Missing Sex Money Mystery Blonde: Day 26

Iceman: You're everyone's problem. That's because every time you go up in the air you're unsafe.

Maverick: That's right! Ice... man. I am dangerous! -- Top Gun

Wait a minute. John McCain's a navy aviator... and a maverick! And isn't his vanishing lobbyist gal pal named Vicki Iseman? Iseman? ICEMAN? Viet cong... VC... VICKI!!? She's his comrade... and his enemy! Connect the dots, people. Then do the math. Then wake up and smell the coffee. Then drink the coffee. I'll wait right here.

Eliot Spitzer's hooker has a song and we still haven't even heard John McCain's lobbyist speak. What gives?

How the hell did someone named Vicki Iseman become the only American since 9/11 entitled to privacy? This isn't about sex with John McCain. I don't want to hear the details. (Sweet merciful mother of God, I don't want to hear the details.) I just want to know she's alive.

And don't tell me she's not newsworthy. If there's no news value in a vacant-looking, pie-faced blonde nitwit who's never done anything, explain Heidi Montag.

--

Maybe, in about ten years or so, The Atlantic can rip the lid off Heidi Montag. It won't be any staler than this month's cover story on Britney Spears. (Did you know she's often followed by paparazzi? It's true!) Also in this issue, there aren't as many dead Iraqis as bleeding-hearts think, the Seventies were a good era for movies, and Christopher Hitchens finds Ezra Pound talented but controversial. Goddamn, what an awful magazine.

--

A couple of quick thoughts on the Atlantic's Britney story:

"The night is darker than usual, owing to smoke from a dozen wildfires that are burning as close as Malibu and around Lake Arrowhead."

Oooo... eerie. Except Lake Arrowhead is almost a hundred miles from where the author says he's sitting. Does he mean, "as close of Malibu and as far away as Lake Arrowhead?" Is fire that frightening? Is he Frankenstein's monster? What about the volcanoes "as close as Costa Rica?" They could blow any minute.

"It was easy to imagine legions of Internet-era Andrew Marvells staying up late in fluorescent-lit cubicles appending metaphysical exclamation points to celebrity photo captions that would rocket readers ever closer to the celestial objects of their desire..."

Easy for you to imagine. Why drag Andrew Marvell into this? What did he ever do to you?

"It is impossible for anyone who has spent even a modicum of time in the comments section of a celebrity blog to look at paparazzi pictures in the same way..."

Modicum sounds like "molecule," so children and science fiction writers think it means "small amount," but it doesn't. It means a moderate amount. So "even a modicum" doesn't tell you anything. It's like saying, "Anyone who eats even a fair amount of food will taste it." Or: "Reading even a number of pages of the Atlantic is a waste of time."

-- Radios probably shouldn't "crackle" three times in the same article. I'm also not sure anyone's ever actually heard a radio crackle, except when a creative writing class was reading their work aloud.

-- Kevin Federline can't be "fecund" unless women are always impregnating him. The field is fecund, the farmer less so. Maybe some other word would be better? Or none at all?

-- "Diagonally across the street, the core of the decayed downtown is wrapped around Frank Gehry's undulating, steel-clad concert hall, which looks like a giant steel-capped molar in a mouthful of rotting teeth."

One: It doesn't, and two: Oh my god. Disney Hall doesn't look any more like a steel-capped molar than your momma does. It is silvery, I suppose, but so are barracuda, Klondike bars, and the back of Steve Martin's head.

Also, it's not sitting in a mouthful of rotting teeth. Look:

From arcspace.com

It sits (like a molar, undulating) between the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and a parking structure. Behind it are skyscrapers. They might look like rotting teeth, if rotting teeth looked like fully-occupied skyscrapers.

Does the non-existent urban (tooth) decay around Disney Hall make Los Angelinos gingivitis? Is the Staples Center a uvula? Or does it have to be the same color? Did you just take the Atlantic's travel money and stay home like a fluorescent-lit Andrew Marvell? Should you get some other kind of work, perhaps at a store?

Are you related to someone?

--

Speaking of Top Gun and blonde women who were never seen alive again, whatever happened to Kelly McGillis?

Shouldn't she be a psychiatrist on HBO or a lesbian on Showtime or something? Wait a second... Kelly McGillis: Lesbian Psychiatrist... in the old west! Call it Rio Lesbo. No. Dr. Queer: Medicine Woman. No. Stagecouch?

Jung Guns!

I've got to make a call.

Comments

[Zyzzygowski]

You have heard Vicki Iseman, but you just don't know it. She does the background vocals for Gov Spitzer's hooker music. Deep bacground.

[DHeil]

Chris: how entertaining it is to read your columns. I always learn something, even if it simply means expanding my vocabulary. I'm not sure there's much point this particular article except to inform me the Atlantic magazine stinks. Not sure I've ever read Atlantic.

But I AM interested in the whereabouts of Vicki Iseman. Keep up the good work of keeping VC Iceman
in front of us. She can't hide forever. I am intrigued at how ANYONE could hide so well. Maybe we should have a contest/reward for anyone who can document she is alive.

I'd contribute.

