Golden Celebrity

["Gossip Girl" Leighton Meester films "The Roommates" with Minka Kelly from "Friday Night Lights" in Los Angeles; image via Splash]

So Housewives wasn’t the only thing that ended last night. The rest of comedy did too. No more 30 Rock, Parks & Recreation, or The Office until autumn. Let’s see where things were left.

Yes, I Did Say Parks & Recreation
Anyone who dismissed this show after its first sorta underwhelming episode made a mistake. The show has only gotten tighter and sharper, culminating in last night’s funny/sad finale. Leslie got kissed, Chris Pratt got his casts off, and Tom Haverford introduced us to his shockingly attractive wife. We love the small, wistful pacing and joke-making of this show. It’s not quite as broad and Commedia Dell’arte as The Office. There’s something wiser and a bit more weary at work here, especially in Amy Poehler’s outta-the-park performance. Her scenes with her old man date were pitch-perfect and just a bit sorrowful, and the almost-at-the-end scene of her and Mark sitting by the pit, near about to kiss, was a heartbreaking little study in rumpled adults being rumpled adults. We’re very glad this show got picked up for a second season.

The Office, Who Knew?
Though the season started off pretty weak and we started to write the show off, suddenly something changed or reversed. Everything from the Michael Scott Paper Company on has been basically golden. Though it was a bit of a logistical stretch to have all the branches coming together in one central place for the Dunder Mifflin corporate picnic last night, it was still an ingenious set up and a nice reminder that, even though we’re all these seasons in, the writers can still come up with a scenario that feels familiar and banal but, you know, funny. Pam’s volleyball prowess was charming where it would have been cloying just a few episodes ago, Michael and Holly (I mean, really, Steve Carell and the ridiculously wonderful Amy Ryan) have such touchingly awkward chemistry, Dwight’s weirdo best friend was jolting and gonzo, while Stanley’s little aside about not normally enjoying the theater elicited a loud hoot. Plus, you know, Jim and Pam and a baby! Has John Krasinksi ever actually acted like that on the show before? He should do it more often.

30 Rock, Of Course
This show has been on a steady climb most of the season, though this episode, for us, fell just slightly short of some of the other recent installments. Maybe it’s because we don’t really like music jokes all that much, because we’re lame. That aside, Chris Parnell’s brilliantly insane Dr. Spaceman is always welcome (”maybe it’s the hard K sound that’s getting me…”) and “sexually transmitted crazy mouth” should enter the lexicon. Plus: Kenneth getting religiousy about science class, “Rainstorm Katrina,” and the gay kid at graduation bit (”Who told?”) all killed. If the closing, kinda-creaky “We Are the World” joke at the end felt a bit flat to you, well, you’re not alone. But all the rest considered, it certainly wasn’t a deal breaker.

Last night was Part Two of The War of the Grosses, alternately titled the Real Housewives of New York City reunion special. It was: ladies yelling in an echoing room while a gay dude sighed.

I don’t really know how to “recap” two hours’ worth of women sitting and shrieking, so maybe we’ll just do a state of the union here. How does everything end?

Jill
Jill came out, mostly, roses in the reunion. Her various rages about tardiness and charity laziness were mostly valid, she made reasonable points. The finale blowdown between Zary and Bethenny seems to have been smoothed over, because those two dizzy broads are thick as thieves and no fight over branding can come between them. And then in the end Jill’s wonderful momz was shown in a clip and everyone was reminded that life goes by “in minutes.” And maybe somewhere someone sat in shorts on a couch, two weeks away from a scary birthday, the birds and thin bands of sun humming outside, and suddenly he knew exactly what she meant.

Alex
Poor Alex. The thoughtful scarecrow remained mostly mute for the reunion, eyes flicking back and forth like at a Mario tennis match, bewildered pile of hair sitting atop her head, scanning the horizon for any opportunity to swoop in and articulate some grand point. She tried to weigh in on the whole Kelly/Bethenny fracas, and ended up just criticizing Kelly, fairly, for being an idiot who can’t do the verbal arithmetic of putting together a legitimate sentence. Everyone seemed to feel bad for Alex, and it made me like her, but who felt most bad was Simon. Simon was standing behind a curtain watching the whole proceedings, the bright glare of stage lights turning him into a crooked silhouette. He mouthed his own responses to the questions and feigned laughs and asides. To be a part of it! To be a real breathing, beating part of this thing! If wishes were horses, his heart would be Assateague. Full and heavy with galloping, snorts of breath, wild mane. A small trail leading down below the waistband, soft hungry-sad brown eyes, perfect plum lips, strong lean arms, a warm salty taste on his… Wait! Horses. Oh dear god, ha ha ha, he’s thinking about horses. Nothing else. Absolutely no one, um, nothing else.

