Was reading my weekly summaries of the tabloids (thank you Gawker! you save me $1.99 a week when I am feeling a case of the gossips taking control of me in the grocery line), and found out that our Jess, winner of the ye olde Rock o’ Love, had never heard of Brett before the show, and was faking it all. Apparently, “you can’t fall in love in 5 weeks,” she said. Wise words.

But back to Vh1 and it’s love matches–Hoopz pulled the same stunt on Flavor Flav. They did play “Every Rose has its thorn” for the finale. There is no true love to be had in celebreality.
I have to say though, I haven’t been more entertained by a diabetes crisis, ever, than watching Brett and Jess learn trust as he explained his possible insulin shock (all the more surreal since there are camera men filming his supposed medical emergency, and he was well enough to get naked in the jacuzzi after Jess wept (WEPT!) over his diabetes). And we do all know that diabetes is about the least rock and roll problem since gout.

I love reality show calamity diseases! Diabetes! Exzema or whatever Caridee “fought” on ANTM (the flesh eating disease was real and ugly, and that poor model got no props for her struggle). Now Tyra might be exploiting autism (or not, I’m not sure yet).

But I did love the white New York, Heather–all mouth and raving madwoman hurricane strength. Did she actually pull her hair out in rage? I loved her anger at the tattoo of “Brett,” and how she had “the world’s biggest asshole’s name on her neck.” She was pitch perfect, and I realized as the show ended on her car’s tail lights screeching away from the mansion, that she was an actual delight to watch. Vh1–you totally got me.

Apparently being so f-ing rich that you have yachts and four day parties means two things (according to the new super long Hennessy ads):

1.) You never get sick when you drink cognac for 4 days

2.) All the ladies come to 4 day parties with a suitcase full of flowy caftan and caftan-style dresses.

Just so you know…

As I was describing Rock of Love to a friend last night, she made an astute observation:

Me: “So, its this show, where Brett Michaels has to pick from this group of tan blond women with fried hair….”

Friend: “So, they all look like Brett Michaels.”

Good point. Didn’t Freud or someone say that we are most attracted to those who are like us?

Well, this week’s Rock o’ Love had some amazing moments:

1. The vomit spewing from behind a woman’s napkin as she tried to pretend that she was not spontaneously vomiting.
2. “One of the most touching moments” of Brett’s life: when the above lady proclaimed her love for him toilet-side, after she had finished her vomitage.
3. Watching a woman chug a bottle of Jager. You don’t see that every day. At least I don’t.
4. The responsible young lady who didn’t get boozed to the point of vomitiness, bitchiness, or passoutedness is rewarded with a very special night of kissing (with tongue) and more, with Brett himself. Hmmm–this wasn’t how high school worked.

It was bad. And of course, as fascinating as the eye shadow and hairspray these ladies wear as their uniform. I didn’t make it to the end of the show. The vomiting and then the heart to hearts the next day was enough. Do the producers feel bad about damaging all those livers?

So, just spent an hour trying to find something to mindlessly savor, and there were no dice to be had.  Comedy Central was stuck on The Sweetest Thing, MTV is caught up in preparations for tonight’s awards (I admit, I do kind of want to see Britney, but then I don’t want to admit that admittance), and VH1 was showing Hogan Knows Best, which always makes me want to vomit.  The closest I came to satisfaction was Murder She Wrote, mostly because of an amazing red checked suit one of the characters was wearing, with a red checked blouse.  It was a lot of red checks.

What to do, what to do….. Guess I’ll go clean the kitchen.

I was caught in yet another ANTM marathon yesterday–I think Vh1 has passed off the 8 hour doozies to MTV, which still gets the job done–and I realized that all I wanted to see was what was under Tyra’s wig.  Since she so very much wants to be the everywoman, could she please do a show on what her real hair looks like?  I would be a rapt audience, and would quit rolling my eyes when she tries to show that she is a down-to-earth goofball who is more than an ex-supermodel.

