If not, you've got a doppelganger."

"I'm at the bottom of the stairs on the beach near there."

"We just arrived, is it just bits?"

"It's nuts, that's what I was saying."

"Man, there are an insane number of people here."

"Word has it they are shutting down the pier."

One hour later, with one friend found, we struggled to exit the masses of humanity. (We heard they shut down the pier and stopped the music way earlier than promised.)

But, first, we stopped for a look at the ocean, which had been roped off like we were in line at the world's largest VIP club.

Then we saw them: little tiny flopping, shiny fishes. Many, many fishes, flopping happily in the sand. It was the grunions themselves, on a grunion run! (No photos, so just close your eyes and imagine).

They kept inching over to us, ever so closely. We could almost touch them. Then some asswipe went running over the line to them and chased them, trying to catch one. And let me tell you those little fishes ran! They ran away from him, but then the asswipe caught one and raised his fist in victory. But he had chased all the grunions away. It was sad. So it was time to go away from Glow.

In the end, the most Glow-riffic thing about Glow was the Ferris Wheel, which you can see every night of the week.

So, I got on my bike and rode into the night.

That said, big ups (do the kids still say that?) to the 4442-year-old Stacey Dash, who looks like she hasn't aged a day since Clueless (that's more than we can say for Alicia Silverstone). Sure, our sister blog Jezebel thinks that her can-do spirit in the face of broken ribs had more to do with money than competitive desire, after watching her bungee trapeze routine, we prefer to think of her as having the heart of a champion (not to mention the body of goddess). If we didn't have such strong opposition to yet another show filled with judges with questionable qualifications —who was that lispy yet flexible French woman, anyway?— we would tune in again next week to see how she does. Speaking of judges, if you're looking to find judges to sit alongside American Anthem himself, at least have them be named Barnum and/or Bailey. And one day, when we find ourselves turned away from the pearly gates for the nefarious actions that we have committed in the name of blogs, we fully expect to see NBC shill-for-hire Joey Fatone working as a maître d' in the Seventh Circle Of Hell's karoake bar. Nevermore, quoth the elephant trainer, nevermore!

• Celebrity Circus [NBC]

• MORE SEXY PHOTOS FROM "IDOL" RAMIELE MALUBAY [celebtv.com]

the show that never was

msnbc
one hour
live
following keith olbermann

we were close to a deal almost done i let it slip in miami causing panic on the studio end

well
what can u do

2day there is no deal
poof
my career as a pundit is over
b4 it began

just as well
i figure
everything happens for a reason
bashert - as we say

and on we go

"Bashert," of course, refers not to the Yiddish term meaning "it was meant to be," but rather to O'Donnell's mangling of British expat telejournalist Martin Bashir, whose surname she inexplicably evokes in times of great career disappointment. We have no doubt some other network will scoop up O'Donnell during these times of great need for unscripted schedule-fillers, however, finally allaying the deep sadness that comes with having so much nightmare to give, but no staff of producers and assistants to give it to.

• the show that never was [Rosie.com]

"I couldn't believe it. I'm not in the movie at all. Leonard [Nimoy], God bless his heart, is in, but not me," Shatner, 76, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I thought, what a decision to make, since it obviously is a decision not to make use of the popularity I have to ensure the movie has good box office. It didn't seem to be a wise business decision." [...]

[Director J.J.] Abrams said Shatner probably would have a part in the film, which is due in theaters in December 2008. But while Shatner said he had a couple of meetings with Abrams, nothing came of it.

Since none of us were privy to said meetings, it's tough to ascertain what part of the always-delicate script-development and casting process wouldn't allow for the inclusion of the iconic Starfleet Admiral. Perhaps it was Shatner's own pitch that Abrams had trouble with, in which a mysterious wormhole brings Kirk back from the dead, upon which he and newly hot communications officer Uhura (played by the fetching Zoe Saldana) embark upon a torrid, shipboard affair. The clincher, of course, would be the marketing campaign capitalizing on the actor's massive box office appeal, blanketing every available surface in the two-word tagline: "Shat Trek."

• Shatner: How come I'm not in new 'Star Trek'? [cnn.com]

• The Two Coreys [A&E]

· 'Evan' can wait: Silly concept flick just God-awful [FortWayne.com/UPS]
· Noah way! Slapstick of 'Evan Almighty' tempered by strong performances [KCChronicle.com]

· Just say Noah [Star-Telegram.com]
· 'Evan Almighty' could have used some divine intervention [Freep.com]
· God tells Steve Carell to build an ark, but nothing keeps sequel from sinking [SF Chronicle]
· "Evan Almighty": Comedy begets a multitude of winces [DenverPost.com]
· Thou shalt not laugh at 'Evan' [Memphis Commercial Appeal]
· You can sleep through 'Evan Almighty's' flood [Kansas City Star]
· 'Evan' just all-righty [Detroit News]

• Previously: Universal Ready To Knock Over Christians And Steal Their Collection Basket Money [Defamer]

After weathering a flatly written exchange in which Aniston's lesbian character tells Cox, "This is no way to live! You don't deserve to be alone," (oh, the bitter irony), then some innuendo about past dalliances between the characters (four implied times!), and one brushed off ass-grab (easy there, lesbian tiger), we finally get the kiss: A closed mouth cutaway unlikely to moisten the panties of even the show's most incontinent viewers. Have a look, trying not to sigh too loudly over this squandered opportunity to exploit ten seasons' worth of crackling, Sapphic sexual tension.

• Dirt - Courteney and Jennifer kiss! [YouTube]