"This one room fixer-upper is bad. It's bad, you know it..."

Back in November, the world once again scratched its collective heads as Michael Jackson was reported to have been spotted using a women's restroom in a shopping mall:

But local newspapers reported the 47-year-old performer was spotted applying make-up in the woman's toilets in a Dubai mall.

His publicist, of course, called it a "mistake." Honestly, the guy has long ago used up his quotient of "benefit of the doubt," but if I were trying to figure out the Arabic symbols on restrooms, I'd probably get confused, too. However, this morning, another story came out that, well, casts that one in a different light. Mike, it seems, likes the ladies' clothing, too:

Michael Jackson has made a fashion faux pas as he attempts to integrate into Bahraini culture - he has started wearing an abaya robe, which is traditionally worn by Muslim women. The hitmaker has been living in the Middle Eastern nation since he was acquitted of child molestation charges in his native America last June.

Earlier this week, Jackson was photographed leaving the Marina Mall in the Bahrain capital Manama, with his three children, whose faces were covered with dark scarves. While Prince Michael I, Paris Michael and Prince Michael II had just their faces covered, the superstar was dressed head to toe in the loose, black abaya, traditionally favoured by Muslim women in Arab regions.

So now he's wearing women's clothing, too? Is this part of a larger trend? Does Mike really want to be Michelle?

But that's not the interesting part of the story. Michael is weird, and like Madonna's need to find new ways to express her sluttiness with each album, he's just going to keep finding new ways to creep us out. No, the interesting part came at the end of the story:

Recently, reports suggested Jackson is set to become a property consultant with Bahraini firm AAJ Holdings Ltd.

Now, I'm sure that this means he'll be trotted out to the latest mall opening, or whatever billionaire landowners do with their land in Bahrain, but I prefer to imagine Jackson working behind a desk at a Bahrainian Century 21, trying to get young couples into their first home.

Naturally, he's in a dress...

Quote(s) of the Day

"She's not interested in running for office. She's interested in literacy." --President Bush, on the prospect of his wife becoming a U.S. senator.

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" --Bush, in Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000.

"I know he doesn't read." --Anonymous former Bush national security council staffer, quoted by Sidney Blumenthal.

Doesn't... or can't?

Jonesing for Star

As the saying goes, if we didn't have Star Jones, someone would have to invent her, because she's like a kind of hilarity snowball, rolling down the hill, getting bigger and bigger, even as she gets thinner and thinner...

You see, it seems that Mrs. Jones-Reynolds wrote an autobiography, Shine, detailing her inability to keep her legs closed:

It all began when Star took a close look at herself and her life and realized she wasn't happy with what she saw: obesity precluded her from crossing her legs, she needed an asthma inhaler, she couldn't fasten her own necklace, and, worst of all, she got too tired to shop -- a disaster because Star Jones Reynolds is a seriously committed shopper.

Too tired to shop! Oh, the humanity! God forbid she put down the MasterCard and ponder something, you know, important, like other people.

Then, to promote her, um, self-promotion, Jones signed on to do a blog, detailing her three-month book/mediawhore publicity tour.

Likely no one would have cared, but it seems that Star's people decided to leave the blog open to comments. Things went horrifically, hilariously wrong almost immediately, as people let Star know exactly how they felt about a vacuous, self-absorbed former Jabba-the-Hutt-lookalike. Among their helpful discussions was this insightful photo comparison:

And, with that, the blog disappeared.

Scheduled lifespan: 3 months.
Actual lifespan: 3 days.

And yet, Star goes on living, doing what she does best, which is talk about herself and how much she loves her man, who is not at all gay. God bless you, Star. God bless you.

Wanna See My Thingpart?

Reading one of the local alternative rags last week, I was surprised to find a comic that ran in the final issue of the magazine (for the moment) was featured on the comics page, alongside Tony Millionaire and such. The strip, Thingpart, was one of my favorite parts of that issue (copies still available! buy! buy! buy!), and, from the comments I got, one of the readers' favorites too. Here's a sample, blatantly stolen from Joe's website:

Joe posts new comics every Wednesday. Read it, or bring shame on your whole family!