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doggie chew toy you have to bribe your toddler with Mr. Softee
to keep from putting in his mouth. Obnoxious and disliked, you know that, sir. Going
to be America’s first post-racial sweetheart (besides Michelle Obama, that is)
if it kills you and me and every other person in North America who has ever so
much as uttered the words “Laura Benanti.” A dried out little shred of fruit cocktail.
That little puddle of soap scum that somehow always collects around the rim of
the fancy decorative dispenser you started put the dish detergent in because
that’s how far you’ve come and you don’t live like the girls in Girls anymore
but it gets your hands sticky every time you touch it and how can soap
make you feel dirty . One of those grocery store
peaches that looks like a Cezanne but tastes like the inside of a mattress. A
stupid, stupid, curdled little Dannon yogurt person. The least attentive waitress
at Café Orlin. A wan little Lego person. Depressive Pixie Dream Girl. Damp Scrabble
rack of only I and U’s. Crumpled little Duane Reade receipt you stuck your
gum in and then forgot you stuffed back into your purse until it was too late. Not the reincarnation
of Estelle Getty. The anthropomorphized cluster of hair follicles and
air-conditioning condensation. Narcoleptic. Jimmy’s own flaccid penis wearing
an ombré wig. A passive little fruit sticker. Sad little clump of acrylic yarn
that someone has put a statement blouse on. Sad
little half empty bag of dried
out baby carrots that are technically still edible and there’s no other food in
the fridge. An unfinished airline magazine crossword puzzle who is unconvincingly
successfully masquerading as a human being. The semi-animate embodiment of a plastic container of fruit salad from
which someone has already picked out all the grapes and pineapple, leaving only
a few sodden cubes of honeydew melon. A crumpled Duane Reade bag that somehow got stuck to
her shoe in Times Square, and who NBC is now building a Cagney and Lacey-style
procedural around in a not at all doomed attempt to re-brand Katharine McPhee
as a butt-kicking Michelle Monaghan-type action star, but don’t worry, McPhans,
she’ll still sing. A limp sheet of already-popped bubble wrap that
scientists at the University of Indiana have managed to fit with a partially
working artificial larynx. Your American Idol.
    There. I think that’s all of them. If I’m missing any
that you can name, you can email me through my website to let me know, and
also, we can make arrangements for you to return the empty lipstick tubes and
used tampon applicators you stole out of my trash as “souvenirs.”
    I know this wasn’t nice, and subsequently, I took a lot of
shit — or should I say, McPheces — from the McPhans, a loosely organized
McPhederation of deeply devoted McPhollowers, who use a variety of
quasi-McPhacist tactics to intimidate all those who dare to write something
less than McPhlattering about their McPhantasy woman. (And I wasn’t the only
one. As my colleague Kate Aurthur, a reporter at BuzzFeed who has covered the Smash beat, tweeted after one of her stories ran: “I’m trying to think if there’s
a funnier thing that happened to me in 2013 than being called a bitch by
members of KatharineMcPhee.org.” Dot. Org .)
    The messages I received from the McPhans — and even some
not-so-Phans — seemed mainly to come to the consensus that my primary
motivation for harping on various McPhlaws was (and, I suppose, is) jealousy.
Reader, they aren’t totally wrong. I’m jealous of Katherine McPhee in the way
I’m jealous of anyone who has more money than me, which is to say, almost
everyone (unless they live in Bangladesh or went to graduate school for poetry
or something). I’m not the kind of person who needs a Gulfstream, or even a
really fancy handbag (although I’m currently accepting donations if you’ve got
one going spare), but it would be nice to like, be able to get my roots done
and rent a