Ok now that I have your attention surprise surprise its the Biggest Loser!!
I never watched this in the beginning so I have only heard in passing about this couple Matt and Suzy . Just one of those meetings that were meant to be and so that would give Biggest Loser the same amount of marriages as the Bachelor and Bachelorette which were created to create couples.
I have watched the last few seasons (needing inspiration) and became a bit of a fan. Can't stand when they have nasty whiny people on there that complain about the work - surprise its a weight loss show and you don't lose weight by sitting around eating chocolates (I am an expert on that subject).
The new season started a couple of weeks ago. The first girl booted off the show was profiled at the end - in her time home she has rocked out her weight loss. She also teased the viewers about a "crush" she developed in the house. Last night all was revealed when the latest contestant was booted out. He was a cute darling and I guessed that was who she had the crush on. Sure enough during his follow-up it showed him also rocking out his weight loss and becoming quite buff. He also said that one of the first things he did was contact Alexandra when he got home. They have been dating for quite a while - I even heard the "L" word a couple of times.
So by my count Biggest Loser has one married couple and two babies. One dating couple and maybe more that I haven't heard about. Lets face it this is about weight loss and not love - but not a bad track record for a weight loss not dating show.
Things are finally settling down a bit at work and home is less busy too. But that said we are off to Arizona and New Mexico on Sunday for 10 days. Looking forward to seeing the Grand Canyon and the Balloon Festival. If I don't catch up with you before we will catch up when we return.
Joanne
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Mad Men: Recap of September 27 show
Never again can its critics complain that nothing happens on this show. After last week's foot-soaker of an episode, and the opening 60 seconds alone of last night's, the third season has hit its glorious stride. The opening shots of prone characters were ominous ones, and set the tone for a terrifically tense hour of TV. Peggy lay naked in bed, an unknown man's back beside her. (Don's? Pete's?) Betty, swanned out on a swooning sofa, looked like a dazed Spiegel catalogue model. And Don, broken, bloodied Don, lay face down in a strange hotel room before he roused and rubbed his parched throat.
Beautifully, the action rewound to an earlier shot of Don's throat, as he straightened his tie, gave his shoes one last scuff of polish, and smoothed back his shiny head of hair. Swingy jazz piano played in the background as if we were watching a commercial for antiperspirant or aftershave. Here was a man at the top of his game! Downstairs Betty lorded over her new living room with an interior decorator, wondering about the empty space in front of the fireplace. ''That's your hearth darling,'' the expert purred back to Betty, not realizing she was talking to a woman who confuses polish for beauty, and manners for warmth. ''That's the soul of your home.'' Betty has but one roost to rule over so it's tragic really when Don strides dismissively into the room and, forced into having an opinion, rightly judges the Drexel end table to be misplaced.
In the cramped elevator up to the office, the distance between former chums Roger and Don is still palpable. ''I watched the sun rise this morning,'' said Roger. ''How was it?'' said Don. ''Average.'' These are pale, privileged, buttoned-up men, largely unaware of their natural world. Roger is feeling churlish that their competitor David Ogilvy has his eventually best-selling business treatise Confessions of an Advertising Man (''Great title,'' deems Don) soon to hit bookstores. ''It should be called 1,000 reasons I'm so great,'' says Roger. Both men look peevish that they hadn't first thought of the idea of writing such a book themselves.
All episode other men were making themselves comfortable in Don's chair, as if to remind him that he is both replaceable and without any real power. First it was Conrad Hilton, who was unimpressed with Don's tardiness and his lack of desk accessories. ''I don't know what I'm more disturbed by — the fact that there's not a Bible or that there's not a single family photo.'' (Says the amiable twice-divorced kazillionaire who, according to that 1963 Time cover story, went through 20-something stewardesses like they were socks and was so impressed with his heirs that he would eventually cut them out of his estate.) Connie ribs him again for being late before Don slings back one of his signature bullet lines. ''Maybe I'm late because I was spending time with my family reading the Bible.''
His coolness, as always, impresses and Hilton offers him his New York hotels. They'll deal man to man, like they did in Hilton's old West, plus the conference room table's worth of lawyers who'll later insist Don sign on their dotted line. ''Having me in your life is going to change things,'' says Connie. Don is a man who wants little else from life than the constant promise of reinvention and so he receives such news as a promise rather than word of warning.
I've loved every scene between Pete and Peggy all season. So much is left unsaid between this repressed pair. There's such a crackle of competitiveness and simultaneous attraction and repulsion between the two. Pete always seems to be sneaking up behind Peggy, catching her unawares in the hall or on hand to catch her as she faints. Last night he marched into her office and declared the gift she was opening to be expensive, corrupt, and courtesy of Duck. It was an Hermes scarf (''I hope yours is a different color,'' she snappily replies) and Pete insisted she return to sender. And off they went, carrying on two separate conversations, their rhythm delightfully out of whack. Pete warned her that Duck was after them to get back at Don, then accused Peggy of being brought on the Hilton account. Peggy knew nothing of Hilton but dreamily announced that she's read the man's book and he's a Catholic. Pete hissed about Duck again, then, hey!, what book. Finally Peggy told Pete to go his own way and leave her be. It was like a conversation they might have had in an alternate universe, but about their baby rather than a 100% silk scarf. ''Look I'm keeping this,'' she said. ''We're not tied together. I'll keep my mouth shut and you do whatever you want.''
The office was abuzz with Don's latest conquest. ''How did you make this happen,'' wondered Roger, with a slight sneer in his voice. Don bristled a little, reminded of their conversation out under the country club tent. ''We travel in the same circles,'' he snapped. The partners wanted him to sign a 3-year contract, as much for Hilton's sake as theirs. Don balked, unwilling to tether himself to his present life. He promised to take the weekend to think it over, pocketing the wad of legalese in his suit pocket like a man who takes a number from the smiling girl he never intends to call.
Again, the action shot forward in time, with Don looking at his smeared face in the mirror. ''Ah Jesus,'' he said. (At the risk of wading into choppy waters I'd be curious to start a discussion on these boards about whether or not what this man needs is some kind of religion. I'm continually struck by that baptismal image of him in the California waters last season, or the widow Whitman saying to him that the only thing keeping Don down was his obstinate belief that he is all alone in this world.) As Don gasped at his own image, Betty looked on the verge of an exhalation of another kind as her red-taloned fingers snaked slowly down her flowered frock. And away we went, to an earlier scene of Betty entering a bakery in another bouquet of a dress for her illicit meeting with that alligator shoe of a man Henry Francis.
On behalf of the Junior League's efforts to halt the draining of their local reservoir, Betty is able to orchestrate another meeting with Henry. After they planned their Saturday hook-up, Betty banged a little at Don's locked desk drawer to remind herself of what's fueling her fire. After their lunch, during which Henry made it clear he's not concerned about a water tank, he rushed to shield Betty's eyes from the eclipse. Apparently her eyes are her erogenous zone because she practically swoons. They passed an antiques store and Henry pointed at the fainting couch in the window, used by elegant women when their nerves or emotions got the better of them. Betty is so delighted to have a powerful man treat her so protectively and with such delicateness — unlike Don who finds her tedious, or her father who found her pathetic — that she springs for the silly sofa. Earlier the Junior Leaguers marveled at this seemingly together woman. A new baby and a new living room? ''Are you suicidal?'' one teased. She very well may be.
Across town Don and Sally's slightly unhinged teacher circle each other under the looming solar eclipse. (It finally occurred to me that her name Miss Farrell is a play on the word feral. She is a woman who cannot be tamed or broken, and so of course every self-entitled man in the suburbs longs to lasso her.) When Don wondered about her summer plans, Miss Farrell gave him a sour, taunting look and accused him of being like all the other hard-drinking married men who come a'sniffing. Don was miffed, but of course turned on. ''How do people live elsewhere?'' he asked, only partly teasing. ''They don't have as much,'' she said, echoing Peggy's earlier gasping over the sheer abundance of Don's life. ''They don't get as bored.'' (Go bang your head against a wall Don, rather than bang this off woman!) The moment of the eclipse arrived. Everyone scurried under their boxes for a look. Don turned away, looking behind his shades in another direction altogether.
It's painful when someone calls out your condition, and you realize that what plagues you is both banal and so easily identifiable. Don is bored. Bored and angry. When Roger insisted again that he sign that contract (''grunt once for yes!''), Don needed someone to lash out at. So when Peggy bounced into his office wondering about the Hilton account Don flexed some ugly muscle. ''What do I have to do for you?'' he asks the stunned woman. Moss' face flushed beautifully as she tried not to cry. ''You were my secretary. And now you have an office and a job that a lot of full grown men would kill for.…Put your nose down and pay attention to your work because there's not one thing that you've done here that I couldn't live without.''
