Happy Birthday

July 25th is apparently Pretty Lady Day. Who knew?

Shantel van Santen, who plays Quinn on One Tree Hill, is 25 today.

Kate Beckinsale, whose hair is probably the most enviable thing I've ever laid eyes on, is 37.

Sandra Bullock turns 46 today. There's really nothing to say about how awesome she is that hasn't already been said so I'll just say that she's a great example for how a woman should rise above it when she's handed a pile of shit.

Helen Mirren, who might be the hottest sexagenarian on the planet, is 65.

And because the exception proves the rule, I might as well mention that Taylor Momsen is turning 17 today. Last week she was talking to some magazine or other about her "style" (ironic quote alert!) and said that she still wears things from "fucking middle school." She was, I gathered, trying to make the point that she uses "old pieces" along with new in her wardrobe but since middle school was 3 years ago for her, I was once again overcome with an urge to slap her and tell her to keep her fucking mouth shut. And also to petition the government to get her a parent who can actually PARENT.

Ahem. Happy birthday, ladies...and Taylor!

Strung-Out, Insane, Crack Whore

I assume that's the look that Taylor Momsen was going for here. That's not even eye liner, she just painted large black circles all around her eyes.

And I won't even ask what she was snorting that left grey dust around her nose. I do not want to know!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go try to decide whether her being absent from several episodes of GG's next season is enough to make me like the show again.

I Hate Them All

And by "them" I mean the main characters on Gossip Girl. Well fine, hate is a strong word. I don't care about most of them, wish others would go away forever and could tolerate others if they were tertiary characters in the Eleanor/Cyrus/Darota/Vanya spin-off I keep praying for.

Jenny continues to be the worst thing about this show. This week she spent more time trying to get into Nate's pants and therefore being the suckiest step-sister ever.

Meanwhile Serena is back to her daddy issues. Carter Bazin tracked him down and she tried to hide it all from Nate but she's not smart and Jenny exists and Carter's a dick so that all went badly. In the end she showed up on daddy's Miami doorstep only to find Lily.

Speaking of Lily, Rufus is on to her and he's had it. So have I - their marital woes are easily the least interesting thing to happen to the Upper East Side ever.

Vanessa is out of town so Dan has nothing to do but get ice and befriend Blair. And ok, the Blair thing was vaguely interesting because I have always wanted those two to form an alliance of some kind. But it all happened as part of her total meltdown over what awful, hateful, evil people she and Chuck are which would have been an interesting development if it had happened a year and ago when she and Chuck actually were those people. Now that they're all boring and loving, it's ridiculous.

Leighton Meester did rock her breakdown scenes though.

Chuck was trying to win her back over by throwing a wedding for Darota and Vanya in one day and while it didn't work, the wedding was really nice. Plus it put a ton of focus on the people in the show that are fun and don't suck - Darota, Vanya, Eleanor and Cyrus.

Oh, and Eric who has a crush on the boy he met in the Waldorf's lobby last week but he doesn't know if that boy is gay so he just keeps looking for excuses to go to the Waldorf's house to try and accidentally run into him again. When New Guy brings his girlfriend to the wedding Eric's adorable little heart is crushed. Then New Guy sends the girlfriend home because he goes both ways and right now he'd like to be going Eric's way. I don't blame him, Eric is adorable. Even with this new, awful hairdo of his.

Speaking of bad hair - it was all over the place this week! Serena showed up for the wedding looking like she's experimenting with low-flow shower heads, dry shampoo and Crisco as a styling product. Not to be outdone, Nate chose that same event to pump the top right side of his hair full of helium while the random longer bits at the back flipped up crazy-like. Jenny's atrocious extensions still look like extra long hanks ripped from the scalp of a Cabbage Patch Corn Silk doll and pasted to her head with Elmers white kindergarten paste. And Dan is still styling his curly locks in a '20s comb over.

Unfortunately hair wasn't the only hideous thing happening on the UES last night. The fashion was also one miss after another. It was bad through the entire episode but the wedding was a cacophony of ugly clothes. Jenny wore a sienna dress that was 2 sizes too small and was squeezing her boobs out through a cut-out up top, paired with black lace stockings. Blair wore a dress with both illusion netting and a bow across the front of her pelvis. I think she might have mistaken "traditional Polish wedding" with "figure skating competition." It happens. Serena wore a limp, blue-grey grandmother-of-the-bride wrap dress that gaped at the chest and pooched out at the stomach making her look flat-chested and fat. She is decidedly neither. Flat-chested was a big theme of the night as Blair and a random Chuck chippy both wore blouses that made their chests look positively concave. And everyone in the episode walked hunched over - probably ashamed to be involved in the mess this entire show has become.

One Step Closer To The End

What I learned from Gossip Girl last night:

1) Jenny is manipulative, hateful and annoying. Still.

3) Nate is cute, but dumb. Still.

4) Jack Bass is vile. Still.

5) The writers don't know what the fuck to do with Blair or Chuck. Still.

6) Dan's a bad writer and a worse liar. Still.

7) Vanessa is a bad writer and a worse liar and a condescending editor. Still.

8) Dan and Vanessa are boring together. Still.

9) Connor Paolo's (Eric) hair is terrible but it's even worse when he puts a stocking cap on it. Yikes!

10) Chuck tricked Blair into screwing Jack to rescue him and his hotel which is gross in a way that even Original Chuck wouldn't have stooped to because as despicable as he can be, he would never team up with Jack to sell someone he loved into prostitution without them knowing. Especially if that someone was Blair!

I'm pretty sure I hate this show now.

Jack? Shit!

I guess I should have put Gossip Girl on notice a long time ago because last night, they stepped it up a bit. There is still some work left to do, and I'm not cancelling my PIP just yet, but it was a vast improvement over the past several weeks, that's for damn sure.