[VSamuels]

Eliot Spitzer's hooker has a song and we still haven't even heard John McCain's lobbyist speak. What gives?

Speaking of connecting the dots, MSNBC did specials on the presidential aspirants, and the one featuring John McCain was littered with various epidsodes of him fooling around on 1st wife, even offering the viewer McCain's own admission that he had been wrong in chasing women after he came back from Hanoi Hilton. Yet, now it is somehow a stretch of the imagination that he is not capable of carrying on an affair with Ms. Iseman? Again, the media has shown that it does not wish to connect the dots as it ignores the very character of McCain who has had a history of chasing women.

Besides, it was amazing how quickly McCain was allowed to discredit this story with a simple press conference and the talking heads all quickly agreed he was being unfairly picked on. So much for the 'liberal press' because it seems to be taking Hillary and Obama to task alot more closer than McCain, who has also had 2 campaign operatives indicted---and this fact is basically ignored.

Speak to Ms. Iseman, indeed!

[jukesgrrl]

I agree that the MSM is purposefully avoiding improprieties from the McCain family. No one I talk to seems to know that McCain had a wife before Cindy, let alone that he admits cheating on Wife #1 repeatedly before he fell in love with the young-enou­gh-to-be-h­is-daughte­r cheerleade­r/heiress. And they certainly are in the dark about Cindy's drug arrest and the deal that was struck to keep her from having a nasty felon record. I'm not troubled by the fact that Cindy was an addict (too many politicians have addicted relatives to keep track and as far as I'm concerned, it's an illness), but I am troubled by favors that may be owed, and arms that were twisted to keep the thievery that went along with her addiction from being publicized. That was a non-profit organization she was ripping off, wasn't it?? I guess all is forgiven because she later had a stroke. Would that be true for Michelle Obama if she were caught stealing drugs?

As for Iseman, the woman wasn't independently wealthy as far as I can tell. Who's funding her exile? FOLLOW THE MONEY, FOLKS. I don't know about you, but I don't have enough cash squirreled away that I could ditch my job on a moment's notice and go into hiding until the end of November. Who's paying the bills???

[sarge]

I think it does kind of look like a steel capped molar in a mouthful of rotting teeth.

[tstamp]

always happy to read a new post from Mr. Kelly. Hilarious. thanks for adding some laughs to my day.

[tdbach]

Nobody makes me laugh the way you do, Chris. And I'm not always sure why. Thank goodness I'm self emlpoyed and don't work in a "fluorescent-lit cubicle" surrounded by other fluorescen­t-lit-cubi­cle-dwelli­ng drones, or they'd be hauling me away for "laughing at nothing" - or so they would claim.

[vipersdad]

Hilarious! I loved this. Thanks for channeling Edwin Newman ;-)

[ClosetExtrovert]

My life has been getting so weird. I realized that I now have 3 economists on my speed dial - and I listen to them. Everybody knows that the economic majors in school were too dopey to get business degrees. Years ago, my speed dial was pizza delivery and the dentist. Not losing any money gets me gold stars. I make connect-the-dots animals over trend reports and pretend I understand them. Then I read your stuff and I think it's all going to be ok. Weirdly ok, but ok.
Thanks again for the laugh.

[speakingtruth2power]

The fact that Spitzer was the leading critic of predatory lending & was leading

a fifty state revolt against the Bushies intent on destroying America's financial

institutions from within had nothing to do with his being outed for sex crimes.

The GOP would NEVER allow discriminatory prosecution against Democrats.

[ron071]

Logic has it that this " outing " was motivated by the friends of Wall St. withing the Republican party and their friends in the D.C. administration. One of the many tragic outcomes of Bush is the use of the federal justice machinery to prosecute Democratic " enemies ." Look at the Don Sigelman prosecution in La. and this scenario becomes clearer. The firing of the Justice Dept. attys. by Alberto is yet another bit of evidence.

How much coincidence is too much? It seems that the corporate control of the main-media has become yet another tool of this administration to bury stories of little import like Iraq and Vicki girl . This has reached frightening proportions. How can any clear thinking American even consider voting for a Republican?

[calpubserv]

Well Mr.Kelley, as usual, your post leaves me LOL.

If there remains a modicum of intrepid reporters in this country who are unable to locate Ms. Iseman, perhaps one of them could find the opportunity to ask John McCain about his "romantic" and "exciting" experiences in Southeast Asia.

[DouginCT]

Ditto. Funny as always. Granted, here you seem to be twiddling your thumbs while waiting for Iseman to reappear (or wash up on a beach), but funny and on point as always. How sad about Altantic Monthly.

[philistine]

HuffPost's Pick

Chris Kelly, you take stabbing with a pen to new levels. I was raised to not take pleasure in others' misfortune, but you make it too funny to pass up. God forbid I ever become famous enough and do something stupid enough for you to take notice.

Cheers!

[Bongborg]

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Schadenfreude.

[smallgal]

this is the first time ever for me - I spat coffee all over the monitor.

HI-LARIOUS

[Citizenofreality]

No doubt Vicki is in lobbyist rehab. She will be cured of her desire to cozy up to presidential candidates and will make her triumphant return as a commentator for Fox.