Chancelucky

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Bachelor Rome 8- Shotguns, Giggles, and Slow Horses (tv review)


This one probably looked good on paper. Prince, villa, good manners, fairy tale and fair maiden so virtuous that they even dressed her up as a white-gowned vestal virgin for the final rose ceremony. There was only one small matter. Lorenzo Borghese was simply miscast.

Everyone knows that when the heroine writes, "I dream of a man who loves me so deeply that he doesn't even think about another woman..." You do not end the story with,"Well, to tell you the truth there is another woman and I like her better."

Sadie was tempting fate more than a little by expecting her kind of love on a show where the whole idea is to have one guy date twenty seven women. Talk about bad odds for being the one and only! Dare I mention the fantasy suites, the hot tub scenes, and as Lisa Blank might put it so many tools on the show that the generic name for future Bachelors should be "Stanley”?

My question though is should the rest of us be disappointed that Lorenzo Borghese chose a serial giggler instead of the spunky but sweet, classy-conservative, articulate-firecracker, made for reality television heroine Sadie? Wasn't it only editing and a bunch of romantic backdrops that made anyone expect Lorenzo to drop to one knee for the real heroine and say, "I'm not worthy to be that man for one such as you, but please would you have me anyway? You have brought out the best in my unworthy self. I had lived but it was as if I was born again when you came out of the limo that night" ?

They would then both quiver and the sheer joy would bathe the scene in warm telegenic light.

Let's back up! Does it occur to anyone that Sadie was being more than a little delusional about Prince Charming? She decided that Lorenzo was somehow Mr. Right because he flew a plane with her and he showed some respect for her decision to save it for marriage.
First, Prince Lorenzo's passions never included saving starving children, defending the persecuted, or going to Bible study classes. If you asked me about a rich guy whose pleasures in life were flying, scuba diving, and sailing, my first reaction would be "playboy" (not necessarily the Hugh Hefner variety) but certainly
not "Here's a great candidate for a deep emotional commitment of the Sadie variety."

Yes, there are women out there who fanatasize that she can be the one who'll change all that, but there really weren't that many indications that Lorenzo was chivalry reborn. Yes, he had good manners and yes he did talk some about family and just wanting one woman to spend the rest of his life with, but those are things gentlemen do, they don't make you a gentleman or a knight. The essence of either of those things is in the heart not the lineage. It might just be me, but Lorenzo seemed to have an oddly distant relationship with his own parents when they were actually in the room with him.
I mean, what was this guy doing kissing Agnese that way just hours before kicking her into the canals without a rose? Other than wanting everyone to move to New York City, where was the "there" with this guy?

I wasn't a Sadie fan necessarily, but the young woman has charm and can actually articulate her feelings especially in front of the camera. It was Lorenzo who was way out of his class, yet everything got reversed in the weird logic of the Bachelor. The Prince was supposed to be the prize, yet Sadie was the one who came and went with actual regal grace while Lorenzo was playing cheap-ass therapist"tell me what you're thinking" with her after the rejection as he tried to assure her that "It was indeed all real." (not that it mattered)

Yes, I confess. I'm the same guy who trashed Sadie for saying the V word maybe sixty or seventy too many times. I still also don't completely trust people who keep talking about "having values."
It's strange, but I still liked Sadie for having energy and guts. I also thought the editing was telegraphing her as the winner with the possible exception of giving her Cameron Diaz’s do from Something About Mary’s hair gel scene with all that implies.

Of course, the Fleiss way is to load drama into the otherwise not so fairy-tale like raw material of reality tv by implying possibilities that simply aren't going to happen. Often, the editing treachery forces out any appearance of genuine interaction on the show, depriving it of reality tv's occasionally unscripted power. Despite the repeated cuts to Erica Rose, who is likely now changing her SAG name to "Rome Hilton", Paris's bustier even more classless cousin, the producers were selling "fairy tale" so hard, that I made the mistake of taking them seriously. Why the heck would you sell something that didn't wind up happening? I guess I forgot that this was Heidi Fleiss's cousin. The promos and editing are about delivering ratings not actual romance or fairy tales.

