Bad Advice

Don Draper Makes it Easy to Hate Men

Oh, Don. . . .

Where to even start? You're so handsome, I've yet to meet any human who wouldn't drop trou for you. Even my boyfriend was marveling aloud over your perfect five o'clock shadow. You know the one—that light film of black shadow, gracing that perfectly square, manly jaw of yours. . . .

Over the last few episodes we felt like you'd met your match. Faye was independent, strong, career-oriented, smart, age-appropriate and crazy about you. So crazy she even went into an ethically gray area to bail out your dumb company. (This I believe sealed her fate.) Sure, she's kind of awkward with the kids, but you only get them once or twice a month anyway, so who cares?

Then there's Secretary Meghan of the Overbite. Meghan is much younger, fawning, efficient, and possibly the most impressive flirt I've ever seen in action. Attractive in a non-traditional way (like Faye), Meghan put out when Don was at a low point and then just hung back until he came to her, as it seems she knew he would. Watching her take care of the little ones—teaching them to sing in French—showed Don that she would be the trouble-free choice for wifey. And just as Faye originally predicted, Don was wife-shopping.

Imagine Faye staying home with the kids while Don slips out for a nooner with some boho bim he met on MacDougal Street? Wouldn't happen. Meghan, however, will be up, cheerfully feeding Sally & co crepes and teaching them French verb conjugations when Don inevitably reverts to form, stumbling in at 5am, lipstick on his collar, spooge stain on his slacks. It all makes a horribly depressing kind of sense.

Men as a population were redeemed with Ken Cosgrove. Summoned into a meeting with Weasel Pete, Roger and Don, Cosgrove is directed to use his fiance's family connections to arrange a meeting with a potential client. Seeing that it would put his fiance, her dad and himself in an awkward position, Ken refuses. The other men are incredulous as Ken says something along the lines of, "this is work—she's MY LIFE!"

To a man, they look by turn utterly gobsmacked and then scornful as Ken puts down his drink and walks out of the room. "B-b-b-but work is life!" you can practically hear their little brains screeching. Thank you Ken. In one short sentence you managed to redeem your gender. (A few of them, anyway.)

Check it out!

Dating Dont's from Judy McGuire on Vimeo.

My friend Richard and I did this video to illustrate my Frisky column. Turner didn't bite, but we think someone will, because we're awesome.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. . . .

A couple months ago I got a random Facebook alert that said Colbert Show tickets were available. I got all excited, told my friend Rose, and we both signed up and got tix for consecutive days. Unfortunately, when I got my confirmation email, I neglected to notice that I had to actually click on a link to officially confirm. So when my date rolled around, I didn't have any tickets.

But Rose, being infinitely smarter than me, actually clicked on the link and got the tickets. So yesterday we met up at 4:45—along with Rose's GF, Anna—and began the arduous process of actually getting into the show.

First we gave Rose's name to the dude with the clipboard. He checked her off and then examined all of our IDs to ascertain that we weren't terrorists. We were then directed onto an plastic-enclosed, snaking line where we stood around for a good hour, being urged to cram ourselves in closer to our fellow man so they could jam more people in. At about the one hour mark, we were startled out of our boredom by the perkiest woman I have ever had the horror of speaking with.

Chirpy McShowtunes was working her way down the line with a stack of laminated passes—I guess these were to serve as our actual boarding passes. But she didn't just hand them out, oh no. She accosted each small group and asking them where they were from and if they were SUPER PUMPED FOR THE AWESOME SHOW! With her SUPER EXCITED IMPROV VOICE she assured each and every couple and grouplet (four max, please!) that THEY were the reason for the show's success and she loved each and every one of us. LOVED!!!!

Imagine our horror. We are trapped in a plastic tube with a mad woman and a hundred or so other humans, who are doing their best to be good sports. At one point a large pony-tailed man let out an eye-wateringly vicious fart. Even his date backed away from his ass in horror, making sure to let everyone around her know that HE had dealt it; not she. 

