Given that E.R. is not HBO, they must watch their language. Last season's finale included the word "shit" but only because Noah Wylie was dying and it was surrounded by a Big Serious Moment. Otherwise the characters are subject to network, well, weirdness and forced to keep it clean.

Tonight's episode highlighted the return of Dr. Widow after her quick stint back home in England where she realized you can take the girl out of Chicago but you can't take the Chicago out of the girl. Or something. Her snooty Brit cohorts treated her like she had leprosy and she sure could use a Midwest Reality Check to take her mind off the baby.

In the Windy City, they don't mince words. Well, usually, but given her perameters, the Crazy Old Woman in the waiting room did her best.

"YOU SUCKALICIOUS ASS LUCKER!"

She said suck twice and I never noticed how border-line the word could sound. I say the F-Word more than this S-word but I just might try it out for awhile.

10:31:51 PM    sro home /

Favorite Search Link of the Day : "satan's cheerleaders costume".

Someone is planning a wild Halloween. I was trying to picture the outfit when I remembered Elizabeth Hurley was one in "Bewildered". Given the number of people who saw that flick, my guess is the searcher is Matthew Perry's assistant. Now if Matthew Perry could only find a role that fit, the two might be a winning pair.

9:51:53 PM    sro home /

I forgot to mention the L.A. moment at the Apple store.

I was sitting at the "Genius Bar" waiting for "Amy" to return with my plug when this tall Glamazon came walking up the lucite staircase that divides the whole store. In other words, it was an Entrance and she stopped at the very top and slowly turned.

The bitch was hot. It was all about the suede boots and the hair. Her hair definately said Someone but I didn't recognize Anyone and I was trying not to stare.

I should have. Alot of people went to alot of work to give some forty-year old queer twirling on a barstool a cheap thrill. Even if we're not on the same team, we still dig a great looking uniform.

8:09:23 PM    sro home /

I needed a new power cord for my iBook, the old one inexplicably broke and was sparking and making quite a display. It fascinated both myself and the dogs for a good ten minutes.

I realized, however, I would soon run out of juice (power) and needed to get a replacement. Apple recently opened a store in LA at a new shopping mall called The Grove and it would be my first trip there.

From the outside, the mall looks like some large government building, maybe a sanitorium or a mint. When I emerged from the parking lot into the mall, I literally had no idea where I was. It looked as if I'd gone out the wrong door and emerged on a street.

This "street" actually was the mall. It was all fabricated to look like... something. Disneyworld via Conneticut by way of Norman Rockwell. Whatever it was, it was clean.

I discovered I was in "Buffed Creek Lane" or something like that. The mall has sections, like themes, and all the themes are about spending money.

I found the Apple store and was impressed. It was somehow ennobling to be part of such a intellectual pursuit and small pods of people were huddled together, sharing, uh, intellect.

I went upstairs to what is called the "Genius Bar" which is where they handle warrenties and problems. There was already a gentleman there with his iBook doing something. I didn't care, I couldn't take my eyes off of how clean his computor was. I knew it had to be old(er), it was one of the lime green ones and the newer ones (like mine) are all white. I even asked if they cleaned computors there, like an iMaid, assuming the only way his keyboard had remained so pristine was professionally.

The Apple woman said no and I decided to drop the whole thing before I started telling them how dirty I felt. I felt like the White Trash Kid in school who has the dirty shoes when everyone else has the clean ones. I'm not abusive to my computor by any means but you could have eaten off this guy's book.

They replaced my cord - free of charge, natch - and the replacement is even a newer "model" with a nifty light around the plug telling you when it's done charging. I left the store a happy clam and slowly walked away from the gingerbread house and back to my car.

7:26:37 PM    sro home /

Who the tuck named this movie "Tuck Everlasting"?

I've only seen the trailer and it makes my skin crawl. It's hard to tell what the movie will really be about, something to do with ghosts or time travel or motorcycles or time-traveling-ghosts-on-motorcycles. You watch.

Everlasting is a hard word to pull off in a title, especially when everlasting ends up being straight-to-video. Tuck? The Joan Rivers Story?

The movie's been profiled into the same gang as "Road To Perdition" and "Forrest Gump", not one of which is on my personal Top Ten list. If it weren't for the title, I wouldn't have given it as much thought as I have.

6:52:24 PM    sro home /

It seems they're closing the broadway production of "Les Miserables", making the it the second longest running musical right after "Cats". I'm not as enthralled with the show as I know some people are, but I did like it better than "Cats".

Years ago I dated a man who was the understudy for the male romantic lead in Les Miz. When my mother and sister came to New York to visit, he got us all great seats and we met him before the show backstage and saw all the costumes and sets.

I also used the performance as an opportunity to tell my sister, who was 16 at the time, that I was gay. I told her during an intermission and to her credit, she looked at me like I was a retard and said "Duh."