Chastened, I must pay homage to those who clearly earned their Bachelors of Science or Science of Bachelor by ignoring the edits and carefully studying the picture of the ring from screen captures of the teasers. A bunch of people figured out some time ago that Jennifer Wilson won by matching fingers, reflection, and pigments. So this installment of the Bachelor was about chemistry after all, but a branch of it known as "mass spectrometry."

btw You want further proof of the missing "there" with Lorenzo. The guy tries to tout a ring designed by mom for the Home Shopping Network as a "family ring." When your lineage goes back six centuries, family ring is supposed to mean an object worn by generations of women in your family, not something that mom dashed off between palm readings and sent off to the house jewelry salesmen to mock up for the Final Rose Show. Yuck!!! This guy was nothing but ersatz romance. If you bought it by the third show, I’m sure they threw in a ginzu knife or maybe a case of dog shampoo.

Given that, I do suspect that Prince Lorenzo was true to himself, his real self not the storyline. He’s a thirty four year old bachelor for a good reason. I’m not suggesting that he’s in the closet or anything. I thought he was being very much himself when he said “I wanted to find out more about Jen’s emotional side, so I took her to a Swedish amusement park.”

I know this was tv, but there was never any hint that the guy had ever dealt with serious emotional crisis or risk. He appeared to guarded and placid to ever let that happen. On the show, he came across as someone who was afraid of making emotional mistakes. If you noticed, each time he tried to articulate his reasons for not offering a rose to an individual woman (except for Jami and Pretty Woman night) he sounded actuarial. He extrapolated the downside of things not working out with Agnese while ignoring what appeared to be actual passion. He took Lisa’s deposition about her timeline and past relationships. With Sadie, he more or less ignored her very personal gift and letter in favor of some unspecified feeling of “safety”.

There is a theory out there that he simply chose the finalist whom he could break up with the most easily. I suppose that’s possible, but I actually think Jen was simply more at his actual emotional level. After eight weeks, did we find out much about her other than the fact that her father has a shotgun just like Dick Cheney? When she talked about Lorenzo, Jen was “Wow, I feel like I could be really serious about this guy and maybe his parents will be my in laws….Lorenzo is just the kind of guy who might be it for me.”

She might have deeper more specific feelings about the matter, but she like Lorenzo really wasn’t going to show them to the camera. Honestly, watching their interaction on screen I don’t think Fleiss was trying to hide the romance as much as fifteen minutes of actual conversation between the two would have put America to sleep. “Hey, thanks for the stuffed animal, I think I’ll call him Fred. Why Fred? He looks like a Fred to me. Why not Murray? Okay, I’ll call him Murray-Fred.”

Or how about this greatest hit, “You’re going to be a counselor so counsel me? Okay, I think you should just see me and get rid of the other women.”

Not exactly Hepburn-Tracy or Grace and Rainier, it’s what it appears to be two relatively sheltered adults who are physically attracted to one another, but who don’t seek out intellectual or emotional sparks say like Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson. Lorenzo still works for the family business and lives close to home. Jen appeared to be living at home and was set on going into the same field as her mother. The finale made a lot of the odd commonalities between Jen and Sadie, dad’s with beards, counselor moms, and zodiac signs. The real actual parallels are between Lorenzo and his rose of choice. Neither one is a romantic and in the end there’s nothing wrong with that. Jen may well be the right match for the real Lorenzo and isn’t that what the shows supposed to be about as opposed to manufactured fairy tales?

On the horseback riding date,Jen's not quite galloping seemed about the perfect metaphor for Lorenzo. Sadie was an initiator someone who would have pushed his emotional boundaries. Jen is simply more cautious.

A few more stray thoughts- Am I the only one who thought that Prince Senior and Mom seemed less like royalty than the Maitre De at the local Italian restaurant and his more sociable wife? Also the whole meet the parents scene screamed for Agnese as Lorenzo’s opportunity to discover his real Borghese legacy. It also felt like the brunch with the three families (didn’t the Mafia do something like this in upstate New York once?) was supposed to generate more reality drama than it did. As it unfolded, all the participants seemed to heed the “Set up” alarm then avoided the traps built into the set piece by talking repeatedly about how awkward it felt.