The no makeup/retouching photo shoot did wonders for Jamie Lee Curtis’ career.  Tyra, invite other famously wigged ladies on–Dolly Parton, Cher,(that would be one great hour of television)–and own those wigs! Show us that they are your choice–that they give you power, that they provide an extreme fabulousness that we all know is not natural.  You aren’t trying to fool anybody–you’re just enjoying the art of costume.

Please?

I should start by saying that I don’t hold the New Yorker sacred.  I like EB White.  I like James Thurber, I like Capote, and all the others, but washing my hands in New Yorker offices’ bathroom isn’t a lifelong dream.  I enjoy the magazine–I like its reliability in offering something interesting and shaped.  I like the seriousness in which it takes itself–the myth of the laboriously crafted casual style, the idea that every writer has been whipped and made to justify every comma.  The idea that in this magazine, every word must tell.

And then, in today’s mail, I get a piece of dreck so confusing, so poorly executed, so outright bad, that I can’t believe it wishes (proudly, apparently) to be a bi-product of New Yorkerdom.  As a strangely aligned supplment to the Food Issue, comes some slick Cosmo looking mag called Fashion Rocks. Jennifer Lopez in on the cover, in full lips parted/hair in the wind/full frontal eye-lock.

Every page I turned made me groan.  This is a full, “who are the ad wizards that came up with this one” moment.

To limit my rant, I offer a list of offenses:

1. What is Fashion Rocks? Is it the name of some new magazine Conde’ Nasty is trying to insinuate into the monied New Yorker audience? A television show hosted by Jeremy Piven? A horse? A benefit concert? A Vh1 awards show? A stupid editorial theme? I have no idea.
2. Every thing about this magazine wants to be Cosmo gone Vanity Fair gone Vogue gone Seventeen gone US Weekly.  It ends up worse than all of these.
3. The editors letter talks about a horse named London Fashion Rocks, and that is pretty much it.  The editor, one Jonathan Van Meter, writes as if horses and dogs named Billie Holiday are inherently interesting, and that we need no reason to know why this thing has arrived in our mail–that we might have actually paid for such a supplement–there is not mention of what the hell is being supplemented!
4. A Hilfiger ad has men in suits fishing.  It is so naked in the cool that it wants to be that it makes me sad to look at it.
5. There are pages of shitty collages updating us on society and celebrity types.  Doesn’t Vogue already have dibs on that sort of thing?
6. One of the shitty collages, dubbed “Karma Chameleons” has a pic of Scarlett Johnasson “in vintage.”  Here is an example of how horrible horrible horrible the writing for this unwanted mess of paper is “Scarlett Johansson unleashed her inner songbird at the Coachella music festival (and even plans to release an album!).” When did good old NYer start unironically using exclams?
7. Every thing in this mag is supposed to make me covet–to want to be part of a club scene or rockband, but the execution is so poor that it just makes me angry that such a celebration is occurring.  It all looks shoddy and overhypped.  I don’t want to be like any of it.  It all feels dated, and super unhip.
8. To show the craziness of the club world, one pic is labeled “scary masked reveler.” Wow, so descriptive.  I feel like I am there.
9. Another moment of editorial brilliance–an entire spread of pairing a hot model with a rock band.  It will be hilarious! Or really boring. The title? “She’s with the band.” I could groan for so many reasons.
10. One moment of pleasure–The Kings of Leon look so douchy it is astounding.
11. One moment of pain–the highlighted quote (the words so important they were underlined and red) “I want to know where they get their jeans because I’ve never found any as tight as those.” Why not ask their stylist? The same one who dressed you, model lady.
12. Did you know that sometimes “rockers” sing without a shirt on? The caption? “No jacket desired.” Puke and puke.
13. Another hit, “people want to look at a rock band as much as they want to look at a model.” This editorial is proving negator skelletor on both accounts.
14. Aren’t models pretend playing guitars adorable?
15. Did you know David Bowie was important to fashion and music?
16. Stevie Nicks has a trademark style?
17. This one made my mind spurt a little blood, but we’re all doing okay–guess what P. Diddy’s new fragrance is called? It gives me the shivers. Unforgivable Woman.   Yikes.  Another day, another rant.
18. The Hives—hmmm,  didnt they have a hit song about 4 years ago?  They’re Swedes.  They wear suits. OK Go.  Hmm, didn’t they have a hit song years ago? That’s right. Treadmills.  They wear suits.
19. Did you know that The Rolling Stones are important to fashion and music?
20. Panic at the Disco, you know, for the kids.
21. This one is a doozie.  A field of flowers, a chevy in the background, and Fergie in tights and a blouse gazing soulfully into the distance.  Then, one of the most amazing paragraphs I’ve read in advertising, “Life isn’t always so glamourous on tour: Fergie knows how important it can be to stop and take a deep breath.  On one of her days off while on her first-ever solo tour, she took time to strike a pose with the Equinox Fuel Cell.  With zero greenhouse gas emissions and only water vapor as an emission, it’s what we call a breath of fresh automotive thinking.”
22.  I gotta hold the phone here:  A: I thought they quit doing adverts like this in the 1950s.  B: Fergie? C: The picture is so fucked up.
23. I can’t even make it through the entire magazine, but in short:
    Every celebrity mentioned is either overexposed, tired, or simply not very important. Everything in the magazine is shockingly stale and tired–could they have just found an old Glamour from 2004 and revamped it?  It seems like one must work very hard to make a magazine this bad.

