Rules of Attraction

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was actually a movie, but it was on HBO, so I guess it counts. It was the film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel, The Rules of Attraction. Let me just say straight off that the movie is terrible. I'm not sure how it happened, but Roger Avary managed to take a film that was filled with sex and drugs and still make it boring. Anyway, it's awesome because it stars Dawson! And he does bad, bad things. So instead of listing the plot, which is stupid, I'm just going to tell you all the awesome things you can see Dawson do if you watch this movie. I highly suggest recording it, and then just fast-forwarding to the Dawson scenes. Dawson drinks whiskey straight from the bottle! Dawson has sex! Dawson drives a motorcycle! Dawson looks angry! Dawson sells drugs! Dawson hangs out in his underwear and adjusts his package! Dawson takes a shit! Dawson picks his nose! Dawson says, "Rock and roll!" And he says it on two separate occasions. Dawson kisses a boy! Dawson masturbates while listening to "Afternoon Delight"! Dawson has sex with Mary Camden while 'shrooming! And then later, Dawson punches Mary Camden right in the nose! So all of that was awesome.

Average Joe

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week wasn't all that awesome, but it was sort of awesome, and I didn't see anything else, so it'll have to do. I watched the premiere of Average Joe and I did enjoy all the dorky-looking guys trying to pretend the only reason they didn't have wives was because women are shallow, when in fact, a lot of them were just kind of annoying. There were some decent guys in there, too. But the awesome part was when the bachelorette was about to meet her suitors, and she was clearly expecting a bunch of model types. So they had a stretch limo pull up and this hunk got out and the woman was all excited to meet him and he walked up and was like, "Hi! Nice to meet you. But I'm not one of the eligible bachelors." And then he just got back in the limo and drove away. Awesome! And the woman was like, "Wait! Can't you stay?" And then a bus drove up and the nerds piled out and her facial expressions were hilarious. I have to wonder what the producers said to her after that to get her to stay. And then another kind of awesome part was that there is one guy who is more traditionally good-looking, so he's an asshole, and he just thinks he's the greatest thing and I hope the woman eliminates him this week. That will be awesome. Also? His name is Zach. Perfect. And then there's the college professor who is so pretentious and obnoxious and thinks he's so smart. I know I'm supposed to root for the nerds, but that guy's just a douche. He even dressed like a douche. He wore a long coat, and he's about five feet tall and he just couldn't pull it off. So while it was not the most awesome thing I've ever seen, it was pretty awesome.

Little House: "At the End of the Rainbow"

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was the episode of Little House where Laura and her little buddy (who looks like a Monchichi) think they find gold in Plum Creek or whatever the creek was where they always went fishing. So it all starts when Mary drops a nickel on the ground and Willie and Monchichi get in a fight over it. Luckily, Mary is able to identify her nickel by the dent in the side (what?), so Miss Beadle gives it back to her and makes a comment about Sutter's Mill. This leads to a class lesson about Sutter's Mill, because Miss Beadle is all about the teachable moments. So then Laura and Monchichi go fishing and Monchichi hooks a fish and his line gets snagged and Laura goes into the water to help out and she's thrashing around like a bear and the fish gets away, plus she scares off all the other fish, like, good one, Laura. But then Laura notices all of these gold flakes on the bottom of the creek, like, how did they come to this creek practically every day and never notice the gold flakes before? But such is the way of Little House, so you just have to go with it. So then Laura and Monchichi decide to take all the gold out and get lots of money for their families, but they have to keep it a secret or it will be Sutter's Mill all over again. But the awesome parts were the fantasies that Laura had about her life after she got rich from the gold. In the first one, she and Mary wore all white and tiaras and rode up to school in a carriage. And Nellie and Willie were standing there in ratty clothes and dirty hair, like, I don't know why they got poor just because Laura got rich, like, apparently the wealth in Walnut Grove was a zero-sum game. And then Laura and Mary presented Miss Beadle with a box full of shiny apples, and then Nellie gave Miss Beadle an old, wormy apple and Miss Beadle just tossed it over her shoulder, which was pretty awesome. And then in Laura's second fantasy, the whole Ingalls clan was dressed all in white and the dirty Olesons were waiting on them hand and foot. And then in her third fantasy, every business in town had been renamed for the Ingalls family, including the Ingalls Mill, the Ingalls Bank, and the Ingalls Mercantile. Also, the town was renamed Ingalls Grove. So I guess Laura never heard of a little thing called humility. But then at the end, it turned out that it was fool's gold instead of real gold and Laura was all bummed out and they played the Little House theme in a minor key, but then Pa came and they had a heart-to-heart and everything was better. Which was awesome.

