There's a ton of other good reasons for her to have missed it, and it's nobodies business, but is it possible she's contracted to attend press events with Brad? I mean, stars must attend their own press events, clearly, and Brangelina are kind of a package deal, and the press is much better if they both attend, so it…

Why? Because a picture of Angelina at a funeral is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, fucking obviously. Paps don't give a shit about respecting privacy, and even IF they somehow managed to keep it under wraps, she would need to be attended by security, and even IF that weren't true, she would still be the center…

The HS grad thing was a contrast against a masters student. The subtext of my specification that she's a masters student is "this is not some random imbecile with no knowledge of the world." And yes, by high school grad I indeed meant someone who holds a high school diploma.

Yes. I don't really know how to answer that, as it's a statement of mine posed as a question. Yes.

Ha. Well, any masters student probably has a great deal more general knowledge than your average 19 year old high school grad. At least, one should hope.

Crash landing. Emergency landing. Forced landing. I do consider it a crash when you run out of fuel and you have to "land" in the ocean.

What you're basically saying is that it's actually way less of a mystery than I thought it was.

Yes, she might have done lots of things. She might have been on the first moon landing. She might have run for president. Anything is possible if you want to go down this road.

The point is that the majority of her enduring fame (clearly she was world famous during her life) is related to this mystery. That is exactly…

I might. That is not the same as enduring, widespread fame. Nobody is saying she would be nothing without this "mystery," we're saying that she would not be even a fraction as famous as she is. I don't see what is hard to grasp about this.

I think that's only true of men with a fairly modest number. You know, because adding one is completely inconsequential if your number is over, say, 25. Twenty-five and 26 are essentially the same. 3 and 4 are quite different.

My personal formula for calculating my socially acceptable sex partner number (for my sexual…

Yes, very slim chance. Of course her achievements would still stand, she'd be "on the books" and she'd have a neat wikipedia page. Worldwide fame? Hell to the no.

Agreed. Despite my general interest in frivolous historical facts, this seems so inconsequential. She didn't "vanish." She crashed. We do not know if she crashed into the sea or somehow managed to get to an island, where she either died of starvation or by being eaten by coconut crabs or whatever. Her life and…

I cynically find myself thinking that US cosmetics consumers are embracing "ethnic" customers (skin tones) partially because the skin tones of the white girls who buy their products, and who have always been the focus of their marketing and product lines, have gained a lot of, uh, tonal variety in the last decade or…

This phrase and his past (lawsuit and rape allegations) are not related just because he mentioned a piece of lingerie, that's such a tangential association. The OP was questioning what was wrong with that phrasing, so you are the one taking issue with that phrase, but thanks for the "reminder."

Yes, she looks like a pretty lady who's had way too much plastic surgery. And all women who've had too much plastic surgery look much like her, now Portia has joined the ranks.

I'm referring only to his meaning in this phrase you're so hung up on, not anything else. It's really apparent that you're unable to focus on the subject at hand because you have a preformed idea, and you're peculiarly unable to see the sense in what he's saying. I'm not "giving him a pass" because what he's talking…

Here's Portia in January '13. Dead-ringer for Ellen Barkin.

Considering what the St Petersburg subways look like, I have no trouble believing that.

if you need to believe that the fact that he's right about one issue makes him an unimpeachably great guy

You certainly have a talent for inventing wildly illogical meanings of other people's statements.

No, it wouldn't have, and you wouldn't have been able to invent the idea that he's saying slave labor is especially bad when it's used to produce sexy clothes.

At worst, he is a sexually charged person whose mind goes there first. At best, it's just what he happened to use as an example, as something representing a…

"On the eve of trial in one case, the plaintiff confessed that she had not been subjected to sexual harassment and agreed to go to an arbitration hearing aimed at clearing Charney's name. However, the plaintiff failed to show up to the hearing and a ruling was unable to be reached. As a result, the $1.3 million…