So the big question….Do I want to watch Andy Baldwin do the Bachelorette triathlon? Didn’t they do a Duke educated doctor not too long ago? How’s the whole Officer and a Gentleman theme going to play against the backdrop of the Iraq war (not that anyone talks about anything like that on this show)? I suppose unless Jesse Palmer solves Fermat's Last Theorem and Jen Schefft settles down with the right guy in the meantime, I'll likely at least check it out.

My one parting thought is that if they want actual romance on this show (personally I much prefer the hot tub, beach scenes, and fantasy suite dilemmas), they need to stop shopping for Bachelors at central casting or by resume and look for someone with the necessary heart and imagination to make it possible.


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Friday, November 24, 2006

Bachelor Rome Episode 7-Will You Take Erica Rose (tv review)


Coming into Monday night I had figured that the over-under on Erica Rose's time on camera for The Women Tell All would be right around thirty nine minutes out of a total of 48 on air minutes. Rose's schtick as reality show villain-clown is simple. She's basically a modern take on the ugly stepsisters from Cinderella. If you ever see the Drew Barrymore movie Ever AFter, you'll recognize the template. The producers put a tiara on her and then tell her to make the rest of us feel good about not being too wealthy.

Bachelor gender politics are fascinating. The show celebrates the wealthy or "seemingly so" male. Andrew Firestone was an heir, Travis was a Doctor, Aaron was a banker, and Lorenzo's a prince. Even Ian, Meredith's beau, clearly came from money. The women on the show,whom America is supposed to love, are almost always made to appear middle class. The winning females on the show tend to be nurses, teachers, have deaf fathers, go to school (in one case law school), or be retired NBA cheerleaders. Being an actual doctor, lawyer, or a socialite is a near guarantee that you won't make the home visits because the show will expose you as neurotic, angry, entitled, or just plain weird.

Consider some of the women singled out for special embarrassment on past installments. There was Doctor Rotting Eggs, of course. There was the actual attorney Jessie from San Antonio who supposedly "creeped" out the virginal backup quarterback, Jesse Palmer, by touching him while they were sunbathing together. There was an older woman who claimed to run several business of her own who didn't make it past the first rose ceremony. This time it's Erica who kept trying to remind the Prince that only she came from a comparable station.

I noticed that both Jessie the frog-loving attorney and Doctor "it cost me fifteen thousand dollars in business to come on this show" refused to show up for the Women Tell All, the b-fest ( the "b" doesn't stand for "bachelorette")that precedes the final rose show. So what is it that made Erica Rose come back? Well, it might be that the plastic surgeon's daughter always had her eye less on the bachelor than the camera itself.

The point of the "Women Tell All" is to confirm your worst fears about college sororities. You hold a camera up to a pack of young women living under one roof and voila 48 minutes of televised embarrassment. This is, of course, part of the Fleiss formula. With the bachelor alone, they talk about "journeys", "the most romantic date of their life", and "perfect". Together on the group dates in front of the bachelor, they tell jokes and confess things to the camera. Without the civilizing influence of rose-enhanced testosterone, it's claws out in steel cage.

For the last few installments, the formula has included a "first impression" rose which means the show's women declare open season on the recipient. There was Trish the stalker, "everyone hates me because I'm so beautiful" Sarah, and Susan who only wanted to go to Hollywood. This time it was Lisa and the wedding gown. Why don't they just call it the "ritual sacrifice rose"?

As first-impression recipients go, the ladies were relatively gentle with Lisa only calling her a "reality show whore", "two-faced", etc. One first night casualty who happened to be already thirty then instructed Lisa to "go live her life" while Lisa protested meekly that there's nothing wrong with having a timetable and that she wasn't as crazy as she appeared on television.

In the meantime, I'm stuck with five hundred official "Lisa Blank Dayplanners" which I was going to sell on E-bay after Lorenzo offered her the final rose and instead of kissing him, she whipped out her datebook and crossed off the next item on her timetable then high-fived the camera crew. Fortunately, I did hedge by also buying three hundred and fifty complete four book sets of Ellen Fein and Sherri Schneider's The Rules- all personally autographed by Sadie.