Kell on Earth? or Snooze on the Sofa?

I had high hopes for the new Kelly Cutrone show, Kell on Earth. Maybe my reasons sound dumb—she doesn't wear makeup on TV! She's over 40 and hasn't stuffed her face with fillers or botulism! She's a tough broad! These are all qualities I love. I mean, when was the last time you saw someone on television without a mugful of Max Factor? Especially someone her age! Love it.

Unfortunately, the show is about as exciting as watching an elevator security cam, except sometimes funny things happen in an elevator. Like they get stuck and people panic. Or somebody cuts a fart and everyone looks around trying to figure out who dealt it. No such wackiness on Kell on Earth.

When the climax of your show involves an Excel error, you know you're in trouble. And that's exactly what happened last night. There was—no joke—an Excel CLIFFHANGER. Complete with a "To be continued" tag. Thank god those minxes don't get mixed up with Photoshop or InDesign; just imagine the hijinx!

Other peaks included a mad dash to clean up the showroom. Trouble reared its head when one of the doohickeys on the end of a rack just wouldn't straighten! Then there was the reminder of last year's fashion week firing fiasco that occurred after Kelly sat Elliott Spitzers' paid consort in the front row of one of her client's shows. We didn't even get to see that hissy fit happen, so Ashley Dupre—along with her mom and a dopey fedora—showed up at the offices to do the replay. Snore. And frankly, getting canned by some jerky fashion designer, who I've never heard of, isn't even interesting the first time around. In the retelling, it's even more boring than hearing your weird aunt gas on about her sorority days.

Then there was the manufactured gay-yenta crap—"I'm going to find you a boyfriend," Kell insists to her perfectly handsome young assistant. This dude needs help finding a man like I need help finding a donut. Especially when said help consists of scoping guys from a fourth floor window.

Someone who was actually hurting and could've used some help was one of the Stephanies. (There appear to be several.) Kelly's former assistant—now in the midst of a trial promotion—is a pretty young girl who looks like she hasn't had a wink of sleep or full meal in about a year. I've never seen a non terminally ill person look so peaked. Shouldn't Earth Mama Kelly step in and send her home for some much-needed shuteye? I have the maternal instincts of a river rock and I wanted to bring her a warm bowl of soup. 

As I work at home and don't have any office interactions, I'm the ideal Kell on Earth viewer. I thought I could live vicariously through other people's power-broking and office intrigue. I fully believed it would make me miss working around other humans—interacting, having lunch, taking meetings. . . but no. Instead it showed the fashion biz to be approximately as scintillating as a mid-level insurance company and made me happy I don't have any yappy coworkers shooting me the stinkeye over paperjams. And I'll take actual felines over a gaggle of catty dames any day.

Flipped Out

I generally love Flipping Out's Jeff Lewis, which I suppose is evidence of my unnaturally high tolerance for assholes, but the other night he even pissed me off. He listed the three things he was violently afraid of. They are:

1. Clowns (Yawn. Who isn't?)
2. Drag Queens
3. Homeless People

I had to roll my eyes at the first two—the man obviously wears makeup and gets collagen injected into his lips and he's afraid of a dude in a skirt? I find that highly unlikely.

But my little PC-heart was truly annoyed by his stance on homeless people. That was just cruel—especially when the homeless person on the job site died.

Like most reality shows, Flipping Out has gotten worse as the seasons wear on and the cast can see how they're portrayed on-air. For one thing—everyone gets skinnier. Jenny and Ryan both look skeletal this season. But they're not the only ones—remember how chunky Kathy Griffin's brunette assistant was last year? She's dropped at least three sizes coming into this season. Real Housewife Bethanny Frankel moved whatever fat she might've been packing in the back and moved it up to her bra. That scene of her in the pool showing visible front rib with giant saline bags popping out on top is burned in my brain.