So Elizabeth and Jack tip their hand to Chuck first thing by evicting him from The Empire. Chuck tries to appeal to Elizabeth's motherly instinct but she's insane - that is the only explanation for why she'd be in love with Jack to the extent that she'd do anything for him including dicking over a sad Chuck. Anyway, she and her disorienting accent really are Chuck's mom but she tells him she isn't right after she tells him that she gave Jack a "me or the hotel" ultimatum and he chose the hotel. Then she leaves town but not before Jack tries to entice her to stay by telling her how much money he has now. I can't decide if Desmond Harrington is himself a disgusting human being or if he's just a really good actor but either way, Jack works my gag reflex like a rotted corpse full of maggots. He is that gross.

Gossip Girl herself hits a big bulls eye when she implies that Jack has to steal what other people build because he's to useless to create anything of his own. I can not wait until he's taken down for good. Unfortunately, this week he only person trying to facilitate that was Nate and I think we all know how Nate's scheming works out. When he and Serena attempt to catch him mid-fornication with a couple of prostitutes, he laughs in their faces and leaves the two of them doing what they do best - standing there looking pretty...and dumb.

Before they can tell everyone themselves, Nate spills the beans that Dan and Vanessa are dating. Then Serena points out to V that after 25 minutes of dating, she and Dan are already in a rut. Vanessa dresses up (and looks so cute) while Dan sits there with his stupid haircut being oblivious and annoying. No one cares.

Rufus, still the most inept parent in history, thinks Jenny needs to stop moping around about being dumped so he conspires with Eleanor to get Jenny back into fashion by helping out with some junior line Eleanor is launching. I thought for 1/2 a second that this would be a good development since fashion designer Jenny is a happy Jenny and about the only Jenny that doesn't make me feel homicidal. But you know what isn't fun to watch at all? Jenny and Agnes together. One hateful, bitch of a teenage girl is bad enough, two is absolute torture.

Whatever, Agnes is back, she's pissed at Jenny so she fakes nice, schemes to get the drugs Skeeve left in Jenny's possession that he now wants back. She gets the drugs, hands them out to all the models and this one other seriously bitchy Waldorf minion. Then they drug Jenny and drop her off at a bar with some truly creepy dudes having a bachelor party and looking for someone to rape. Fortunately for Jenny, Nate may not be able to scheme but he's had loads of practice rescuing Little J and has become very good at it. So he swoops in for a rescue and tells her how she needs to be happy - like he is with Serena. Then she gets a call from Eleanor offering her a job and her whole life is good. So now of course she's looking at Nate like he's a delicious turkey dinner she can't wait to sink her teeth into, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

There's also a thing where Blair has no friends and has to hire prostitutes to pretend to be her friends and then confess to her mom that no one likes her and she hates NYU before some minions in waiting from Columbia seek Blair out to worship her and now Blair wants to go to Columbia. Speaking of Columbia, has anyone seen any evidence this season that Nate is actually attending that ivy league school? Didn't think so.

Gossip Girl, consider yourself PIPed!

What's a PIP? That's the deceptively cute acronym my company uses to denote a performance improvement plan - what an employee is put on that officially gives them 30, 60 or 90 days to shape up or file for unemployment benefits. And after another week of complete boredom, I'm PIPing the hell out of Gossip Girl.

The episode was mostly about Jenny's plan to lose her virginity to Skeeve and the resulting completely inept plans of everyone she knows to thwart her in her mission. Serena tries to get Skeeve to climb all over her again and arrange for Jenny to walk in on it. Rufus puts out an APB. Lily tries to be someone she can talk to (a truly fantastic plan with anyone but Jenny Humphrey). Dan tries...ok, Dan and Vanessa are really way too busy trying to decide where they should act like they're just friends and where they can go ahead and eat each others' faces off to give two shits that Jenny is being deflowered by a grotesque drug dealer. Priorities. And Nate first tries to help Serena (ugh! These two are a cacophony of incompetent scheming), then he tricks Jenny into being caught by Rufus, then he tries to explain how if she has sex with Skeeve, she'll end up being a big whore like Serena, his girlfriend. Then he gets punched in the face by Skeeve right before Little Bitch, er, I mean J, runs off with him for her cherry popping ceremony.

Off to a hotel these two detestable morons go. Once in bed (and only 1/2 undressed - ?), Jenny pauses the action to make sure Skeeve knows she's a virgin. He's like, "duh!" but he's failing to grasp that what she's telling him is she wants to discuss it first, to make sure she's really doing the right thing, and then if they go ahead with it, she wants him to make it special. What he wants is to hurry it up because he's got drugs that aren't going to sell themselves. Once she realizes that I call this asshat "Skeeve" for a reason, she takes her grossly thin and bony self home where she tells all the people who've gathered there because they care about her (do not ask me why), that she and Skeeve broke up, then she is rude to them all and stomps off to her room before she tells Serena that she did have sex with Skeeve because Little J has not one single likable cell in her entire, emaciated body.

The other main plot point was that Jack Bass slithered back into town and messed with Chuck's head so Chuck got a DNA test to make sure that Strange Accent is really his mom. He also created a sex scandal out of nothing, and schemed with both Strange Accent and Chuck's lawyer to get Chuck to sign over control of his hotel to Strange Accent (when the DNA test came back saying she was his mom - though, who the eff knows if that's the truth) and, essentially, Jack himself. Convoluted? Yes. Stupid? Yes. A bit of ridiculousness that the real Chuck Bass would have spotted at 50 paces and also schemed to turn back around on Jack? Definitely. Further ruination the awesomeness of my favorite character (actually, characters because he's tied with Blair and she didn't catch the snap on this one either!) on the show? God, yes!

