Where's the money? Don't show it to me, gleesh, just tell me where it is

    I don't despise Rosie O'Donnell much more than anyone else that doesn't like pathological liars, but I do find a certain amount of humor in her "I've made a huge mistake" return to talk television as a co-host. This is the same woman that had the most successful daytime chat show since the days of Mike and Merv, and she walked away. She'd had enough, other important things in her life, blah x 3. Kathie Lee Gifford went out much the same way, of course, and skulked back into an even lowlier position on some infotainment magazine show, but I never disliked her all that much. Her situation is humorous, just not as delicious as Rosie's.

  Why do I despise Ro? It wasn't her show persona, which annoyed most of her detractors; that sort of sycophancy is what talk shows are built on. What turned me against Rosie was the way she went out. Suddenly, she was all over the place acting surprised that people were surprised to find out she was gay. Well, some of us were a lot less shocked than others, but her insistence that it was never hidden was completely untrue. Saying you've never denied something is not the same as saying you never hid it, nor is it the same as broadcasting it. She spent a lot of time droning on about the increasing herd on her kid-farm, and the nannies, and the squirrels that were eating out of her bird feeders, but never a mention of 'companion', 'significant other', 'girlfriend', 'Kelly', whatever. It was a calculated omission for the benefit of the blue hairs that made up her core audience, and she was smart to do it.

  Unfortunately on her way out, since she had nothing to lose or the most severe case of denial in television history, she chose to claim it was a well-known fact that she was a lesbian. The little crushes - Tom Cruise was the big one, but there were other 'Cutie-Patooties' that she gushed over - were calculated to cultivate a sense of her heterosexuality, and pretty cynical. I don't mean to detract from the brilliance of her closetedness, my ill-feelings towards Ro are entirely about her lack of respect towards her audience. As mentioned above, her overwrought faux adoration of every single person to walk on her stage was standard talk show operating procedure. It was the insult to the intelligence of every viewer that suffered through it, her blustering about having always been openly gay; that placed her near the top of the list of famous people that speak out of the side of their necks.

  In the news, newly surgically svelte Star Jones Reynolds has decided that sitting next to Ro for 4 hours a week is something she already has way too much money to have to endure. Or so she had wanted you to believe. In what was seemingly a surprise to co-hosts Baba Wawa, Joy Behar, and Eliza Whatsits; Star announced Tuesday that she will not be returning for the 10th year of "The View", which begins in September with new co-host Rosie O'Donnell replacing Meredith Vieira. Rosie has belittled Star publicly for not mentioning often enough that her weight loss is due largely to her gastric bypass surgery and not diet and exercise alone. Apparently, currently portly Ro was displeased that Star had been accepting accolades about her weight loss without consistently raising her skirt and showing her surgical scars.  

  Of course, it seems now that Star was blowing a bit of bluster of her own, putting quite the deceptive spin on her firing from the show to make it seem as if she had a choice. Baba Wawa cryptically noted "reasons we won't go into" for why ABC had told Star months ago her contract would not be renewed, but I would imagine it was because they didn't feel they needed her because of Rosie or perhaps even at Rosie's behest. I still think Star would have left on her own soon enough after sitting with Ro for a while anyway. And now a show I would probably never watch goes on my record list this fall, just to see how Ro acts the first week or so.

  I wonder if it was ABC or Baba that got pissed off and fired Star immediately for her surprise speech? It always seems to Baba's pet project unless we're speaking of something unpleasant, then it's ABC that's in control.


Duty Freebie: I love me some Presurfer! Maybe the best truly all-encompassing linkdump website, I have never been disappointed when looking for something to waste time on, a 'daily dose of diversion', if you will.

Nobody Ever Says, "When I Grow Up, I Want To Be A Cliché"

   I've never seen an episode of Star Trek from beginning to end. I've seen moments here and there, but I've never seen a full installment. Of course, through cultural osmosis I know what people are talking about when they talk about 'beaming up', 'red shirt', and 'Tribbles', and I've seen a few episodes of Next Generation and Enterprise; but not a single time have I seen Kirk and Spock and Bones and Scotty and Uhuru and Sulu do their thing for the full thirty minutes. I've even seen the first feature film, and most of one of the others, I think the fourth one; but I have no memories of the 80 original episodes that launched a thousand conventions.

  I didn't set out to be some sort of 'Anti-Geek', I was even a little interested in the seventh grade when a kid was telling me about this cool game he was working on with his graph paper in the quad; "Dungeons & Dragons", he said it was. Just not interested enough to play, but D & D is a different level of geeking, and really a separate story. I have an older sister, so the family television was often controlled by her or my Mother, so Star Trek reruns were bypassed without pause. I can even remember a few teenaged times, in the era of cable and a television in my room, flipping the channels with friends around, and happening upon a classic episode. "Oh, that's the blank blank one, skip it", someone would say, or "That's a good one, leave it there", but someone or something else trumped the choice. As time has gone on, I've never had enough interest to seek out the show on my own, continuing on until the situation I find myself in today. I'm not exactly ashamed, in fact, it's to the point that I kind of want to keep my 'Star Trek Unseen' record intact. What I mean is, if I were to see an episode now, I would have seen one episode, not nearly as neat and tidy as having never seen one, and I would remain basically as ignorant of the series as I was before. I could go all O/C disorderly and watch all of them over a couple of weekends, but that would require a lot more interest than I have. Really, my lack of interest could fill a warehouse.

   On a different science fiction angle, I have seen every episode of Futurama several times each. (That probably establishes a level of geekdom of a different sort. I won't go into my collection of commercial product mascot figures and toys, except to mention that I will be getting my Poptart talking alarm clock in 6-8 weeks. It runs counter-clockwise!!!) In the viewing of those episodes with the audio commentary, I became aware that Matt Groening has also never seen a Star Trek episode beginning to end. Actually, it was hearing that comment that made me realize that I myself hadn't seen one all the way through in the first place; I had never given it that much thought. He seems to be reasonably well adjusted, so I think I'll leave well enough alone.