Sink or Swim

Lesley Stahl honestly needs to stop with the lipstick. Is she covering over some sort of miserable flaw? Practicing for clown school? Does she not have make up artists to help her figure out that no, painting over that divot in her lip isn’t plumping her lips, it’s making them misshapen?

I’ve been rather disgusted with pop culture lately, what with The Sopranos sucking wind – which reminds me, is it me, or does no one else care anymore? Shoot Tony! Don’t shoot Tony! Give Carmela The Herp! I don’t care. It’s just that I’ve invested all this time – time that I’m not willing to give up without a conclusion, and although tonight’s episode sure packed a punch, I’ve got to admit that the silent, creeping misery has insulated me against just about anything, because I don’t care. Mostly, I just walk away disgusted with many realizations, but mostly with the fact that Tony Soprano is really, really bad in bed, and while I realize that’s the point (misogynistic, waiting to be serviced, ergo, he just lays there), come on. He wears socks.

And Entourage! Don’t get me started on Entourage. I don’t like Vince. I don’t care if Vince ever gets another job in Hollywood, or ends up doing Aquaman VII: The Series and has sex with Mandy Moore on the streets of Calabasas. I don’t care about Medellin. I also really, really dislike Kevin Connolly.

And you! Grey’s Anatomy! I know I said I was done and all, but again, there’s that investment thing. An investment I’m not willing to walk away from without some sort of resolution – resolution that will never, ever come, because the world seems to revolve around forbidden love, which has kept television going for decades, oh Jesus Christ. It’s like those years in college I spent so wrapped up in Days of Our Lives waiting, just WAITING for that day that Marlena and John would finally be together, blind to the realization that Stefano had kept them apart for decades, with cages and possessions and hypnotism or whatever, and that it was just never going to happen, or at least not while I was matriculated at Syracuse University.

(Um, seriously, does anyone remember when she was possessed by the devil and then stuck in a cage? Or something?)

(Also, I see that John is now in a COMA, while Marlena waits by his side to wake up. JESUS.)

Jim and Pam are on the same path, by the way, and yet I can’t help myself; I’m sucked in and bitter about it. Oh Pam.

The bitter pill is making its appearance because I spent the better part of this weekend watching a glut of TiVo’d television after last week’s ParentFest. A fest that included, by the way, dinner with my in-laws, the details of which came to me in bits and pieces over the course of several days, thanks to searing panic and a few gin and tonics. God. I must have blocked it out.

However, a few snippets have me cringing on a daily basis, including that horrible moment where my stepmother – who’d had one too many glasses of wine – screamed over the table in a half-amused, half-terrified voice that surely my (kind of scary and slightly mafioso-seeming) Russian father-in-law must have connections with the Russian mafia, which prompted him to retort that while he’s not in the mob, he does always carry a gun and then I believe (oh dear God) he half-jokingly threw out a few people he’d like to knock off and it was horrible, just HORRIBLE, especially given that my parents are staunchly anti-gun and um, anti-murder. Or whatever. And not that he’s the murdering type, or so we at least hope, Jesus, it’s just that it was all SO AWKWARD.

God, I’m so much more accustomed to causing awkward moments that I never realized how miserable it is to be an innocent witness.

And while I’ve deluded myself into thinking it turned out somewhat okay, it’s a good thing they live in different states.

Not to bring it back to further television embitterment, but I’m also personally angry with Brooke Burke, who promised me another summer of Rockstar and yet, I see nothing of the sort. No Rockstar. No Ryan Star replacement. No Dave Navarro as lurking Svengali. And while Blythe and I may be the only two people who care, disappointment looms large. But not Storm Large.

However, because I’m twelve, I have to say, this (NSFW) page… with the nudists playing volley ball? Has had me snickering for hours! Nudists! Playing volleyball! And canoeing! The ass crack and the life vest!

*Ryan Star. Because it’s never going to happen again.

22 comments May 13th, 2007