| march
31
|
Ah, this time of year. Warm windy days, matzo
on the plate (and in the background on the web page) and me with my peeps.
It never ceases to crack me up that: 1) Peeps have a web
page. In fact, several.
"Girl, you're my angel, you're my darlin', angel,That cracks me up every time. A) because it makes me think of the marshmallow peeps; B) because you know, what romantically inclined young woman doesn't one day wish for a man who will whisper in her ear: "Closer than my peeps you are to me." I think Shakespeare put it best: "Compare thee to a summer's rose, nay --Matzo just isn't funny that way. In fact, it's pretty gross. And here's where I betray my definitely-wasn't-born-Jewish roots: I dig it with mayo. Annoying: That all the "flavors" which make it tolerable aren't Kosher for Passover. Bleah. Not that I'm all that into the details of the thing (before I realized what I was doing I'd had cake and tortillas last week) but I'm trying. Buddie was all upset when I told her I didn't have a seder to go to, and frankly, since Passover is one of the most enjoyable holidays to do the religious part of (you get to sing this goofy song, "Dianyu," which I swear, has a tune right out of the Catskills, leading me to think that's where the lost tribes went) and there's all this great talk about boils and locusts and the rivers running blood which keeps the kids interested. Plus, you get to eat and sip wine during the ceremony. So overall, it's got a lot going for it. Just no challah bread. So this year, since I couldn't get home for the ceremony, I signed up with the same people who I took a class on Islam through last year (signed up for pre-9/11, by the way) -- the Center for Religious Inquiry at St. Bart's Cathedral. I thought it would be some kind of old-fashioned Seder, capital S, with all the trimmings, but it turned out to be more of an instructional manual on how to conduct a seder for the non-Jews. I will say that despite my tortilla eating, I am ahead on that game. Nevertheless, it was enjoyable. I sat at a long table, one of four, with total strangers and had some very interesting conversations. You never do know who you're going to meet in New York. The young woman (well, she looked younger than me but turned out to be 35) in front of me had come with her mother (next to her) and eventually her mother's high school friend joined us, sitting next to me (across from the mother). The mother and daughter were both named Allison and were from Brooklyn. Allison, Junior had been working on a stand-up career for some time now, although she first labeled herself an actress. Then she explained that in order to make money while struggling in this actress/stand-up life, she took a job as a phone sex operator. Well, er, okay, then! (Actually, I had a poor time in my life when I looked at those ads and thought, shit, I could talk dirty for money, then decided it was a little too weird, but AJ had me fascinated.) The money was so good, it turned out, that Allison Senior got into the act, too! I shit you not. So Allison Senior (now having scandalized her former high school friend) began explaining how "it's mostly about fetishes" and how people would want her to be mean to them on the phone, so she could do that, and how strange the calls could get. Damn, I should have written this down earlier, it was too good to forget. Anyway, towards the end of the evening I remembered I had a few more photos on the roll I took when Mom was in town last month and was trying to finish it out, so I asked if I could take their picture. AJ seemed a little suspicious but got into the act ... they both did -- and both withdrew clown noses from their purses!
New York. It kills me.
On another religious note, and a considerably more serious one, suddenly the world has become aware of pedophiliac priests in the Catholic Church. Come again? You're kidding that this is news, right? Law & Order did an episode on this in the mid-1990s -- one of their main characters was solicited by a priest, and years later they prosecuted him for touching other boys! Then there was The Boys of St. Vincent, a Canadian miniseries, which came out in 1993! This is not a new problem, and it bothers the hell out of me that everyone's acting so indignant and shocked. I've felt like this was a reality which was being dealt with for years and years now ... the idea that this is somehow new to people just shows how deep in the sand a head can go. That said, it's reprehensible, but the Catholic Church will go bankrupt before it changes policy on priests and marriage.
