The first thing you need to know about me is this:

I : Lost :: Beavis : Soda

I am Lostholio.

The mere mention of anything Lost will send me into a quivering fit, and so, mere hours before the long-awaited premiere of Season Four (tonight on ABC, 8pm EST/7pm CST), you can only imagine the trouble with which I am composing this piece, forcing my wee chubby fingers to overcome the excited agita that has wholly seized me for its own as I positively vibrate with anticipation.

When Mannion asked me, well aware of my Lost lust, to write a little something about the show in honor of its return, I thought I certainly could. How could I not write something about I show I so adore? I’ve done it before, surely I can do it again. The thing is, Lost is a hard show to talk about with a general audience—one doesn’t want to spoil anything for people who haven’t seen it, even as one can’t believe such people actually exist, and yet it’s nearly impossible to convey the enormity of its brilliance without the details. And one wants to talk about every infinitesimal detail with other fans, because broad strokes aren’t sufficient. “Did you notice that it was Nadia, the girl Sayid helped escape in Iraq, whom Charlie saved from the mugging in London and whose house Locke was inspecting in California?” Yeah, stranded on an island blah blah, but all this other stuff, too!

Which is why my friend Joanna, who got me hooked on the show, and I can spend embarrassing amounts of time amusing one another by discussing Lost like two LOLcats on speed.

Jo: And then you were like, “Dude!” and I was like “I know!” and then Locke was all “Claire I made you a Bugaboo stroller out of palm fronds and dung beetles” and Kate was all “I can haz fish biskut?” and Benry was all “My dad was mean to me that’s how come I kill people” and Walt was like “Rapid puberty feels like climbing the ropes in gym class at 147 mph.”

Me: And Michael was all “My son! My son!” and Jin was all “Udders! Udders!” and Sun was like “I know English and he’s saying Others” and Kate was all “Zuh? You know English? Cool.” and Sawyer was all “Amusing pop culture reference” and Rose and Bernard were all “Why aren’t we in the show more because we’re totally awesome” and Juliet was all “Benry?” and Benry was all “I’ll kill all you bitchez” and Desmond was all “Something something, brutha” and Hurley was like “Dude.”

Jo: And then we were all LOLLERSKATES, and Jack was all, “Waah” and Kate was all, “I’m wearing nothing but panties for no reason” and Sawyer was like, “Southern colloquialism” and Claire was like “Mah behbeh where is mah behbeh” and the Dharma people were all “We are creepy and mysterious and will steal your baby” and the island was all “I contain numerous secrets” and JJ Abrams was like “I have captured your imagination” and we were all kthx show us more making out and Jack was like “I’m wearing blue pajamas” and we were all let’s make babiez.

Me: And Mikhail was all “Eyepatches are the shizznit” and Roger Workman was all “My last name is Linus!” and Mister Eko was all “smoldering look” and Libby was all “Damn DUI!” and Anthony Cooper was all “I can haz kidnee?” and the column of smoke was all “It’s weird how I sound like a machine, right?” and the smaller island was all “Surprise!” and Locke was all “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” and Jacob was all “Now you see me; now you don’t!” and Richard was all “I look like I’m wearing eyeliner, don’t I?” and Christian was all “Jo and Liss totally want to blow me” and Jo and Liss were all “We totally do.”

That was for the Losties among us. And this is for those who have never seen the show my Scottish husband calls “the best fooking shoo in the histoory oof shoos,” but are secretly beginning to suspect that failing to watch it was a bad decision:

Go here, where you will find an amusing recap of the show so far—Everything You Need to Know about Lost in 8 minutes 15 seconds.

And then tune in tonight for the season premiere (ABC, 8pm EST/7pm CST). It’s gonna be great.

Let the jittering commence.

Shaker Dr. Nick emailed me this weekend to tell me about having inadvertently tuned into and then watched “one of the bizarre shows I’ve ever seen” in which ten former high school cheerleaders, now ranging in age from 25 to 42 and in weight from 136 to 175, go to “cheerleading camp” to be bullied and berated by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders trainer (and his wife) back into their former selves. The show, called “I Want to Look Like a High School Cheerleader Again,” naturally pits the contestants against one another, as they are “physically and emotionally challenged” by the trainer’s “tough Army-style fitness regimen” while competing for “a $50,000 prize and the chance to perform again in front of a live audience.”