Out Don's office Peggy flew, right smack into Duck's open arms. (''I'll have a whiskey.'' ''You are Don's girl, aren't you?'' Ewwww.) Duck is sober and horny, reciting lines of soft porn. (''Hmm, wonder who wrote that for him.'') Peggy listened with her mouth hanging open as Duck suggested taking her clothes off with his teeth and gifting her with a go-around unlike any she's ever had. Sorry, Pete! And if he was amorous in the evening, wait til she sees him in the morning.
At the Draper home, Roger hit where it hurts, calling Betty to get her on the case of Don's contract. Messing with the very strictly separate compartments of Don's life is a punishable offense and their fight was a sad and mean one. ''No contract means I have all the power,'' spat Don. ''They want me but they can't have me.'' ''You're right,'' said a shrewd Betty, ''why would I think that has anything to do with me? It's three years Don. What's the matter — you don't know where you're going to be in three years?'' Like a child he tore off into the night, clutching his glass of Scotch. Two hitchhikers appeared in the midst. Aw Jesus. Vietnam has become a steady cloud hanging over each episode, and the boy now sitting shotgun was heading to Canada with his girl to get hitched and dodge the draft. They make fun of Don for being an ad man square. Desperate not to be so pegged, Don takes two of the broad's phenobarbitals. We all know how the night is going to end but I certainly didn't see old Archie making an appearance. ''You're a bum, you know that,'' his dad said, cursing him over slugs of moonshine. ''You can't be tied down. Look at your hands. They're as soft as a woman's. What do you do? What do you make? You grow bullshit.'' The kids looked up from their making out and saw the time was right to filch the drooling suit's wallet. The boy slugged him hard in the back of the head and down Don went, along with whatever dignity he had left.
''Fender bender,'' he kept bleeping to everyone at work the next morning, including Peggy who was fidgeting at the previous day's vest. Mr. Cooper was waiting for Don behind the man's desk. Yes, Roger gets all the best lines and John Slattery's biting zingy style is one of Mad Men's true pleasures. But it's time for Robert Morse to get some love for his silky, powerful portrayal of a businessman who rules supreme, despite his silly outward affectations. There is no doubt who will ever win in a duel between Don and Mr. Cooper. He has all the power, he has for a while now. But now it was time to remind the younger man of that. ''Would you say I know something about you Don?'' he asked calmly, holding the contract. Don sighed, beaten. ''I would,'' he said, and the sadness in those two words cut deep. ''Then sign,'' crooned Mr. Cooper. ''After all when it comes down to it who's really signing this contract anyway.'' Devastating. The only thing Don could demand was that Roger stay out of his face from now on.
And so a bruised and battered Don returned home to a family room with no soul. ''I signed,'' he tells Betty, as if delivering news of a cancer diagnosis. Don Draper has been tied down, drafted into a world that he increasingly resents. As he trudged up the stairs, and Betty sunk deeper like a cat into her chaise, a coal miner's lament played over the credits.
This was by far my favorite episode of the season. How did it sit with you? Will someone help me unpack the symbolism behind the eclipse? Did you think Duck had such vim and vigor in him? Is there any hope at all for Don and Betty? Now that we've gotten to know her a little better, is Miss Farrell a nut or the only sane soul left in Cheever country?
by Karen Valby,
Entertainment Weekly magazine
Beautifully, the action rewound to an earlier shot of Don's throat, as he straightened his tie, gave his shoes one last scuff of polish, and smoothed back his shiny head of hair. Swingy jazz piano played in the background as if we were watching a commercial for antiperspirant or aftershave. Here was a man at the top of his game! Downstairs Betty lorded over her new living room with an interior decorator, wondering about the empty space in front of the fireplace. ''That's your hearth darling,'' the expert purred back to Betty, not realizing she was talking to a woman who confuses polish for beauty, and manners for warmth. ''That's the soul of your home.'' Betty has but one roost to rule over so it's tragic really when Don strides dismissively into the room and, forced into having an opinion, rightly judges the Drexel end table to be misplaced.
In the cramped elevator up to the office, the distance between former chums Roger and Don is still palpable. ''I watched the sun rise this morning,'' said Roger. ''How was it?'' said Don. ''Average.'' These are pale, privileged, buttoned-up men, largely unaware of their natural world. Roger is feeling churlish that their competitor David Ogilvy has his eventually best-selling business treatise Confessions of an Advertising Man (''Great title,'' deems Don) soon to hit bookstores. ''It should be called 1,000 reasons I'm so great,'' says Roger. Both men look peevish that they hadn't first thought of the idea of writing such a book themselves.
All episode other men were making themselves comfortable in Don's chair, as if to remind him that he is both replaceable and without any real power. First it was Conrad Hilton, who was unimpressed with Don's tardiness and his lack of desk accessories. ''I don't know what I'm more disturbed by — the fact that there's not a Bible or that there's not a single family photo.'' (Says the amiable twice-divorced kazillionaire who, according to that 1963 Time cover story, went through 20-something stewardesses like they were socks and was so impressed with his heirs that he would eventually cut them out of his estate.) Connie ribs him again for being late before Don slings back one of his signature bullet lines. ''Maybe I'm late because I was spending time with my family reading the Bible.''
His coolness, as always, impresses and Hilton offers him his New York hotels. They'll deal man to man, like they did in Hilton's old West, plus the conference room table's worth of lawyers who'll later insist Don sign on their dotted line. ''Having me in your life is going to change things,'' says Connie. Don is a man who wants little else from life than the constant promise of reinvention and so he receives such news as a promise rather than word of warning.
I've loved every scene between Pete and Peggy all season. So much is left unsaid between this repressed pair. There's such a crackle of competitiveness and simultaneous attraction and repulsion between the two. Pete always seems to be sneaking up behind Peggy, catching her unawares in the hall or on hand to catch her as she faints. Last night he marched into her office and declared the gift she was opening to be expensive, corrupt, and courtesy of Duck. It was an Hermes scarf (''I hope yours is a different color,'' she snappily replies) and Pete insisted she return to sender. And off they went, carrying on two separate conversations, their rhythm delightfully out of whack. Pete warned her that Duck was after them to get back at Don, then accused Peggy of being brought on the Hilton account. Peggy knew nothing of Hilton but dreamily announced that she's read the man's book and he's a Catholic. Pete hissed about Duck again, then, hey!, what book. Finally Peggy told Pete to go his own way and leave her be. It was like a conversation they might have had in an alternate universe, but about their baby rather than a 100% silk scarf. ''Look I'm keeping this,'' she said. ''We're not tied together. I'll keep my mouth shut and you do whatever you want.''
The office was abuzz with Don's latest conquest. ''How did you make this happen,'' wondered Roger, with a slight sneer in his voice. Don bristled a little, reminded of their conversation out under the country club tent. ''We travel in the same circles,'' he snapped. The partners wanted him to sign a 3-year contract, as much for Hilton's sake as theirs. Don balked, unwilling to tether himself to his present life. He promised to take the weekend to think it over, pocketing the wad of legalese in his suit pocket like a man who takes a number from the smiling girl he never intends to call.
Again, the action shot forward in time, with Don looking at his smeared face in the mirror. ''Ah Jesus,'' he said. (At the risk of wading into choppy waters I'd be curious to start a discussion on these boards about whether or not what this man needs is some kind of religion. I'm continually struck by that baptismal image of him in the California waters last season, or the widow Whitman saying to him that the only thing keeping Don down was his obstinate belief that he is all alone in this world.) As Don gasped at his own image, Betty looked on the verge of an exhalation of another kind as her red-taloned fingers snaked slowly down her flowered frock. And away we went, to an earlier scene of Betty entering a bakery in another bouquet of a dress for her illicit meeting with that alligator shoe of a man Henry Francis.
On behalf of the Junior League's efforts to halt the draining of their local reservoir, Betty is able to orchestrate another meeting with Henry. After they planned their Saturday hook-up, Betty banged a little at Don's locked desk drawer to remind herself of what's fueling her fire. After their lunch, during which Henry made it clear he's not concerned about a water tank, he rushed to shield Betty's eyes from the eclipse. Apparently her eyes are her erogenous zone because she practically swoons. They passed an antiques store and Henry pointed at the fainting couch in the window, used by elegant women when their nerves or emotions got the better of them. Betty is so delighted to have a powerful man treat her so protectively and with such delicateness — unlike Don who finds her tedious, or her father who found her pathetic — that she springs for the silly sofa. Earlier the Junior Leaguers marveled at this seemingly together woman. A new baby and a new living room? ''Are you suicidal?'' one teased. She very well may be.
