It's mid-January and I'm just getting around to the first new Media Blender of 2009. I'm not sure if it's due to a dearth of lesbian-ish related content, that my once-upon-a-Rioja soaked brain is too lazy to form full sentences or if I've acquired too much of an elegiac tone thanks to the end of lesbian television as we know it!
Still reeling from bidding a teary farewell to those raspy-voiced cuties, South of Nowhere's "Spashley," back in December, I've barely had time to recover and The L Word's final season is nigh. Now what? I feel like Will and Grace's Jack and Karen who spent an episode mourning the end of Sex and the City, Friends and Frasier in 2004.
While hotass socialite Karen Walker and her main gay Jack McFarland opted to make real memories of their own, right before heading to what they believed to be the Central Perk, my addiction denial has led me to wasted wee hours trolling for lesbian programming. And now, I can never recover the brain cells I've recently killed while bleary-eyed and transfixed on the first season of Work Out - I mean, why? I live in Weho. I see Jackie out about as often as I dodge creditors' calls. And if that weren't enough, I got swept up in back to back episodes of the Valtrex and Purel sponsored A Double Shot of Love.
But first -- and here's where my inner gay boy sashays to the surface-let's talk Globes...Dame Kate Winslet's mighty fine set of Globes she nabbed at Sunday's ceremony. The ostensible Susan Lucci of the Big Screen -- after seven Golden Globe and five Oscar noms -- the Winslet finally nabbed not one, but two of those babies in the same night. It remains to be seen if Ms. Kate can edge out this year's heavy competition at the Academy Awards or if she'll go on for a record 17 noms before landing the golden man, but let's talk about Kate's big night.
Looking dazzling in Yves St. Lauren, Kate won a Best Supporting nod for stripping down, lobbing them out and getting it on with a barely legal actor in The Reader. There was an accent and some heavy acting involved too but some things just stand out. On the subject of Holocaust films, which The Reader is on one of its levels, let's take a few moments to drink in Ms. Winslet's guest appearance on Extras, in which Ricky Gervais' writing instructed her on how to win an award. Plus, she wears a habit and talks dirty. How's that for a fetish fantasy?
And it's not just my pervy ass focusing on Kate's assets. The Real Queen of the World, The Big O - Oprah - waxed a tad fixated -- if not pervy -- about Kate's real girls, on the Oprah show Tuesday. Kate -- being the objectified lady, accustomed to even seasoned interviewers like Oprah, Ellen, Letterman and Leno, tripping over their tongues to intellectually drool over her proclivity for prancing around on celluloid in the buff -- gave Oprah a resounding "Thank you very much."
The gorgeous globed Brit took to the podium a second time Sunday, winning a Best Actress Award for the light romantic comedy about a 50-era suburban couple that reteams her with her Titanic man-child star Leonardo DiCaprio, in Revolutionary Road.
Alright, so it's not a romantic comedy. She plays a dissatisfied, transgressive wife in the most devastating film I've seen this year and damn did she deserve those double globes!
A tearful, marginally over-the-top, yet wonderfully endearing speech ensued. Ms. Winslet acknowleged the other amazing women in her category including Meryl Streep, Kristin Scott Thomas, lil Annie Hathaway -- who was rumored to be the winner -- and to quote Kate, "Who's the other one?" while momentarily forgetting to bow in Angelina Jolie's general direction.
That's when I became fairly certain Zeus was about to throw a lightning bolt and straighten her lovely British ass out, especially since days earlier, the nominee Kate momentarily forgot to mention, Santa Angelina Jolie of the Holy Order of Saving the World One Child at a Time, looked as though she was about to drop kick adorable Annie Hathaway, who won and rambled during her acceptance speech at the Critics' Choice Awards.
The Internet Gods were looking out for Santa Angelina since that incriminating clip of Angie looking like a sore loser has mysteriously disappeared from the Web. Now, as any red-blooded Lesbo, I love my Ange, but she seriously crossed a proprietary line with her proverbial eye daggers at Annie. And while Ange has moved on from teasing the girls with bisexual sound bites like, "I'm the celebrity most likely to sleep with her female fans," Annie's an up-and-coming gay girl icon who recently auctioned herself off for a cool $12,000 for a night of drinking with some gays. There's no word yet on whether Annie will be drinking with the boys or the girls but here's hoping she dons her best slutty togs and takes to West Hollywood's Truckstop for a night of upside down Margaritas and ass grabbing with the ladies.