My BF was very generous and apparently had tons of theater connections which resulted in my seeing about everything showing at the time.

I saw Tyne Daley in "Gypsy", an amazing performance. I saw Maggie Smith and we went to the opening night party at Tavern On The Green. I went to one of the last perfomances of "A Chorus Line", a benefit for Broadway Cares.

It was given on a "dark night" when the other shows were closed and the audience was packed full of other performers. At the end of every number, the entire audience would jump to their feet and cheer. They not only cheered for the singer or dancer, but for the existance of live theater and in some way seeing their personal story brought to life in front of everyone.

The BF and I seperated eventually and he went on to star in another Event Musical which got luke warm reviews and got him a Tony Nomination. I was sorry to see him lose.

Skip ten years and I'm at an opening of a swank new eatery with my friend the Restaurant Critic. Free Crystál, smart little nibbly-things and as a Special Bonus, Rue McCallahan (from the Golden Girls) singing a Broadway tune dressed in a Hello Dolly getup. She was accompanied by three tuxedo-ed men for a chorus.

One was my ex.

I'd had a few glasses of bubbly and considered saying hello but I thought the irony of the situation would be a bit much. I know it was for me.

2:46:09 PM    sro home /

Today, Salon's Chicano Chocara adds her opinion of the new Joss Whedon show Firefly.

http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/diary/2002/10/03/firefly/index.html

I'd sent in my story about the show to the A&E editor a couple of weeks weeks ago and also sent her a copy thinking she might be interested. I don't know what I as thinking, after all she is the annointed TV critic for the "mag", and my e-mail to her with my piece must have seemed presumptuous and a little "All About Eve".

Our takes on the show are very similar, natch. You can read what I wrote here:

http://blogs.salon.com/0001573/2002/09/29.html

I stand corrected on several factual points. The creator is, of course, named "Joss" not "Josh" (a real duh moment) and according to her article, the series takes place 500 years in the future, not 300 as I'd stated. Bad bad bad.

11:47:28 AM    sro home /

Because I had been placed ahead in elementary school, I was fourteen the year I started High School. That was also the year I subscribed to Rolling Stone Magazine. I actually didn't subscribe because of the music content, the year was 1976 and I honestly don't remember who was popular. My own tastes veered wildly. I was both a big Rufus and Patti Smith fan while my peers were into Lynard Skynard, Jacksonville's claim to Rock N' Roll.

I actually subscribed because it was the first place I saw Annie Leibowitz's photos. I was naturally attracted to their storytelling quality, a story about the subject, about personality and about the relationship between the photographer and the public she represents.

I also developed a deep adoration of the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, idly repeating her name as I flipped through the latest Stone. Fallaci, fallaci, fall-a-cio...

Her writing was intense, personal, angst-ridden and like Annie Leibowitz's pictures, tightly entwined her personal and public persona. From what I remember, she had long salt and pepper hippie hair, a tight leather coat and was always holding a lit cig while gazing intently into the distance.

In other words, she was Italian but I had never seen women like her in the South. All the women I knew said "Miss?" when asking for a waitress.

I talked my mother into buying me a small handheld tape recorder. Ours was the size of a car battery and I wanted something to carry through wars and on cargo planes, at least something I could carry when riding my bike. I got a relatively smaller model, around the size of a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies.

I'd vaguely planned to interview people but hadn't really figured out who. Fortunately the church behind our apartments always had evangelical protesters marching in the parking lot. They never really protested anything tangible, just overall evil and moral rot in general. I saw the perfect chance to be Oriana, exposing the underbelly of the Right.

I approached one of the two men milling in front of the main chapel, the one not sitting in a lawn chair. Chair-man had a posterboard sign with JOHN scrawled across it, leading me to think it was his name and this was how he signed his signature. Below that, in tiny neat letters drawn to look like a typewriter, was written 3:16.

I knew what that was, so entrenched was I in the midst of Baptist country. He held the sign like I shield as I approached.

I didn't have a leather jacket like Oriana but I was wearing a belted safari coat like I'd seen them wear on the news. With my huge glasses and shaggy hair, I must have looked like Harriet the Spy.

"Excuse me, can I ask you some questions?"

"For GOD so loved the world.."

Well that went nowhere. Maybe another approach. Lying.

"I'm doing an article for my school paper." I did belong to the school paper but the people I went to school with lived on the other side of town and wouldn't give a rat's ass about this guy or the church behind him.

Chair-man spoke.

"Ask all you want but no recording."

That, of course, sucked the fun right out.

I went home and hid the recorder behind pillows on the couch. My mother and I watched TV and I recorded the two of us, her voice occasionally rising in a loud guffaw over the laughtrack.

1:46:25 AM    sro home /