Are the people at the NYer toasting themselves on finally identifying with America’s youth? With America’s gossip audience? With America’s 12-year-olds who have parents that have NYer subscriptions and don’t know any better?

In all-what is this? What the fuck happened?  It bothers me in the same way that the Bush administration is troublesome–it is lazy about hiding its intentions.  It says, yes, we think you are stupid enough to fall for this, so please, go ahead, and fall for this.

Puke, puke, and puke.

I am conflicted about this one:

A.)On the one hand,  it’s hilarious to watch beauty queens’ armor of sequins and makeup fail their mouths

B.) But on the other hand, it’s an embarrassing moment.  She is humiliated. Is it fair to celebrate that?

C.) Why I offer it here–the look on the host’s face as he tries not to laugh is pretty fantastic.

Take a looksie

So, by accident, complete accident, I have fallen headfirst into Vh1’s new crop of crap.   The Pick Up Artist show (maybe that is the actual title?) is yet another reality show pretending to be full of virtue, when it is really really killing us all by its existence. And, yes, I do enjoy watching it.

The premise?  A bunch of sad men with no “game” are schooled by a real life Hitch character.  The cool part: mr. Ladie’s man is not a macho stereotype–he is more Tommy Lee than Brad Pitt.  Skinny, flamboyant, and with painted nails and long hair, this ultimate ladies man is wonderfully ungendered.  But, his name is also Mystery, which makes me want to punch him often.  And, as sensitive and daring he might be with his fashion, he is a bit of a dickhead.

Why? First off, his co-hosts,err wingmen (their actual title), sit with him in bachelor leather arm chairs and the three of them talk coach the normal unaccesorized fellows that have come for enlightenment–they have their own fake business book jargon for their program.  Words like “gambit,” “story,” and another I can’t remember, but it has to do with nicknames.  They try to present hitting on a woman as if it is actually a classic scholarly endeavor–all telling stories really, and trying to delight and entertain.  They never mention that this isn’t really about great literature or art–it’s about trying to get a woman to sleep with you.