Oh my.

For perspective on how profoundly grim this concept truly is, consider for a moment that it’s quite possibly sadder to imagine a grown woman in search of self-esteem performing as an actual cheerleader in front of an audience of people who expect her to keep her clothes on than it is to imagine a woman in search of rent money “performing as a cheerleader” in front of an audience paying her to take her clothes off. That, friends, is some dire stuff.

There’s a video sneak peek of the show (not embeddable) which introduces the show thusly:

Narrator: They were the darlings of their high schools, the most popular girls in class. Every girl wanted to be them. Every guy wanted to date them. And then… [record scratch!] …life happened. These ten former high school cheerleaders have a problem.

Contestant: My jelly belly!

Contestant: This jelly belly!

Contestant: My butt!

Contestant: My thighs!

Contestant: My bedonk-a-donk!

Narrator: So they’ve headed back to camp to recapture the confidence and bodies they once had.

Contestant [looking at scale registering 161]: That’s so not cute.

Narrator: Their journey back to cheerleaders won’t be easy, because bad habits [trainer yells: "Let's go! Let's go! You're wasting my time!"]—and bad attitudes—die hard.

Trainer: What are you doing here?

Contestant: I came here to better myself!

Trainer: Then what are you doing talking?! [points to ground] Better yourself!

And on and on it goes, describing how the “girls” will be tested at every meal with piles of junk food and how their endurance will be stretched to its limits, etc. etc. etc., interspersed with clips of former cheerleaders sadly admitting, “I’ve been on every diet; I’ve tried to lose weight,” and “Nobody other than my husband has called me pretty in a long time.”

It’s actually painful to watch.

The worst part of it is train that’s inexorably barreling down the tracks—the one that means “life” will “happen” again, which makes maintaining a body dependent on extremely time-consuming daily workouts and a very specific, non-family-friendly diet a practical impossibility for these (mostly) working mothers. Attaching self-esteem so inextricably to this physical ephemeron is just all kinds of cringe-inducing from the long view, as one imagines hard-won confidence melting slowly away as rock hard abs give way to the dreaded “jelly belly” once again.

I want to bring these women to a boot camp of my own design, where they are not faced with hard work-outs but hard truths. It’s a lie that every girl wanted to be them. It’s a lie that every guy wanted to date them. (Some guys wanted to be them and some girls wanted to date them, for a start.) It’s okay if no one but your husband calls you pretty. It’s okay if you’ve got junk in your trunk. None of these things have anything to do with being a good or happy person. Looking “like a cheerleader” is not the apex of anyone’s full potential.

And then there’s the problem with their definition of what “a high school cheerleader” actually looks like. The name of the show, of course, isn’t “I Want to Look Like I Did When I Was a High School Cheerleader.” It’s “I Want to Look Like a High School Cheerleader Again,” reinforcing the narrative that cheerleaders share some inherent characteristics, that they’re all bearers of some magical phenotype that excludes the imperfect, mere mortals with flaws. But that’s not the case, is it? I knew two fat cheerleaders in high school—one in my class, one just behind mine—and not “fat by cheerleader standards” but fat. They were bigger than any of the women on this show, and they could hop around and flip and twirl and yell “Go Team!” at the top of their lungs just as well as any skinny girl. But the women on this show don’t want to look like them. And I’m quite sure they don’t want to look like the cheerleader at my high school with severe craniofacial deformities, either. Nor my college acquaintance who’d been a high school cheerleader and had only one hand.

They all looked like cheerleaders to me. Because ultimately what makes someone look “like a cheerleader” is pretty much a cheerleading uniform.

What makes someone a woman of confidence is something altogether different. A lasting poise is harder to come by, but I suppose it doesn’t make good TV.

[Crossposted at Shakesville.]

We need to talk about Flight of the Conchords. Why? Because it’s a gazillion little bits of hilarious goodness stitched together with golden strands of awesomeness, all wrapped up in a big bow of brilliance and topped with a cherry of jocose absurdity. I mean, if that’s not worth talking about, what is?

