Sandy B. won Oscar while hubby was showing tattoo model his monster garage

(Left) The "tattoo model" Sandra Bullock's husband apparently was having sex with while SB was in Georgia making "The Blind Side."

The tabloids and wires are buzzing today with the news that Sandra Bullock won’t be attending the London premier of her film “The Blind Side,” the one for which she just won the Best Actress Oscar.

Why? Because apparently while Sandy was off making the movie, her husband, “Monster Garage” star Jesse James, was hooking up with a skanky looking tattoo model.

The model, Michelle “Bombshell” McGee, has spilled the whole story to In Touch magazine. She told the magazine she’d had sex with him for months during 2009 while Bullock was making “The Blind Side” in Atlanta.

But the Bombshell added: "I would never have hooked up with him if I thought he was a married man.” She also said the first night they met they had sex “two or three times.”

Two thoughts:

First, since when did “tattoo model” become a career?

And, second, you had sex “two or three times”??? Does that mean you can’t remember how many times? Or are you Bill Clinton and confused about what counts as sex?

Bullock issued this statement today: “Due to unforeseen personal reasons a trip abroad to support ‘The Blind Side’ has been deemed impossible at this time. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and thank you for your continued support of the film."

Polite to the end. A class act. Jesse James, on the other hand, has canceled his Twitter account. (I have a feeling the backlash to this is going to put the Kanye West/Taylor Swift debacle to shame. Tiger Woods must be ecstatic.)

Meanwhile, JJ apparently has other attributes. McSkanky Mcgee told In Touch that she called James the Vanilla Gorilla because he was so "well-endowed." (Also, they never used a condom. Great. He cheated AND he's gonna give Sandy an STD.) McGee said she met James when she approached him about a possible modeling job -- I had no idea tattoo models were needed to fix motorcycles -- and they started exchanging information via email.

Then he invited her to meet him and "gave her a tour of his monster garage" (soon to be the sexual euphemism to replace "hiking the Appalachian trail"). McGee said she asked him: “‘What’s going on with you and Sandra?’ He said, ‘She doesn’t live here. She has a house in Austin. She is filming, and I can’t talk about it.’" From that, McGee said, she assumed the two had split.

Bullock and James' romance was one of those “opposites attract” stories. He was the big bad motorcycle dude and mechanic formerly married to a porn star. She was the beautiful girl-next-door and America’s-sweetheart actress. In an interview with Barbara Walters before the Oscars ceremony, Bullock said of her husband: "I’d never before met a man who I felt had my back."

Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.

I won't say "all men are pigs" because I don't believe it. But every time a story like this breaks, I have to wonder: When a man has a good woman at home, not to mention one who looks like Sandra Bullock, why is he out trolling for trash? And why did someone like Sandra Bullock marry someone like the porn-star lovin' Jesse James in the first place?

So much great news for Sandra Bullock just a few days ago. Now this humiliation. After she recovers from the initial shock, I wish her more great movie roles, and a faithful partner who will bring her peace and joy. As for Jesse, I hope his Monster Garage burns to the ground.

Paulette Tobin is arts & entertainment reporter at the Grand Forks Herald, Grand Forks ND.

Posted by: tobin on 3/17/2010 at 5:08 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Two great events in Grand Forks, both FREE

Art from the 2009 ArtWise art show, by Taylen Norling of Grand Forks Lake Agassiz Elementary School. (Image courtesy of ArtWise)

Two of Grand Forks' biggest and best arts & cultural events are coming up next week. Both begin Tuesday and both are FREE.

The 17th annual ArtWise elementary school art show will be March 23-25 at the big ballroom of the Alerus Center.

The 41st annual UND Writers Conference will be March 23-27 with events at UND Memorial Union, Chester Fritz Auditorium and North Dakota Museum of Art.

In terms of sheer numbers of artists and art works, ArtWise has got to be North Dakota's biggest art show.

From 4 to 8 p.m. each day, ArtWise will feature hundreds (thousands?) of works by schoolchildren from Grand Forks, East Grand Forks, Manvel and Thompson. There will be artists and demonstrations of art, make & take projects for children and adults, and entertainment. It is a totally kid- and family-friendly environment.

I have this theory about art. I believe all of us are artists as children, but somewhere along the way, many of us lose our artistic abilities, or have it drummed out of us. I have some thoughts about why and how this happens, but I won't bore you with them now. At any rate, ArtWise certainly shows how creative children can be. ArtWise art is colorful, free-wheeling, organic, inspiring and frequently dazzling.

To find out more about ArtWise, go to http://www.gfschools.org/education/dept/dept.php?sectiondetailid=4443&/

Then there's the Writers Conference, which this year will be headlined by Art Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for writing a graphic novel (we used to call them comic books) about the Holocaust depicting the Nazis as cats and the Jews as mice. The other authors will be Mark Amerika, Cecilia Condit, Deena Larson, Nick Montfort, Stuart Moulthrop, Frank X. Walker and Saul Williams.