In other news, Rufus and Lilly make up and then Lilly's mom calls and uses her poor health to guilt Lily into contacting Dr. van der Woodsen to help her again - CeCe was apparently the impetus for their reunion last time too - and Lily braces for that but doesn't tell Rufus because she's learning impaired.

And Dan and Vanessa decide to tell everyone that their dating even though exactly no one cares.

Oh! I almost forgot, Jenny wasn't content with being hated for her personality, attitude, wardrobe, behavior, makeup, hair, and bad choices - she had to go and completely misunderstand Dirty Dancing and claim that Dr. Houseman was a worse father than Rufus so now I don't just want the show to send her away to boarding school in Caracas, I actually want them to kill her in a bloody military coup while she's there! Fuck you, Humphrey! Dr. H was more awesome than Rufus ever thought of being and you're misread of that situation is officially the stupidest thing you've ever said or done. And you have a long and storied history of saying and doing monumentally stupid things.

God, I'm really starting to hate this show.

Mommy Issues and Daddy Issues and Boring Shit, Oh My!

Last night I decided I'm angry that my beloved One Tree Hill (soapiest hour of awesomeness on TV) is on the bubble while it's equally ratings-challenged friend Gossip Girl has already been given another season despite the fact that OTH has been pretty damn good this season while Gossip Girl is so damn boring.

What happened last night? Chuck pouted about his mom, then paid her to leave, then listened to her sad story, then stopped pouting, had sex with Blair and made up with his mom.

Jenny acted like an asshole, purposely got herself busted with Skeevy's drugs, ran away when faced with moving back to Brooklyn and stole oxycontin from Lily.

Skeevy told Rufus, Lily and Jenny that his dad is an addict, Rufus didn't care, flushed his drugs and told Jenny she couldn't see him any more. All Jenny got out of the story was...nothing. I hate her.

Dan dated a girl named Melissa (because "Melissa is a nice name" - thanks, Dan) that he met in the hall. Vanessa dated a gay guy named Paul that she broke up with a month ago. Melissa and Paul dumped Dan and Vanessa. Dan and Vanessa made out and then had sex.

Dan and Serena proved once again that they have no concept of appropriate nookie locales and also that they are really only suited to standing around and looking pretty.

There, you're all caught up.

The world's most boring drug deal...

I was so excited for Gossip Girl to come back after being off the air for 3 months that I forgot how boring the show had become. I was braced for soapy awesomeness and what I got was a raging case of narcolepsy.

Jenny is still hanging out with that skeezy, drug-dealing son of probable Euro-trash and basically working as his mule. Classy. She comes up with a plan to sneak drugs into an official event for the French president (or something - I might have been asleep when they explained what the hell this event was) so that they can deliver a shit-ton of pills to Mr. French's bitchy daughter. The plan is to sew them into a replica of the shrug that Bitchy will be wearing to the party and then swap coat check tags.

The plan seems solid enough - for something Jenny came up with anyway - until Skeezy runs into Serena on the street. It seems the two of them were classmates at the boarding school that S attended during her lost year after she "killed" that guy and had dirty on-the-bar sex with Nate at that wedding. Remember? Good times!

And speaking of Nate...he and Serena are a couple now. Well, he apparently left town to spend time with his grandfather about 30 seconds after S got out of the hospital, so their relationship has been limited to late-night sexting so far but now that he's back, they are going to go on their first date to Mr. French's dinner because why WOULDN'T those two be invited to a state dinner? Anyway, armed with a plan to "take it slow" the two of them immediately lose all control over their libidos and end up fucking on Elenore Waldorf's living room floor. Thank God in Heaven that Darota is out of town because that poor woman does NOT need to know what's been happening on the surfaces she's charged with cleaning. And btw, S is the worst house guest ever.

After their tryst, S meets B and Nate meets Dan and the bad advise starts flying fast and furious. Blair thinks that Serena should stop being such an easy slut and start playing hard-to-get bames because if Nate knows she's so easy he won't want her anymore. Never mind that everyone on the PLANET knows that Serena gives it away like cheap candy and Nate has already been the recipient of her sweets before so Blair is making no kind of sense. Meanwhile, Dan has convinced Nate that S will get bored with him if he's too available. So Nate tells Serena that they should go back to the take it slow plan and therefore should NOT go to Mr. French's together. S, in turn, thinks this is Nate being tired of her free milk already and decides to make him jealous. So she asks Skeezy to take her to Mr. French's with him.

And now we're back to the world's most boring drug deal, already in progress. Skeezy tells Jenny that he appreciates her plan but he's taking Serena to the dinner and having her wear the hideous shrug and that pisses Little J off so she decks herself out and tracks down Nate at the front door of the dinner and offers to be his date. Why he agrees is any one's guess. Once inside S and N act like middle-schoolers around each other, and Skeezy tries, and fails in epic fashion, to get S out of the shrug, and Jenny just relishes his crushing defeat because Skeezy really isn't much of a match for our newest Heather.

Finally, Nate and Serena fuck on the coat room floor (or a settee in the coat room - whatever, they are huge with the inappropriate coitus this week) and then Jenny yells at the coat check girl to give the shrug to Bitchy and then she tells Skeezy to ask her out.

In other UES news, Chuck finds his mom but she won't admit she's his mom and then Blair gives her a talking to so we all know the shit is about to fly. And Rufus is all holier than thou with Lilly for kissing Papa Van Der Woodsen so he climbs up onto his mighty high horse, lectures her like a small child about lying and cheating and promptly drops in unannounced to another woman's hotel room. Jackass!

Oh yeah, and Dan is all bummed out because he told Vanessa he loves her and now she's avoiding him. No one in the universe cares.

GQ Puts Chuck In A Corner

(Ed Westwick)

First Drugs, Now Prostitution

I'm guessing...just based on Little J's wardrobe here, that that's the direction they're taking her character.

