Friday Spies @ Begging the Question

Begging The Question
A day late and a dollar short once again, here's this week's Friday Spies:

1. What five things should you never buy used?
Ok, not feeling creative for this one, so I'll go obvious.

1. condoms

2. heroin needles

3. coffins

4. toothbrushes

and finally,

5. toilet paper

Thanks, please move along.

2. Sony BMG just ended a payola investigation by settling with New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer. So let's engage in some reverse payola: What song or artist would you pay to never have to hear again?
Given that TK is a six-year old girl, you may be able to predict my artist DON't PLAY list.

#1 Hilary Duff - anything. I always feel embarassed by young movie stars who seem to sincerely want to sing, and obviously have people telling them they're good at it when they aren't. So, to the ear-splitting horror, I add the uneasiness of feeling bad she's been lied to

#2 Raven a.k.a. Raven Simone, especially on the Cheetah Girls soundtrack

#3 Lindsey Lohan: actually not so bad, if she had something to sing.. at least by comparison

#4 I don't know their names, but its that girl from Phil of the Future and her girl singing partner - ouch!

#5 And this one isn't Disney. And I don't mind the singing (wouldn't buy it, or turn it up, but it could be worse - see above). What I really mind is the crap-poor lipsyncing. Yes, nominee #5 is Jessica Simpson. The lady is HOT, no doubt about it, but when she tries to lipsync (for a video or televised performance), it looks like an old fashioned talking dog commercial. You know, where they'd glob a bunch of peanut butter to the roof of the dogs mouth, and the mouth would randombly move as the pup tried to lick it off. Think of that the next time you see Jessica singing and tell me if it isn't what's really going on.

3. In honor of the new Bad News Bears: Did you ever play little league, or other organized youth sports?
First of all, I'm not all that happy with the idea of honoring remakes of Disney movies. However, since it's a fairly good question, I'll answer anyway.
Sigh... yes, I played. Well, not little league, but T-bal.. and flag football, and one season of soccer. I sucked, and I didn't really enjoy it. But that was what you did in the summers - you played sports on teams. At the time I was too young to decide based on what I wanted to do, so I decided based on what I thought I should do. Mom and Dad never forced me to sign up, but once I signed up, I was required to attendevery practice, every game. I wonder how different my life would have been if I'd had the balls to strike out on my own and do MY thing back then. Of course, my thing was riding my bike on the trails, and reading. I guess I really needed to search around more. My ghod, what if I'd fallen into mime?

4. What was your biggest fashion faux pas?
When the baseline is set so low, the faux pas' don't really stand out from the noise. Let's just pick one. Keeping on the highschool theme, how about:my hairstyle and my glasses. OK, that's two, but I can't seem to separate my thick plastic frames from the side-part megaswoop of hair I maintained through middle school and into high school. Finally, some kind soul in the post-gym class locker room suggested I try a middle part with feathered hair. A bit more in style, eh? And when finally paired with wire rim glasses, it approached respectability. And then the hair loss began in college, and the part was no more. I still miss it sometimes.


5. In honor of all our readers who took the Bar Exam this week: What was the hardest test you ever took?
Easy. Sophomore year of highschool (keeping the theme going), we had a routine quiz. Apparently, it had been announced in advance, but I didn't know a thing about it. Well, I was struggling thorugh the damn thing in a panic when I suddenly went blind. Well, not really blind, but I could only see by peripheral vision. Taking an entire spanish quiz by peripheral vision is not optimal. For some reason, I didn't shout out "Oh my ghod! I'm blind!", which was probably a good thing, given my already low social standing in the school. Else I'd have suffered "Hey Fishmonger! You blind again?" , "You know what makes you go blind, don't you, Fishmonger?", and related witty retorts. Anyway. I managed to finish the quiz, class ended, and my blindness faded as I walked to my next class. Hysterical blindness over an unplanned quiz. My lord, what would I have done if I'd lost a leg in a car accident?