July 22, 2004
11:23pm Thursday

'CAUSE WHEN YOU'RE DEAD AND BURIED WELL YOU GOT NO BIZ

It's gonna be a long two weeks, I'm telling you. We're going back on Sunday to try to narrow eight choices down to one.

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I think my sensibilities aren't jibing with the Hollywood Reporter's lately. I read a review for that new Bravo show "Things I Hate About You" and thought it was going to be a crapfest, but I totally love it. My only question...is it staged a little? The first couple was almost too happy, too nice to each other through all their annoying weirdnesses. If that's REALLY what they're like, so happy-go-lucky through the belching and the lists and the backrub demands, then my God they'll be together forever and God bless 'em. The Reporter also said that HBO's new "Entourage" was genius, and, um...whatever. The Hollywood part of it was all right, like Jeremy Piven as Ari the agent was pretty good, but otherwise it was kinda misogynistic and crass. I think what the reviewer was responding to was the realness of the guy-to-guy dialogue, and probably the "I (heart) Cock" sticker on the back of the Hummer.

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Last week I went out to dinner with two of my friends and I made them tell me what their household incomes are. I know, it's totally rude. But one is married to my friend who's the TV writer, and the other is married to my other friend who's in sales, and we're all friends here, right? And everybody's spending up a storm these days on houses and bathroom remodels and cars, and numbers are hinted at but nobody's talking. So leave it to me to excavate the truth, and they were reluctant (but they really wanted to know, too, you could tell), and so they spilled. And good GOD does it pay to be a TV writer. And a good salesman. And they can both can buy my ass dinner from now on.

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This morning I saw a commercial about a company that reimburses for credit card fraud. The actor in it was a senior citizen black man, and it was a dramatic commericial, very staid. The man starts off by saying, "I got my credit card bill and somebody'd charged two surfboards to it." Then it cuts to stock footage of a guy surfing, then back to him. "They said I bought it in LAGUNA BEACH!" and he chuckles. As if a black person would ever buy a surfboard in Laguna Beach. Somebody at that commercial prodco had themselves a little giggle. A black person! In Orange County!

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We saw Napoleon Dynamite last night and between the high-pitched girlish laugh of the guy behind me and my own husband's high-pitched girlish giggle I had a hard time hearing Napoleon say, "Dang!" and "You gonna eat those tots?" The funniest parts are the bits we've all seen in the trailers, but it's a pretty spare and funny film. That said, if you find Napoleon's character even slightly annoying, you're gonna hate this movie. I think that unlike the Hess couple who wrote and directed it, if I were to write and direct a movie with Gray we would kill each other dead. Maybe the Mormons are more patient, and their special underwear keeps them calm, cool, and collected. That's gotta be it.