Bethenny
Bethenny emerges from the flames mostly unscathed. Not to say that she hasn’t come off a bit too harping, a bit too snide. Just that she doesn’t really seem to give a shit. She’s got her girl J.Z. on her side, and a sort of half-willing ally in LuAnn. Fighting with Kelly is like fighting with a dying stand of pine trees or with a suspicious dog who is blind in one eye and you always see at the top of your street like he is waiting for something (maybe it’s you) or with an old shoe that you found behind the bureau when you were moving or with a dead woodchuck. Which is to say, fighting with Kelly is pointless because you’ll never get anything in return but frustration and emptiness, a vague sense that the world is playing a mean, strange trick on you. This person can’t actually be real, you think to yourself. But she is. Oh, dear souls in heaven, she is. But brave Bethenny persists. She must be tired.

Kelly
As stated above, Kelly is a mostly useless inanimate object. Or maybe inanimate isn’t the right word. She’s animate, but like an earwig is. An earwig doesn’t feel pain or regret, an earwig doesn’t make wry jokes over Bordeaux on a snowy night. An earwig is just pesky and kinda gross, and not worth spending more time on than the time it takes to scramble shrieking to the kitchen to get a paper towel so you can go blot the thing out, stuff it up in the paper and throw it in the trash and forget it. Kelly was evasive, as expected, about the twink bashing, and at one point was like “I have a question. Everyone’s talking about this and that and this and that and going back and forth and, like… who cares?” Which was a ridiculous, annoying, holier-than-thou-but-in-a-really-dumb-person’s-kinda-way thing to say on a reunion special for the goddamned reality show you were just goddamned on. Be of the world, Kelly! It’s a way better place than the self-built netherrealm of mirrors that you’ve been existing in for the past year or so.

Ramona
Speaking of other, fantastical worlds, Ramona took some time away from building her giant clock on the moon to beam down to New York for the reunion special. Mostly she gibbled and garbled and threw her purple features around the room, singing strange Barbados songs and making crazy eyes at everyone. Oh, crazy eyes. Countess Crackerjacks diagnosed Ramona with Oculum déménsium over and over and over again, each time Ramona’s eyes getting even wider and crazier, while Andy Cohen felt a strange tingle creeping up his spine and then all of a sudden he couldn’t speak and the room was growing swirly and oh god what was that horrible black light creeping up in the corner over there, who is it, why is it coming closer and closer and closer reaching out to him like some wraith of oblivion and oh god I should have been a doct—phew, Ramona blinked. All the bad sensations were gone. Andy sat there, trembling. “I’ll tell you about crazy eyes,” Ramona muttered. There was a strange silence, like the few seconds right after the sun has set on the wintry tundra. Finally Ramona smiled. She looked around the room. “Isn’t Mario handsome?” They all nodded their heads, shivering.