If you have no idea who or what Flight of the Conchords is, it’s a two-man band. And it’s a show about them. The band is fake, in the sense that they’re really comedians, even though the band is also sorta real, and the show is fake, in the sense that the real Jemaine and Bret aren’t totally stupid. But they are really Kiwis on the loose in the US. Hang on. I’ll just let HBO, which airs the show, explain:

Flight of the Conchords follows the trials and tribulations of a two man, digi-folk band from New Zealand as they try to make a name for themselves in their adopted home of New York City. The band is made up of Bret McKenzie on guitar and vocals, and Jemaine Clement on guitar and vocals.

Bret and Jemaine have moved to New York in the hope of forging a successful music career. So far they’ve managed to find a manager (whose “other” job is at the New Zealand Consulate), one fan (a married obsessive) and one friend (who owns the local pawn shop) — but not much else.

Yeah, okay. That sums it up pretty well. Except for the glaring omission about the little bits of hilarious goodness and the golden strands of awesomeness, but hey–not everyone has a flair for gushing hyperbole. The thing is, you really just need to see the show. So there’s a full episode below the fold, in three pieces. But if you’re at work, or don’t feel like watching a half hour of YouTubery, even if it is highly awesome Flight of the Conchords YouTubery, then here’s just a short clip to whet your whistle.

Hip-Hopopotamus vs. The Rhymenocerous

My rhymes are so potent that in this small segment
I made all of the ladies in the area pregnant!
Yeah—sometimes my lyrics are sexist
But you lovely bitches and hos should know I’m trying to correct this.

Seriously. Any more awesomeness, and I’d probably just die in a huge explosion of happiness.

[A new episode of Flight of the Conchords airs tonight on HBO at 10:30EST.]

Episode One:

Just pieces of him now remain - and not enough to know him well by proxy. Pictures, some newspaper clippings. Facts - a date of birth, a year of death, a wedding anniversary. His favorite joke. It’s said that one’s favorite joke says something about a person. John Noble’s favorite joke was the one about the guy who complains to his buddy that his wife is a terrible housekeeper, just filthy; “I’ve got to move the dirty dishes every time I want to piss in the sink.” A touch of appreciation for the absurd then, it seems. But mostly, there is just enough left of John Noble to draw an outline, with the rest to be filled in by supposition and imagination.

He was fiery - that much is sure. And he loved a good fight. It was a terrible habit that would stick with him throughout his life, yielding lost jobs but great stories. A man of small stature with an outsized need to prove himself, he was dishonorably discharged from the military service he had lied his way into, sometime just around his 20th birthday and the Spanish-American War. In later years, he would draw an imposing man into a fistfight on the bus, because the guy was eating a salami and “blowing his salami breath” at the irascible scrapper.

At 19, he married the 16-year-old Elisabeth Rogatz, forming a union that no one thought could possibly last; they were too young; they were foolish. And for more than sixty years, John Noble marked their anniversary by saying, “They were right - it’s never going to last. I’m going to divorce her.” It was a weirdly wonderful union that lasted until death parted them, just as they had promised each other it would, probably because it was such a perfect, peculiar match. His foul temper was nothing to her; the angrier he would get about something, anything, everything, the more she would laugh, and the more she would laugh, the angrier he’d get. He loved to bake, and once made her two cherry pies, which were still cooling when she came in and said, “Oh. I wanted apple.” John Noble picked up the pies and flung them against the wall, sending Elisabeth into gales of laughter as he stormed out and pie slid down the wall.

Then again, maybe what made their marriage work was spending much of it separated as John Noble was touring the world.

Small but incredibly strong, and flexible, he made a career for himself as an acrobatic contortionist. He trained with his aunt and his uncle, known as The Nolas, and for some time, the three of them worked together, ever pictured in the same order, with young John Noble on the right. After his time with The Nolas, which, one imagines, ended with the retirement of his relatives and mentors, he spent the next several years as a part of various acts, though none of them found him any measure of success beyond a living, no small feat itself in those days.

It wasn’t until John Noble founded The Richard Brothers: Comedy Gymnasts that he began to make a name for himself, even if it wasn’t his name. The other Richard Brother was not his brother, though they shared at least one notable trait in common - not being named Richard. From whence the name was taken is anyone’s guess.