"They're too beautiful, they're too thin, it's not realistic, Jenny's fucking crazy, there's too much het sex, I don't want to see Tim's bulging muscles, Bette and Tina aren't locked in a stagnant monogamous relationship that would never move the story forward in order to make me feel secure about my own monogamous relationship..." blah, blah, blah...
Criticizing the L Word became a pasttime even before the community could sigh a collective, "Hey, it's television, an image-oreinted medium, and it's great to see Jennifer Beals in beaters week after week. And hey, isn't nice to see full-on, hot lesbian sex without the compulsory wavering bisexual who eventually returns to her man--or worse yet, says 'I don't know what to do' in the boudoir." Criticism and fantacism have been the show's hallmarks since that first establishing shot of Los Angeles.
Droves of girls who wouldn't fork over the funds to actually order Showtime have gathered on friends' couches to bitch about and privately lust after The L Word. And, finally, all those Jenny Schecter haters have won because her demise goes in lock step with the show's end. And who says the writers weren't listening to the fans?
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But L Word loony fans never fear, because the show's Dr. Frankenstein of sorts, the inimitable Ilene Chaiken, has hopes for life after the L Word. First up, there's a specious pilot for a spin-off starring none other than the eat-her-with-a-spoon adorable Leisha Hailey's Alice in a prison show, and word has it that Fucking Hot Famke Janssen turns up in the pilot. I'm not sure how I feel about this iteration of Alice. I mean, no Blackberry and access to her interconnectedness of Weho-specific lesbian sluttery Our Chart? No Michael Kors' heels and designer frocks? No $12 lattes from The Planet? No fucking in her mini Cooper? That's not the Alice we've come to know and love.
Despite a fairly pedestrian women's prison fetish, I never envisioned the Alice Doesn't Live in Weho Anymore pilot to include shanks and gang showers. Here's hoping it's sexy, fun and ironic like the Anne Heche / Ione Skye modern classic Girls in Prison and less like the British smash hit Bad Girls. Alice in a dreary jail sans the witty repartee would just belie her core being.
Oooh. I feel like Kate Winslet during her speech "Gather," "Wrap it up." I've waxed on about Globes and girls behind bars at such length I'm about to go way over....
So quickly, during a quickie phoner with Ms. Chaiken last week, she eluded to a possible L Word movie. A 50-foot tall Beals might require a crash cart for the faint hearted like me, but here's hoping Chaiken and the gang just keep resuscitating the crap out of thing. There's nothing else like it coming down the pike.
Speaking of no lesbians on television. The newest member of the Grey's (yawn) Anatomy's (zzzzzzzz) cast, Melissa George, has bidden a fond and friendly fuck you to the show. And good for her. While George says she left of her own volition to pursue other things -translation, less sleep-inducing -- I'm personally happy she's moving on to more exciting pastures.
I'm still bitter since they roped me in with a fairly engaging lesbian storyline -- which I could watch on YouTube and thankfully avoid the zzzzzzzz's of Pompeo, Knight, Heigl and Leigh -- only to ax the lovely and talented Brooke Smith because some fat cat in the big office got cold feet about featuring two full-figured, sexual women in a somewhat realistic relationship... Did I say bitter?
That blasted American Idol gets me every year. Just when I thought I'd had enough cognitive therapy to 'say no' to idol, they got me with their new hotass judge Kara DioGuardi, a singer and songwriter who's not afraid to tangle with Simon.
Although, during Tuesday's premiere she launched into a rather unattractive a cappella sing-off with bikini girl to prove there's more to musical interpretation than cleavage and a clean-shaven bikini line but still... DioGuardi's impromptu ditty reminded me of my brother-in-law at family gatherings. Singing as if the world wants to hear! But here's the recipe for success, a sassy Dioguardi in cowboy boots and kicking Simon's ass while favoring the female contestants. There's not a lesbian in the world who wouldn't watch that, if even for a moment.
Missed the last Media Blender? Read it here.