LuAnn
Oh LuAnn. Sure she’s sad and getting divorced and who knows if she’ll even have a title come the dissolution of the marriage. But she’ll always be a Countess, always be our Crackerjacks, in our hearts. She got called out, mostly, for being stuck-up and condescending, and for not practicing what she preaches vis-à-vis her etiquette book. Kelly the Dumb was brave and stupid enough to flat out accuse Lunz of not reading her own book, which was met with hoots and hollers from the other ladies (well, not from Alex, whom I’m pretty sure had either fallen asleep or replaced herself with a dummy stuffed with straw and left at this point), because Kelly, m’dear, you might be right. But you’re still the new, worst kid in town, so it’d behoove you to shut yer damn yap. Anyway. After a time Loony just sat back and lit up a cigarette “Can I smoke in here? I can’t? Well too damn bad, I’m gonna anyway. You know, friendos, all this bickering. Man it reminds me of my early days in Cee Tee. We bounced around a lot. Up around Meriden for a while. Stayed in Storrs one fall, daddy’s conning college students and mama the professors and the deans, threaten to show sexy snaps to their wives. So there was lotsa change, lotsa things stayin’ in boxes for years n’ years. And I dunno, you get tired, y’know? You get rundown. But you get used to it to, your legs don’t feel like they’re workin’ unless they’re movin’, unless you got some good old ground goin’ underneath your feet. So I guess that’s why I went, y’know, why I kept on wenting. Idaho and Big Sky and all them shitty rainy towns they got up there in the State and Or’gon. But you do still keep hopin’, you know, you still keep thinkin’ this time I’m gonna slow down, this is it, this is the move, this is the little apartment above the laundromat or the chamber of goddamned commerce, this is the one that’ll stick. But it never does until it do. Y’know what I mean, Andy? It never does until it do and I thought this one here, this fancy old strange life I’d got goin’ over here in New York goddamned City, man, this was gonna be it. But it wasn’t and it ain’t and that’s the breaks. So you over there sparkletits, Kelly or whatever the hell your name is, you can go take a long jog off a short pier. And Ramona, your eyes are crazy ‘n you know it. You know it better’n all of us. You found those in some old magic cave about two hundred years ago and they’re just keepin’ you alive. I don’t care. I don’t care if you’re Gumby wearin’ a godammned people suit. I just wish you were honest about it. And you other three? Aw hell, you’re all right. But mama, well… Well, mama’s got to be goin’. So in closing,”

And then she lifted her leg and farted, long and loud. She cackled once, threw her head back and opened her mouth and sent the sound into the rafters, and then she was gone. Left the back door of the studio slamming shut. There was a revving of engines, and she’d disappeared.

After they’d wrapped up the reunion, Andy went to the bathroom to sob for an hour.

Alex and Simon went home and sat in their sex dungeon and watched their kids play with the antique iron maiden. What a strange life they’d found, strangest of all was that it fit so perfectly. Like a black leather glove.

Bethenny went home and put on her lab coat and her goggles and drew the blinds and went to work in the kitchen trying to concoct a Skinnygirl Cosmo. It was hard work, but she had a calling. There waiting on the mail table was a letter from Oslo. The Nobel committee. Would she be submitting again this year, they wanted to know. She would be. Oh yes, she would be.

Jill called her Mom from the car phone and they made a lunch date. After driving for another minute or two, she yelled “Oh holy Fuck.” She pressed three on the speed dial and her little gay house elf friend answered. “Bubbz, I gotta cancel lunch on Thurdsay, I’m sawree.” And Bubbz understood. He always does.

Ramona just kicked herself in the behind and flew away into the tinfoil dusk and we all knew, each and every one of us, but especially greedy Kelly the Once-ler, that we never should have cut down her Truffula Trees. Because it was a beautiful world that Ramona had, more beautiful than all the Thneeds in all the land. But now she’s gone, and it’s too late. Too late as always. So Kelly sits alone in her empty factory, wishing.

And Crackerjacks. They say sometimes that on a crisp night, one of those first crackling autumn nights in October, that you can hear her chuckling on the wind. If you smell an earthy whiff of leaves burning, maybe it’s actually her curling cigarette wisps. If you taste the stinging-sweet taste of cooling air in your mouth, maybe it’s one of her whiskey drinks. Just last week a small town paper in Muncie, Indiana ran a small article about a mysterious woman who wore a headscarf and rented an apartment above the stationery store. Everyone thought she looked vaguely familiar, but no one could quite place her. After a week, she left, but not before leaving a five hundred dollar tip at the local diner. The young waitress, a sad looking girl with fussy brown hair, was flabbergasted. But even more so when she read the note that the mysterious woman had left with the pile of cash. It read:

I’m you, baby. And you’re me. So from one of us to another, a word of advice. Keep lookin’ out, kid. Keep movin’ on. Keep strong, keep wise, keep sane. And if you see an old rich dude at a bar somewhere nice, and he looks like he needs some company and you just might be the gal to give it to him, you take that chance, honey. You do it, you run with it, you do it all the way. Cause sure it ends, but everything ends. Everything in this rotten, wonderful old world is one day gonna leave you. But no one’s gonna blame if you hang on tight for as long as you can.

