A Celebration of Fine Trash TV

Will Loretta Lynn Sing at the Royal Wedding?

2011-04-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

The first Royal Wedding I can recall watching on TV was Princess Margaret's, in 1960.

My very first ever gay husband and partner in insufferable precocity and I took one look at the freshly coiffed and titled Lord Snowdon and smiled delightedly at each other, wriggling with pleasure at the acuity of our budding and insufferably precocious babyGayDar.

Hours passed, and still we sat there, held in the enchanted thrall of the snowy image on the little black and white TV, thrilling to the Voice of All Events of Great Import, Winston Burdett.

We knew The Story. We knew that Margaret's Real True Love had been Group Captain Peter Townsend, but she couldn't get married unless her sister The Queen said she could, and her sister The Queen couldn't because Peter was divorced, and, and and...

(Walter Cronkite, in those days, was the Voice of Things that Happened, but to voiceover anything involving crowned heads, popes, or requiring frequent repetition of the word "catafalque," it was Winston who slapped on the oversized headphones and went to work).

I'm going to fast forward past a handful of also-rans in the Royal Wedding Pageant, the matches of various non-Windsors and a few minor Windsors and Windsor-adjacents, not only because my fingers would get really tired (as would your eyes if you even tried to read it all), and not only because the Windsor ones are likely to be more familiar to most of you, but because let's face it, the British royal family gives awesomer wedding than anybody.

So fast forward to 1973. Alas, Prinnie Royal Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise's wedding to future ex-husband Captain Mark Phillips was something of a disappointment. Anne's dress is best described as "quintessential WindsorWear," and PrinnieRoy being deep in the throes of her "dispense with all that" mode, the whole thing ended up being pretty blah. Mark even turned down a title. That was all the Story there was to be gotten out of that one.

All remained quiet on the Windsor wedding front until 1981, when the firm beat its own personal best several times over and set the bar not only for weddings, but any and every kind of royal/papal/catafaulque-havin' occasion you can think of.

Prince Charles, having been commanded by his true and undisputed Queen, and her own true and undisputed lovable old bigot of a mother (who held in equal disdain anybody who was not directly descended from Queen Victoria, herself, or both) to obtain forthwith the services of a uterus, finally put on the itchiest of all his royal uniform jackets and on July 29, dutifully married the hapless 19-year old docent of a functioning female reproductive system indicated by the Queens Elizabeth.

The pedigree of Doctor-Certified Virgo Intacta Lady Diana Spencer was, it was archly murmured in certain circles, at least marginally, and possibly even somewhat, more authentically royal than the rather fanciful lineage of the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg- Glucksberg-Saxe-Coburg Gothas, at least relatively, with some even going so far as to suggest that the Spencers' hereditary titleage might be just a little more hereditary and a little less, um arbitrarily decreed.

Diana also got points for being at least a distant enough cousin from one side of the blanket or another, to effect some needed expansion in the Royal Gene Pool, which had, over the years, become just a smoosh limited, and as a result, had produced, um, Prince Charles.

From the minute that big ol' wrinkly dress, with its big ol' wrinkly 25-foot train was de-clowncar'd from the Crystal Carriage and wrestled to the ground by poor little India Hicks, it was on like Donkey Kong!

Every female viewer from the age of two to a hundred and two, whether she admitted it or not, even to herself, wanted to be that blonde girl, who, like Scarlett O'Hara, was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm, as were women who saw her on that day. In that dress.

Of course we all realize now, with the clarity of hindsight, that it was just a particularly adjective-rich chapter in a very sad and sorry tale, made all the sadder by its utter lack of uniqueness.

While the pomp and spectacle and glitter have yet to be even seriously challenged, much less duplicated, by even Vanisha and Amit, the exact same Story was told, over and over, day after day, all over the world, as it has been since the beginning of time, albeit usually sans crowns.

The creative license whimsy of some biographers notwithstanding, there are really no parallels between The Story's Charmilla and Abdication subplots.

It's safe to say that 9 out of 10 historians surveyed agree that David, known popularly as the Duke of Windsor, and briefly as Edward VIII, is typically painted as something of a wuss.

Yet he was able to overcome his wussiness enough to ball up, call the bluff of an entire government, a centuries-old religious institution, and a full battalion of medal-encrusted, lorgnette-wieldin', crown-wearin' old farts and fartesses, and renouncing the very throne upon which he sat, take to the airwaves and proclaim himself liege man of life and limb to his heart's Queen, a sort of proto-Real Housewife from Baltimore named Wallis Simpson.

While the Act of Settlement of 1701 may ostensibly have been all about preventing the unthinkable possibility that a papist buttock might descend upon the British throne, that wasn't the only agenda. The gene pool thing had already become something of a concern, and while ActoSet closed some sectarian doors, it discreetly opened some very generously-sized windows.

It was, therefore, not Mrs Simpson's US citizenship, nor even her lack of a royal title, that constituted the actual constitutional impediment to England's acquisition of a Queen Wallis, but the fact that she was a divorcee, and in 1936, the Church of England had a zero-tolerance policy on divorce.

Because the sovereign is the titular head of the Church of England, a divorced person couldn't be "received at Court," meaning they couldn't even receive an invitation to the Royal Party Barn, so the question of an heir to, or occupant of, the throne marrying one was a non-starter.

Between 1936 and 1970, when Charles met and fell in love with Camilla Shand, several things had changed, including things like Prime Ministers, Archbishops of Canterbury, and the Church of England's official position on divorces and people who got them.

Even if they hadn't, Camilla, though her virgo intacta boat had probably been sailed for a minute, had neither married nor divorced anyone, Charles was not King, and there was nothing to say he couldn't be if he didn't dump his boo.

In fact, the only people who objected to Camilla were a handful of fusty old relatives with a penchant for brightly colored coat-dresses, but Charles lacked the testicular fortitude to stand up to this (literally) toothless opposition and marry the woman he loved.

Anyone who is inclined to read the Duke of Windsor for trash will not suffer from scarcity of material. He was a bigoted asshat, and those who strive to defend him from accusations of being a Nazi sympathizer are invariably reduced to arguing that he was too stupid to comprehend that Hitler was a way worse bigot.

In the area of girlfriend-related absence of balls, however, which Prince of Wales wears the wuss crown is a matter of public record.

Oh, but we were not talking about all that. We were talking about the Mother of All Royal Weddings, and the vision, forever engraved in our collective consumer consciousness, that was Diana.

What neither we nor she knew was that while gloriously arrayed as The Ultimate Princess Bride, she was, in fact, a Traditional Sacrificial Virgin. That was the secret part of The Story. At least for a while.

Her secret was that like the Shameful Saga itself, she wasn't a bit unique. Her appeal lay, not in the glamorous gowns, or the glittering jewels she wore, nor the pageantry that became the backdrop of her life, but in her accessibility.

The covert marketing operatives who do these things had them some skillz. They knew, as most of us know now, that identifiable and accessible will trump pure aspirational every time. Adam DiVello, when casting for Laguna Beach, did not cast his net for the most beautiful girl in the local high school. Being a Royal Family consultant-grade marketing genius, he chose Lauren Conrad, and the rest is history.

The cheeks of sweet young blonde girls do turn a very pretty shade of pink when they blush, they do have an endearing way of ducking their heads and lowering their lashes and casting shy, sidelong glances. Thus, Diana was first and foremost, familiar.

Every person who ever saw her, in person or on TV, had seen all those things before, in a neighbor, daughter, a niece, a classmate, a girlfriend. There was not one single high school or college, attended by three or more young blonde girls, that could not boast at least one "Diana lookalike."

Hair salons turned out dozens of them daily. Like LC, Shy Di became aspirational because she was ordinary.

All that changed when she grew up - into a woman who was most extra-ordinary, who turned the trite old narrative into whose pages she was so unceremoniously plopped, into an epic that though chilling and tragic, was unique, because it was her very own, and because she, too, and in her very own way, was a marketing genius.

Diana's wedding was so over-the-top and iconic that it was all we were thinking about when Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson. Who among us can honestly say that we remember that dress, hmm? Yeah, that's what I thought. Footnote to The Story. Maybe a sidebar for the first 50 years or so.

Though Prince Edward's marriage to Sophie Rhys-Jones earned itself a place alongside Prinnie Anne's in the Royal Wedding Hall of Boring Shame, Ed might have had the right idea - why even try to compete? It's not his Story.

In 2005, eight years after the accidental assassination of the sweet blonde girl who grew up to present a very real threat to some very profitable industries, Charles' handlers and management bent over backwards to avoid occasion for any comparison to his first wedding, an impossible task, though it turned out being way more about contrast than compare.

At his first wedding, a billion hearts chorused awe and adulation. At his second, a billion shoulders shrugged an overwhelming chorus of indifference.

The only thing that kept it from the Boring Shame Hall was The Story.

At last, thirty-five years after he should have done it, Charles stood at the altar and pledged his troth to the woman who had inexplicably hung onto it through heartbreak, marriage, bearing and rearing of another daddy's babies, and divorce.

Few romantics were hopeless enough to be moved.

Many young people grumbled that they didn't see much sense in people bothering to get married when they were that old, and a hefty chunk of old people gruffly replied that in this particular case, they didn't see much sense in it either.

It smelled an awful lot like a sort of minor contingency afterthought.

Should the Queen prove to have inherited her life expectancy gene from her father instead of her mother (who died in 2002 at age 206 or thereabouts), and precipitously die without warning or enough advance notice to allow for even a fast-track abdication, the country would then be left in the awkward position of having to choose between a reigning sovereign openly cohabitating with a mistress - in the era of TMZ and telephoto lenses, or a Royal Wedding starring a reigning sovereign and a divorcee with whom he had been openly cohabitating.

Having officially established, some time ago, an unofficial Royal Family position of mild embarrassment on subjects like Edward VII and Mrs Keppel, no one wanted to be the one to decree that one would be preferable. Or not.

A pretty subtle distinction, to be sure, but in a culture where subtle distinctions are both obsession and art form, as Tony Soprano would say, "Whatcha gonna do?"

So a deal was cut, and an Archbishop appeased. One wedding today in return for an agreement of no crowning anybody Queen in case Something Terrible, all deities forbid, were to happen tomorrow.

If such rumors are fact, it's overkill seldom seen outside the Pentagon marketing office, a caution whose abundance is rivaled only by restaurant waste.

It's been extremely unlikely for a while now that Charles will ever be King.

As the Queen stands poised to sail into her 85th summer, in apparently excellent health, this would seem to indicate that she will, in fact have inherited her mother's longevity, and that the chances are good that she will continue to reign over us for at least another 15 years or so.

Charles is already in his sixties, but this alone would hardly be an impediment to his making what is, after all, a lifetime covenant, at least in doctrinal terms.

The real issue is that Charles hasn't been very popular since he - well, practically since he hit puberty. As soon as he became a teenager, it became apparent that he is blessed with neither the telegenic charisma of his son, nor the iconic stateliness of his mother.

Any inclusion of a young Prince Charles in lists of Cute Boys compiled by teen magazines in the 1960s was done, if at all, out of pure courtesy or as an afterthought, and most frequently both. A courteous afterhought.

If you were Adam DiVello, holding an open casting call for a love interest for Lauren Conrad, and a young Prince Charles walked in, unless you knew he was Prince Charles and you were open to a whole new direction for The Hills, you'd be yelling "NEXT" before he dropped his headshot on the folding table.

He is neither handsome nor charming, neither an inspiring speaker nor possessed of quick wit. He's solidly and stolidly unappealing and dull.

Yet such is the strength of loyalty and love of the monarchical tradition among the vast majority of the British public, that all that might have been forgiven - even today, in the information age, where "reading well" on TV can trump a multitude of sins and failure to do is the only unforgivable one.

Sheer respect for the institution and the history it represents might have been enough to make Charles not only an acceptable and accepted monarch, but a popular one.

As was the case with his grandfather, George VI, his very bumbling imperfection might have endeared him to his subjects, much in the same way as Diana's blushing EveryGirl endeared her to the world even before she had sat through her first class in "media relations."

And back we come to The Story. We have no way of knowing whether Charles ever wanted to be King. All we know is that he probably won't be, because The Story will have rendered the idea infeasible.

The only reason England has a monarchy today is because enough of the British public is pleased enough with having a monarchy - and pleased enough with the monarch - to keep on paying for it.

Unlike warlords and captains of industry who operate above such petty considerations as public opinion, the British royal family, like celebrities everywhere, owes everything to it.

Diana attained a level of public popularity unprecedented, not only in living memory, but in the history of media. Even years after her death, she's in a category all by herself.

As a character in The Story, she's the innocent Princess victim. And Charles is the villain, the Evil Prince, who deceived her, shamed her, defiled her, and doomed her.

He's the anti-monarchist's Dream King.

It may have withstood nearly a thousand years of wars, and plague, murder and famine and intrigue and warming pan babies and Oliver Cromwell, but it was Diana to whom the head that wears the crown was obliged to bow that day in August, when newspapers blared, in Second Coming Type "SPEAK TO US, MA'AM!"

Her Majesty may have thrown up a little bit in the Royal Mouth, but she did it. She did it because it was her duty. She did it because, according to her deepest beliefs, the monarchy is a sacred trust that must be preserved. So she went out there and she preserved it. But she wasn't preserving it for Charles.

She will have realized long ago that if the crown ever sits on her son's head at all, it will rest there only for the time it takes to draw up the papers to get it onto the butter-yellow and oft-over-gel'd locks of Diana's son, Diana's heir. That's what she bowed to.

And That's The Story of this Royal Wedding.

It's got nothing to do with all that gushing and simpering about Kate Middleton having an ancestor that worked in a coal mine, entertaining though that is to watch. (Yes, I'm easily amused, and I own it. Embrace it, even).

They've stopped short, but only barely, of hauling Loretta out of retirement and flying her over to sing "Coal Miner's Daughter" from the choir stall in Westminster Abbey.

(We probably should shut up about that now and not give them ideas).

The Story of the young couple themselves would put a meth head to sleep. Boy meets girl in college. Boy dates girl. Boy takes break from girl. Boy gets back together with girl and proposes.

I mean, whoa. Stuff like that just never happens.

Kate Middleton, whose striking and most intriguing resemblance to Lauren Conrad may be pure coincidence and entirely unrelated to marketing, seems like a very nice woman.

At 28, she's hardly a blushing young ingenue, and having lived with William for at least some of the eight years they've known each other - and they've known each other in the regular people sense - none of this stuff about random Moments of Destiny in some field some place.

I give her props for wasting very little time in going on public record to squash the crap about keeping a poster of Wills on her bedroom wall before she'd ever met him, or since she was 12, or any of the various Faux Stories that have been preceding Royal Weddings ever since the one about little Princess Lilibet gazing out at her little boat-rowing cousin Prince Philip-of-Greece-but-only-because-Greece-had-recently-borrowed-their-royal-family-from-Denmark.

What Kate will do with her cultural bully pulpit remains to be seen. She's not obligated, frankly, to do anything with it.

There would be no shame in her simply living what she will have now instead of a life producing the requisite quantity of issue, doing her share of the ribbon-cutting and charity event appearing, and trucking along like that until it's time for her to be fitted for her Mother of The Whatever gown for her kids' Royal Weddings, and those of her grandkids' after that.

Those who expect her to "follow in the footsteps" or "carry the flag" of Diana don't realize what they're saying, and will be horrified if they ever do, so let's hope they don't. Nor could Kate ever do such a thing, even if she were "troubled" enough to aspire to it, which I certainly hope she isn't.

In this Royal Wedding, the Story isn't about Kate. She's just the bride.

The Story of this Royal Wedding, like the Story of the monarchy itself, is the same as it was in 1981.

Diana's son, who will be the next King, is getting married. And The Story goes on...

Sister Wives: Real Plural Housewives of Somewhere in Utah

2010-09-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

The exciting race to be the first network to hit the airwaves with a reality show about polygamy is over, and TLC won!

Patriarch Kody Brown describes the family's faith tradition affiliation as "Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints," but don't expect Warren Jeffs Little House on the Prairie dresses or 19th century pompadour and braid hairstyles.

The family wears modest, mostly unremarkable "modern" clothing, though they sometimes put their own "twist" on it (In some scenes, Christine rocks a fuchsia spaghetti strap top over a long black sleeved crewneck) and when they're not discussing religion or polygamy, have more or less normal speech patterns and vocabulary.

Number One Wife Meri has one daughter, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Number Three Wife Chirstine.

Meri has received the Gift of pain-free baby tooth extraction.

Twice in the first segment of the show, Meri tells us that having someone ready to step up and raise your kids in case you die is is "definitely a plus to this lifestyle."

Um, Meri, next time you're on line, try googling "godparents." Those stultifyingly monogamous Catholics have had the contingency parent thing in place for a while.

Janelle, Wife 2, works outside the home. 6 kids. Only wife who wasn't raised in a polygamous home.

Christine, Wife 3, has 5 kids, and pregnant with what we may assume is another one. (Though don't try to tell me that the TLC execs are not praying for quintuplets, at least)

She always knew she'd be a plural wife. As a teen, she turned down single men who "asked my dad about me" because she "just didn't want them."

"I honestly wanted sister wives more than a husband for a good time in my life," she says.

She specifically wanted to be a third wife, because it "sounded the easiest." She didn't want to be a first wife, because she "didn't want to be married to a guy by myself," and she didn't want to be a second wife, because she "felt like (2nd wives) were a little wedge in the relationship."

She informs us that it is said that if there are problems with a 2 wife family, the conventional wisdom is that the solution is to obtain a third, to "even things out."

The kids were home-schooled until 5 years ago. Since then, they've attended a private "polygamist school" school "for our people."

Christine seems to be the principal homemaker for the family. She does not have a toaster, and makes toast in the oven, because
"More people die from toasters than sharks every year."

Her preferred interjection is "Darn it" or "Gosh Darn it."

Throughout the show, references are made to a "big announcement" Kody plans to make to the family that night.

Turns out that he is "courting" a potential 4th wife, a 30 year old woman named Robin, who "grew up in the lifestyle."

The wives acknowledge that they had a feeling that there was someone else, but the "big announcement" is the first time that the children are told about it.

Robin has children from a previous marriage, and apparently there has been some kind of joint play-date at some point, because dad presents the idea by asking the kids if they remember Robin and had fun playing with her kids. How would they like to have Robin's family join theirs?

The response is enthusiastic. One of the younger children doesn't quite get it, so Kody tries again, but it is Christine who gets the message across that Kody hasn't proposed yet, so the whole Robin thing must be kept on the DL for now.

A couple of the older kids acknowledge that it might be "weird" or "different" at first, as they've all grown up with three moms, but no one has any objections.

Meri doesn't deny that "jealousy issues" exist, but hopes she can get over it.

Janelle says that when Kody first told her about it, she had a "spiritual witness" that Robin was special.

This is the "first courtship" in 16 years, says Kody. Adding a foruth will be a "big deal."

Christine cops to being "kind of hesitant," because she "likes 3 wives a lot." She doesn't want to be a boat rocker, she says, and she doesn't want her boat rocked. "If it hapens," she adds, "she just has to be absolutely amazing, otherwise it might be a little difficult."

Robin, who lives four miles away from the family, has been courted by Kody for about 4 months. The number 4 seems to crop up a lot in this story arc. They are shown going on a date. Robin says he's her soul-mate.

Wives in this lifestyle, Kody points out, are comfortable with another wife, but not another girlfriend.

The day after the premiere episode airs, it is reported that the family is being investigated for bigamy. Coincidence? I think not.

Let's just hope this doesn't mean there won't be a Season 2.

My Generation 2010 - An Even Bigger Disappointment Than The Decade Itself

2010-09-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

The genre: Mockumentary. A red flag already. The premise: A film crew who did a documentary of 9 high school kids in the year 2000 returns in 2010 to see Where They Are Now.

To begin with, this show was hard to get into. The dissonance between the Austin setting and the generic US mall accents was bewildering, even jarring. I'm guessing that "Austin" was just pulled out of a hat by a writing and production team whose areas of knowledge and expertise do not include - oh never mind.

My personal preference is to give a show more than one episode before forming much of an opinion of it. In fact, my usual practice is to let it run for several seasons, unwatched by me, end, and then several years after THAT, sit down and watch the whole series at once.

But this one had such a promising premise that I not only watched the premiere episode, but foolishly allowed my expectations to exceed recommended pre-viewing levels, thus ensuring disappointment.

The first really big lump of it plopped itself down when Steven, the erstwhile "overachiever" with "success" as his watchword, was presented as an utter failure, when my perception was that he had indeed achieved success.

He was in a place he wanted to be, doing things he enjoyed doing.

I am obliged, however, to bring myself up short right there. However content, even happy, he might be with his life, because he had neither become affluent nor chosen a career path that the culture claims to value (even if the value is not necessarily manifested in market terms) he was, in fact, made of FAIL.

Later in the episode, of course, I realized that it was necessary to portray him as a worthless piece of ish, and in a way that would indeed be perceived as such by viewers.

As his backstory was revealed, I was obliged to acknowledge that maybe I was being too hasty - maybe he wasn't all that content and happy. Maybe he was just trying to make lemonade out of the lemons life had handed him, and that I was just chillaxing up on my moral high horse projecting stuff about how he and everybody else SHOULD have this huge Epiphany that success is not about how much money you have, or societal approval (even if the society doesn't put its money where its mouth is).

I was also (a little unreasonably) disappointed in some of the other story lines. The rich boy who forsook his true love apparently motivated by filial piety, and/or loving parental dollars more (I guess we'll find out if Dad threatened to cut him off) and settled for a loveless marriage, ten years into which he still sits around watching videos of his Lost Love and pining, was Bollywoodesque in its predictability, as was the story of the wife he settled for - blonde ectomorph with dreams of stardom who makes it to maybe the second Rose ceremony in Season Two or something of The Bachelor, upon which she forsakes her showbiz aspirations and settles for a loveless marriage to the local rich boy instead.

Ditto the boy who as a high school student, claims his only ambition is to have a family with lots of kids. A decade later, not only is he still unmarried and childless, his only "kids" the ones in the elementary school class he teaches, he's still a virgin, living with and caring for a girl he's in love with, but who is married to and pregnant by someone else (Dawn, known in high school as "The Punk") - and as if that weren't enough, he's sterile!

My inner curmudgeoness hmmphed loudly that all this is evidence that the writers are not averse to taking the easy way out, which does not bode well for the future, but I told her to shut up because she was being unfair.

If some of the characters' stories were too obvious, at the other extreme we have Carolyn the ultra-timid, silent "invisible" girl, (quaintly characterized as "wallflower") who, we are told, hooked up with Steven the "overachiever" and Quintessential Popular Boy on prom night.

While such might be the dream of many an ultra-timid, silent and invisible "wallflower," who might indeed hook up (and get knocked up) on prom night, her babydaddy is so not going to be the Popular Boy. Another night, maybe. But I promise you, the Popular Boy is way too busy on prom night to impregnate the wallflower.

Not to mention that fully ten years have passed, during which she has blossomed into a beautiful, articulate and grown-ass woman, doing just fine raising her child, and suddenly she feels compelled not only to inform a sperm donor who never even knew her name that fertilization occurred, but also plants these daddyhavin' expectations into the mind of a child who has made it to the fifth grade just fine with whatever previous explanation of his parentage she had previously given.

This, too, requires excessive levels of suspension of disbelief. Either this is a call she would have made the first time the kid asks "how come I don't have a daddy like Binky and them?" or at least in the first few months, even year, of telling him whatever she told him, or the call would have been for purpose of obtaining family medical history only, as the result of suddenly becoming aware that this is Important, (but not also becoming aware that here in Modern Today, there are tests that can determine that stuff) and would likely have been made through an intermediary, since her only contact with this person consists of that one hookup, and it is reasonable to presume that had she, (who is, remember, presented to us as having blossomed into this intelligent and responsible grown-ass woman) had any desire to have Steven "be part of her son's life," she would surely have expressed that desire, and informed him of the reproductive event, long ere this.

I'm not even going to commit additional rantage on the whole thing of putting these expectations into her child's head. That might be the kind of thing that MethGranny over on Teen Mom would do, but not the character of Carolyn (unless her initial protrayal is waaay deceptive, and we have yet to learn that she is addicted to meth, or suffering from some severe and untreated mental and/or emotional illness).

Almost as ridiculous is the proposition that the girl labeled "The Brain" reacts to the casting of a particular politician as on-camera talent by abandoning her lifelong passion for science and becoming a lawyer who helps banking companies write laws that ensure that banks will receive additional revenue.

This makes me think that the deadline was looming really large, and everybody on the writing team had been really busy with something else, so there was only one story idea in the hat for Brenda, and they just had to go with it.

About the only believable character is that of Falcon, the "Rock Star," who has become a wigga who does production and post-production for bands that have not become commercially successful.

Oh, well, yeah, there's the obligatory "Jock" who sacrifices a promising career in the sport he loves as the result of a belief-based choice to participate in the implementation of business decisions favorable to the interests of key industries. Sadly, that's believable.

Even as, against my better judgment, I went ahead and allowed all these opinions and views to harden like two coats of Sally Hansen's finest, I realize that they could all come back and bite me in the butt.

But I accept only very limited responsibility, because, if they are going to do that, if all my perceptions are just so, so wrong, then the writers should have given me some hint of that.

It would be hints of that, you see, that would flame the spark of my interest, and bring about the presence of a strong desire to see Episode 2.

Not only did the premiere lack cliff-hangers, try as I might, the only real intriguing unanswered question that I can recall has to do with the rich boy forsakes true love to please/obtain money from parents story: because the rich boy is white, his true love is Latin American, and the girl he settled for is the blonde ectomorph, with the Texas setting, the obvious rush-to-judgment is that his parents had a strong preference for a white daughter in law.

BUT - we later find out that the Jock, who is African-American, is his best friend since childhood.

So does the show plan to take us on a journey through the various levels and permutations of anti-Otherness in Texas - that his parents believe that being BFFs with someone from a different ethnic group is OK but marriage is not OK? Or that the parents simply have an aversion to Latin Americans?

I mean, if they want to go there, that is actually pretty realistic. Ethnic divisions, especially those in a demographic majority/minority context, do tend to increase in intensity according to the size of the minority, with the largest ethnic minority in a given region frequently taking the brunt of impact.

For example, at least until recently, if you went to a small town in Alabama, you would typically find a mainstream demographic, or majority population, of Euromericans, or white folks, and certainly the largest, indeed frequently the only statistically registering minority to be African-Americans, a group with which the majority Euromercians have had a longstanding division.

People from Latin America or Asia, as long as there were only a few of them, might experience markedly lower levels of anti-Otherness-driven impact.

In contrast, if you went to a small town in Texas, where again, you might find that Euromerican majority, the largest ethnic minority might well be Latin Americans, and even while there might be a significant level of anti-Otherness directed toward African-Americans, it would be more intense toward Latin Americans.

Add to that the very real prevalence of the belief among some Euromerican groups that social integration, friendship, and between members of different groups, is acceptable, but marriage is not. (Though clandestine sexual activity between white males and females of other ethnic groups, whether consensual or not on the part of the latter, has a long history of quiet acceptance).

Like I said, if they really wanna go there, given the cultural context, it would be believable for Anders' parents to approve of his friendship with Rolly the Jock, but strongly disapprove of the idea of accepting Brenda the Brain as a daughter-in-law, even if they did not disapprove, at least as strongly, of his dating her in high school.

As we see, however, all that seems just a smoosh complex for any TV show, much less a network "mockumentary" whose premise encompasses a decade in the lives of nine different people, which means that Rich Boy's parents disapproved of Brenda is almost certainly for some other reason - maybe her family is poor.

Economic segregation is every bit as marked and and comprehensive as racial apartheit ever was, and in many communities (though not typically ones in Texas) has surpassed ethnicity-based social segregation, which is still pretty comprehensive and marked in its own right.

Or - and here I am clearly sailing off on the wings of imagination - one or more of Brenda's relatives has a history of having committed some crime or other, for which they spent some time subsumed into the judicial system, even generating a revenue stream for the prison industry!

Now THAT would indeed have some cultural reflection possibilities, if the crime were something like shoplifting, or even sticking up a convenience store.

