Amanda's Turn!
Just in time for tonight's sixth episode (of only eight -- that kind of stings) of The Paper, another interview with Amanda Lorber.
You Gotta Live By the Code
It's the new 90210 promo. Check it out:
Donna Martin Graduates . . . and Yet . . .
Meh news all around:
First, according to OK!, there's talk of a Project Runway All-Stars season or special. Because those always work out so well.
Second, Tori Spelling seems to be bullying her way into 90210. I feel bad about this: I like Tori, but I feel like she's become kind of a freak since hooking up with Dean McDermott, and I never cared one way or another about Donna. Plus, most importantly, we know from Degrassi: The Next Generation, that it's boring and sucky when the original cast members return.
More Project Runway Weirdness
This is maybe the strangest thing I've read about Project Runway lately -- and that's saying a lot. Nina Garcia, who was apparently ousted from Elle last month, and may have recently landed a job at Marie-Claire, is apparently back at Elle, but just through Project Runway's fifth season (this summer!).
Today in 90210 Casting
Huh. It makes a certain amount of sense. Actually, wait. I think it makes a little too much sense: Estes was on Melrose Place (after we all stopped watching, but still . . .), which was originally a spin-off of the original Beverly Hills, 90210. I guess Grant Show was busy?
The Bureau of Good and Evil
Night Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko. This seems to me stereotypically Russian: one half fairytale, one half bureaucracy. You see, there are the forces of Good (the Light Ones) and there are the forces of Evil (the Dark Ones) and they're locked in an epic struggle. Exciting, right? Well, kind of. It turns out that there's a centuries-old truce between Light and Dark, and this is really the story of the Night Watch, the Light Ones in charge of enforcing the truce. (There's also a Day Watch consisting of the Night Watch's opposite number among the Dark Ones.)
I go back and forth about this book and its sequel, Day Watch, which I'm reading right now. On the one hand, reading about treaties, it turns out, is pretty unexciting (unless we're talking about the s!@# that went down at Yalta, of course). Plus the books' episodic structure tends to draw suspense away. But what the books have going for them is Lukyanenko's psychological and philosophical insight. The central, seemingly doomed love story between IT guy/magician Anton and Svetlana, the much more powerful witch he loves is worth all the talk about "fifth level infractions" and the rest of it. -- Pete
Do You Want Fries with that F-Bomb?
Dear Jenny,
I think you've been watching Top Chef this entire f!@#ing season, so I hope that you can explain this s!@# to me: when did this g!@d!@# show get so f!@#ing crazy? I saw, here and there, some of that Andrew a!@hole and I can tell that he's a loose f!@#ing cannon, a real s!@#disturber. I had also read that Bravo was a little embarrassed by all the profanity. Even so, I was shocked -- absof!@#inglutely shocked -- by what I saw of last night's episode. The judges' table was f!@#ing bananas. "Those b!@$#es burnt my motherf!@#ing rice!" Are you kidding me?
Is it always like that? How have I missed this? Is it hard to take week after week or does it just get funnier?
Also, settle a bet for me: Lisa and Zoi -- same person?
F1!@# you!
Love,
-- Pete
OMFG, Again
Here is a funny discussion of the idea of Gossip Girl as a web-based phenomenon, as opposed to a show that actual people watch. I think that this sort of online buzz might eventually translate into actual viewership, sometime down the road -- say when the show returns for five episodes this summer. Or, on the other hand, TV might actually be dead. It could go either way. I do think it's interesting that the online aspect of the show is approaching that of The Hills, but that many more people watch The Hills (even though it's on cable). So what's the difference? I think the big difference is the gossip rags are covering Lauren, Heidi, Spencer and Audrina, and they're not covering Serena, Georgina, Dan and Blair . . .I may have this wrong, though, because actually comparing Gossip Girl and The Hills is making me a little queasy.
The Non-Judging Breakfast Club
Dear Jenny,
Did you see our girl Lisa Loeb on Gossip Girl? Does it age us to refer to Lisa Loeb as "our girl"? Wait. Do we even like her? I know that we loved #1 Single. I think I used to hate that "Stay" song, except I know it by heart -- how? -- and I really enjoyed hearing it at Rufus's concert last night. I might even get it from iTunes, because -- not old!
In any case, singer-songwriters of our collective past aside, pretty great episode last night: not as pop-culturally funny as last week's* but well-plotted and satisfying. We did not yet get Chuck + Blair vs. Georgina (next week?), but we did get Blair, in Great Friend mode, vs. Lily, in Awful Mother mode. I finally decided that I like what Michelle Trachtenberg is doing with the Georgina role. I was hating Georgina in general, but this week she seemed to slip over from hateful nuisance to screaming psychopath (around the point where she tried to bring Serena coffee -- the Hell?), and it turns out Dawnie can do that. I think we should all be glad that Mischa Barton allegedly passed on that role, because Coop? I don't think Coop can do that.
Love,
-- Pete
*Last week's was almost Sherman-Palladinian in its speed and fluency -- I only just remembered that great, throwaway Zac Efron joke.