House Wars

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a new show on the USA Network called House Wars. It features four families, each of which moves into a new house in a development in Arizona. Each family is also teamed up with a designer, and each week, they have to decorate one room in the house. The rooms are then judged, and at the end of the season, the team with the most points wins their house. It sounds pretty basic, but the producers obviously made an effort to put each team with the designer that would cause the most conflict. This week, the teams had to work on the master bathroom, which included installing the toilets, sinks, showers, and flooring. The first team got pissed off at their super-flaky designer, and one woman called the designer a bitch about three times. Which was awesome, since the designer is so self-absorbed that she couldn't figure out why her team was pissed. The second team got a designer who clearly doesn't want to do any work, because she disappeared once the challenge was announced, and only showed up again at the very end, when she informed her team that she had just spent $600 on fabric, which put them over budget. In addition, her team only had a few hours left, and they hadn't even installed the tub at that point. The third team is all youngish women who have never done home stuff before, and so their designer ends up doing most of the work while they have paint fights. And the third team is a dad and his hottie triplet daughters. Their designer is a total diva named "Barclay" who actually slammed one triplet's arm in his car door "accidentally" when they got in a fight. So far all of the conflict has been between teams and their designers, but since each team consists of family members, I'm sure they will start arguing soon. And it will be awesome.

Stolen Innocence

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was yet another TV movie on the Lifetime Movie Network starring Ms. Tracy Gold (a.k.a. Carol Seaver) and titled Stolen Innocence. In this one (which was based on a true story!), Carol plays an eighteen-year-old who hates her parents and goes out and gets drunk all of the time. So, your typical eighteen-year-old. Except she and her best friend run away, but they only get, like, two towns away before they run out of money and the best friend wants to go home and it's her car so Carol hitches a ride with a trucker, like anyone thinks that's safe. But this trucker was a Christian or something because his truck said something about Jesus so he didn't try to kill Carol or anything. So then they got to a truck stop and Carol hooked up with Thomas Calabro (a.k.a. Evil Doctor Michael Mancini on Melrose Place). Except that Michael had a pageboy and wore hats all the time which made you start to think that the hair was really a wig, which it totally was, but also that it was one of those wigs that's attached to a hat, which is funny. So then Carol took off with Michael to Vegas, and she was totally in love with him even when she found out that he had stolen checks from a former employer, and even when she found out that he was previously married and had two daughters he never saw, and even when she found out he had stolen guns in the back of his truck. None of that bothered Carol too much. The thing that bothered her was when Michael tried to get Carol to take a gun and she wouldn't, so he pulled her hair and the gun went off and hurt Carol's eye. And then Carol was pissed and wanted to go home. So Michael came up with the brilliant idea of trying to get ransom money from Carol's parents, and Carol's parents called in the Feds. And then when they were supposed to be meeting to make the cash/Carol exchange, Carol's dad spotted them and despite the fact that they were at a complete stop and in a convertible, Carol totally didn't try to jump out of the car, which was bogus. So then there was a big standoff in a motel and Carol got to leave, but she was upset because she couldn't take her kitten (and I'm still not sure what the point of the kitten was) but then she and her kitten got to safety but Carol had decided that she still loved Michael and didn't want him to get killed even though he nearly killed her and raped her a few times so then the FBI agent (played by a really fat Terence Knox) talked Michael out of killing himself and he surrendered. So I'm not exactly sure whose innocence was lost, since Carol told Michael that she wasn't a virgin when they met, but it's such a typical TV movie title that I'm sure they just couldn't resist. And it is a pretty awesome title.

