The DVR Files

Not to brag or anything, but I consider myself an excellent Googler. When I combine my insatiable knowledge of useless information with the mighty search engine, ANYTHING can happen.

Except, of course, when it doesn’t. You, see today I really wanted to write about one of my all time favorite scenes from a tv show. Which one is it, you ask? When Kimberly pulls off her wig on Melrose Place?

Nope, not that one.

When Rudy sang Ray Charles on The Cosby Show?

Closer . . . but not quite there.

Nope, my all time favorite moment in a television series is a long forgotten memory, buried deep in history by scandal, suicide, lip synching, and Jason Priestley. It is a scene so rare that it is not available on youtube, DVD, heck probably not even VHS unless you taped it yourself.

Still lost? I’m talking about the only scene that ever mattered, the musical moment more earth-shattering than when The Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show. I have to take a deep breath because this still makes me very emotional to this day, over 22 years after I first witnessed it on January 7, 1990. It was the day the music died, or, more aptly, stopped being sung. I am talking about the day my beloved Milli Vanilli appeared on the under appreciated and oft forgotten one season wonder tv show that we call Sister Kate, starring a pre-90210 Jason Priestley as an orphan and British actress Stephanie Beacham as a nun! On this episode, titled “Eugene’s Feat,” Milli Vanilli sang their huge hit “Blame it on the Rain.” A month later, they won a Grammy for Best New Artist. Nine months after that, we discovered that it WAS ALL A LIE. Milli Vanilli, aka The Brothers of Soul (according to their liner notes) were no more talented that your favorite drag queen lip synching Abba hits at your corner gay cabaret bar. I cried and cried and cried and while I did not blame it on the rain, I blamed it on the snow that covered my heart and made it a very dark and cold place.

I so badly wanted to revisit this scene when my first black crushes sang on one of my favorite shows (I was a very multicultural kid), but I could not find it ANYWHERE. Bummer. It’s like it’s been erased from our collective memory. But I will remember! I will not forget you, Milli Vanilli, not even you Rob Pilatus who died of a drug overdose back in 1998. Yes, I like to keep it upbeat!

But Fab and Rob, while it is a tragedy for me to see the dream is over, and has been since 1990, I never will forget the day we met, boy I’m gonna miss you.

Peace out!

Even though I am really young and beautiful, I am an old soul at heart. While I like hip shows such as Game of Thrones, Veep, The Killing, and Two and a Half Men (just want to see if you are paying attention!), I have a soft spot for anything made in the 1980s. Yes, Alf and Small Wonder, I am talking to you.

Wow, she looks like she is having fun. I thought robot little girls were supposed to be happy!

I am also talking about one of the greatest tv shows of all time that I unfortunately was never able to watch beyond the first commercial. Let’s play the pyramid so you can guess what I am talking about. JR . . . Shooting . . . Oil . . . Texas . . . blah blah blah. Yes, we are talking about Dallas. Dallas was my parents’ favorite show back in the day. It aired on Friday nights on CBS, alternating between 9 and 10pm over the years. As young children, my sister Katie and I were allowed to watch the opening credits and up to the first commercial. We felt so COOL. Of course we had no idea what was going on, but considering how strict our parents were this was the equivalent of watching a porno on the school bus on the way to CCD! My favorite moment of the ten minutes I was allowed to watch every week was the opening credits. Katie and I would cheer on the good guys (“Yeahhhhh!!!!) and jeer the bad guys (“Boooooo!!!!”). Sad thing is watching it now I can’t remember who was what, but I can tell you that Patrick Duffy was a fox!

Keep that shirt off and please never make a show about step families with that chick from Three’s Company.

I’m sure you’ve heard the news but in case you haven’t they’re remaking Dallas which will premiere on TNT on June 1. The good news is that Duffy and Larry Hagman are reprising their roles as brothers Bobby and J.R. Ewing, respectively, the bad news is that this show is happening, period. Bonus bad news is that Jesse Metcalfe will play Christopher Ewing, Bobby’s adopted son. His eyebrows are way too sculpted for me.

Oh, and yes, Bobby is still a bit of a fox. A silver fox, yes, but a fox just the same.

Don’t mind the salt and pepper that makes me a distinguished gentleman.