That's because two of the characters were impacted by business decisions made by the Enron company, with one even sacrificed as an acceptable target of opinions and feelings that would, if applied consistently and on a larger scale, be considered anti-business!

So if they wanted, they could contrast how the child of a parent who has stolen a chicken is perceived vis a vis the perception of the child of one who has stolen the coop - white collar vs blue collar crime, etc etc.

But that is unlikely, too, since that would lead us down yet another "Do they really wanna go there?" road, and get into some pretty heavy topics, many of which would simply not be a good fit for commercial network TV.

Maybe it was the Brain thing. Maybe Anders' parents didn't feel that Brenda was a good choice as a marriage partner because they feared that with her Brain, she might not wish to be a full-time parent and homemaker, and that was important to them, or that she would become bored with Anders, which would probably be a pretty good call, had Brenda not pretty much shed herself of the whole Brain thing by ditching science for law school and ending up helping rich men make more money because some suits in another board room made a decision that as it was intended, resulted in rich men making a whole mess of more money.

Plus, ten years post-high school, Brenda continues to carry a such a big torch for the unremarkable Anders that she not only hasn't married - she "doesn't date." If she were really that much of a Brain, wouldn't she have figured out by now that her high school boyfriend is something of a dud?

This brings us, at long last, to the real meat of this episode. Well, the pit, really.

See, one of Brenda's co-workers decides to set her up on a blind date. She agrees to go, it is implied, because the documentary cameras caught her gazing wistfully at a picture of Anders the Dud, and she wants to throw us off, you know, so we won't think she still hasn't gotten over him.

Whoever this co-worker dude is, it'll be interesting to see if he turns out to be a recurring character, because he clearly has an abysmally low opinion of Brenda, because the dude with whom he fixes her up is a total asshat. "I have a small penis," he leans forward to confide, less than five minutes after Brenda sits down. "But I know how to use it," he adds, and then offers Brenda the opportunity to speak, something she has yet to do, since asshat has been sitting there rattling off one proof after another that he is not somebody with whom even a moderate Brain-owner would want to have so much as a nodding acquaintance.

But it's his table manners that Brenda cites to the co-worker in the de-briefing scene. He put his olive pits on the bread plate.

Let me preface this by stating how much I resent being in the position of defending even this minute detail of the behavior of the Blind Date From Hell character.

Though I agree it is riddled with aesthetically-challengedness, if the restaurant did not provide a plate specifically to contain the pits, putting them on the bread plate is pretty much the conventional Western dining etiquette wisdom.

I didn't happen to catch whether before putting them there, he removed them discreetly and unobtrusively, but that's what is supposed to happen.

The rule says "remove by the same method it went in" but in the case of olive pits, even if they went in with a fork, discrete and unobtrusive removal is more likely to be achieved by pretending to dab delicately with one's napkin, then swiftly removing the pit with the fingers of the other hand, using the napkin as a shield, having first (discreetly and unobtrusively) pushed the pit up to the lips/front teeth area, so that the fingertips do not need to enter the mouth). Ew.

Here's Why: There may have been a time when it was a common practice for people to hold their napkins up to their mouths when inserting a food-laden fork, but in Modern Today, this is so seldom if ever done that it would call much more attention than just holding a napkin up to dab, which is done all the time, thus exponentially increasing the likelihood that no one will notice that you removed something from your mouth. (That is, until they see you put it on the plate, whether bread or olive pit).

Unless it is a very casual restaurant with paper napkins that you can ball up, hiding the pit in your napkin is extremely poor manners, because a human being who has just as much value and worth as you do is going to pick up that napkin when they clear the table, and another one is going to unfold it, and neither is on this earth, or working in the restaurant, to have stuff that has been in your mouth tumble out into their hands. Re-Ew.

I don't know if I will bother watching Episode 2 of this show or not. Having committed such a massive word-dump on it, you might think I would be really eager to discover how wrong - or right - my initial impressions prove to be.

You might be right, maybe I should see some more of it, if only for that reason, but that's kind of the problem. The show itself hasn't given me any reason, or even particular desire, to tune in next week.

Real Housewives of DC Makes White Folks Real Mad

2010-09-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

In keeping with franchise tradition, not one of them appears to be an actual housewife.

At least so far, any casting office hopes that Paul Wharton might emerge as DC's answer to Da-wight have been stultifyingly dashed. He comes off more like a 5th Housewife version of last season's Alex McCord: so abysmally lacking in skankitude that you wonder if he signed up for the wrong show by mistake.

Or maybe he's there to tell Mary ("Michaele was in her perfectly coiffed riding jodhpurs and boots.") that clothing items do not sport a hairdo.

Clicking around the internets, "Cat," the one who kept bragging about her husband being the Lord High Photographer was just sad. She reminded me of Kelly on RHNY, who seems to get way too much of her sense of identity from having once been married to a famous photographer, who in turn, reminds me of Brody Jenner, who reminds us every 15 minutes that his biomom once dated Elvis.

She seems to be one of those love her or hate her characters - her admiration for a beloved political figure was appreciated by the predictable half of US viewers, while her comment that "all British children aspire to be American children" seems to have resonated a little less with the rest of the world, some even going so far as to disagree with her outright, asserting that British children are quite pleased to be British and do not long to be another nationality.

I tend to agree with those who have questioned whether the show will really be a good cultural fit.

In fact, I predict it will require extensive post-production to keep it from being labeled as "inflammatory," which might not be good for either the franchise or the network.

Stacie has already made herself a mess of enemies.

For a person of color to mention the existence of racism is extremely displeasing to many US white folks, who receive a very real psychological benefit from the belief that both slavery and apartheid happened some time during the early Pleistocene era, and have long been completely absent from the heart of all white Americans with the possible exception of a couple of toothless crackhead Aryan gang members who are now safely behind bars now anyway, so African Americans should, if I may quote approximately 7 squillion internet comments "get over it."

In fairness, people, including white folks, watch these shows for the skankiness and schadenfreude, not to be reminded of bandaids on sucking societal chest wounds or herds of elephants tromping around the TV, both tall orders for any show set in Washington, even if the only cast member with any claim to a "political connection" is the dude that takes PR stills of the current on-camera talent.

I guess Bravo gets props for going there at all.

My guess is that they were maybe targeting an older audience, and hoping that the prevailing viewer reaction would be more in accord with an offline comment I overheard: a polyester-clad matron in a small southern town referred to the DC ladies as "real classy," and went on to declare that they represent her "ideal America."

I'm skeptical that any generation will bestow upon these Housewives the mantle of "ultimate aspirational character" bestowed on Lauren Conrad and The Hills gang.

At least we jaded Snark extremists get our usual helping of the delicious characteristic Real Housewife staple of people with dramatically annoying personalities acting really trashy while tossing around not-so-subtle insinuations about how superior they are to everybody else. ;)

Cat and Stacie may have their share of fans and haters, but the unquestioned stars of the show are "The Salahis."

We may not know the name of the covert Bravo operative who returned from that 1st reconnaissance mission into the mean salons of Washington with orders to sniff out Hamsters Most Likely, who discovered this pair of prizes, but we do know that whoever s/he is, that will be one hard-to-top career triumph.

Ditto for the marketing genius who thought up Operation Party Crash, and double ditto if the same person cast the Salahis in it.

It was a Cultural Fit Powerball, with just the right Golden Drop of subliminal Retsyn (ouch. Obscure allusion to 60s breath mint commercial? Really?)

And now, a moment of silence to acknowledge the awesome power of television - even really bad television. No other force, man-made or natural could so instantly transform a couple of lacklustre practitioners of petty sleaze to Defcon 5 Level Public Enemies.

He, whose principal resume bullets include a spurt of short-term employment related to implementation of business decisions on behalf of some US "key industries," and an equally non-stellar attempt to run the family wine business, the latter culminating in a lawsuit-embellished family squabble, appears to excel only at playing polo.

Michaele, a retail cosmetics counter clerk by profession, had hoped to obtain wealth and fame by becoming a fashion model, but believe it or not, not every blonde ectomorph who auditions is cast, and she will be neither the first nor the last pretty girl who, after an accurate evaluation and assessment of her own natural talents and aptitudes vis a vis the marketplace, accurately determines that her best chance of acquiring a large bank balance is marriage to an already-wealthy man.

The current chorus of US viewers flooding the internets with outraged calls for their imprisonment, tarring and feathering and extermination by live burning are predictable (and I'm gonna guess also predicted) and consistent with the culture, but that any two people of such spectacular mediocrity would inspire such a tsunami of any sentiment among any population is such an incongruous absurdity - and such a monumental feat of marketing, that I predict it will be the opening chapter in textbooks on the subject unto the 7th generation.

It's also, judging from these first episodes, anyway, the DC franchise's one chance at getting high enough ratings to placate the suits in the accounting department.

The Bachelor/ette: Is Roberto Really Hot? Ethnic Ambiguity, Demographics, & Beauty

2010-08-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

Call me a love-grinch if you will, a jaded Debbie Downer of romance, an old fuddy-duddy who just doesn't understand the young folks and their new-fangled ways, but even setting aside my somewhat limited capacity for suspension of disbelief with respect to reality shows in general, I have just not been able to jump on the rainbow-and-My-Little-Pony-festooned bandwagon of misty-eyed wonder at the latest candidates for the Great Lovers of All Time Hall of Fame.

Judging from the media and prevailing chatter, online and off, the level and intensity of admiration and adulation for this couple is unprecedented in Bachelor History!

The range of opinions, the ongoing battle between belief and suspension of disbelief, the pragmatists and the faithful, invariably plays out into a much more full-bodied entertainment experience than actually sitting there watching it.

Full disclosure: Although I do have it as a tivoid timer, and dutifully make a sincere effort to watch every episode in its entirety, I admit that I have, on more than one occasion, fallen asleep.

The human mind - or at least my allegedly human mind - can only endure a limited amount of helicopter rides and pageant-worthy comments about the importance of family and being real, and the phrases "here for the right reasons" and "one on one time" can cause my eyes to close and my head to fall faster than Pavlov's pet pupdog.

Maybe I don't enjoy actually watching the show much, but I do enjoy listening to people who enjoy watching it, I think I called it a "cultural phenomenon" in the previous rant.

The Bachelor is one of the most thoroughly and unapologetically ethnically and culturally homogeneous shows produced in the US today, clearly targeting an ethnically and culturally homogeneous audience. And that's OK.

I have no intention of going off on any lofty tangents about the myth of multiculturalism in the US of Modern Today, I'm just saying that it's a network show, with the potential for some high-dollar ad rates, and business is business.

Everything we see - or don't see - on the show is the result of a business decision. From casting to story arcs, to wardrobe and makeup, as with any commercial entertainment product, it's about the money.

It's also, as RealitySteve pointed out in his season wrap-up, about the drama.

Previous years had made it very clear that the future of the franchise depended on the show's ability to compete with the increasingly popular trashy reality shows, many of which were, ironically, actually inspired by The Bachelor, according to Mark Cronin, who, in an interview a few years ago acknowledged that the whole "Skankapalooza of Love" franchise was inspired by his wondering:

"... what if the Bachelor was actually a big character? The Bachelors tend not to be big characters. They tend to be nice, eligible men. Hunks, maybe, but that’s not character. A good character is someone who says funny stuff and who has a weird, whacked-out lifestyle. So, really, we wondered, “What if the bachelor were a crazy lunatic?..."

That's when he and partner Cris Abrego decided to call Flavor Flav...

Fleiss et al responded by ramping up the drama - and the sleaze - accordingly, with the MesnickDump Heard Round the World, the lame but nevertheless effective Rozlyngate, and even going so far as to insert an "insurance policy" early in Ali's season - the famous Jake vs Vienna bout, which predictably raised viewer interest in the show to unprecedented levels even as it dashed whatever hopes Jake might have had for "ever working in this town again."

Anyway, back to viewer reaction. This season, I was especially struck by the division of opinions about Ali's options along demographic lines.

Generally, girls and young ladies of the "mainstream" US demographic were going wild over him, while their counterparts in the rest of the pie chart, well, weren't.

US mainstream demographic viewers seemed to perceive Chris as more "husband material," often referring to him as "real," and "family-oriented," while Roberto was seen more as the "fling," an embodiment of an thrilling fantasy of sampling strange fruit, so that one will have lived a little before settling down and nesting oneself in that weathered-wood-picture-frame-and-matching-dadface environment, the idealized version of the culturally familiar, featuring a less physically attractive but more "realistic" partner.

Outside that mainstream demographic, while the numbers might be lower, perceptions were predictably the opposite, with Roberto viewed as only modestly handsome, at best, and about as interesting as a pile of sawdust, certainly no competition for the exciting and cinematic dream of Chris and Ali, stereotypical blonde couple, living out a charmed life in an eternal - and yes, "exotic" - Norman Rockwell painting.

As one viewer put it:

"She shd hav a afare w Roberto so she wil have sum memoris cuz he is HOT n SPICY but don get carid away cuz he wil so brake her heart, Chris is the 1 she shd marri cuz he wil aprecate her"

Variations of this sentiment abounded among Ali's demographic sisters, even among the Old School contingent who spelled most of the words right, with the phrase "not that into her" bandied about quite a bit.

As a rule, I am not a big fan of critiques and comments on peoples' physical appearance, and I intend no unkindness to Roberto in saying this, but it is simply a fact that - well, let me try to present it a little more politely:

Just as many mainstream demographic young men expressed the view of Ali as attractive in a "girl next door" kind of way, while their sisters viewed her as having an "accessible" kind of beauty, Roberto tends to be perceived by the larger chunk of earth residents as very "boy next door."

But return to that US of Modern Today context, with seismic demographic shift in full swing, and Roberto has a "look" that is extremely popular with one of, if not the major viewer segments - those mainstream demographic females 18-35, who tend to view him as "exotic," the stereotype of the "Latin Lover," yet assimilated to a fault - "diversity" in an acceptable dosage, as highlighted by the remark about his mother cooking "Spanish things I don't know the names of."

It's that demographic shift, the ologists would tell us, that is responsible for the corresponding shift in the prevailing "standard of beauty" embraced by that mainstream demographic.

While the society is still largely socially "segregated" along ethnic and cultural lines, that has to do with a purely cultural change, and cultural change tends to prefer a slower pace.

When we talk about things like "standards of beauty," we're talking about something that goes a little deeper, even less likely to reflect any conscious choices, something that touches on primordial proto-caveman instincts.

Here's how the ologists would, and frequently do, explain it (and believe it or not, using even more words than I am):

In the case of the US population, it simply means that as a larger percentage of the population becomes more ethnically heterogeneous, peoples' ideas of what is beauty changes in order to increase their likelihood of finding a mate and reproducing sooner, thus preserving the species.

The US/Western European standard of beauty is currently in the process of widening to include what has become a currently popular advertising buzzword, the "ethnically ambiguous" look.

Now of course the preservation of the species does not really depend on this event. It is just one of those sort of leftover things we don't really need anymore but are still there in or biochemistry, kind of like the way some populations have body hair.

Originally its purpose was to keep them warm - the same reason their even more pre-historic ancestors had it - and many other species of mammals still have it today.

But many ologists believe that the reason some humans hung onto it for a few more million years was because they got into stuff like more organized societies, written language, science, etc, a few millennia later than the other boys and girls and thus continued for a longer time to need something to protect their skin from thorns as they wandered around in the bush gathering berries or hunting bison or something.

Others point out that the only people who still have it tend to be from colder climates, so it was always about keeping warm, and that the later adapting of all that stuff was coincidental and/or weather-related, but whatever.

The point is, they still have it now, and they don't need it - any more than they need any unconscious and/or involuntary perceptions of blondes or "ethnically ambiguous" people as more or less attractive in order to prevent human extinction.

It's that kind of thing - against the backdrop of that vortex of change - that makes all this interesting.

Plop the whole thing down into another population, one that is NOT in the throes of a major demographic shift, and there's nothing to see. In a traditionally heterogeneous population, you'll get some of the same "split" along those old lines of "my tribe bestest," but you'll get that today and 150 years from now, and in a solidly and eternally homogeneous population, anyone who did not conform to that single standard of beauty would never be cast in the first place.

But with a population in transition, we get stuff like this:

While the current twin ideals of blonde and ectomorph still hold sway, with both blonde AND ectomorph being almost a guaranteed winner, even though Ali is blonde, we did not hear her referred to as "hot" by male and lesbian viewers of that mainstream demographic anywhere near as much as we heard their sisters and gay male brothers use that adjective when referring to Roberto!

If the viewer-expressed adulation of the undisputed audience favorite set me to musing and pontificating on relative standards of beauty and changing faces of a population, and clearly it did, since I seem to have gone on about it for several pages, watching the undisputed Queen of Roberto worship, Ali herself, fawn over her Chosen One should have been more fun than it was.

So enchanted was Ali by her perception of Roberto's physical appearance that on more than one voiceover occasion that she expressed misgivings about the possibiliy of a relationship with him on the basis of his being so much more attractive than herself that she felt insecure, as if he belonged to some kind of higher aesthetically-pleasingness-based caste.

Once I got past the sheer sadness that anyone would feel that way about themselves, I could not help wondering what Roberto thinks about that.

Even if she didn't say it directly to him during shooting, he will surely have heard it by now.

Every viewer who was ever asked to prom, or worse, proposed to, because someone thought they were "exotic," or even that they were so nice to look at that they didn't really give a damn about the rest, is going to be asking the obvious question with me:

Just who is more likely to break whose heart here? I'm just sayin'...

We have no way of knowing whether their post-show photo-ops, some of which reach Speidi-adjacent levels of sheer cheesiness, actually reflect a sincere mutual attraction.

Internets, checkout lines and water coolers alike are positively trembling with an unprecedented groundswell of certainty expressed by such an overwhelming swath of (mainstream demographic) viewers that Ali and Roberto are not like all those other Bachelor/ette couples, that their feelings for each other are not either superficial, they are in Real Love with a capital L, and they are going to live happily ever after.

I certainly hope they are right. I hope that happens to everybody. Who doesn't?

But let's face it. One of the primary sources of amusement afforded by this show is the wild absurdity of the premise best illustrated by the episode (at least in Bachelor seasons) where this dude buys an engagement ring, and tells us that he intends to propose marriage to somebody tomorrow, he just doesn't know yet to whom.

By season's end, the couples have, with luck, spent a total of a few hours in each other's company without the chaperonage of a camera crew.

With the understanding that most romantic relationships do begin because one of the parties feels some degree of physical attraction for the other, and that millions of people live out perfectly happy lives without having a single relationship, romantic or otherwise, that millions of other people would not call "superficial," what chance do any of the Bachelor couples have?

Have any of the ones who are not Trista and Ryan ever wondered how their stories would have played out if they had met each other at a friend's house or a cooking class or the neighborhood gym?

Do any of them ever wonder if they might have "made it" if their romance had not started out as a "showmance?"

Questions We're Not Asking About The Fergie Sting

2010-05-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

For some of us, $500K is beyond a lot of money. For some of us, it's more money than we'll earn in our lifetimes, more than anyone we know will earn in their lifetimes.

It's so huge, it might as well be expressed in one of those generic terms for "more money than I can conceive of," like a gazillion, a squillion.

But that's just some of us. For others, $500K is a reasonable price for a nice house, for a year's work, for still others, it's about what they'd expect to spend on a wedding, a piece of jewelry, a vacation, what they'd pay to buy a small company, to educate their children.

For the Queen, $500K is the daily interest earned by some of her holdings.

What am I suggesting? I'm not sure. I'm not really suggesting anything. Just pointing out the fact that $500K has a very different meaning, is a very different amount of money, to the Duchess of York than it is to most of the people reading about the News of The World's Excellent Adventure, and to to some of the people writing about it.

But how much is $500K to Fergie? While the sum would buy a whole new life - a whole new identity - for some of us, exactly how far would $500K get the Duchess of Debt? It's hard to believe that she owes LESS than $500K. So as a one-time lump sum, it's hardly likely that it would even get her out of the red.

Nor is it likely that she would be able to use it to just dump her Princess daughters, get a little strategically placed "work done," and start a whole new life for herself in a small Sri Lankan village, in a cozy little ancient dwelling with 50s-era electric lighting, a big ugly satellite dish in the front yard held together with duct tape and coat hangers, a hand pump in the sink, a household staff consisting of an illiterate 12-year-old, and a passport that says "Agnes Higginbotham."

Are we to conlcude that this was not a one-time result of the Duchess having enjoyed one cocktail too many with her Prozac, but a regular practice, a sort of Royal cottage industry with which she and perhaps also the Duke, have supplemented their incomes? Prince Andrew's annual income starts with around $335K every year from mom, plus revenue from his own business activities from Dubai to Kazakhstan, about which little is known, so we can be pretty sure they didn't conspire to do this one time and split it and both go off to live in a Sri Lankan village. It does not seem like the kind of sum a Great Game playa like Andikins would have much interest in.

And if it were something that they did every 3rd Tuesday, may we not assume that they both have enough sense to vet potential clients at least enough to determine that they are not being paid by News of the World?

That's the thing about $500K. It is a high enough figure so that the price of a private detective is not an unreasonable amount to spend in the obtaining of it, but it is not such a huge sum that either Fergie or Andy are likely to regard as life-changing, worth betting the farm for.

And what happens now? Will Andy evict Fergie from Royal Lodge? How much does she know about those business activities of his? Is she in danger of being considered, like Diana, a "loose cannon" that could potentially jeopardize business activities worth sums that would be considered in the gazillions even by those who pay $500K for homes or weddings?

Where did the idea for the sting operation come from, anyway? Which News of the World employee thought it up, who approved it, funded it? And to what end? To discredit the Duchess of York? Was she, before this, all that "credited?" No pun intended, but hey.

Let's just say that if she were my close and personal friend, I would strongly encourage her to consider the benefits of becoming that new-nosed Agnes Higginbotham, enjoying the roses, fresh air, and promise of long life in the humble safety of her rural Sri Lankan home.

Real Housewives of New York Channel Harold Pinter

2010-05-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

I was all set to do a nice little recap of this episode. It looked so promising. Ramona has been in the throes of a major Renewal this whole season, and she has invited the Housewives on a Caribbean getaway to celebrate it.

At first, it was what you'd expect. The girls get tipsy. They bicker. Alex gently tsk-tsks, her role on the show has been reduced to Den Mother, the token grownup. Ramona proudly displays her bikini collection. Bethenny gives everyone little swag bags of beach-appropriate personal care products. This displeases Kelly, who feels it is impersonal. Actually, Bethenny's very existence appears to displease Kelly more by the minute.

Perhaps seduced by visions of reality show fame on a scale like that enjoyed by Real Housewife of New Jersey Teresa Giudice, Kelly proclaims that Bethenny is a ho-bag.

Bethenny excuses herself and accompanies the Renewing Ramona, liberally fortified with Pinot Grigio, to the neighboring Hooters boat where the two ladies enjoy some Turtle Time.

Sonja announces that she smells cat pee and retires for the evening.

Meanwhile, back in New York, Jill and The Countess, who did not go on the trip, have dinner. Jill announces that she will go down to the Caribbean and surprise Ramona. The Countess declines to join her.

Kelly takes photos of the girls on the beach. Bethenny cooks dinner, and at some point during the dinner, the spirits of Pinter and Ionesco descend and possess them.

They all mount the loa and are subsumed in a whirling vortex of non-sequiturs, the most intelligible of which is Kelly accusing Alex of being a kabuki-dancing vampire and revealing that she threw up because Bethenny is trying to kill her and went after her girls and Gwyneth Paltrow.

I mean, really. It all just goes down hill from there. They all take turns being Stanley.

Alex and Bethenny try to resist, but only succeed in dissolving in a fit of helpless giggles.

In intermittent flashes of lucidity, all agree that Kelly needs help.

"You couldn't write it," declares Sarah Jessica Parker, who is inexplicably this week's guest on the Aftershow. "Not even the finest actor..." she trails off, and Andy shows us a preview of next week, when Jill will arrive on the island to surprise the Renewing Ramona, and no one will be glad to see her.

Real Housewives of New York: An Epic Episode!

2010-04-23T20:15:00.000-07:00

Jill fears that a member of her household staff, the little chihuahua dog she employs to deep clean her sinuses with its tiny, prehensile tongue, has a digestive ailment, so she calls a veterinarian to come look at it while she wipes chihuahua dog mistake off her furniture and the paravetic shoes.

The doctor examines the trembling exploited little thing, and declares it to be in good health.

Bethenny goes to Alex's house for lunch. She says that Alex, who has made a quiche, is a relief to her because she is low maintenance and does not have any citrus. While the girls make salad dressing, Bethenny reveals that she is engaged. She says it is hard for her to commit and she will keep her pregnancy a secret for now.

Meanwhile, in the Hamptons, Kelly and her daughter share trying to understand the instructions on a box of pancake mix.

Ramona and her daughter go to a sidewalk cafe for dinner. Avery, the daughter, asks for foccacia with prosciutto, ricotta and truffle oil. It's not on the menu but she wants one. Ramona says that the restaurant is her home away from home. She can't remember the name of what she wants, but thinks it has eggs and may be something like an omelette.

She reveals that she is going through a general renewal process and wants to renew her marriage vows. She wants her daughter to be her maid of honor. The daughter says she would rather just watch, but reluctantly agrees. Ramona says that although Avery is only 14, she has become a woman mentally.

Without warning, the New Jersey Housewives appear and warn the public that menstruating women must not be allowed to make pasta sauce because they will spoil it.

Back in New York, the Countess, with Kelly in tow, is looking at "permits."

(Note: a subsequent viewing with subtitles turned on revealed that she was looking at apartments).

The Countess reveals that she is accustomed to a sophisticated lifestyle after being married for 16 years.

She is surprised by the price point of even small, insufficiently Countess-like downtown apartments in the 7-8K rent range, but Kelly tells her that it is a more fun than the Upper East Side because you can wear a baseball cap, but the Countess says she prefers to be among people who make an effort.

The agent shows her a larger apartment, on Madison Avenue, with a rent of $14,500, but she is displeased because there are so many buildings in the area, some even visible from the windows, and it does not have a doorman.

The Countess' surprise turns to shock and disappointment because she was expecting something else. She feels she is better suited to be uptown.

Jill has written a book with her mother and sisters, called Secrets of a Jewish Mother. They and the sinus-cleaning Chihuahua dog all get in the bed to choose photos to illustrate the book. Jill explains that they are called the Bed Family because they always like to get in the bed and are very cuddly.

Jill's mother Gloria, revealing a sample Secret, warns the public not to wear chiffon on Christmas.

Jill says that her mother has done a good job of giving them that message repeatedly for over forty years.

Meanwhile, back in the Hamptons, Kelly, Sonja, and the Countess have cocktails. Sonja remarks that her friends who take Adderall have lost weight but are very snippy. She would like to lose weight but does not believe that Saggitarians should take Adderall.

Kelly says that Ramona is like that. She is on fire and told her to shut up.

The Countess reveals that she calls Ramona "crazy eyes," and explains that the three of them have a lot of love to give.

Sonja reveals that having regular sex is very important. Kelly says the guys in the stables are all Argentinian and gay. She reveals that she wants to get married and have more babies because she loves kids. The Countess tells her that is because she is a child, the Kelly Child, woo-hoo.

She tries to make the "woo-hoo" a Countess-appropriate version of Real Housewife of Orange County Vicki's signature "Woo-Hoo." Kelly and Sonja stare at her, quiet for a minute.

Sonja says she would like a man that doesn't cheat. "Did your husband cheat on you?" Kelly asks. "Did yours?" retorts Sonja. Kelly confesses that she is not sure why Sonja asked her that, unless maybe she wanted to talk about something that happened to her.

The Countess asks if they have to talk about that. She says she doesn't think she had that problem. Again, Kelly and Sonja stare at her, quiet for a minute.

Sonja confesses that she is sure that the Countess has her share of suitors.

The Countess reveals that Italians are great as lovers, but not to marry, because they want to marry their mothers and grandmothers.

The girls attend a Gotham magazine party for the 100 Most Eligible Bachelors.

Jill reveals that Ramona ruined her Kodak event and she can barely refrain from bitch-slapping her.

The Countess confronts Ramona's husband about calling her "Countless." She speaks to him in halting, high school Italian. She explains that she does not want to air her dirty laundry.

She reveals that she does not think Bethenny's blouse is appropriate.