From the "I can't believe adults act like this" category,
this is Angela Shapiro. Well. The Lowest Rated Soap On Television happens to be on ABC. They fired one of their leading actresses. She tried out for another soap, on another network (Days Of Our Lives on NBC, nyah). We reported the latter, not the former information. And even at the time, there was a flurry of concern about how this might cheese people off On High, and yet, you know, screw them -- it happened, it's news, let people read into it what they like. Oh, and by the way: It was already being talked about on the Internet, so it's not like we were giving away state secrets. Two weeks ago tomorrow I got in late to work (eye issue, moral: don't wear contacts to bed) and was brought into the Princess's office. Head Cheese was there, too, although Amazon Hurricane was thankfully absent. I got real scared -- not for my own job, but I honestly thought the magazine was shutting down. Then they told me: Shapiro was pissed about the news piece. She'd withdrawn all ABC support on coverage for a month. We'd been punished! Sent into the corner! Given a time out! This is the stupidest thing I've heard of in this industry, and I promise you, I've met Jessica Morris, and this tops even her. In a way, however, it's been freeing. Since we've always had to go through ABC publicity to get to the actors, and now cannot, we're more or less free to go get what we want however we want. Obviously, the well would run dry on stuff eventually, so this couldn't be a permanent state of existence, but it is rather a change of pace -- and a nice one in the meantime. We're still getting the synopsis information through some kind of underground movement, and we've all got backlogs of information, so we're riding the storm just fine. And then, as if to prove mediocrity rises -- if, in fact, this really is a promotion -- Angela Shapiro, last Wednesday, was given a new job: Head of ABC Family Channel. To me, that's a step down, but what do I know. Until they name a successor, she's still in place, but when I told my fellow ABC editors we all had a group hug and started singing "ding, dong, the witch is gone...." It was a happy day.
Other items of note, at least to me. I've been sitting on my hands all month because I was dying to see Panic Room. It opened on Friday. We got out at 2:30 for the holiday. I was seated for a 3:45 showing. Good movie. 8 of 10. Not great, not Se7en, but I liked it. I guess I prefer when I don't notice the clues along the way -- but it's hard to know if this is my fault or the director's, since I've seen a lot of films like this. Like for example, Jodie Foster puts her daughter to bed, and opens a small refrigerator near the bed and puts some water on the side table. All the fridge has is bottled water, orange juice and some strange clear-looking medicine. That's not much of a spoiler, but these are. Now, I give the movie credit for (as far as I can tell) never using the word "diabetes" but as soon as you see that, you know at some point this is going to be an issue. Then, later on the thieves ransack Jodie's bedroom and there's a very specific shot of her cellphone skittering across the floor. Will that cell phone be important later? Of course.
But minor complaints, I suppose. I didn't see that the sledgehammer would be such a major point; I didn't see that the father would eventually come over and become a major player. I was thoroughly grossed out when the door slammed on Dwight Yoakam's hand -- I am not, not, not good with the broken bones; I was traumatized when I saw Sharkey's Machine as a young un and they tortured Burt Reynolds by breaking his fingers, one joint at a time, until he talked. Blade Runner is another difficult one for me -- I just clench my fists under my armpits and curl up not unlike the daughter in the photo above. Anyway, Yoakam's character (Raul!) (and no, I had no idea who he was until I saw the credits) has his hand in the door a ridiculously long time and it was torture for me, sheer torture. But I like the kick-assedness of Jodie, and how she foils the thieves, particularly when they decide to get cooking with gas. The ending, I felt, was a little pat, however. I think Forest should have gotten away with it. That would have been okay, at that point. And finally, a bit of eye candy:
My boy -- my peep! -- Vin is going to be a super secret
agent in a new film called XXX. This is the poster, or one of the
posters. It looks just as stupid as The Fast And The Furious, and
is directed by Hollywood's current favorite hack, Rob Cohen, but whatcha
gonna do? Still, I'd have loved to see Vin in Panic Room. I wish
he'd stop taking junk roles; Pitch Black was B-movie-esque but canny;
most everything else since Saving Private Ryan has been beneath
him. (And I liked Boiler Room!)
|
She looks sane enough, but as it turns out, this (recently removed) President
of ABC Daytime is, in fact, a complete head case. She started my magazine
and another magazine back in the '70s, but (as it was told to me), neither
became popular until after she left. Apparently she had something to do
with inventing the mood ring, too. Good ideas, lousy with the execution,
apparently. Which explains a lot about ABC these days. Anywho, my magazine,
being of the soap genre, has a rather unnaturally close connection to the
industry it "covers." That is, we're at all times first at the mercy of
the shows to give us synopsis (synoptic?) information and access to the
actors (the Constitution does not have a clause that we have a "right"
to interrogate individuals for publication); yet at the same time we need
to preserve some kind of journalistic dignity. So there's friction. Some
shows tell us we can't do this; we try pushing the envelope, eventually
they snap, we draw back and start pushing again.
