Real TV for Women

Last night I watched the Oh! Network for the first time- and totally by accident. It was late. It was early morning hours of Halloween and I wanted to watch a decent non coed-slasher scary movie. After flipping through the dials and having my low brow senses assaulted by “entertainment” such as Dracula 3000 and Halloween XX I was delighted to see that the second installment of the Resident Evil Franchise was on. What real woman doesn’t love an ass kicking female protagonist? Generally I despise supermodels, or even minor models, turned actress but I can handle Milla J because she doesn’t try to tackle dialogue. She basically runs, jumps and delivers quick successions of blows to her CG opponents. The story aspect of the film is kept to a minimum. After watching for a few minutes a bubbly pink logo appeared at the bottom of the screen; I was watching the Oxygen network and didn’t even realize it.

I had always avoided Oh! figuring that since its only real competition was the Lifetime (TV for battered white women) Network the programming would be similar. Au contraire. During the commercial break in addition to scores of weight loss, yeast infection, lotion and birth control ads they ran a series of vignettes featuring local female comics explaining what do say and how to react to a bad kisser. They were quite funny and very realistic. I actually paid attention instead of muting the TV like I usually do. After the movie ended at 3am I was still unable to sleep so I lingered in front of the set to see what was on next. The next show began as normal, a nice looking young woman came on to a generic low budget talk show set. I assumed it was some kind of infomercial or a feed from HSN. My interest waned and I began to tidy up the room. It was way past my bedtime. I picked up some empty plates and glasses and took them to the kitchen. When I returned to finish cleaning off the coffee table I noticed that another young woman had come on the set and she was talking to the host about feeling les than comfortable buying certain items. Then a web address appeared at the bottom of the screen- www.shoperotic.com.

Well, well, well. The two women proceeded to pull out and candidly discuss the purchase and usage of various vibes, dongs, double dongs and strap-ons as if it were a Martha Stewart show on cake decorating. They knew their stuff. They even had a phone number for women to call if they wanted to speak only to female phone representatives and the host made frequent assurances about the discretion of item delivery. The prices were good, the merchandise top of the line (so I’ve heard…), the whole outfit was very impressive. Now, that’s TV for women.

I Heart Candy Corn

For me Halloween is not about SamHain and the thinning of the veils between our world and the spirit world. It is not about parading around in a fishnetted sexy costume version of a typically female profession, woodland creature or comic book character. Its about Brach's candy corn . (Brach's makes the only acceptable brand. Please don't waste my time with the cellophane bagged no name variety with the stapled paper on top. )
I love seasonal candies - candy corn, peeps and the weird chewy holiday candy with the Xmas tree in the middle. I like the idea that their availability is limited and that they come in small quantities.
Having been on vacation for the better part of October, I had totally forgotten that Halloween was approaching. It took me a few minutes last Saturday to figure out that the skanky looking women on the subway car we in fact in costume and not working. In any case at 8:45 tonight all of a sudden I got a craving for candy corn. I made an announcement about it and my husband, G agreed to accompany me on a trek around Riverdale in search of the tri-colored triangular treat. We didn't have to go far; in this town with the current demographic drugstores are plentiful. There were a few bags left and they were only 99 cents. I remember them being much more expensive perhaps Brach's has fallen on hard times.

Ansible Online

An ansible is a hypothetical machine, capable of superluminal communication, and used as a plot device in science fiction literature. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible

I am a creature of habit and extremely risk averse in every aspect of life including my choice in reading material. Event the causal reader of this blog knows that I read the WSJ everyday- even their crappy weekend edition- and that I eschew the reading of fiction. I especially do not enjoy science fiction, so I was surprised that Orson Scott Card’s Speaker of the Dead was able to consume more than a few of my at-the-beach honeymoon days. Speaker is the second part of a trilogy involving a central character trying to reverse the effects of a xenocide (that’s right Xen) that he unwittingly committed as a child. In any case, it is years in the future and the human races has spread like locusts to approximately one hundred worlds in our universe and is one of only three known sentient species. While the human race in the book has managed to master space travel they have yet to discovered how to travel faster than the speed of light AKA time travel. And thank goodness because that is where I draw the line. The are two things I cannot work with in a Sci-fi piece, one is time travel and the other is robots with human emotions. I can take anything grossly oversized, aliens of all sorts, smart viruses, computers gone haywire and hell bent on human destruction, changelings, multiple comets heading towards earth, evil drows, Cheney… whatever nasty fantastical thing might appear on a sci-fi tv original or be in a sci-fi book club collection. I can take it, but something about time travel and moody robots just turns me off.

