The Odd Broad

Can you hand me the remote?

I'm not sure about you, but there are some things I simply find more enjoyable when I'm a captive audience.  Certain television programs or movies just seem better if I'm riding on a Greyhound bus, for example, or an airplane.  I'm usually intoxicated when I take a flight, of course, so I'm not really a tough crowd.  Taken out of context, however, I may not have loved The Notebook as much as I did, or J-Lo and Jane Fonda in Monster in Law, or Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?  But after three miniature bottles of airplane chardonnay?  I'm laughing.  Or crying, depending.  Tyler Perry can get pretty intense.

It's sort of the same situation when I'm awake in the middle of the night nursing my baby.  Sometimes I'll turn on the television and will become quite engrossed in a program I may not ordinarily watch, like Who's the Boss?  or Cheers, or I Love Lucy...

A word about the latter.  I've somehow gone my entire life without ever really watching I love Lucy, but these days it's sort of become part of my early morning routine.  It's a cute show, a classic, but my God, the lies and deceit that take place in the Ricardo household!  Every episode is just another vehicle for Ricky and Lucy to play some twisted joke on one another.

Sometimes the hijinx gets to be too much and I have to turn the channel.  Like last week when Lucy decided to redecorate the Mertze's living room.  The walls were covered in wet paint and Fred went to get a fan to help them dry.  This was Lucy's cue to rip into the easy chair and start pulling out the stuffing.  (She also planned on upholstering their furniture, naturally.)  Down feather stuffing, a fan, wet paint...

You see where this is going.  It was just too stressful!  I also had to turn it when Lucy and Ethel started wallpapering the bedroom walls after Lucy sold all of her furniture to a second hand salesman for $75.  She thought she'd won a contest that furnished her entire home, but in reality Ricky and Fred had just pretended she'd won.  (The guys wanted to go see the new Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, you see, and Lucy was insisting on sitting by the phone all night to see if she'd won the contest.)  The deceit! 

The other day Ricky got mad at Lucy for leaving her wedding band lying around, and he put it into his pocket to teach the little lady a lesson.  Of course, when Lucy discovers it's missing she realizes it probably fell into the brick barbecue they'd constructed that afternoon, and she and Ethel spend the entire night taking it apart brick by brick...

Now Ricky, did you really have to act like such an asshole?  And Lucy, why not just tell Ricky the truth, huh?  Won't he find out in the morning when he sees the reconstructed grill anyways?  I mean, you and Ethel weren't even trying to lay those bricks back properly!  And, while we're on the subject, if you had only confessed to Ricky that you'd purchased all those sides of beef, you probably wouldn't have gotten yourself locked in that oversized freezer in the basement!  I'm just saying...

Yes, I'm awake in the middle of the night analyzing the dynamic between Lucy and Ricky Ricardo.  I'm not proud of it.  I've also started watching The View.  I'm not sure what this says about me, but those ladies do cover a wide range of topics.  Plus, I think the baby likes Whoopie. 

I also have to say that the latest Masterpiece Classic, Downton Abbey, is ridiculously juicy and entertaining.  Have you been watching, Dear Reader?  I can't look away.  Set your DVR!

High on Charlie Sheen

Ordinarily I don't condone watching excessive amounts of trash television, but I'm pretty sleep deprived these days and my will is weak.  I suspect this to be the reason I can't seem to stop following the media circus surrounding Charlie Sheen.  I don't even watch Two and a Half Men, but Charlie's recent behavior has been such a perfect storm of terrific awfulness that I can't look away.  I liken it to that fascinating Michael Jackson interview with Martin Bashir from 2003.  (Which, by the way, I also couldn't stop watching.  So outrageously cringe-worthy.)

As for Sheen's interview on 20/20, I watched it alone, and again the next day with Sissy, and then by some miraculous turn of events somehow persuaded Hubby to watch it with me that evening.  Initially he was very resistant; among many other reasons, he felt it was "sad," but I told him it would be worth it.  Yes, of course it was sad...if by sad you mean totally bitchin'.

As a godmother, I realize this is probably toxic programming to be exposing Lukey the Wonder Nephew to, but he was pretty preoccupied by his packet of Oreos (high fructose corn syrup and trash television...winning!), and besides, my sister already watches TMZ. 

As you may have heard me mention before, Lukey, 3, is already a bit of an intellectual.  He's been reading since the age of two.  I understand it's probably the kind of thing you have to witness to believe, but there you have it. 

