It's A Shame About Amy

Look away, all those who would claim to loathe Zooey Deschanel, for her cultural saturation point is nigh. Even now the fates have begun chiseling her porcelain visage onto the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Mount Rushmore (preferably capturing the bewildered look she gave Billy Crudup at the end of Almost Famous), honoring her decade-long career as Twee Personified. Starlet of successful indie flicks and failed blockbusters (Hitchhiker’s Guide is underrated), elegant shiller of cotton, remarkably infuriating Top Chef cameo veteran, and faithful companion to what passes in 2011 for a rock star, she now brings us The New Girl, a ludicrous Fox sitcom that is, at the very least, less wantonly shat upon than Whitney. (Still, though, if you ever have the opportunity to train a pit bull to rip someone’s throat out merely by your uttering a “code word,” do make that code word “adorkable.”) Ah yes, and there’s She & Him, her Instagram-folk outfit with the quietly excellent M. Ward, proud parents of two cheerily frivolous full-length records many people took remarkably seriously, and why not. And now, a Christmas album. Various deluxe editions come packaged with a hat and/or mittens.

If any or all of this enrages you (including her perfectly competent, bizarrely derided delivery of the National Anthem at a World Series game the other day), you oughta find other stuff to get enraged about. (Seriously, no worse than B- for vocal, and, okay, D+ for the dress.) Even if you don’t buy into her It Girl/sex-symbol campaign, let us admit that Zooey’s dainty, bright, appealingly low-swooping voice is Good for an Actress, and that’s only, like, 15% pejorative.

Surprisingly smart thing I read in a Pitchfork review for A Very She & Him Christmas. 

“I always make time to work out. It just…puts my blood in flow and…puts me on the go.”

• Still watching Dirty Soap.