I'm not sure where I'm going with all this. Just trying to get back into writing in my blog. I have my big horrible gum surgery next Monday and it's difficult to think of anything else. Bad TV keeps my mind off my mouth. Speaking of which, I wonder what'll happen on Gossip Girl tonight?

Bitches, please!

Last night I watched one of the most irritating documentaries I've ever seen. It was called Youth Knows No Pain. Directed by Mitch McCabe, the daughter of a plastic surgeon, it purported to be all about society's fear of aging, but basically showcased a bunch of neurotic freakshows and the frightening measures they take to remain youthful.

One of the high/lowlights was a segment about a plastic surgeon and his busty young Playboy type daughter. (I bet you though I was going to say "wife," didn't you? More on her in a minute.) Daddy Dearest proudly shows the filmmaker a nearly naked centerfold of his daughter as her mom—his wife—looks on proudly. We gradually find out that all is not well in paradise. Ten years or so earlier, Plastic Papa left his wife to go screw some of the models he was operating on. He came back and presumably operated on his wife so he could have the woman he loved inside the body of the women he lusted after. But you know what—when you're 65 and have a wrinkle-free face, inflated boobs, Farrah hair and giant fishlips, you don't look young. You look like a sad wax dummy.

Speaking of dummies . . . another lowlight was a segment with bloggers Julia Allison and Mary Rambin—both in their twenties—frenemying each other into cosmetic injections neither needed. The two marvel over 26-year-old Rambin's forehead wrinkles (which are minimal and seem to only appear when she crinkles her forehead) and Allison's imaginary nasolabial folds.

A Ken-doll looking plastic surgeon named Bobby Buka administers the injections while his assistant looks on, rolling her eyes at the ladies. Truthfully, they both look a bit older than they are, but that's only because they wear way too much makeup and dress like mall store mannequins. They'd benefit much more from a visit with Trinny & Sooz, than they would from spending any more dough pumping poison into their faces.

Oh, and the illustration I used for this entry—that was inspired by Allison's comment that women come "with an expiration date." As I've got quite a few years on her, I figure I've hit mine. Those spiderwebs in the picture—that's what passes for pubes these days. It's just a slow walk to the grave from here on in. Sigh.

Throughout the rest of the film we meet a guy who's had a bunch of surgeries to look more like Jack Nicholson (WTF? Why?!?!), and watch as the filmmaker becomes more and more obsessed with keeping age at bay, until she's also letting people stick needles and lasers into her skin. The only relatable character in the piece is a sad, but very sweet-seeming woman named Sherry Mecom. When we first meet her, she's at the top of her game—on her fourth marriage, looking sassy and happy, despite all her neuroses. A year later and she's gained weight and desperately bargaining with the surgeon to throw in a freebie nasolabial injection with the botox and lip augmentation he's performing. It was like watching a junkie bargain with their dealer—very sad.

This wholly depressing hour and a half of television made me glad that I didn't grow up relying on my looks for affirmation. (Good thing, too!) Even though I'm not thrilled about getting older, it makes aging a whole lot less fraught.

Law & Odor

Last night, Law & Order CI came to Williamsburg and I almost missed it. (There's some great video in that link.) Luckily I'd checked my computer before pulling on the jammies and saw an email from my buddy Travis, informing me about this little bit of entertainment history. This was Jeff Goldblum's first episode—he took over for Detective Mike Logan (aka "Big" aka big, hunky Chris Noth)—and it was a laff riot.

I generally love all the Law & Order franchises, but CI must've lost all their good writers when they shifted to USA Network. It was like your uncool Aunt Sally wrote the dialog with only a dog-eared set of circa 1974 World Book Encyclopedias for reference. Not since the "punk rock" version of Quincy has a show gotten it so hilariously wrong:

• Like when the Black (naturally) drug dealer announced that one of the hipster vics had asked for a "lid" of weed. A lid?!?! Are we at Woodstock? Prior to being brutally murdered, he was no doubt planning to smoke this primo doobage while jamming out to Procul Harem on 8-track. Another fave line: "there's a whole lotta bogus going on." I'll say!

