Reviewed: Random Little Devils, and TV

It's funny how many ads there are for Egg Donors in the "Jobs" section on Craigslist. Is that a job?

I'm reading job listings every morning, since I'm in a semi-jobless limbo of just having moved combined with a really yuck job market. But I'm starting to work everyday again, and by that I mean, that old devil the writing life. And that makes me feel somewhat normal again.

But it's a new normal, and hard to get used to, because I'm a creature of habit. A homebody. A girl crazy with nostalgia and comfortable old shoes. I hate moving, which you probably wouldn't realize about me considering I've moved six times in the last ten years.

So I'm trying to take comfort in the little things:

1) Becoming crazily obsessed with the ABCFamily network, including their 13 Nights of Halloween and the best show ever, Greek. And before you think anything, know that I am not ashamed...and maybe you, my friend, should be watching as well: Greek is hilarious, subtle, exciting and completely entertaining. You are missing out. I cannot even tell you how much you are missing out. (I heart Casey and Cappie! Eeek! Squeal!)

2) Ranting about what the frick happened to One Tree Hill. It's no secret that I watch terrible TV. I love it. I live for it. If terrible TV didn't exist, I'm not sure what other joy I would get out of the world. Formerly the mac-daddy of bad television, One Tree Hill captured the gold every year purely by continuing to give Chad Michael Murray, the master of the tortured brooding look, multiple broods an episode. Not to mention the sadistic character of Dan Scott, the ultimate Bad Dad!

But CMM is gone now, explained away by having vaguely, "moved somewhere" which is curious given his character's previous penchant for asserting over and over again how the tiny town of Tree Hill was where he belonged. But now he has been replaced with whining, overly-brooding characters: a sports agent with a stupid, tragic past they aren't quite letting on about but you know is going to be idiotic, and another character's never-before-mentioned-newly-reappeared sister, who broods and broods and broods and broods about her impending divorce (she just needs to "find herself" guys, and it's terrible that she's hurting her husband, but something is "broken" and she "can't fix it" and here is where is ends up again and again and again about ten times an episode and I do not care.)

3) Listening to the Brothers Bloom soundtrack, particularly "Penelope's Theme".

4) Shopping for slippers.

5) Re-watching Kill Bill. Re-watching Terminator 2. Re-watching In The Army Now. Re-watching Adventures in Babysitting.

6) Wondering what Keith Coogan is doing now.

Reviewed: Aquafresh Extreme Clean

This toothpaste is disgusting. It tastes like cough drops.

And today I made a PB&J (heavy on the PB, heavy on the J) and it just wasn't great. Because things aren't the same in the West, and nobody sells Polander All-Fruit. Which makes me regret the half-full jar of seedless raspberry I had to throw in the trash the day we moved, because moving means you find yourself, regretably, throwing away perfectly good things. Mustard. A can of creamed corn. And I'm still feeling the weight of that garbage bag on my conscience.

About a month and a half ago now, we were moving and packing and discarding and there isn't a harder place to try and do good than New York City. Because it's not easy to lug 6 bags of clothes and shoes and books and CDs and various other castoffs twenty blocks away to the Goodwill when your only wheels are a shopping cart.

And it wasn't just clothes and books, but trying to recycle things like old computers, stereos, printers. I had to throw my broken DVD player straight into the trash because after Googling in vain I found that the only place to recycling electronics was somewhere in the Bronx. Do you know how far that is from Brooklyn? It's completely ridiculous in a city of 8 million. Like telling the entire state of Virginia they have to drive to Cleveland to recycle...and no one has a car.

But despite the lack of All Fruit, and Black Cherry Schwepps, and Thai delivery, one of the many things I appreciate here is that Seattle recycles everything. It's practically composting against your will. New York could never pull something like this off; the rats would start overtaking people. And so my tread-lightly points are going back up.

Sometimes when I throw something away I take a minute to imagine where it will go. Because remember the movie Unfaithful? When Richard Gere dumps that body rolled up in a rug straight into the landfill? I mean, he just drives back there and his loafers are crunching around in all the trash with a dead body? It left an imprint in my mind.

And tomorrow when I wake up and take Joe to the airport for a funeral back in New Jersey, I'll also go buy new toothpaste and throw this full bottle in the trash and have the whole rest of the week to think about it.

0 stars.

Reviewed: General Hospital and James Franco

I know I'm treading on dangerous ground here. But for the last 6 months at least, I've withheld from yammering about General Hospital. There has been no yammering, no mentioning--not even minor references--and that was good for me. People didn't want to hear about it. I know that now.

But, you guys, James Franco is going to be on General Hospital! (Proof lies here.)

And today Joe was cleaning out his computer, erasing all the crap I collect there when I don't want to sully my Mac. And to his credit, he asked me before deleting this clip I recorded on General Hospital. And I screamed across the room, "Send it to me first!!!!"

I used to blabber on about General Hospital at the bakery where I worked in Brooklyn, and my good friend there was kind enough to listen. It's just that sometimes I can barely believe how lucky I am to see the kind of crap that comes up in peoples' minds and actually makes it to television on GH. It's really astounding, and entertaining and maddening and hilarious all at once. I love it, I really do. I can't help it.

The clip below is my favorite story line, the Hitman and the Nurse. The Hitman and the Nurse are in love but no one can know, because it is dangerous. Their secret love becomes more complicated by the child they share, which has to be kept even more secret because the hitman's "enemies" might try to use it against him. And it happened, too! It totally happened!

The secret kid gets kidnapped and held in a room with a bomb and then when the hitman goes to rescue the kid, he comes in and is shooting up this room full of all these bad guys dressed in black sweatsuits and as one of the sweatsuits is dying he pushes the button on the bomb detonator!!.......but luckily the hitman's ex-girlfriend--who is a PI and during this giant shootout was ninja-kicking a Russian mobster's blond seductress lawyer--manages to grab the secret kid and jump out the window....but the hitman just escapes the blast and watches the building blow up and screams, "JAKE!!!" (because that is the secret kid's name, because the nurse who is tortured by her love has named him after his hitman father) and tears, actual honest-to-god tears are in the hitman's eyes and his bewildered face looking at the explosion like, 'my crazy, dangerous life just killed my own secret kid' and then, miraculously, his PI ex-girlfriend who likes to wear leather jackets runs up with the secret kid and the day is saved.

Really, where else* can you get this stuff?

So now James Franco is headed in, and it's crazy, it really is. But it leaves me a little satisfied that he picked General Hospital. Because you know what this means, right. I have taste.

100 stars.

*I'm sad to report that One Tree Hill just isn't good for it anymore. Chad Michael Murray really was holding that show together, and now he is gone. And with him go the glory days of the heart-eating dog.