So, the A1 thing that irked me? To teach the fellows how to talk to ladies, Mystery had them entertain a group of little girls–apparently if you can keep a 5 year old entranced, you have the key to success with grown up women, too.  This was annoying because it suggested that little girls are different listeners than little boys, that these little girls would one day get to grow up and be hit on for real by men like these, and that women are really just little girls with makeup on.  Over and over again, the men said they shouldn’t be scared of their weekly challenge (going into a bar under surveillance and applying their new skills), because the girls were the same challenge as the women.

Really? Can they hear themselves.

icky.

The other doozie is the Flavor of Love gone white, Brett Michaels and  The Rock of Love.  I only saw the end of this, but any time you have one man asking women over and over again as a sign of some faux invitation to join him on a journey of exploration and committment, “will you continue to rock my world” and not crack up as he says it, you have television gold.  He also offers each lady a VIP pass instead of the requisite rose, or, giant watch.  At least VH1 is willing to show that every demographic has its low taste high silicon element, and that the glee in the trashiness of women who lust after passe’ celebrities is quite a pile of fodder.  It could almost look like a sign of equality, an apology for suggesting that it was only women of color (and the unfortunate Pumkin) that were “hoochies” for the cause.  But it’s not.  It’s just the presentation, again, that women are sad and funny, especially when they are a little bit despereate.  Boo.

Another weeklong lapse in my posting–mostly because wordpress had the nerve to erase my platinum/titanium (valuable and strong!) thoughts before they could be posted. Now you get the joy of the expanded and rehashed version.

Because I can’t get over it, we have to talk about the amazingness of last night’s ANTM, where somehow the editors of the show decided to keep in the footage of Tyra embarressedly and desperately holding her hand over head when her scarf fell off (she was also in the middle of removing a kangaroo suit fuzzy head, which is ripe for another discussion of how lame that “we’re going to Australia (scream scream scream) segment of the show was. It looked like they filmed it a producer’s cubicle next to the water cooler).

It has been bothering me that Tyra has been wearing such horrible head scarves lately, looking a little too much like a Bratz doll, cheap polyester accessories included. And, then, her panic at having her roots show, it was all too much. Everybody else in the world probably already knows this, but it was news to me, and an answer for the hairhiding: Tyra wears a wig. Tyra wears very expensive wigs. I also very much appreciated how, in order to make up for her wierdness with the kangaroo shoot (really, why couldn’t they just reshoot that or edit her our, reality shmeality), she went sans headband for the elimination segment of the show. She appeared in overlong blonde locks with a severe middle part. I have to say, I didn’t know that wigs could fake hair parts and roots. I’m impressed. I wish she would do a show all about her wigs. If she wants to be so real, then show us what’s under there.

Another thing, I am sick and tired of all the hoohaa about Tyra being fat. She isn’t fat. She still looks completely in proportion, she has no unsightly rolls, and she can wear a bathing suit without having any bulges or cellulite. At the most she is simply not a model size 0,2, whatevs, anymore. She might be a whopping 10 now (which is probably a 6 in mall sizes). Stop picking on her, she’s a lot of things, but I’m worn out with the fuss about this one.

Next up, all the talented ladies on the CW are secret teenage mamas. Remember in the fifties when it was the height of shame to be a teenager preggeroo? Or how beauty contestants have to drop out if preggo (like a current Ms. something somewhere), or hide their babies (I think I saw that in a Minnie Driver movie…). Apparently, having a baby in your early years actually helps in the new talent competitions. Not only do a whopping 3 of the girls on ANTM have babies at home (and Dionne has a toddler, a real toddler!), but also one of the frontrunners on the Next Pussycat doll “Robin Antin is a man” show, Asia, has a baby. The girl’s 18. So, if you have a baby as a teenager you are: model pretty, sexy, a decent singer, and pure gold (so shiny) to reality shows. You have built in melodrama. Caridee’s psoriasis can’t hold a melodramatic boohoo to missing your baby! Or better yet, being on the show “all for your baby.” There are a lot of things you can do to get ahead and make a better life for your spawn, ladies. You can go to law school, you can enroll in refrigeration repair, you can work at Blockbuster. Or, you can go on TV and swear its all for the baby. You would think that pregnancy would be the unmodel maker, but apparently not.