• Or when one Hasid explained to the other, that in matters of life and death, you can use your cellphone on shabbat—all this while staring at a murdered corpse. I'm not saying Hasids don't keep to the sabbath, but this bit of manufactured tension was obviously just stuck in there to show the writers had done their research on these exotic bearded creatures. Get it—hipsters and Hasids are thrown together and the result is a giant culture clash. Where was the bike lane conflict? That could've been a great subplot!

• For some reason, the writers opted out of using Puerto Ricans as the third group a-culture-clashing in the 'burg and opted (inaccurately) for African Americans instead. I guess Black people are just scarier—the nice little slutty hipster girl certainly thought so! And where were the Poles?

• The bedbug-infested loft where the hipster doofi lived was obviously based on 255 McKibben. Nice touch, but the forensics through bedbugs was really pushing it.

• How difficult would it have been for casting to line up some actual hipster-infested band to play their cable-tv debut? You can't spit on Bedford Avenue without hitting a guitarist. Instead, Aunt Sally got her clarinet-playing nephew to line up his uncool friends to come up with some jammy R&B riffs. Even this uncool old broad thought they sucked—and not in a "kids today and their crazy music" kind of way!

My Prayers = Answered!

According to AP, this last season of The L Word (starting Jan 18!) will be a Jenny-free zone! Yesss!!!!!

We're not sure how Jenny dies (and apparently she does die—here's hoping it's painful and we get to watch!) but here are some possible scenarios that I've come up with:

• A deranged L Word fan from Brooklyn ties Jenny down, smears Fancy Feast all over her torso and leaves her alone with Inky the cat. 
• Alice* locks Jenny in a room with the Betty theme song blasting on a loop and Jenny is driven to tear off her own ears and dies a slow painful death, which is still preferable to listening to that dreadful song one more time.
• Evil Mikkos Cassadine revs up his weather machine and zaps a tornado on her ass. 
• [Insert your idea here.]

*Apparently Alice is getting her own spin-off and it takes place in prison! Maybe she killed Jenny!

The Smell Word

Some of you (okay, maybe four of you) might be wondering why I haven't been blogging The L Word this season. Others of you (Ivan!) are probably happy. For those few that are wondering, keep reading—Ivan, move along—I'm going to do a bulleted list after the jump of the most memorable moments thus far.

Dreams = Shattered

I don't know about you, but every time I hail a cab, I hope and pray and cross all fingers and toes, that I'll be lucky enough to hail cute Ben Bailey and his disco-lit Cab o' Cash.

See, I'm not much of a game show fan, but I love me some Cash Cab. And yes, like some kind of demented granny, I yell out the answers at my TV. I inevitably screw up the geography and ancient history questions, but I do pretty well with just about every other topic. I've racked up $700 on some imaginary rides. After calculating my illusory winnings, I imagine how I'd spend that money. I have a boyfriend, but I know he wouldn't mind if I took Ben Bailey out for a cocktail or three. I'd definitely put some towards a new computer as this one is on its last legs. Anyway, as you can see, Cash Cab isn't just a show for me. It's more like a life goal.

So imagine my shock, horror and devastation when last night I find out that Cash Cab is actually fake! I don't want to get the breaker of the news in any trouble in case he signed some sort of confidentiality agreement, so I won't mention names, but it turns out this guy was cast as a contestant! And it wasn't even tryouts like Jeopardy! This guy had worked on some other TV show and the casting agents thought he'd be good and so he got the gig. They don't just randomly pick up people on the street. Sigh. Oh, and that wad of cash Ben forks over at the end—nuh uh. You do win, but they send you a check weeks later.

Hours later and I'm still reeling from the news. It's going to take a while to fully process this information. I guess I should've figured that anyone who listed their #1 do-not-miss spot in New York City as "The Comedy Cellar" on MacDougal St. was up to no good.

(Edited for clarity's sake.)