Rupert

Jezebel James... finally... ummm... yay...

So I was watching... ummm.. I was watching... uh... I was watching okay it was american idol and a coming attraction spot came on for the new amy sherman-palladino show "the return of jezebel james" which will have an hour-long premiere on fox march 14. which is four days before the she and him album. and three days after tin man on dvd and hello voyager. (you have to put these things into perspective). anyway, franny has expressed some doubt about this show... from the preview i'm not sure what to think. they sure buried it in the schedule. anyway, i'm hopeful. i think.

Giggling with the stars

I found out this morning that Monica Seles will be featured in the new season of Dancing With The Stars. Later today, I leaned that she'd retired this week. I thought she'd actually retired by now. Franny told me that she'd been training for a comeback. I wonder if she decided to retire the moment she got the TV offer. Besides being my all-time favorite tennis player, I've always thought she'd make a great pop culture presence and it might be fun watching the non-tennis watching world take to her if she makes a good showing. What's upsetting about all of this is that I feel compelled to watch Dancing With The Stars. Enjoyer of musicals and dancing that I am, I've tried to watch it and found I couldn't last a whole season.

This is sort of a boring post because I can't muster enough enthusiasm to say much more about that TV show. I'm sad that Monica is retiring but I felt for a while that her heart was no longer in it, even though she'd had some amazing moments in later years. I'm glad she'll be back in the spotlight in some way. I've posted this under, among other things, Patron Saints. Does she qualify, Franny?

La Western Loca--Allison Anders moves to TV

Generally, AMC has become "the channel that isn't TCM" to me for many years. While TCM manages to be a little Film Forum I can watch in the living room, AMC shows the same movies they show on Lifetime complete with commercials... but since everything's about vague initials, AMC is branching into original programming... Mad Men and Breaking Bad are supposed to be well-written, well-acted, intruiging shows that I haven't seen.

Anyway, a couple of months ago Variety posted a story about upcoming series coming to AMC including two westerns. One of which sounds like something I'll have to watch:

"from Allison Anders and Terry Graham, [the show] centers on Comanche leader Quanah Parker, who fights the U.S. Army for the rights to his tribe's land."

Which forces a couple of questions: is this potentially in limbo due to the writer's strike? And also: is it possible to work a Duran Duran reference into historical western fiction?

If it is still planned, it'll probably bring me back to AMC and now that AMC is on iTunes, it's a perfect setting for Franny since lush mountain landscapes look great on an iPod screen. Anyway, Alison is another patron saint of Rupert if I can be offered a nomination, along with Agnes Varda who I need to post about again soon now that my brother bought me the 4 by Varda Criterion set which I've been watching during my brief time away from work this week...

what to watch when everything you like has ended

all the shows i'm into have pretty much hit the end of the line--alias, charmed, it is probably the last season of the gilmores

and i've been casting about for replacements--of course feeding my ipod is also a concern so i have tv shows to watch whilst commuting.

thanks to my ipod i've discovered the house of carters--my one no reality show rule breaker cuz it is so unbelievably bad and truly sad that a family was torn apart to such extremes and used by the adults in their lives that they have no idea how to function on there own except to cling to one another. but it is a completel dysfunctional clinging. and it is incredibly patriarchal in a way that fascinates me.

other stuff i've found that is good is weeds-that is actually one of the best tv shows i've seen in a while it is up there with 6 ft under et al when they were good.

sleeper cell ain't bad and i also really like studio 60. there was one episode a few back about the writer played by mathew perry who is in love with the actress on the show who also happens to be a born again christian and they actually break up over their religious differences yet neither of them are over one another and in this episode a riter id oing a piece for vanity fair about the "show" and she says something like the romance between mathew perry and i think sarah paulson is fascinating because the country is more polarized than it ever has been yet those two have an attraction that is both symoblic of the split and transcends it and it is those kind of insights into the world outside the idiot box that make wasting time watching it seem worthwhile.

Oh Babette, Have a Beautiful Day...

Aw honey, if it were only a few years ago, I can't imagine ever posting on a blog a happy birthday to Sally Struthers. I mean, out of all the cast members on All in the Family, she was probably my fourth favorite. But that all changed when I started watching the Gilmore Girls. Now I just think of her as Babette and I love her. I swear to God she's channeling Ruth Gordon. So have a great day, hun, over in Stars Hollow and hopefully Morey will play a little Hogey Carmichael for ya if the spirit moves him.