Across town Don and Sally's slightly unhinged teacher circle each other under the looming solar eclipse. (It finally occurred to me that her name Miss Farrell is a play on the word feral. She is a woman who cannot be tamed or broken, and so of course every self-entitled man in the suburbs longs to lasso her.) When Don wondered about her summer plans, Miss Farrell gave him a sour, taunting look and accused him of being like all the other hard-drinking married men who come a'sniffing. Don was miffed, but of course turned on. ''How do people live elsewhere?'' he asked, only partly teasing. ''They don't have as much,'' she said, echoing Peggy's earlier gasping over the sheer abundance of Don's life. ''They don't get as bored.'' (Go bang your head against a wall Don, rather than bang this off woman!) The moment of the eclipse arrived. Everyone scurried under their boxes for a look. Don turned away, looking behind his shades in another direction altogether.
It's painful when someone calls out your condition, and you realize that what plagues you is both banal and so easily identifiable. Don is bored. Bored and angry. When Roger insisted again that he sign that contract (''grunt once for yes!''), Don needed someone to lash out at. So when Peggy bounced into his office wondering about the Hilton account Don flexed some ugly muscle. ''What do I have to do for you?'' he asks the stunned woman. Moss' face flushed beautifully as she tried not to cry. ''You were my secretary. And now you have an office and a job that a lot of full grown men would kill for.…Put your nose down and pay attention to your work because there's not one thing that you've done here that I couldn't live without.''
Out Don's office Peggy flew, right smack into Duck's open arms. (''I'll have a whiskey.'' ''You are Don's girl, aren't you?'' Ewwww.) Duck is sober and horny, reciting lines of soft porn. (''Hmm, wonder who wrote that for him.'') Peggy listened with her mouth hanging open as Duck suggested taking her clothes off with his teeth and gifting her with a go-around unlike any she's ever had. Sorry, Pete! And if he was amorous in the evening, wait til she sees him in the morning.
At the Draper home, Roger hit where it hurts, calling Betty to get her on the case of Don's contract. Messing with the very strictly separate compartments of Don's life is a punishable offense and their fight was a sad and mean one. ''No contract means I have all the power,'' spat Don. ''They want me but they can't have me.'' ''You're right,'' said a shrewd Betty, ''why would I think that has anything to do with me? It's three years Don. What's the matter — you don't know where you're going to be in three years?'' Like a child he tore off into the night, clutching his glass of Scotch. Two hitchhikers appeared in the midst. Aw Jesus. Vietnam has become a steady cloud hanging over each episode, and the boy now sitting shotgun was heading to Canada with his girl to get hitched and dodge the draft. They make fun of Don for being an ad man square. Desperate not to be so pegged, Don takes two of the broad's phenobarbitals. We all know how the night is going to end but I certainly didn't see old Archie making an appearance. ''You're a bum, you know that,'' his dad said, cursing him over slugs of moonshine. ''You can't be tied down. Look at your hands. They're as soft as a woman's. What do you do? What do you make? You grow bullshit.'' The kids looked up from their making out and saw the time was right to filch the drooling suit's wallet. The boy slugged him hard in the back of the head and down Don went, along with whatever dignity he had left.
''Fender bender,'' he kept bleeping to everyone at work the next morning, including Peggy who was fidgeting at the previous day's vest. Mr. Cooper was waiting for Don behind the man's desk. Yes, Roger gets all the best lines and John Slattery's biting zingy style is one of Mad Men's true pleasures. But it's time for Robert Morse to get some love for his silky, powerful portrayal of a businessman who rules supreme, despite his silly outward affectations. There is no doubt who will ever win in a duel between Don and Mr. Cooper. He has all the power, he has for a while now. But now it was time to remind the younger man of that. ''Would you say I know something about you Don?'' he asked calmly, holding the contract. Don sighed, beaten. ''I would,'' he said, and the sadness in those two words cut deep. ''Then sign,'' crooned Mr. Cooper. ''After all when it comes down to it who's really signing this contract anyway.'' Devastating. The only thing Don could demand was that Roger stay out of his face from now on.
And so a bruised and battered Don returned home to a family room with no soul. ''I signed,'' he tells Betty, as if delivering news of a cancer diagnosis. Don Draper has been tied down, drafted into a world that he increasingly resents. As he trudged up the stairs, and Betty sunk deeper like a cat into her chaise, a coal miner's lament played over the credits.
This was by far my favorite episode of the season. How did it sit with you? Will someone help me unpack the symbolism behind the eclipse? Did you think Duck had such vim and vigor in him? Is there any hope at all for Don and Betty? Now that we've gotten to know her a little better, is Miss Farrell a nut or the only sane soul left in Cheever country?
by Karen Valby,
Entertainment Weekly magazine
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Canada, get ready for Reid!
Reid's going to Calgary with Jesse, Mike Stag, and Kip on October 24th. Maybe the JB tour needs to dust off the bus and finally set sail to sweep up those jilted hunks. Maybs. :)
Friday, September 25, 2009
Reid is mostly likely NOT the next Bachelor!!!!
Remmilicious, HCM, Marianna, and whoever else is part of the Team Read board/FORT may have caught the scoop. Apparently, someone leaked some very big news on FORT that definitely states with 100% certainty that Reid did NOT accept The Bachelor 14 gig.
The insider is ERLuv12 who apparently knows Reid's family. I guess Reid truly was jilted and realized that he's not ready so fast to fall into love again only to propose AGAIN. We'll see on Oct. 14th. Rumor has it that the new Romeo is Jake. Read all about it here:
Thursday, September 24, 2009
recent comments question
Is anyone NOT getting their "Recent Comments" feed updated? I check my iGoogle to find recent comments to the blog, but it hasn't been updating since this weekend. Any insight?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Info on the new "Bachelor"
I just got a blurb on my Facebook page stating they will announce the next Bachelor on DWTS, October 13th. The general census is it will be Reid or Kippy. I was hoping for someone new personally. I love Reid obviously, but I can't see him going through all that again. Any opinions?
Sunday, September 20, 2009
A little background to get you started on "Dexter"
You can't get any higher on the evolutionary ladder of cable-TV antiheroes than Dexter Morgan. Sure, Tony Soprano and Vic Mackey have their dark sides, but come on, now: serial killer! Yet in some ways, Dexter is actually more sympathetic than those two villainous protagonists. A character first introduced in Jeff Lindsay's 2004 crime novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter (a sequel was published last year), Dexter is a murderous sociopath, yes, but one who only butchers people who deserve it. When he was young, his foster father, a detective named Harry (Sex and the City's James Remar), spotted signs of his son's unquenchable thirst for blood; recurring flashbacks show Dad teaching Dexter how to slake it by tracking and slaughtering deserving murderers and pedophiles with meticulous gusto. It's a hunt made easier because he thinks just like them: Call it slaydar. ''I think it's a lot harder to understand what Tony Soprano does,'' says Showtime entertainment president Robert Greenblatt. ''He has more of a moral bankruptcy than Dexter, who has a very clear moral conscience.''
Morality is a strange word to attach to Dexter, a character who confesses in narrative voice-overs to lacking true human emotions and a sex drive — as per the serial-killer psychology. Something happened to him as a child (a mystery that will be explored all season), and it made him such a sociopath that he has to simulate all feelings with his co-workers, his cop sister (The Exorcism of Emily Rose's Jennifer Carpenter), and his girlfriend Rita (Angel's Julie Benz), a former abuse victim and single mother who, fortunately for him, is still so emotionally scarred that she can't manage a physical relationship. The only thing that gives him legitimate joy is bloodshed, which is why he finds his job at the cop shop so rewarding. ''It's the perfect place for Dexter to hide in plain sight,'' says Hall. ''He's surrounded by people who are, for lack of a better word, creepy. He loves his work. His day job and his night job.''
As he brings doughnuts to his fellow cops, double-dates with his sister, and chats about sports — chummy interpersonal skills he must work to feign — Dexter seems nothing like the usual heavy-breathing, knife-sharpening, suit-of-human-skin-knitting serial killers we're so used to seeing in movies and TV. ''Bob [Greenblatt] always said, 'I don't want Dexter to be creepy,''' says executive producer and former Paramount production head John Goldwyn, who brought the project to Showtime with partner Sara Colleton. ''He said, 'You want to spend time with this guy, you want him in your living room, you want him in your life.''' But not just anyone could pull off portraying a murderer who audiences would want over for Yahtzee and pie. ''We had to find the guy who was really complex and really tortured and also sympathetic and likable,'' says Greenblatt, who'd exec-produced Six Feet Under before arriving at Showtime. ''It was a really tall order.'' And it was one that he filled by suggesting Hall: ''I knew he wasn't anything like David.''