Bart-els and Shames

The CW put two more of it's shows on ice for the remainder of 2009 last night,and I'm actually kind of relieved. First because it gives me a chance to catch up on something other than television - like the DVDs I've had at home for over a month and haven't watched, or the book I need to finish for book club before January, or my Christmas shopping and socializing - and second, because Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill both need to take a time out and think about what they've done so far this season, and how they can do it better the rest of the season.

So it's been a year since Gossip Girl killed the worst parent on a show full to the brim with really bad parents, Bart Bass. You know how Chuck didn't deal well at first? Running away and drowning his sorrows in whores and drugs and briefly letting his slimy uncle befoul our show until the combined powers of Blair and Lily pulled him out of his tailspin? Well the anniversary of Bart's death has brought with it the return of sullen and pissy Chuck.

His dad is in his head and as Chuck imagines it, Bart is none too proud of Chuck's less-than-ruthless behavior in matters of business and love. Imaginary Bart spends the episode insisting Chuck buy a homeless shelter and turn it into luxury lofts and dump Blair because the warm feelings of love Chuck has for her make him soft and weak.

Oh, speaking of soft and weak, Tripp's been rolling around between the sheets with Serena for a few days at the van der Bilt country home when it suddenly occurs to him that it's incredibly stupid for a newly elected Congressman to leave his wife for a teenager who refuses to keep either her ass or her boobs fully covered when in public. So he and his wife come to an understanding that they'll stay married and he can quietly and discreetly fuck whoever he wants on the side. Unfortunately, Serena is both young and stupid so she didn't see that coming and she tells Tripp to screw off but her timing, as usual, sucks because they have this fight in a moving car on a country road at night. Tripp crashes the car and nearly puts S through the windshield then moves her into the driver's seat and leaves the scene.

For that, he gets decked by Nate who, in case I haven't mentioned it lately, is now the most awesome person on the show.

Nate calls everyone to let them know Serena has been in an accident; Lily stops trying to tell Rufus that she probably nailed her first ex-husband while she was pretending her mom was dying of cancer; Dan stops making excuses for why he won't be nailing the weird drama girl in the ugly blouse and rounds up Blair (in her jammies) and Vanessa and the three of them head to Nassau County together on a road trip I would have paid good money to see; Chuck tells his imaginary dad to shut it and his driver to stop looking at him like he's crazy and get him to the hospital with a quickness; Jenny and Eric push pause on their fight for the car ride up with Lily; Rufus stays home to try and find Serena's insurance card - which she has in her purse! - because Lily is a big, fat chicken.

While at home, Rufus gets a visit from Wifey-poo with the letter of extreme contrivance. Later, Jenny and Eric make up because it turns out that Eric's brand of awesome doesn't translate into scheming nearly as well as I had hoped. I guess he didn't live with Chuck quite long enough. The young van der Bassphries arrive home with mom - Rufus no where to be found but the missing letter back on Lily's desk - and then Little J sneaks out to deal drugs with Kevin Zeggers whom I really hoped had gone away.

Meanwhile a heart-to-heart between Blair and Chuck at the hospital results in a near perfect demonstration of what people mean when they tell someone to be a man, as Chuck acts like a real man for maybe the first time. He leaves the shelter to the homeless and takes yellow roses to his dad's grave where he finds a woman who has beat him to it and that woman is totally his mother! DUN!

Dan tells Vanessa that he loves her and she says she loves him too but hers is like "yeah, I love you too, buddy!" and his is all "I luuuuurve you." Rejected!

Nate stays by Serena's side all night because he is awesome.

The end.

A bit further south on One Tree Hill, a whole lot of caca del toro.

That slap that Mrs. Edwards dealt him last week, must have jarred something loose in Dan's head and now he's decided to stop profiting from his evil deeds and instead quit his show, leave his money-grubbing whore, er, wife, and give all of his money to charity. Rachel is pissed and commences with the big-talk all "I'll make him pay" or some such nonsense when she she gets the divorce papers from his lawyer, but then the lawyer astutely points out that he GAVE HIS MONEY AWAY so he has nothing to pay her with. I'd almost feel bad for Rachel if she weren't always such a massive bitch.

Which reminds me, the writers have decided to completely disregard Brooke's heretofore established personality and awesomeness and instead make her an intolerant, insensitive, pouty, whiny, selfish shrew.

Julian felt bad about the overly-harsh things he said to Alex last week so he goes to see her and interrupts her while she's busy bleeding to death mid-suicide attempt. He stays with her in the hospital to make sure she's ok and that pisses Brooke off because...well, shrew. Julian tells Alex that it turns out their movie will be made and she will be involved and that he'll be her friend unless she tries something like this again and then he will write her off forever. He tells Brooke that he loves her and he wants to be with her and that he's making the movie with Alex because as it turns out, those two things are not necessarily mutually exclusive! Brooke tells him that she feels he is destined to leave her for Alex because he met Peyton when she was vulnerable after her breakup with Lucas and he fell for Brooke when she was in need of help with Sam so he's clearly got a pattern of falling for damsels in distress. He tells her that he just can't bear to see people throw their life away based on a lack of self esteem because he watched his mother do it and it broke his heart. It's a very heartening story and a real glimpse into Julian that Brooke then spits on when she screws up her face into a pouty, pissy little snit and makes it about her again...some more.

Victoria hires a guy to design COB's new men's line without consulting Brooke and Brooke is just like "oh, ok." She was probably just too tired from being a bitch to Julian to work up a good annoyance at her mother.

News of Alex's attempted offing causes Millie to feel bad for approximately 1/2 the episode. She cries to Mouth, she apologizes to Brooke (who fires her - because let's face it, that had to happen - and tells her to get help because they are still friends), she sort of apologizes to Alex but not exactly. Mouth takes her to rehab and they have a touching goodbye and then she sneaks her skank-ass out. She and Rachel need to take their show on the road because Tree Hill and I have had enough of their shit.