She's No Angel

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a movie on the Lifetime Movie Network (or LMN, for those in the know) called She's No Angel. It starred Carol Seaver (Tracey Gold) as a woman who worked as a bar waitress. So one night this guy grabbed her ass, so Carol decided to quit, but the ass-grabber was her boss's brother, so her boss refused to pay her, so Carol had no money with which to leave town. So then Carol closed the bar and the boss's brother raped her so Carol stuck him with a knife and then the boss tried to beat her up so she stuck him with a knife too and ran off. So then Carol hitched a ride with these newlyweds and Carol tried on the wife's engagement ring and just then they got in a giant car accident but Carol was ejected from the car so she was the sole survivor. When Carol woke up in the hospital, the driver's parents were there, and they thought Carol was their daughter-in-law, whom they had never met. So Carol half-assedly tried to set them straight a few times but not really, because her new in-laws were really rich and owned a vineyard and totally took her in. So then Carol found out she was pregnant by the boss's brother but her in-laws thought it was their grandchild. And also, Carol started hooking up with her "husband's" best friend, which is kind of ghoulish, but whatever. So then Carol's old boss figured out where she was and tracked her down and started blackmailing her. So Carol gave him some money she stole from the vineyard, and then gave him an heirloom bracelet that her mother-in-law gave her, and then some vintage bottles of wine. And the whole time, I guess I was supposed to feel sorry for Carol, since she was the protagonist and all, but I really kind of hated her. Everyone else was so nice, and she kind of sucked. I think I even liked the boss better than her, because even though he was a blackmailer and a rapist's brother, he was just looking for vengeance since his brother was dead. So finally Carol decided to write a note coming clean with her fake in-laws and then run away and have her baby alone, but the boss showed up one last time and then Carol's boyfriend showed up and tried (and failed) to beat up the boss. So then an alarm went off and woke up the in-laws and the father-in-law came out with a shotgun but he got knocked aside so then the mother-in-law (played by the mom from E.T., also known as Mrs. Covington) blew the boss away with the shotgun. So then you'd think that they'd all tell Carol to fuck right off since she'd lied to them and stolen from them, but instead they were all hugging her and shit. Which was horseshit. They should have prosecuted her! But it was still awesome.

Starting Over

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. First, a Most Awesome programming note: there's a new season of Endurance starting on NBC on Saturday, September 27th. Check local listings. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was the new Bunim-Murray show, Starting Over. First of all, it's on every weekday. Every weekday! And since women are usually the ones who cause all of the drama in a Real World house, Bunim and Murray only allowed women in the Starting Over house. And boy, are these women messed up. They are supposed to be in the house so that they can change their lives, but some of them seem to only be there to get on television. Okay, I guess that part is not that different from The Real World. But they do have some crazy ladies in that house. Like there's Nyanza, who reminds me of Tami from The Real World Los Angeles, but a little bit less crazy. But Nyanza really loves herself, which makes me wonder what exactly she thinks she is going to change about herself. I think Nyanza would be a lot happier if she could change everyone in her life instead of herself. And then there's Maureen, who wants to become a stand-up comedian. The problem is that she's not funny, has no sense of timing, and is frankly kind of scary. Also, stinky, because she rarely bathes. And then there is Andy. Oh, Andy. She looks like Brooke Shields, but bigger and more mannish. And she's crazy! And manipulative! And overly dramatic! And antagonistic! The usual problem with B/M shows is that they start out strong and then get really boring or repetitive. (See: The Real World/Road Rules Challenge). I'm hoping that doesn't happen with Starting Over, because once a woman achieves her goals, she gets to leave the house and a new person come in. Oh, and I didn't even mention the life coaches. Life coaches! Awesome.