The wedding was beautiful. The bride was a vision in white and lace. The groom was proud and obviously in love. The marriage between the two most beautiful people on earth was going to break that Hollywood tradition of short-term marriages and long-term gossip...

Oh, I guess that didn't happen. Just goes to show you, no matter how perfect you think a couple of celebrities are for each other, it's no guarantee that one of them isn't going to lose their freakin minds one day and cheat on their wives. I guess there's no understanding people. And that is where I have found myself with Brad Pitt. Angry, betrayed...how could you do this to me, Brad? More curiously, how could you do this to yourself? You are married to a gorgeous, successful woman who obviously loves you and you ruin it. Plus, you cheated on a modern-day blonde bombshell. What's with you? Why go out for burgers when you've got steak at home?

Our official position at Las F is that we are firmly on Jennifer's side. She is such a sweetheart, and we are glad to see that she is recovering well from this undeserved heartbreak and making nice with Vince Vaughan - even if it's not a romantic link. You live your life, girl! And don't even pay any attention to what Gwyneth said about you. She's just jealous because the fame resulting from naming her child Apple has died down and she a mere housewife now.

I used to truly love Brad. Let's face it, he's been a Hottie McFabulous since he first hit the scene in Thelma and Louise. But now our love affair is over. I wouldn't marry Brad Pitt if he begged me now. There is nothing sexy about a philandering liar. I can't even enjoy Angelina Jolie so much anymore. Even if there was nothing between her and Brad, which it's pretty obvious that there is, she is clearly lacking in some kind of sensitivity to a fellow woman. Take a look at the photo shoot she participated in for W Magazine. And that's just one photo from a litany of insensitivity. How mean can two people be? Girls, you know the dating rules. There is a refractory period that you must respect when pouncing all over some other gal's guy, and Angie didn't respect that. Even though she was completely sexy in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

We at Las F are heartily in favor of eating. We'd like to take this commercial break to say that Hillary Duff must eat.

Now.

Honey, "losing baby fat" is not cool. It's just not! Being stick-thin is so out. Curvy is in! Be curvy! Eat, darling, eat?

We won't get started on the fashion consequences of this outfit, but we like the fact that you look happy. And healthy. And we'd like you to stay that way.

Oh, Heidi, Heidi.


Listen, babe, we love you. You're gorgeous. The skin, it glows! The hair, it shines! The smile, it's genuine! The makeup, it's charming! The shoes, they're glamorous! The bump, it's perfect!

We have never, ever seen a more genuine smile from a celebrity. You look as if you're truly, truly happy.

But honey, have you been taking lessons from Britney? Really.

THE DRESS, IT'S HORRIBLE!












Were you going for Vegas Showgirl? Or fashion-clueless cougar? Or what? Whose dress is this, and how did it unfortunately find its way into your closet?









We think that grown-up mommies shouldn't wear dresses this short, but your gams are gorgeous, so we'll tolerate it. But listen. The fringe is OUT. Done. It was history as of 1988.

We'll tolerate a short black dress on a pregnant lady. But even the Shining Intellects have their limits.

Ditch the fringe!

Although we at Las F are not a news outlet, we wanted to express our solidarity to everyone who is effected by the terrible disaster on the Gulf Coast. We will continue to post our hysterical content for everyone to take a break from the real world, and provide our readers with the following links to help if they so choose.

With love,
Las F

To Donate:
The Red Cross
The Salvation Army
The Network for Good
Operation Blessing
America's Second Harvest

Being the astute beings we are, dear readers, we at Las F never lose a chance to make observations based on things we've seen in real life. You can imagine that we took pages of furious notes during the entirety of the much-anticipated VMAs. We still have writer's cramp from all the note-taking!

We like to observe and comment. We feel it saves you the trouble. It's the least our shining intellects can do to benefit this poor world.


Now pay attention, boys and girls. This is Gwen Stefani. Hollaback Girl jokes aside (oh, how the musically mighty have fallen!), we love this dress. And we even love Gwen in it. She is the queen of cool. Or hot, seeing as the leopard is a jungle cat, after all. We'll forgive her the blindingly blonde locks and the oddly-placed white collar, because she is Just. That. Hot. She looks fabulous.

We'll take this moment to remind our readers of our earlier stance that eating is good for everyone, from the tiniest of babies to the famousest of celebrities. Gwen Stefani is obviously a good little eater. We at Las F endorse eating. We also endorse healthy living and avoidance of fashion faux pas at all costs. Gwen has a very healthy right arm. She's been working out. We approve of this.

In closing, this look works for Gwen. We have to take points away for the collar, but she still gets 4.5 very golden stars in our book. Well done!

Moving along, we have--Goldie Hawn?

Oh no, it's just another teenager trying to look like a 40-year-old.


In case you couldn't tell because of her glazed-eye glacial glare, that's Lindsay Lohan, who was apparently drugged before being rudely stuffed into this atrocity of fashion. Who comes up with this?