The Women Tell All serves one other function, it gives Chris Harrison extended camera time. I sincerely believe that if they ever have an Emmy for best reality show host, it belongs to Chris. In some sixty seven rose ceremonies, he's found at least fifty nine different ways to say "This is your last rose." More significant, he's demonstrated a super-human capacity for keeping a straight face. Who can forget how he took Jesse Palmer asside after the quarterback passed a rose to the wrong lady? Installment after installment, Chris Harrison serves as a reliable reference point for "normal" in the face of the behavior altering mixture of alcohol, sex, and fame that drives the show.

Chris was his masterful deadpan hosting self as they reviewed Kim's drunken beach rant,Gina atually saying something, Agnese's underdog run to the home visits, and especially Lorenzo the Bland. Part of the art of Chris Harrison is that like the Butler narrator in Ishiguro's Remains of the Day
he is so restrained that the viewer must watch very carefully to see any signs that he actually likes or dislikes the bachelor or bachelorette whom he serves as intermediary. One could never imagine Chris interrupting Jami's "Pretty Woman" fantasy with "Why are you comparing yourself to a prostitute?"

Despite the gentleman's club antics in the first couple shows with the body shots, ladies in Princely boxers lounging on royal bed, and confessions about the strangest place you ever did it (all somehow involving Desiree), the producers have worked hard to position Lorenzo as the ultimate gentleman. I find myself wondering what the ever inscrutable Chris Harrison thinks of the fact that Prince Lorenzo only seems interested in finding someone who fits his life rather than the other way around. He takes Sadie flying and scuba diving because they're the things he loves to do. His big moment with Jennifer comes when she shows a willingness to move to New York for him despite the fact that he went to college in her native Florida. Finally, it doesn't even seem to dawn on him that an Italian prince who finds an Italian woman might consider staying in Italy a while. He might say the right things, but...

Combine that with this guy's notion of a "great conversation" which almost always consists of his being judgmental whether it's Jami's parents' divorce, Lisa's less than perfect romantic history, and Jeanette's rather classy reluctance to be demanding after winning the chariot race in Ben Hur. This is, after all, a guy who's wittiest moment was a joke about cow penises (if you were wondering, cows are female). Throw in a couple glimpses of his car door slam with Lisa and his dismissal of Erica and I have this funny feeling that Erica has been right all along. Lorenzo is just pretending. He's really just acting like Prince Charming while having the heart of Prince Charles, the man who had the fairtyale wedding on worldwide tv only to prefer fox hunting and his affair with a mistress from the inner-circle.

When he told Erica, "We might have money in common but not values" it might have made for good tv, but it rang strangely harsh. A genuinely romantic soul might publicly dis someone who had hurt others or dishonored herself, but he would never do it to someone who'd simply been a fool. If you ask me, the only real love match that's been made on this installment is between Reality Tv's fifteen minutes of fame and Erica Rose.


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Sunday, November 19, 2006

How the VWRC Would Have Done IT (Another Karl Rove Adventure)
















CL: Karl what happened to your old office, the pumpkin-colored one with the closet? What happened to Robo-Karl?

The deputy chief of staff and I were sitting in a vestibule in the basement of the executive office building next to the White House a week after the mid-term elections of 2006.

KR: Robo-Karl was just the beta version. I’ll be baaaak!

CL: Wrong movie Karl. He can’t run in 2008 he wasn’t born an American citizen. Look, I know it didn't go that well this time. I'm sure you're a little depressed, but it's going to be okay.

KR: Well that whole majority leader thing was fun.

CL: Karl, you ever heard of karma?

KR: What are you suggesting?

CL: Well, just suppose....

Karl looked up at me, his eyes wide and sad.

KR: Suppose, I had maybe done some of the things they say I did?

CL: I'm not saying you outed a CIA agent or caused someone back in Texas to commit suicide by spreading Mark Foley like rumors about him. But suppose, you did some things in the past, not big things, but little stuff that maybe you've never told anyone about.

Karl drops his head.

KR: Like Lee Atwater stuff...You know I always wondered about that brain tumor and how he suddenly started asking for forgiveness at the end.

CL: Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night?

KR: What person with my job hasn't?

CL: Karl, let's imagine you maybe showed the president how to start a war just to win an election.

KR: You mean, not like I did anything like that, just how I would have done it?

I pull a folder out of my backpack.

KR: What's this?

