2007 in Review

There are mere hours before we have to retire our Hilary Duff calendar for the year, so it's a good time for me to blog poetic on 2007's best and worst...


Best Comedies of 2007
Pregnancy movies: Knocked Up and Juno, though I actually consider pregnancy movies to be of the horror genre.

Best Semi Truck vs. Fighter Jet Scene in a Movie
Live Free or Die Hard. Strangely enough, it wasn't any scene in Transformers.

Worst Timing Award

• The release of Things We Lost in the Fire just before the California wildfires began
• Lynn Spears trying to publish her book on parenting

Guilty-Pleasure Pop CDs of the Year

• Dignity by Hilary Duff
• We Are the Pipettes by The Pipettes
• Headstrong by Ashley Tisdale
  (But NOT the new album by her fellow High School Musical costar Vanessa Hudgens. Well... I'm not a fan of V-Hud's music album, at least. Her personal photo album, though, is an altogether separate matter.)

Restaurant Jingle of the Year
The Outback Steakhouse song ("Let's go Outback tonight...")
I can't get that damn song outta my head. It's based on "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games" by Of Montreal, but I actually like the digeridoo'd up version better.

Worst Restaurant Name
Pastagina.
I thought this was a symptom of a really bad yeast infection, but I guess it's just a poorly named Italian joint. But did they really need to use a triangle of spaghetti as their logo?

Other restaurant names to avoid: anything ending in "-esticles," "-lamydia" or "-airy nutsack." Also anything rhyming with "Schmapplebee's."

Best Pregnancies
5. Halle Berry
4. Jennifer Lopez
3. Christina Aguilera
2. Jessica Alba
1. Jamie Lynn Spears

Jessica Alba would've topped the charts if I had posted this in early December, but I ended up waiting. Meanwhile, Jamie Lynn Spears didn't end up waiting. Good thing for this list.


Top Celebrity Jail Sentences
5. Michelle Rodriguez
4. Keifer Sutherland
3. Lindsay Lohan
2. Nicole Richie
1. Paris Hilton

Paris wins for the blazing the trail and serving all the extra days that her other debutards didn't. Turns out that Lindsay's 84-minute jail term was longer than her movie I Know Who Killed Me lasted in theaters. I guess "overcrowding" wasn't the case in those theaters.

Jason Goes to American Music Awards, Redefines "Fergalicious"

The American Music Awards ceremony was held this past Tuesday, and I was somehow able to attend the show and after-party. Through my fancy-pants job, I got to hang out in the green room for the entire show, so I rubbed elbows with almost all of the American Music Award presenters and performers before they hit the stage. Here's the scoop on the backstage dirt...

• Ashlee Simpson, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie did a lot of talking together, as did Christian Slater and William Shatner. Not a lot of crossover between those two worlds, though, I guess.
  

• Miley Cyrus was all "long-time-no-see" with Mario Lopez. I think they both attended Bayside High or something.
  

• Even though he was introducing them, Tony Hawk said he'd never heard The Pussycat Dolls' music. Some of us should be so lucky.
  

• Tender Paris Hilton moment: When Paris entered the green room and was greeted with "Hey, Silly!" by Nicole Richie. They really are friends!

• Creepy Paris Hilton moment: Paris inviting all the celebrity backstagers to "another house party" of hers, resulting in her actually extending the invitation to Taylor Hicks.

• Bizarre Paris Hilton moment: Paris phoning someone to pick her up and having to repeat "This is Paris" five times.

• Fallout Boy was asked to perform their hit song but didn't want to do old material so they threw together a new song for the show. It was only two weeks old and sounded like it.
  

• The blond kid from the cast of High School Musical was the only celebrity who threw away his plastic plates and water bottles rather than waiting for the caterers to do it. He actually bussed the table for the rest of his castmates, too. It's good to know some actors are bracing themselves for waitstaff careers.

For the official after-party at the Shrine, it seemed like almost all of the celebrities ditched it for bigger and better shindigs. Word on the street was that Jay-Z was having his own party. Maybe for his re-un-retirement.

The Shrine ballroom apparently wasn't decorated as opulently as it had been for past events like the Emmys. It resembled a school gym having some sort of "Jazz Night." I spotted only a handful of stars at the party:

• Aly & AJ, who were making a pretty early exit

• "Weird Al" Yankovic, who was busy in the buffet line

• The cast of High School Musical, who I'm pretty sure are all too young to attend any of the better parties anyways

• Joe Francis, or as one woman boldly declared within earshot of the two ladies he had in tow, "There's that jerk from Girls Gone Wild."

I actually saw a middle-aged woman excitedly getting her photo taken with Joe Francis. That just seemed wrong to me. Damn. Now that I think of it, I totally should've lifted up my shirt for them. Maybe next year.