Paltrow a Hollywood Pariah After Weight-Gain Roller Coaster of Shallow Hal

idden away in the dark corners of her ranch-style Hollywood home, where thick oaken blinds strain the noontime sunlight to a dull trickle, former A-list actress Gwyneth Paltrow stares out over the rim of a vodka-and-tonic.

"I don't know what's going on," sighs Paltrow in barely a whisper. "It's like I've got the clap or something. Nobody calls, the doorbell doesn't ring... I haven't heard from my agent in weeks."

Such is the fate of a once in-demand star who dared to play the fat girl.

"Honestly, I'm surprised nobody has tried to hollow out her chest to hole up for the winter. My God. I mean, what was she thinking?" gossiped Hollywood producer Mart Wixle.

Paltrow's star seemed to be unstoppably on the rise until her fatal miscue of accepting a role in the Farrelly brothers' recent Shallow Hal, in which Paltrow plays a morbidly obese North Carolina woman. During the film's production, rumors began to surface about Paltrow's out-of-control weight fluctuations, with various sources placing her anywhere between 110 and 350 pounds on any given day.

"It was insane," stated former co-star Ben Affleck. "One day I'd see her and she'd be the same old Gwyneth, and then the next she looked like she ate a boyscout troup. It was kind of creepy. You think she got into Metabolife or something?"

"Do you think it's that rumor that I'm really a dude?" asked Paltrow during a recent interview. "That went around for a while after I did Shakespeare in Love but I thought it had died down. You never can be too sure with the internet, though. My sister seems to think it's about Shallow Hal but that doesn't make any sense. Everybody knows that was just a fat suit, right?"

"Yeah, we've all heard the fat suit line," quipped Wixle. "That one's older than Bob Hope. Eleanor Roosevelt tried to pull that once, and it was old even back then. A Hydrox cookie suit is more like it, heh."

Few are showing sympathy for Paltrow, who many claim should have taken a hint from the overwhelming public disgust shown when actress Renee Zellweger ballooned up to a corpulent 120 lbs for her role in the limey farce Bridget Jones' Diary. Starlet Julia Roberts also took a public-relations tumble when she was shown eating an entire cracker in the summer comedy America's Sweethearts.

"I mean, get with the program," continued Wixle. "Nobody goes to the movies to see fat people. Walmart's closer and they don't charge admission. People don't want to be confronted with the tubby realities of everyday life when they go to the theater. Did you see Renee in Bridget Jones? Good God, I thought she was going to reach through the screen and eat my popcorn. Somebody get me a lipo tube and a bone saw, we'd better take out some ribs. She must have force-fed herself three meals a day to bulk up like that. Talk about sick."

Paltrow's upcoming film deals appear to be in limbo as no one in Hollywood seems to be willing to share a phone line with her, thanks to rumors around town that fat might be contagious. Her fax machine is still ringing off the hook, however all recent offers have been from talk shows and companies selling miracle weight-loss herbs. Additionally, Paltrow reports that her gardener recently discovered a nest of tabloid photographers living in the azaleas in her front yard. Spraying commences on Wednesday.

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Over the course of my life, any time I've had a gripe about the way things were going or if I had things that I thought were unfair, my mom was always there to remind me that there are people out there who have it worse off than me. No matter what your problem is, there's always some poor S.O.B. out there whose wretched existence made yours look like a complimentary trip to a Bangkok whorehouse.

My mom's the undisputed master of this line of reasoning. No matter what happened when I was growing up, she always had some reason why I should be happy about it. Any time I took the guys to meet Mr. Bike Frame after riding my Huffy into a gopher hole or a curb or something, while I was on the ground in the fetal position, writhing in pain, she always reminded me that at least I didn't have spinal meningitis. I'm not kidding! Needless to say, that's not the kind of thing a guy wants to hear when he's just had his family jewels knocked back into his earlobes, so I spent a large portion of my childhood years sucking on a bar of Ivory soap.

But she never faltered. Your dog got hit by a car? That's a piece of cake compared to having cystic fibrosis. Pulled a 300 on the SATs? That'd make your day if you had hooks for hands. I don't know where she got half that shit. Every once in a while I'd catch her blatantly making something up, like the time in Jr. High when I got kicked in the nuts by a mule and she told me it was better than having Herkemer's Syndrome. I asked her what the hell that was and she just muttered something vague about having your bones itch and said I didn't want to know the details.

To be perfectly honest, I never really appreciated my mother's philosophy when I was growing up; actually I thought she was sick in the head. But now that I'm older I'm really starting to understand where she was coming from. It's taken me a long time to find my purpose in life, but now I think I've really found it. I'm here to remind people that no matter what kind of foul shit is going down in their own lives, hey, at least their last name isn't Fagerbakke.

