Happy Effin New Year

Finally! Finally! The holidays are over! Technically I don't have to speak with or have a meal with another human being until the next major day of nationwide observance which, according to my calculations, might be Groundhog Day. I don't mind the holidays. The alligators in my moat which surrounds my walled off compound kind of freak out my relatives, but other than their needing sedatives rather often, I enjoy them. So many traditions that just keep happening year after year. I embrace consistency like that. I like to know what to expect. You know who else seems to embrace consistency and who else seems to like doing the same thing year after year? Kathy Griffin and her tradition of belting out some sort of expletive or sexually inappropriate reference while hosting some New Year's gala with, of all people, pretty, pretty Anderson Cooper.

Here's the deal: Last year, while hosting the New Year's festivities again with pretty, pretty Anderson Cooper, Kathy was being heckled by none other than, you guessed it, a heckler. And, well, let's just say that she had finally had it with said heckler and she let fly a rather pointed rebuttal when she yelled out to the dude, "Shut up!! Do you know what? Screw you! I'm working! Why don't you get a job, buddy!? I don't go to your job and knock the d**ks out of your mouth." Ah, yes. What a way to welcome in the new year!

But that was last year. I think. Wait. Yes. Yes, it was last year. I was a little confused because Kathy Griffin again hosted the New Year's Eve festivities and she again let her vocabulary fly a little bit off in a direction that I'm sure the FAA will be looking into. It won't be as intense as the scrutiny over Janet Jackson's Nipple-Gate at the Super Bowl that one year, but if she gets the same gig next year, they're really going to have to look into assigning a permanent agent to follow her around or something just to monitor her and her inevitable and predictably unpredictable outbursts. I'm just saying.

So this year, Anderson Cooper, being as how he's a fairly legitimate news reporter and all, decided it would be a good idea to engage Ms. Griffin in a little game of "Who Was Who in the News in 2009". You know, show her some pictures of folks who were prominently in the news (for better or for worse. I'm guessing mostly worse.)...see if she knew who they were. It seems harmless. And if he wasn't doing it with Kathy Griffin, it probably would have been harmless.

First up was a picture of reality show

hopeful asshats Richard and Mayumi Heene who had their kid hide in the attic or somewhere whilst they told the rest of the world that he was flying over a three state area in some sort of mylar balloon thing that the family constructed in the backyard during their spare time. (In spare time at my house growing up, we did yardwork, but whatever.) Ms. Griffin knew exactly who they were and said that she "admired their stick-to-it-tiveness". I hadn't heard it put quite that way before then. They did have stick-to-it-tiveness, didn't they? They would not let go of their lie for what seemed like weeks! OK, fine, kudos for that.

Then Kathy asked Anderson if he followed the story and he said that he did and that his

favorite part was when "Falcon said 'Who the hell is Wolf?' " It was at that moment that Kathy Griffin became a bit confused. It was like Anderson Cooper had suddenly started speaking Chinese or something because she started sputtering words out as if she was hoping to randomly hit upon what it was that he had just said. So she asks him, "Falcon?" And Anderson reiterates, "Falcon Heene." Do you see where this is going? Neither did I.

Even with Anderson's "Falcon Heene" clarification, that didn't seem to clear things up for Kathy Griffin. Nope, instead she continued to question him on what he had said. "Fal....F**kin'....Falcon? How do you say it?" Hoo boy. Nice.

I think that poor ol' closeted Anderson Cooper was having flashbacks of the year before and probably was praying that it wouldn't go any farther. Meanwhile, those of us watching this unfold were praying it would go farther. We wanted it to go really far. We wanted her to continue to act as if she had just been liberated from lifelong deafness and was hearing the spoken word for the very first time. That's what we wanted. Sadly, it didn't go that way.

Anderson acknowledged her "curiosity" by simply bowing his head (likely asking the gods for forgiveness and praying that he either keeps his job or finally loses the New Year's gig) and moving onto the next picture while muttering, "You're terrible...." Good cover, Anderson. I wonder if Kathy will come up with something that clever when she is inevitably asked about it?

Well, in a statement released by her publicist on Friday, she didn't just come up with something that clever; she came up with something more clever. According to the AP, she responded to this incident with the following: "Like every other serious reporter covering the now infamous balloon boy hoax, I struggled to pronounce his name 'Falcon' correctly and have gotten a kick out of how many ways I've heard it pronounced by other serious reporters. Just add me to that list and happy new year!"

It's hard to know where to start with that obviously sarcastic and non-serious statement. There's the hilarious reference to her being a "serious reporter". (Then again, there's the hilarious reference to everyone else who covered that ridiculous story as a "serious reporter" as well.) There's also the implication that she was "covering" the story. She was barely having a conversation, let alone covering anything. But my favorite was the assertion that the name/word/bird "Falcon" is difficult to pronounce. You know, more people had difficulty pronouncing the family's last name of "Heene"

than they did have trouble pronouncing "Falcon". Tell me, just how many ways are there that "Falcon" can be pronounced? Let's see...there's falcon. That's one. And then there's...oh, that's right. THAT'S IT! That's the only way! What else could there be? Fulcrum? You're going to tell me they named their poor child after a lever mechanism? Falco? How into the 80s would his parents have had to be to name him after the one-hit wonder Rock Me Amadeus guy? (Very. Very into the 80s and probably very stoned as well.) Falcon. There's one pronunciation and we all know it. Well, we all know it. Let's just hope that the guys at the FAA don't know it because if CNN gets fined and she gets booted from the New Year's Eve gig then the tradition will never have a chance to properly flourish! And after the year that we just had, we need as much possible flourishment in the upcoming year as we can possibly get. And if it has to be through the means of a raunchy, D-List comedienne dropping a f-bomb at some point during the last night of the year, then so be it.