Skillz got the job in LA so he and Mouth amscray to the west coast because Antwon Tanner has to go to prison now for that business with selling fake passports. I'm not sure why Lee Norris has to go with him but maybe it's because Mouth doesn't have a job in Tree Hill and his girlfriend is not his girlfriend anymore. Whatever the case may be, farewell gentlemen. Hope we see you again.

Jamie is pissed that his parents are moving him to Spain so he swears, and Haley washes his mouth out with soap. Then Nathan takes him to the bar where Grubbs works his bartender mojo on the Scott men but can't on Miranda because he totally likes her. Then Grubbs and Nate and Haley and Jamie get into a tomato throwing fight that is actually fairly fun.

When everyone has left Tric/Red Bedroom, Grubbs (of the IRL band Wakey Wakey) sits down at the piano to play and sing a bit and Miranda sees and now I think she kind of loves him too. Let's keep Miranda and Grubbs around and bid a final farewell to Alex, Rachel and Millie!

Quinn finds out from Clay's old assistant that one of his clients (a Center for Sacramento) has received bad news that his mom is dying of cancer. He goes to see the guy, who's from Raleigh don'tcha know, and tells him that he's been fired from the agency but that he would like to help if there's anything he can do. A really hilarious cheerleader audition from Quinn and some smart negotiating from Clay later and the two head back to Tree Hill to save the day for the James-Scott's.

Just as Nathan is about to sign his contract to play in Spain, Clay and Quinn stop in to tell them that if Nate will sign with Clay, and get off his weird high horse about Clay and Quinn dating (because Clay "plans to fall insanely in love with her"), and sign a $15M contract with Sacramento right now, then Sacramento will hurry up and trade him (along with the center whose mom is sick) to the Charlotte Bobcats right away and the family can remain in Tree Hill.

Everyone is happy there and Jamie and Nathan go on tour with Hailey until basketball season starts.

The previews imply another, shorter fast forward in time when we catch back up with the folks in Tree Hill in January. Let's all hope that the time away helps someone in the writers room find Old Brooke and bring her back because New Brooke is close to impossible to watch!

This Is A First

I never expected to see a man with an outfit that out-gay'd Chuck Bass...though, in fairness, this is not an on-set picture so I guess the lesson here is that Chuck Bass may dress gayer than Carter Baizen but Sebastian Stan dresses gayer than Ed Westwick.

Coke Whores All Around!

Sorry I'm tardy with my posts today...my trip to the dentist slowed me way down this morning.

Let's talk about television, shall we?

Gossip Girl gave us the fallout from the unholy threesome and proved once and for all that the only people on this show that know anything about anything are Chuck, Blair, and Nate.

Vanessa and Duff engaged in a juvenile tug of war over Dan during a Snow White/Lady Gaga-themed cabaret featuring Blair as the evil queen (duh), Duff as Snow White (ugh) and Dan as Prince Charming (ppffftttt!) with Vanessa directing. That wasn't even a dream sequence, it played out in real life! Duff broke up with Dan when she decided that the way he kissed V during their creepy-capades meant he loved V, causing Dan to "realize" that he still harbors deep feelings of love for Vanessa even though there has been nothing at all resembling these feelings since a flashback from the first season, but whatever. If he does really have these feelings, it is possible they were brought on by the fact that Jessica Szohr has the most gorgeous eyes ever.

Serena can't keep it in her pants around Senator Tripp and once Nate's mom schools Tripp in who exactly was responsible for Project Hudson Hero, Tripp is more than willing to roll in the hay with the hot blond teenager who is very much not his wife. Which is really too bad, because I was quite enjoying the scenes where Nate was keeping S away from the Senator with a whip, a chair, tales of Dan's ridiculous love life, shots of tequila, and his own extreme sexiness. Even if I did think that was a random place for the writers to go after so much time has passed.

And finally, Chuck continues being a respectable business man by playing tour guide for a diplomat's son in the form of Kevin Zeggers, who I have to say, has looked hotter. But before they head to the planetarium or some other lame locale, Chuck makes a stop at Prada Marfa Palace to drop off some Bass Industries paperwork to Lily. That's where he takes some good-natured familial ribbing from new step-dad Rufus (love!) and then agrees to let Jenny take his diplomat-sitting duties since Kevin Zeggers is setting Little J's pants a flame.

But it turns out that the Zegg is running his own pharmaceutical business. Jenny discovers this and continues to tag along with him and even use her crotch as a sort of "bag man" during a transaction. She is clearly uncomfortable and attempts to make a break for the powder room but Zegg is all creepy and shit and won't let her. That's when her new big brother (and former would-be date rapist - because that's how far shit on this show has come people!) pops in (love!). Chuck schools Zegg in the finer points of who not to mess with. Informing him that Housekeeping found his stash and that he and his father can take their diplomatic asses out of his hotel with a swiftness or they can catch up to their bags on the curb. Zeggy tries to flex his muscle and Chuck counters with "I'm Chuck Bass. Even Europeans must know what that means." (LOVE!!!)

He then spirits Jenny home and tells her to, you know, stop trying to nail drug dealers or before she knows it she'll get herself in so much trouble that even Blair and he will not be able to rescue her. As soon as she's back in her room she texts Zeggy with a proposition for doing it again some time. Man is that little bitch ever stupid!

And drugs were a main plot focus over on One Tree Hill too, as Millie continued her warp-speed slide into coke-whore-dom. She demanded a 1/2 million clams from Brooke for being the face of COB - even though the campaign is "zero is not a size" and with every passing minute Millie gets closer and closer to zero so for that and many other reasons Brooke would like to tell her to shove her demands and her 'tude up her annoying ass. Then Alex called her out for stealing and snorting all her coke, Millie swore she'd stop but then 10 minutes passed and she went into withdrawal so she called some other skinny coked-up model who came over and got high with Millie in the bathroom. That's when Mouth busted her for it and though we didn't actually see him kick her sorry ass out of his apartment, I certainly hope that's exactly what happened because developing a drug problem is one thing, but a drug problem on top of her newly atrocious personality is more than anyone should put up with. Ever!