(John Noble is the clown on the bottom, twisting his body into its own trapeze in the advertisement to the left.)

The Richard Brothers

The Richard Brothers toured for many years, traveling all over the world. In one of John Noble’s notebooks, he keeps a record of their destinations, and he can be followed from Rockaway Beach to London to Australia and back again, until his penciled notes are suddenly obscured with newspaper clippings - adverts for and reviews of their shows. Over time, the Richard Brothers move from opening act to headliners. The comedy gymnasts could draw a crowd, ladies and gents.

And John Noble always came home to Elisabeth. During the years he was a Vaudevillian, they had two daughters - and later, as a complete surprise, a son, born when his sisters were already nearly adults themselves and his father’s aging body was soon to end his career as a traveling acrobat. This son was called Gene, and he was my grandfather.

One night in 1958, John Noble said to his son, like him an ardent stamp-collector, “Gene, I can’t die yet. I’ve got too much work to do on those stamps.” Though John Noble was 80 years old, he was in perfect health, strong in body and mind. Gene said, “You’ll live another ten years. What are you talking about?” That night, John Noble died in his sleep.

His granddaughter, my mother, remembers him to me, tells me of his beloved cat Tommy, tells me of the time he hit his head on the edge of a trampoline and came home with his entire head bandaged and one wee eye poking out. Some of these are simply stories she has heard, part of the oral tradition of our family, and I search for myself in them. What part of John Noble has passed to me?

I have felt him my whole life in my body, stretchy and bendy and able to contort itself into awkward pretzels. My joints, my tendons, my curving fingers - they are his. Gene could wiggle his ears; I can roll my eyes in opposite directions. I am short and strong, with muscled legs, like my mom, and Gene, and John Noble, who wanted to see the world.

Looking through his things, the remnants of his life, on Easter Sunday, my mom pulls an ancient, flaking newspaper from a bag, and my husband, Iain, picks it up gingerly to look at it. “This is a paper from Britain!” he exclaims. It is a copy of The Performer, from May 1914, on the very precipice of World War I, and there is no hint in its pages of the imminent conflict. Iain reads apartment listings for London and Edinburgh, his hometown. He turns brittle pages gently. We look at advertisements for the Vaudevillians converging in London from all over the world.

“Isn’t it amazing,” says Iain, “that ninety-three years ago, this paper was brought from Britain, and now here’s a Scotsman, reading it in Indiana.” As big as the world ever may have felt to John Noble, in that moment, it felt beautifully small to me.

The Vaudevillian, John Noble

[Originally posted at Shakesville.]

Like any good Brit, Bond fandom is in my husband’s blood; he’s read the books and seen all the films—and like any good Scot, he regards Sean Connery as the Best Bond in the History of the Universe. I’d never seen a Bond film until I met Mr. McEwan, and when we went to see Casino Royale at the cinema when it was first released, it was the first time I’d ever seen one on the big screen. And, quite honestly, I went along because Mr. M. loves the films, not because I had any particular yen to see it myself. It’s not because I don’t like the genre; I could watch the Bourne movies a thousand times and never tire of them. It’s just that the Bond franchise didn’t quite jive with my, um, aesthetic.

Part of it, naturally, was being a crabby old stick in the mud who had no joy for one of the most celebrated Western male icons using scantily clad women like disposable toys, but that wasn’t the only reason I was never especially enamored with Bond, James Bond. By late in the series, circa Brosnan, the unveiling of super-gadgets and elaborate hi-tech Houdinism was so hackneyed it was turning Bond into a satire of his former self. This is James Bond. This is James Bond on digital steroids. All pretense of captivating plot (and, largely, good acting) were left by the wayside in favor of the thinnest of connective tissues holding together one explosion, one daring and death-defying getaway, and the next. If you’re going to relegate a recognizable and lit-based character to the action equivalent of a porno, you ought to at least have the best special effects in the biz—and they didn’t.

So I was glad that reviews of Casino Royale were announcing a New Bond, back to the Old Bond, or a Bond reimagined, depending on one’s perspective and familiarity with the books, but in any case celebrating a relief from Bond’s distracting dependence on his ubiquitous gadgetry. But few of them saw fit to mention that what was arguably the most misogynist mainstream film franchise in history had exiled its sexism, too.