The theme will be "Mind The Gap," and it will explore how storytelling has transofrmed over time and the big changes that are happening today. Tuesday I went to a session led by Writers Conference co-director Kathy Coudle-King who spoke about the work of Deena Larson and Cecilia Condit. "Deena Larson is a pioneer in hypertext," Kathy told us, while I wondered "What in the world is hypertext?"

The first panel at noon Tuesday has the provocative title: "Are books obsolete?" It sounds like it's going to be a pip of a conference.

For more about the Writers Conference, go to http://www.undwritersconference.org/

Paulette Tobin is arts & entertainment reporter for the Grand Forks Herald, Grand Forks, ND.

Posted by: tobin on 3/17/2010 at 4:22 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Don't read this if you just ate

"The Exorcist," all time movie vomiting champ?

Every now then, I read something that makes me want to scream "yes," twirl around in my office chair and do a fist pump, which -- at my age -- is somewhat alarming to my colleagues, so I try not to do it.

But I could hardly restrain myself the other day when I came across Robert W. Butler's piece on the McClatchy Tribune News Service wire titled: "I’m getting sick of all the onscreen vomiting."

"The most popular bodily function in the movies these days isn’t sex. It’s vomiting," Mr. Butler says, and I agree.***

Butler began with a list of offenders: Meryl Streep (!) in "It's Complicated," Jeff Bridges in "Crazy Heart," Leonardo DiCaptrio in "Shutter Island,” Paul Rudd in “I Love You, Man,” Alison Lohman in “Drag Me to Hell” and so on.

There were vomit scenes in “Adventureland,” “The Haunting in Connecticut,” “Year One,” “The Hangover,” “Moon” and “Observe and Report,” all in the last 12 months.

For me, the most egregious movie vomiting scene is in "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist." One strand of the film's story concerns Norah’s efforts to find Caroline (Ari Graynor), her lost and very drunken friend, who gets confused and wanders around the city looking for new places to vomit. This story line was so gross I nearly got sick watching it. Seriously. I will never be able to watch that movie again, and that really hurts, because I liked that movie. Well, except for the vomiting.

While there are way too many movies that have made use of this disgusting, stomach-turning trend, Butler names "The Exorcist" as the all-time cinema vomit champ. "Little girls and green slime make an unbeatable combination," Butler says. Readers? Thoughts?

Mr. Butler concluded his piece by saying: "I say bring back movie nudity, the more the better."

***And I say, while we're at it, could we cut back on the torture, too? At the very least, this would prevent Mel Gibson from ever making another movie, and one less nutbag kook in Hollywood could only be a good thing.

Paulette Tobin is arts & entertainment reporter at the Grand Forks Herald, Grand Forks N.D.
 

Posted by: tobin on 3/16/2010 at 4:06 AM | Comments (2) | Permalink

The final days of St. Bette's at Fire Hall

As a reporter, I know that there is both satisfaction and trepidation in writing those stories that you know are going to touch people in the most personal way. The satisfaction is that you are sharing information and/or telling a story that you know has the power to affect people, even to change lives. The trepidation? That is a LOT of responsibility. You had better get it right.

And so it is with "St. Bette's," written by Grand Forks playwright Kathy Coudle-King, which will have its final three performances this week, at 7:30 p.m. March 18-20 at Fire Hall Theatre in Grand Forks.

St. Bette’s takes place in 1961 as four women enter a home for unwed mothers. Each women feels this is her only choice. Unmarried, young, no financial means, burgeoning professional dreams, reckless behavior, and love have brought them to this house. Some want to keep their babies. One, because of her disability, is not allowed. What is choice when there are no options?

When I talked to director Adonica Schultz Aune about the play just before it opened, we talked about whether today's generation could understand the time in which St. Bette's was set. The 1950s and 1960s, even the 1970s, when I was a young woman, were a very different time if you were single and pregnant. Most often, pregnant women would get married quickly and hope no would could count to nine months, or they would go away to hide in shame until they had given birth, and then give up their babies for adoption.

Yes, society was different then, Aune told me. But people today still understand the terror and the fear that young women face in making choices when they face an unplanned pregnancy.

For plenty of older women, St. Bette's literally IS their story. Women have told Coudle-King: "You told my story." One woman even praised the set of St. Bette's for how well it reflected the home for unwed mothers she'd gone to before giving birth, from the crucifix and the photo of the pope on the wall to the four twin beds in a single room.

Aune remembered a young woman she knew years ago who became pregnant in high school. Her boyfriend was allowed to continue to go to school but she was not. When her baby was born, it was denied baptism.