Also, did anyone notice, mostly last week, how creepy it was that all the girls missed their babies terribly, and on cue? It was an epidemic of teenage mamas all of a sudden concerned about the welfare of the kids they left in order to go and scream about TyraMail.

I’ve been away from Televisionisgoodforyou, and oh my goodness, there is so much to talk about.  Here is a quick run down of things that deserve some mention, even if they are no longer memorable or important because they happenened somewhere in the eons of last week:

1.) Ohmydear! Reality finales have become (or maybe always were) the most depressing things ever.  If you saw the sad end of VH1’s A List/B List Celebreality show–I can never remember it’s name–you know what I am talking about.  I love Kathy Griffin, I don’t have anything against her, but why was she the hands down judge to decide who wins?  The contestants have been part of this wonky performance based elimination thing for show after show, and then it all ends on who Kathy thinks, after a brief interview/danceoff, should win? Maybe this was a wink at how any A-list celebrity is all a big nonsense lottery affair anyways, but what is looked like more was that the producer’s got tired, or Robin Leech got tired, and they threw it to Kathy.  Hmm, maybe Kathy could get a new career as a Cleaner, a la’ Harvery Keitel, for botched reality TV shows…

So Tracey Bingham won (I still don’t really know who she is), and Ron Jeremy had the double lose of finding out that he hadn’t won by expectantly walking down a dark hallway (that was very short, making it more sad), and having cameras on him as he comprehends that this brick wall is not what was behind the winning door. Bingham (Bonham, whatevs) on the the other hand, squeals and gets her big cardboard check, reminding us all that nothing about this show matters.  Nothing at all.

2.) Lost–One question Lost producers: Do people still care about diamonds? With the two characters going all villainesque in this episode over a pouch of stolen diamonds, I thought I was boomeranged back to an old episode of Murder She Wrote.  I have my fingers crossed that Paulo and Nikki are some gesture towards meta television, because even their names and looks are as plasticky as their lame diamond plot motivation.

3.) Ninja Warrior–Just glad it’s off reruns.  G4, I never knew I’d like a geek like you.

4.) The Riches–The third episode of this show was its weakest so far, but Minnie Driver still knocked it out of the park.  I hope the writers are able to fix misses like Izzard’s floundering rock speech (that was a missed opportunity), and avoid too much melodrama with the elder son’s girlfriend and that bright yellow car.

5.) I can’t believe that CMT is suffering through another Coyote Ugly Search.  Reality TV has gotten cheap. Remember when contestant were in the running for a million dollars, or a dream job.  Now its $50 grand, and a job as a bartender at a mediocre theme bar. Boo.  Is this show supposed to be relevant because it had a crappy movie made in it’s honor? Double boo.

6.) America’s Next Top Model: The one from Hawaii got all kinds of attention at the beginning because she had a husband and babe at home–in fact I believe she was doing ANTM for her baby (she could also go to college, or become a taxidermist for her baby, but this is how she is sacrificing, blah blah blah), but the Russian mail order bride has a surprise baby that is revealed in a phonecall (an icky phonecall, no less), with Russian mail orderer husband.  Nobody talks about it, nobody cares, except one of the girls in the house proves they’re all a little daft when, four episodes in, she asks “do you think she is, like, you know, a mail order bride?” “I thought maybe,” says another girl.  At Tyra knew what was what, and made some jokes about postage early on.

7. ANTM: Tyra must stop wearing those headbands. Why does she insist on a headband every week? They aren’t the cute ones that are popular and flooding Target right now.  They are over-the-top headbands, that would look better in the water color illustration outfits that are made for paper dolls, maybe in a “Paperdolls of the 70’s” book.  On Tyra, they just look wrong wrong wrong.