He's also been on a techie kick lately and can identify and retain what kind of computer (computah) models his loved ones use. For example, Gateway, Dell, Vista, apple.  He comes out with odd little catchphrases, which he's picked up all on his own:

Control alt delete!
Done, but with errors on page!

Microsoft Help!

My father's computer is really old, and Luke will tell anyone who'll listen: Papa's computah is slow!  Papa needs Windows 7!  Papa needs Comcast!

Naturally, my opinion of Lukey has always been that the child is brilliant, if not a bit eccentric.  And yet, lately it seems he loves to snuggle with hot girls.  At family parties, he'll identify the most voluptuous female, usually a friend or girlfriend of a relative, and tell her, in his little baby voice, I want to snuggle with you.  This surprises us, because ordinarily he can be a little shy with strangers.  When it comes to snuggling with the ladies, the bustier the better.

He doesn't snuggle very much with auntie.

And I digress. Back to Charlie on 20/20.  As Sissy and I were watching the train wreck unfold, Denise Richards came onscreen and Luke suddenly exclaimed, "I want to snuggle dat gurl!"

Sissy and I looked at each other in horror. "What?  Luke David," my sister asked him, "What about mama?  Don't you wanna snuggle me?"

"No!  I wanna snuggle that gurl. She will love me!"

When Charlie's "goddesses" came onscreen shortly after, my nephew informed us he'd like to snuggle them both. "Lukey don't say that!  You don't wanna snuggle them!"

Oh, but he did.  He really did.  Especially the porn star.

Sissy had to leave the room for a second and I hit the pause button, and it stopped on a picture of Capri Anderson, the hooker Charlie allegedly choked in a New York City hotel room.  Somehow I knew exactly what was coming...

The Wonder Nephew wanted to snuggle dat hooka.

No!

He even wanted to snuggle the woman conducting the interview.  I'm pretty certain he was saying all this to get a rise out of us, but we still didn't like it.  This is what we get, I suppose, for forcing him to watch hookers and drug addicts rather than Calliou.

At any rate, that interview was just so deliciously entertaining.  I'd like to think Charlie is merely putting on an act for publicity's sake.  But something tells me he's not.  Oi vey.

Time for me to go have a lie down.  After all, I'm tired and I don't have tiger's blood running through my veins. 

The admission

Yes, this weekend I did watch Shannen Doherty grow a giant, prize-winning pumpkin in order to save her grandfather's farm in the Hallmark Channel's original movie, "Growing the Big One."

I couldn't help myself.  Please do not judge.

It also appears Vanilla Ice has his own show on the DIY network.  He flips houses in Palm Beach and seems to know an awful lot about landscaping and trees.  You go, Vanilla!  Good for you.

Sickie

I got a flu shot on Thursday and have been feeling wretched ever since.  More musings soon!

In lieu of my old friend Nyquil, I'm surrounding myself with lots of tea, orange juice, tissues and consecutive episodes of Slings and Arrows. 

Okay, and maybe a little Alice.  In the last episode I watched, Linda Lavin licked her fingers while plating some eggs.  Total health code violation.  But in her defense, she was upset because the man she'd been dating, an old college buddy of Mel's, turned out to be gay.  (This was obviously a Very Special episode of Alice.  Will she still allow Tommy to go with him on the fishing trip?)

And on that note, it's back to bed for me. 

Sniffly yours,

The OB xoxo

Kiss my grits!

Hubby and I have been really into Netflicks lately.  (Well, on a Friday night I need something to distract me from the fact that I can no longer daintily imbibe three and a half glasses a nice, tall glass of Riesling.)

I won't lie, I always did casually wonder how pregnant women did it; how they went the whole forty weeks sans alcohol.  When my first trimester came along, I finally discovered the answer to this phenomenon: I already felt like I was hungover, so the mere thought of booze, the smell of it even, was enough to send me gagging!  But I'm not in the first trimester anymore.  In fact, I'm feeling pretty great.  Naturally, the intense love I feel for my little bambino makes abstaining from the drink a worthy cause.  But that doesn't mean I don't miss it every now and then.

In short, I'm a pregnant teetotaler and therefore find drunk people unbearable to be around.  And they're coming out of the woodwork here in South Boston.  I long to smack them upside the head, like Moe Howard so gracefully did to Larry and Curly.  Last night the twenty-somethings were out in full swing, getting their drink on, bantering inanely into the darkness up and down Broadway.  (Good Lord, how these streets echo!  And oh, how I longed to join them!)  But alas, instead I just fantasized about ways to rain on their parade.  ("Get inside!  Don't you know some people are sitting on their couches trying to be pregnant?!")