When we watched Dr. No again recently, between Bond referring to Moneypenny as “government property” and reacting to the perpetually half-naked Honey Ryder’s claim that she did in her rapist with a black widow spider by telling her, “Well, it wouldn’t do to make a habit of it”—this, from a character who regularly kills men for less—I was reminded how big a role sexism played in the series right from its start. Over the years the Bond girls—Honey Ryder, Pussy Galore, Kissy Suzuki, Plenty O’Toole, Holly Goodhead, Penelope Smallbone, Xenia Onatopp, ho ho ho—moved from being nearly exclusively damsels in distress or wicked sexpots to occasionally being closer to his equal and even sometimes assisting him (and the “Bond girl groups” that served as background eye candy were mostly cast aside after The Living Daylights while Dame Judy Dench became M). But there were never many of them who escaped the fate of being one of Bond’s fuck trophies.

In Dr. No, there is the requisite bombshell for whom Bond has no use but the extraction of information. Once that mission has been accomplished, he first takes her to bed before he calls the cops to come haul her away. No need to pass up a good piece of tail. In Casino Royale, Bond uses the babe for intelligence-gathering, but not to get his rocks off. He makes her his source, but not his whore.

Of those reviewers making mention of Bond’s newfound respect for women, they mostly cite his expression of those three little words: “I love you.” But any dipshit can say “I love you”—respecting women has never been a prerequisite for that; hell, there are plenty of women and men saying it to other men who have said it without having any respect for the person to whom they were saying it, too. What they’re missing is the subtle commentary in scenes like the one in which Bond delivers to Vesper a sexy dress she’s meant to wear to distract his opposition in a card game, only to find she has delivered to him a tailored jacket he’s meant to wear to fit in at the table. And after making her point that she doesn’t cede the upper hand to anyone, Vesper promptly turns Bond’s request to use her feminine wiles on its head—by walking into the room wearing that dress directly in front of him, instead of his competitors. He admonishes her that she was supposed to distract the other fellows, not him. “Was I?” she asks coyly, making those words for all the world sound like the coolest “Fuck you” ever uttered.

By the time Bond tells her he loves her, we actually believe it, because he’s finally been given a woman who’s worth loving. And so have we.

What’s particularly worth noting about the new Bond is that he’s still smoking hot, cool under pressure, hard as nails, the smartest, wittiest guy in the room. In losing his toys—of both the electronic and flesh-based sort—he hasn’t lost any of the things that really make him Bond. Imagine that.

[Originally posted at Shakespeare's Sister November 20, 2006.]

So, okay, I finally gave The Real Housewives of Orange County a chance. And, within 15 seconds, I wanted to gouge out my eyes. Between one ninny, who evidently went to the George W. Bush School for Talking Good, going on about “reindependisizing” herself, and another ninny, who maybe needs to reindependisize herself, waxing political about being a Republican because her parents were and now her husband is, I honestly began to wonder if the show had been conceived as a weapon against feminists, in the hopes it would just make our heads explode.

The women on this show could not be more cartoonish, which one might credit to editing, except for the fact that the Housewives are back for a second season, clearly pleased with the results of the first. They—and their various men—enthuse about not having to be nice, because they’re rich, and sigh about how easy is it to forget about all the things about which “the rest of the world” has to worry. Honey, thought I, last time I checked, Orange County was still on the globe, and a global climate crisis won’t skip your house because it’s got a six-car garage.

The depth of vapidity and avarice are enough to make me weep, as is the sickening realization that we’re meant to hate these women. The Housewives sort of seem to know that, too, but they’re too silly to realize we don’t hate with envy, but disdain. Don’t hate me because I’m rich and beautiful and fabulous, they seem to say—and all I can think is, “Okay. How about I hate you because you’re a hopeless, facile, gluttonous imbecile?” And, you know, I really don’t actually want to hate people I don’t even know, especially cardboard cutouts of women who quite likely feel immeasurably worse about themselves than I do, even in spite of their being closer to the arbitrary lifestyle and beauty ideals that are supposed to make us happy than I could ever hope to be.