Samantha Stevens, advocate

Okay, this week Nicole Kidman takes over the lead role in the Bewitched movie, and while I'll reserve judgement until I see the movie (which may be when Netflix has it), I'm a little nervous about it (and I like Nicole a lot -- I just don't know about the conceit of the whole TV show-within-a-movie thing, or the Will Ferrell idea). But the one good thing the movie is bringing is Elizabeth Montgomery - the first season of the TV show comes to DVD tomorrow - featuring Alice Pearce, the real Gladys Kravitz, and Dick York, the real Darren, and Paul Lynde but not yet as Uncle Arthur - he plays a nervous driving instructor. Plus appearances by not-yet-famous Raquel Welch, Peggy Lipton and Adam West. Plus the genius of Agnes Moorehead and Marion Lorne (someone needs to make a flashback series of Endora and Clara as sisters growing up)...

And Samantha. So anyway, besides starring in the one "grown-up" TV show I loved as a kid because I was a kid and still think is cool as an adult, I want to point out that Elizabeth Montgomery during her TV movie years ended up doing time as an AIDS activist, and also, rather bravely, donating her voice to two documentaries that her people may have tried talking her out of, CoverUp: Behind the Iran-Contra Affair and also, The Panama Deception - the latter won an Oscar for best documentary while basically pointing out to the world that Bush Sr. pushed to instigate an attack on US troops in Panama by having the military harrass citizens until someone "struck first" so that he could remove Noreiga from power after his usefulness to the CIA had ended. Both films were directed by Barbara Trent who continues to make a wonderfully patriotic nuisance of herself through The Empowerment Project.

And when Dick Sargent (the fake Darren) came out, Liz rode with him as co-grandmaster of the San Francisco gay pride parade and it was really sweet. So anyway, as all of the current Bewitched hullabaloo is going on, the same people who put the Ralph Kramden statue at the Port Authority bus terminal are lobbying to put a Samantha statue in Salem. Residents are pissy about the idea since celebrating witchcraft equals mass paranoia celebrating murder in the name of religion, really. But believe me, I went to a magician's convention there during the 80s and one more statue of a witch won't change the balance. Plus she's a good witch in many ways. If Massachusetts is as liberal as George Bush claims, they should embrace the Samantha statue.

So what is the mindset of the average American, anyway?

Okay, let's take a quick snapshot at average American society as on May of 2005.

Fox News Channels ratings are in free-fall. According to TV Newser on Media Bistro,  FNC's ratings have dropped in the last six months. During that period, viewership is less than half of what it had been and there are currently less than 500,000 people tuning in during prime time.

At the same time, a popular movie also being distributed, ironically, by Fox, has made about $160 million since it's release, less than a week ago, and is basically about a war being fought on false pretenses so that the elected head of the government can stay in power forever and control the senate and the judiciary.
It contains such quotes as:

"What if the democracy we thought we were serving no longer exists, and the Republic has become the very evil we have been fighting to destroy?"

"This is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause."

"We shall change into [an] empire for a safe and secure society."

I'm just saying...

With Rosalie Totsie and Barbarino... Under the boardwalk at Coney Island

So this week, I found myself facing news items that made me anxious, and the whole point of having access to a site like this is to let the catharsis flow, but somehow sitting down at the computer, lethargy beat catharsis, so it's Saturday and I'm uncleansed, so how about a little recap...

Thing one - Thor Equities, a mall developer, has been buying up property in Coney Island on and around W. 12th Street, including the go-kart stand, "dunk the creep" and the gyro guy - these aren't exactly landmarks on the level of the Wonder Wheel or even Gregory and Paul's. Plus, okay, that's probably the lamest clown-dunking stand outside of the Westchester County Fair. But, according to a Daily News report this week, one of the properties being wooed by Thor is Ruby's. I repeat: Ruby's. RUBY'S! The businesses whose leases have been taken over have been given to the end of this season to move out or relocate. Part of my love for Coney Island is for the fantasy of what it was and part of it is for what it is now. I don't care much for clean, family amusement parks. When I see films like Harold Lloyd's Speedy and see Coney Island, I see it big and bustling, but also bizarrely creepy even then - it's been the home to more than one fire, and for amusement people used to throw themselves on rotating floors to be scattered to the wind, and jump from big towers. It seems fun and dreamlike and frightening. And it still is - it's scalding in the summer, and some vendors are really rude and I pulled a stomach muscle on the flume and will never risk my life on a bet on whether or not the bolts holding together the Cyclone will hold up after 76 years. But it's perfect in it's inperfection and beautiful when it's lit up at night. It's cheesy, and has cheese fries. And pistachio soft serve which I swear exists nowhere else. And it's April and I'm feeling the call, and I know it's been open for weeks and I hate having not been there yet. But the point is this might be the summer before a South Street Seaport type environment slowly turns dirty and exquistite into clean and merely pretty. I want to see it thrive, just not by losing it's soul. But one thing I've learned is that there's no way to stop these things from happening so everyone reading who can - appreciate Coney Island the summer before whatever happens ends up happening.