And I digress.  What I really intended to talk about was Netflicks, because the other day, Hubby informed me that he'd added something...special...to our queue.

"What?!" I asked, never one for surprises.  "What did you order?"

It was something I hadn't seen since we left New York two years ago.  The colorful 1970's sitcom that so lovingly filled my DVR and made me regret having to surrender the contraption over to Time Warner Cable.

ALICE. 

Now, you may already know my feelings on this particular situation comedy.  Yes, if I were actually a paying customer at Mel's Diner, surely I'd never be able to keep anything down; the place obviously wasn't up to code and Mel just never looked as if he showered enough.  And I've seen how the waitresses would sometimes grab the toast with their bare hands and place it on a plate before handing it over to the customer with a sassy remark.  But even still, it's a guilty pleasure of mine, and like most of my guilty pleasures...it's an odd one. 

"Let's watch an episode!" I said to Hubby last night, after singing the theme song aloud two or three times, in full voice.  (Well?  All of my neighbors were already outside being drunk and disorderly, so what did they care?  They deserved it.)

A word about this theme song.  There were so many variations of it!  And all performed by the irrepressible Linda Lavin herself.  It's an exuberant celebration of female liberation and, in true 1970's form, it kind of reeks.  (My favorite way to describe the 1970's is that collectively, they smelled a little...funky.  B.O., curdled milk, stale yogurt, rotten eggs...you pick the scent.)  I realize I was born into this odiferous decade, but at the tail end.  Twelve days before New Year's Eve, even!  It was practically 1979!  Not that the eighties were any less foul scented, but that's another post in and of itself.

At any rate, it appeared the powers that be were smiling down on my husband last night, because sadly, inexplicably, the Alice DVD didn't work.  Not in the X-Box, or the DVD player.  THERE WAS NO SOUND.

This was a real tease, I tell you- because I could see the opening credits, with Alice and Tommy Hyatt stranded on the side of the road in Arizona, despondently watching their car get towed away- but I couldn't hear anything!

Hubby, ever gallant, did spend a good fifteen minutes fiddling with wires and cables, trying in vain to recover the sound.  No, he didn't care to suffer through even one episode of Alice, was most likely dreading it, even; but he knew how disappointed I'd be if I was unable to watch the malodorous hijinx unfold.  Just one of the countless reasons I love this kind man.  He enables my insanity.

This then got us to talking about Alice, and all of the zany plot lines we've sat through together.  Like the ones towards the end of the series, when Linda Lavin was directing and absent from some of the episodes.  Then there were the times she dressed as a man to play that mobster, "Sam Butler;" thirty minutes that I just couldn't ever seem to stay awake for, hence never really witnessing the awfulness they yielded.  And then one day I realized it had been erased from the DVR.

"But I never got to watch that one!" I informed Hubby.

Hubby was unrepentant.  "I've sat through it like three times, and you always end up falling asleep.  I can't do it again!  It's too over the top!  The acting is horrendous!"

Oh dear.  Hubby was actually analyzing episodes of Alice.  What had I done to the man?

Thankfully, another Alice DVD is in the mail and I'm anxiously awaiting its stinky arrival.  Do you have any guilty TV pleasures, Dear Reader? 

Something isn't right here...

The DVR in my bedroom is slowly spiraling out of control.  I currently have 62 episodes taped of Who's The Boss? 

I could swear that number has tripled since yesterday.  Nobody needs that much Tony Micelli in her life.  Not even me.

You were my favorite Corey

I just received a text and for some reason I knew it must be bad news.  Corey Haim has overdosed!  I was genuinely pulling for him.  Couldn't whoever's who have set him up with Dr. Drew or something?  So sad.

I can only imagine what Feldman will have to say.

Snap out of it, Bella! Are you a method actor, or just a dud?

Dear Kristen Stewart,

You are the worst.  Could you BE any more sulky or fidgety?  Can you not crack just a little bit of a smile, if only for Oscar?  And while we're on the subject, must you cough into Taylor Lautner's face, mid sentence, without covering your effing mouth?  Taylor is only eighteen, and he still pulled it together enough to be poised and dashing! 

Listen girl, you're living the dream.  Suck it up and smile.

Love,

The Odd Broad  xoxo

PS: R-Pat, what are you thinking?  How could you fall for such a pill?  (Call me.)