When the Dexter script was brought to Hall in July 2005, he'd just wrapped Six Feet Under and had no intention of returning to TV so quickly. ''I was back in New York, and hoped to get back on stage,'' says Hall, a seasoned theater vet who logged 493 performances as the Emcee in Broadway's Cabaret in 1999 and 2000. ''I didn't have a definitive plan as to what I'd do next. But then again, when Six Feet came along, I certainly wasn't anticipating it, either.'' With that in mind, Hall signed on because he was intrigued by the macabre mix of dark humor, chilling violence, and a unique central character. While there were superficial similarities to David (the strong father figure, a regular proximity to corpses), in every other way Dexter proved to be opposite: You can't get any less repressed than a guy who binds his victims in plastic wrap and dismembers them alive with a bone saw. (Let's reiterate that for skittish viewers: The killings can get very intense.) Says Hall, "Yeah, this guy's a bit more proactive than David."
Dexter and his fellow cops work far from Ocean Drive in Miami's funkier, grungier corners — or at least the L.A. stand-in equivalent; after the pilot was shot in Miami, Florida's hurricane insurance proved too pricey to shoot there full-time, as was the producers' original hope. But it's an appropriately colorful backdrop. The show has an arresting high-contrast look and artfully designed crime scenes, especially the ones left behind by a tidy butcher who drains his prostitute victims of blood, chops them up, and neatly wraps them in brown paper. (This killer, recognizing a kindred spirit in Dexter, instigates a game of hide-and-creep in the premiere episode, one that will continue as the season progresses.) Fortunately, some of the actors are used to a bloody workplace, like Lauren Vélez, who (along with costars David Zayas and Erik King) is an alum of the Grand Guignol prison drama Oz. Vélez, as Dexter's superior, Lieut. Maria LaGuerta, develops a crush on him, proving her taste in men really hasn't improved since her Oz doctor fell in love with a psychopathic inmate. She laughs, ''My twin sister saw the pilot and said, 'God, it's brilliant.... Now I would like you to do a Disney-type show.'''
So, yes, the slayings are plentiful and the red stuff flows freely, but Dexter is not really about crime-solving in the same way that Showtime's Weeds isn't about the drug wars. ''It's character-driven,'' says Phillips. ''He works in the world of cops, but I wouldn't call the show a procedural.'' As such, Dexter is more interested in how murders — whether a result of Dexter's own handiwork or someone else's — can slowly force a killer to recognize traces of his humanity. ''In the most extreme way,'' says Colleton, ''this will hopefully force the audience to examine themselves. Every week he's grappling with some aspect of human behavior that we have to grapple with.'' So will Dexter learn and grow, and someday (cue ''Man in the Mirror'') close down his abattoir and open up his heart? Reflecting on this in his trailer, Hall begins a thoughtful analysis of how, when Dexter's play-acted relationships start to fall apart, he may realize that he felt a human connection to them the whole time...and then he stops himself and laughs. ''I mean, he's still a serial killer.'' Then he flashes a faintly creepy smile, one that would completely terrify poor David Fisher.
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Morality is a strange word to attach to Dexter, a character who confesses in narrative voice-overs to lacking true human emotions and a sex drive — as per the serial-killer psychology. Something happened to him as a child (a mystery that will be explored all season), and it made him such a sociopath that he has to simulate all feelings with his co-workers, his cop sister (The Exorcism of Emily Rose's Jennifer Carpenter), and his girlfriend Rita (Angel's Julie Benz), a former abuse victim and single mother who, fortunately for him, is still so emotionally scarred that she can't manage a physical relationship. The only thing that gives him legitimate joy is bloodshed, which is why he finds his job at the cop shop so rewarding. ''It's the perfect place for Dexter to hide in plain sight,'' says Hall. ''He's surrounded by people who are, for lack of a better word, creepy. He loves his work. His day job and his night job.''
As he brings doughnuts to his fellow cops, double-dates with his sister, and chats about sports — chummy interpersonal skills he must work to feign — Dexter seems nothing like the usual heavy-breathing, knife-sharpening, suit-of-human-skin-knitting serial killers we're so used to seeing in movies and TV. ''Bob [Greenblatt] always said, 'I don't want Dexter to be creepy,''' says executive producer and former Paramount production head John Goldwyn, who brought the project to Showtime with partner Sara Colleton. ''He said, 'You want to spend time with this guy, you want him in your living room, you want him in your life.''' But not just anyone could pull off portraying a murderer who audiences would want over for Yahtzee and pie. ''We had to find the guy who was really complex and really tortured and also sympathetic and likable,'' says Greenblatt, who'd exec-produced Six Feet Under before arriving at Showtime. ''It was a really tall order.'' And it was one that he filled by suggesting Hall: ''I knew he wasn't anything like David.''
When the Dexter script was brought to Hall in July 2005, he'd just wrapped Six Feet Under and had no intention of returning to TV so quickly. ''I was back in New York, and hoped to get back on stage,'' says Hall, a seasoned theater vet who logged 493 performances as the Emcee in Broadway's Cabaret in 1999 and 2000. ''I didn't have a definitive plan as to what I'd do next. But then again, when Six Feet came along, I certainly wasn't anticipating it, either.'' With that in mind, Hall signed on because he was intrigued by the macabre mix of dark humor, chilling violence, and a unique central character. While there were superficial similarities to David (the strong father figure, a regular proximity to corpses), in every other way Dexter proved to be opposite: You can't get any less repressed than a guy who binds his victims in plastic wrap and dismembers them alive with a bone saw. (Let's reiterate that for skittish viewers: The killings can get very intense.) Says Hall, "Yeah, this guy's a bit more proactive than David."
Dexter and his fellow cops work far from Ocean Drive in Miami's funkier, grungier corners — or at least the L.A. stand-in equivalent; after the pilot was shot in Miami, Florida's hurricane insurance proved too pricey to shoot there full-time, as was the producers' original hope. But it's an appropriately colorful backdrop. The show has an arresting high-contrast look and artfully designed crime scenes, especially the ones left behind by a tidy butcher who drains his prostitute victims of blood, chops them up, and neatly wraps them in brown paper. (This killer, recognizing a kindred spirit in Dexter, instigates a game of hide-and-creep in the premiere episode, one that will continue as the season progresses.) Fortunately, some of the actors are used to a bloody workplace, like Lauren Vélez, who (along with costars David Zayas and Erik King) is an alum of the Grand Guignol prison drama Oz. Vélez, as Dexter's superior, Lieut. Maria LaGuerta, develops a crush on him, proving her taste in men really hasn't improved since her Oz doctor fell in love with a psychopathic inmate. She laughs, ''My twin sister saw the pilot and said, 'God, it's brilliant.... Now I would like you to do a Disney-type show.'''
So, yes, the slayings are plentiful and the red stuff flows freely, but Dexter is not really about crime-solving in the same way that Showtime's Weeds isn't about the drug wars. ''It's character-driven,'' says Phillips. ''He works in the world of cops, but I wouldn't call the show a procedural.'' As such, Dexter is more interested in how murders — whether a result of Dexter's own handiwork or someone else's — can slowly force a killer to recognize traces of his humanity. ''In the most extreme way,'' says Colleton, ''this will hopefully force the audience to examine themselves. Every week he's grappling with some aspect of human behavior that we have to grapple with.'' So will Dexter learn and grow, and someday (cue ''Man in the Mirror'') close down his abattoir and open up his heart? Reflecting on this in his trailer, Hall begins a thoughtful analysis of how, when Dexter's play-acted relationships start to fall apart, he may realize that he felt a human connection to them the whole time...and then he stops himself and laughs. ''I mean, he's still a serial killer.'' Then he flashes a faintly creepy smile, one that would completely terrify poor David Fisher.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"DEXTER" new season premieres Sept 27
Okay, everyone whose interested -- "Dexter" starts its new season Sept 27. If you've never seen this show, go out and rent the previous seasons -- it's important to have watched them first for all the insight into Dexter's personality and motivation.
Happy viewing!
M.
Happy viewing!
M.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Julia Child and Mad Men: For all of you who remember the sixties -- even as children
Last weekend was a nostalgia rush and all things considered I prefer yesterday’s madness to today’s. More challenge, more style. First, I took in Julie & Julia, the film biopic of the great American TV cook Julia Child set in the sixties. The lobster scene brought back my own ghastly attempts at being a murderess. “You can keep live lobsters in the refrigerator at around 37 degrees for a day or two,” Mrs. Child advised us all on PBS—now there’s a thought—and after the kill, “locate the stomach sac with your fingers, twist out and discard . . .”