It’s a question for the ages. Whenever a new ensemble comedy premieres with a cast of four, it is inevitable that you will ask who is Dorothy, Rose, Sophia, and slutbag (and my idol!) Blanche Devereaux.

Thank you for being so iconic. And great shoulder pads Dorothy!

I started playing this game back in the day with The Facts Of Life. While Facts actually premiered in 1979, six years BEFORE the Golden Girls debuted in 1985, both were NBC sitcoms that I used to watch on Saturday nights in the mid to late 1980s. This show was easy to diagnose:

They just took the bad with these outfits and hairdos. Mrs. Garrett has better taste!

Blair=Blanche (vain, beautiful, popular)

Natalie=Rose (sweet, innocent, adorable. She also has the best line of any sitcom ever: “Who wants to be a skinny pencil? I’m happy being a magic marker!” I hate to say that but it’s way more captivating than any St. Olaf story.)

Jo=Dorothy (masculine, wore shoulder pads)

Tootie=Sophia (more by default than anything. Always keeping the black man down!)

You see where I’m going with this. And now that one of my favorite new shows has just concluded for the season, we’re going to play the same game. Yup, New Girl, it’s time for you to get the Golden Girls treatment.

Schmidt sees a tail he wants to chase! No Winston, not you.

Here we go:

Jessica Day: Rose, duh.

Nick: This was a tough one. He’s cynical and a lost soul (oh how I can relate!) and confused about love. While I adore everyone on the show, I actually find him the most real. And that’s why I gotta go with Dorothy for him. Caroline is his Stan, but less charming.

Schmidt: This is another easy one. And you know Schmidt himself would agree . . . yes, he is the Jewish Blanche Devereaux of the group. Romancing Cece and her roommate at the same time, always talking about his insatiable need to satisfy his private parts . . . that’s straight out of the book Blanche wrote.

Winston: Ugh, again by default, he’s gotta be Sophia. I feel like such a racist. I would even say he’s more like Miles Webber, but that’s not how we play the game.

Luckily for us, New Girl has been renewed for a second season, so we will have the opportunity to cast Barbara Thorndyke, Big Daddy, Uncle Lucas, Clayton Hollingsworth, Laszlo, Jean the lesbian, and more in future episodes!

Even though the season is over, this is not the last you’ll hear from me on New Girl, by the way . . . .

Hello all-

Yesterday morning I made my television debut (of sorts) on Good Morning America where they were trying to set the Guinness record for the most makeovers in a 24 hour period. Now, as you know I am REALLY beautiful so they didn’t have to spend a lot of time on me, just about 3 hours. Kidding! More like 10 minutes.

While I was actually made over on Tuesday morning, my friend Nicki texted me yesterday, which was Wednesday: “Did I see your makeover on good morning america this morning???”

I replied: “Probably!”

To which she responded: “I thought I saw your before and after!”

Oh, snap! I was excited! As a huge fan of television, here was my big break! I had DVRed GMA that morning, so the minute I got home from work I fast-forwarded till I could find my beautiful mug.

She’s a beaut!

Truth be told, I prefer the picture my friend Amy took of me later that day. I’m not an egomaniac or anything.

I feel like a bit of a trader that I’m not wearing my signature glasses, but what are you going to do. This could make a good online dating photo, hehe.

Confession: people in my family LOVE true crime shows. And by people in my family I mean my brother Andrew. He watches them all: Snapped, Dateline, The First 48, I Survived . . . you name it, his sick mind enjoys it.

The thing is, his taste (if you can call it that) has rubbed off on me. I record 48 Hours Mystery on my DVR, but my rule is that I will never watch them at night, only on weekends when it is sunny outside. But last night I just had a craving to watch devious people do really bad things, so I watched the 48 Hours Mystery from 4/28 about Jeffrey Locker, a white motivational speaker from an upscale town in Long Island who drove into Harlem and allegedly paid a black man to stab him to death. Ouch is right.

I had followed this case in the New York Post since Locker was found dead in his car in July 2009. At first it looked like a robbery gone wrong, and then as details unfolded it was evident that Locker was on a suicide mission.