Thing two - Debralee Scott died this week at 52 of what's being called unnamed natural causes. There's a great Jeneane Garafolo line about there being fewer eating disorders in the 70s when Welcome Back Kotter was popular, because when Hotsie Totsie was the model of feminine perfection, everyone could feel they had a shot. To which I'd add I found Debralee really cute when I was at that age. She looked like every girl I knew and they were all really cute, too. Ah, the golden age of the media when all the teenagers were played by people who were 25-plus. She was Mary Hartman's teenage sister, Angie's (aka Donna Pescow's) teenage sister, and Rosalie Totsie who had to con the Sweathogs into thinking she was pregnant in order to scam them into having to admit none of them ever slept with her (causing Horshack to propose out of Horshackian chivalry)... and yet this all spanned about ten years and she was over 20 the whole time. And very real. Sadly enough, she had been engaged to a Port Authority cop who had died on 9/11/2001. And now she's gone - the opposite of Hillary Duff - taken too young like the rest of what was saner about the past. Rest in peace, Hotsy Totsie. Well see you on all the Match Game reruns.

Jennifer Melfi, MD chooses Zoloft

"Even then I thought, 'What? My life is on the upswing!' I thought I'd exercise and yoga my way out of this -- I was going to beat it," she said. "But of course, we know now that that's impossible. Depression gets a hold on you, and the longer you wait, the harder it is to get out."

That type of denial and procrastination is typical of many depressed individuals, said psychiatrist Dr. Patrice Harris, who is working with Bracco and drugmaker Pfizer Inc. on a campaign and Web site (DepressionHelp.com) that urges people to spot depressive symptoms early and seek out care.

Lorraine Bracco struggles with depression.

Alt retirement communities

thought this sounded interesting...now you know the men use viagra responibily!

Message

Hi All -
 
I sent this out a while back, but thought it was worth a reminder:
 
SUNSET STORY
Broadcast premiere Tuesday, March 22 at 10 p.m. on PBS (60 minutes)
SUNSET HALL
A Short History
Sunset Hall was incorporated on April 23, 1923 by a group of women from the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles.  An eleven year quest for funding followed in order to "set up house."  By early 1934, assets stood at $10,3345.  How did they do it?  Through card parties, dinners at the First Church, written appeals to every women's alliance west of Chicago, $10 annual membership fees, bequests and prudent investment.  As money was collected, discussion was begun regarding where the retirement home would actually be located.
About the Film
SUNSET STORY is a funny and intimate documentary drama that will make you think differently about growing old. Set against the backdrop of a retirement home for political progressives, the film goes inside the world of two women, Irja (81) and Lucille (95), whose feisty engagement with life draws them together inextricably.
Deep in the heart of central Los Angeles, in a neighborhood bustling with immigrant Latino and Korean families, lies a fascinating anomaly. A "retirement home for free-thinking elderly," founded in 1923, Sunset Hall integrates aging with progressive activism, giving residents the opportunity to engage daily with causes they hold dear. The library, overflowing with books and adorned with a bust of Lenin and a portrait of Paul Robeson, is the site of many a heated debate. Bingo, dismissed by one resident as "a ridiculous game," is categorically rejected.
Yet, as their bodies and minds deteriorate, the 25 Sunset Hall residents, aged 65 to 101, struggle to participate in these lively activities. In the midst of a lecture, discussion or meal, many will doze or stare off into space; others will insert non-sequiturs or belligerent remarks; still others remain in the common living room, glued to the television.