It’s a mechanical bull, baby. This whole thing called living. And, if ya got the thighs for it, it sure is a helluva ride.

Peace and chicken grease,

- C.

News from Cannes and from Mickey Rourke. A strange movie gets strange casting, terrible TV shows are picked up, and New York will collapse on October 16th.

Oddly named actor Cylk Cozart has signed on to direct Sandy Creek Girls, about a Nebraska high school’s girls basketball team. Cozart will also play a role, alongside a cast of notable damned souls such as Brian Austin Green, Tiny Lister, Dean Cain, and the ultimate in Hollywood will-o’-the-wisps, Jonathan Lipnicki. One can only assume that they’re all going to play high school girl basketball players. [Variety]

At Cannes, Sony Pictures Classics has acquired distribution rights to Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, a creeper about a boarding school. Right now the general buying climate seems mild, with some eager to see smaller pictures by Ken Loach and Grant Heslov, but nothing big sticking out. Though it’s only the third day. [Variety]

Mickey Rourke is set to star in a remake of the 1980’s British crime flick Mona Lisa, possibly alongside former Bond girl Eva Green. Larry Clark, who made the disturbingly entertaining Bully a while back (as well as Kids), is attached to write and direct. Doesn’t sound too high profile for the recent awards darling. But, you know, it’s something. [Variety]

Oh… good? The not-so-good seeming New York, I Love You has been given a release date by Vivendi. On October 16th you can rush out to the theaters to see New York shorts directed by the likes of Natalie Portman and Brett Ratner. Terrif. [Variety]

Two new shows—the ugh-inducing Melrose Place reboot and the, um, ugh-inducing Vampire Diaries—have both been given permission to begin staffing by the CW. So it looks like they’re going to air. The ghostly specter that is the Gossip Girl spinoff? Still awaiting word on whether they’ll be picked up for midseason. Ouch. [THR]

Wonderful! Another show about rich, entitled little shitty teenagers. This one is called Gigantic and it’s going to be on the N and it’s about the children of celebrities and poor Marti Noxon, of Buffy, has co-created it. Sigh. [THR]

Oh, and Scrubs is coming back on ABC. [THR]

Sad lifejoke Lindsay Lohan was once, you may remember, a working actress. She starred in films such as The Parent Trap and the one about the schizophrenic peg-legged stripper. Those days might be back.

According to Star Magazine, a stapled together collection of glossy pages with colors on them, LiLo is slated to star in an “indie fantasy comedy” called The Other Side. Think of it as Hannah Takes the Stairs mixed with The Mummy and Zelig. I kid. It’ll be much pornier. Per Star, “the plot centers on a graduate student who takes a summer gig working at a science research facility on a remote island. Once there, she comes across and interesting cast of characters.” Though promising, this little indie “fantasy” comedy, faces some major hurdles.

Copyright infringement: I’m fairly certain I saw this exact movie on the Spice Channel back in 2002, when I used to order 10 movies simultaneously on my Dad’s television in some sort of strange revenge. It was called something like Desert Dissertation Vol. IV: Anal Proctor

The Cast: Along with the esteemed actress, other cast members include Woody Harrelson, Dave Matthews and Alanis Morissette. Combined, this trio once wrote, “Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you. When you think everything’s okay and everything’s going right. Sweet like candy to my soul Sweet you rock And sweet you roll. A black man would rather miss than look bad.”

Lindsay Lohan Is Uninsurable: This is the least fun but also the most serious hurdle. As talent manager Bernie Brillstein once noted, “I believe [Lady Lohan]’s uninsurable. And when you’re uninsurable in this town, you’re done.” Simply put, who’s going to put money on Lohan actually finishing this project as opposed to say, freaking the fuck out and re-enacting her own personal Grey Gardens, holing herself up with a Kilimanjaro of cocaine and cat pee? The answer is probably no one.

Will this movie, slated for 2010, ever get released? And if it doesn’t, will the world still survive the calamity? Maybe, probably, respectively. But the world without a film about a wise-cracking Lohan graduate student on a desert island with Dave Matthews wearing a Pukka necklace and little else is a sadder impoverished dystopia.