I’m no crime reporter so I’m not going to write out the deets of the case. Plus I don’t want to get another nightmare! My point is, I had to watch my beloved Golden Girls before I went to bed. I chose to view the episode where Blanche is dating a really rich man who has two young kids while Rose and Dorothy try to install a toilet. Oh how I laughed! And then when I went to bed, visions of a geyser erupting from my toilet, Bellagio-fountain style, to the tune of “Time to Say Goodbye” by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman, danced in my head.

Murder is just way too uncool for bedtime.

Confession: I have not been a regular viewer of the The Simpsons in probably 20 years. Yes, it’s scary to think that I am that old, especially since my skin looks so dewy soft and I still have to call my mom for laundry advice when I get grease stains on my t-shirts. But this blog is about tv not how Liz looks so young and beautiful yet sloppy because she has stains on her shirt, so let’s move on.

Last fall I decided to reinstate The Simpsons into my DVR rotation just to see if it was still good. I usually ended up erasing episodes without watching them because there are only so many hours in the day and a girl has to watch her Ho’wives. But this weekend I was perusing through my DVR and a Simpsons episode caught my eye: “A Totally Fun Thing Bart Will Never Do Again” which aired on 4/29. Because I am a really erudite person, I knew INSTANTLY, without even reading the description, that this mean that the Simpson family was going on a cruise. And how did I know this very erudite fact? Well, in addition to being a connoisseur of useless knowledge, I am also a big reader. Not to brag or anything, but I read between 52 and 60 books a year. Not to brag. Anyway, one of my favorite authors to bitch about is the late David Foster Wallace, who wrote the trillion page opus Infinite Jest which is partly set in Boston and mentions the famed Ellis the Rim Man sign on Comm Ave in Allston (which sadly is no longer there).

This sign always made my dad giggle when he’d visit me when I lived in Boston.

Anyway, Wallace also wrote this book of essays called A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again about, you got it, going on a cruise! I have a love/hate relationship with David Foster Wallace, mostly hate because his books are so goddamn long, but I will read pretty much anything he has written because he infuriates me so. And plus he committed suicide in 2008 so there is a weird sad voyeuristic thing going on when I read him. Doesn’t that make me sound like a crazy cold bitch!

Overall, The Simpsons episode was funny and it made me want to go on a cruise, as long as someone else paid for it, plus I like that the title made me feel smart and insidery. I like their literary allusions . . . perhaps since the economy is still bad they will make an episode inspired by Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath! Oh wait . . . .

Okay, I should probably NOT write really vague headlines that only I will understand. But today I did some major catching up with my good friend the DVR and that included watching the two episodes of the awesome new political comedy Veep on HBO. Veep is excellent, and I’m not even a political junkie. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as Selina Meyer, the fictional vice president of the United States of America. At 51, Jules looks better than ever. It’s interesting because she always looked way older than she was back when her career was starting. Who could forget her in Day by Day, everyone’s favorite show about daycare (and I’m serious, it was awesome!). Bitch was only 27 when she was cast on that show, but she looked 42! Here, let’s compare her then and now to see how she has improved:

THEN: That’s Julia on the right. She couldn’t even get her own photo in the Day by Day years!

Now: Present day Julia can’t believe it took her so long to cut her hair!

You could say maybe she got her good taste by becoming a gazillionare from Seinfeld, but Julia actually comes from a super rich family. There is hope for all of us!

I’ve gotten distracted and now need to focus. Back to bees. Okay, so Veep also stars the lead actress from my all-time favorite movie (well, when I was 12 anyway). Yes, we’re talking about Anna Chlumsky, aka Vada Sultenfuss from My Girl. Oh, how I loved that movie. It’s the one where Macauley Culkin got stung to death by bees. I cried and cried and cried, which was sort of my thing when I was a preteen. Also, their adorable smooch (pre-Macauley dying) won Best Kiss at the first ever MTV Movie Awards in 1992, and I didn’t even have to look that up on wikipedia, I just remembered it in my brain, because I used to watch the MTV Awards over and over on VHS because Edward Furlong won “Best Breakthrough Performance” and I loved him so much. How’s that for a run on sentence? And I majored in English. Oopsy daisy!

