ith the Tuesday release of actress Claire Danes' book, My So-Called Sex Life a new wave of attention has been focused on the damage young actor and possible space creature Leonardo DiCaprio is doing to the lives of Hollywood's young actresses. When this reporter spoke recently with Danes, she was in a near-catatonic state.

 "I just want everybody to know that Leo and I didn't DO anything on the set of Romeo and Juliet. We were just in the same movie together. Hell, most of our scenes were filmed separately, it was all camera tricks that made it seem like we were in bed together, I swear! Somebody, please sleep with me!" said Danes, bursting into tears.

This pitiful scene is being repeated all across Tinseltown as young actresses who've shared the screen with DiCaprio find that men now fear to touch them. Some even cross the street to avoid them, sometimes against swift traffic. This reaction seems to be genetically ingrained in the male sex, an unspoken knowledge that something is not quite right with the young actor, and that even the slightest contact with him leaves a woman strictly undateable. This Curse has extended even to girls who sat in the same classroom with DiCaprio in grade school and singer Alanis Morissette, who once stated in an interview that her astrological sign was Leo.

Most women seem to be strangely immune to DiCaprio's nauseating effects. Some even claim to find him attractive, a tendency that baffles psychologists and medical doctors alike.

"It is my professional opinion that DiCaprio exudes toxic pheromones from tiny ducts behind his ears," noted neurologist P. William Clydesdale commented on the phenomenon. "These pheromones act to confuse the female's neurological systems, resulting in a dizzy sense of confusion and impaired reasoning. As to why these pheromones do not effect the males of the species, my educated guess is that the average male's desire to pop DiCaprio's head like a blister results in increased levels of endorphins in the blood stream, which counteracts the pheromones."

An accurate assessment of how many young careers have been ruined by the Curse of DiCaprio cannot be made, since County health officials have been unable to find any male subjects who can name any films other than Titanic in which DiCaprio has appeared.

DiCaprio's co-star in Titanic, actress Kate Winslet, was very direct when asked how the Curse has effected her career: "No talk. Eat now."

There is a bright hope on the horizon, however. Recent reports have indicated that actress Chloe Svengali is the first documented female to be immune to DiCaprio's insidious pheromones. She has vowed publicly to track down all actresses in upcoming DiCaprio projects, in an effort to warn them before they make any terrible mistakes.

ASA scientists met with a crack team of cultural anthropologists in New York today to discuss the trend of 1980's revivalism, a fad now determined to be a serious threat to the survival of the human race if not brought under control within the next seven years.

"I'd say we've got five years, seven at the outside, before we devolve into marrow-eating cave people once again. Should this trend continue unchecked at it's current rate, the human race is whipped, and whipped good," commented Daniel Furgelman, cultural director for the Smithsonian Institute.

"And if I hear 'Come On Eileen' one more time, I'm going to fucking puke," added Furgelman.

Spin Magazine columnist Kirk Jaded explains the phenomenon:

"It started, of course, with the 80's themselves. The culture of the day was not a threat at the time since it was confined safely to the actual decade of the 1980's. Only later, in the mid-90's, with the advent of Rhino Records' "Awesome 80's" CD collection, did the cultural zeitgeist begin to pull a massive U-turn and head back to it's unfortunate past. Cover versions of 80's standards by irresponsible alternative groups like Save Ferris, Marilyn Manson, Hole and Reel Big Fish only compounded the problem, fooling an entire generation of young music fans into thinking that the 80's were actually, as the youth are fond of saying, 'cool'. This has sounded a death knoll for one of the greatest civilizations ever to walk the face of the earth."

Today's meeting of the CFGOI (The Committee to Fucking Get On With It) was to act as a think-tank to develop means of turning around the current trend. Demonstrators picketed in front of the Committee's headquarters, most of whom admitted to being VH1 stockholders. Documented proposals included Public Service Announcements from prominent 80's figures like Kirk Cameron and Howard Jones to warn kids of the dangers of thinking the 80's were cool, the silencing of Mexican radio and constant airings of the television programs "Mama's Family" and "Small Wonder" in America's classrooms.

"Education is the key," stated Manley Farber, the committee's loudmouth. "If we bring enough kids into actual contact with Boy George, we may just have this thing licked."

Hey, Shorty, get me a glass o' buttermilk, will ya? Ah, thanks… nothin' like a nice cold glass o' buttermilk, no sir. Hey, I ever tell you the one about the milkman's boy? No? Well, listen up a spell…

You remember that ol' boy Floyd that used to deliver the milk, don't you? Long time ago. Guy was always pissed off at everybody, couldn't nobody talk to him for very long or he'd go off on 'em? You remember. Anyway, it turns out that ol' Cecil , who brings the milk now, is his son. I know, he's Moira's boy, rest her soul, and no, it didn't happen the natural way. Ol' Floyd was too mean and lowdown to ever spend enough time with a woman for that. And crazy Moira… well, you know I don't like to speak unkind of the dead. But anyway, here's what happened…

See, Floyd, he was always pissed off about something, like I said. And for a long time he held a grudge against Moira and her sister Penelope. Somethin' about 'em not givin' him a Christmas tip or some damn thing, I don't know. The thing was, he was in a position to do somethin' about his grudges if he wanted, and I guess he did, too. What I heard was that he used to take a bottle o' milk and get in the back o' the truck and whack himself, then he'd stick it in the bottle and get his duck butter all in there with the milk. He called it a "protein shake," and if you was on his shit list, pardon my French, you had to watch out that he didn't deliver you a protein shake with your regular order.

Well, I guess he had been givin' them ol' girls Moira and Penelope some o' them protein shakes for quite a while. And the way Penelope tells it, Moira didn't always use the milk to pour on her corn flakes. She said that if Moira coulda afforded it, she woulda bought enough milk to take a milk bath every morning. Now you know, them ol' girls wasn't rich, so Moira never did get enough milk at one time for that. Instead, she used to take one bottle each morning and wash her lady parts with it. Dutchy, I think they call it. So anyhow, turns out that she uses one or two o' them protein shakes and dutchies herself with 'em, and bingo, whaddaya think? Couple months go by and she realizes she's fragrant.

I'm tellin' ya, Shorty, no one in town could believe it, and not just because Moira and Penelope were about as ugly as monkfish left out to dry for a week. Thing was, they never had no truck with the men in this town, none of 'em. And they didn't have no truck with no men from no other towns, neither, far as anyone knew. They was suspected of being lebanese, to be perfectly honest.

That ol' Moira, though, she didn't try to hide it or nothin'. She said it was a sign from God, a whaddaya call it, one o' them unmasculate deceptions. She walked around town like she was givin' a watermelon a ride, just as proud as could be. Then when ol' Cecil gets born and grows up, whaddaya know, he's the spittin' image o' Floyd. Damnedest thing I ever heard, but it's one hunnert percent true. Ask anybody.

'Course now, Cecil, he's a little easier to deal with than ol' Floyd was, but that don't mean he don't got a temper. You just gotta stay on his good side, that's all.

Hey Shorty, you ever notice how chunky buttermilk gets sometimes?

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