God Shed His Grace on Thee

I love the way Miss Teen South Carolina cleverly satirizes the dire state of American education by acting like an airhead on TV. She demonstrates her answer to the question in the very way she is answering it. Brilliant.

Please watch:

I saw comments on YouTube that defended her, saying she must be under a lot of pressure, and that it is a contest of beauty and not brains. Sorry, kids, but it doesn't take a whole lot of brains to answer a simple question in Standard English — unless you are part of the problem the question is referring to. I think she should have stopped at "some people don't have maps." At least that made sense and was true.

Madonna Gets It Right

Madonna is not much use to us as an actress in feature-length films, with some exceptions, but in short films, like this H&M commercial, she really shines as a comic performer. I don't watch enough TV to see commercials, so I completely missed this one.

Glass of Water for Mr Grainger!

Rest in peace, John Inman. Now you're free.

From Sí to Shining Sí

	Ugly? Not really. Fun? You bet your ass. [abc.go.com]

I can't put it any more simply: I love Ugly Betty. Congratulations to América Ferrera for winning the best actress Golden Globe for a TV show comedy!

Forget all the feel-good nonsense about ugly vs. pretty and our culture's insistent, insidious focus on glamour over substance. I mean, sure, give Jason Mraz a gold star for his earnest, cutsie ditty about "beauty in ugly." He really gets it, right? Right. Of course, all that stuff is true. And obvious. Get her some lighter eyewear, lose the braces and cut that hair back, and she's not really ugly. It's marketing. It collapses on itself. And the conceit is so manufactured, I take it for granted. So leave it for the American Studies majors to digest in their pop culture theses.

What's the really important impact of this show? It's fun. And it's about bloody time someone besides Marc Cherry is doing something to save TV from itself.

There's a mystery woman in a veil obscured in darkness, marital infidelity, flashbacks to a fiery death, shadiness at the top of a publishing corporation, interoffice romance and intrigue, a plot to undermine a reluctant hero ... and all kinds of standouts making the cliché not only bearable — but brilliant.

Vanessa Williams is at the best I've seen her. I loathed her "Save the Best for Last" days. But now, her high-camp evil set to medium-low burn is almost enough to make Glenn Close curse her own career as cheap and worthless. (Almost. No one can touch Glenn Close.) Eric Mabius: just plain yummy as a player with a heart of gold. A little rough around the edges, I think — but I hope I look half as good with crow's feet (which, the way things are going, can't be more than a couple more years off). We love cutie Michael Urie, whose Marc St. James is so gay it hurts. And welcome to America, Ashley Jensen! (She plays the so-Scottish-I-can-barely-understand-her-despite-years-of-watching-Eastenders seamstress and Betty confidante, and you should see her as the hapless Maggie in the HBO/BBC series Extras.)

And THANK GOD for the return of Judith Light! What a triumph! Good-bye, "Who's the Boss" — hello, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"! Her resurrection of the lanky, wise-cracking, self-absorbed, argumentative, alcoholic blonde archetype warms my superficial gay heart. She is Patsy Stone with Long Island Lockjaw.

Plus, Betty lives in a sound-stage replica of my neighborhood. Always a good sign.

La Linea

	Metta il resto della linea qui! [TV5.org]

Who remembers this guy?

If anyone is looking for a highly effective and entertaining way to waste some time (apart from reading this), I recommend checking out a series of cartoon shorts called La Linea. I guess there were about 100 of them made by an Italian cartoonist named Osvaldo Cavandoli in the early '70s. In each episode, he draws a single white line, of which the ill-tempered main character is a part, and he presents him with various sadistic obstacles and the objects he uses to overcome them. And it's all in jibberish, so there's no need for translation.

When I was little, I'd see one of these little clips every day on an embarrassingly memorable kids' morning show called The Great Space Coaster. These things still crack me up. I could watch them all over and over. I love the très européan hand gestures and the simple expressions of emotion, especially when he turns to cuss out the cartoonist.

One can find them on the French TV5 Web site or, naturally, on YouTube, where there's even a naughty sex-themed episode available. (I didn't see this one as a kid!)

Here's a good one:

Christmas Toys

Someone in my building got a new TV for Christmas. And by the sound of it, it's a nice one. I can tell because horrifying sounds of death, horror and destruction sound like they are coming at me simultaneously from below and above and behind me. I bet the DVD is new, too. It's very generous for my neighbors to share their gift with all of us in this way. Johnny Mathis and Andy Williams and Barbra Streisand are having a devil of a time competing.

Nothing Like Rudolph

	A Cylon centurion, c. 1978, from the original Battlestar Galactica series

When I was a kid, I had recurring dreams that the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica were after me. We'd see them approaching down the street, and my mom would wrap me in an afghan and hide me behind the couch. She'd politely let them in when they knocked at the door (yes, they knocked), and I'd hear them clunking through the house, searching for me. I was sure they'd capture me and kill me or make me into a human slave. No matter what their plans might have been, the worst part was he thought of them taking me away from my house.

After a few minutes of coming dangerously close (but not close enough!), they'd always give up and leave, promising that they would come back again some other time. I'd pop up from behind the couch, pull the blanket off myself, breathe a heavy sigh, wipe my sweaty forehead, and give my mom a big hug.

Last night, in a bizarre throwback to my childhood, I had a dream that a reindeer was trying to get me. I was my present age. It was winter. I was at my grandma's house in suburban Detroit, where reindeer usually glow with electric persistence, are made of plastic and stand in people's front yards from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.

Looking out the kitchen window, I saw a reindeer trudging across the lawn to the front door. I couldn't tell if he was friendly or not, but he was sort of mangey and dirty, and it looked like his antlers had been sawed off.

