Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (August 22, 2008)

Even Pixar started getting on my nerves, though you wouldn’t know it from the critics, which couldn’t praise them highly enough. The Incredibles was a bloated, never-ending mess. Finding Nemo was a brief high point, but Ratatouille was all CGI sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Musical numbers were now out, since apparently that alienates some part of the heterosexual male audience. And now the movies all had to feature big, distracting celebrity voices in the lead roles — as if Jim Carrey hasn’t already ruined enough movies in his life.

"Crappy" animinated movies, says Brent

But more than that, what drew me as a gay guy to these movies in the first place was that the main characters were usually misunderstood outsiders — outsiders who are tempted to join the herd, but who eventually learn what makes other people hate or fear them is actually something special, something that can make their world boundless if they let it.

Oh, a lot of these movies — Shrek 2, The Incredibles, etc. — pretend to be about outsiders, but they’re not. They’re about sarcastic, wise-cracking, pop culture-spouting hipsters. I never believe for a second these characters truly understand what it means to feel completely and utterly different. They’ve never felt the profound loneliness of feeling not just alone, but like you’re the only person like yourself who has ever existed and ever will exist.

But this new mandate clearly works for the studios. I mean, of course more people are going to relate to the cocky, arrogant rat in Ratatouille, or the bombastic, entitled father in The Incredibles than, say, bookish, marriage-hating Belle, or awkward, tradition-opposing Mulan, or unloved, anachronistic Woody.

Belle, Woody, Mulan

And don’t get me started on the flood of fast-food tie-ins and miscellaneous merchandizing crap that must now accompany all these movies. As I type this, I am sure the Walmarts are flooded with WALL-E merchandise, with no one, and I mean no one, noting, or even understanding, the irony.

Unlike a lot of film connoisseurs, I’ve never really cared if these movies break new CGI ground or have clever in-jokes where they viciously parody some obscure fashion designer. All I care about is if the characters speak to my soul.

And lately, in animated movies at least, they just don’t.

NOW THIS IS FUNNY!

Cloris Leachman, John Stamos

So celebrity roasts are back. I admit I didn't quite know what to make of Comedy Central's roast of William Shatner last year — all those celebrities saying really tasteless (but often hilarious) things to each other. But let's face it: even if George Takei had a good sense of humor about the whole "gay" thing, Betty White totally stole that show. "Oh, Bill, all of your friends are either dead or they hate you. To be fair, I'm a little of column A and a little of column B." And to co-roaster Farrah Fawcett: "Right now I'm in my 80's, which is funny, because that's the last decade you mattered in."

Now comes a new roast, this one of Bob Saget, the former sitcom star who is apparently now moonlights as something a blue comedian himself. And who should steal this show (warning: NSFW!)? None other than another former Mary Tyler Moore Show star, Cloris Leachman.

"I am not here to roast Bob Saget," Leachman opened with. "I'm here to f*** John Stamos. You heard me, pretty boy, I'm going to strap on my Oscar and take you right there in that filthy bean-bag chair! Stamos, you shouldn't talk so much--your mouth is cancelling out all the hard work your ass is doing."

Strap on her Oscar! OMG, I can't believe she said that! But I couldn't stop laughing. FYI, the woman is 82-years-old. Damn!

Next Page! Two boys by a campfire, and the gay Joni Mitchell!