CL: It's the Downing Street memo. Let's suppose you knew this sort of stuff well before the invasion and someone really did send an order to "fix" the evidence.

KR: We're really just supposing....

I raise my hand to signal and a camera crew slips in the door.

CL: Absolutely. Remember, that special prosecutor already said you won't be indicted.

KR: Well, he did meet with me an awful lot of times for someone as innocent as I happen to be.

CL: So let's say you killed 35,000 civilians. How would you go about it?

KR: You know it probably really is 650,000.

CL: Well, I was wondering why the Iraqi government quadrupled its own estimates just a day after the election to 150,000. You guys were saying that 45,000 was the only reliable official estimate? How does that sort of thing happen?

KR: I'm not saying I had anything to do with it right?....But, if I were to be involved in something like that, I'd be hitting the cable shows with talking points while quietly reminding Baghdad that if the new estimate got out before the election the new Congress might just let the new government do a Saigon 1974, but this time with no helicopters out.

CL: But, what if they still wanted to talk?

KR: You go after their wives and children. You remind them that it's not just them stuck in Baghdad with no Green Zone.

CL: Would the President have known about anyt of this?

KR: Of course, but not in any way that could be traced directly. In the meantime, you stall any investigations on the ground of national security and executive privilege.

CL: That seems awfully cynical.

KR: Maybe, but it feels awfully good.

CL: What feels so good about killing thousands of people and misleading the American people?

KR: Of course, I've never done anything like that, but say I did. There's nothing like the power....

CL: You mean like a good push poll can be like a dagger to the integrity of the system?

KR: Now, I didn't say that. You did.

CL: But maybe you would feel it, if you ever did something like that?

KR: It's kind of like saying, "Who's your daddy now, who's your real daddy?"

Karl suddenly jumps on a chair and begins gesticulating wildly. I start motioning to the camera man to cut the scene.

CL: Karl, we're just speculating now right?

KR: I killed thousands of people, I ruined lives, I kept the truth from being heard. So what? You know the really scary thing.

CL: You mean scarier than what we're already hearing?

KR: Fewer people care about this than care about O.J.

It's a few weeks later now. Karl got his office back and as always he was right. Not only did Fox news refuse to air the footage, no other mainstream network would even mention Karl's "confession".

I did finally get a producer from "Hardball" to talk to me.

HBP: "We've always known this stuff. America's always known this stuff. It's just not news."

CL: What do you mean it's not news?

HBP: Who's gonna watch something like that when they can talk about O.J. instead?

Karl Rove adventures




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Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Bachelor Rome Episode 6-Kissing a Tool (tv review)



Or What Kind of Tool Am I?

The bachelor is in Sicily at a villa-type spa that looks vaguely like the place that Michael Corleone stayed with Appolonia, the pure-hearted Sicilian beauty who represented his last chance at redemption. Sadie (did she tell the camera that she’s still a virgin yet?) is in a white bikini straddling Prince Lorenzo while giving him a back rub. She tells us that Lorenzo has now been responsible for so many firsts in her life, flying a plane, scuba diving in a pool, giving outdoor backrubs to naked men in Sicily with extra VIRGIN olive oil, etc. We're supposed to think that Lorenzo's next first for Sadie will be to help her become the first woman to give up her viriginity before a national television audience. I can see the producers telling one another, "We get that on video and we can go head to head with O.J.'s semi-confession on the Fox Network, we're back in the reality tv big leagues."

Mmmmm....I do remember something like it on a special episode of Doogie Howser and we now all know what happened with Neil Patrick Harris. I also vaguely remember similar firsts with Tori Spelling's character in Beverly Hills 90210 and maybe there was a lost episode of Heathcliff Huxtable drugging one of Lisa Bonet's friends, having his way with her, then paying an undsiclosed settlement. Isn't it strange how reality tv is so much more like sitcom or soap opera tv than actual reality?

I checked the ABC site and where it once said "Sadie San Diego California 23 occupation: event planner" it now apparently says "Sadie, occupation: telling America repeatedly that she's a virgin."

After the fifth reminder in six minutes, I was screaming at the tv. "Call in Tattaglia to put a bomb on Lorenzo's private plane. Sadie's going to want to show him how she's learned to fly all by herself...."