Something of a shame, I thought, as Meryl Streep’s Julia Child plunges her knife into the writhing lobster, that she and Martha Stewart couldn’t have met, two splendid women wielding cleavers—probably on one another as they wrestled for camera position. On Sunday came the premiere of Mad Men’s third season about advertising men in the early sixties, when everyone smoked, wore uptight clothes and political correctness was being on the right rather than the left.
Okay. I know this stuff. True, as young women we did wear girdles, garter belts and stockings as a matter of course rather than buying them from Frederick’s of Hollywood for a giggle. Some respectable people did wrinkle their noses a bit when encountering Jews or “Negroes” and I distinctly remember in 1964 purchasing an original Relax-A-Cizor, a machine which in the series is said to have the pleasant but unspoken side effect of giving women orgasms. Hello? All I can remember is the nuisance of putting gel on its little body pads and switching on an electric current that made muscles twitch—which, had it worked, strikes me as a more civilized way of toning than today’s hanging-about-fitness-centres in latex. Had I known it was a pleasure machine, I would have stuck at it much longer.
A crucial ingredient of those times, overlooked by the producers of Mad Men who clearly did not grow up female in those decades, was gelatin. My first crush was Donnie Gill who lived on the Roxborough housing estate in Hamilton. Incredibly, he was utterly unresponsive. By summer I had switched to a dark Jewish boy from Westdale, an address that required serious measures. I purchased packets of gelatin. I would dip my crinoline in the gucky mixture, dry it on the clothesline outside till it was stiff as a hooped skirt and go for it at the school dance. I would have killed to look like Betts in season one of Mad Men, whose crinolines would have made her a standout at any sock hop and whose cheerleader “goy” blondness would have got her swarms of the synagogue set.
By the late sixties, I was soaking packets of gelatin again, this time for Julia’s Orange Bavarian Cream during my stint as an East Side apartment Frau in Manhattan. Unlike Amy Adams in the film, I was unable to work my way through volume one of Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I did manage a small kitchen fire on East 57th Street when a dishcloth too close to the stove irritatingly ignited upon grazing the stovetop and the vermouth I was reducing in the mirepoix for my Langue de Boeuf à l’Aigre-Douce. (Okay. I know this strains credibility but Julia said that boiled tongue was “supremely easy to do.”)
Does anyone else remember the Jack LaLanne fitness show at this time? You’d start the morning behind a kitchen chair carefully placed in front of the TV set. Jack, wearing a rather odd outfit with rolled sleeves to emphasize huge biceps and tight trousers curiously modest with no bumps where there ought to have been a real bundle, would urge us through four gentle half leg lifts and ask, “Ladies, have you thought about the food you eat?”
Then, you’d go out and buy the gelatin, heavy cream, brown sugar and cartloads of butter and go home to clarify it. God, the time I spent clarifying butter to Julia’s great roaring cry “You can’t have too much butter” and then getting up to face Jack LaLanne. I failed miserably at the quenelles, which simply would not bind and thought there might be a role for gelatin here too but life moved on.
I enjoy Mad Men and I loved the Julia Child film but it’s annoying to see one’s own times viewed as period pieces, with our manners and mores depicted as relics from some unenlightened age. A late episode of Mad Men last season condescendingly viewed the hysteria many had in preparing for doomsday as the Soviet Union’s ship sailed toward Cuba in the 1961 missile crisis. I’d like to know how the writers would have acted if they had lived through it as adults. Just what is the sane plan when facing annihilation in a nuclear war?
This happens to every generation I suppose. You become funny little people with ridiculous habits to be viewed for amusement by your grandchildren. My only compensation is to muse on the rich lode of bunk this current lot will give their chroniclers. The great fight against plastic bags, for example, should be a hoot for one episode and the prudishness over displays of child nudity from a society showing off their thonged underwear and deconstructed clothing at super-constructed prices a real riot of hypocrisy. Of course, none of this will come to light for a few hundred years if one of the other idiocracies triumph and Western society wraps itself up in burkas. Who knows which set of lunatics will feature in the historical fiction of 2060? It’s a toss-up.
Barbara Amiel in Maclean's magazine.
Something of a shame, I thought, as Meryl Streep’s Julia Child plunges her knife into the writhing lobster, that she and Martha Stewart couldn’t have met, two splendid women wielding cleavers—probably on one another as they wrestled for camera position. On Sunday came the premiere of Mad Men’s third season about advertising men in the early sixties, when everyone smoked, wore uptight clothes and political correctness was being on the right rather than the left.
Okay. I know this stuff. True, as young women we did wear girdles, garter belts and stockings as a matter of course rather than buying them from Frederick’s of Hollywood for a giggle. Some respectable people did wrinkle their noses a bit when encountering Jews or “Negroes” and I distinctly remember in 1964 purchasing an original Relax-A-Cizor, a machine which in the series is said to have the pleasant but unspoken side effect of giving women orgasms. Hello? All I can remember is the nuisance of putting gel on its little body pads and switching on an electric current that made muscles twitch—which, had it worked, strikes me as a more civilized way of toning than today’s hanging-about-fitness-centres in latex. Had I known it was a pleasure machine, I would have stuck at it much longer.
A crucial ingredient of those times, overlooked by the producers of Mad Men who clearly did not grow up female in those decades, was gelatin. My first crush was Donnie Gill who lived on the Roxborough housing estate in Hamilton. Incredibly, he was utterly unresponsive. By summer I had switched to a dark Jewish boy from Westdale, an address that required serious measures. I purchased packets of gelatin. I would dip my crinoline in the gucky mixture, dry it on the clothesline outside till it was stiff as a hooped skirt and go for it at the school dance. I would have killed to look like Betts in season one of Mad Men, whose crinolines would have made her a standout at any sock hop and whose cheerleader “goy” blondness would have got her swarms of the synagogue set.
By the late sixties, I was soaking packets of gelatin again, this time for Julia’s Orange Bavarian Cream during my stint as an East Side apartment Frau in Manhattan. Unlike Amy Adams in the film, I was unable to work my way through volume one of Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I did manage a small kitchen fire on East 57th Street when a dishcloth too close to the stove irritatingly ignited upon grazing the stovetop and the vermouth I was reducing in the mirepoix for my Langue de Boeuf à l’Aigre-Douce. (Okay. I know this strains credibility but Julia said that boiled tongue was “supremely easy to do.”)
Does anyone else remember the Jack LaLanne fitness show at this time? You’d start the morning behind a kitchen chair carefully placed in front of the TV set. Jack, wearing a rather odd outfit with rolled sleeves to emphasize huge biceps and tight trousers curiously modest with no bumps where there ought to have been a real bundle, would urge us through four gentle half leg lifts and ask, “Ladies, have you thought about the food you eat?”
Then, you’d go out and buy the gelatin, heavy cream, brown sugar and cartloads of butter and go home to clarify it. God, the time I spent clarifying butter to Julia’s great roaring cry “You can’t have too much butter” and then getting up to face Jack LaLanne. I failed miserably at the quenelles, which simply would not bind and thought there might be a role for gelatin here too but life moved on.
I enjoy Mad Men and I loved the Julia Child film but it’s annoying to see one’s own times viewed as period pieces, with our manners and mores depicted as relics from some unenlightened age. A late episode of Mad Men last season condescendingly viewed the hysteria many had in preparing for doomsday as the Soviet Union’s ship sailed toward Cuba in the 1961 missile crisis. I’d like to know how the writers would have acted if they had lived through it as adults. Just what is the sane plan when facing annihilation in a nuclear war?
This happens to every generation I suppose. You become funny little people with ridiculous habits to be viewed for amusement by your grandchildren. My only compensation is to muse on the rich lode of bunk this current lot will give their chroniclers. The great fight against plastic bags, for example, should be a hoot for one episode and the prudishness over displays of child nudity from a society showing off their thonged underwear and deconstructed clothing at super-constructed prices a real riot of hypocrisy. Of course, none of this will come to light for a few hundred years if one of the other idiocracies triumph and Western society wraps itself up in burkas. Who knows which set of lunatics will feature in the historical fiction of 2060? It’s a toss-up.
Barbara Amiel in Maclean's magazine.
Interesting post about writing "faction" -- a mix of fact and fiction
MADOFF AND HIS BORING MISTRESS
by Barbara Amiel, Thursday, September 10, 2009
Last week Mrs. Ronald Weinstein, 60, former CFO of the Jewish women’s organization Hadassah, published her first book, Madoff’s Other Secret. Her claim to have been Bernie Madoff’s long-time mistress is the “secret,” but that aside the major revelation is on page 123, when Mrs. Weinstein tells us Bernie “had a very small penis".