Bethenny reveals that this is the party where they were all supposed to wear a square of toilet paper, that she doesn't have a top on, and Kelly's vagina and Alex's ass cheeks are hanging out and it like a yard sale of body parts.

Jill tells one of the Eligible Bachelors that if he will stick his tongue down Sonja's throat maybe she will let him sit at her table. "Wow," he murmurs politely.

Bethenny announces her engagement. Jill reveals that it is very awkward because all these things are happening that she and Bethenny talked about laying in bed.

The Countess stifles a yawn.

High Society: Watch Out, Kardashians! Move Over, Tila Tequila!

2010-03-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

At last a show for those of us who just can't stop wondering:

"But what about the girls who didn't make the cut for Rock of Love Bus?"

"High Society" is all about the doings of the creme de les beaufs in New York.

This show may not be suitable for viewers who are sensitive about international smiles-behind-the-fan when the subject of US culture pops up (pun soooo intended).

You know what I mean - people who just don't get that there is no such thing as old oil money.

For We the Authentic Bad Reality TV cognoscenti, however, it's a true treasure trove o' trash, featuring the arch-rival of Adam DiVello discovery wannabe Olivia Palermo, a girl named Tinsley Mortimer, who despite her positioning as an East Coast product, adheres strictly to the Stereotypiconic Indistinguishable SoCal Blonde style template, from corn-colored hair to strippalettos.

Tinsley claims to despise "being flat-footed" so much that she walks on tiptoes even when barefoot.

She is considered by some to be an aristocrat because of an ancestor who was very good at cleaning carpets. (I guess those same people would consider me a-list royalty. I have several ancestors who were really good at designing and weaving carpets).

Other cast tropes include PJ Calderon, in the role of quintessential spoiled brat, steadily partying away his trust fund, villainess gossip-monger Devorah Rose (who I believe gets a catfight scene with Tinsley in an upcoming episode), and Jules Kirby, the mandatory bigoted bus station skank who enjoys abusing hotel staff, and hates everybody but thin heterosexual white protestants. (Jules has since issued the mandatory post-production statement to the effect that CW forced her to say she hates everybody but thin heterosexual white protestants, and the network has duly responded that they didn't).

But the One True and Undisputed Star of the show is Tinsley's mom.

Dale Mercer was born for reality TV. She steals every scene she's in, and the one where, positioned at the foot of a grand staircase, she genuflects to dab at her eyes with the diaphanous hem of her red evening gown qualifies as a Great Moment in Television.

Although sadly, we are unlikely to be blessed with a second season of this train wreck of vapidity (its premiere received the lowest ratings in CW history), we are almost certain to get more of Miss Dale. Producers have got to be fighting over her as we speak.

Hey! I just realized something - Dale has been divorced from Tinsley's dad for like forever, which means she is single, which could mean - O please Mr Cris Abrego, if you are reading this - Socialite Bus of Love???

200 Pounds Beauty: Not Just a Rom-Com

2009-08-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

This movie was actually released in 2007, so I'm late to the party, but it stuck with me so much for days after watching it that a rant was inevitable.

The plot: Hanna (Kim A-Jung) is an incredibly talented singer, but because of the societal stigma of overweight, she is relegated to the position of "playback singer" for Ami, the hottest new pop princess.

Stuck backstage in a stuffy little booth, Hanna belts it out while Ami, dressed up in typical pop princess stagewear and surrounded by the usual conglomeration of backup singers, dancers and special effects, lip-syncs.

When not recording or lip-syncing for Ami, Hanna moonlights as a phone sex worker, where thanks to her gifts of compassion and patience with her troubled clients as much as her creatitivity and "evocative" skills, she has a loyal following.

Hanna is in love with Ami's producer and boyfriend, Sang-Jun, (played by Jin-mo Ju), who is the only person who is even remotely nice to her.

Western audiences will be shocked by the way BFF Jung-Min (Hyeon-sook Kim) treats Hanna, so much so that the one scene where the girls get matching tattoos and giggle and squeal like actual friends is jarring and out-of-place, and in fact the tattoos are central to a needed plot element, so it is possible that the scene really was "stuck on."

Hanna should face facts and forget about love, Jung-Min tells Hanna, because as far as men are concerned, there are 3 kinds of women in the world, the pretty girls, who is a treasure, the ordinary girl, who is a gift, and then there is the reject. Hanna, of course, is a reject.

Although Sang-Jun's friendliness to Hanna is clearly only that, Ami is jealous of his sincere appreciation for Hanna's talent, and resentful of the fact that she has none herself.

She sets Hanna up with a cruel trick, sending her a dress, supposedly a gift from Sang-Jun, to be worn at his birthday party. Of course the dress is all wrong for Hanna, she looks awful in it, and then Ami shows up in the same dress. She actually looks pretty awful in it too, but that is just my subjective judgment and has nothing to do with the plot.

While a humiliated Hanna hides in the bathroom, she overhears Sang-Jun telling a fretful Ami that they must both be nice to Hanna, or does she want to go back to backup dancer days, because if Hanna walks, Ami's career will end.

In despair, Ami attempts to end her life, but is saved by a call from one of her devoted phone sex clients, who happens to be a famous plastic surgeon.

There follows a funny scene in the surgeon's office, where he is about to throw her out after she asks about getting the miracles he describes done on credit, but quickly changes his mind when Hanna cleverly reveals her "other" identity.

Hanna disappears for a year, during which time Ami's career predictably crashes and burns, and when her Extreme Makeover is complete, she erases her old identity completely, and returns to the world as the slender and beautiful Jenny.

Meanwhile, all the expected drama has been going on behind the scenes as the recording company is losing money by the day, having had to postpone Ami's much-awaited second CD, and a desperate search for a replacement "voice" is underway.

Hanna, as Jenny, auditions, the company (including San-Jun) goes wild, and plans are made to launch Jenny, the new pop princess, while Ami is left out in the failing sitcom pasture of the has-been.

The only person who knows Jenny's secret is Jung-Min, and that only because of the tattoo, which is a big old scoop of artistic license, as it would not have survived a makeover as Extreme as Hanna's, but hey, it's a comedy.

Jung-Min still sucks at being a BFF, though, telling Hanna that women who have had plastic surgery are considered "monsters" by mainstream society, and that even the most forward-thinking men may think it is fine for girls to get work done, "just not MY girl."

When Sang-Jun himself confirms this, using the same words, and her interaction with Sang-Jun continues to be as one-sided and painful for her as it ever was - if his earlier remarks to Ami about only using Hanna were a clue that Sang-Jun is no prize, in his most dramatic scene with Jenny, a raw, tear-your-heart-out moment when Sang-Jun finally understands just how much the woman who stands before him now, the woman who is Hanna, loved his sorry ass, just how sorry an ass that is is brought home to us as as hard as it is to her, and the more hopeful among us may even think we see a clue-stick hovering above the head of Sang-Jun himself.

Jung-Min needed the tattoo to recognize Hanna, but her father, institutionalized due to Alzheimer's or some other non-specified, or at least not understood by me, illness, does not need a tattoo, and when the movie, according to Korean comedy tradition, gets to "the serious part," it is through the scenes involving her father, (Hyon-shik Lim) that we feel the profundity of Hanna's anguish and the extreme emotional effects of the identity crisis in which she now finds herself.

But the one scene that is at once the most Spielbergian wipe-a-tear and bounce-up-and-down-howling-with-delight absurd takes place at Jenny's first concert, where everything hitting her at once, she is unable to perform, and confesses, whereupon the crowd all hold up stick-lights and chant "It's OK! "It's OK" reassuringly as a giant screen behind her fills with the image of Original Recipe Hanna, singing the song that she wrote "while just looking at the stars."

It is during these climactic scenes that Jung-Min finally redeems herself and starts acting like BFF material, and by movie's end, as a new SuperStar is born, and new posters and CD covers that say "Hanna" replace the ones that said "Jenny," even Sang-Jun seems to be trying on a bit of introspection for size, sadly realizing that to the extent his superficial ass may have ever been capable of real feelings, it was to the person Hanna is that his heart has always been drawn, as much as his mind has been drawn to the artist, no matter what she looks like, and that this nascent epiphany is several dollars short and about a year late.

Although especially the first third of the movie contains a lot of frankly offensive lame "fat" jokes and slapstick, as well as plenty of expected standard rom-com content, 200 Pounds Beauty is no ordinary romantic comedy.

Reportedly several famous actresses turned this role down. Maybe they were skittish about donning a "fat suit" Or maybe they read the script.

This would be a difficult role for any actor, but Kim A-Jung steps up, and while she plays nicely off the other actors in the comedic scenes, it is the dramatic moments where she gets the chance to show her chops.

This is an actress who works on her craft, and that someone who is -let's be honest here - NOT a natural comic in the classic sense of the term, nor with decades of experience and training to fall back on - can capture, to any extent, some of the subtleties of "what it would be like" not only to get used to a completely different body - but the instant turnaround in societal attitudes - is pretty impressive.

After a lifetime of being the butt of snickers, cruel jokes and rejection, when she emerges from the seclusion of recuperation from her surgeries, Jenny learns overnight just how different reality is for girls who are considered beautiful. In every situation, from the most casual encounter to potential catastrophe, the treatment she receives, the way people respond to her, is diametrically opposed to everything she has known.

For viewers looking for social commentary, it's there, but the mixed message element nearly obscures it.

I guess if we want to wax philosophical, we could argue that this accurately reflects cultural reality. While on the one hand, lip service about the importance of inner beauty, acceptance and self-love, has become obligatory, a cursory glance at any magazine or screen, large or small, tells a different story.

The wisp-thin girl who conforms to the current standard of beauty, near-universal in the global village that is Modern Today, continues to enjoy a very fat advantage over her older, plumper, different-featured sister, everywhere from the workplace to the lunch counter to the social and dating arena

I know I have just left out whole chunks of this movie, for instance, there is the element of family business drama - Sang-Jun's dad owns the record company, which also employs his brother, and one scene in particular, with a slightly hokey but very effective use of blood as a symbol of, well, blood, is certainly worth a mention, but I have totally failed to praise Hyon-shik Lim sufficiently for his excellent portrayal of Hanna's addled but loving father.

If nothing or no one in 200 Pounds Beauty makes you cry, Hyon-shik Lim will!

If you like pop music, or even if you don't, the songs in this movie will stay in your head for days, and one way or another, find their way to your iPod.

Western viewers will enjoy Kim A-Jung's cover of the old Blondie song "Maria," and a totally new take on Ben E. Hill's R & B classic "Stand By Me" will make you first go "huh?" and then "Yeah!"

NYC Prep: "Paris Hilton was doing it, so I guess it's cool."

2009-07-29T07:18:00.000-07:00

For someone who has, at 17, the spirit of a cartoon 50-something dowager, that Jessie would be so utterly unaware of the nature of fashion industry "intern jobs" awarded to applicants who come with a camera crew gave the First Day at Work segment an almost Chaplinesque, comedy-tinged-with-pathos feel.

But the evidence of the huge disconnect between her perception of her worldly-wise sophistication level and the facts on the ground was a reassuring reminder of the existence of Jessie's only visible teenage girl characteristic.

Except for none of it being quite believable. But then her stated goals do not include a career in acting, so it's all good.

Meanwhile, over at the Jill Stuart show, Taylor disingenuously voices over that the reason Cole doesn't like PC is because he thinks PC was "being mean at Camille's dinner party."

Sorry, Taylor. Nobody's suspension of disbelief bungee stretches that far. Cole doesn't like PC because you talk about him the way my neighbor's 11-year-old talks about the Jonas Brothers. Cole doesn't like PC because, at least for the purposes of the show, you are the Winnie of his Wonder Years, the little red haired girl in his bag of peanuts, his Venus in blue jeans, and no matter how much fun the Keyboard Analyst Posse is having speculating about the tender buds of PC's pullulating sexual preference, Cole doesn't like PC because you so obviously want to tap that.

Watching the fashion show, Taylor realizes that fashion is "like an art."

Watching the models, Cole makes typical teenage-boy-watching-models comments. When one of them succeeds in making Taylor giggle, PC suddenly realizes that his Scornful Aside skills need work, so he tosses a practice one at Cole, advising him to "take notes." The way the sequence was edited, it came off looking like he says this because he is miffed that it is Cole, and not he, who recognizes that one of Stuart's ensembles features a Mary Poppins hat.

Sebastian doesn't really know to which show he has received tickets for. He admits that he's not really into fashion, he's just psyched about hanging out with Kelli.

We are treated to a delightful scene where Sebastian clumsily mumbles to Kelli the glorious tidings that since Taylor has wisely declined to hook up with him, he is prepared to confer upon Kelli all the benefits of First Runner-Up, and Kelli deftly but politely slices him up for sandwiches, and just in case we missed it, declares in her Confessional that "I'm not his backup girl."

Poor Sebastian. Just last week, he was all excited because he scored a date with a Real Live Senior (who thought it would be fun to have a walk-on part with lines in a reality show) who not only talked to him as if he were the little brother of a friend that she had agreed to entertain for an evening, but turned out to actually speak French. And if that weren't enough, his hair was looking a little droopy, and wouldn't even flip right.

Hair-flipping and a very basic vocabulary of heavily accented French comprise Sebastian's surefire panty-dropper repertoire in its entirety, and he knows this. His Fashion Week prospects are looking mighty grim. He is reduced half-heartedly Confessing that he thinks Kelli must be bi-polar.

"There's just protocol"

PC apologizes to Kelli for accusing her of being younger than 16. If what you need is a good, old-fashioned nostalgic sigh, reach back far enough to remember just what a Grievous Offense that is.

Kelli does not accept the apology. Instead, she retaliates by accusing PC of fighting like a girl.

At the Pamela Roland show, PC greets Devorah of Social Life Magazine with a kiss and a compliment. Jessie scurries off and installs herself and Cat The Friend in PC's front row seats. It is the cruelest punishment she could impose on PC, and before he knows it, he is Making a Scene. At Fashion Week!

Humiliated, he Confesses that Jessie is a fat bitch. From his disgraceful second row seat, he leans over and hisses an epithet at her. After the show, Jessie and PC continue bickering, pecking at each other like fretful chickens. Cat the Friend is over it, and bails.

Jessie Confesses that people in the fashion industry are sometimes not who they say they are, and informs us that she is not like that.

Kelli and Camille go shopping. Kelli admires some boots. "I like them - for you," says Camille, skillfully dripping equal amounts of condescension on both boots and Kelli.

Undeterred, Kelli tells Camille that her singing teacher wants her to have an Edge and an Image. "That's funny, thinking that she doesn't think you are, you know, put together enough," Camille sneers delicately, looking Kelli up and down.

Kelli tries to save face in her voiceover. "I think Camille is confused about what an Image is."

Camille confesses that she thinks Kelli was "taken aback" by her "questioning."

Jessie gets another faux intern job with Carmen Marc Valvo. She arrives late, but the camera crew is on time, and Jessie is forgiven and even permitted to hand out press kits.

Kelli meets with the stylist, and inexplicably takes Camille along. Camille continues her "questioning" with the stylist.

Camille Confesses that even though they all go to fancy dinners, it is ridiculous for a teenage girl to have a stylist.

"You can tell when someone's not from New York, and just like, not like a real person."

Jessie decides to kill two birds with one stone: make up with PC and show off her new job at Carmen Marc Valvo, so she invites him to the show, but is upset when he shows up with a full court posse in tow - and if that weren't bad enough, Jessie Confesses, he brought people who were "(meaningful pause)different (pause redux) from everybody else that was there." PC, she informs us, knows better.

And the hits just keep on coming. Not only does PC bring one, possibly two gay men to a fashion show (a stylist and a photographer, shrugs PC in voiceover)but which Jessie considers "just not right," but he also invites Devorah the magazine editor.

"Why is she talking to PC?," Jessie wails. It grosses her out. PC should get to know people before he hangs out with them. She doesn't know them well enough to know if they are good people or not. They are 20-something.

She tells PC she is hurt, and she doesn't think he should go out with them after the show. He has time to do that in the future. PC tells Jessie that he isn't going out.

"What's her drama?" asks a bewildered Devorah. PC says he doesn't want to talk about it, and off he goes with Devorah to Buddah Bar, gallantly holding an umbrella over her head, leaving Jessie forlorn and alone in the Carmen Marc Valvo tent.

Things are looking up for Sebastian after all! He has a date "with this really hot girl I met at a party." When he agrees with her that "flambe" means "like on fire," she asks him if he is French.

"Wee," he replies, with a toss of head and hair. Sebastian has high hopes for this one, but is visibly horrified to discover that she attends public school, and immediately declares that the date is over.

This girl not only wanted a reality show walk-on, she really wanted to hook up with Sebastian, and asks if she can at least touch his hair. (It's doing much better today. He must have remembered to volumize). He refuses, and later Confesses that he thought that was weird. For once, he's right.

After gushboasting to a singularly unimpressed friend about her heady experiences at the fashion show and what an impressive manho PC is rumored to be, starstruck Taylor Confesses that she "isn't sure if it's cool to be bisexual, but it's cool that PC is bisexual."

Jessie returns to Carmen Marc Valvo, and is sent to a warehouse in New Jersey to match pictures to clothes and pull accordingly. She is thrilled to be trusted with such an important task.

But she's not thrilled with PC!

There is a really long-ass segment of her variously berating him, interspersed with Confessional, voiceover, back to harangue, and I Confess that I sort of tuned it out shortly after I heard the word "heartbreaking."

While all we saw was a couple of polite inquiries about whether she and her friend had enjoyed the show, to hear Jessie tell it, both Carmen Marc Valvo and his press dude are so consumed with the terrible awfulness of the disgusting, subhuman vermin that PC brought to the fashion show that they can think of nothing else, because "Guests of guests do not bring guests," and now Jessie's job is in jeopardy, and Carmen and the press dude have lost all respect for her, at the very thought that she might possibly know such wretched creatures, but despite all that, her only concern is to protect PC from predators who only want to use him for his money.

Jessie begins to cry and asks that the Confessional stop.

PC confesses that he loves Jessie to death and would do anything for her. He offers to send Carmen Marc Valvo a note, even personally go to the office, which finally shuts her up.

Well played, PC! Check, and mate!

Jessie hands over her queen without a fight, and mumbles something about really wanting the job. Since the last thing we heard they were telling her what she would be doing next week, this appears to be something of a non-issue, and thus the perfect note on which to end the episode.

More To Love Does Not Get A First Impression Rose

2009-07-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

Predictably, this show is being pimped as some kind of At Long Last! Inspiring Ray of Hope for the world's 98 or so % of women who are not size 0-2.

It's really just a Chubby Chaser version of the Bachelor. The Grand Prize is Luke, one of those dudes.

What, exactly, would be the difference in someone who didn't want you because of your size and someone who did want you because of your size?

It's pretty much a zero-sum game (pun not intended but left there anyway).

That said, if you loves you some trashy reality show (and who among us does not?) then Yay! Here's a new one!

In the parade of contenders, we were treated to such inspiring and hopeful jewels of self-love as "I'd like to lose 50 pounds" and "I prefer to think of myself as 'big-boned'"

The main thing to me that stuck out about these hamsters compared to the average Bachelor selection is that there is a much higher % of beauties. Now I know that's a subjective judgment, but it's still true. A few of them are weapons grade beautiful - Turn-around-in-the-street-and-stare-even-if-you're-a-straight-woman gorgeous, which I haven't seen on The Bachelor or any other reality show, and only one of Luke's choices is plug-ugly, which I have seen quite a lot of on other reality shows, including the Bachelor, and no, I will not name names.

I heard one girl whimper that she finally loves herself. Maybe one day the thought won't make her cry. Oh well, it's a journey, I guess. Baby steps.

Anna-The-Goddess and Sandy both say that they think they intimidate people, but the one who should really worry about that is Arianne, who might want to consider changing the pronunciation of her name. And I would make the same recommendation even if she were five feet tall and weighed 90.

And just in case anyone needs to be told this, a woman who is 5'7" and weighs 180 is "plus size" in the same way that she is "short."

Just as most women in, for example, the US, are size 14 and up, most women are also 5'4" and under.

Somebody tell me if I missed it, but I counted a total of 1 hamster on this show who was 5'4", and 0 under that. Most of them appeared (coincidentally, I'm sure) to be at least or above the minimum height for fashion models, plus size or otherwise.

Which, by the way, is fine with me. I hope they get work. And I guess the fact that even a couple who are "too short" to model made the final cut is remarkable.

Southern Belles Louisville: The Belles Toll a Toneless Farewell

2009-07-25T03:57:00.000-07:00

So this uncomfortable little Real Housewives Lite knockoff has come and gone like the slightly queasy morning after a night spent consuming a surfeit of questionable seafood.

I did get a small chortle when one of them accidentally alluded to their not having known each other from Adam's old fox before the show.

Shea will, and should, end up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.

I have known about 8 dozen versions of Shea over the years, and she always ends up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.

Her obligatory post-emotional trauma drastic hair change is an object lesson for fair-complected brunettes everywhere: No matter what anybody tells you about how lightening your hair will make you look soft and youthful, do NOT do it without first experimenting with a wig to make sure that it does not totally ERASE you!

If we cared to dig deeply enough, which I don't, the "real dirt" we would probably uncover is that they were all recovering from unsuccessful attempts at modeling careers, or unsuccessful attempts at thinking about one, and that Julie is the only one who owns up to it. And will probably be the only Belle who, as a result of the show, achieves it.

I loved her nail polish at the dinner in the opening segment!

It was this really pretty dark burgundy color, which means that while it is perfect on cinnamon-dusted Julie, it probably wouldn't work on dirty mustard-dusted Weimeraner me. Burgundy clothes work fine, but every burgundy nail polish I have tried just makes my hands look sickly, especially now that both sun exposure and melanin production have been discontinued.

But I digress.

I also really liked Hadley's silver necklace at the going-away party, and I hate her for having a big ass enough head to be able to wear a wide headband like that, especially a tacky silver lace one. But I would do one that was silver lace all around, not lame elastic in the back. What was she thinking?

So captivated was I by that silver lace, that while Shea was strolling around Jeff's Dream House, I developed a love-hate relationship with that over-Bedazzled prostitution whore of a black and silver car coat.

I was glad to see that Kellie came to her senses, but I am still so annoyed by the very existence of that butt-fugly gray sweater of hers with that enormous turtleneck. Maybe it's supposed to be ironic. Come to think of it, that whole enveloped in giant folds of bulkachunk wool seems to be a sort of sartorial leitmotif for her. Is it that cold in Louisville?

If you can get past all that supersize knitting, Kellie is a sort of Modern Today version of a classical Dutch Baroque beauty, and it's a shame that at her age, she still doesn't know what to do with it.

Speaking of people standing around holding giant lumps of beauty, turning it over and over in their hands and looking puzzled, I would really like to get a hold of Hadley's mama. Although that haircut has become ubiquitous and tiresome, it's the only thing she's doing right. It also appears to be the only thing she's doing.

But she did make me spend several minutes wondering if I should ask my hair designer if she thinks I should add spiky bangs to my own copy of the ubiquitous and tiresome haircut.

I so miss the squillion different length layers hairdo that looked like it had been done with a Weed-Whacker. When is that one coming back in style? I didn't even have to comb it. Plus if you have very coarse, straight hair like I do, it will naturally stick out in all directions, giving the illusion of volume.

I would be very surprised if funding is found for a season 2 of this forlorn thing. The hamsters were spectacularly unremarkable, and failed to produce enough sensation or drama to compensate for that.

Southern Belles Louisville: Lord, this show makes me preachy!

2009-07-17T12:16:00.001-07:00

Mercifully, subsequent episodes of this show have not been quite as "raw" as the "premiere," maybe it was just a learning curve thing, with the 1st couple of airings taking viewers along for the ride - an extra bonus layer of "reality" as the producers figure out just how much of that commodity viewers should be asked to stomach.

To atone for past sins, the last couple of episodes have featured some frankly comical overstaging - like the "slumber party," but it's Julie's "babysitting" sequence that, for all its hilarity, gives our suspension of disbelief a serious workout!

First, we are asked to accept the idea that Julie, in the 35 years she has been alive, has never spent so much as an hour or two alone with any children.

From there we glide into the idea that her first-ever conversation with her father on the subject of whether she might one day wish to be a parent occurred last week, and then it is just a hop-skip to Julie's grand Epiphany that in order to find out how becoming a mother would change her life, she should spend an afternoon babysitting - not one, not two, not even three - but FOUR small children!

Enter two of Julie's good friends - each with two daughters of about the same age - two sets of extremely telegenic sisters, one pair blonde, one pair brunette, all completely at ease with lights, crew and camera.

Of course we only see what makes it out of the editing room, but it does not appear that the two sets of sisters have ever played together before. All the interaction between the children that we are shown involves sister playing with sister. Kids who know each other would be much more likely to pair off according to age, kids who have never met will tend to interact with their respective sibling.

This show just might be a contender for the Mostest.Audrinage.Ever reality show tradition award - if some, even most, of the cast of the various Real Housewives shows were only glancingly acquainted with each other prior to the first day of shooting, the Belles' lack of shared "history" is glaring.

Nevertheless, as I continue to watch it, I find that it provides as much fodder for sober refection as for helpless giggling fits.

Kellie's situation, for example, is heart-rending, a grim reminder that whether it feels awkward, weird, even inappropriate, the time for the "Do You Want Kids?" talk (or more kids, if one of you has, like Kellie's Jeff, already obtained offspring) is preferably the second, but no later than the third date, BEFORE either party has had a chance to become "emotionally invested" enough to cause serious damage should there be a wide variance in their respective views on this subject.

It's a thought-provoking illustration that no matter how trashy the show, how stupid the script, or how inane the hamsters, even the lamest and most superficial television shows can educate, even illuminate, and this is something that every one of the "single ladies" - and their single brothers - who watch this show can "take away" from it, and receive the huge benefit of saving themselves from the kind of agony Kellie is suffering, an agony that would be even more emotionally eviscerating, even more causative of permanent harm, if Jeff were not such a tool.

At least when it is all over, she will have the comfort of relief that she did not make a permanent committment to a total asswipe.

Shea, who also has a Jeff, is confronting basically the same issue, at least in my view, since I don't make a large distinction on the basis of species.

Even if we lay aside their housing preferences - while Jeff dreams of mulching and mowing as proud handyman and householder, Shea's notion of the ideal home involves maid service and a spa on the premises - the real non-negotiable, potential deal-breaker is that Jeff comes with what is, for all practical purposes, a child.

The well-being of dependent family members who share one's home, whether human or not, can be neither relegated to the status of non-essential "extra," nor swept aside entirely, and anyone who would even consider such a thing is presenting empirical evidence that they are NOT husband material.

If they are capable of, much less willing, to renege on their committment to that being or beings, what could one expect who considers choosing such a person as life partner? And this goes both ways. If Shea can so easily dismiss the needs of Jeff's dog - well, in the case at hand, Shea has already been pretty upfront with Jeff about just what kind of living hell he could expect, and indeed the internet buzz is that he has wisely delivered himself - and his pupdog - from such a grisly fate, and empowered Shea to return to the garden to seek a more suitably crushable flower.

That this match was doomed was pretty much foretold in every frame of Shea-and-Jeff footage that made it to air, and in case there were any doubts, it was writ large in big red flags in the scene where Shea takes Jeff for a pre-marital counseling session with an gentleman who looks eeriely like Emily's creepy dad. Shea believes that the counseling will prevent her from ending up divorced like her parents.

"I have changed so much for you," Jeff blurts. Shea asserts that she has seen no change, but whether she has or not, whether it is even objectively true or not, if such a sentiment is in the heart of either party, that relationship is dead in the water.

Ideally, true love does change us, in that it makes us want to be, and become, better people, the best version of ourselves, but that's several galaxies away from Jeff's orbit.

As always, even as we keep in mind that the footage of each hamster is deliberately edited for the purpose of drawing a particular "character," we are also obliged to recognize the flip side of that: no matter what they leave out, no matter how they change or remove from context entirely - if the hamster doesn't say or do it, they won't have it to leave in.

Although it may be that Shea's footage is edited frame by frame in order to paint for us a portrait of a woman completely devoid of substance, if we assess the footage that she has given them to work with, we can come to no other conclusion that she is either a talented actress or that there really is no "there" there.