Do I need to remind myself that just a week ago there was this guy in Colorado who was writing books with his wife about how to keep your marriage vows before God and was helping the people of Colorado ensure that marriage was only for heterosexuals? Sadie is working so hard at letting America know that she has an intact hymen that she's sounding an awful lot like Ted Haggard which makes the "Lorenzo reminds me of dad" thing even creepier.

Please don't even get me started about the excitement of scuba diving in a swimming pool while you're like thirty feet from the Mediterranean or this whole "I fell for you because you have a pilot's license." I'm thinking. Okay, a boy asks my daughter out and picks her up in his car. Daughter goes. Wow, I'm in the car with this guy and my life is now in his hands. I must really trust him. He must be really special. Sadie, you do know that more people die in cars driven by teenaged boy idiots than in private planes not flown by major league pitchers? I guess, if the prince doesn't pick her in two weeks, we know where we can find Sadie. She'll be hanging around the bar at Lindbergh Field in San Diego looking for guys with wings on their coat pockets.

Yikes! That got pretty dark there. I need to be more positive. How about put her in a harem costume and she looks like Barbara Eden? That would make Lorenzo, Larry Hagman, which would mean we just have to wait a few years and we can get Mary Crosby to shoot him.

Wow, that's even darker. I read the above paragraphs and realized that I've watched way too much tv over way too many years. Either that or Nick at Night is the only channel on our cable system. Well, I respect them both for being classy and conservative. After all, it's the epitome of classy and conservative to shout on national television fiteen or twenty times, "Hey everyone I'm a virgin. I'm a virgin."

What a tasteful conversation starter say at the next royal gathering. "Good evening your highness....thankyou for inviting us to the ball. This is Sadie. She's a VIRGIN. I met her on a reality tv show where I spent the night in the fantasy suite with a woman who went skinny dipping in front of a camera crew with a girl who did it in a locker room. "You know if we get married, we're going to have our honeymoon in the VIRGIN Islands."
I'm sorry, I guess I got so worked up I may have missed the whole point of the Sadie segment this week. What is it we found out again?

I know this seems strange, but I really started to like Lisa. First of all, I follow the Bachelor message boards and she basically revealed that she's one of us. After all, we're the ones who post about Travis being a tool and Andrew being a sleaze. Lisa, if you're reading this leave a comment on the blog or on fansofrealitytv.com or sirlinksalot where the real students of the Bachelor hang out. I mean where else will you find skin pigment analyses of pictures of the ring from the previews done by electron microscope and spectrograph?

Maybe the parents liked Lorenzo, but I've already commented that Lorenzo clearly had no chemistry with that dog Lisa rented for their hometown date. If ever there was a sign that the woman is delusional, claiming that her dog approved was it. Should she apply for the show again, here's some advice.

1) When talking to a 5'6" bachelor about another bachelor being hot looking, don't pick the guy who was 6'4" and looked nothing like him.

2) If Lorenzo is the prince. Andrew was the heir to the vulcanized winery. I wouldn't call the guy on the show most similar to the Prince, a sleaze.

3) You went on the show to find true love. Now, you and I know that only an idiot would expect to find true love on reality tv. Truth is you find Erica, Lee Ann, Lannie's mom, stalker Stu, or scariest of all someone like Jen on reality tv. It's just one of those things. If you're actually honest about your motives say like being an actress who thought the exposure might help your career, everybody will hate you. Bachelor sincere is not the same thing as actually being sincere. This is what good tv is all about.

4) You cheated on boyfriend one and kept breaking up and getting back together with the guy you cheated with. That one ended like three weeks before you applied for the show which implies that he or you might....
This is really good reality tv btw but these are the stories you tell to other bachelorettes while you're playing drinking games then one of them goes on the one on one date and tries to rat you out.

5) You might want to think about asking Lorenzo a few questions back and telling him what you like about him before you let them film you making out on the bed with him in the fantasy suite. You want good tv. You should make a surprise appearance on the final and offer to show the footage to Sadie before he offers the rose?

6) Could you let me know when you put the earrings on E-bay? The trick is to set the "buy it now" at 14,5k and they'll sell in about ten seconds.
btw. I actually know someone who got a diamond ring on a reality show and sold it to buy a Scion. Maybe you can get a scion of your own that way.