You don't even have to know a thing about be, beyond my name, to know that I didn't have an easy time of it growing up. All my life, I've been like some kind of nickname magnet. You can try to surprise me with something new, but I'd advise you to save your breath, I promise I've heard them all: Froggerhockey, Fan-of-Balki, Faggotbacon, Fag-bot, Fuckerbacker, Fingerbecky, Shag-her-buddy, Fizzledick, Dr. Lousy Lay, Sir Fucksafreshman, Tommy Hatesajew, Dildo on Wheels, The Cunnilinguist, Tom the Racist Wonder, Tommy Comesponge, Mr. Nazi-cock, Tommy Two-Minutes, Tommy Knockmeup, The Back-door Bandit, Tom Thumbs-a-stranger, Tommy Inchworm… the list goes on and on. I'm sure I'm forgetting some good ones, too, you can email my mom if you want the complete list.

The point is, I got stuck with the Spruce Goose of bad last names. And for a long time I thought that was a curse, you know? But now I realize it's a blessing. Just like how Superman got super-powers and used them to help out humanity when it got in a pinch, Tom Fagerbakke got a super-shitty last name and he's going to use it to raise humanity's spirits. No matter who's pissing on your parade or what kind of crap life is trying to pull, all you have to do is stop and reflect on the fact that your last name isn't Fagerbakke, and that kind of puts it all in perspective. Sure, maybe your wife left you for your boss and your mom joined a cult and your son just got into Weird Al Yankovic, but you know, at least you're still doing pretty good in the last name department. So maybe everything isn't as bad as it seems, right? Feel better?

No need to thank me, it's the work I was born to do.

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As one of two conservatives in the commune office, the other being a complete asshole, I felt quite alone watching the election coverage back in November. It was like the 1994 election, only horribly inverted—Democrats, Democrats everywhere, and not a successful attack ad in sight. Piss on the current administration, I say. Not because I'm not a loyal Republican, but because I firmly believe if the president had kicked a little pay-off action to the voters again (we call it tax relief) he could have skated all his cronies back into office with ease. "Iraq-a-what?" millions of greedy undecideds would have said, dollar signs clicking comically in their eyes. I love it in cartoons when you can see dollar signs rolling in someone's eyes—it wish everybody was that honest in real life.

But no, goddammit, he put his faith in the conservative religious base once again, and trusted his purges of minority voters in key states would do what he needed. Well, that left a lot of your guys shit out of luck, Mr. President. We're all financially fucked now. And don't expect the healthy sense of fear and respect we've been getting from enemy nations, now that the cursed undecideds have lame-duckified both the president and congress. Old Glory (yes, you capitalize it, goddamn you) has become a welcome mat we can roll out to terrorists, dictators, fascists, welfare moms, pervert artists, and other enemies of the great republic.

I still remember watching it on the TV, knowing it was coming 'cause all the polls pointed to disaster. As usual, I was here in the commune office, conveniently located where I sleep and eat chicken wings. I remember having most of the year off, for whatever reason—I'm only the Office Manager, work stoppages aren't any of my business. All I know is we hadn't been publishing since April or something and a lot of the reporters had taken off for long vacations, which meant I could crank up the Creedence. It was better than hearing the news folks actually covering the elections proselytizing about "wake up calls" and "referendums on the war." It's not a war, idiots, it's an occupation—at least get that part right. A war is when both sides agree they're fighting, and we clearly haven't gotten on board that wagon yet.

Regardless of semantics, forgetting who voted for what and why, we all have to thank the Undecideds. Yeah, they get the capitalization treatment now, too, 'cause they're a group—the same group that keeps fucking things up for everybody. At last the Democrats and the Republicans can find common ground together, a mutual enemy. These la-dee-dahs and their lack of conviction. How could anyone over the age of 10 and under the age of 90 not know what the hell they stand for, and which political group makes the weak promises to give them just that? How could complete morons, who predictably somehow make it out to the polls on election days, not pick one big fat emotional issue and react with gusto on that? Going right into the congressional elections of 2006, just like 2004, 2002, 2000, and every election in-between, before, and to come, these numb-nutted weasels had every reason to believe they knew there was a big military presence in Iraq, there was a major SNAFU with the future of social security, and they either had a good job or no job whatsoever. Did these guys wake up bankrupt, old, concerned with immigration and terrified about the environment on Tuesday morning? You assholes had plenty of time to register with a party or at least warn either party of your voting intentions. But no, you had to leave it to the last minute to make a commitment toward the party you want to let you down for the next 2-6 years.

If we had known, maybe we could have kissed a little more Christian ass before that fatal Tuesday. Promised to make fireproof flags or give an abortion doctor a death penalty or something. Thanks for nothing, losers.

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