Last night I had a very vivid dream.  I was in Science class and my 7th grade Geography teacher, Mr. Phelan, had just asked me to give a witty speech about why Robert Pattinson was smoking hot.  I had only minutes to prepare.  My friend Amy was with me, and I sat at the back of the auditorium, hunched over my notebook.  I wrote frantically.

My sister wasn't surprised at my dream.  She's in her second trimester of pregnancy now, and will be the first to credit Edward Cullen as a good deal of the inspiration for conceiving her second born.  R-Pat is even better looking, she contests, when he's not wearing:

1.) a peacoat

2.) whiteface

and

3.) lipstick

You may already know my thoughts regarding the Twilight sensation.  While I find the self-loathing Bella a wretched role model for young girls, and the intensity of her relationship with Edward dangerously limiting (ie: she'd rather lie in a field staring into the sparkly boy's eyes than take the frigging SAT's), even I can admit that vampire is rather dreamy.  If one is into that sort of thing.

I won't lie, most of the time I play for Team Jacob.  Especially after watching New Moon.  (I'm raising my eyebrows as I type this last sentence, can you tell?)  Yes, the sunny werewolf has my vote even after I went on imdb and discovered, much to my horror, that Taylor Lautner was born in 1992.  (He did just turn eighteen, though!)

Impure thoughts regarding shirtless, tanned werewolf minors aside, my dream last night was a weird one.  R-Pat dominated much of the conversation at work today, and a friend told me to google what he revealed this week on The View.

Have you heard about this, Dear Reader?  How R. Pattinson told Details magazine he's allergic to (and hates) vaginas?  He was also quoted on The View as saying he thinks Betty White is one of "the sexiest women in America."

Say what?

So, R-Pat...what you're saying is...I have a chance.  Come on, even on my worst day I'm way hotter than Rose Nyland!  I'm just saying.

Car Luvin'

My older sister is forever trying to coerce me into watching trash television.  Case in point: Rock of Love, Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, Sex Rehab, The Two Corey's, Strange Love, the 2003 Michael Jackson interview with Martin Bashir...

Often times I fold.  But not the other night.  For nothing could convince me to watch what my sister was witnessing.

Sissy and I recently discovered the joy and wonder of Blackberry Messenger.  We're already pretty much in constant contact throughout the day, but somehow this has enhanced our communication even further.  I BBM chat with Sissy while walking, shopping, at work, on the toilet...

Received on Tuesday, 8:16 pm:

Sissy: "Okay...Luke is not allowed to love cars anymore.  Watching "My Car is My Lover" on BBC America.  These guys that have sex with cars...they find them sexually arousing.  One guy even did a helicopter.  So fucked up."  

Had my sister just said someone "did" a helicopter?  I asked her how, exactly, does one "do" a car?  She told me to use my imagination.  (I tried but I still couldn't figure it out.)  Apparently these lads hump cars.  Sissy said one of them molested a car that looked exactly like Kit from Knight Rider.  Poor thing.  These car fuckers are referred to as "mechaphiles;" men who are sexually obsessed with cars.

Sissy: "He did a helicopter.  He became visibly sexually aroused at a car show...he was kissing the cars and rubbing them."

Sissy went on to explain that the helicopter he did was from Airwolf, that 80's TV show.  Oh dear.

Sissy: "They had him on surveillance camera f-ing his bud's car.  The one man wore a hat with bear ears and decorates his car with stuffed animals.  And he did a helicopter." 

(Again with the copter banging!)

Apparently the other gentleman spoke of f-ing his car like a rabbit as well as raping cars.  Very, very disturbing.  He also does a punch buggy.  A white punch buggy named Vanilla.  He likes to lick her.

Poor Vanilla.  At this point I asked Hubby if he could try and pull up some of this nonsense on YouTube, if only to appease my sister, who was tired of experiencing it alone.  We saw the man licking Vanilla, but after about three seconds I had to look away. 

The other dude's "car lover" is named Todd.  (It was Todd's reliability that first attracted him.)  I asked Sissy if these people only do their own cars, or if they'll eff just any old car, in any old parking lot.

Sissy: "Vanilla and Todd are their cars, but the older guy kind of crosses boundaries with other people's cars."

Ah.

Yesterday I texted Sissy: "Gotta run.  Gonna go fuck the coffemaker."

Sissy: "The Keurig is a good lay I hear."

So, so wrong.  On so many levels.  Happy Friday, Dear Reader.  xoxo