The idea of an ansible however interests me greatly. It sounds like a kind of smart internet that uses space particles instead of fiber optic wiring to instantaneously transfer information between terminals that may be decades of light years away. And it never breaks down.

In the novel, a colony of possibly renegade possible revolutionary earthlings is considering (I am in the third book , Xenocide, and still don't know the outcome) severing communication with the rest of the colonized worlds, including the motherland, by disconnecting from the ansible. One figure remarks that without that connection they would be utterly alone. At that moment I thought – So what. They are already a whole world surely they could make a go of it. They wouldn’t really be alone. Puny humans.

I thought of this heartfelt response again while I was scrambling around on the floor cursing my half an hour loss of internet connection. Literally, I felt I couldn’t get anything accomplished without it.

Puny human.

11/26 @ New World Stages TONY LOUNGE

Thanks Vicki!

Laugh Out Loud @ 10pm
Time Out New York Lounge @ New World Stages
340 West 50th, (between 8th and 9th)
Saturday, October 27th

Starring:

Jacquetta Szathmari from Comix!
Shawn Hollenbach and Jenny Rubin from MAX Show!
Blanca Dominguez from Don't Tell Mamas!
Helen Hong from E! Entertainment!
Stephanie Sine from the Duplex!
and musical guest Wendy Ho!
Hosted by Vicki Ferentinos

Not Mold but Mildew

Whenever something “goes wrong” for me in New York I have to remind myself that I did not move here because this is a good place to live but because it has enough people with expendable income to pay me to tell jokes.

Last Tuesday I returned from a 3 week honeymoon/vacation in the Carribean. Weeks before I left I was already dreading the return. I was going to places that were sunny clean and compared to NYC stress free. I would be eating food that was fresh and delicious instead of pretentious, concept and PR driven - food that did not need to be accompanied by a celebrity sighting or an article by someone with dubious kitchen experience but with an axe to grind against anyone who dared to open a restaurant. For 21 plus days I would be spared the gory details of the celebutante set and would not have to take spotty dignity-usurping public transportation or see dirty starving “artists” or see the word tastemaker. When it rained I would not have to worry that the next puddle I stepped in might be a dangerous mix of city waste and DNA. I was unlikely to encounter the basic “why do I have to have this shitty job” aggression and petty hipster faux underclass angst that is sadly a part of New York life. I knew that even after just a fortnight I would be spoiled making my return to Gotham seem like a prison sentence the moment I set foot in that excuse of a transport hub called JFK.

I spent a great part of my last week away trying to think happy thoughts about the city. Still high on The Four Hour Work Week, given to me by the one person I know who has a chance to implement its strategies, I mentally made lists of how I would simplify my life when I got back in order to achieve my goals of being a fulltime entertainer and a achieve world domination or at least a fat market share. If I just kept that in mind I would be fine I thought. Stay positive, visualize… all that quasi/pseudo psych crap.

Then I smelled the mold. Actually the managing agent told me it was mildew as mold doesn’t smell. Phew! Well now I feel better.

Sometime while G and I were sunning ourselves on one of the Riviera Maya’s most self conscious beaches amidst the preening blue eyed light skinned Mexican nouveau riche (I’m guessing they were not the descendants of the Maya who culture is so aggressively used for marketing purposes but those of the conquistadors whom they pretend to vilify) pools of water were making their way from an overflowing tub a floor above us through our ceiling and then to our floor in an attempt to reach the basement. Welcome home.

The roaches love it!

This is not the first time this has happened to me in New York, but this I own the mildewed damp and rotting apartment. And it is also the first time that the apartment is my place of work.

If only it would stop raining.

The honeymoon endeth

... and now back to comedy.

Hola

las vegas sumo, having just gotten hitched, is on hiatus in Jamaica and Mexico and will return on October 25 with a full account.
Adios!