I was rather dreading a bog of phallic analysis but only a page or so followed on the effects of penis size with the observation that Bernie was curiously intent on bringing this matter up. Still, men of all manner and size band together when penis matters surface and their defence mechanisms cannot be overstated. When I told a male acquaintance of mine whose mind is almost exclusively focused on philosophy and science that Sheryl Weinstein’s contribution to the Madoff affair was details on the circumference/length issue, he became nearly belligerent. “How did she know it was very small?” he asked. “Just how many penises had she seen?”
Sheryl Weinstein claims to have been the mistress of Bernie for some 20 years, but the actual length of their extramarital affair, like that of Bernie’s penis, is a bit murky. They met in 1988 when she was referred to Madoff by one of Hadassah’s sizable donors. They had some months of making out and dry humping or whatever it was called then and finally embarked on an affair in 1993. As Hadassah’s CFO she played a significant role in the $40 million invested with Madoff. She was also CFO of the Weinstein household and all its money went over the Madoff rainbow. (Mr. Weinstein, either a brick or else a doormat, is still married to Sheryl and on Ritalin.) Sheryl thought Madoff “chivalrous” and enchanting. On June 29, 2009, as one of nine witnesses delivering “victim impact” statements in the Manhattan federal court, she labelled him “Madoff the Beast.”
Her book belongs to the kiss ’n’ tell genre, a bastard offspring of autobiography. This is a dodgy field. Sorting out fact from fiction is almost impossible. Who knows how much of Kathryn Harrison’s 1997 book The Kiss detailing consensual sex with her father is true? Women tend to write these books more often than men but then men almost never talk about the intimate physical details of their sexual lives. I can’t recall ever hearing a man describe a clitoris, and should he do so, it’s unlikely to be about a specific woman.
Weinstein’s book is vanilla-bland though fascinating because you wouldn’t expect an affair with the Dracula of con men to be so bloodless. This is almost Doris Day sex where a new black negligee creates an apogee of excitement. The publishers must have gone nuts:
Editor: “Look, we’ve got to have some real dirt here. Some sexy stuff.”
Mrs. Weinstein: “We did enjoy blintzes and caviar in hotel rooms, sometimes when we were undressed.”
“No, really sexy stuff to prove you’ve been . . . there.”
“Would a word about his penis do?”
Dating a female writer can be perilous, as Chopin found out when he took up with George Sand. Ms. Sand collected some pretty significant boyfriends including the French poet Alfred de Musset—must have been her cross-dressing that attracted as she was said to be physically unprepossessing—and then made her reputation writing about how difficult they were. Simone de Beauvoir detailed her sexual exploits with the writer Nelson Algren as well as with existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre.
The female sexual confession was immensely popular in the early 20th century. Margarete Böhme’s 1905 bestseller The Diary of a Lost One used an alter ego to trace her life as a fallen woman, but by 1929 Alice Prin, a.k.a. Kiki de Montparnasse, the famous model of photographer Man Ray, published her kiss ’n’ tell as Kiki’s Memoirs. Hemingway’s introduction did not soothe the New York Public Library, which placed it in a special reserve section till at least the late nineties.
Low lit has developed genres with bells and whistles. Kiss ’n’ tell books have spawned “Kiss and Sell” agencies. The muddling up of fact and fiction has given us the new online genre of Real People Fiction and Fanfic with made-up tales, often sexual, about real celebrities. This is gutter stuff, a long way from “faction” debates—the propriety of using real people in fictional novels—sparked by E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 book, Ragtime.
Bertrand Russell did the reverse brilliantly. He put a dozen or so of Shakespeare’s fictional characters on the psychiatrist’s couch. One could elaborate on that. What about a book in which Romeo tells what it was really like to date Juliet with that damn nurse coming in with milk all the time? Or the goods from Ophelia: “I saw him sitting on a wall one day turning a skull over in his hand and it was so weird. I said ‘Would you like some breakfast, Hamlet?’ But his appetite was absolutely gone. His mum had told him he had a small penis.”
As the British novelist A.S. Byatt said last month in her attack on faction: “Now we have the blog and Facebook [and] everyone is a writer, and everyone’s idea of anyone else, kind or cruel, just or unjust, is available on the Web to be believed or mocked. Blogs and Facebooks too have caused suicides. Writers often realize the power of writing too late.”
But not Mrs. Weinstein. She’s hoping better late than never.
* * * * * * * * * *
Note from Marianna: Interestingly enough, the author of this piece, Barbara Amiel, a Canadian journalist, is also the wife of none other than Conrad Black).
by Barbara Amiel, Thursday, September 10, 2009
Last week Mrs. Ronald Weinstein, 60, former CFO of the Jewish women’s organization Hadassah, published her first book, Madoff’s Other Secret. Her claim to have been Bernie Madoff’s long-time mistress is the “secret,” but that aside the major revelation is on page 123, when Mrs. Weinstein tells us Bernie “had a very small penis".
I was rather dreading a bog of phallic analysis but only a page or so followed on the effects of penis size with the observation that Bernie was curiously intent on bringing this matter up. Still, men of all manner and size band together when penis matters surface and their defence mechanisms cannot be overstated. When I told a male acquaintance of mine whose mind is almost exclusively focused on philosophy and science that Sheryl Weinstein’s contribution to the Madoff affair was details on the circumference/length issue, he became nearly belligerent. “How did she know it was very small?” he asked. “Just how many penises had she seen?”
Sheryl Weinstein claims to have been the mistress of Bernie for some 20 years, but the actual length of their extramarital affair, like that of Bernie’s penis, is a bit murky. They met in 1988 when she was referred to Madoff by one of Hadassah’s sizable donors. They had some months of making out and dry humping or whatever it was called then and finally embarked on an affair in 1993. As Hadassah’s CFO she played a significant role in the $40 million invested with Madoff. She was also CFO of the Weinstein household and all its money went over the Madoff rainbow. (Mr. Weinstein, either a brick or else a doormat, is still married to Sheryl and on Ritalin.) Sheryl thought Madoff “chivalrous” and enchanting. On June 29, 2009, as one of nine witnesses delivering “victim impact” statements in the Manhattan federal court, she labelled him “Madoff the Beast.”
Her book belongs to the kiss ’n’ tell genre, a bastard offspring of autobiography. This is a dodgy field. Sorting out fact from fiction is almost impossible. Who knows how much of Kathryn Harrison’s 1997 book The Kiss detailing consensual sex with her father is true? Women tend to write these books more often than men but then men almost never talk about the intimate physical details of their sexual lives. I can’t recall ever hearing a man describe a clitoris, and should he do so, it’s unlikely to be about a specific woman.
Weinstein’s book is vanilla-bland though fascinating because you wouldn’t expect an affair with the Dracula of con men to be so bloodless. This is almost Doris Day sex where a new black negligee creates an apogee of excitement. The publishers must have gone nuts:
Editor: “Look, we’ve got to have some real dirt here. Some sexy stuff.”
Mrs. Weinstein: “We did enjoy blintzes and caviar in hotel rooms, sometimes when we were undressed.”
“No, really sexy stuff to prove you’ve been . . . there.”
“Would a word about his penis do?”
Dating a female writer can be perilous, as Chopin found out when he took up with George Sand. Ms. Sand collected some pretty significant boyfriends including the French poet Alfred de Musset—must have been her cross-dressing that attracted as she was said to be physically unprepossessing—and then made her reputation writing about how difficult they were. Simone de Beauvoir detailed her sexual exploits with the writer Nelson Algren as well as with existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre.
The female sexual confession was immensely popular in the early 20th century. Margarete Böhme’s 1905 bestseller The Diary of a Lost One used an alter ego to trace her life as a fallen woman, but by 1929 Alice Prin, a.k.a. Kiki de Montparnasse, the famous model of photographer Man Ray, published her kiss ’n’ tell as Kiki’s Memoirs. Hemingway’s introduction did not soothe the New York Public Library, which placed it in a special reserve section till at least the late nineties.
Low lit has developed genres with bells and whistles. Kiss ’n’ tell books have spawned “Kiss and Sell” agencies. The muddling up of fact and fiction has given us the new online genre of Real People Fiction and Fanfic with made-up tales, often sexual, about real celebrities. This is gutter stuff, a long way from “faction” debates—the propriety of using real people in fictional novels—sparked by E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 book, Ragtime.
Bertrand Russell did the reverse brilliantly. He put a dozen or so of Shakespeare’s fictional characters on the psychiatrist’s couch. One could elaborate on that. What about a book in which Romeo tells what it was really like to date Juliet with that damn nurse coming in with milk all the time? Or the goods from Ophelia: “I saw him sitting on a wall one day turning a skull over in his hand and it was so weird. I said ‘Would you like some breakfast, Hamlet?’ But his appetite was absolutely gone. His mum had told him he had a small penis.”