Anyway–it’s great to see Anna back onscreen. She’s as beautiful as ever–really more beautiful because she was going through puberty last time I saw her. And we’re in luck (unlike the ill-fated tv show Luck!) . . . Veep has already been renewed for a second season.

Let’s just hope the bees stay away!

Because my bitch Camille is going to be back on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills!

It is so nice to know that while her ex (who shall not be named) is starring in the critically acclaimed Boss on Starz (ha!), home girl is appearing on the much more respected genre we call “reality television” on the very erudite network Bravo.

Now, of only we can get Lisa Wu Hartwell back on the Real Ho’Wives of Atlanta. She’s such an accomplished business woman after all, and she’s going through a messy divorce so she could probably use the work. Fingers crossed!

Confession: I once ruined a child’s belief in Santa Claus. Not on purpose, mind you, but I was in high school and my friend’s mom was picking us up from track practice. Her little sister, a fifth grader, sat in the front seat. My friend said, “I want a North Andover corduroy jacket for Christmas.” Lil sister replies, “Don’t worry, Santa is getting it for you!” I burst out laughing because I thought she was kidding. But no . . . she really believed in Santa! She looked at me with tears in her eyes. “You mean there’s no Santa???” I kept on laughing.  

My point is it was a terrible thing what I did, even though it was unintentional. But you know what is even more unforgivable??? Reality competition show spoilers on Facebook. Those people have no souls.

RuPaul is pissed you spoiled her show too!

You know the type. The person who actually has TIME to watch shows live. Their lives are so organized that they don’t even have to DVR anything. And then the second that the finale of Project Runway is over, they’re all, “Can’t Believe Gretchen Won! Booooo!” And I’m all, Boo is right, because we are done as friends.

Facebook tv show spoilers are unconscionable human beings. Just tonight a FB friend of mine who I barely even know congratulated the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race. As in, he revealed the winner! Granted, I’m two weeks behind, so I would have been okay with a spoiler from last week’s episode. But tonight’s finale? This person is dead to me.

Consider this a PSA: if you link your Twitter account to Facebook, do NOT tweet who won a show. Otherwise I will have to tell you there is no Easter Bunny.

I’m grumpy.

Let’s be honest, I don’t really want to be murdered ANYWHERE. But, if my life is going to be cut short, I’d prefer it to be in a city like, let’s say New York, because there I would make the cover of the Post and they would be all, “The unconventional brainy beauty liked to jog and eat cupcakes till she was killed in cold blood.”* They would probably solve my murder and even if they didn’t it would end up haunting an NYPD detective for years and then 10 or 20 years down the line he would write a book about it. At the very least I would become the subject of a Law & Order episode.

Do not use this photo if I die prematurely.

But if I got murdered in Seattle, well, forget about it. Look what’s happened to poor Rosie Larsen on The Killing! I’ve watched every episode of this show since it debuted last year. The first season was excellent, edgy, and suspenseful . . . until the very last episode when Holden did something that compromised the case (though I couldn’t tell you WHAT he did because I am slow), mayor candidate Darren Richmond got shot, and Linden chewed gum. And the second season began much the same way. Linden continues not to smile and be a humorless shrew, Holden looks like a teenage skateboarder and Rosie’s killer is still at large. Granted, we’re only on Day 18 of the case (I’m one episode behind, eek!) but can you IMAGINE if your daughter was murdered and meth-head Holden and frowning Linden showed up at your door???

Less effective than the Keystone Cops!

Seattle is a major city, in fact it’s the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country (thank you wikipedia!). There is no way those two are the best the city has to offer. I mean, Rosie is a white girl from a nice part of town! Everyone wants to save the white girls! And–her dad was once a small-time Polish gangster. At the very least his old cronies would straighten out the situation. Instead, we get cops who make Chief Wiggum look like Sherlock Holmes.

I’m going to stick with The Killing for now, but I think this is the worst PR stunt in Seattle’s history. Maybe we can send Steven Seagal: Lawman to infiltrate the Seattle PD? A girl can hope.

*Everyone under 40 is considered a beauty in the Post, whether you be a prostitute (“faded beauty”), a lesbian (“athletic beauty” or “sapphic beauty”), or overweight (“big bold beauty”). I wear glasses and my teeth are a bit overcrowded so hence the “unconventional brainy” tag.