Internet personality aklein has called Emily "painful to watch." She has, aiklen remarks sadly, "emotional maturity of a 12 year old."

It's hard to come up with a credible rebuttal to that.

I am so not the appropriate person to defend any of these hamsters, but in fairness, there was a scene where Emily's Xtreme Cage Match Creepy dad was ragging on her about her hair, while Mama just sits there and says nothing, and there was something about it that looked like it was one of the more natural and effortless bits of footage we are likely to see on any reality show. I got the distinct feeling Emily heard that song with dismal regularity, just another number in CreepyDaddy's extensive repertoire of Pick on Emily showstoppers.

Whether Emily's dad is "for real" or not is a tough call. On the one hand, we have all known people with the misfortune of having parents like that. If it's a role and he is an actor, he has certainly "committed" to the character. He has it down, down to the teensiest creepy nuance.

This is probably born more of wishful thinking for Emily's sake than concrete perception, but a couple of times he has appeared to be mugging for the camera in an almost SpencerPrattian cartoon villain face mode.

I would be willing to bet that there is a connection between Emily's emotional development issues and having grown up with a father who considers his daughter having physically "matured too early" as a sort of inexpiable indiscretion, an unforgivable transgression for which he is still reprimanding her even as her thirtieth (or 30-something) birthday approaches.

Emily is presented to us as the classic damaged bird, her plumage dulled by a lifetime of stern reproaches for having ever had any plumage, without an ally, reviled in the nest which should have nurtured her, and which she now fears to leave, torn between what remaining shreds she has of natural, healthy instincts to go forth and be a person, pitted against the sheer terror of displeasing the father she has never, can never please, who has devoted himself to steadily and relentlessly breaking her down, convincing her that she is essentially incapable of personhood, and her female role model appears to conform to that ideal. Emily's mother is painted as a non-entity, an empty cipher who silently accepts Ogre Dad's condemnation of her daughter.

Her determination to move to Las Vegas may not be the shrewdest move, nor her aspirations of becoming a high profile broadcast journalist the best match for her aptitudes and abilities, but that she has enough "oomph" left into her to recognize and follow the self-preservation instinct to get the hell away from her toxic Daddy is a positive and hopeful sign.

Ironically, while it is Emily who dreams of becoming a TV star, it is Hadley the Flounderer who has the face for it, though she, too, appears to suffer from an extreme case of arrested emotional development, in some ways even more fundamental and deep-seated. So much so that if I were obliged to bet on which of the two would "succeed," in terms of growing into a whole and functional person, I would put my money on Emily.

The character of Hadley is as materially empty and vacuous as Shea, at least as she is presented to us, and as always with the understanding that she could be acting, playing a role that was assigned to her.

Lord, this show makes me preachy!

16 & Pregnant: Making a Way Out of No Way - The Miracle, The Mirror

2009-07-17T01:56:00.000-07:00

For most of the world, a girl of sixteen - or even younger - having a baby is an everyday occurrence, as it has been throughout human history.

But in the US, due to a variety of factors, over the last few decades it has become the exception rather than the rule, although some statistics indicate a reversal of the trend.

At the moment, however, it is noteworthy enough to get a reality show, whatever that means, and MTV has obliged.

The first episode was notable only for its extreme predictability.

Featuring the same demographic as Engaged & Underage, the girl steps up, the sullen boy sulks, and we can see that this is going to be one of those kids whose contact with his biological father, if there is any at all, will be infrequent, and the best case scenario will be the girl finding a new partner who is willing to help her raise the child.

The second episode took an uncharacteristic step up from the lower socio-economic tier, though barely. This girl was a cheerleader whose babydaddy never appeared, nor was his presence desired by the girl or her piece-o'-work mother, who was able to provide all the additional tribulations that the pregnant teen required.

Unable to afford housing of her own, and coming to rapid grips with the financial reality of parenthood, I got the sense that this young mother's best hope at salvaging her life would be to apply the advantages of the education she had enjoyed and place the baby for adoption.

In Episode 3, the producers returned to their usual demographic pool and selected a plump young couple remarkable in that the babydaddy not only appeared able and willing to be a father, but not utterly miserable about the prospect, and even professed love for the young girl and asked her to marry him, down on one knee, proffering a pink sapphire ring from Wal-Mart that cost $21.34.

The scene where he calls the same Wal-Mart to inquire about returning the expensive video game he had purchased was strangely moving.

Maci, the subject of the first episode of the series, is probably the most representative of what usually happens, and not just with 16-year olds.

She just sort of instantly grew up, and set about doing whatever she had to do. Of course finding out the boyfriend was a worthless crumb o' dung who didn't really give a politician's ass about her or the baby will have been as horribly painful for her as for anybody who has their heart broken, but being a mom, she no longer has the luxury of grieving about it, receiving comfort and support from friends who will stay up all night with her eating ice cream and letting her talk it all out, doing something new and fabulous with her hair, slowly getting herself back into the social scene, being convinced by those supportive friends to accept the invitation from that really nice guy who has always liked her, etc.

She had to go to work and take care of her baby, just like millions of other moms in her same situation - just like many moms of people who are reading this!

There are many shows that take cameras into delivery rooms, and there is a moment, when the baby is placed in its mother's arms, that is so private and so personal that we should so not be seeing it, but see it we do, in show after show.

Something happens in that moment, we look at the mother's face, at her eyes, and we see magic. We see a real live miracle happen right before our eyes, much bigger than the biological miracle of reproduction, of birth itself, a miracle, it has been suggested, that, along with art, is the closest we will get in this life to seeing our Creator.

That light that comes into the eyes of that new mother, when she holds her child in her arms for the first time, is tinged with the divine. It is in that moment that she ceases to be whoever she was, and becomes something much more - it is in that moment that she becomes what she will be for the rest of her life - a mother.

From that moment on, everything she does, everything she thinks, everything she feels, will be about her child. There is nothing she will not do to provide for that child, protect him from harm, comfort and care for him, today, when he is a tiny, helpless infant, and in 60 years, when his hair is gray and hers is white.

That Maci's story was the most "real" is at once a reflection of that totally awesome miracle, and commentary on the sorry way society treats that miracle.

In many ways, we have not progressed a whole lot from the days of the prevailing cultural mores so poignantly illustrated in Rizzo's song in Grease.

(For those unfamiliar, the thinking at that time was that it was the height of selfishness for a girl who "got herself in trouble" to "try to bring the boy down too" by telling him about it. Her life was ruined, of course. That was a given, but why, society "reasoned," should his life be ruined and his future destroyed too? After all, it was the girl who had "made the mistake." He was just doing what came naturally.)

Today, in one way we have gone in the opposite direction, with most people thinking that the girl absolutely MUST tell the boy she is pregnant, and there is more lip service paid to issues of child support and whatnot, but the reality is that in the US, some 90 odd per cent of people living in poverty are mothers and their children in situations where the father opts out of participating financially. Some of those mothers were married to the fathers, some receive token sums of court-mandated money, but the main societal message remains that it is the female's "problem," and the most likely answer to any statistics on the subject will be some variation of the sentiment that she should not have had the children if she didn't have the money to take care of them.

Ironically, in an age where more girls - and more women - have (at least in theory) more reproductive choices available to them than ever before, there has been an interesting trend among the US mainstream demographic in recent years, a sort of regression, if you will, to the pre Roe vs Wade days.

Terminating an unwanted pregnancy has reclaimed a level of stigma and taboo that it had not enjoyed since the 1950s, even in cases where it is obviously the only sane option - for example, in the case of women - and little girls - who do not have the resources, financial or emotional, to care for a child, nor any realistic chance of acquiring them in 9 months.

Ologists hold forth on a variety of fascinating reasons and theories about why this is so, and it is an intriguing subject for debate and discussion.

What's not up for debate and discussion, however, is the reality of those girls, those women, who decide not only to deliver, but keep, their babies, and while all those ologists and hangers-on are enjoying all those delicious theories and lively discussions, those mothers are rushing to get dressed, feed their babies, pack their diaper bags, hurrying to catch pre-dawn buses, drop their babies off, and run to catch another bus, probably several, praying that they will not be late for their first job, whose wage, even when put together with the wage for the second or third job, is still not enough to purchase the basics of survival.

Not one of the girls on the 16 and Pregnant series chose to end her pregnancy.

We have no way of knowing whether this is because so few girls today make that choice, that there were just no candidates who met other casting and production criteria, whatever those may have been, or whether because of the great stigma of abortion, MTV felt that it would just be too controversial.

In fact, all the girls but one elect to raise their babies themselves.

The season finale features a heart-rendingly sweet and together little couple, flowers who have somehow managed to grow up into strong and loving young people despite both having come from dysfunctional train wreck homes.

They are determined that their child will know a different life, and being smart enough to realize that they cannot give her anything more than what they have, which is, it bears repeating, a train wreck, they wisely arrange to have the baby adopted by a a couple who can give her what they want for her, what they are, in fact, determined to get for themselves - one day.

But recognizing that 1) their baby will need it before "one day" occurs, and 2) "one day" is not going to occur if they set out to try to raise a baby at 16, with their only support consisting of their dysfunctional train wreck parents, "All that baby needs is love" insists the boy's fresh-out-of-prison father.

When I mentioned to a neighbor that I was going to blog about this show, her mother offered an interesting perspective.

"I don't like that show," she said. "It romanticizes it too much. That first girl had a hard time, but you look at some of them, their parents are helping them out, a couple of them got to go move in with their boyfriends, it shows them having these baby showers, they have all the cute little clothes, and then they show them in the delivery room, shows their face when they see the baby."

While her view is directly opposed to most of the comments I have read and heard about the show - including those of many teens who assert that the show has made them much more aware of the difficulties of having a baby while still in high school - I was struck by the kingpin of her argument - "it shows their face when they see the baby."

She was talking about that miracle.

Being a parent is the most important job in the world. We hear a lot of lip service paid to that, but we do not put our money where our mouth is. In actual practice, we do not give that miracle the respect, the awe, that it deserves.

The real "reality" is that as a society, that miracle is Maci making a way out of no way, and we are her no-account boyfriend.

Nurse Jackie: A New Jewel Appears in My All-Time Favorites Crown!

2009-07-15T15:42:00.000-07:00

Nurse Jackie is my new favorite show. She has also become one of my All Time Favoritest TV Characters With Whom I Secretly Identify - right up there with Emily Gilmore, Barnabas Collins and Gregory House.

It's just one of Those Shows, and she's just one of Those Characters, that come along only once in a great while - a kind of TV Love at first sight.

Within minutes, even seconds, you just Know.

It shoots right up there into that rare stratosphere of favoriteness where watching re-runs is like re-reading a beloved book, a show that, if you could afford an external hard drive, you would save every episode just so you could watch them whenever you wanted to, and you keep them on your hard drive until you are so absurdly low on space that you are faced with the impossible task of deciding which episodes you absolutely cannot be without.

I've always suspected that the first utterance of that old saying about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts was inspired by an ensemble cast.

It's something that the shows we love the most tend to have in common, and usually what happens is we get to watch the actors' journey, watch them feel and fumble their way to that Golden Ideal.

Nurse Jackie viewers get to witness an even rarer phenomenon - the magic of an instant ensemblization - they just sort of miraculously click themselves into a whole greater than the sum - and do so at least to our eyes - effortlessly.

With the exception of Jackie herself, the other characters, whether taken separately or as a boxed set, are pretty much predictable, standard issue, stock supporting roles, but set into orbit around the sun of Jackie, something cosmic happens.

We'll probably never know an exact percentage credit breakdown for the character of Jackie as we see her - how much of her was first committed to paper by Liz Brixius, how much of her is fleshed out and layered and nuanced by the fabulous Miss Edie Falco, but the result is genius enough to qualify for yet another Miracle Ensemblization Award - another whole that exponentially exceeds the sum of its parts!

Independent of cultural context, and I will dare to predict, historical period, Jackie is first and foremost a kind of SuperMarySue. Through her, we are able to do all kinds of things that we wish we could do, that we would do if we had the opportunity.

Jackie lets us imagine being the person sitting there with the organ donor card in front of us, and no one paying us the slightest bit of attention, through her we can enjoy the wish-fulfillment of getting to slip the wad of cash into the bag of the sleeping single mother, packing up a big bag of medicine for the little girl with the sick mom whose "insurance is shit."

This is not to cast the show in the role of some kind of aid for mental health through vicarious living.

Jackie's choices are by no means always the ones I would make - like yanking the catheter out of the alleged pedophile - or using physical intimacy with a co-worker as a strategy for managing the gargantuan stress-load of job and personal health issues under which she somehow manages not only to function, but excel.

The show is first and foremost just plain old good entertainment, and does a great job of maintaining the right mix of comedy, pathos, and drama. Dialogue is simple but snappy, and story arcs are meaty enough to intrigue but simple and universal enough to be "accessible" to a wide audience.

Granted, my perception is that of a viewer who loves the show and has bestowed upon it - and Jackie - a place in my personal All Time Favorite Hall of Fame.

No TV program is going to be for absolutely everybody, but the good news for critics of the show and particularly of the Jackie character, is that today, what we used to call "the airwaves" are populated with such a wide variety of programming that there is something for everyone.

People who don't like Nurse Jackie simply need to watch a different show!

Real Housewives of New Jersey: Bravo Gets Its Discovery Channel On

2009-06-18T21:03:00.000-07:00

Two things I doubt we will ever know: 1) what transpired between Dina and Danielle, and 2) What role Bravo played in the structure of the finale, including the "big family dinner" and the presence of Danielle and the book.

Both Dina and Danielle have made repeated references to a falling out between them, conflict that pre-dates and is unrelated to the book.

That the date of the big family dinner would coincide with the show's season finale could have been a post-production decision, or it could reflect routine, run-of-the-mill reality show "collusion" between producers and cast, but as was the case with the famous Salsa Night event, the idea that the decision to invite Danielle originated with the family strains "suspension of disbelief" to the breaking point.

The Manzos all have some relationships with non-family members, with whom they are on good terms, yet the only non-family member invited to this family dinner was Danielle.

That Danielle might seize a gathering of all the Manzos to confront the family about their reaction to the book, and to her, with or without prodding and/or logistical assistance from Bravo is believable. Whipping the book out and plopping it onto the table smells, at least to me, of a closer, more familiar relationship with and knowledge of production values than Danielle's modeling experience would have provided.

I have not been able to watch a single episode of this show without being involuntarily shifted into Discovery Channel mode, and I think the finale may have done that to a lot of viewers who don't even watch the Discovery Channel.

It was a continuous anvil-drop, flattening the heads of the viewing audience with the message that 1) The Manzos are a closed society, and 2) Intruders are not welcome and will be ejected.

So who really "took the book through the town?" The whole point of the show was that it does not matter.

If one Manzo did it, they all did it, and Caroline, as the tribal chief, will "take the blame" on the tribe's behalf.

Just as kings and chieftains of old rode out to battle in front of their clansfolk, so Caroline assumed responsibility for her tribe.

That is the "real" reality, and it trumps and renders irrelevant the minutiae of individual actions on the part of those who ride behind her.

The most interesting Discovery Channel Moment was of course when one of the tribe stood in opposition to the rest.

The principle that loyalty to a group, family, tribe or nation takes precedence over any and all other values, mores or moral code so permeates our human family, today as yesterday, in the glittering modern city as in the most isolated mountain hamlet, that many of us don't even notice it, or if we do, we simply take it for granted, and consciously or unconsciously seat it firmly at the head of the table at our own "family dinner" of attitudes, opinions and beliefs, above tenets or doctrines of our faith tradition, even our own personal notions of "right" or "wrong."

If a group with which we have a strong association, with which we identify, does it, it is right, even though we might be the first to call it "wrong" when the same thing is done by a different group.

Group members who diverge from this take a big risk. Historically, they would most likely be set upon and killed outright by the other group members, or physically banished from the group, which historically would mean death, as a matter of practicality, since once humans had established tribes and communities, we became dependent on them for survival. They were, after all, established in order to enable us to survive.

Today the banishment is more likely to take a less literal form.

Banishment of a primal dissenter - meaning one who places some other principle or value above the primal and unassailable rule of "if my group does it, it's right," in modern times frequently involves banishment by dismissal - the dissenter is labeled as one version or another of a harmless fool, and any potential threat to the group - or to decisions made by the chief on the group's behalf - is removed.

That threat, of course, the danger being averted by this action, is that other group members might follow suit, stand up with the dissenter, divide the group and reduce its power.

This very thing has, of course, happened in the course of our history, so many times that today it has become commonplace for another group to initiate the tactic, by encouragement of an existing potential dissenter, or by outright placement of a "ringer" to act as dissenter with the aim of dividing the group, and conquering the two resulting weaker groups, thus the expression "divide and conquer."

Caroline - with the help of her brother, in the role of lieutenant - deftly averted the possibility of anything like that happening to the Manzos, shrewdly dismissing Jacqueline's dissent by attributing it to the latter's "good heart," and magnanimously forgiving her, including her in the fold even as she is effectively banished from holding any real power within it.

It's unlikely that she realized that she was also delivering, in the approximate words of a popular sacred text "a lesson for those with eyes to see."

Southern Belles Louisville - Not Suitable for Sensitive Viewers

2009-05-22T14:10:00.000-07:00

May all applicable deities, djinns and spirits be invoked, and my household instructed to inform visitors, in hushed tones, that I am laid upon the bed!

I have watched the "Real Housewives," in all its various ghastly iterations. I have squee!ed and shuddered in delighted disgust with the best of them in the unspeakably lurid parade of the majestic oeuvre of Chris Abrego, each more grandiloquently repellent than the last.

So what is it about the seemingly innocuous-by-comparison Southern Belles Louisville that makes my flesh crawl?

It took me a while to figure it out, but I think, to put it as politely as possible, that it is the diminished suspension of disbelief requirement.

With all due respect to DiVello, Abrego, et al, their creations give the senses an "out." The much-decried obviously scripted and totally UN-real nature of the reality shows to which we have become accustomed permit us to emerge from our viewing experience comforted, even if subconsciously, by the knowledge that it is "just a show," a work of fiction no different from Ong Bak or Original Recipe Exorcist.

But somehow, Southern Belles Louisville, whether due to artistic intent on the part of the director or exceptional dramatic talent on the part of the cast, fails to provide that cooling spray of reassurance.

These hamsters, this reality show, cranks the realness up a couple of notches past my viewing pleasure center.

Maybe it is just the unavoidable damning by faint praise of calling these characters "better drawn" than the typical Rock of Love skank, a sort of superficial pseudo-documentary version of Arendt's banality of evil.

Or maybe it's because that banality hits a little too close to home in ways that at least for most of us, Bikini Corrie and Heidi Montag do not.

While relatively few of us can make such a claim about Saaphyri or Brittanya, if we are to be brutally honest, and leaving aside any and all distinctions of geographical or cultural context, most of us have, at some point in our lives, known these Belles.

And even more poignantly, most of us will have, at some point in our lives, faced the sad task of comforting their hapless Beaux.

The Belles' grisly payload of skeeve is not about just another gaggle of bimbos "suckin back" on the glorified screwdriver whose current popularity has no doubt caused the descendants of that crafty old imperialist Lauchlin Rose to ceaselessly bless his crusty old opportunistic soul, nor is it yet another stream of glittering scenes of yet another charity event where the total sum of funds raised is slightly less than price paid by most of the attendees for their gowns.

If we are tempted to gasp at the incogitant cruelty of Hadley, as she describes her dream wedding standing two feet from the man who has just declared himself and been spurned, what really gets us is the look on his face. That's just a smoosh realer than I like my reality, thanks just the same.

Hadley actually breaks two hearts in the course of the first episode. Her best friend, who, though presented to us as a "ladies man," has the words "quintessential nice guy" painted all over his every word and gesture, is also in love with her, and meets the same sad fate as his rival.

If we can manage to move past the cringeworthy pathos of those sorry little scenes, we are obliged to acknowledge that it would be disingenuous, not to mention impossible, to completely divorce the show's zeitgeist from cultural context.

On the contrary, we are hit in the face with the social costs of a culture in which some of the children remain children until they are well into their thirties.

If Hadley displays the emotional nescience of a teenaged girl, Emily seems similarly oblivious to the gilded cage from which she acts out "her dream."

Thanks to parents depicted as annoying salt of the earth folksy folks who dine at a card table adorned with a bottle of supermarket salad dressing, whose down-home working class ethos belies their inherited millions, in return for some relatively mild belittling of her unremarkable hairstyle choices, Emily receives the safety net that permits her to eschew a seat in the family boardroom in favor of a low-wage fun job at the local TV station.

The Belles' blondetourage is rounded out by Kellie, the obligatory divorcee "waiting for her settlement," currently obliged to live in a modest home that she petulantly boasts would have fit into the garage of the residence provided by her erstwhile spouse. The poor thing has even been reduced to using one of the bedrooms as a closet, to accomodate the designer spoils of her late marriage. At 32, Kellie declares she wants to have her own money now. She wants her settlement, dammit!

Of all the Belles, Julie is the least fleshed out, at least in the first episode, where her role seems to be primarily that of Culture Victim. A low-end fashion model in her mid-thirties, she is now subjected to the indignity of being told she could get work in ad campaigns looking for "soccer mom types." As the camera moves from the decade-old glamour shots in her book to her face upon hearing this verdict from a smug-faced agent, the narrator doesn't have to say a word. The strains of the leitmotif of heartbreak swell as clearly as if sounded by a score of violins. Julie's story is trite but true. The Youth Culture really does destroy lives and souls. Well, duh.

Speaking of narration, apparently Shea does need some. We hear her background described as "nouveaux riche," against a montage that screams "Ya think?" If ever reality show has shown us a stereotype, Shea is it. Her shallowness and vapidity soar to cartoonish near-Hills quality heights. She has captured, it would seem, the heart of a suitor, but pouts that she has no ring. She takes him shopping for one. He would, he says, need to sell both kidneys in order to afford one that she would wear.

Shea is the creepiest of all because if you have known only one Belle in your lifetime, whether you knew her in Louisville, Lagos or Lhasa, in the 20s, the 60s, the 80s, she's the one you knew.

Maybe you know her today. And even if you missed it, you just know she had a really amazing Super Sweet Sixteen.

Real Housewives of New York: Chihuahua Tongue Flashback and The Count is an Old Rake

2009-04-24T02:58:00.000-07:00

In case we had forgotten about RHNY's contribution to the Most Revolting Moments In Television Hall of Ew, Jill promises her little chihuahua dog that if he cooperates with having his Halloween costume fitted, she will "let" him insert his tongue deep into her nose and lick it clean.

Mercifully, we were spared a repeat of Ms Zarin's preferred combination nasal hygiene and animal cruelty performance.

This week's real RHNY gossip was off-camera - according to reports, Count de Lesseps (who received his title as a result of an ancestor having arranged for some rich men to make some more money) has forsaken his erstwhile Countess Luann, who refers to herself as a "Native American from Connecticut," for Her Royal Highness Princess Kemeria Abajobir Abajifar of the ancient Gibe Kingdom in the land today popularly known as Ethiopia.

Luann, who distinguished herself on the show for expressing displeasure when Bethenny introduced her to a driver as "Luann," instead of "Countess de Lesseps," maybe ten minutes before a scene in which she is shown addressing catering staff by their first names, and hurling an especially ugly back-handed putdown at a ten year old girl who said she wanted to be a model when she grew up, and snort-sneering at another who aspired to be a baby-sitter, has written a book called "Class with the Countess."

Count and Countess are said to be currently "separated," but if they should divorce, will outraged readers demand that the publisher send them a new copy of the book with an updated title? Maybe "Class with the Ex-Countess," or "Class with a Native American from Connecticut?"

On the show, however, Luann goes shopping with her daughter, who, she says, enjoys "watching her (Luann) getting dressed in the dressing room." (WTF?)

She buys the daughter a black hoodie identical to one I got last week at Wal-Mart, except the daughter's has unsightly elbow patches. Mine cost $9.

I hope the Possibly Soon-to-be Ex-Countess didn't pay a whole lot extra for those patches.

After re-watching a few episodes, I have, upon reflection, come to the realization that Kelly, at least as she is depicted on the show, may be "troubled," and thus the only appropriate comment would be to express the sincere hope that she will seek and receive any help she may need.

The Hills: El Mongol would have kicked Spencer's ass

2009-04-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

OK, OK, I know this has already been mentioned, including by me. But come on. Is this going to go down in the Great Moments in Stupid Television or what?

The dude went into the bar with a camera crew. Releases were signed. Introductions were made, removing any possibility of Stacy-the-bartender not recognizing one of the two most over-exposed faces on the planet.

Next, we get Spencer ragging on Heidi about the appearance of her high school boyfriend at a restaurant outing with her parents in Colorado, where she had, in her anguish, fled, with a camera crew, for three whole days.

Said boyfriend appearance, it is only fair to note, was one of the stiffest and most awkwardly done scenes in the whole series. Darlene couldn't even keep a straight face, and boyfriend's fervent desire for the floor to open up and end it all right then was more audible than his mumbled lines.

Then, we have Heidi and Stephanie speculating about where Spencer may have gone. Hey, I know - ask the camera crew that's there with him! The ones that the crew that is there with you are texting and paging every five minutes about logistics and lunch as soon as we finish up the next scene.

OMG! They guessed right! Are they psychic? They know Spencer so well! He can't hide! And there he is with the Stacy the Smirking, that Charlie-who-is-a-bad-influence (How can anyone possibly be a "bad influence" on Spencer Pratt?) and a couple of random girls who, like Stacy, are like, all brunette and stuff, but still white, KWIM?

Spencer waits for his cue. You can't see his earbud, but you know it's there, and he listens, Bush-like, for instructions, for line.

Suddenly, there they are - Heidi, in full Donna Reed Wannabe Wronged Wife Face Mode. She's been practicing. Spencer is contemptuous-contemptible-tipsy-cavalier, Charlie carpes the diem for some face time, even profile, he better take what he can get, this is his Big Chance, Stacy Smirks, the random chicks smile randomly for the camera crew.

Next thing you know, we're back on the regular Hills set, a little table outside any cafe, and oh what a cliffhanger - the show ends with Heidi, as advised by Stephanie, giving Spencer An Ultimatum - Counseling or Else!

Could this be the End of the Greatest Love Story of All Time?

As if that weren't suspenseful enough, think about it from the point of view of viewers who have forgotten that taping for this season ended like around Christmas or something - TMZ has not done any Speidi segments for a whole week!

Fox has got your back, Adam.

When I was in the sixth or seventh grade, around 1963 or 4, I don't remember how the subject came up, but I remember that some kid said that the "wrestling" show slated for the weekend in a nearby city, headlined by El Mongol, was not "real." A short, stocky little girl with freckles and a porcine nose leapt up, and with tears streaming down a face flushed to an alarming shade of fuschia, began pounding the young heretic with plump, grimy little fists. "Take it back!" she sobbed, her squeaky voice hoarse with rage and for a second, I thought, something like fear.

I cannot hear the even the first notes of Natasha Beddingfield's anthem of hope and promise and excessive lip gloss without remembering that scene, as vividly as if it happened an hour ago.

So yes, Virginia, The Hills is real. Adam Divello is a real man. The releases are real. Lauren is real. Heidi, Spencer, their Great and Eternal Love, the camera crew, all real.

And so is The City. Whitney really does work at DVF. The show shoots there at least twice a week, and she receives a real paycheck for showing up there and doing her scenes.

Kyle XY: Series Finale Override: The hey_am_here Canon

2009-03-28T06:16:00.000-07:00

To say that the series finale sucked, that it was a slap in the face to the many sincere fans of the show, would be an understatement - and nothing but a paraphrase of about 12,975,389.06 other blogrants.

But what the viewers want is closure, and hey_am_here was kind enough to provide it, on the blighted network's on website, and so, without further ado, I present to you the full and original text of what shall henceforth be known as the hey_am_here Kyle XY Canon:

here's what I think so far:

Well first I thik kyle will not kill cassidy but he'll in some how get into cassidy''s memory and find the way he killed sara and save it into a herogliphic memory and that he'll black mail cassidy like he did and threats him if he don't let the familly alone he will expose him and put him i jail.