A far friendlier-looking reindeer than the one in my dream.

As he approached the door, I opened it to meet him. He looked menacingly at me and demanded, "Let me in."

"No," I said, startled not so much by the reindeer's ability to speak as by his foul mood. "What do you want?"

"Let me in!"

I slammed the door and snapped it locked. He scratched half-heartedly at the storm door and loped away.

It occurred to me that he might try the side door and come in through the kitchen. My heart was racing. What could he want? What would he do if he got inside? I ran to the garage and got to the door just as the reindeer was charging toward me. I locked the door and leaned against it for reinforcement. He stoped short of ramming the door and put his eye up to the window. He was clearly very angry. I wondered if he had some sort of disease. And what did he want with me anyway?

"Open the door!" he demanded. "Let me in!" His breath fogged over the glass.

"No!" I shouted and ran back into the house, hoping he'd get bored and just leave me alone.

Norway, José

KARE 11, a TV station in the Twin Cities, has issued an ad campaign in — what else? — Norwegian. At the end, he even says, "Ya, you betcha." They're promoting their new weatherman. And let me tell you, weather(man) or not — this kid is a little hunk of cute.

With a name like Sven Sundgaard, he sounds like he owns a coffee shop in Lake Wobegon. What choice is there? It begs for a little Scandinavian navel-gazing.

I Love Project Runway. I Hate Project Runway.

I once counted myself as one of the proud few who did not fall for mind-numbing reality TV crap. American Idol — Love Kelly Clarkson. What red-blooded American homosexual man doesn't? But Who Wants to be a Superhero? If this is the evolution being televised, please spare me.

However...

The clouds part and a fiery chariot descents to earth to bring us ... Project Runway.

I. Love. Project Runway. As far this particular reality show goes, I have dismounted my high horse. It takes a subject that makes no sense to me whatsoever — fashion — and makes into a backdrop for some really good human drama. These people live together. They are made to run around like chimpanzees trying to work out how to reach the bananas.

I simultaneously love and hate the contrivances and twists that are engineered to create drama for those poor contestants. The third season may be the best so far, but I'm worried about Seasons 5 and 6 and 7. Already they've been made to design for each others' mothers and sisters (with the result that one was reduced to tears). They've designed for dogs. They've used recyclable trash as fabric. What will they make those designers do in a few years? Create underwear for each other? Design dresses for the male contestants to model? Use human waste as dyes and pigments?

Tonight, in a move both brilliant and cynical, they brought back two of the designers who had previously been removed. I nearly shit myself when I saw Vincent again. I hate Vincent. (No, Eric... You hate how Vincent behaves.) I guess it makes sense: They have some talent; maybe it was bum luck that got them removed. And they got booted off anyway, along with the pageant queen Kayne, much to my dismay.

I am now Project Runway's bitch. Yeah, daddy. Do it.

Finally! Something Decent on Television

LONDON (Reuters) — Up to 200 strip poker players will compete Saturday to see who will lose their shirts — and more — and who will scoop 10,000 pounds by retaining their clothes and modesty.

All around the nation. We're the new sensation.

A good friend recently reminded me of a minor source of embarrassment for me. He posted a clip to my MySpace profile from a kids' show from the '80s (and, I was surprised to learn, '90s) called Kids Incorporated.

It's a rendition of "Over and Over" by Madonna. As it's her birthday, I thought appropriate to re-post it here:



As I recall, every episode of that show was book-ended with musical numbers. How much you want to bet that "Over and Over" was the last scene of this particular one, and the girl singing it (Renee, I now know, following some Google research) had had some sort of crisis earlier in the show where she felt like a failure but her friends convinced her to keep trying until she succeeded? Those closing numbers were always thematically relevant and oh-so cathartic.

Some quick Googling reveals that the clip is from Season 2, episode 5: "The Big Lie," in which, according to www.kidsincorporated.us (turn down the volume before clicking!) "Renee's rumor about Riley blows up into a big lie."

Riley was the soda jerk, I am ashamed to remember, at the place where the little supa-stars performed. In fact, the place was called The Place, because the first A in "Palace" had burned out on the marquee. (Oh, no. It's all coming back to me.)

So, not exactly as I thought, but evidently poor Renee had to talk herself out of the doldrums with an obscure Madonna B-side following her brush with Sunday afternoon immorality.

I'm embarrassed to remember how many episodes of that show I watched as a kid. Every Sunday. I'd stand my friends up in order to sit in front of the tube with this silly tripe. Even then I was kind of annoyed by the awful, watered-down, cleaned-up shadows of pop songs I actually liked. But it was infectious. And the show did give us Martika, so who can complain, right?

Incidentally, that show also gave us:
• Eric Balfour (Six Feet Under)
• Stacy Ferguson (Black Eyed Peas)
• Jennifer Love Hewitt (Party of Five)
• Mario López (Saved by the Bell)
• Scott Wolf (Party of Five)

	Teenage dreamboat Ryan Lambert. The chicks on either side of him formed a girl group in the '90s called Wild Orchid. The one on the right is the hot blonde from Black Eyed Peas [Kids Inc Photo Home Page]

I had such a crush on the dark-haired white kid, Ryan. He was so cool, with his spiked hair and turned-up collar. I wanted to BE him. He was also in The Monster Squad, in which he was also heart-stoppingly cool. Remember him? I guess he's the lead singer of a San Francisco band now called elephone. They just put out an album this summer. He's not nearly as cute as he used to be.

The episodes where he sang were always my favorite. Back then I guess I thought it was envy. In retrospect, I can see it was young puppy-lust. Good lord. I was 9, 10, 11 and 12 during the years he was on that show. How did it take me so long to come out of the closet?