You’re so goddamned livid right now. The DVR is fucking up, again, and keeps looping the first few frames of tonight’s episode of The O.C., which you had set to record because you were in Queens visiting your old friend from college. Well, not so much a friend, but an ex-lover. Girlfriend, whatever. You broke it off with Claudia before graduating, you recall, and that worked out fine until she moved to Astoria and called you up saying how nice it would be to visit her using the fucking 7 train. As if, man, as if. That line on the map is fucking purple, and you look that homo shit right in the eye, and renounce it like there never was a Bravo Network. But you had a momentary relapse and went out to some goddamned Greek restaurant to have a catch-up dinner with her. Fuck, it was tedious, and she kept talking about how Manhattan real estate was so over-rated, but at least you knew you had your DVR slated to capture The O.C. to its 80-gig harddrive. The grape leaves were worth it, though, as was your knowledge that you had hours of available recording time free on your machine.
At least you think you did; the tech/sales guy on the phone wasn’t entirely certain, but then again, he was working out of some fucking province in India. So you’re now back at your place in Gramercy. And you’re feverishly gripping the goddamned all-in-one remote, and trying to get the episode to play, because it’s approaching midnight and you need to get into work tomorrow before 8am. PLAY, goddamnit. Peter Gallagher’s face is frozen in some actorly-contortion, and the image keeps flickering back and forth between two consecutive frames of video. The DVR’s interface is just hanging there onscreen, its cutesy late-’90s fast-forward and rewind arrows just taunting you with their promise of television on your terms.
You hit the exit key rather ungracefully, and you’re now out of the onscreen programming guide. You were almost clumsy in your haste to remedy this shit. Got to be more pro-active, responsible. Rational. Calm.
You select tonight’s episode again. And it jumps to the credits, the fucking end credits. 1:00:01, it says on that cutesy little bar at the base of your 32-inch television screen. That’s just what you needed, right, for it to be midnight and Point Pleasant to come on and taunt you with its insipid content. It’s not nearly as inspired as The O.C.. You fucking have to find out what’s going on with that Mexican gardener boy, and Julie Cooper’s reconnection with Mischa’s dad, and that hottie bartender. Yeah, the hottie bartender. Blond. And fucking bisexual. You read online that there’s going to be some lesbian shit in upcoming episodes, and, despite your general protestations of all things homo, you can, and will, make an exception when it comes to some tongue-kissing action between Mischa and the blondie.
But these Point Pleasant title sequences are just hanging there, teasing you. You put your hard-on away. You bring up the dialog box, the one that says, “Play from the beginning,” and, fuck, fuck, it does just that. You are content. Peter Gallagher appears onscreen again, only as he’s speaking fluidly, now, that single-frame grab you were subjected to moments ago seems so much more appealing. Almost Emmy-winning in caliber. He’s going to wreck the rich motherfuckers in Newport! Low income housing, he’s saying, low income housing. Tell that shit to Claudia, maybe, because, fuck, Astoria pissed you off tonight. And now you’re distracted, so you try to rewind a minute or so. And, again, the screen fucking freezes. Fuck you. Time Warner Cable is getting a curt little phone call first thing in the morning tomorrow. You’ll be at your desk, and your friends will be talking about The O.C., and you’re going to hate them for that.
Actually, I’ve never seen The O.C.; I’m sure it’s pretty good.
The O.C. airs Thursdays at 8PM EST on FOX.
Earlier: O.C.-centric entries, now collected in a limited-edition DVD box set, retailing for $34.97 at your local Best Buy. Formatted for Region-1 players.
Month: January 2005
The Louise Post Post
Veruca Salt’s Louise Post goes Anna Nicole Smith.
From Willy Wonka’s I Want It Now, sung by Veruca Salt (the character, not the band):
I want a feast
I want a bean feast
Cream buns and donuts and fruitcake with no nuts
So good you could go nuts
I want a ball
I want a party
Pink macaroons and a million balloons
And performing baboons
Give it to me
NOW!
Indeed.
(Thanks Erin)
Among the attendees at the World Economic Forum, (clockwise from top left) world spokesman Richard Gere, U2 point man Bono, Citigroup Chief Executive Hottie Charles Prince, and Catwoman star Sharon Stone.
(photos via AP)
low culture Gossip Alert Vol. 3
Despite Page Six’s lede, Pete Doherty, formerly of The Libertines, currently of Babyshambles, is indeed disappointingly, crashingly sober. And not only do Kate and Pete dance the 12-step together, he’s now attempting to guide the ur-waif’s new singing career.
Update: Or not.
And yeah, Juliet and Julian dance down the red carpet of commitment this spring. But what of the band’s rhythm section, similarly due for new tax filings, and the ceremony newly transported from France to New York? Now that’s news…
L-R, Tegan and Sara, So Jealous; Bright Eyes, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn
Hmmm…and you’re still wondering what the next Bloc Party or Dears LP will look like?
Here’s to a great second term!
“America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations, we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time.
So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”
— From President Bush’s second inaugural speech, January 20, 2005
Iraqi youngsters display an election pamphlet, as a British soldier on patrol in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, looks on, Wednesday Jan. 2005, as Iraq heads for national elections scheduled for January 30.(AP Photo/Odd Anderson, pool)
Children examine election posters displayed on a campaign vehicle as Kurdish women’s rights activists raise election awareness among poor and often illiterate women in suburbs of Arbil, Wednesday, Jan. 26. 2005. Kurds are expected to attend the forthcoming elections in Iraq in overwhelming numbers thus strengthening their position in the interim Iraqi parliament. (AP Photo/Sasa Kralj)
You can’t handle the truth!
From Powell gives bleak assessment of Iraq security problems, by Guy Dinmore in Washington for the Financial Times, January 13 2005:
According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. “We’re losing,” Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave.
Or, directly from Mr. Freeman’s mouth, by way of the transcript of his appearance at the recent Capitol Hill Conference Series on U.S. Middle East Policy, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the War on “Terror”, January 11, 2005:
Anyway, the other day I understand that someone went into the Oval Office – someone known to everybody here, a rather senior person who is on his way out of the administration – and was asked by the president what was going on in Iraq, and said, with his characteristic bluntness, we’re losing – and was asked to leave the office forthwith and not continue the discussion.
So there’s a question about what is going on in Iraq, and perhaps the competition between reality-based analysis, much disparaged in Washington these days, and hallucinatory optimism, which is the alternative.
Bond Beauty Drops in to Boost World Record Abseil Attempt: Rachel Grant at Twickenham Rugby Stadium, London
Who in the hell is Rachel Grant?
Abseil?
Was the attempt successful?
We assumed a brief Google could set our minds at ease. We were wrong.