About what Jessi found in nate's computer I think she knew the fact that Kyle and cassidy are brothers and probably nate too that's why he was interessted in kyle issue.
Then nete wakes and hurts jessi he'll shock her or try to kill her or some thing like that and in some way amanda manages to run away so she goes back to tell kyle. Mean while kyle goes to the rack to save the family and by mark's help he figures out away to do it.

But there's one missing IT'S JESSI so amanda tells him that she is in nate's appart and probably he killed her and that nate is in arage and ask him to stay and don't go that she's gone and that she wants him back since every thing is over now, but he tells her that after what they passed through together he can't leave her that he cares about her that he loves and can't live without her.

So kyle goes to latnock no one was there just like in the firt episode of saison 3 every thing is gone he listens to jessi's hart beats here is it but it's getting slower he starts a deseption to find out where is she she's locked in cassidy's office, she's wonded she is dying here heart is stoping kyle restarts all his power revive her but it doesn' work he's loosing her he lost his hope and as usual it come some one to save the day it's Foss he asks him to kiss her, but kyle says there's no why she's allredy dead but foss inssists so kyle does it at that moment a masse circuit of energy lightens the city of seatel. And here she is, she opens here eyes she's alive but after this whole power loss kyle and her are so tyred and frustraited they just passe up and wake up on the hospital where all the familly and friends were waiting for them. So foss took them to the hospital. Then life goes back to normal at the tragers kyle and jessi decides to take along tripe out of seatel. They continued their training together with foss.

And finally it all ends up three four years later it's josh and andy's wedding every body was there kyle and jessi are back for the weddind they got married and they have tow cute children a boy and a girl "Adam & Sarah", declan and the girl from latnock are married to she became a Prof at the university and declan is now ruling his fathers company since he can't get back to basketball. Lori now is pop star she kept writing songs and her cds are hitting the world but she out of work now, she's pregnant, her husband mark now is working with steven they established acompany working in computers hardwares. And of course you all asking about amanda she's teaching piano and ruling her own conservatory and yes she's got married to a guy who is muscian too he plays violent and she has a very sweet young man seven months old his name is.....defently "KYLE". Oh how do I forgot necole the tender mother she is working at a heigh school as a social conselar. Hey waite I said it's josh and andy's wedding but where are they they're too late every body is waiting for them, oh not they're in josh's room, what are they doing, WHAT??? they're playing G-force!!!!!!!!!!!! what is this tey never grow up even though they are 21 years old unbelievable.
what do you think????????????

The L Word: A Eulogy of Faint Praise

2009-03-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

The first three seasons of The L Word are a frolic of nostalgia for the late-sixties-early seventies lifestyle as enjoyed by that swath of the Baby Boom who lived for Art and stayed twenty-something right on up to the maw of 40.

Lyrical, even evocative of early David Lynch, L Word starts out as the simple tale of Jenny, All-American EveryGirl, who leaves her corn-fed, midwestern small town existence behind to seek her fortune in Hollywood.

We know right away that this story is not just your typical night-time soap, because Jenny does not aspire to be a movie star.

She does not want to be an actress or a model. Our Jenny wants to be a Writer!

When she arrives in LA, where she will live with her corn-fed, midwestern small town womens' swimming coach of a boyfriend Tim, she expresses surprise at the proximity of the Pacific Ocean. That's just how innocent she is. And she has big googly smudgepotted eyes, with really looooong innocent lashes, that lower thoughtfully as she peeks at a couple of her new Lesbian neighbors romping in the swimpool next door.

Tim has her describe everything she saw in detail. He is really turned on, and they make sweet innocent corn-fed midwestern love.

It is through young Jenny's eyes that we are introduced to the other major characters, Bette and Tina, the Stable Relationship Couple with Issues, Alice the Adorable and Quirky EveryPal, Dana the Closeted Athlete, Marina the Predator Fatale and Shane the Irresistible Androgyne.

The juxtaposition of the comfortable traditional sitcomic stereotype characters with the kiss of quasi-surrealism in the editing, lots and lots of snappy Gilmore Girl-grade dialogue and a compact if predictable plotline that manages to peel away the layers of those characters while still retaining an ethereal and amusing lightness makes the first three seasons as delightfully addictive as even the most jaded viewer could wish.

We meet the L-Wordians in the full bloom of those halcyon days of friends as chosen family, the first yearnings of that second nest-leaving that can be more seminal than the first, a coming of age redux as the twenties march on, and instincts older than time, stirrings of nesting, wing-spreading, and through the show we watch this poignant, sometimes cataclysmic unfolding into adulthood's chilly Big Room.

It's entertaining enough to make you overlook the annoyance that once again, the victims are affluent residents of the SoCal enclaves, though the series does indulge in some diversity celebratin', The L Word's glossy ambiance of entitled and affluent SoCal whitefolks manages to be faithful to the subgenre of 90210, The OC, and their subsequent "reality" companions even beyond the enclaves, with significant storylines set in West Hollywood, East LA and beyond.

Though it may have the ring of damning by faint praise, the series does feature more people of color than its predecessors, and its "social issues addressed" list includes at least a glancing acknowledgment of the impact on the lives of individuals of societal perceptions of ethnicity: Bette, one of the main characters, is bi-racial, and the show gets points casting here. Like Bette, Jennifer Beals is a light-skinned child of one white and one African-American parent.

If previous teleworks, both traditionally scripted and "reality" flavor, have subjected the hapless SoCalaffluents, particularly women, to a repeated battering of stereotypical portrayals, drawing, over the years, a caricature of a population already popularly perceived as cartoonish, characterized by shallowness and exaggerated materialism honed to art forms, proudly insular, more proudly ignorant, essentially useless creatures whose principal talents are self-absorption, shopping, solipsism, and "tanning," a quaint custom of white people dyeing their skins orange, a key expression, along with aquisition of long blonde hair and large surgically attached breasts, of their collective desire to physically resemble each other as much as possible.

The L-word cranks that up a notch, giving us further insight into the nature of this fascinating demographic creation, presenting us with a portrait of beings almost unfailingly incapable of viewing or being in the presence of another human to whom they feel even the most fleeting and superficial attraction without hurling themselves immediately into each other, the mythical "nymphos" so whispered about by the zit-afflicted teenboy contingent since time immemorial, the heroines of generation upon generation of wet dreams, women who are not only willing, not only eager to engage in physical intimacy, but biologically and emotionally incapable of restraining the ferocity of their uncontrollable urges regardless of appropriateness of time, place, choice of partner, potential - or certain - impact on others, involved, traffic...

Someone somewhere decided at the first concept meeting that The L Word must not content itself with merely featuring lots of sex scenes. Every episode must be chock-a-block with not just any old sex scene, but Hollywood-styled pretty, pretty sex, most of it the kind of hot steamy girl-on-girl fantasy action so beloved of those adolescent males and "men's magazine" fans.

Although the show's credits feature many prominent women very prominently, and the main characters are Lesbians, one gets the sense while the dialogue and character development seem skewed toward a female audience, the sex scenes are very markedly designed to appeal to the customer base of the Girls Gone Wild series.

A kinder perspective, might compare it to the Bollywood convention of characters spontaneously bursting into big song-and-dance production numbers every fifteen minutes or so in the course of a two-hour movie, completely independent of whether such a thing would be something the character in question "would do."

Enjoying this show requires the viewer to ascend to whole new levels of suspension of disbelief.

This is really the best way to absorb the show as a whole, otherwise it becomes just too distracting. Although the Sex Scene-Production Numbers certainly impact the story line, and frequently constitute plot development, at the same time they sort of exist on a different plane, floating above characters or plot, presumably for the benefit of those pubescent males who have no interest in any of that, and simply fast forward through any scenes where the actors are clothed. (Though they should do so with caution, as the characters are not always able to contain themselves long enough to disrobe).

Even during the Summer of Love, those dreamlike pre-AIDS years that saw the coming of age of the Baby Boom, where those who participated had few inhibitions about sexual activity, engaging in it early and often, and on the slightest provocation, (pun just left there), it was nothing like the L Word, where eyes meet, meaningful glances are exchanged, and the next minute is a full-on Penthouse video, plot and character tossed wildly across the room to land engagingly across the lampshade, along with time, place, and bits of fancy lingerie, which all the characters wear all the time, even when they are at home alone.

Before the show's debut, there was naturally a lot of interest, and many hoped, I think, that it might serve to reduce, even if only a little bit, the ignorance that spawns bigotry and hatred, and there are certainly storylines and dialogue that do have the potential for raising awareness of a number of social and legal issues that bigotry has created.

However anyone who looks to this show to "learn about Lesbians," or transgendered people, gay men, heterosexuals of either gender - anybody - would be well advised to hang onto that Bollywood song-and-dance metaphor with regard to actual sexual behavior.

No real people of any sexual preference or orientation behave like that, or have sex like that, unless they are doing it as performance art at best, or making that Penthouse video or a simple porn flick at most likely.

Ironically, what suffers most from this are the points in the story where the characters would be intimate. It's not that they aren't, just that by the time we get to a point in the story where there should be a real "sex scene," there have been so many that this is just another one, and like all the others, it is Bollywood Production Number Sex, that deprives the characters of any genuine sexuality, and thus deprives the viewers of a key and integral facet of the character.

Halfway through Season 1, I found myself doing the opposite of the teenboys - fast forwarding through the sex scenes as if they were commercials, not out of prudery, but a combination of boredom and curiosity born of real interest in the story itself!

No doubt to atone for an unacceptably low-level of regime praise in earlier episodes, in season 4, one of the most likeable and popular characters, Alice, is persuaded to jettison any previous aversion to crimes against humanity by being taken on a helicopter ride, given a kiss, and informed that her current object of desire is an old fashioned and traditional kind of girl who believes in invading other countries and waiting until she is "sure" to throw down and get freaky.

Her best friend is naturally the totally coolest lark in the exaltation; Kate Moenning's portrayal injects loveable fauxbutch playa Shane with more cool hotness even the producers will have dreamed of, back in those giddy pre-production days when the character's concept was carefully focus group-enriched to inspire girls who have never kissed a girl to reflect that if they ever were to do so and like it, it would have to be one like Shane.

Her gender-transcending and irresistible appeal is trumped only by that of Papi (Eva Torres), a stereotype-laden Latin American force of nature, the aforementioned best friend of the regime loyalist who reinforces the ideological dysfunction du jour of "supporting" the "policies" while disliking the on-camera talent.

Viewers who are sensitive to having their intelligence, along with a generous handful of population sectors, insulted will want to avoid this show, but the truly impervious devotee of vapid, mindless entertainment and Trash TV as an emerging genre should revel in it.

Season 4 is definitely where the series jumps the proverbial shark. This is where it all breaks down into desperate needy marketward graspings, not only at the predictable and presumably obligatory glorifying of atrocity, but greedily lapping up even the poker craze, culminating in one of the characters using crisp paper money to commit a sexual act on the disowned heiress, a connectivity that will cause the more fastidious viewers (the ones who have heard of Erich von Stroheim, anyway) to cringe.

To add insult to injury, Shane, the most awesome of all the principals, is shown wearing pointy-toed boots.

Yet to give credit where it is due, the scene where Alice and Shane spray paint the billboard is a truly moving expression of friendship, and the All Day Bed Party in the same episode (9) is as delicious as it is cheesy.

By the show's Swan Season, the most complex of all the characters, Max, whose story had heretofore taken us down roads of transgender whatitsreallylike-ology that Hilary Swank drove right by with windows rolled up, has been sensationalized into a groaningly predictable "pregnant man" scenario, smearing cheap tabloid sperm all over one of the potentially meatiest roles Daniela Sea (who does an awesome job in spite of it all) or anybody else is likely to get in any sitcom, ever.

Sweet Innocent Ingenue w/ long lashes Jenny has morphed into Evil Jenny, so evil, in fact, that she has either fallen off an unfinished exterior landing or been mysteriously murdered, evidently by one of the other main characters, who despite their assorted nuanced flaws, and ample respective Reasons They Might Have Killed Jenny, are all essentially Good People.

The series finale has been by now so thoroughly and vigorously trashed by pretty much everybody who saw it and deigned to say anything about it at all that there is little I can contribute to the pyre.

Was it by design that all the "loose ends," - and there was a big ol' tangled ball of them - were pulled out and made looser? Had the writers just come off a Majid Majidi binge of several days without sleep, and decided, as the deadline hurtled ever closer to their noses, to present their own interpretation, some sort of pseudo-deconstruction of the great director's precision-landed nonendings?

Or was it a case of mass writer's block, caused by mercury poisoning, the result of poor sushi choices in the days and weeks that preceded the handing in of that final script?

If truth be told, it was so non-final that I did not realize until well into the second half of the episode that it was the series final!

It was probably accidental, the presence of one smile-and-nod inducing plot point: The L Word ended as it began, with the main characters, Bette and Tina, together with issues, and with firm plans in place to resolve those issues by dint of obtaining a (second) baby.

The City vs The Hills: The Discrete Charm of the Vapid Whole

2009-01-14T17:14:00.000-08:00

I think it may be one of those whole greater than the sum of the parts things.

A key element of the charm and appeal, for want of better terms, of The Hills, had to do, I think, with the juxtaposition of essentially bland characters, each of whom brought a different quality of blandness, and without that blandness, the show would never have had another key element to its success: accessibility.

Lauren, Audrina and Whitney remind us all of girls we knew in high school, college, or both, no matter when or where we went to high school or college, and regardless of whether we mocked those girls, were best friends with those girls, wanted to be those girls, or were those girls.

That, more than any DiVellic script or production values or editing, is why we feel as if we know them, and why their inane interactions with each other against the backdrop of an almost static, time-stands-still landscape, resonate with us.

We are taken back to a standingstill time when we each heard our own personal protoLaruens and protoWhitneys exchange banalities, sharing with each other and us the non-events of lives that are, despite the glitterglam of the designer bags and endless expensive outfits and trendy restaurants, the glitzy star-studded events and assorted swimmin' pools n' movie stars, basically dull as dust.

Oh, sure, there is a little kick of schadenfreude, of cliched hollow bleakness of tinseltown existence, but these are almost optional condiments to be sprinkled or not on the dish that we are really lapping up: the slightly more "experienced," opaque-eyed Lauren, as she recounts, in her trademark whiskeywhisper, to Whitney the Fresh-Faced, that this or that boy did or did not call, that this or that recently or not-so-recently estranged friend of her televised Lagunadolescent days was or was not present at this or that place, texted or did not text, and Whitney's impeccably polite and unerringly noncommittal responses delivered in that perfect Nice Girl peal of a voice that no amount of coaching nor talent could produce. This is the reality part.

Whitney the Wholesome, who keeps her friend-estrangements, if any, genteelly to herself, who seldom receives, or expects calls from boys, at least none that she wishes to tell us about enough to interrupt Lauren, to whom it seemingly never occurs that Whitney has any existence at all beyond sitting at the next desk, she is there all night, waiting, while Lauren is out at the fashionable bar du jour taking shots and whispering to other more, sophisticated but equally uninteresting and unremarkable members of her limited little social circle about who has come in, who has gone out, OK, don't look but who is coming this way now.

Maybe the incongruity of what, in almost any other circumstance, would be called the "chemistry" between the two is enhanced by Whitney the MarySue, the viewer representative.

Lauren is without a doubt the most accessible Teen Queen in television history, Millions can identify with her completely, either being, or having been her, minus, of course, at least some of the tinsel and limitless wardrobe budget.

But if it is too heady for most of the show's biggest slice of the demographic pie, young girls between 10 and 24, to imagine themselves in the Jimmy Choos and Louboutins that grace the feet of LC Superstar herself, they can at least imagine themselves as that next-desk neighbor, receiving the Word from the slightly overglossed lips of the Goddess Herself.

Every high school, every college homecoming, every town festival, always has more Ladies in Waiting than Queens, more Whitneys than Laurens, who don't date quite as much, don't seem to inspire as much envy, or have quite as many quarrels with friends old and new.

The Los and Audrinas of the world do not fight over the coveted prize of being Whitney's BFF, nor are mothers likely to sigh that they wish their daughters had more friends like that Lauren.

It is no wonder then, that as The Hills has crawled on, through season after season of a story whose actual plot, if it can be called that, could be summed up in about half a page, double-spaced, as Lauren has blazed into the stratosphere of superstardom and become a one-woman empire that some awed whispers have suggested could be on her way to giving Oprah herself a run for her money one day, if this keeps up, that the Sweetheart Crown has gradually ceased to fit exactly, and shifted from Lauren's smooth, meticulously maintained highlighted head to the softer, corn-colored locks of Whitney the Increasingly More Accessible.

The decision, in retrospect quite shrewd, of Whitney to keep her personal life off the show (if indeed it was hers and not the producer's) added a touch of mystery to her sweetness, and cultivated a growing interest in the girl who just sat at the next desk and absorbed recap of the basically nothing that had happened last week, whose lines consisted almost solely of those unfailingly courteous, exquisitely vapid replies that slowly got viewers to wondering, first idly to themselves, and then out loud, what was really going on under those golden tresses.

There were even a few here and there who dared to speculate that Whitney must be totally over it by now, sick of just sitting there listening to Lauren going on about every phone call and text message she received, every social engagement she attended, though Lauren's star could by no means be said to be in decline, on the contrary, her fame moved ever-upward, even as more and more viewers began expressing more and more love for Whitney.

Audrina and Lo's own respective "chemistries" with Lauren fulminated and marched apace, and roles continued to grow, and the unique contributions to the show's overall lack of substance recognized, with Audrina becoming what that big viewer pie slice perceived as having an "edge," meaning that she hung out with "rockers" and had once posed for photos with her top off.

Audrina evolved into the Slightly Bad Girl and undisputed champion whose perfectly empty gaze would define for a generation the term "vacuous," perhaps most sharply crystallized by a scene that quickly catapulted itself to viral status, of a co-worker trying to discuss with Audrina the news of some experiments involving a particle accelerator, to which Audrina responded with the now-classic line "Isn't it strange that all of this is happening when Lauren is gone?"

Meanwhile childhood friend Lo, historically pleasant and perky, but so assiduously uninteresting, even for a show famous for giving viewers a glimpse into a world where nothing happens, that in a bold and unprecedented move, she was given a character makeover, and with no warning, and for no apparent reason, did a complete personality 180, from one appearance to the next became New Demon Lo, jealous and crafty, petty and manipulative enemy of Audrina, her declared arch rival for the BFFic affections of LC.

Whitney, already The Sweet One, by contrast began to appear positively angelic, and all through the fandom, Whitney Love bloomed like wildflowers on Miracle Gro.

This is how spinoffs happen, and so it happened with Whitney and The City, the story of the basically nothing much that happened when Whitney proved to have indeed grown weary of sitting at the next desk delivering noncommittal and courteous responses to Lauren's weekly update.

If ever a show were positioned to be an instant hit, The City should have been it. Whitney even relaxed her no private life on camera rule and allowed herself to be shown not only liking a boy, but kissing one, going on dates with one.

The new star-become sun was given her own coterie of satellite players, carefully selected to be guaranteed to be duller than she, but with tenuous off-show celebrity connections: the daughter of a famous name eighties rock band, a social-climbing wannabe whose mediaho antics had gained her a few, if not a full fifteen minutes of minor and largely local notoriety, even a slightly sketchy musician boyfriend with an Australian accent that he might or might not be enhancing for dramatic effect.

She was outfitted with a suitable faux job at a famous name design house, and the regulation spacious luxury apartment that no one who really had that job could possibly afford. Off-camera, she launched her own clothing line and made multiple appearances on The Hills aftershow to promote The City.

No effort was spared to painstakingly craft the show into an East Coast doppelganger of The Hills, with all the identical stock elements, of fancy parties and scene after scene set at cafe tables set up outside establishments popular with a small but select segment of Manhattanites who all knew each other and no one else.

But it just wasn't the same. It just isn't the same.

Whitney in the role of Manhattan Lauren recounting the non-events is nowhere near as compelling as Lauren, with her Knowing Looks imparting significance to the dreary trivia of her lifestyle of the rich and famous.

Frankly, Whitney was much more fun to watch when she sat at the next desk and replied politely, when any expression of emotion, even a smile or a laugh, would send viewers by the thousands to the internets to exclaim over how beautiful she was, and how much they loved her.

Where is the Whitney that won our hearts that wonderful day when, in the presence of God and everybody, even Emily the SuperIntern, Andre Leon Talley cast one keen glance at her and commanded the magnificent midnight blue Guy Laroche be brought forth and placed upon her?

Andre Leon Talley himself validated our growing Whitney-love, Andre the Giant of all that is Vogue on any and all coasts, saw some ineffable something In her sweet everyday face and proclaimed that our Whitney would walk.

Gracing and graced by the elegant drapery of the very gown in which Hilary Swank had accepted her Oscar, it was our Whitney who would walk, while LC, the undisputed Queen Regnant of Reality Television looked on with a clearly heartfelt joy for her friend, in contrast to the poorly-concealed glowering of Emily the SuperIntern, despite the fact that she, too, was walking, and Lauren was not!

It was an unforgettable day, a day on which something actually happened on The Hills - and what a something!

The now-famous stumble was the moment that sealed forever (or so we thought) Whitney's place in the box section of our affection.

What happened?

How can it be that a mirror-image of DiVello's Hills, matched shot for shot, scene for scene, ham-handedly lyrically relevant popular pop songbyte for ham-handedly lyrically relevant popular pop songbyte, trendy restaurant for trendy restaurant, with even more celebrity cameos and even more Real Couture because it IS New York, and starring our beloved wholesome fresh-faced Whitney, for whom the writers have even gone the extra mile, positioning her character as if she were the quintessential ingenue just arrived farm-fresh from some hamlet in the heartland instead of a seasoned Teen Vogue Paris returnee intern born and bred in the affluent SoCal enclaves and forged in the world capital of glamour, can fail to captivate us even as much as watching yet another meaningful Look form in the void behind those opaque eyes of Lauren Conrad as she huskily confides news of yet another phone call from someone the innocent-looking girl at the next desk has never met?

How do we, who have faithfully watched, for four seasons, every excruciatingly substance-free second of every still-life-paced, soul-sucking episode of The Hills, dare to complain that this DiVello creation, if possible more Hills than The Hills, is just not very interesting and that nothing really happens?

What audacity we have! And what short and fickle memories, to sulk at the just-opened box in which nestles the gift we asked for, the Whitney show we wanted!

The very WhitneyStar we created with our praise of her blandness, we whine, is too bland.

It is early days still for The City. It may find its zone yet.

Even if it tanks, if DiVello has ever had a moment's doubt of the rare jewel he has in Lauren Conrad, or ever questioned that he should move heaven and earth to hang onto her, he can consider the millions spent on the City as a good investment, because if it does nothing else, it will put those doubts and questions, whether they have actually occurred or not, to eternal and definitive rest.

Scarlett O'Hara, wrote Miss Margaret Mitchell, "was not beautiful, but men seldom realized that when caught by her charm..."

Lauren Conrad may be neither beautiful nor charming. She may not be the crispiest fry in the bag, or even interesting. One young man who had a small one or two episode part on The Hills described her "odorless."

**If she were not famous and therefore accompanied by a large and obvious entourage and jostling horde of paparazzi, It would, I think, be difficult to find Lauren in a crowd, in the context of the milieu in which she has lived her life, for instance, in a mall or at a concert in the SoCal enclaves. Had she not, as a young girl, made that fateful decision to sign on for Laguna Beach, it is very probable that today she would be virtually invisible.

I have seldom uttered more than two sentences about her without using the word "accessible," meaning that she is ordinary enough so that millions of viewers, diverse of age, culture, economic status and just about every other trick in the demographer's bag, can identify with her on some level.

Whatever she does not have, Lauren Conrad, we now know, just in case it might have been we and not DiVello who was having those doubts and questions, does have some indefinable and ephemeral quality, a je ne sais quoi that somehow confers on her the mystical ability to cause us to watch her, whether with reverence or lulz, as she does the same thing - which is basically nothing - week after week, year after year - that is, at least, as long as she is one of those parts whose sum is less than their whole.

**(Ironically, I can't say any of that about Whitney. I bet I could find her in a mall within minutes).

The Secret Life of the American Teenager: Here Comes The Child Bride

2009-01-07T01:42:00.000-08:00

"Little to offer," said The LA Times, who described the show as "thin, mechanical and confused."

"Doesn’t take the fun out of teenage pregnancy, it takes the fun out of television," sneered NYT, going on to hmmph that "ABC...could not have done worse."

Dudes! You had me at "thin, mechanical and confused!"

Nevertheless, whether due to planetary alignment, a coincidental side effect of The Pills, the hormonal hilarity unleashed by The Liberation that is Menopause or a combination of all three, but I completely ignored this show when it actually ran on ABC family, and as I did with The Gilmore Girls and more recently, the Twilight book series, sat down one day and gobbled up the entire pie of the first season in one gulp.

Or maybe I'm forming me a little pop culture consumption tradition.

Secret Life is the story of a typical TV-wholesome upper middle class suburban mainstream demographic community, whose idyll is shattered by a series of events at once improbable and ordinary, in a delightfully unlikely yarn ball of plot twists entertwining the various characters and their families.

If season one of Secret Life were a book, I would say it was un-putdownable, a crazy quilt of stereotypes and contra-stereotypes, improbable plot line comprised of everyday elements so commonplace they're either and both cliches and stuff that just doesn't even register on anybody's radar anymore.

Teen pregnancy, teen sex, foster homes, divorce, single parents, absent fathers, extra-marital affairs, blended families, sexual abuse, religious hypocrisy, all living cheek to jowl with the (very) occasional flash of serio-comic sweetness, nobility of character, and just plain old fashioned goodness synonym, all of the latter largely referring to the character of Ben and his widower father the Sausage King, both still grieving for the death of Ben's mom five years pre-show.

That's right. Out of the entire gaggle of tangle-lived teens, plotting against stereotype for once, Ben the rich kid is the "good one," for it is Ben the Chivalrous Prince of Sausage who falls in love wth Amy the Pregnant and offers to marry her, even though the baby is, of course, not his. Ben is so innocent that he practices his planned First Kiss on a life-sized plush bear. And dad the pudgy, dad the loveable Sausage King is all for it, because, he has no problem admitting, he - and his son - miss Ben's mother. What if, he asks, the marriage of two fifteen year olds does work out?

Ken Baumann as Ben appeals equally to lolfans and earnest innocent factions alike, with a performance that will have the latter raising the value of Kleenex stock, while the former will be obliged to give his talent its due and incline their giggling heads in respect.

I suppose some kind of quasi 4th-wall deliciousness points are due for casting Molly Ringwald, whose rise to icon was born of a series of movies where she played a teen who gets pregnant as Anne Juergens, whose daughter Amy (Shailene Woodley), the star of Secret Life, whose secret life includes - you guessed it - getting pregnant!

Amy "embodies innocence" as thoroughly as the most avid fan of innocence embodiment could wish. Shailene Woodley looks younger than fifteen, the age of her character, and somebody figured out that her doe-eyed childface would make a poignant contrast of a visual if they get her hands in the shot, the jarringly womanly length of her nailbeds, unpainted and natural, just to remind us when a scene is supposed to be particularly moving and bittersweet.

Liberal use is made of physical characteristics of other actors as well, sometimes engineered in whole or in part to tell the story, sometimes they seem to have been cast in their own sub-role. Alicia's injected fishlips, Ben's adam's apple, Adrian's big butt, the empty yet earnest opacity of Grace's dull almost turquoise/yellowblue eyes, even the TV evangelist butter-colored prophetlion mane of Grace's overacting buffoon father (played by John Schneider), and of course Amy and her nail beds.

The producers get props for casting Camille Winbush who has - gasp - dark skin - as Lauren, the obligatory African American best friend, and extra props for featuring Luke Zimmerman, an actor with Down's syndrome, though they lose some of those props by giving him lines with an unreasonably high hurl factor.

Megan Park as the vapid blonde devout Christian cheerleader gives really good vapidity, and Daren Kagasoff as the victim of child sexual abuse turned teen Lothario - and - Amy's band camp babydaddy drops upon our heads all the anvils of nuancing anyone could ask for.