"I think it was harder on the girls because they were held more responsible for everything that happened," Aune said. "It was a double standard for men and women. The girls had to face their shame alone and churches weren’t real sympathetic. It was unfair and really sad."

Coudle-King began writing "St. Bette's" in 2004. Here's what she told me about it in an e-mail:

"At a retreat that year I talked about my project, and two women came up to me separately and said this was their story. If I wanted first hand info, they’d be happy to give it. That’s when I realized there are untold number of women out here walking around with a story that they have been shamed into keeping silent. This made me want to write the play even more. After all, the women who adopt the baby is lauded for her action, yet the woman who provides that baby is shamed into silence? That doesn’t seem right. Some of the women who release their babies are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Those of us not in her shoes cannot possibly understand what went into her choice; however, I’ve tried to imagine it a bit with this play. I think it’s a choice that’s hard because it stays with you your whole life. The summer of ‘61 when my characters are gathered at St. Bette’s is frozen in time for them. They never leave it behind. They live that choice every day.

"Interestingly, the day I announced the upcoming production a fellow playwright on Face Book emailed me. He said that 1961 was the year an annoymous woman released him for adoption."

Kathy concluded: "These stories are out there and it’s the playwrights' job to get us to look at them and perhaps lay aside some of our preconcieved notions about right and wrong."

Paulette Tobin is arts & entertainment reporter at the Grand Forks Herald, Grand Forks, N.D.

Posted by: tobin on 3/15/2010 at 2:35 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Books on my calendar

A few weeks ago one of my blog readers called me a "geezer" so I might as well admit I still carry a paper agenda book in my purse to keep track of appointments, deadlines, birthdays and such. One of the things I record on my calendar is book release dates for books I can't wait to buy and read. Here are three books that are on that list right now:

"Nothing But Trouble," by Rachel Gibson. Release date: April 27. Gibson writes fun, smart and steamy contemporary romances. Her first two romance novels, "Simply Irresistible" and "Truly Madly Yours," were named among the Top Ten Favorite Books of the Year by Romance Writers of America. And in 2002, "True Confessions" was awarded the RITA® for the Best Single Title Contemporary Romance of the Year. I think these are three of the best books I have ever read. Gibson writes great female characters and her alpha males are to die for. Several books, including "Simply Irresistible," are set in the world of hockey and/or in the Pacific Northwest. So far I've been unable to discover much about the storyline for "Nothing But Trouble," but Gibson could write a book about chicken ranchers and I'd still read it.

"Storm Prey," by John Sandford. Release date: May 18. This will be the 20th in Sandford series about Minneapolis cop/high-ranking criminal investigator Lucas Davenport. I am a huge Sandford fan; the last time he released a Lucas Davenport book, I finished it, and then re-read in order the 18 books that had preceded it. (OK, I may be slightly obsessed.) This book, according to amazon.com, begins on a bitterly cold Minnesota morning when three big men burst through the door of a hospital pharmacy, duct-tape the hands, feet, mouth, and eyes of two pharmacy workers, and clean the place out. But then things go bad, one of the workers dies, and the robbers hustle out to their truck-and find themselves for just one second face-to-face with a blond woman in the garage: Weather Karkinnen, surgeon, and Davenport's wife. What happens when the bad guys decide they must eliminate the witness? In addition to his "Prey" (Lucas Davenport) novels, Sandford has written nine other books, most recently the Virgil Flowers novel "Rough Country," also set in Minnesota.

"61 Hours," by Lee Child. Release date: May 18. OK, this will be a conundrum -- which one do I read first, Sandford or Child, because both books are scheduled to come out on May 18. Child's books are about an ex-military man, Jack Reacher, whose basically has been traveling aimlessly since he left the service. Amazon.com says "61 Hours" begins with a tour bus crash in a savage snowstorm -- in South Dakota no less -- and lands Jack Reacher in the middle of a deadly confrontation in Bolton, S.D., (Note: There is no Bolton, S.D., but there is a Colton. Coincidence?). A woman is standing up for justice in a small town threatened by sinister forces and if she’s going to live long enough to testify, she’ll need help, because a killer is coming to Bolton, "a coldly proficient assassin who never misses." The book blurb continues: "Reacher’s original plan was to keep on moving. (Note: That's always his plan, but he always seems to get waylaid, and there's usually a woman involved.) But the next 61 hours will change everything. The secrets are deadlier and his enemies are stronger than he could have guessed — but so is the woman whose life he’ll risk his own to save."

Readers, please note: All of these authors write books for adults, with adult themes, language, explicit sexuality and violence. If this is not your thing, there are plenty of other great authors out there.

Knowing these books will soon be on the shelves of my favorite bookstore just gives me one more reason to anticipate spring.

Tobin is arts & entertainment reporter at the Grand Forks Herald, Grand Forks N.D.

Posted by: tobin on 2/18/2010 at 3:40 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink