Mere Duchess

When You Get All You Wanted in your Wildest Dreams

Girl crush of the moment: Selena Gomez of Disney Channel’s “Wizards of Waverly Place.” First of all, according to her wiki, girl is named after slain Tejano singer Selena (RIP), so need I go on about what she has to recommend her? How do you get a credential more sterling than that? I was compelled to learn more about her after witnessing her fabulous hair and witty Bacall-like swagger on WWP, only to discover that this girl is it-girl of teenybopper Edie proportions (OK not quite but). Her band is called “Selena Gomez and the Scene” which is like take one part “Jem and the Holograms,” add a dash of Selena Quintanilla Perez, make it sound a little New Wave, a little like “the Max” from Saved by the Bell and you get, um, the answer to my prayers.

And then it’s like, all right guess I’m old, but I find out that she’s in fact the girl who stole Justin Bieber’s heart? And this is after a stint with Taylor Lautner? Now, I’ve personally never been one for Tiger Beat heart throb types (NKOTB/JTT etc fever left me cold in my prepubescent dreamboat-dreaming days) but jesu christo, Selena Gomez, you have to give it up for the girl, I mean she’s achieved what generations of sixth grade girls couldn’t dare to dream—nabbing the Cutest Boy in School times 27 billion. How very chic for these times, how very alpha.

I don’t know, here’s to hoping things don’t go in a Lindz/Britney direction for this showstopper, but for now, in this moment, I choose to celebrate Selena Gomez, because today is her day. Also, this website is probably the best thing on the internet.

03/27/11

In these uncertain times...

03/10/11

Some prefer brunettes…

RIP, Ms. Russell.

03/2/11

The Hallmark Channel is quickly becoming my favorite stop when channel surfing. It’s basically where the CBS primetime lineup from 1988-1992 goes to be reborn. Now that alone, of course, would be worth the price of admission but it’s the particular slice of the pie that Hallmark aims to (re)deliver that makes it so Chicken Soup for Lost Childhood great. Old favorites like “Empty Nest”, “Golden Girls” and “Who’s the Boss” are available ‘round the clock; Nurse Laverne is always there, ready with a Band Aid and a lollipop after your appointment with Dr. Weston. Dreyfuss the Dog is always licking your face, saving you from Charlie’s lecherous stares and Carol and Barbara’s bickering. Other staples on the channel include “Cheers” and “Murder She Wrote.” When I was a kid, I would often escape my less than ideal home life and go over to my Nana’s, where she’d peel and partition out Granny Smith wedges and we’d park ourselves in front of the television watching these shows. It’s no surprise then that the Hallmark Channel, awash in its pastel blues and beiges, both comforts me in a deep and guttural way while also leaving me with a serious hankering for green apples.

03/2/11

DRAG RACE: The Next Lap

My admiration for drag queens only grows the older I become. As my interest in (and probably ability to keep up with, in all honesty) the “now” wanes, I feel the transition to kitsch queen approaching, and I’m OK with it. Drag queens are by nature referential and derivative. But it’s their ability to distill the familiar down to its very essence and filter it through themselves that make the talented ones great artists.

There’s definitely no shortage of talent in the new group of contestants on this season’s “Rupaul’s Drag Race.” Whether or not the next Michelangelo of tucking is among them remains to be seen, but three episodes in, we’ve already witnessed ingenuity (and drama) not ever seen before this early in the competition.

I won’t bore you with the whole roster - that’s what Logo’s website is for - but here are my favorites.

1. Shangela

I do not like her. She is annoying. But she’s coming back for this round of competition and she is looking for blood. I can respect persistence.

Pros: Persistence

Cons: Annoyance factor = high

2. Mariah

The first contestant to come from the Ballroom Voguing scene, Mariah brings a fierce competitiveness to the Race.

Pros: Realistic appearance, McGuyver like ingenuity

Cons: Not over the top enough

3. Delta Work

Delta had me at Episode One when she crafted a well-received holiday look she coined “Kwanzaa Realness.”

These are my predictions for the Final Three but obviously it’s too early to tell. From now until Tuesday, I’ll be crafting my Yom Kippur fantasy (or Festivus Realness…I haven’t decided) look and eagerly awaiting my next fix of the Race.

02/14/11

This is LaDonna Tittle. As the host of “Cookin Wit Tittle” on CAN 19, she’s been a fixture of Chicago Public Access for many years now. Ostensibly the host of a soul food cooking show, she’s actually more of a tour guide through the absurd, culinary and otherwise.

Julia Child probably wouldn’t smoke during a show, or for that matter, consume several glasses of white wine during one either. It’s a good thing she’s not here to see Tittle. In addition to her boozing and Krusty the Clown voice, Tittle also feels the need to wear an over-sized chef’s hat during every episode. She usually hosts the program with a special guest; past co-hosts have included Executive Chefs, noted jazz musicians and a yuppie couple she met on the El. Once she wanted to grill while it was raining out, so LT broadcast from her building’s back stairwell (communal umbrella stand squarely in the shot.)

LaDonna Tittle is a master of editing, and content selection in general. She’s quite fond of 1980’s in-Camcorder tricks, usually the 360-degree rotating screen or exploding star fade-in. Once, during a segment where she was co-hosting with a jazzman she referred to as “Big Joe”, there were several randomly placed cutaways to a large zucchini. Another time, the last ten minutes of her show were devoted to an elderly male stripper’s routine (to a reggae version of “Hot Stuff”) she recorded while on vacation in Negril. It’s like Pee Wee’s Playhouse on Night Train, basically. I swear she’s shown us how to make a mixed greens salad at least twenty times, and never all the way through. But clearly, that’s not the point.

01/26/11

Kelly’s Dilemma

I sometimes feel bad for Kelly Rowland. She’s like the Jan Brady to Beyonce’s Marsha Marsha Marsha. I guess she’s more famous than Michelle ThirdStringReplacement or any of the other various former DC members but she’s still an afterthought, nonetheless. Beyonce’s been in several critically acclaimed hit movies (“Dreamgirls”, “Cadillac Records”…) but to date, Rowland’s biggest film role was as the token sassy black girl in “Freddy vs. Jason.” (She didn’t even make it to the end, y’all.)

One one hand, don’t cry for her Argentina. For the rest of her life, she’ll make millions in royalties and has a couple of Grammys to boot (in non-televised categories-sigh.) But she’s obviously not content to sit back and harvest the fruits of her labor (?), and that’s the problem. Her constant attempts to reestablish herself as a relevant public figure have reeked of desperation and are just plain embarrassing. Let’s first review her forays into music, sans Beowulf. Miz Kelly has released three solo albums, which have sold a total of 4 million copies worldwide. While this would be great for an emerging artist, it’s dropped-by-your-label territory for a name (formerly) as big as hers. It’s also cringeworthy that she still does the big name promo circuit (instead of rebranding herself as more of a niche act, like Mandy Moore) and has sales this paltry. To date, her most well known work has been as the hook girl on Nelly’s 2002 hit, “Dilemma.”

Most recently, Rowland was dropped from Bravo’s “The Fashion Show” and replaced by the infinitely more talented and amazing Iman. How far into the ground did Rowland drive the ratings for this show that the producers dropped after Season One? Or, better yet, why’d they even both with her in the first place if Iman was get-able? I’m thinking producers invite her onto a project looking for a Beyonce-by-proxy effect and just hope for the best.

Kelly would do better taking a page from the book of Mary Wilson, the former Supreme (and besides Diana, the only surviving founding member.) After so-so post-Supremes efforts, she moved back to Detroit. She’s now an alderwoman on the City Council, and does occassional concerts. Other than the living in Detroit part, doesn’t that sound like a great life kind of?

Or…she could always marry rich. Either way, I just wish she’d stop shoving herself down our throats. It’s your choice Rowland — Mary Wilson or Jermaine Jackson. Just saying.

01/10/11

LVP = MVP

With Real Housewives of Beverly Hills my urge is to strip off all the soundtrack hijinks and teasers, tint it in 70s film stock colors and watch it with subtitles.

Their Beverly Hills is a balloon going flaccid. There’s a sense that some deadly combination of environmental toxins and demagogues could render moot all these delicate toile scenes of late capitalism at any moment.

Their faces have a spectral quality like mannequins papier mached in moth wings. Children are born from rented wombs and women get facials in hyperbaric chambers. More lives than you can count are a replay of Darryl Hannah, and it’s still the age of Spago and Glenn Close as sex symbol.

Sometimes it’s enough to just imagine yourself floating alone in a housewife pool, the horizon emblazoned with paste-colored big box Taj Mahals.

It would be enough—just that—but then the Lord gave us Lisa Vanderpump, holographic amalgam of a thousand Charlie ads. Lisa is a posh Brit whose house is where Diana Ross goes in champagne/benzodiazepine daydreams when she clicks her Wiz heels together and says “There’s no place like home.”

A very special brand of 1986 - 89 is embedded in everything Lisa touches. Reading her blog I discovered that she appeared on Silk Stalkings, which has long been an obsession of King Helene and I. Silk Stalkings was broadcast on the USA Network from 1991 - 1999. Not a show you could linger on with parents lurking about, but when you’d catch a glimpse of it, it piqued your filthy curiosity: you had no idea what a silk stalking was, but you knew from the sultry saxophone and red lipstick script it was some trouble you wanted to get into. When you got old enough, you realized it was mostly a lot of Vanna White-looking women pulling clothes back on over high waisted thongs. But Lisa manages to evoke, in her 50s, fully dressed, what was supposed to be the thrill of SS. She’s perpetually in the driver’s seat of a red Ferrari, a black silk chiffon dress fluttering in the breeze, cutting out of another Careless Whisper evening.

Lisa’s also exactly what my girlhood would have spit out of its Weird Science computer as its Mom/big sister/life size Barbie (also because she kind of is/sounds exactly like Kelly LeBrock??) So many colors of pink and purple, and her outfits are what you designed with a Tyco Fashion Plates set and rub-on colored pencils.

Lisa being from the UK, with her normal family (except that her daughter is named Pandora!?!) and a husband who loves her, sort of anesthetizes the Beverly Hills scene, makes it a wholesome place to love again. She’s like going back to a time before the Kardashian Kard, shrunken heads on Celebrity Rehab, and poison-paralyzed faces of junked women were canaries in the coal mine for universal spiritual death. To when the words “Beverly Hills” evoked only a beach day in a Barbie Camper under a mantle of Christmas palm trees.

12/9/10

Fits and starts

Toddlers and Tiaras. My present intrigue is the walk/dance of “glitz” contestants when they’re modeling swimsuits/talenting. It’s sort of like if a catwalk stride went to the rodeo and got filtered through a strobe light. There’s something really distinctive about its etymology—it’s like partly a Beyonce sass/finger wag, partly a line dance heel-toe-shimmy, but then it’s sort of half broken, maimed, like a banner ad for car insurance with an animated dancer that keeps getting stuck on the last beat of its routine. And then of course it’s all framed by the horror show grin, which, in the way it’s plastered precariously onto the tots’ faces evokes shocked paralysis.

It brings to mind this thing popular girls (used to?) do where, in their speech, they purposely develop a very slight stutter or lisp. As an adaptive strategy it performs a variety of damsel submissiveness but also clutches the viewer in a hostage situation as he has to stand there and anticipate the syllable forming. I think there’s a similar dynamic at play in the fractured pageant walk. Instead a syncopated sound or two it’s a stitching together of seven or eight small, full body seizures, but in both cases manipulative; an example of learning to spectacle.

11/1/10

Misc.

On Wednesday night, I caught the premier of Adrian Grenier’s documentary, Teenage Paparazzo, on HBO. It’s a nice enough piece of fluff, ostensibly about a 14 year old rookie pap who’s better at his job than most veterans. But the most interesting part about the whole affair is when Grenier interviews a social anthropologist who offers a couple of theories regarding the concept of “celebrity” and why our collective appetite for them seemingly grows over time.

In a recent study, members of some primate species or the other elected to go hungry (literally starved themselves) in order to be able to stare at pictures of the dominant members of their society. The only other images that caused them to do the same were extreme close ups of the hind quarters of females. (Oh…so that’s why I’ll still buy a copy of “US Weekly” when I’m down to the change jar and washing my dry clean only-s in the sink…) We may have an ingrained evolutionary response to idolize and want to constantly observe the dominant members of our society. This once served to keep us alive (these alphas would teach us how to hunt game, build housing, use tools), but is now kinda useless (look bored during a beej? bejewel our Blackberries? choose Jason Wahler over Paris?!.)

The other theory is that is a world of less tightly knit families and towns, we don’t gossip about the town drunk or our crazy Uncles as much as we used to. So we use celebrities as sort of cultural conduits for working out our collective morals and values. What’s too far? What’s OK? What’s still considered “bad”? We work all of these things out with celebrities as stand-ins for the town whore and pin a scarlet letter on Angelina Jolie (she stole Brad!) instead of Hester Prynne.

It’s probably some mix of the two although I’m more inclined to get behind the latter. The star machine of the studio system took advantage of the fact that we wanted to see our ideals (aesthetically, representing virility and beauty) made 10 feet tall and learn (how to love, seduce, be elegant, be a stud…) from them – so direct link to the first theory. We should have had that need satiated. And, in a way, it was until the post-sexual revolution 70’s –when society was starting to be made up of a myriad of social mores- that we started to even think of celebrities as actual people.

Also, Chantal Biya. She is the First Lady of Cameroon. That hairdo is named after her – it’s one of two that are. (The one pictured is for formal occasions, duh.)

This is Chantal with Paris Hilton.

With Carla Bruni. (Why the stern side-eye, Chantal?! Both of your initals are CB!) Also, am I the only one that thinks she sort of looks like Kimora Lee Simmons? Trannyliciousness to the second power!

09/30/10