SHE's EIGHTEEN. ONE-EIGHT. AS IN, JUST BARELY LEGAL FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION.
Lindsay, sweetie, I don't know who helped you dress for the VMAs. Was it a family member to whom you were indebted for some untold reason? Was it a stylist named Franz who attacked you on the street and insisted that leopard is the new black? Was it a bling-crazy fiend who insisted that, perhaps, GOLD is the new black? Whoever it was, Lindsay, you should fire them promptly. You get 1/2 of a star for your lovely locks, but I'm afraid that's all the Shining Intellects can grant you, because we have big problems with this look.

Where are your lips? Did they disappear?
We at Las F are just wondering how many times we're going to have to explain to you kids that LIPSTICK IS GOOD. We at Las F want to make it very clear that WE ADVOCATE COLOR. Wear it on your cheeks, wear it on your lips. Just WEAR it, for the love of God.

Lindsay, you have decades ahead of you to look like a cougar. Years of disillusionment will come. Trust us. 18, however, is bad time to start aping a 40-year-old, leather-skinned has-been man-eater. Stop. Stop right now.

I hate to say this, Lindz (Can I call you Lindz?), but you are not, and never will be, Gwen Stefani. Gwen looks good even with fruit and flowers festooned throughout her coif. By pulling off THAT look, she's essentially declared herself above the laws of the Shining Intellects. She can do whatever she wants. We'll roast her as necessary.

You, however, cannot do whatever you want, and all the spoiled "leave me alone I'm independent" teenager songs in the world won't change our minds. The Shining Intellects have spoken! Let it be as the laws of the Medes and Persians! No more leopard for Lindsay!

I went to a friend's house for dinner recently, and I was prepared for the absolute worst. She is a self proclaimed domestic dunderhead who can boil water for spaghetti and not much else. Much to my surprise, she had prepared a well-balanced meal that was not only aesthetically pleasing, but also gastronomically acceptable. I asked her where the caterer was, and she informed me that she had cooked the entire meal herself. The key was that she hadn't cooked it from scratch, and there are quite a few shortcuts out there that can make even the worst cook look like Emeril Lagasse. After all, if you want to impress your significant other (men, this means you, too!) a home-cooked meal is an irreplaceable date idea.

A well-balanced meal will consist of the four food groups. I know the government has flipped it's lid over its increasingly complicated food pyramid, but it's easier to remember the food groups we grew up with. You'll need a meat, a fruit/vegetable, and a starch, with the meat replacable by some other source of protein. For example if you're cooking for a vegetarian, or happen to be one, I recommend any of the fantastic Boca foods. They're not just about burgers anymore - they make chicken and beef substitutes, even chili, and they all taste excellent. If you're cooking for a meat-eater, a great shortcut are the Tyson frozen meats, pictured at left. They're already cooked - all you need to do is microwave it and it will come out juicy and ready to go. I recommend the teriyaki chicken breasts - they come out fully seasoned and even have little grill lines in them so it looks like you actually cooked it! They come in a big bag in the frozen section - now you've finished the main section of your meal.

Next is a fruit/vegetable, and this part is just as easy. Go to your grocer's freezer section and pick out anything you like. All you have to do is stick those in the microwave as well, and you're good to go, because those frozen veggies also come pre-cooked. We're having teriyaki chicken here, so as an alternative, let's do something different. Go to the canned fruit section and pick up a can of sliced mandarin oranges. You can drape them over your chicken breasts and it will not only cover your fruit/vegetable, but it will be a prettier, tastier alternative to brussel sprouts. Believe me.

Now for the starch, the foundation of the meal. Again, this could not be simpler. In the pasta section of your grocery store you'll find a number of products that both look fancy and take little work to accomplish. I'm a big fan of the Near East line of foods. They are fancy-sounding and -looking side dishes that are so easy it should be a crime. For our meal we'll select the vegetable and chicken rice, to go along with the oriental theme. This is going to require some actual cooking, but other than water boiling, you've got nothing to do - just make sure to start this going first so you can be cooking your other parts while you're waiting for it to finish. Now all you have to do is spread the rice on the plate, put a chicken breast or two (depending on who you're feeding) on top, and sprinkle a generous portion of the mandarin oranges on top. Add a sprig of parsley if you're feeling especially artistic. And there you have it - a gorgeous, tasty Chinese dinner in under half an hour, and with less MSG, I might add.

While I admit that I am not the president and CEO of the Martha Stewart fan club, I do believe the woman has two things: an unfairly stained reputation and a knack for domestic divaship. I'm sure you've been hearing and seeing quite a lot of her, and perhaps you're unsure of her past, present and future. We at Las F want to make sure you're always on the cutting edge of current events, and so here, in a nutshell, is Martha Stewart.

Martha came from humble beginnings to form a home goods empire, blah blah blah. That part is truly boring. It's just your typical entrepreneur story - trust me, you're not missing anything. Let's skip ahead to modern times. Being filthy rich as she was, she wisely invested some of her money in stocks, and had the misfortune of buying into the doomed medical company ImClone. One day Martha got a phone call from a friend, tipping her off that ImClone was going to tank pretty soon, and if she didn't want to lose a truckload of money, she'd sell her stock real quick. Now, at this point, she had two choices, one legal and one illegal:

A) "I've just received information that a company I've invested in is going down the toilet. I'd better sell my stock so I don't lose money."
B) "I've just received information that a company I've invested in is going down the toilet. Even so, I'm not going to sell my stock because profiting from insider information is wrong."