Anyway, off to Tric she went where she did some shots with Alex, who actually did the shots this time because she's all depressed over Julian not loving her. I would feel sorry for her if the entire Julian/Brooke/Alex triangle story weren't so utterly ridiculous.

Oh yeah, and despite the fact that we didn't see it when she was at the doctor, it turns out that not only was Brooke not pregnant last week, but due to some un-named medical ailment that her doctor could diagnose just as easily as diagnosing "not pregnant," she's unable to ever have children. And when she tells Julian it brings them closer together (until the next episode I'm sure) so they're all snuggled in bed together when the phone rings at 3am and it's Millie informing Brooke that she (and Alex) were arrested and need her help. Brooke says no and hangs up which...cold! I mean, I'm starting to hate Millicent quite a lot but still, that was Victoria harsh right there.

Speaking of Victoria, she's back in town and fixin' to fuck the beard right off of Psychic Bartender Man.

Nate is ten kinds of pissed that Clay did not get him a contract with Carolina so he heads to his house for a confab and finds Quinn there, calling Clay "baby," - weird - and that is just one step too far for Nathan so he fires Clay. I could almost understand it - finding out via ESPN that you don't have a job is just traumatic enough to cause you to go temporarily postal after all - but then he asked Hailey if she thought he was too hard on Clay and Hailey basically said he wasn't hard enough and then she went and called Quinn a career-killing slut-muffin (maybe not in those exact words). I called foul on the whole thing because no one in their right mind should listen to someone whose hair looks like THAT!

There was a really poorly written thing with Dan trying to drown Clay and then Clay telling Dan that his wife is dead and stuff which I totally didn't get. The upshot is that Clay is jobless because his firm fired him after Nathan did. Quinn is staying at a hotel instead of with Clay though how she can afford that with now discernible job I can't imagine. Dan might be friends with both Clay and Mouth now...my brain short-circuited during those scenes so I'm not entirely sure what's going on there. And Nathan and Hailey are a matched pair of assholes.

Right and Wrong

Last night was a mixed bag. Both Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill got some things right but some things very wrong.

Gossip Girl:

Right: Chuck pulled strings like the puppet master he so totally is, trapping Serena and Blair in an elevator and forcing them to make up.

Wrong: Mere moments after making up and making plans to hang with Blair for the evening, Serena sends B packing and decides instead to spend the night flirting with her new married congressman. Hooking up Tripp and Serena is stupid on the grounds that S would never have an affair with a married man, Tripp is not interesting enough to have an affair at all, and certainly not with a teenager!

Right: Eric and Blair team up and scheme up to take Jenny down several pegs because that emaciated, stringy-haired, little bitch has gone too damn far. Eric and Blair make a genius team.

Wrong: Nate saves Jenny from complete humiliation and kind of flirts with her again. I know Nate isn't the sharpest crayon in the box but how many times is he going to help Jenny be a terrible person? Also, the Nate/Jenny relationship had a chance, it didn't work out and it needs to be left in the past. Surely there is someone left in the 5 burrows that Nate hasn't already hooked up with that they can find to help give that poor kid a storyline of his own.

Right: Vanessa's heretofore unmentioned, adorable and hilarious obsession with Duff's Twi-light movie series. It is no wonder she and Nate got along so well.

Wrong: That threesome! I forgot until the drunken, flirty behavior started but it turns out that I do not in any way want Vanessa and Dan to be together. It is awkward and bad! And Nate is right when he asserts next week that the third party in a threesome is supposed to be someone you don't know. But if you do know them, it should be someone you already hate. And on that note, I say that the people who should have had a threesome are Blair, Chuck and Vanessa. That would have been hot and wrong in all the right ways. Duff, Dan and Vanessa was not hot and even I feel ashamed this morning!

Right: Nate in a tux.

Wrong: The cotillion dresses of both Little J and Blair.

Right: Rufus's total cluelessness about cotillions.

Wrong: Any cotillion ever letting any band perform a song with the word "bitch" in it. This is society people! Also, cotillion dresses are always white. Has anyone on this show even been to a cotillion before? WTF?

Wrong: Jonathan breaking up with Eric. I'm sad for Eric now even though I never thought Jonathan was remotely cute enough for him.

Right: Eric hinted that Jenny's intended escort was totally gay and he's super cute, so...new love interest!


One Tree Hill:

Right: Clay and Quinn finally kissed.

Right: Good father/son interaction between Nate and Jamie. Appropriately bad father/son interaction between Dan and Nate.

Right: Mouth metaphorically slaps Rachel and then Millie. Brooke physically slaps Rachel, then verbally slaps Millie.

Right: New bartender Grubbs. He has the ability to know what people want to drink before they ask him. When Dan sits down and orders a scotch neat, Grubbs tells Nathan "I would have guessed blood." I laughed and rewound to watch that 3 more times. Grubbs is good people.

Wrong: Everything else about the entire episode.

Brooke can not exhibit any self esteem whatsoever. She spends all of her time whining and bitching about Julian spending too much time with Alex effectively saying that she does not want him working and would rather he laid around on her couch all day waiting for her to come home from work and rip his clothes off. I find that both pathetic and disrespectful.

Unfortunately, he then made the completely lame-brained mistake of ditching Brooke without even telling her to go and "rescue" Alex when she went crying to him about how she found some coke in her luggage and was totally going to do it. The smart thing to do would have been to ask Brooke to come with him to help Alex. Which I guess would have been more likely if Brooke were acting like a remotely rational person lately and therefore gave some indication she could be helpful rather than just barge into the room and scream slut accusations at the crazy little addict.