As the British novelist A.S. Byatt said last month in her attack on faction: “Now we have the blog and Facebook [and] everyone is a writer, and everyone’s idea of anyone else, kind or cruel, just or unjust, is available on the Web to be believed or mocked. Blogs and Facebooks too have caused suicides. Writers often realize the power of writing too late.”
But not Mrs. Weinstein. She’s hoping better late than never.
* * * * * * * * * *
Note from Marianna: Interestingly enough, the author of this piece, Barbara Amiel, a Canadian journalist, is also the wife of none other than Conrad Black).
Love Happens
Our little blog is sputtering along as most of us resume life, school, parenting, absurd work hours:) Maybe I can generate some conversation today. A few things have been on my mind, one topic being the movie, Love Happens.
I am NOT a movie critic. I also have a hard time with critiquing artistic form. I'm fine with critiquing message, but form, I just don't do it well. All that being said, here are my thoughts on Love Happens.
I'll preface with this advice: Go see it. Bring tissues.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
"More to Love" article sheds light on "The Bachelorette"
Very enlightening article particularly how it sheds light on Fleiss' skeptical and mocking attitude towards love and the way in which the producers coerce the contestants in interviews
Favorite Romantic Films - Two More
The former thread on this topic is quite "buried" at this point, so I decided on a new post to hopefully add two films to our site's list (if whoever is compiling the list agrees with my choices). With both there is a love affair with a locale in addition to compellingly-portrayed romances.
There probably would be fairly general agreement that "Out of Africa" should be on the list...don't think I even have to describe why this is a choice of mine. I will say that, for me, it adds a lot that a number of various meaningful relationships are so well portrayed, in addition to the central romance(s).
I wouldn't be surprised if almost all you wonderful, tasteful, "with it" bloggers are also familiar with my other choice, "The Piano." I don't find it enormously well-known in the general population, however; and I do mention it around occasionally. I was very surprised that a particular woman I ride horses with said it just might be her favorite movie of all...may have underestimated her!
Certainly "The Piano" left me in love with New Zealand, as well as entranced and gripped by the storyline. I don't know how a better job could have been done in making this film.
Scotty
There probably would be fairly general agreement that "Out of Africa" should be on the list...don't think I even have to describe why this is a choice of mine. I will say that, for me, it adds a lot that a number of various meaningful relationships are so well portrayed, in addition to the central romance(s).
I wouldn't be surprised if almost all you wonderful, tasteful, "with it" bloggers are also familiar with my other choice, "The Piano." I don't find it enormously well-known in the general population, however; and I do mention it around occasionally. I was very surprised that a particular woman I ride horses with said it just might be her favorite movie of all...may have underestimated her!
Certainly "The Piano" left me in love with New Zealand, as well as entranced and gripped by the storyline. I don't know how a better job could have been done in making this film.
Scotty
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
To ALL Who Have Sent Me a Note
Just a heads-up that I have received your notes and will process all the invites for readers and new authors by the end of the week. Don't worry...you won't be closed out, if you have written to me to request to stay a part of Romantic Portrayals. (Note: If you are already an author, you have nothing to worry about...your status will not change. You know who you are because your name is on the contributor list.) I also owe a few of you personal emails. Please forgive (with a cherry on top).
I must admit that all this was on my to-do list for last weekend. But since Sunday the 6th was my birthday, my wonderful, sweet husband gifted me with a 3 day weekend driving through Pinot Noir country to Mendocino on the California coast. Temperature was 72, wine was wonderful, ocean was gorgeous, and the food was sublime. Not to mention the bestest (Thank you Leen for a new favorite word.) company a girl could have.
So, 148 tests will have to wait to be graded a few days, lesson plans will get done on a daily basis, and my duties for this blog will fall a little behind. What the hay! :-) Life is for livin'. And this girl has one BIG smile on her face.
Cheers, everyone!
P.S. When I am all caught up with everything, I'll write up a travelogue of our weekend to share with you all. :-)
Monday, September 7, 2009
In Case Y'all Care
I don't know if y'all heard but JED will be on Ellen this Thursday. This is a new show. Ellen says she plans to get to the bottom of all the rumors. It might be interesting to see if anything is said about Reid. Just thought you might want to know. Have a good Labor Day.
HCM
Melanie
HCM
Melanie
The Bachelor show changes its focus
Hmm... playboy? Player? Pimp Master? Bikini-clad babes? "True love" in quotation marks? The Bachelor falls further down the relationship rabbit-hole?
Seems the producers are finally calling it as they see it. No more pretending that this is a search for true love and a lasting marriage.
Read for yourself. Here is the new description for the upcoming season of The Bachelor. Do you see Reid as this type of bachelor?
M.
"When it comes to falling in love, The Bachelor has the formula down: Add a parade of 25 (often-times bikini-clad) babes, a hot tub, tear-riddled elimination rounds, verbal cat fights, multiple make-out sessions and a mansion. When it comes to staying in love... well... *crickets*
The Bachelor takes us on an all-access journey with one man looking for his ultimate sweetheart. Whether you're envious, excited or completely revolted by the scenario, we know you can't help but spy on our leading man as he plays tonsil hockey with his many lady loves. Arguably the luckiest guy on the planet–for just one television season–our bachelor finds himself TOTALLY exempt from the cheating rule. In this world, nobody hates the player.
The bachelor is the object of 25 girls' affection. And these women aren't those trashy bar flies you see on other reality dating shows–these ladies are classy (yes, with a "c"!) and they are looking to get hitched. Have no doubts over their determination–these women will do anything to make an impression. ANYTHING. You get to see how lady contestants play the game not only in front of the bachelor, but also what side they show the other girls. (Two-face much, ladies?) And we know you love it when the claws come out. Oh, and they do!
Will these bachelorettes' efforts go unnoticed? You'll find out because you get to play spy during all of the one-on-one dates. These rendezvous can involve anything from couples massage and bubble baths to helicopter rides and bungee jumping. At the end of each episode, the bachelor reflects on all of his darlings to determine who will go home in the rose ceremony elimination. And we know his choices are always the subject of heated living room debate.
As the season progresses, you are taken along on the bachelorettes' hometown visits where our playboy extraordinaire switches gears to meet the family. You'd think the prospect of in-laws would kill the buzz for our said mack daddy. But quite the opposite inevitably occurs as the bachelor falls further down the relationship rabbit hole.
Who will steam up the hot tub with the bachelor this season? From which exotic location will he propose to his "true love"? Sit back and enjoy as host, Chris Harrison, A/K/A "The Pimp Master," guides us each week as the bachelor narrows down the field of his female pickings to the final ONE!"
Seems the producers are finally calling it as they see it. No more pretending that this is a search for true love and a lasting marriage.
Read for yourself. Here is the new description for the upcoming season of The Bachelor. Do you see Reid as this type of bachelor?
M.
"When it comes to falling in love, The Bachelor has the formula down: Add a parade of 25 (often-times bikini-clad) babes, a hot tub, tear-riddled elimination rounds, verbal cat fights, multiple make-out sessions and a mansion. When it comes to staying in love... well... *crickets*
The Bachelor takes us on an all-access journey with one man looking for his ultimate sweetheart. Whether you're envious, excited or completely revolted by the scenario, we know you can't help but spy on our leading man as he plays tonsil hockey with his many lady loves. Arguably the luckiest guy on the planet–for just one television season–our bachelor finds himself TOTALLY exempt from the cheating rule. In this world, nobody hates the player.
The bachelor is the object of 25 girls' affection. And these women aren't those trashy bar flies you see on other reality dating shows–these ladies are classy (yes, with a "c"!) and they are looking to get hitched. Have no doubts over their determination–these women will do anything to make an impression. ANYTHING. You get to see how lady contestants play the game not only in front of the bachelor, but also what side they show the other girls. (Two-face much, ladies?) And we know you love it when the claws come out. Oh, and they do!
Will these bachelorettes' efforts go unnoticed? You'll find out because you get to play spy during all of the one-on-one dates. These rendezvous can involve anything from couples massage and bubble baths to helicopter rides and bungee jumping. At the end of each episode, the bachelor reflects on all of his darlings to determine who will go home in the rose ceremony elimination. And we know his choices are always the subject of heated living room debate.
As the season progresses, you are taken along on the bachelorettes' hometown visits where our playboy extraordinaire switches gears to meet the family. You'd think the prospect of in-laws would kill the buzz for our said mack daddy. But quite the opposite inevitably occurs as the bachelor falls further down the relationship rabbit hole.