Now, call me crazy, but which one would you pick? The truly unfair part is that simply by virtue of the fact that this person told her this information she is guilty of receiving insider information and subject to a criminal investigation. You can't control the gossip you receive, only the gossip you tell. Some detractors argue that this is probably not a case of an innocent bystander, and her true conviction was of lying about her stock trade, but let's be fair, folks. If you heard your investment was about to fail, you'd drop it like a hot potato.

Instead of whining about her misfortune, however, Martha has brilliantly parlayed her prison sentence into a celebrity cash cow. From the minute she reentered our airspace in that homemade poncho she had the attention of all media, and is now using that attention to launch not one, not two, but four side projects, including: a Trump-esque Apprenice spinoff, a radio station on Sirius Sattelite Radio, an appearance on an MTV show and her very own daytime talk show. What a busy bee! Whether or not she'll actually achieve commercial success, considering the failure of her K-Mart empire and absence from the airwaves for a considerable period of time, remains to be seen. In the meanwhile, chin up, Martha. You really know how to turn lemons into lemonade.

Sunday night played host to the night on the high school calendar, the Video Music Awards. Although the network has not taken my suggestion to air the show on a non-school night, thereby catering to its key demographic and making sure no one sleeps through Algebra II, the show was a hit as per usual. We at Las F are quite surprised that a somewhat facetious award show on a cable network has garnered the kind of media and industry attention equalling, or even surpassing, the Grammys, including in viewership. This being the case, it merits our attention.

The big winners at this year's VMAs, of course, were Green Day, as I'm sure you've all heard. I would hate to sound derivative, but they do deserve some mention, if only because they have completely revolutionized rock. They have grown from an immature band making music about unmentionable topics to a group that is not only socially conscious, but musically conscious as well. Every new release surprises us with its depth and relevance, and for that reason they deserved what they received at the big dance.

That being said, however, the age of the sweep must now die. There were a lot of artists who also accomplished great things that went unrecognized because Green Day took it all. I know it makes great television when a band takes everything like that, but some artists were just as amazing and deserving of their moment. Gwen Stefani, for example, did garner two awards for two of her videos, but they were for Art Direction and Choreography, two categories that generally go unnoticed by the general public. While I admit she wasn't Video of the Year-worthy, she should have gotten a more prominent moon man.

I was pleased, however, that the Gorillaz took home a couple of prizes, for Special Effects and Breakthrough Video. I think they were the most deserving group of the night, considering they are little more than drawings on paper and are still that musically impressive. Of course, it's hard to imagine they wouldn't be, since they are the product of the combination of a few great bands from the 90s (Cibo Matto, Blur). They were the best of the best, now rolled in one. I noticed that the Killers did not take anything home that night, which left me stymied. It's as if I was forced to listen to Mr. Brightside 8 times a day on local radio fruitlessly. Actually, that's exactly what happened. Nevertheless, it was another surprising and entertaining show, and you can be sure I'll watch next year.

I went to purchase makeup at a department store this weekend (the company will remain unnamed) and had an interesting experience. I asked for a shade of blush, and the associate happily applied it to my face, including my eyes. She informed me while she did that you had to be a little experimental when it came to makeup. I let it go, although she had the condescention to instruct me as if I was some doe-eyed sixteen year old. In order to make sure she knew she wasn't dealing with just any acne-faced kid, I let her know that I was a fan of the lipstick-as-rouge trick. If it seems that my tone is rambling, it is because even now I am so angry that I can't really think straight. Her next words went right through me.

"Oh, don't ever do that. It's not a good idea," she replied, adding a finger wag.

This serves to illustrate two very important points. The first is, you should never assume to know more about makeup than the person you are serving, just because you are wearing a company-issued uniform. The second is that you shouldn't ever discourage a woman from being experimental with her makeup, unless it's bad for her skin. For example, if she's pulling on her eyelids to apply her eyeliner, warn her about the wrinkle risk! But if you're taking to an absolute genius such as myself, you should step aside and let the pros do what they will. That sounded awfully magnanimous - but seriously, honey, don't do that again, or you just might get slapped because you had the pluck to question me.

In defense of my makeup technique, I'm not the first person to try it, and I certainly won't be the last. Let me direct you to Stila, where they have their very own - gasp! - lipstick and blush combo. So it looks like I wasn't too far off after all. The beauty of lipstick-as-blush is that it lasts a lot longer than powder blush. Of course, there are trade-offs; lipstick is a lot less forgiving, so you better hope you like where you put it, or you're going to have to redo your entire face. Still, don't be afraid to try it if it works well for you. You have to do what you like for your face.

And I suppose that's what chafed me the most about important-looking-uniform lady. Everyone does something different, so you should not judge until you try it. The flipside of this point is you don't have to listen to people because they shovel some false authority of you. What kind of qualification does makeup jockey have, anyway? Probably no more than you or me. Do your own thing and don't be ashamed!