liveblogging today’s episode of the view

10:56 a.m. I’m not sure how to prepare for this. Watch the Sex and the City movie? Have sex in a city? Dig out my Lilith Fair souvenir muumuu? (Hang on a minute, I forget: did I buy that in size Cagney or size Lacey?)

11:00 Who are the ladies on this thing again? Let’s see: there’s Whoopi, Sleepy, Grumpy, Elderly and Completely Intolerant of Homosexuals.

11:03 Okay it’s all coming back to me: Elisabeth Hasselbeck is the token conservative. Barbara Walters is the token reanimated dead. And Whoopi is incredibly bloody annoying.

11:06 Joy Behar begins things by saying Barbara Walters has always been “an incredibly skinny bitch.” Walters launches into a story about one time her clothes wouldn’t close and she took some advice from some weight-loss expert and then the food she recommended was good and… is it too late to liveblog the guy on my street who’s going through our recycling looking for bottles?

11:10 The Hot Topics segment of The View is the most popular part of The View. That’s where the ladies discuss things of pressing global importance, such as the environment and how it can’t possibly survive just one more blast of Joy Behar’s hairspray. Today, they’re talking Obama. Obama is great. Also, he is sexy. Sherri Shepherd, who is African-American, says she called home last night to talk to her baby son just to tell him he could grow up to be president. I guess if Clinton had won, she’d have called to tell him he could grow up to be a woman.

11:14 Apparently I missed a big show yesterday. Sherri had been going on about how much she loved Janet Jackson, and how she once camped out overnight to get Janet Jackson concert tickets – and then, boom!, Janet herself showed up to give her two tickets to her upcoming concert in support of Janet’s new album, No One’s Buying Me So I’m Going to Have to Get Janet to Drop By the Freaking View to Drum Up Publicity (may not be actual title).

Word is Shepherd screamed and jumped around in shock, then composed herself long enough to tell Janet: “Aside from Michael, you are my second favorite, girl.” That would be a sentiment shared by many of us – if she’d not used that second comma.

11:20 Remember when Star Jones left and everyone was worried they’d never be able to find anyone quite as stupid to replace her? Sherri Shepherd = problem solved. When not expressing uncertainty over whether the earth is flat (she hedged for a bit before caving to the relentless sphere lobby), Sherri gained fame – or, rather, fame’s retarded cousin, infamy – for insisting on the show that Christianity pre-dated ancient Greece. Apparently it’s all there in the Old Testament – right on the page where it talks about the dinosaurs being Catholic.

Anyway, today she’s dressed in an outfit that belongs before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal – and her contribution consists mostly of staring ahead blankly and, on occasion, trying meekly to interrupt Whoopi but then deciding she’d rather keep her hand.

11:24 Whoopi confesses that she couldn’t watch the Sex and the City movie because they talk about “stuff from behind and all that.” But Sherri says women need to be “cognizant” of men’s sexual desires because they are a “basic need.” Hmm, this Sherri person is growing on me.

11:28 The ladies delve into whether Bill Clinton has or has not been doing Gina Gershon, as per the new Vanity Fair article (consensus: probably not, but maybe). Sherri insists Gina is a woman of “great accomplishment” but declines to elaborate on whether she’s referring to Gina’s performance in Three Way, Showgirls or that one where she got totally naked with Jennifer Tilly.

11:34 I am reliably informed that Joy Behar is the new pitchwoman for Kraft Bagel-fuls. You know how opening a bagel and spreading cream cheese on it can be a frustrating and onerous chore? Me neither. But apparently it is because now there are Kraft Bagel-fuls – a prepackaged bagel and cream cheese rolled into one and available in your grocer’s freezer. Half the taste and four million times the chemicals! (I’m kidding, Kraft Foods: I’m sure the fact that a Bagel-ful looks exactly like a Twinkie has no bearing on its nutritional content.) And think of the benefits: with the seven seconds they save by not having to spread cream cheese themselves, everyone in America is going to study to be an astronaut!

11:38 Today’s first guest is… Denis Leary?! Whaaaa?? Denis Leary on The View! This could be the first time that the vulgar term for the female genitals has been uttered on the set of The View since every single day that Barbara Walters and Rosie O’Donnell walked past each other.

11:40 Explanation: Denis Leary is here with his wife, Ann Leary, to help promote her new novel, Outtakes From a Marriage. Keep an eye out for his upcoming new book, Outtakes From a Marriage That Ended Moments After You Made Me Go On on The Goddamn View.

11:42 Drawn into the debate over men’s “needs,” Denis says that, yes, men need sex — “but we also need sandwiches.” Ugh. Memo to Denis Leary: Do not forget to reclaim your testicles from the ball caddy on your way out of the studio.

11:45 Speaking of Rosie O’Donnell, she performed some standup last night at Radio City Music Hall. Of her time on The View, she said: “It started out as a tea party and wound up like a women’s prison movie.” Geez, and I thought nothing could ruin women’s prison movies for me.

11:51 The ladies welcome Christine Baranski and Mary McCormack, now starring in the Tony-nominated Boeing Boeing, a farce about a playboy engaged to three flight attendants. It is also the only show on Broadway during which Bill Clinton took copious instructional notes.

11:58 By way of conclusion, an urgent note to our elected officials: Having spent an hour watching The View, and the commercials that air during The View, I bring grim news: our women apparently suffer from an astonishing array of medical ailments that require pharmaceutical intervention – from osteoporosis to genital herpes. Especially genital herpes. The genital herpes people just can’t advertise enough. Women also apparently like yogurt and sex jelly. You’re welcome.