Lindsay Lohan sues E*TRADE over commercial

Lindsay Lohan is suing online stock trading company E*TRADE to the tune of a hundred million because of a commercial spot about (what else?) babies who are diversifying their portfolios, cheating on their baby girlfriends, and dealing with milkaholism. Trouble.

Kristen Stewart gets super awkward at the Oscars

I watched the Academy Awards last night with my grandparents and their friends, and a large part of the conversation was nostalgic: the spotlight was on aged and aging stars, and the young 'talent' in line to replace them seemed, well, lacking.

I know Kristen Stewart's only nineteen, and I'm sure she's a lovely girl. But I was surprised to find a dearth of snarky blogs or mentions at all today in regards to her stage presence, which I found frankly appalling. When she took the stage with Twilight co-star Taylor Lautner to introduce a montage of horror films (it's unclear to me what, if anything, the Twilight franchise has to do with classics like Psycho and Frankenstein), I thought she looked less like a confident, spotlight-ready star than an awkward kid forced to give a class presentation.

Stood up by 'Jersey Shore' star The Situation

Last Thursday, our own Niall O'Dowd gave me a very serious journalistic assignment. He'd heard that the Jersey Shore's reigning king, "The Situation," was making his first New York appearance at McFadden's, and Niall wanted me to go and cover the story. "No, seriously," he said, "You write very well about lowbrow culture."

Gee, thanks, Niall.

Coinín bán: rabbit rabbit white rabbit

When I was small, I remember having sleepovers at my best friend Sophie's house on New Year's Eve and sometimes on the last nights of other months. I remember being woken up with her mother saying "rabbit rabbit," which, if you said it first before opening your mouth to say anything else on the first day of each new month, would bring you good luck for the next thirty days. It's one of the superstitions I've carried into adulthood, one of the rituals that I enjoy keeping.

For those of us raised in secular households, these rituals can sometimes feel few and far between. The religious basis of my youth was mysterious and scattered. While my father was raised in a large Italian Catholic family and later converted to Christianity, he kept his faith mostly to himself, while my mother took me sometimes to Unitarian church but stressed the feeling of community more than the belief in anything in particular. I went to a Quaker elementary school but didn't feel spiritually touched by the difficulty of keeping silent during Meeting for Worship. When we visited my grandparents in New York, I was overwhelmed by the majesty of 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church, but the context of the sermons often escaped me. I was raised by my mother to understand how religion can be misused to hurt and oppress people, including, largely, women, but I also saw how my father was deeply comforted by it. I spent a long time ignoring this complex and haphazard personal history, but as I get older I feel drawn back into it, wanting to make sense of what I believe and why.

Conor McPherson's The Eclipse eclipses IFTAs

I was thrilled to learn that Conor McPherson's new film The Eclipse swept the Irish Film and Television Awards on Saturday, snagging awards for Best Film, Best Film Script, and Best Supporting Actor for Aiden Quinn.

I saw the film Monday night at a press screening and was excited, I'll admit largely because The Eclipse stars the unpronounceable Iben Hjejle, best known in America for her star turn opposite John Cusack in High Fidelity (easily one of my top five favorite movies). In The Eclipse, which is set at a literary festival in Cobh -- the gorgeous and eerie scenery holds a supporting role all on its own -- Hjejle plays a novelist caught between the competing desires of Nicholas (Aiden Quinn), an absolute asshole American writer/drunk (Quinn is fantastic in this, alternately hilarious, tragic and complexly, awfully intense, and the award is well-deserved) and Michael (Ciaran Hinds), a widower who serves as a volunteer at the festival and thus is a much ignored silent witness to the egomaniacal and neurotic writers' personalities.

At size 4, supermodel Coco Rocha says she's out of luck

Irish Canadian supermodel Coco Rocha, who I interviewed for Irish America's June/July 2009 cover story, claims that she's not getting work because she's (gasp) a SIZE FOUR. Although she's appeared for Zac Posen and Diane von Furstenburg this fashion week, Rocha says she's not in demand anymore. The New York Times quoted her as saying, "Girls are told they're not skinny enough, or they hear, 'She's old, she's boring, we've had her, she's not tiny anymore... A lot of people don't take into account the vulnerability of these young girls.