The Real Housewives betrays the illusion of those promises—which I suppose could be an answer to my Why?, although I can’t imagine anyone who hadn’t yet twigged that the American Dream is so much glistening, gossamer codswallop would find enlightenment in the O.C.

Someone out there is being entertained, apparently, but I couldn’t count myself among them. It’s all too sad, too infuriating, too pitiful, too American. Not authentic America, the America of diversity, and struggle, and humor, and pain—it’s not American enough that way—but apathetic, voracious, materialistic, consumerist, privileged America; the America of Grover Norquist’s dreams and my nightmares. I get enough of that shit reading the news and the latest social Darwinist machinations of the rightwing; I don’t need it or want it in my escapist pursuits. So after I gave The Real Housewives a fair shake, I put on The Big Lebowski for the ten millionth time. Because, ya know, the Dude abides.

[The image above, perfectly capturing the hierarchy of the Housewives, is from Pretty on the Outside—a blog showcasing the original art of David Gilmore, who critiques our celebrity culture and obsession with vanity. This article was crossposted at Shakespeare's Sister.]

Not so many years ago, you launched into the collective consciousness, seemingly from the ether, with nothing to sustain your reputation for greatness. You, and your stories of debauchery and rebellion, were everywhere. Overexposure, thought I, thy name is Colin Farrell. For this, young lad, I unfairly dismissed you, hated you even. I was tired of you before I ever saw you in a film, and for this I apologize.

In Tigerland, you gave a hint of the talent that laid beneath your rather lovely skin, suggesting that the smoldering eyes were more than a mere aesthetic charm. A gateway, perhaps, to something real and raw. I began to reconsider my assessment. Then, there you were in Minority Report, a film for which I had no love at all, my pet, except for the opportunity it granted me to broaden my hopes for you that much more. You could hold your own against a certified star, and effortlessly upstage him. My heart opened a bit more with Phone Booth and The Recruit—not great films, but fun enough, and you were, I reluctantly admitted, captivating, even in films that did not aspire to greatness. Still, I was not wholly convinced, but then—then, Colin darling—was A Home at the End of the World. And you slayed me.

By the time the credits rolled over Bobby Morrow, you had reached through the screen and drawn me toward you, and I was perfectly content to never leave.

And that’s when everything started to go horribly, horribly wrong.

I watched you in the wreck that was Alexander, fighting to retain your dignity among its ruins, and you did an admirable job, but it was, in the end, a wretched failure. Well, everyone stumbles now and again, love. But you picked yourself up, dusted yourself off, rid your hair of its horrible brassiness, and careened headlong into another disaster.

I spent two hours of my life that I shall never get back with the horrendous mess that is The New World, and though every scene worth watching had you at its center, your soulful eyes conveying precisely what they were meant to convey and probably more, it was, quite plainly, another dismal flop.

And you followed it with Miami Vice. This, sweetness, did not, I’m afraid, rekindle the waning embers of your fire.

Beyond it, I see Pride and Glory, a film about cops with a costar called Edward Norton, who shares the name of another once-great actor full of spectacular potential. Whatever happened to him? I’m not sure two lost souls can arise from the ashes of the Phoenix. You ought steer clear of has-beens.

Speaking of which, we must talk a moment about this Woody Allen project. Can Woody deliver both you and Ewan McGregor from your chains? There may be an audience who yearn to see Sonny Crockett and Obi-Wan Kenobi waxing neurotic, but I struggle to define the demographic.

And there are rumors of another Terrence Malick film, which would certainly be the pinnacle of a dreadful trifecta of upcoming projects. As if The New World weren’t bad enough alone, you’ve got to add another of his meandering, dialogue-starved filmsongs to your teetering résumé, poised to co-star with Mel Gibson, to boot. This is not what I had hoped for, dear.

I’m going to give you a few names, my love, and request you commit them to your mind. Jane Campion. Sam Mendes. Damien O’Donnell. Marc Forster. Stephen Daldry. They are directors who need you, and whom you need. Chuck your agent. Get a new one who will phone these directors and endeavor to restore your luster. You won me over once, darling, but even true love fades with inattention. I am longing for our love affair that began at the end of world. Take me back, Colin. Make this old heart flutter again.

[This piece was originally published in similar form at Shakespeare's Sister in August of last year.]