Who will steam up the hot tub with the bachelor this season? From which exotic location will he propose to his "true love"? Sit back and enjoy as host, Chris Harrison, A/K/A "The Pimp Master," guides us each week as the bachelor narrows down the field of his female pickings to the final ONE!"
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Wonderful article for fans of tv show "Mad Men"
Thisarticle is from early August, from Newsweek magazine. I love this show and thought this article very apt.
M.
Time has been Mad Men's costar from the start. It provides the jokes, the fears, the gadgets. It's behind the haunted look in Don Draper's eyes. But when season three begins on Aug. 16, time may play its biggest role yet. Creator Matt Weiner won't pin down the year, but the evidence points to 1963—and 1963 was no ordinary year. For men who thought they ruled by right, it was the year things fell apart.
On Mad Men, the cracks are there already. Copywriter Peggy Olson broke through Sterling Cooper's glass ceiling with her wit and smarts, but she's had to endure the derision—and worse—of her male colleagues. What will she think of the rise of the women's movement that followed the February 1963 publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique? The call to arms in Friedan's preface ("I came to realize that something is very wrong with the way American women are trying to live their lives today") seems aimed directly at Peggy—and at Betty Draper, Don's beautiful caged bird of a wife.
So far, the civil-rights movement has been only a whisper at the lily-white Sterling Cooper agency, but it grew to a roar in April 1963, when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference launched the Birmingham, Ala., sit-in and nonviolent protest campaign. Martin Luther King Jr. and others were arrested and jailed for their role in the demonstrations. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," he wrote in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail." As Bull Connor let loose his police dogs and fire hoses on protesters, more Americans began to think King was right. Will Birmingham rattle Madison Avenue? Will Washington? It was in August 1963 that King stood before the Lincoln Memorial and told the huge crowd, "I have a dream." The dreams of millions changed that day. It's hard to imagine that the show's only black character, the Drapers' maid, Carla, won't be among them.
The course of pop culture continued its shift in 1963, too. Bob Dylan (né Robert Zimmerman) came out with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and Charles Mingus released one of the best jazz albums in history, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. The British invasion was launched soon after the Beatles recorded their first album, Please Please Me, in London in 1963. It's certainly no coincidence that a British firm has invaded Sterling Cooper. Admen on Madison Avenue weren't the only ones controlling the message.
The biggest event of the year, of course, came at its close: the JFK assassination. Weiner has said that he wants to stay away from that particular moment because it is such familiar ground. But can he avoid it? That was the moment when Camelot came crashing down, and Draper's life, looks, and charm are nothing if not Kennedyesque. Don (or is it Dick?) already watches life as if it were a Zapruder film; he already knows that you can't keep history at bay. He lives the American Dream as if it were a nightmare, always fearing he will be found out as a fraud. Will the turmoil of 1963 provide a release, or just inflict more trauma? Either way, it's clear why the tagline for the show this season is "the world's gone mad."
M.
Time has been Mad Men's costar from the start. It provides the jokes, the fears, the gadgets. It's behind the haunted look in Don Draper's eyes. But when season three begins on Aug. 16, time may play its biggest role yet. Creator Matt Weiner won't pin down the year, but the evidence points to 1963—and 1963 was no ordinary year. For men who thought they ruled by right, it was the year things fell apart.
On Mad Men, the cracks are there already. Copywriter Peggy Olson broke through Sterling Cooper's glass ceiling with her wit and smarts, but she's had to endure the derision—and worse—of her male colleagues. What will she think of the rise of the women's movement that followed the February 1963 publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique? The call to arms in Friedan's preface ("I came to realize that something is very wrong with the way American women are trying to live their lives today") seems aimed directly at Peggy—and at Betty Draper, Don's beautiful caged bird of a wife.
So far, the civil-rights movement has been only a whisper at the lily-white Sterling Cooper agency, but it grew to a roar in April 1963, when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference launched the Birmingham, Ala., sit-in and nonviolent protest campaign. Martin Luther King Jr. and others were arrested and jailed for their role in the demonstrations. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," he wrote in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail." As Bull Connor let loose his police dogs and fire hoses on protesters, more Americans began to think King was right. Will Birmingham rattle Madison Avenue? Will Washington? It was in August 1963 that King stood before the Lincoln Memorial and told the huge crowd, "I have a dream." The dreams of millions changed that day. It's hard to imagine that the show's only black character, the Drapers' maid, Carla, won't be among them.
The course of pop culture continued its shift in 1963, too. Bob Dylan (né Robert Zimmerman) came out with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and Charles Mingus released one of the best jazz albums in history, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. The British invasion was launched soon after the Beatles recorded their first album, Please Please Me, in London in 1963. It's certainly no coincidence that a British firm has invaded Sterling Cooper. Admen on Madison Avenue weren't the only ones controlling the message.
The biggest event of the year, of course, came at its close: the JFK assassination. Weiner has said that he wants to stay away from that particular moment because it is such familiar ground. But can he avoid it? That was the moment when Camelot came crashing down, and Draper's life, looks, and charm are nothing if not Kennedyesque. Don (or is it Dick?) already watches life as if it were a Zapruder film; he already knows that you can't keep history at bay. He lives the American Dream as if it were a nightmare, always fearing he will be found out as a fraud. Will the turmoil of 1963 provide a release, or just inflict more trauma? Either way, it's clear why the tagline for the show this season is "the world's gone mad."
September Book List
Since Mel's request for good books was such a hit, perhaps we can keep a monthly log of literary suggestions.
As we finish a good read, let's post suggestions here as comments, ok? Ok. :)
Reid's future
Last night, I finally dreamed about Reid. Our wedding or our world tour honeymoon was not my dream.
It was about Reid as a new soap opera star.
Reid was cast as the leading man in All My Children. How the hell All My Children was showcased in my lala-land is anyone's guess, but there he was, brooding and smoldering and pining away for...you guessed it, Jillian, who guest-starred in this high quality drama.
Their interactions were set in a pool (again, why?) with too many polite overtures masking their desires.
Then Reid cannon-balled into the pool, the spray waking me up.
Perhaps Reid's been dubbed "The Bachelor", but if dreams hold any truth, then I've had a premonition.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Romantic Portrayals Will Now Be Private
Dear Friends,
Many have now weighed in about whether the blog should be public or private. No one seems to feel passionately one way or the other, but many have said that they would like our group to remain small and intimate, allowing for open discussions about intimate topics. The need to feel safe to share straight from the heart is paramount to all of us.
So, I will be closing the door firmly behind us this weekend. If there is anybody on here who doesn't post or comment please, please, please send me (click the word "me") an email if you want to have continued access to this blog. Because of how Google sets up private blogs, only those who have received a formal INVITE from me through email, will continue to have access. Once the door is closed one can get in by invitation only.
If, in the future, anyone would like to nominate someone to join our merry band at Romantic Portrayals, please just send me an email.
The private Writer's Blog is also up and running. Please email me (click the word "me") to let me know if you would like to be a part of this group. Everyone joining the BBB Writer's Group should either have writing they wish to share, and have constructively critiqued, and/or should be a reader who would like to share in the joy of reading and giving constructive critiques of others' writings.
Salutations,
Nadya
Many have now weighed in about whether the blog should be public or private. No one seems to feel passionately one way or the other, but many have said that they would like our group to remain small and intimate, allowing for open discussions about intimate topics. The need to feel safe to share straight from the heart is paramount to all of us.
So, I will be closing the door firmly behind us this weekend. If there is anybody on here who doesn't post or comment please, please, please send me (click the word "me") an email if you want to have continued access to this blog. Because of how Google sets up private blogs, only those who have received a formal INVITE from me through email, will continue to have access. Once the door is closed one can get in by invitation only.
If, in the future, anyone would like to nominate someone to join our merry band at Romantic Portrayals, please just send me an email.
The private Writer's Blog is also up and running. Please email me (click the word "me") to let me know if you would like to be a part of this group. Everyone joining the BBB Writer's Group should either have writing they wish to share, and have constructively critiqued, and/or should be a reader who would like to share in the joy of reading and giving constructive critiques of others' writings.
Salutations,
Nadya
The End
The Bachelorette Message Board is gone baby, gone. It was my first ever message board and I was very attached. I still checked in from time to time. So long Dark Horse Thread and Marianna's Musings. Oh how I will miss you!!
By the way, for those interested, Pattismatti created a "Team Reid" secured site at http://teamreid.proboards.com and wanted me to let you all know. She sends a shout out to all!!
By the way, for those interested, Pattismatti created a "Team Reid" secured site at http://teamreid.proboards.com and wanted me to let you all know. She sends a shout out to all!!
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