Jack the box of rocks devout Christian jock is played to stereotypical perfection by Greg Finley, though Francia Raisa as Adrian the School Ho With A Heart of Gold and OMG! - A Brain! has a tendency to bring a little too much depth and subtlety to her character, making her mercifully short scenes with Finley a little awkward for all concerned.

And for extra stereoffensive lulz, guess what? She's Latin American! - and her single (of course) mom (Paola Turbay) is also a Ho With A Heart of Gold. And oh, yeah. the costume designer makes sure that Adrian has a teeny tiny waist and a big ol' JLo-sized booty.

But it is India Eisley as Amy's perfect Lolita of a little sister who emerges as the consistent scene kleptomaniac, ruthlessly commiting acts of serial scene larceny as she proudly shows off her ability to go from from the zero of a deadpan precocity of 13-going-on-40 Lolita to hurt child sixty in a nanobeat.

Season Two premiered this week with Ben and Amy's wedding. Yes, they really do get married. Why not? The typical scenario of economic troubles that might plague such a union are conveniently sidestepped by the existence of the lucrative Sausage Kingdom.

It is implied that Ben footed the bill for fake IDs for the entire all-teen wedding party and guests.

No parents were invited. Just as well, since all the parents are currently very busy with their own assorted and sordid goings-on.

Amy's parents are splitting up, because it got out that her buffoon of a dad was hooking up with Adrian's mom, who is in negotiations with her babydaddy over Adrian's future, the evangelical blonde Christian Bowmans might also be splitting up, because it got out that Mrs. Bowman cheated on Amy's dad when they were married, before she married Dr Bowman and had Grace and adopted Tom, Lauren's dad, who is also Ricky's shrink, is all conflicted because Ricky made out with Lauren, and the school guidance counselor has Mysteriously Disappeared.

If the opener is any indication, Season Two of Secret Life will be more "thin, mechanical, and confused" than ever!

I'm stoked! I won't be missing a single golden moment! And neither should you!

Gossip Girl: Writers Steal Bad Fanfic and CrossBreed with Twilight

2009-01-06T07:34:00.001-08:00

I think this season, I'm just going to be a little less literal in terms of my Gossip Girl viewing, and just pick up where that semi-inspired but sad little sputter-start of a fanfic left off.

The writers, at least so far, are being at least semi-cooperative in terms of subtext, so no matter what you may think you saw, here's what really happened on tonight's episode, which is subtextually told in flashbacks as the past merges with the present.

Upon catching Chuck in his glittermarble arms as he was jumping from the building, Edward whisked him off to Thailand, where the Cullen family has taken up part-time residence when they're not in Forks.

There he was swiftly vampirized by Carlisle, whose intrepid dedication has resulted in this being a much more streamlined process, and instead of being a raging, incontrollable walking bag of unstoppable compulsions and urges, Chuck emerged from the process just a bit groggy, but with the help of nomad Uncle Jack, quick-study Chuck learns nomad skills and nomads back to New York for the first day of school, obviously not quite 100% yet (hash makes lousy joints, you really need a pipe).

Because Chuck is careful to stay in the shade, Blair doesn't see any actual sparkling, but she can tell that something is a little off, because when she looks into his eyes she can't see him anymore.

Then Blair has a panic attack but is luckily able to stop it by quickly stylemorphing into Emily Gilmore.

Before dreaming that it is she and not Edward Cullen who saves Chuck from his planned rooftop plunge, she gets really mad at the most prestigious Argyle Vest Enthusiast club in all New York, which she is hoping to join but will be unable to when her parentage is investigated and it is revealed that Dorota is secretly her biomom, which makes her ineligible, at least until it is revealed that Dorota is secretly the child of a member of a long-deposed Eastern European royal family (Romania, maybe? Hmmmm. Just sayin...) whereupon the fancy club will fall all over itself begging her and Blair to please please both join. And what hilarity will ensue when Nellie's inevitable and official not-quite-werewolfescence gets cranked up and she imprints on Uncle Jack, even though the rules on the Vampires Unite roleplaying board clearly states Absolutely no Vampire/Werewolf romances and even though Uncle Jack is discovering that Blair is his own special brand of heroin and he is totally going to tap that.

Meanwhile, somewhere, probably somewhere in Manhattan, an Immortal Child is on the loose. Well, an Immortal Teen, ostensibly the product of a moment of fervent youthful fumbling by Rufus and She who has now been revealed as now-Enemy Vampire Lily, but of course really created by her because all women want babies more than they want to breathe air, which Lily, being a vampire, only does recreationally anyway, and it is in that same spirit of primordial whimsy that she created the Immortal Child, whom Rufus has vowed to track down, because he thinks it is just a regular mortal child and he is the babydaddy because being a babydaddy is what he is all about.

While all this is going on, we suddenly notice that Lil' J is behaving very mysteriously, suddenly and for no apparent reason renouncing her life's ambition and her dreams of being a Famous Fashion Designer and the Toast of All the Runways of Paris, and decided instead that she wants to be a normal high school girl. She explains that this is because at the Snowflake Ball she felt 15 for a minute and liked it. Very mysterious, indeed.

What is unknown at this point is whether that crusty old dude we saw Serena tangoing with in Argentina made her a vampire during one of those dips. What we do know is that she has broken up with he who is now Blair's sketchy artist dude step-brother, and now wants to be Dan's girlfriend again, and teach him to do the tango.

Did Rufus arrive just in time to save Dan from being vampirized? Is Lil'J suddenly so concerned about Nellie's human rights being violated because she knows that Nellie is secretly a teenaged not-quite-werewolf and she wants to make a territorial agreement for the Upper West Side with her before Nellie surprises everyone, herself most of all, by fursploding? And shouldn't that happen at some sort of fancy dress ball specially given for the occasion by the Argyle Vest Enthusiast club or something?

And just exactly how dead is Bart, really? Or would it be more accurate to describe him as UNdead? Is he - could he be - Volturi? Chosen of course, for his Special Vampire Talent of being really creepy.

Ruby: Inspired Adornment and Unadorned Truth

2008-12-28T07:29:00.000-08:00

Best.Ruby.Episode.Ever!

On the one hand, it feels inappropriate, presumptuous, to compare my own journey, my own challenges, to Ruby's.

While I have, to be sure, a heaping plate of "health issues," my own situation cannot be compared to the urgency, the immediacy, the right-now-no-shit-life-or-death state of affairs Ruby faces.

But has Ruby herself not stated that her very motivation for the show is the hope that her story might inspire others?

That is, after all, her reason for subjecting herself to months of taping, allowing camera crews into the home, into the life of an individual who is about as far from the typical reality show hamster as it is possible to get - to inspire and help people who are struggling with all kinds of addiction, all kinds of problems?

It is her intention that we identify with her, each in our own way, and today's episode totally hit home for me.

Although we have seen some advancement in the last few decades, the fact is that the principle of inclusion in the area of ladies' ready-to-wear receives a lot more lip service and advertising hype than facts on the rack.

When my own five two-and-a-fraction self tipped the scale at 175, I found that my (western-style) clothing choices were, to say the least, limited. Again, let me stress that I do not compare my own weight issues with Ruby's, the point is that the exclusion, the cutting-off point, starts at less than half what Ruby's weight is now - after losing almost a hundred pounds.

A hundred pounds since the show began - remember she had already lost over two hundred before that, on her own.

When I lost over 50 of my 175 pounds, I was overwhelmed with fashion choices at every turn. Not that it was all "made for me," or even becoming, much less flattering. I was still short, still a bit "top-heavy," in a culture where the ideal of feminine figure pulchritude is basically Paris Hilton, but there was plenty of stuff that fit, a large enough pool of it so that I was able to accomplish that once-in-a-lifetime experience of Complete Wardrobe Replacement on a budget that, due to my "health challenges," had taken a one-way plunge from just a smoosh of discretionary income to poverty practically overnight.

As I gradually gained almost half of the weight back, that "cutting-off point" has come into a much sharper focus.

From a perspective that will be all too familiar to anyone who has lost weight and re-gained it, the ruthlessness of that exclusion, the constricting narrowness of that "acceptable" range decreed by the industry can cut off, if we let it, much more than our fashion options.

The exact "tipping point," measured in pounds, will be different for each of us, for me it has been somewhat soul-chilling, to say the least, to contemplate that it occurs far below 175.

There is a difference - a world of it - between being a slave to fashion, a superficial Barbie doll whose sense of self is dependent on labels and price tags and which celebrity or glossy magazine is adorned with the same or a similar garment, and taking pride in looking one's best as an expression, a celebration of respect and love for our uniqueness, who we are.

In fact, the two are diametrically opposed. The former seeks to achieve, through outward accoutrement, the self-esteem the inner joy that the latter seeks to manifest, to rejoice in, by the simple and joyous expedient of simply decorating herself.

When we consider what a small percentage of women not only fail to be shaped like Paris Hilton, but fall completely below that "inclusion point," we are compelled to reflect on the impact of that, the ripples and dominoes of that bleakness, that most of us are not considered to be worthy of decoration.

Of course the reality is not as sinister as all that sounds. It is, like most things in this particular cultural context, about business, about profit.

Obviously, if all the Rubies and all the ShimmaPuffs and all the everybodies in between could just breeze into any retail store from Wal-Mart to the 'leetest boutique on Rodeo Drive, according to our budget and preference, and put together a flattering, versatile wardrobe with the ease and from among the same wide selection as our size 2 sisters, made up of those classic, basic pieces on the Tim Gunn list, items that will continue to delight us as we smile into our mirrors, season after season, year after year, updated here and there with strategic accessories, that would mean, to put it simply, a dramatic decrease in industry profits.

That is not to say that We Who Love To Shop would shop less. We would, however, spend less.

If we did not have to buy those basic black pants and just hope that they would "look OK" with a different top, that our all-occasion top would "look OK" with a different bra, because we had not "chosen" them.

They do not excite us or thrill us or reflect our good taste or our personality.

They were the only pants, the only top, in the store that we could tolerate and with which we could "fit the largest part" of ourselves, especially We Who Can Neither Sew Nor Afford Alterations, oh, we would still be back in the store the next week - with bells on - but we would be there to buy that strategic accessory, not the basic top and pants all over again, take two, maybe these will...

In fairness, even the size twos might make many of the same arguments with respect to the quality and workmanship of their dazzling array of choices, including the very valid point that they, too, are likely to be back to replace those basics long before the passing of "season after season," because the things simply did not look too good after a couple of washings, the seams did not hold up to normal wear, the fabric, dependent on "sizing" as opposed to sewing for its shape-holding properties, collapsed into a sad little rag.

As the old saying goes, "if it don't crack your head coming in the door, it'll kick your ass on your way out."

Rambling now? Possibly. Ranting? Oh, definitely!

Today's episode of Ruby touched a particularly sensitive nerve.

Even as I marvel, as always, at the magical splendor of her spirit, even as I am, as she hopes we will all be, inspired and encouraged by her ebullient and blessedly "hippie-loving" ;) magnificent self, I am also angry.

Obtaining new clothing should NOT require that the head of the local Art and Design college call together his star pupils to design a wardrobe especially for her.

That is not to say that this should not have happened or that I did not enjoy watching it happen. On the contrary, I think this episode should have been a Feature-Length Very Special Episode. I would like to have seen more of it, the whole process - both of making the clothes for this part of Ruby's journey as well as the designers' own journeys, briefly alluded to by Andrew.

Ruby is a Star in the best sense of the word, and more than deserves many racks of beautiful clothes made specifically for her, at the weight she is right now.

But it should have been a choice. An option, not the only possible way that she could hope to get new clothes that she actually likes and that actually fit her.

I am inspired, empowered and emboldened by her courage to tell the truth. Ruby and all of us deserve many racks of beautiful clothes that fit us - in stores. We deserve to be included, even if it means less money for rich men.

The Hills: Through All The Days of Your Lies

2008-12-23T00:25:00.000-08:00

The Hills: Through All The Days of Your Lies

What a night! A full feature-length 90 minutes of Hills magic that will have tongues wagging for days! Right now, I guess most people are understandably still trying to process it all.

Not one, but TWO Spedi not-weddings, Justin Bobby giving Audrina a not-engagement ring, and then, just when you think things can't get any not-better, Lauren appears on the aftershow and reveals that there are more episodes, thus making the blockbuster 4minute Hilltacular we just witnessed the official season not-finale!

Of course we knew something was up last week when the Associated Press was running stories casting some leaks of doubt on the legalizing of the not-legal Patron product placement nuptialoids engineered by marketing genius Spencer Pratt on a Speidaneous weekend trip to Cabo, but it wasn't till I heard the not-judge utter the words "through all the days of your lies" that all the loose ends were tied up.

On the fashion front, who wants to bet Whitney's remarkable aftershow ensemble makes Who Wore it Why on The Dish?

Finally, a moment of pathos, as we all suddenly realize that there is no one left on earth who will tell Lauren Conrad that she should not wear red lipstick, ever.

The Gilmore Girls: Which Gilmore Girl Are You? (Not a Quiz)

2008-12-16T15:05:00.000-08:00

Media conglomerates spend millions on market research to learn which shows appeal most to which market segments, but in the case of The Gilmore Girls, no sophisticated data mining techniques are required.

scour the earth, and you will not find a more avid gaggle of Gilmoristas than daughters who do not get along with their mothers and mothers who do not get along with their daughters.

Granted, the fantasy relationship between Rory and Lorelai is the stuff of legend precisely because it IS fantasy, but if Gilmore Love were a red line on a graph, as the tiny numbers representing mother-daughter relationship quality goes down, the red line on that graph will go up, up, up!

One of the reasons the show is so popular, and so talked about even after going off the air, is that there is no mother or daughter who cannot relate to at least some aspects of the relationships between Emily and Lorelai, Lorelai and Rory, indefinable yet palpably miasmic things that transcend culture and creed.

Whether nightmare or idyll, dysfunction or delight, the relationship between mother and daughter is like no other, it is a story that never ceases to tell itself to those who live it, and all whose lives are touched by it, a story that the Gilmore Girls tells remarkably well for what appears at first glance to be essentially an hour-long sitcom!

For We Who Cannot/Could Not Just All Get Along, The Gilmore Girls gives us the gift of vicariously reveling in the mother-daughter relationship we can only wish we had, an emotional do-over, with the delicious twist of a catharsis, not of tears, but laughter.

Because all of that is so obvious, it's sort of embarrassing to confess that for a while I was completely baffled as to why I like this show. I never watched a minute of it when it was on, but upon discovering it sometime around the fall of 2007, I was instantly hooked, obtained all 7 seasons and sat there and watched, enthralled, with alarmingly minimal breaks for things like sleep and work and shampoo.

It's still on my Tivoid and I have now seen the whole thing at least twice.

It is a veritable chowder of a show, lousy and lumpchunky with cheese and corn, but I cannot bear to miss a single episode.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of my unexpected enjoyment of this pretty standard 90s TV offering is how much I identify with the Gilmore Girls, even apart from the not-get-along-with-mother thing.

I don't identify with Rory, nor Lorelai either really, though, like me, she does enjoy making a wisecrack or two now and then.

It is, I am mortified to admit, the crotchety, imperious, insufferable old bitch of a grandmother with whom I have, to my horrified amazement, the most affinity.

Emily Gilmore knows what she wants, she knows what she likes, and she knows who she is, and so do I.

And when a situation involves other people, places or things that dare to diverge from the first two, in clear and utter disregard of the third, Emily is not one to stand on the ceremonies of reticence. And neither am I. Though I do try to be as polite about it as one can under such circumstances. Emily, not so much.

For the benefit of the two elderly lurkers in Mogadishu who join me in being the only people on earth who did not watch this show ten years ago, the premise is this:

Lorelai Gilmore, the witty but only very slightly unconventional only child of parents so conventional that her father is played by the same actor whose starred in the most famous made-for-TV movie about Franklin Roosevelt, gets pregant in high school, and decides to raise the baby herself, which she does, and when we meet them all, she is pretty much done with that, as the baby is now a teenager and in high school herself.

Rory, the erstwhile baby, enjoys very close if very different relationships with both her mother and her grandmother (hence the name of the show) who each believes herself to be much more different from each other than they really are.

While Emily may prefer a more overtly old-fashioned and traditional lifestyle, Lorelai's ostensible rejection of tradition is wafer-thin, confined to things like the occasional comical household accent piece, and while Rory dutifully plays along with her mother's charade, she is, even at sixteen, clearly headed more toward Emily's side of the chart.

Most fictional works require, for maximum enjoyment, some level of suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader/viewer, but the UN-believeability quotient of the Gilmore Girls saga attains lofty heights seldom seen in works lacking a supernatural element.

Lorelai supposedly shows up at a small New England inn as a runaway teen with a babe in arms, is given work as a maid and a shed to live in, by the sympathetic manager, and goes on to work her way through the ranks, so that by the time we meet her, the baby is now in high school, Lorelai has become manager of the inn, and now owns both a home and a car.

Now even if we accept the premise that Lorelai's career advancement has been due to her exceptional abilities, and assume that the shelter of the shed remained a gift from that sympathetic hotel manager, AND that she paid Lorelai well above the going rate during those pre-'executive" years when she was working as a housekeeper, and I guess we can assume she would have done a stint as a desk clerk, nothing is ever said about who took care of Rory while Lorelai was doing all this laudable quasi-bootstrap-pulling.

As the show begins, Lorelai is obliged to reluctantly, for the first time, invoke the safety net of her wealthy parents, in order to send Rory to an expensive private school, thus we are also asked to assume that never once in sixteen years did neither of them ever have an injury or illness or other situation whose cost would exceed the means of a low-level hotel worker, or if she did, that we can assume the manager took care of the bill?

The relationship between the two of them seems patently indicative of their having spent more time together than would be possible for someone trying to raise a child on the salary of a hotel maid, even a hotel desk clerk, for whom it would not be realistic to spend a lot of time at home engaging in and developing these longstanding traditions related to recreational activities like watching TV and movies.

And in the last couple of seasons, it seems like all of the characters have suddenly and mysteriously acquired unlimited funds.

We see things like Lorelai taking a birthday partyfull of tweens to a cosmetics store and giving them baskets, telling them to fill them up, a couple who work as a cook and a vegetable vendor, respectively, with two small children, taking spur of the moment ski trips and too many other instances to recount of various characters making purchases and expenditure choices that would not be commensurate with the discretionary income of the particular character.

While it does not affect the fun of the show as a situation comedy at all, if you move outside of that suspension-of-disbelief bubble and attempt to examine the actual story line and the characters "in depth," you will invariably fall into the massive believability gap!

When I make the mistake of thinking about it too much (as I clearly did to write all this) it is baffling that I find any of the characters remotely likeable or interesting, since about the only thing I really have in common with Emily (aside from what I consider to be just a healthy amount of basic arrogance) is a penchant for a well-appointed dinner table. Maybe it is an inversion-based attraction. If Lorelai's contempt for tradition is confined to superficialities, I guess you could say the same thing about my predeliction for it. I do love me some fine textiles and bone china.

It is probably most accurate to say that the show relaxes me, kind of like the way Ina Garten does.

Lorelai's little quips, her bantering with Rory, are funny in the same sort of comforting way the Three Stooges and Max and Ruby are funny, and the way the show adheres to all the standard sitcom conventions has a calming effect somehow. There are no surprises, no onion-like layers of character depth to be plumbed, everyone is consistently and satisfyingly exactly as their one-dimensional true-to-genre sitcom self is supposed to be.

The younger, single Gilmore girls have a full contingent each of the expected wacky friends, engage in all the expected romantic hijinks, all of whom and which Emily variously approves, disapproves, or knows nothing about.

The acting is, at worst, slightly a cut above the average sitcom level, the casting is excellent, and the pace is fast enough to engage me, which is saying a lot.

I highly recommend this show to that afore-mentioned pair of Mogadishu elders, my fellow Ina Garten fans, and anybody else who seeks an amusing, entertaining televiewing experience, every bit as bewilderingly soothing as Max and Ruby.

Twilight Rants Moved to Their Own Blog

2008-12-11T13:36:00.000-08:00

The Twilight-related rants that used to be here glared fiercely into my un-topaz eyes, and in a voice that was more growl than speech, commanded me to vampire-swoosh them into their own special bedless mansion.

"Did you really expect that I would share even such a wretched scrap of cyber-squalor as this," they hissed, "this blog," spitting out that last word as if it were a globule of half-coagulated Tila Tequila blood, "with the likes of Cris Abrego?"

I was resolved to keep my composure. I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing my fear. The rants could not read my mind, and I was not about to concede that advantage - at least not on this point...

What happened next, I will never know, but the rants can now be found on their own blog:

Twilight: Random Layers of Lemons and Lulz

Bad Girls Club Season 3 Premiere

2008-12-03T19:25:00.000-08:00

I finally watched season premiere of Bad Girls Club, and once again was disappointed that Cami from Laguna Beach is not among the cast.

At first glance, though none shine with the radiance of a Tanisha, or the fundamental dysfunction of that Season 1 girl from the Mennonite community, Whitney is my initial pick for entertainment potential. (Suggested Drinking Game: every time Whitney mentions "Baah-ston," take a shot).

After breaking into the house, the girls eagerly obtain sex toys and hooker shoes.

Kayla ges a vibrator from the convenient in-home vending machine, and claims that she has never owned one before. She expresses confidence that the Bad Girls Club experience will bring unity and enlightenment.

The girls go out for an evening of brawling, but return home after being ejected from only two clubs.

Amber M. suggests to her fellow Amber that they look for men, but Amber B. complains that there are only "Chinese" and some unintelligible characterizations present, and asserts that she does not "date outside her race," but that she would be nice to an African-American person who came into a club, but that Mexicans are "a little different" because she thinks they are illegal.

Amber B offers to pay the other girls to clean up after her, and expresses a desire to tell "Asian jokes."

The Ambers soon find themselves somewhat isolated, and Amber B, who wishes to employ her roomates as household staff and tell Asian jokes begins to wonder if the Bad Girls Club is right for her, as she emerges as the most isolated of the two, probably because only the other Amber was around when shared her thoughts about African-Americans and Mexicans.

Amber B later delivers a smirkful "apology" to Kayla and Ailea, and the girls decide to try to put their disagreements behind them and dine out.

After they have been ejected from the restaurant, they are nevertheless provided with go-boxes for their food, but Whitney is angry, and shares this with Kayla.

Kayla's anger management issues have been prominently featured in all the girls' outings, but this subplot is nearly completely subsumed by the discomfort of the Ambers.

It is impossible not to wonder whether these girls realize, when they sign up for the show, that there may be an ethnically diverse cast.

This is not the first time I have gotten the impression that producers of a reality show, motivated by a desire for "drama" and "good TV," have made very deliberate casting decisions to put hamsters into an environment in which not only will they feel very uncomfortable, but that will actually be at variance with their beliefs.

Although bounds of good taste may not be a concept frequently heard in discussions of the genre, it is, in my opinion - an opinion which is, by the way, amply backed up by even a cursory glance at the history of Reality Television, not to mention the unexplored and under-touched elements of even this single episode of this very show, that this is not only a practice which smacks of questionable ethics, but even leaving such niceties aside and examining the question under the cold hard lense of business, unnecessary to not only achieving, but surpassing, ratings and revenue goals and objectives.

Note: My apologies to both if I have confused the remarks, etc of the respective Ambers. Although I have categorized them rather broadly as "blondes," they are actually that particular flavor of blonde who has obviously put a great deal of work into closely resembling each other as much as possible. My remarks should not be taken as an accusation that either of them was born with yellow hair, or any reflected aspersion against the millions of people who were, and who look nothing alike.

Real Housewives of Orange County : A Transcontinental Leap

2008-11-29T05:57:00.000-08:00

It is impossible to watch even one episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta without recalling the words of Miss Margaret Mitchell, and it will henceforth be impossible to read Miss Mitchell's words without recalling NeNe.:

"...But Atlanta was of her own generation, crude with the crudities of youth and
as headstrong and impetuous as herself..."

Thanks to the miracle of Dish Network's Tivoid, I was able to televiport directly from the Atlanta reunion show to the season premiere set in the SoCal enclave of Coto de Casas, and I enjoyed the immediacy of that transition.

Although I recognize that their own view would be very different, from my perspective, the Housewives of the various locations seem to have share much more than the relatively small if visible and entertaining cultural details, such as accents, that separate them, and the new season promises to reassure viewers who need it that little seems to have changed in the lives of the California hamsters.

These are, in the reality show universe, Old Money people, since they have had a lot of it for ten or twenty years, as opposed to the Atlanta cast, who just received theirs ten minutes ago, and while all the Housewives, regardless of location, are obviously selected for their strong drama potential, the OC hamster selection process seems to also cleave very closely to the SoCal enclave stereotype that has been presented to the world via a whole schedule full of other shows, and rightly so, as the world cannot seem to get enough of this remarkable subculture.

While the Atlanta bunch are still actively choosing how to spend their newly minted money, their SoCal counterparts have pretty much done that. Vicky, for example, has a "lake house" that is paid for, and which she plans to sell in order to purchase a million dollar pleasure yacht.

That the yacht contains household appliances is beyond anything she has ever imagined, she is surprised and delighted.

Lauri, over a breakfast of eggs and what appears to be rather revolting little nodules of some meat product, asks her recently acquired "multi-millionaire" husband George where they will go on their honeymoon.

Without hesitation, he replies "Dubai," which Lauri does not like, and indicates this by an insistent declaration that Dubai would be a good stopover, for shopping, she adds with a meaningful glance George-ward, but she wishes the honeymoon to take place on an island where they will be pampered.

It is as clear that Lauri has never even so much as talked to anyone who has visited Dubai, with the possible exception of George, and whose opinion on the subject does not interest her, as it is clear that Vicki has never set foot on a pleasure yacht of the type she had already determined to purchase.

George suggests, with resigned cheerfulness, that they ask a prominent billionaire for the loan of his private island. Lauri seems pleased enough with this.

Tamra's son is moving into a new apartment, and her segment consists almost entirely of the process of Ryan and Simon moving a large TV into the headstrong youth's new digs.

He has left his low-wage job at the car part place, and is now making what is considered at least an Orange County-style Living Wage of sorts at a construction company. What, if anything, he actually does is not clear.

Tamra's mother has decided to get a face lift, and while they are at the plastic surgeon's for her inistial consultation, Tamra announces that she wants to age gracefully and nestles back onto the examining table and has her lips injected.

Poor sad Jeana is still separated from her head-injured husband, Matt. Apparently still refusing treatment for the sequelae of a severe head injury some years ago, he has moved back into the house with Jeana. To cope with his presence, she plans to redecorate a couple of rooms.

Kara, who surprised many viewers last season by choosing to attend Berkely, has remained strong in her traditional SoCal enclave reality show values, and seems to be enjoying living in a different cultural milieu and cultivating contempt for her fellow Berkelians.

The older son, whose name escapes me which would probably please him, apparently does not want to be on the reality show any more, and Jeana was obliged to bribe him by hiring a chef to make a special breakfast in exchange for his appearance in a scene or two and uttering a couple of monosyllables.

All in all, despite the variological intrigue of the teleleap from Atlanta to SoCal, nothing much has happened in the enclave, and that's how they like it.

The biggest change, I guess, is the departure of Tammy? Or did she leave season before last? Whenever it was, it was obvious that she put the needs of her family before our entertainment, proof that she never really did fit in, anyway.

This season features the addition of two new hamsters. From only a couple of frames in the pre-show promos, I thought that Gretchen's fiance Jeff reminded me of a post-surgery Kenny Rogers, and apparently I'm not the only one, as within minutes of introducing the new couple, both Jeana and Gretchen mentioned seeing the same resemblance.

And that is about the extent of thoughts and comments that would be appropriate for me to share about Jeff and Gretchen.

Jeff has leukemia. I hope that he will beat the disease and regain his health, and keep him, and all who love him, in my prayers.

Lindsay Lohan Brings Colored Back: Politeness and The Power of Words

2008-11-13T23:40:00.001-08:00

At first, I thought that the reason I reacted with such uncharacteristic annoyance to that story of Lindsay Lohan referring to an African-American politician as "colored," had to do with the lack of reaction I perceived on the part of other people.

Only TMZ seemed to have even noticed it, and all round the internets, the loyal brigade of sincere young girls who love "LiLo" seemed either unaware of it, or if they were aware of it, argued that their idol should be "given a pass" because she was probably just "out of touch" with the fact that it is not considered polite to refer to people as "colored." Hope is expressed that nobody will stoop so low as to suggest that she is a racist.