"Everybody knows that, in general, a basketball player needs to be tall and a fashion model needs to be skinny, but how skinny is too skinny?"

Coco has spoken out before about the problematic expectations of the fashion industry (in which the sample size industry standard is a size zero). When I interviewed her last July, she said, "When you start off you have to have a certain body type. I mean, that’s why we get [recruited] so young. Your body hasn’t even gotten to that peak yet. So when you start aging and your body is changing, people want it to stop, they don’t want that happening. … You can’t please everyone. If Client A and Client B want two different girls, are you somehow going to get both of them? No. If you don’t want me today, someone will want me tomorrow.”

Let's cut Robert Pattinson a break (interviews, context clues and good journalism)

Okay, Irish Central readers. You seem to have this thing about Robert Pattinson. It's a love/hate relationship. Not that I can blame you: our website seems to have a thing about him too. A fixation, if you will. A preoccupation. A sort of mesmerized cult following.

At the ripe old age of 22, I'm not exactly the kid's target audience, but I am generally fascinated by how differently some hot young things react to their newfound celebrity, and find myself torn between opposing stances of You Get What You Ask For (stars innately have signed away all rights to a normal and private adolescence) and They Become What We Make Them (American media's obsession with celebrity culture and constant salivating over the rise and continuing freefall feeds into self-destructive behaviors).

Irish Americans Spillane and Kearney win Olympic medals

The 2010 Winter Olympics have already become a source of pride for Irish Americans, with two of our own snagging medals in cold-weather events.

The Good Guy: snark and sappiness abound in the new Alexis Bledel film

This Tuesday night a friend and I went to see a press screening of The Good Guy, a sort-of romantic sort-of comedy written and directed by Julio dePietro, coming out in theatres February 19. Starring Alexis Bledel, Scott Porter and Bryan Greenberg, it's the none-too-original story of Beth, a twenty-something girl in Manhattan trying to figure out who to date, with an adorably bro-y She's All That-style subplot about clueless dudes teaching a more clueless dude how to succeed with women and on Wall Street.

Brittany Murphy mystery part two: visit from the coroner's office

First off, I should say I have mixed feelings about the media circus that the circumstances surrounding Brittany Murphy's death continue to drag out (although, of course, compared to Michael or even Heath, it's more like a media small-town-summer-carnival-with-maybe-one-sketchy-looking-ride). I am obviously a diehard Clueless fan, but even aside from that, I think she had some pretty incredible performances in some really fantastic movies (anything co-starring Ashton Kutcher notwithstanding), and always seemed like a likeable, sweet Irish-Italian girl who came from genuinely tough circumstances to make it big.

Mystery continues with cancellation of Brittany Murphy memorial

Mysterious circumstances continue in events surrounding the untimely death of actress Brittany Murphy. Her widower, Simon Monjack, had planned an enormous launch party for tomorrow night to kick off the new Brittany Murphy Foundation, which he is creating to fundraise towards the cause of arts education for children.

One step back for gay visibility, one step forward for Carrey and McGregor

I think we took a significant step backward this week when CBS decided to reject the proposed Super Bowl ad from the gay dating site ManCrunch, which depicted two dudes watching football who start making out after their hands brush in the chip bowl.

Despite the complete normalization of TV spots for straight dating sites (even those which blatantly exclude bisexual or homosexual users) and the long tradition of sexually explicit Super Bowl commercials for beer and other consumer goods (not to even mention the ever-present cheerdancers at football games), CBS released a statement saying that their "Standards and Practices department decided not to accept this particular spot." ManCrunch is calling CBS out on discriminatory practices.

On the upside, Irish-American actor Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor (who's Scottish) shared a pretty romantic moment yesterday in Paris, where they were named knights in France's National Order of Arts and Letters.