In the end Julian gets pissed at Alex for faking the whole thing which she wasn't doing because she really did think there was coke in that vial. She had no idea that the newly HORRIBLE version of Millie snorted it all earlier that day.

Haley's hair continues to upset me because I know that it can look so lovely and instead it looks like that.

Clay biffs the contract negotiations for Nathan and manages to get Nate dropped from the team entirely.

Dan hangs around and creeps everyone out.

Threesome Night

Ok, it's probably not THIS threesome but on tonight's Gossip Girl, three characters will engage in a menage a trios. Oh, Gossip Girl! Always looking for the "controversy" ratings. It doesn't actually work but you keep on keepin' on my friend, because I love your trashy, racy, soapy ass!

.

P.S. Do you have any idea how long I've held on to this picture just looking for a reason or pithy title to post it? And now, like a gift from God himself...a good reason AND a pithy title!

Happy Birthday

Gidgit (Sally Field) is 63 today. I just saw one of her Boniva commercials this morning while I was getting ready for work and I can tell you one thing: she is the youngest-looking 63-year-old in history. Also, Gidgit's bathing suit looks just like my grandma's underwear.

Peter Deluise turns 43 today. I used to have a huge crush on Peter when he was on 21 Jump Street with Johnny Depp.

And finally, a happy 41st to Gossip Girl's Kelly Rutherford.

My Kind Of Gift Bag

Is this really the way bitchy teens on the Upper East Side package their gifts? Because I will become one of Little J's minions so fast it'll make your head spin if it is!

Caught On Tape

Last night some stuff happened on both Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill. It's not that it was boring stuff, but I'm in a mood and I don't feel like going on about it all so I'm going to hit the highlights.

Gossip Girl:

Duff told a story on Jimmy Fallon that made Dan seem weird(er than he actually is) but it was totally nothing and then there was a one month anniversary thing that made me throw up in my mouth a little, before the writers stretched plausibility to it's limit and I had to scream at the television "oh yeah? And when the FUCK did that second trip to Fallon happen, HUH?"

Serena and Blair fought like children and used a drunken moron and a hooker as weapons until Chuck gave them a little talking to about growing up and not acting like they were at a clearance sale at an outlet mall - what he'd know about that last bit I can not fathom. They might have made up but who the hell can tell with those two.

Vanessa caught something on video that initially made Tripp look really good, then made him look really bad. Nate tried to help and made things worse. Then Grandfather got blamed but it wasn't his fault so he wouldn't fess up and then Nate saved the day by taking the bullet so Tripp could be the hero again and win the election, which totally would have happened anyway because speeches made 20 minutes before the polls close have no bearing on the outcome. Anyway, in the end it turned out to be Mrs. Tripp who was the diabolical bitch. Also, Tripp and Serena are friends now and I don't know how I feel about that.

None of that matters though because next week things get dirty. There is a threesome of some kind, and we revisit this:

One Tree Hill:

Nathan, Skills and Mouth have planned a "guys weekend" to take Jamie and that annoying little friend of his camping and Haley and Brooke force Julian to go too so he can have some male friends for once in his life. There is awkwardness and then Julian helps Jamie out and then Skills tells Julian that Nate and Brooke once made a sex tape and, in a truly fantastic line delivery by James Lafferty, Nate notes "I lost my virginity to my sister-in-law, you don't think that makes for some awkward family get-togethers?" He then mentions how that's not even the weirdest incestuous aspect of his family (and that's when I realized that he's slept with two of his sisters-in-law and his wife's best friend at one time or another, plus, his step-mom spent several episodes trying valiantly to get in his pants so Nate's got some shit happening in the awkward family get-togethers department!). Anyway, after a ridiculous number of movie quotes and several uncomfortable-under-the-circumstances gay jokes, they become friends.

Quinn makes pot brownies for Haley and Brooke so the two of them act all chatty and paranoid respectively and eat a lot. Then there was a psychic and a whole thing with a Ouija board and a bunny rabbit.

Clay stayed home to spend some (more) quality time with his dead wife. She told him to get to gettin' it on with Quinn, he sent Quinn packing then ran after her and finally told her about Jodi Sawyer and her extreme deadness and then they spent the night on the beach talking.

Rachel bought off the family of a comatose boy in Mexico to let Dan have his heart and now Dan is haunted by the boy so he wants to go back to Tree Hill. I can not explain the connection, so please do not ask.

What's important is that next week, this happens:

Monday Night TV, Spread Out In A Nutshell

Gossip Girl was boring. You know, you'd think that when they open a speakeasy and they dress up, and they partner swap and they fight and the cops are called, that it would be good, soapy fun. But instead this episode was mostly boring and I'm not even sure why.

Rufus's love of Halloween drove him to carve Kiss-O-Lanterns (that's the band Kiss, not a bunch of puckered pumpkins) and then dress as Joey Ramone which...that wig was disconcerting.

Dan and Duff took there relationship to the next level (which was actually a little creepy to watch) after a whole lot of confusion about whether or not the love scenes in her Twilight-esque movie with her ex-boyfriend were equal to a sex tape. The upshot of that stupid story (seriously, Dan has to be the most judgemental ass in all the world) is that Nate had a couple of pretty hilarious lines during some early scenes with Dan wherein he pointed out that Dan has probably never seen what an orgasm looks like (poor, inept Dan) and also made me question his manhood with how much he knows (and likes) these Twilight-ish movies.