Now if we were talking about somebody who had just emerged from a lifetime spent in some isolated little Town That Time Forgot with little or no access to or interest in, media or the outside world in general, where the cutting edge of technology consists of the local diner's recent purchase of a microwave oven, and most people in the town have never heard of, just for an example, Lindsay Lohan, they might have an argument.

But we are talking about a girl whose entire life has been spent in Hollywood, who was processed through the Disney machine, complete with classes about How to Talk to the Press, and while I guess that you could argue that no one would have thought to mention, even as far back as those days of Lindsay's little girlhood, way back in the 1990s, that neither the "n-word" nor "colored" were good vocabulary choices when referring to people whose ancestors, or some of them, came from Africa.

The reason it is unlikely that such a thing would have come up is that it is not likely that anyone at Disney, which is, when it comes to grooming their little stars, pretty thorough, that it would be necessary to mention this particular fine point of conversational etiquette.

So, realizing that I leave myself open to charges of insensitivity to the very strong and very real feelings of her millions of very real fans, and without intending any disrespect for those feelings, Bzzzzzt! Wrong.

Lindsay said "colored" because that is the word she uses.

"But maybe it just slipped out."

Maybe it did, but things cannot "just slip out" if they are not there.

"You are saying she is a racist!"

I have no way of knowing whether she considers herself a racist. Whether she and I would agree on what constitutes being a racist is not, in my opinion, relevant.

"So you are saying she doesn't have the right to ---"

No. She has the right to use any words she wishes, and have any opinions, attitudes and beliefs that she has, and should anyone suggest otherwise, I would not hesitate to engage, and hard.

So what is it then?

That is what I have been obliged to ask myself, and in that process, because it is Lindsay Lohan, it has been impossible for me to fail to recall that this is the same young lady who not too long ago, passed an evening engaged in activities that had it been you, or I, would have resulted in charges of carjacking and hostage-taking, just for starters, but Lindsay "got a pass," and was charged with possessing cocaine.

"OK but you have to understand that she was under a lot of pressure, with her family problems, and her career, plus she was using drugs then, so..."

And the same could be said of many people who are currently serving double-digit, if not life, sentences for carjacking and hostage-taking.

I'll bet that almost every single one of those people was under a lot of pressure, with family problems, job and money problems, plus they were using drugs, so..."

So, while they rot in hellish prisons, Lindsay is free to go clubbing and party hearty and give interviews to Access Hollywood.

"Why do you hate Lindsay so much? Why do you want her to rot in a hellish prison?"

I don't. Hate is not something that has a place in my own personal emotional repertoire, and even if that were not the case, I don't know Lindsay, so how could I hate her?

Nor do I want anybody to rot in a hellish prison.

But I think that this is a road that no one would wish to go down, as it begs the question as to just why society "hates" all those people who committed carjackings and took hostages because they were under a lot of pressure and had problems and were using drugs so much that they want THEM to rot in prisons, not to mention why those prisons are hellish.

That is a whole nother show, a whole series, in fact, the one point that I am making here is that the "double standard" for the behavior of celebrities is such a deeply ingrained value, such a cherished belief, that it not only exists, but suggesting that it should not makes people angry.

"Um, OK, you lost me. You still haven't said why you are so angry at Lindsay."

That is because I am not angry with her. I may be, however, just a teensy bit angry with the power of words.

While many of my generation take serious umbrage at the "claiming" of the "n-word" that has taken place in recent years, as it has effortlessly found its way into everyday common usage by millions of African-American youth, not just in conversation, but in the lyrics to popular songs as well, I have occasioned my own share of outrage by taking no umbrage at all to speak of.

Frankly, it neither bothers me nor upsets me one bit to hear the word used by young people in casual conversation, nor in popular songs.

Used in its traditional way, however, and by people who do not identify themselves primarily according to their African heritage, I do find the term offensive, although at the same time, I acknowledge the right of those individuals who wish to use it to do so, and in fact, I appreciate it.

"Ew. Why would you appreciate somebody saying the n word?"

Because a racist who is upfront about it presents less of a danger to me than one who is not. Would you rather come across a rattlesnake, or a snake that looked just like one you could pick up and play with?

"Double EW! Snakes are totally gross!"

OK. Would you rather have someone leave a gun in your home that looked like a ball-point pen, or one that was obviously just a regular gun?

The power of words.

The last time anybody called me "colored," they were telling me I couldn't use the public restroom that had toilet tissue, sinks with running water, and paper towels. And it would have in fact been illegal for me to use that restroom, and illegal for that person to let me use it. We could have both ended up in a hellish prison.

The sign on the restroom that did not have any of those amenities did not say the "n-word." It said "colored," because "colored" back then, was the polite way to refer to people of color, specifically African-Americans, because in that time and in that place, most people were aware of only two different kinds of human being, white and black, or "colored."

The one question I do not have a good answer for is why the expression "people of color" is perfectly fine, and "colored" is not.

Why should two similar expressions be so different in meaning, in acceptability, politeness?

The power of words is the only thing I can come up with. I like words. I like putting them together and making sentences. Maybe that's it. Maybe I just want to be the one with the power over words, I don't want the words to have any power over me, so when something happens that demonstrates that I am no different from my contemporaries at whom I have rolled my eyes and pooh-poohed their outrage over their kids listening to songs whose lyrics include the "n-word," their daughters calling each other, and their friends "bitch" and "ho," it annoys me.

Turns out I am not immune to the power of words, after all.

"I'm confused, you said Lindsay was being polite, right?"

I am quite sure that that was her intention.

"OK, sorry. I thought you were trying to say, like, something bad about her. She really is always, like super-polite."

90210: Hit Me with Your Best Shot

2008-11-12T02:12:00.000-08:00

Leave it to the 90210 producers to give us such gritty, no-holds-barred insight into how the recreational drug business doesn't work. Special Agent Kimberly does not waste any time. They tell her how many seconds she has to get West Beverly cleaned up and she does it!

I read somewhere that Jessica Walter will be leaving the show. After seeing her give us such a gritty, no-holds-barred bleating of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" against a backdrop of hot pink neon lights spelling out "Annie 16," it is clear to me that getting rid of granny would be series suicide.

The only thing I could not have predicted in this week's episode was the decision to follow the protocol established by One Tree Hill that teen drama long-lost brothers must be clad in a uniform indicating membership in some regime-sponsored armed group or other.

Absolutely every other second of the show had been foretold by previous episodes, right down to the porn producer's warm and loving Big Fat Iranian family, where every bullet of every teenager's list of Most Embarrassing Things My Family Could Possibly Do Or Say When My New Romance Comes Over was knocked down cleaner than a bowling ball in the path of a 90210 Wilson on Family night.

Adriana is turning her life around for sure. She appreciated all that warmth and caring so much she even still likes Navid even though it was his week to reveal that he is a virgin. Last week it was Silver. Next week, who knows? What's your guess? Maybe the season finale can be the First Ever West Beverly Purity Ball.

I was soooo hoping that Annie would throw Naomi down for a good, old-fashioned cat-fight. boo hiss, I mumbled in resigned and disappointed unison with my fellow viewers.

Real Housewives of Atlanta: "You don't know where the knives are"

2008-11-12T01:41:00.000-08:00

Last week's show was All About Kim, but she gets very little face time this week, most of it at the beginning of the show, where she goes on a boat ride with Sheree and one non-Housewife friend each.

Kim's non-Housewife friend drives the boat, Kim speaks to her rudely, the friend leaves the boat turned on while the girls drink wine and sunbathe on an island, they have to be rescued, and Kim makes predictable comments when Sheree requests some sunscreen, evidently having made the wise decision to disregard the assertion of the sketchy botox vendor that people of color have some sort of immunity to the effects of today's ozone-free solar rays.

We hear no gloating about it from NeNe, but her Big Hat Brunch launching her Twisted Hearts foundation to aid abused women is a rousing success, raising twice the total of DeShawn's Diamond Gala Night of 1000 Stars to benefit her nebulous goal of helping young girls with their self-esteem.

A little backstory about the hat thing: When Vatican II removed the head-covering requirement for women attending mass, an overwhelming majority of US Catholics responded by shouting "Hallelujah!" and gleefully tossing hats, veils, mantillas, dupattas, and every imaginable form of head covering air-ward as if they were Mary Tyler Moore in downtown Minneapolis.

Protestant congregations, most of whom had never had any rules about women's headwear, were of course unaffected, and especially in the African-American community, the Sunday Hat tradition marched apace. If anything, the decades that followed saw even larger and more elaborate hats upon the heads of church-going ladies of all colors in the Protestant south, even unto successive generations as modern lifestyles also tended to include fewer occasions requiring millinery products.

As the years passed, and the cross-demographic general decrease in regular Sunday church-going removed, for many women, the last opportunity they had to rock wearable Head Art.

This is why NeNe's Big Hat Brunch was near-brilliant marketing, as it gave an outlet to this particular demographic sector - affluent and frustrated would-be hat-wearers, to whom for all their wealth, modern customs simply offered few opportunities to sport this particular accessory, although most had grown up in homes that whether rich or poor, almost always contained at least one or two hatboxes on a closet shelf, or perched on top of a chiffarobe, whose remarkable contents were lovingly taken out and applied to the proud heads of mothers and grandmothers and aunts, as all set off together on Sunday morning.

It is impossible to dislike NeNe. I have really tried, but whenever I think I am almost there, we get something like the scene where DeShawn says something about that she does know how to cut lemons, but - and NeNe finsishes her sentence: "But you don't know where the knives are." Impeccable. Chalk up a whole mess of snark-points for NeNe.

She manages to completely dominate this scene, though DeShawn gives it her best shot, simpering and hamming it up for the camera like Shirley Temple on crack. The setting is her breakfast nook. She has invited her good friend NeNe over to plan a sunset barbecue, so of course the nook contains no notepads or rolodexes, but two settings of ugly yellow-brown glazed earthenware, which appear to be intended to serve the function usually performed by charger plates, though few of us employ charger plates when sitting down with a good friend in our breakfast nook. There are things that DeShawn seems to see but through a very thick glass, and very darkly.

She wants her sunset barbecue to clear the air. She is a peacemaker, is our DeShawn, and so she calls both Sheree and Kim while NeNe sits right there, slicing the scene up and making it into sandwiches. She looks especially nice in a lavender dress with a higher neckline that she usually wears, her hair is flawless, and her eyeliner is perfect. For the first time, I realize that NeNe is actually a very pretty lady. She just happens to be a very pretty lady who should always, always remember to jack em up. Sadly, at her own elegant Big Hat Brunch, she failed to do so, and adorned the podium adorned by a good seven inches or so of "ghetto line."

Her bust has become the topic of lively discussion, as some photos have surfaced of her with a very small one, which even though bra-ed and covered, would clearly not be capable of producing even an inch of ghetto line, yet from the first episode of this series she appears with a most ample bosom.

One could conclude that she had, like Sheree, simply paid a visit to her local Boob-Mart, except that her ample bosom does not look boughten.

My speculation is that those small-busted photos being passed around from forum to forum are in fact more recent ones, and that since the show, NeNe has indeed paid a visit to Boob-Mart, but for the purposes of dropping off rather than acquiring.

But enough about NeNe's chest. It was a big week for the Atlanta elite. Sheree was planning an event, too - a launch party for her plans to "start a clothing line." Not the line itself, which does not yet exist. The party is just to announce that she plans to start one. She has hired someone to do the sketches, make the patterns and sew the clothes of the eponymous collection: "She by Sheree."

(Actually ShebaSheree would be a much better name, smoother alliteration, better overall aural aesthetics, and containing elements of Africa, classicism,and potential perception of "exotic" by the mainstream demographic, but she didn't ask me).

The clothes themselves look remarkably like things already ubiquitously available in every retail establishment that sells ladies ready-to-wear. Sheree says the clothes are intended for the masses, serenely disregarding, or perhaps unaware, that the masses already have them.

She is unhappy with the samples when they arrive. My impression is that the seamstresses made the clothing represented in the sketches, ready to be hung on racks from Tar-zhay to Macy's to Lord & Taylor, ready to wear. But Sheree, it seems, was expecting to receive couture samples.

Undeterred, she blows up her sketches and orders her ice sculpure and muscled male models upon whose skin she will cause to have painted her name, the name of the planned clothing line.

Until the line moves forward from the planning stages (and let us not get ahead of ourselves, the launch party to announce that it is going to be planned is barely underway) Sheree's current occupation consists of "efforting" to obtain a seven figure divorce settlement from her famous ball player ex-husband.

She is eager to show the world that she does not need him and that she can succeed all by herself, so she invites him to the launch party and poses with him for pictures for the media.

DeShawn and Lisa, both still married to their respective ball players, go shopping for expensive clothes for their children and discuss reproduction and the contract terms offered by companies who produce this flavor of ball throwing events as opposed to another flavor. Again, poor DeShawn tries and fails to be a face the camera loves. Somebody please get poor little Shirley off that awful crack!

Offline, I have been once again schooled on the nature of Lisa's hair. Previously, in the context of criticizing what appeared to me to be a faux Jheri-curl in one of her Video Diary scenes, I had opined that Lisa's head had been kissed harder by Asia than Africa, and was immediately corrected by several people, who were very definite in their assertions that this was a game that Africa had totally won, and when we see her with straight hair, it is because somebody has done some work.

A neighbor actually went so far as to freeze and blow up a computer image of her temple, so that I could see this truth writ large in the form of her baby hair.

So in case there are others of my fellow low vision afflictees who may have been laboring under the same misconception, Lisa's hair comes out of her head curly, and the Jheri curl scene was closer to her "real" hair than her usual straight do, although we can be sure that curly though it may be, it does not emerge from her scalp coated with quite so much product.

At the sunset barbecue, Lisa aligns herself with DeShawn as a peacemaker. She, too wishes to clear the air. But neither Kim nor Sheree shows up. They both have very busy lives, they explain when called on the telephone.

In a Flashback Plus (a previously aired scene plus Never Before Seen footage) we get to see a little more of NeNe getting her DNA test to find out whether the usually-absent gentleman whom NeNe has always thought of as her father actually provided any sperm on the occasion of her conception.

One of the things that happens is that the technician uses an extremely offensive term that I had not heard in years, and in the very distant past when I did hear it, it was invariably from the lips of southern white racists. Today the African-American Cheek-Scraping Technologist employs it jokingly, and NeNe, with surprising aplomb, just lets it slide, or, since she is much younger than I am, it is possible that she never heard it before and does not understand how offensive it is.

I thought about explaining more about it, and its usage, such as it was, nearly half a century ago, but decided it did not rate so many key-strokes. Suffice it to say that it is a compound term that contains the n-word, and it is a whole nother level of offensive, the n-word having become, though controversial, extremely common among African-American youth, even finding its way into popular music. But this term, not so much.

To return to our story, fast forward to the present, where the NeNe family is gathered round the dining room table, tastefully charger plate-free, for the Opening of the Envelope that contains the Truth about NeNe's parentage.

And so it is in this rather anti-climactic scene that we learn that Curtis is not her biodaddy. Gregg, NeNe's husband, characterizes the news as "devastating." "Then who is your father?" Brentt, whose name we may assume bears a second final and superfluous consonant in honor of his father's redunant "g," asks his mother.

NeNe doesn't know, though The Letter That Started It All made reference to at least one claimant. I wonder if she will request that the individual cited in The Letter will submit to a cheek-scrape, but nothing is said about it, at least in this episode.

Real Housewives of Atlanta: How you spell cat? K-A-T

2008-11-05T06:57:00.000-08:00

Sheree is ready to get back into the dating scene, so she attends a pole dancing party, where she demonstrates surprising flexibility and extension capabilities. Watch out, dating scene! As soon as she gets that 7-figure settlement from her baller ex, she will be one pole dating force to be reckoned with.

Lisa shows up in her Sky Top, the Official Top of the Real Housewives, and says she won't participate, but after a few drinks, she tries her own luck on the pole. "Give her a couple of drinks, and the sex kitten comes out," says Sheree. "Women plus alcohol plus a pole equals a great time."

"In Atlanta, we pole completely different from the rest of the country," the instructor tells us, going on to explain that "Black women have booties and we shake them and we're proud." She vows to make sure that the ladies learn to shake their jelly.

"This is the best thing I ever did, was you," Kim tells Michael, her personal chef. She is getting ready for her first visit to the Voice Coach of the Stars, which has been arranged for her by Dallas Austin, who will be producing her hit song, one he wrote himself.

"When you run in elite circles, you meet producers, athletes, rock stars, you know, people of that nature," Kim tells us. Big Papa and Dallas know each other. (Big Papa is Kim's wealthy "patron." He wishes to remain anonymous. Dallas, Kim informs us, works with her whenever she is available.

Kim plays the song for Michael the chef and her daughter. Her voice, to use a southern colloquialism, as a nod to the show's location, sounds like a "dying calf in a rainstorm."

Nene tries to help her little boy with his homework, but is quickly stumped by a tricky math problem. Her husband is called in, and is quickly stumped by the tricky problem of helping Nene understand that a half is more than a third. He shows her drawings of two divided pies, side by side. "Would you rather have a third of something, or a half of something?" he asks. "It depends on what the something is," Nene answers. "Can we get a tutor?"

Eric gives DeShawn a chunky-looking silver Rolex for her birthday. She is delighted, but explains that of course she won't be able to wear it that evening, since she will be wearing gold. Eric seems disappointed, but accepts that his wife does not believe in mixing metals.

Nene and Lisa, with their husbands, join DeShawn for her birthday dinner. Nene gets a little tipsy, and starts talking trash about the absent Sheree, and shouts for more wine. "Waiter, waitress, scuse meeeee."

In the limo, Nene, who has a very nice singing voice, sings a few impromptu verses poking fun at Kim's musical ambitions. "Babe, stop singing," pleads Gregg.

Sheree accompanies Kim to her botox appointment. "Does a lot of your friends get botox?" Kim asks. Sheree says that none do. "Black doesn't crack," Kim chuckles. (Regular viewers will recall that last week Kim treated the public to an authentic "they don't show their age" declaration. Today she says that that all [i]her[/i] friends get it. "White cracks, sister." Apparently outside the show, all Kim's friends are white. She has been getting botox every 6 months since she was 24 because it helps with her migraines. "Is there something different in their skin versus mine?" she asks the doctor, gesturing at Sheree.

Dr Felicity does her bit to keep the skin cancer industry strong and growing by stating that people with darker skin types have a "natural protectant." I find myself hitting pause to see if there are any certificates up on the wall indicating that Dr Felicity has had any medical training.

Kim has her first meeting with Miss Jan, Vocal Coach to the Stars. "What does a vocal coach do?" she asks. Miss Jan tries Kim on some basic tone matching. "You kind of don't know what you're doing," says Miss Jan, pointing out that Kim has considerable difficulty singing any actual notes.

"Where does that come into play when you're singing in a studio?" Kim does not shy away from the hard questions.

"Being able to sing a tune," answers Miss Jan, who goes on to compare Kim to a house with a cracked foundation. Kim's voice, she continues, is not something she would want to record, because Kim is not yet ready.

"Jan is nitpicking me," Kim grumbles. "She's tellling me that I don't know the ABCs of music. I don't have to. I'm a singer."

Wow! Kim and I have something in common! I, too am a singer who just happens to not be a singer of actual notes.

Kim plays her song for Sheree, who thinks her voice is beautiful. A lot of people, Kim mentions, say she sounds like Cher. "This is my number one single," Kim confides. "All that beauty and talent," gushes Sheree.

Sheree, whom someone has told (in the strictest confidence) about Nene's impromptu limo performace, tells Kim about it.

At the lingerie store we learn that Sheree does not wear a bra and Kim does not wear panties unless she has to. Evidently she does have to wear them sometimes, as she informs the other ladies that Big Papa likes granny panties.

Nene and DeShawn arrive, and there is tension in the air. NeNe is sure that Sheree "manipulated Kim to the core, and pore little Kim, wig squeezin' her brain, she went for it."

Kim and Sheree leave and go to a Mexican restaurant. "I've never had guacamole," says Kim. "I've heard that about this restaurant - guacamole."

"What the hell is that you're using?" Kim asks the server, as he mixes her guacamole at the table in a molcajete. "A rock? to make my food?" Kim does not like the guacamole, which she refers to as "green garbage." "He just took a rock and mixed it up. That cannot be sanitary."

Dallas arrives, and Kim recounts her visit with Miss Jan, about being called a house with a cracked foundation, that she is not "knowledgeable on music."

"So I asked is that hard to learn and she said 'No. - When you were born - 'What's two plus two, Kim?' I said four. 'How do you spell cat?' I said 'K-A-T.' And she said, 'did you know that when you were two?'

Miss Jan, Kim tells Austin, believes that Kim can be successful but that she has some work to do.

Dallas makes a few polite remarks about the benefits of working with someone who can help you bring out what you are trying to do, and swiftly excuses himself.

DeShawn is concerned that the tension between NeNe and Kim is not "your typical characteristic of elite society," and tries to call Kim, but Kim, knowing that she is with NeNe, hangs up on her.

NeNe thinks it is unfortunate that "change something that is just pure innocent fun into drama."

Kim thinks that it is unfortunate that NeNe has been disrespectful because no one wants anybody to succeed. Sheree says that she wants Kim to succeed, and Kim explains that this is because Sheree is beautiful and has so much to offer the world. Both ladies agree that NeNe is miserable because she doesn't have as much to offer the world.

NeNe decides that she wants to have her own foundation like DeShawn does. She actually picks a damn good cause - women in abusive relationships, like NeNe herself once was. Her husband promises "his resources" and NeNe outlines the plans for the foundation's first event, quoting nearly verbatim what Dwight Eubanks said when he heard about DeShawn's fundraiser, namely that ain't nobody going to raise no million dollars leaving flyers next to cash registers at the mall and inviting a thousand people to come into your house and drink your liquor, to which sage advice NeNe responded, viewers will remember, with that prim-but-resolute little speech to the effect that she didn't know about all that, but she was going to support DeShawn all the way.

Although becoming a "top country singer" is Kim's lifeling dream, It turns out that Kim's first recording session is also the first time she has ever heard her voice. At least that is what she says, but she must have heard it when she played the song for Michael the chef and for Sheree. We sure did.

But whatever. To her credit, Kim does describe the experience as a "wake-up call." She does not want to keep listening to her playback, but Dallas, who either missed his calling as a diplomat, is being paid some really serious bucks by Big Papa, (he must really like seeing Kim in those granny panties) or both, patiently explains that this is how we learn what to work on - in her case just that nitpicky thing about hitting the notes. He sends her off with assurances that he will be there once she has ironed out that little glitch, and to the camera, acknowledges that to try to record anything now would be wasting everybody's time.

NeNe has chosen "Twisted Hearts" as the name for her foundation, with the motto "Battered but not Broken." The first event will be a big hat luncheon, there will be ticket sales in addition to solicitation of pledges and donations, and to give us an idea of just how elegant an affair we are talking about, there will be placecards!

Big hats are sent over, there is a frenzy of trying-on, with even Gregg getting into the fun, as NeNe explains to viewers that African-American women have a tradtion of wearing hats to church, and she now hopes to see women of all ethnicities wearing hats as part of the fund-raising activity for her foundation.

While that idea is a very appealing one, in and of itself, it is my duty as Debbie Downer, not to mention an involuntary reflex, to wonder how much each hat cost relative to a month's rent in a modest apartment for a poor woman for whom housing is one of the biggest obstacles to removing herself from an abusive relationship.

At the same time, glass-half-full people will point out that at least the donations, and possibly part of the proceeds of ticket sales, might indeed reach the hands of one of our sisters who needs it most, and that the decision to sell tickets is of itself an improvement over DeShawn's $30K Diamond Gala, and NeNe's cause definitely more definite than the rather vague notion of "helping young girls with self-esteem issues." I am still trying to find out if that tiny mountain village in Bhutan might contain any young girls who do NOT have self-esteem issues.

Sheree receives a call from an un-named friend that somebody is saying bad things about her. She has gotten lots of these calls, she says. She calls Kim, who has been getting these reports about NeNe saying bad things about her, too. Kim texts NeNe: "I can't believed the shit you talked about me. You have no class. You are so evil! Don't ever call me again! You are a low budget bitch!"

Nene calls her husband and says she knows "exactly where it's coming from - women who are mothers and wives, and they are starting shit like that. If I'm in a car singing a song and people want to pull it out of content and make it more than what it is."

NeNe says that Kim should grow up, and "there is no resolution to it. I'm done."

There will, however, be resolution of the question of NeNe's parentage. We are promised that next week, NeNe will finally get the results of her DNA back, and find out for once and for all whether Curtis is really her biodaddy.

Beverly Hills 90210: Reveal Night!

2008-11-04T19:25:00.000-08:00

This week, I caught myself looking forward to this show.

It has been a slow process, but I am obliged to acknowledge that even Shenae Grimes' maddening expression of perpetual Concern is growing on me.

Accepting Gossip Girl as a cartoon show has helped pave the way, I think, and so I have now given myself permission to go ahead and embrace the new BH90210 as a Weekly Afterschool Special that just happens to sport a character or two from the jewel in the teen drama crown of the 90s. (Even though I only saw a couple of episodes in the 90s, and it was not until 2007 or so that I sat down and watched all seven hundred seasons of it in the course of about a week).

Oh, there is still work to be done. I can never remember the name of the pasteurized processed Jim and Cindy substitutes. Or even their last name. Oh! Somebody just said it - Wilson! Keeping that W alive.

This week, it's Reveal Night in the 90210!

Dad Wilson gets things started by revealing the existence of their previously-secret half-brother to the NotTwins, which means he also has to reveal his high school romance with Naomi of the Nostrils' mom. (Dad Wilson, like Kotter, has been welcomed back to his old hood back here where we need ya) They are, predictably, bummed. Annie is gosh-darn-head-shakingly pissed off, and of course, extremely Concerned. Dixon the Brandonesque Icon of All Things Wholesome is pensive, and neither Naomi nor her nostrils could give a shit.

Annie, in a fit of angst, buys expensive boots and sneaks out to go have a slumber party with Naomi and the baby Jackie had that time with David Silver's dad Mel, who used to be Erin, but now goes by Silver because she is a blogger. This new show is so 21st century. The reason Annie had to sneak out is because Dad got really mad at her about the boots, and got even madder when she threw his teen reproductive activity in his face. She is just acting out, says mom, and we see the girls over at Silver's, taking shots.

in a game of I Have Never, Silver reveals that she is a virgin, and Annie reveals that when her parents first adopted Dixon she wanted to mail him to Taiwan because she was afraid that NotJim and NotCindy would love him more.

Annie and Naomi engage in a drunken shirt exchange, echoing the leitmotif of teen girls in bras that look like outerwear, the boys walk in, and Dixon, and is traumatized with disgust at the sight of his sister in a bra, a sight which apparently he has never seen before. The Wilsons must be one modest family.

The producers reveal that they really intend to try to pass Naomi's detention buddy with whom she speaks barely recognizable Spanish as an actual Latin American named Julio, and I realize that the slight tremor I perceive are howls of derisive laughter exploding from a hundred million throats.

Adriana and the porn producer's son who has Loved Her All His Life From Afar make out in one darkened bedroom, until she reveals that since he got his dad to pay for her rehab she intends to pay him back with va-jay-jay time and he reveals that he is Not That Kind of Boy, and stalks off in an offended huff.

While Silver distracts Naomi, who can't stand the idea of her new friend dating her ex-boyfriend, thus obliging them to keep their budding romance "on the DL," until Naomi obtains a new boyfriend for herself and her nostrils, Annie and Ethan make out in another darkened bedroom, until Ethan goes to get Annie some water to help her stay awake because she has never been drunk before, and Naomi escapes from Silver and arrives (oh if she had come in one second sooner!) to bewail her unsuccessful attempt to hook up with Julio, who had bounced, but not before revealing to her that he did not like games.

Plus Annie had declined to hook up with his friend, as she was on her way, unbeknownst, of course, to Naomi, to make out with Ethan.

The Julio-Naomi-nostril scene was actually not that bad. "You're not like the other people at school," Naomi tells him. "I'm like a lot of people at school," replies Julio the Linguistically Impaired. "Just not people you hang out with." Oh snap!