'Extraordinary Measures': My visit to the Crowley home

I was lucky enough to write the cover story for our February/March 2010 issue of Irish America magazine, which meant interviewing Brendan Fraser, the star of "Extraordinary Measures," as well as John and Aileen Crowley, upon whose real life the film is based.

I saw "Extraordinary Measures," also starring Harrison Ford and Keri Russell, at a screening on December 17. I didn't have much of an idea of what to expect: the thing about a press screening is that you have the opportunity to see the film before reading reviews, without seeing the trailers or magazine ads or subway posters that have since sprung up everywhere.

I did know that the screenplay was based on the story of John Crowley, one of Irish America's Business 100 honorees, and his family. When two of John's children were diagnosed with Pompe disease, John and his wife Aileen risked everything to take up the cause, raising money for research and founding a start-up that eventually joined up with a larger pharmaceutical corporation, which developed a treatment for Pompe that John credits with having saved his children's lives.

Green at the Golden Globes

The 67th annual Golden Globe Awards aired this past Sunday, with the big winners of the night James Cameron's Avatar (which I still haven't seen, but at this point, how could it not be overrated?), the quirky not-so-cult TV hit, Fox's Glee, and a handful of umbrella designers. Refusing to let the rain dampen their spirits, the stars were out gloating, graciously accepting and, for some, hiding disappointment on the red carpet and at awards parties afterwards. And a solid handful of those stars were Irish.

Glee, winner of the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy TV series, owes its creation to Irish Catholic-born Ryan Murphy, who acquired at least part of his knowledge of the school music circuit to choir practice as a Catholic school kid from first through eighth grade. Another of the three creators, Ian Brennan, is also Irish-American. Jane Lynch scored a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her performance as the glee club's arch-nemesis in the show.

Irish celebrities in the nude--I mean, news.

For Irish scandals, Mark McGwire beats Iris Robinson any day!

I should preface this by saying that it's very recently I've brought myself to care at all about the grand world of sports. The great American pastime was ruined for me as a small child growing up in New Jersey, when I went to a Phillies game with my dad and spent the whole time trying to catch fly balls (I didn't much see the point of attending any event that you couldn't go home with a souvenir). When one finally, miraculously, landed between my row and the row behind us, the surrounding audience of middle-aged, beer-bellied men decided that the prized baseball ought to be given to the boy sitting behind me: talk about early memories of developing feminism. Baseball, I decided then and there, was a dirty, unfair game. I pouted and ignored sports altogether for approximately the next thirteen years.

All this changed when I turned 21, graduated college, moved into Manhattan and discovered the wide world of bars and the cable TVs that play nonstop in them. I attended my second baseball game in October and was amazed to find that it combined things I love wholeheartedly (Big-screen televisions! The outdoors! Roller-coaster heights! Beer and hot dogs!) into an undeniably fun experience. I was hooked. I followed the baseball season with bated breath right up until the heartbreaking World Series loss of my beloved Phillies to the despicably over-funded Yankees (sorry, New York)-- and luckily, the football season and cutthroat competitive spirit of the office football pool were there to comfort me.

The reason I watch this show: Neil Patrick Harris

Last night marked the 100th episode of the hit sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and for me this meant one thing and one thing only.

Neil Patrick Harris.

Sure, episode 100 of the series, now in its fifth season, might contain an exciting guest appearance from OC alum Rachel Bilson (possibly, maybe, perhaps, but probably not The Mother herself). Okay, Marshall (Jason Segal) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan)'s successful long-term relationship with its minor conflicts (episode 94: Marshall learns why it's important to put your dishes immediately in the sink!) is adorable. I guess some of the show's audience must be dying to find out if Robin (Cobie Smulders) ever breaks out of her wee-hours public-access morning news show and into real journalism. And oh, there's that main character guy (Josh Radnor as Ted Mosby) that nobody seems to like all that much--even his kids in the opening scenes seem pretty disinterested in finding out who their mother is.