Chuck remained mad at Blair who tried to fix his lack of trust in her by going behind his back to Uncle Jack who fucked them over and then Chuck forgave her for reasons I still can not wrap my head around and Blair kind of acted like a douche to Serena who needed Chuck's club opening to be a success so that her hideous boss would stop torturing her. Serena eventually got the bitch off her back by making out with Duff's ex-boyfriend which could improve his career prospects (I have no idea how, so don't ask) and told Blair to take her crap-ass idea of friendship and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.

Meanwhile, Jenny shit all over her relationship with Eric who is the only friend she actually has and he told her to fuck right the hell off because it's one thing for her to have her minions dump yogurt on his head, but it is quite another for her to order those same minions to egg his (not cute enough for him) boyfriend. That final kiss-off scene could only have been better if he'd slapped her annoying face right into the end credits but instead he just shut the door in her face and she promptly retreated to her room where she tossed all of her Brooklyn clothes and her sewing machine out in favor of the expensive designer duds her new step-mom was footing the bill for. I hope that once the trash man collects all of it, Lily gets wind of what a total bitch Little J is and takes all the fancy clothes back leaving her with NOTHING!

So You Think You Can Dance was kind of boring last night. Everyone danced in groups and performed in their own styles. The hip hop number was pretty fun and I enjoyed Mandy Moore's contemporary piece, not least because it's the last time I'll get to see Billy Bell this season as he's had to leave the competition due to illness. But the three person tango (or whatever the hell it was) was kind of creepy and I am beyond agro with that bitchy wife and her CONSTANT assertions that her husband belongs to her. We all know he's your husband and none of us are trying to have sex with him, we're just watching him dance you miserable shrew! The tapping was boring and makes me pretty sure those folks could be leaving sooner than later. Sonya's jazz routine was also boring and disjointed and anything but sexy as she continually insisted it was supposed to be. Russell remains my lone favorite but hopefully tonight's episode will help me find some other people to vote for.

On a side-note, they re-did the stage to look more like the one at the Kodak Theater so it's 2/3 enclosed by an enormous, neon cocoon; the stage area is much too large for small groups, pairs or solos; the camera work and direction remain as bad as ever and now some of the angles are so bad that you can't even see the dancers for the thousand yards of stage...I am very unhappy with this remodel. And Nigel's obsession with getting Paula Abdul to be a guest judge on this show is dumb verging on creepy.

Thank God for One Tree Hill or last night would have been too much disappointment. In a fairly good episode that totally made me cry, Dan was the hero of the day when he tricked Lying Hobag into admitting that she never had sex with Nathan and in fact just saw this as an opportunity to make a little easy cash off a rich man (while simultaneously ruining his career, marriage, family and life - yeah, Dan can take his "sometimes bad things happen to good people" shtick and peddle it to a far more gullible person than I) thereby saving the day for the son who hates him. He also strongly implied that he knows Rachel doesn't love him and that he doesn't believe half of this redemption crap he's getting rich off of. So rest assured, Dan is still Dan and we can all still feel pretty good about hating him.

It turns out that Quinn's husband David did change in some ways that effectively made him a completely different person than who she fell in love with and she attempted to tell him at many stops along the road to douchiness that she wasn't terribly thrilled with these changes but mostly she dealt with the situation through passive aggressive pouting. So while I can see why she might not want to be married to David any more, I think she is partially at fault for not trying to work things out and instead just pouting and then bailing.

Through a series of flashback memories we follow the relationship of Clay and Sarah (who I will refer to from here on out as Jody Sawyer because of my deep, deep love of Center Stage) as they met on a bridge, she proposed to him (more on that in a second), she helped him be a better agent, they danced to Willie Nelson and then she died of grape Koolaid poisoning. Ok, I actually don't know what she died from but they're dancing all romantic like in their lovely open loft apartment when she declares she would love some grape Koolaid, she pours herself a glass, takes one sip, then makes a stricken face and collapses dead on the floor. No more Jody Sawyer.

Anyway, then her ghost insists that he stop holding on to her as if falling in love again will somehow negate the love they shared and start living. She lovingly pushes him toward Quinn and just when you think he'll take her advice because it's pretty clear that he and Quinn have a nice connection based on genuine affection and friendship, he practically orders Quinn to go back to her husband. What? I know!

In the most disjointed and tacked-on story of all time, Brooke bitched at Julian for still working with Slutty Actor Girl even though Brooke fired her despite the fact that Julian obviously wants to do SOMETHING other than sit around the house while Brooke works. He's a grown man with a passion for his chosen profession, for the love of loaves and fishes! Yes, Slutty Actor Girl got naked in front of him, but he didn't do anything so what the hell difference does it make? The Brooke I know and actually like has enough self confidence to not act like a jealous, petulant child and trust her boyfriend. Anyway, then she told him that she tried to propose to him but stopped when he told her he was going to Australia or New Zealand or wherever and then got butt hurt when he was railing at his controlling ass of a dad and said that they weren't getting married. So then he told her that he would like to marry her some day and she stayed sullen and mopey. This shit better end soon or I'm going to start hoping Julian does hook up with someone who isn't so annoying!

Now, I'd like to point out that this episode included two stories where women proposed to men and mention how much I support that. I am not a terribly old-fashioned person and thus I don't think that it's the man's duty to pop the question and I don't much care about elaborate proposals where the "romance" is over-the-top for no other reason than to impress people with the story later. I love it when women propose to men. Nothing could be more awesome, in my opinion, than a person of either gender, declaring a desire to spend the rest of their life with their partner. I hope that a whole generation of girls is learning from examples like these that they don't have to sit around and wait to be asked but can, in fact, take the lead on this important decision and be the one to do the asking. If I ever find a man I'd like to marry (you know, other than Josh Jackson), I hope I beat him to the question popping punch!

So Freakin' Cute

Matthew Settle and Kelly Rutherford (and their respective real-life daughters) giving a little demonstration of the awesomeness they tap into when they're playing a married couple with 1/2 a city's worth of children between them on TV every week.