As Annie and Naomi discuss their shared somewhere-out-there half brother, and just as Naomi is saying how she is sick of being lied to, Ethan appears in the doorway.

Annie catches up with him in the yard, and says she just can't sneak around to make out with him, reveals that she is not drunk, and then throws up.

By this time, the slumber party has morphed into a full-fledged raver, with the entire population of Beverly Hills in attendance, which naturally includes Kimberly the undercover narc, rocking earrings too large for her head size, and on the verge of Romance with the bumbling-but-boyish-charm-havin' teacher who almost or just a little bit hooked up with Kelly before she went to Colorado or somewhere to conduct a two-week Talk with Dylan, her putative babydaddy, talks we know will fail, now that Kimberly is on the case, and Kelly will return all Shattered, and Bumbling-But will be Torn, and Kimberly will flash her eyes and take off her earrings.

But tonight she is just floating around the party trying to get her narcage on, and getting hit on by a creepy looking dude who watches with a Sinister Look as she gets into Bumbling-But's car and drives off into the night.

The entire population of Beverly Hills also includes NotJim, who bursts angrily in to rescue his daughter from the Den of Iniquity, but melts with compassion when he finds her collapsed, and she reveals that she is angry that NotJim did not reveal his reproductive history when it was first revealed to him, and that she has vomited on the expensive boots.

The next day dawns and it is revealed that the creepy looking dude who tried to hit on Kimberly the Narc is a dumb jock who wishes to blackmail Bumblin-But with the threat of revealing that he saw him leave with Kimberly, who he believes to be a jailbait student.

NotJim sternly reveals that it is against school rules for teachers to be alone with students outside of school, and although technically Kimberly is not really a student, Bumblin-But used poor judgment and will be punished by exile to a leave of absence.

Adriana apologizes to the porn producer's son and reveals that she doesn't think he is That Kind of Boy and that she does Like Him Like That.

Annie re-reveals to Ethan that she does not like the DL and wants to reveal their love to Naomi and accept the consequences.

Naomi reveals to Julio that she does not want to play games, and he reveals his phone number, but just when she is calling him, her eyes are met by the revelation of Annie and Ethan making out, and she forgets about Julio, as well as the existence of caller ID, leaving him to repeat the word hello until she remembers to hang up.

Next week can't get here soon enough!

Gossip Girl: Xtra Cartoon Goodness!

2008-11-04T13:35:00.000-08:00

What a dullard I am. Blame the Pills as usual, but it took me all this time to realize that the Aaron the Promising Young Artist is intended to look like Pete Wentz.

The real Pete Wentz, I guess, doesn't do prime time soap cameos any more now that he has moved on up to the big time and married a Simpson sister and won starring roles in Vote or Lose PSAs (Or maybe it is Choose or Lose. Whatever it is, it is no match for Chuy Can't Vote So We Will). 1TreeHill fans will remember his unforgettable portrayal of himself in season something or other as Peyton's short-lived rock star boyfriend.

But I've wised up now, so I was immediately able to recognize that Naughty Little Emma is supposed to look like Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Confidential to Lil'J: It's eyes OR lips, not eyes AND lips. You really should have paid more attention to those old Conjunction Junction reruns in Vanessa's Home Schooling Package.

Dr 90210 is All About Love

2008-11-04T13:32:00.000-08:00

Watch out Megan! If Lindsey ("living in a sea of breasts," says Rey) is not your biological little sister - well, every family has its secrets. Whatever Mami told you, Megan. Stick with that. But watch your back, because Lindsey is about to fit in.

Belynda wishes to augment her Brazilian butt, although not Brazilian, apparently her butt is, and she wants it augmented, so it will be a J-Lo butt. J-Lo is not actually Brazilian either, but apparently her butt is. But alas! She is too thin, and must gain ten pounds so that the narcissistic Dr Matlock, restorer of used va-jay-jays, will have enough fat to augment her Brazilian butt. Her boyfriend is stoked. He likes him some Brazilian butt! Thanks to Dr M, Belynda will become, at long last, marriage material.

Rey wails about his made-for-TV marriage problems. "My marriage is on the rocks again!"

Kimberley the yoga instructor has Runaway Bride eyes, but she is going to Dr. Linda Li for a hand rejuvenation. Poor Dr Li! She sticks out like a sore thumb on this show. In fact, Li's entire family clearly took a wrong turn somewhere. They so don't belong on this show, on any reality show. There has been a terrible mistake. The whole bunch of them are jarring misfits, nice, pleasant people who might be your neighbors or your cousins. Can someone please help them? I think all they wanted to do was tour Universal, maybe get a cell phone pic of Suri or something.

Back in 90210, Megan's little sister loves her new boobs so much she has put blue streaks in her hair. Now she can fit in with her friends. "Lindsey, your boobs look so goog!" they tell her.

Belynda's friends sit in a row on her bed and admire her new Brazilian J-Lo butt. She goes to a party and shakes her new augmented Brazilian butt for the guests. At last her boyfriend can propose!

Rey has deep trust issues. Left over from being abandoned by his kindasorta Brazilian parents. He says he needs a break. The break will consist of taking the skeletal Hayley and his children to Utah, to visit the missionaries who rescued him from middle-class squalor of a nice neighborhood in Sao Paolo. The rescue consisted, according to his account, of the missionaries accepting him as a gift bestowed by his kindasorta Brazilian biodaddy, evidently with little or no protests from biomamma. The missionary family means so much to him. He asks them for help with his abandonment issues. He has not visited them for 32 years. They are very cordial, and say they enjoyed having him in their home. Rey takes Hayley and the kids outside to play in the snow and learns that it is all about love.

Gossip Girl: Is Lil'J Secretly Gossip Girl?

2008-11-03T21:03:00.000-08:00

What a relief! Seeing Chuck throw out those little glimmers of Reform last week was disturbing, to say the least. If Chuck is going to Reform, he should not do so until at least around the end of season five, coast through six Doing Good, then have a Relapse at the beginning of season seven, not to Re-Reform again until the Series Finale at the end of season eight.

Poor Dan! Even when he sets out to do Evil, he does Good. His lame attempt at revenge consisted of giving Blair sounder advice than he had given her when he intended to help her!

I was thoroughly annoyed with Dan last night. After all the drama that ensued as a result of Serena's failure last season to sit Dan down and tell him The Whole Story, you would think that if either of them had learned anything, it would be Dan, right?

But Nooooo. Instead of sitting Serena down and telling her The Whole Story of Blair's anti-Vanessa operation, he tells her nothing about it, and then too little too late, and [i]then[/i] proceeds to not even tell her what his "sabotage" actually consisted of!

Instead, it is Serena the Troubled who points out that if they are going to have any kind of relationship at all, even a platonic one, communication will be a necessary requisite.

To which Dan the Clueless responds by failing to tell Serena that he is still in love with her, and does not wish her to date the artist she went to kid camp with, and probably imagines himself as Dan the Noble as he watches her walk away to pursue her budding interest in the Artist, even though we all know that she is still secretly in love with Dan the Impenetrable Skull Owner.

Nate's character is one of the most random elements of the show. There are people who don't like Vanessa, there are people who don't like Lil'J, but for me, if they were going to kill off a character, Nate the Bland would be my choice. Other than an essentially thrown-away swipe at illustrating the concept of Reversal of Fortune, the sole function of Nate the Odorless has been to serve as an alternative past or potential love interest for every female in the cast, with the two exceptions mzjones cites, and it would not astonish me should he hook up with one or both of them, just as utilitarianly as he has with all the others.

At least, until last night, when we see Nate the Boring suddenly catapulted into what could be some actual role in significant plot development....

We all saw that coming, remember like the first episode where Lil'J was dressed up in Serena's dress wearing those eye-masks that only on TV disguise peoples' identity, and Nate kissed her, thinking she was Serena?

Who can say that they did not get a kick out of Nate the Defender of Innocence riding in on his white horse to save Lil'J the Pure from that terrible den of iniquity, where there she was doing the unthinkable - dancing in her bra! Oh the horror of it all!

And the delicious mixed message of this occurring on the very heels of Lil'J the Child Warrior, with all that Gumption and Pluck, saving her Art, and thus herself, all by herself, from the Evil Eleanor!

Could that be a Sign that what we really saw was just another flash in the pan for Nate the Un-Needed After All, as Lil'J is quite capable of guarding - or not - her Honor from people like Max the Sketchy who would sully her by photographing her dancing with a fashion model, both scandalously and coincidentally wearing coordinating bras and tights.

Whoever it was who described her new look as a "racoon with a mullet" nailed it.

I still secretly suspect that Dorota is secretly Blair's biological mom, and Lil'J is secretly Gossip Girl.

Gossip Girl: The Cartoon Season!

2008-11-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

I find the New Cartoon Version Gossip Girl very entertaining.

I do, however understand that especially for younger viewers, seeking refuge from all the vaguely ominous tectonic plate-shifting going on in the economy in escapist cartoon fiction about the decadence and depravities of fabulously wealthy people, that the presence of characters who are not fabulously wealthy, and in the case of Nate, even a classic Reversal of Fortune, might be a total buzzkill, but just as painters use contrasting colors and light and shadow to give life and depth to even the blandest still life, all that fabulous wealth and privilege would not glitter so brightly if it were not juxtaposed with characters who have jobs and bills and tiresome concerns that are unrelated to being Queen of the exclusive private school or personal vendettas - in fact even those Golden Ones, the story shows us, have their secret demons of growing up motherless, one way or another, which is the Tie That Binds Chuck and Serena, though neither are aware of it, at least not consciously and/or not yet.

And I suppose the moral of last night's episode is supposed to be that their particular shared malady can put even the most relentlessly superficial of uber-privileged scions and scionettes at risk of Reform.

Make no mistake. That glint in Chuck's glowerings was indeed the germ of Reform, as we see that even with Blair, he is after a declaration of the L-word now, no longer satisfied, nor can he even be placated with a simple romp in the V-word, going so far as to announce that he is cutting Blair off from his P-word unless she complies.

We are even encouraged to suppose that his interest in Vanessa is born of respect for her noble qualities, as he finds himself inexplicably and mysteriously drawn to these curious characters who, although they themselves have nothing, are putting forth all this effort to save a historic building in their seedy little hood.

Does Nate also suffer from Motherless Childhood Syndrome, then? Because last week we saw him dipping a hesitant toe into the austere waters of Reform, and this week we see him presented with a big platter of The Poor Who So Gladly Share What Little They Have.

Even those who groan inward and outwardly at this development will be obliged, on further reflection, to acknowledge that they would not really want to see poor Nate trying to maintain basic hygiene in public bathrooms once whatever is left in the mansion's pipes runs out, nor grubbing around leftovers on sidewalk cafes or worse, dumpster diving, where he might be seen by a proprietor who recognizes him, or seized by law enforcement.

Hmm, now that the Barty Bunch has experienced the Miracle of Instant Healing, it would not be unthinkable that they might take in the newly-urchinized Nate, so that his Reversal of Fortune will not have to suffer the added indignity of a reduction in bedsheet thread count.

We must remind ourselves again that this is the Cartoon Version, and it is only to be expected that the Theme so clumsily drummed out and manifest in the Message of Dan is that it is those trite and homely old values like family and friendship, kindness and True Love and all-around Other-Directedness that Really Matter, not Jewelry and glittering soirees and couture gowns (the bestest of which, we are also not-so-subtly instructed, are in fact the creation of one of the show's tiresome old poor people)

At least the writers had the presence of mind to reveal the mantra that unlocks the Secret of the show's True Meaning, if we we will only remember to bob our heads back and forth just a smoosh as we continuously chant it: Tights are not pants.

Dr 90210: Robert Rey Has His Cake and Bites It, Too

2008-11-03T20:57:00.001-08:00

I don't think Robert realizes how good he's got it.

Hayley is willing to raise the kids and take care of the house all by herself, all he has to do is pay for it, and in return he gets the "wife and kids" that he feels he needs or ought to have, with none of the real responsibilities or sacrifices or impact on what he does with his time.

That is not to say that I think theirs is an ideal situation, or anything remotely related to my own ideas of marriage, family, etc but from everything that we have seen of them, and everything that they have told us of their relationship, from its inception, one thing, or value, or whatever you want to call it, that they share is that they both seem to have some basic concepts and values in common, Hayley wanted to be married to a wealthy doctor, and Robert felt that a wife and children were necessary accoutrement to the image, the lifestyle, or persona or whatever that he wanted to be.

So Hayley got her virtually limitless "ATM," and Robert got a wife with a particular look, he got children, so he gets to be a wealthy, in-demand plastic surgeon in the capital of the beauty-wealth-fame-glamor-boobs culture, he gets to "have" the tall, thin blonde wife, the children, the interesting exotic hobby, and even be a reality TV star, and now he even has his "own line of shapewear" that gives him even more camera time with his appearances on one of the Big Two shopping channels!

I do not pretend to understand their insistence on not having a nanny or a babysitter, I think Hayley has explained it saying that she does not want her kids raised by household staff like so many in their community are, and certainly any time that there are extended family members available to baby-sit, I don't think many people would argue that that is not preferable than having the job done by a professional service vendor, and at least from what we can see on the show, she has not really developed any close relationships, she doesn't seem to have a lot of friends that she spends time with, so it is more than understandable that she would welcome - even yearn for - human interaction with humans other than her kids, and living near her parents would unquestionably mean an improvement in her quality of life, if she could leave the kids with mom so easily maybe she would make friends.

Remember when she came back from Montreal she toyed with the idea of resuming her interest in acting, but apparently that was not something that Robert was comfortable with, since it would have required him to assume child-care duties for a few hours once or twice a week, so that was pretty much that.

From what they tell us, Robert leaves early in the morning and doesn't return until late at night, depending on how much time he spends on his martial arts hobby, which is how he prefers to spend his leisure time, and so for all practical purposes, Hayley is functioning as a single parent, and what single parent wouldn't rather have mom and dad right down the street?

I think we all strive to keep on the right side of that fine line, when engaging in the internationally popular passtime of thinking way too much about reality shows, between stating our opinions and "passing judgment" on them, and if in my endeavor to avoid the latter I have failed to be clear about the former, for the record, I have never been a big fan of Hayley. In fairness, when it comes to matters of such importance as reality show trainwrecks, I do tend to be something of a stickler for quality, and let's face it. Hayley is not and never will be a Mr Boston.

While there may be some avid Team Hayley viewers who truly believe that she may once have wanted him, in my increasingly dismally failing efforts to be sensitive to those whose interpretation of the "reality" in reality shows is much purer than my own, perhaps we can all agree that whatever her girlish illusions, if any, may have been, she has accepted, as it were, the "reality" of the situation, revised her desires accordingly, picked up her basket of lemons and here she is resolutely squeezing them into a big frosty pitcher.

Should Robert "have a say" in where they live?
I don't know whether or to what extent the cameras might have been a consideration in the way she chose to express it, if she wished to ensure that the scene had enough drama, on the one hand, or if she might have attempted to sound more tactful had she not been caught up in the moment and forgotten that they were there, but either way, she pretty much nailed it.

Viewers of previous seasons may remember a few episodes where Robert was going to try being a real part of the family, etc, and my assumption was that if that was done for the cameras, it was to help viewers understand just why that would not work.

Robert simply has more interest in other things, and some may even remember what I considered the low point of all things Rey: Robert spending "quality time" with his kids, every other word out of his mouth, it seemed, some little disparaging dig at their mother.**

Even if she did want him to "be around more" at one time, surely she now understands that
A) it ain't gonna happen, and
B) under the circumstances, and especially because there are kids involved, that is really a Good Thing (TM)

So if Hayley wants to move to Calabasas and live down the street from her parents, it is not because I agree philosophically with the Reys' arrangement, but a simple acknowledgement that these are the choices they made, this is the "reality" they have chosen that I am able to concur with Hayley's pragmaticism, shrug and declare in rare unison with her:
"Yeah Robert, just shut up and pay the bill!"

What are Robert's choices? California is a community property state, and they have two kids. It would cost him a lot more to divorce her than she will spend buying, even decorating, a house in Calabasas, and he would no longer technically "have" that wife and kids that he appears to consider necessary accessories for his persona, his "station in life."

He would be between a worse rock and a worse hard place - either pay for kids he no longer "has" living in his "home" - AND forfeit half his assets, or, since he is very wealthy, he could probably purchase sufficient lawyerage to get custody, which he would not want either.

In a divorce, Hayley would emerge the sure "winner," the only "weapon" Robert would have is that she has emotional issues and an eating disorder, and the only thing he could hope to get out of it would be custody, which he doesn't want, and might not get anyway, since the kids are so young, rightly or wrongly courts do favor mothers, her parents are right down the street and she would surely be getting "treatment" for all that by the time they got to that point.

So, to mercifully sum it all up, I am not a fan of either Rey, nor can I claim that the decisions and compromises and trade-offs they have made, the way they have chosen to live their lives, or at least the way they have chosen to present all that to the viewing public, would appeal to or agree with me, but then they might say the same thing about me!

As far as they (or any of their staff, representatives and service vendors of any kind) are concerned, I am just one more wacky viewer holding forth and opining based on footage that makes it out of the editing room, and as far as I am concerned, they are just a couple more reality show hamsters upon whom I opine, and that, at least, is exactly as it should be!

**And here we uncover one foetid side of the dual kernel of why I find the Reys among the creepiest and most viscerally repellent of all reality TV hamsters: No matter what issues they may have, illnesses and conditions that they choose not to treat, it is not the fault of the two children they chose to bring into the world. I remember expressing the hope on some blog or forum or other that they would not only get divorced, but no matter what they decided to do with their own selves, quickly while the children were still young enough to at least minimize the trauma, at least let the kids go to homes where they would have the benefit of a loving home, and parents who enjoy a loving, functional relationship.

The other side of that dual kernel is of course Robert's um, "bedside manner," with his patients, the politest way I can put it is to say that I find it distasteful, beyond the planet of inappropriate and well into the realm of creepy and viscerally repellent.

So much for this week's Armchair Rey Analysis, as always brought to you free of charge and worth every penny!

Dr 90210: Selective Perception

2008-11-03T20:54:00.001-08:00

Selective Perception used to be a thing that got a lot of classroom discussion time in advertising classes. I don't know if it still does, and other than sending people off to the dictionary to look up the term itself, as well as its components separately, if needed, I don't really know a good way to explain it other than by giving an example, so Robert Rey's fans will please forgive me if - and note that I stress the if - they feel that it could be interpreted as casting him in a less positive light. It is only coincidence that the anecdote has anything to do with him at all.

He frequently makes a point of talking about the terrible poverty of his early life in Brazil, and if anyone has been to Brazil, you will know that there is indeed extreme poverty there, in fact Brazil is often cited as an object lesson in why some people are not enthusiastic about the transition of certain other countries to the "two-class" system.

Anyway, Rey has spoken extensively about the horrific conditions in which he lived, being obliged to sleep on a table, belonging to a "gang" of child thieves who stole candy to keep themselves alive, the squalid dump of a school, until one day when he is about eleven or so, his father gave him away to some missionaries from Utah, and they brought him back to Utah, where he went to school, learned English, etc.

So one day we have this episode where he goes back to Brazil, he's going to reconcile with his father, who is now old and sick, and supposedly filled with remorse for his part in making Rey's early life such a living hell, and Rey feels sorry for him, old and sick in all that terrible squalor and poverty, it's his father, after all.

Well, I'm sitting there, watching. I'm expecting Rey to take us to a lean-to in a favela, you know?

So imagine my surprise when we see the school, and it is pretty basic, but far from squalid, and then we get to the house - and it is not a favela shack, but a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and then - his dad speaks English with the accent of the Northeastern US! Dad was either born, or raised for most of his life in the US, or he is some kind of linguistic savant.

Now obviously, none of this means that his father did not do all kinds of awful things, maybe he did not provide for his children, maybe he did give little Rey away to "missionaries."

I always thought it was a little odd that Rey does not pronounce Portuguese words or phrases (the few we ever hear him utter) like someone whose first language was Portuguese. Usually, even if kids don't ever hear that first language, they will still retain some pronunciation basics, even if they are removed from that language long before eleven.

But the way people learn and remember languages is all over the place, and you could certainly argue that if his dad didn't take care of him, he probably didn't speak English to him either, so I guess that it would be theoretically possible for him to have had an English-speaking father, even a native speaker, who never used it, and that his own language skills might be so sketchy that even though he spoke only Portuguese until he was eleven, since he would have heard little if any of it in Utah, that his neural pathways could have paved over so hard that even his vowel sounds in that language today - oh, well.

What cannot be argued away is that neither the school nor Rey, Sr's home were squalid nor poverty-stricken. I have seen FAR "worse" homes - and worse schools in other places, including the US. In fact, in the US, the home where we found Rey, Sr would be considered at worst, solidly middle class. And again, those familiar with Latin America will recognize that people there who live in terrible poverty do not typically do so in homes that would be considered middle class in the US.

Now what you would expect from the fans of Rey, at least what I expected, were arguments that maybe Dad had made good during the intervening years, maybe there was some mix-up and that wasn't the favela shack, maybe the school had received some major remodeling and renovation grants.

But what really impressed me about the whole Rey back to Brazil episode was that Rey stood in the basic but clean little school and waved his arms and talked about how awful it was!

He made similar comments about the nice quiet street, etc.

And lo and behold, all over the internets the next day were people going on about how difficult it must have been for Rey to have to see his father living in such terrible squalid poverty!

Now I did not say all that out of a desire to start up a storm of Rey-bashing. It would be impolite to his fans, who have very strong and very real feelings about him, and I would certainly not want the Reyista vigilantes to come over here and bother Our Serene Management, who are also our Serene Benefactors and our hosts.

My point is not really even Rey-related, although the anecdote I am using to illustrate it does involve him.

My point is that if someone holds up a picture of a girl with messy hair, and says "What a neat, pulled-together hairstyle!" or even holds up a picture of a blue car and says "What a bright red car!" not everyone who sees the pictures will agree whether the hairstyle was messy.

And not everyone who saw the pictures will agree about what color the car was.

Just one of those Funny Things We Humans Do, that can sometimes make some people go "Hmmm."

Paris Hilton's New BFF: Just Pick Corrie Already

2008-11-03T20:43:00.001-08:00

In the opening scenes of this episode, Kiki looked so over it, I was thinking she was going to do something like eliminate herself at the end. To me, she just seemed to have "don't wanna be here" oozing from her pores, as excited by the idea of a "who knows the most about Paris" game as I might be if someone called me up to inform me that "The Story of Bricks" would be starting in ten minutes on the Discovery channel.

But to my surprise, it was Kiki who WON the Paris Trivia Challenge. And off she goes to eat dinner with Paris. Her prize.

Paris gives current pet and fellow bigoted offal scrap Corrie the choice of who should be eliminated. I think Paris should eliminate all the rest of them and just declare Corrie the winner, on the basis of their shared values, and shared bigoted scrap of offalhood.

Corrie chooses Zui of course, who in fairness did once mention her desire to plunge a knife into Corrie, a classic and universal textbook example of a reality-show no-no, (and recalling a current thread in the beauty forum, a classic and universal textbook example of someone who should not have dyed their hair black at all, and certainly not with a dye that even people who were born with black hair should stay clear of) but I was really hoping she would choose one of the ones that I keep getting confused with her unless there is a label under their name, someone is addressing them by name, or of course, if Corrie is speaking.

"TTYN," Corrie sneers at Zui.

Then the girls are challenged with a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven with Dirt Nasty, and it is Natasha who gets sent home, as far as I could tell, because she already knew Dirt from back east.

Without Onch, this show is sinking fast.

One Tree Hill: Countdown to Sex Tape

2008-11-03T20:37:00.001-08:00

My speculation is that the script for next week's episode will contain the term "sex tape."

Julian is obviously going to turn out to be a dalliance of Peyton's early, naive and lonely days in LA, and from which dalliance, being the good and sensible girl that she is, swiftly removed herself, but Julian, like that creepy dude in the late lamented and much loved by me show Dirt, had the habit of recording all his dalliances for posterity, and it was very probably the discovery of this custom that caused Peyton to terminate the association, but he of course still has the Tape, but it is not until now that he has any use for it...

The suspension of disbelief requirements of this show are skyrocketing.

First we are supposed to believe that any professional entity would hire a person who not only has a chronic back injury, but takes opiates for it, to go out on a basketball court where he could not only rack up the company's workman's comp rates, but cause injury to other players, incurring further costs, not to mention the loss of the use of said players.

Then we get Lucas, who though he may have made a hot mess of his personal life, has always been the wise and prudent one with the brain, who signs a contract on a pool table at the local bar with a dude who shows up and says he's a producer who will give Lucas $300,000 without even having his agent look it over, much less a lawyer.

So what I think is going to happen is, of course Peyton will be Torn.

Should she come clean, and tell Lucas that the Evil Julian is really a porn producer, and her own indiscretion, and the existence of the Tape, and risk Losing him, or should she keep her mouth shut in the hope that Julian will not throw her under the bus, even though having to watch Lucas' agony as he rails at his agent, and calls in lawyers now that the barn door is open and the horse is out, in a vain struggle to keep his beloved book, the story of his pure and sacred boyhood love, turned into a sleazy porno, which may or may not feature some choice footage of Peyton herself, as if she did not have enough to worry about already...

Dramatic, and it will surely shoot the ratings through the roof, but what Mr Puff and I have really been looking forward to is when Millicent, worried about Gigi, confides in Brooke, who gives her a makeover, which will mostly consist of taking off her glasses and giving her some really classy slutty lingerie, whereupon she will reveal both to Mouth and to us, that she is really a Hottie, and Mouth will fire Gigi, who will either have completed however many episodes she was signed up for, or move on to set her sights on Skills, whom she will try to convince that he should leave Deb because she is so old, maybe even forty, and is thus going to die before long anyway.

We have also been looking forward to learning more about Sam's parentage, and finding out whose long-lost sister she is, but we won't know that until she Reforms and we see with which character she falls in love and develops a deep romance, the consumation of which is repeatedly attempted but always interrupted or prevented at the last minute...

Real Housewives of Atlanta: Poison Means Fish in French

2008-11-03T20:35:00.000-08:00

After that first little exchange about "poison means fish in French" with Kim and her friend at the restaurant, I was feeling kind of like I did after seeing the preview show for the New York Housewives: "Even I can't bring myself to make fun of these people. Shame on Bravo for exploiting them, and I'll take the high road and aim my snark at a a fair target like the people on My Big Redneck Wedding."

But by the time we got to Kim's "they don't show their age, you know" line, I was too busy spluttering "Uh-uh. She didn't just say that" to be troubled by such questions and was thus free to enjoy the rest of the show impeded only by a small bout of idly wondering if any teenaged girls - or boys - [i]without[/i] self-esteem issues had ever actually existed, or possibly still do, somewhere in a little mountain village in Bhutan, maybe. Even so, that's still one big mission.

DeShawn said she spent $30,000 on her party, and received $10,000 in donations, thus depriving "her girls" - and her husband of only $20,000. Kim said the bracelet she bought cost $14,000. Maybe they were getting only a percentage of diamond bracelet sales. Kim had to text Big Papa immediately to inform him of the purchase. I wonder what the cut-off is. I mean, does she have to tell him if she buys a $6.99 hair clip at CVS, like the one DeShawn was rocking right before the Night of a Thousand Stars Diamond Gala? What about $800 or so for a pair of Jimmy Choos? $39.95 for a new Dynel (TM) wig?

None of the guests were interested in paying $7500 to have dinner with LeBron James, and Kim called Big Papa again, complaining that she was bored and the wine was bad, then stuffed the black satin sausage casing into which she had stuffed most of herself, with the exception of her mammouth faux mammaries, back into her limo and bounced.

Sheree was too disgusted to even buy any diamond bracelets. "No coat check?" she sniffed. What am I supposed to do with my fur? Earlier that day, she had revealed to Kim that she has always been popular and beautiful. Kim admitted that she was not always beautiful, having been afflicted with naturally black hair.

All in all, a pretty sorry little episode, with only the briefest flash of NeNe getting swabbed down for her DNA test to find out whether Curtis is really her father. That was the storyline that had hooked me in last week.