A small point or two: Lorenzo is 34. If you ignore the editing, Lisa was the only one of the final four who owns her own house, has a career, and had the nerve to say "Well, I don't know that I'd just follow to New York either." She also actually told Lorenzo the "truth" about herself by showing him her flaws both personally and interpersonally. Okay, there's the small matter that she might be a bit manipulative, but Lorenzo's supposed to be a royal and thus used to that sort of thing. It's even an asset for a princess if you think about what happened to Princess Di who may have come to Windsordom a bit too naive. If Lorenzo really were a prince, Lisa's the only one of the three who would survive in that world.

Another small note, didn't they teach any foreign languages in all those private and boarding schools that Prince Lorenzo attended? Royals are supposed to talk to other royals who inevitably speak some other language. It's kind of poor form to wander royal gatherings with one of those calculator-sized translators.

Even cooler, she would have been on the message boards telling us all about it. She could post as Princess Lisa or Ms. Timetable. It saddens me that all those people on the message board turned on someone who was so clearly one of their own at least in spirit.

Lorenzo wanted to see Jennifer's emotional side so he took her to a Swedish amusement park. This guy's really deep. Royal newsflash, screaming on a roller coaster is not really anyone's "emotional" side. They hung out at an ice bar which I suspect was either some sort of metaphor or just made for a good backdrop. They have a deep conversation about Jennifer's past love life. She got over a college romance which now means she's ready to get married, have kids, and move to New York.

As a guy watching the show, let me complain for a second. What's with showing more of Lorenzo's cleavage and abs than his date's. Anyway, as they are about to jump into the hot tub, Prince bad hair and funny-colored sweater tells her, "This day was so much better than I expected."

Any sane woman would say, "What the hell was that supposed to mean bozo? Were you expecting to fall asleep? Were you expecting to spend the entire dinner telling me that you'd never move to Portland?"

This was the perfect moment for some real Bachelor drama, maybe something like
"Well if you weren't expecting much with me....let me tell you this. You really think that Sadie's a virgin...Maybe you should ask Chris Harrison and Desiree. You know what I mean?"

Can you imagine that as the lead in for the Ladies tell All show?

Okay, even Mike Fleiss wouldn't go that far, but at least he could have cross cut to Dad watching his daughter in the fantasy suite. btw, In case you were wondering, it's illegal for private citizens to own or carry firearms in Sweden. I checked. The producers of the bachelor are much smarter than even I imagined.

Anyway, let me step out of the room for a second. Any choice this guy makes won't change my opinion. He might be nice enough, but he's still, in the great Bachelor tradition, a tool.

Here's my prediction, the editing tells me that it's Sadie by a nose, I mean a rose. Oh gosh your highness, I'm so terribly sorry. I don't know what got into me. It was nothing personal, it was just business. Like maybe you're not on here for true love either.



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Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Cat Stevens-Yusuf Islam-The other Rumi


After thirty years, Cat Stevens has a new pop album. This is the downside of letting the Democrats win again! Two years ago, the Republicans did the right thing by putting the guy on the "no-fly" list. They claimed it was because he had given to Moslem charities with possible terrorist ties. We all know though that they just didn't want any more whiny pop-folk musicians in America. Now, there's a conservative value that I might vote for.

Even though I personally like Cat Stevens music (I have a CD even and once a year we play it and my wife and I dance around the living room pretending that we hate jumbo jets and that we're on the road to find out), I understood completely. I don't want another generation of kids endlessly explaining to one another "You know a moonshadow is the sign of a tumor in a medical scan. The song really means that he's dying. Isn't that sad and cool at the same time?"

Yes, I made it all the way through Harold and Maude, once. I even went a second time to impresss a girl I liked many years ago- it didn't work. It doesn't mean I want to see a DVD remaster complete with enhanced Cat Stevens soundtrack. Naturally, it was hard for me to see how a guy singing about riding the peace train and who wrote delicate songs about building houses from barley rice and all that other sweet seventies girl stuff, might really be an Islamo-fascist-terrorist. Still, I completely agreed with the general idea of keeping the guy out of the U.S.

It has nothing to do with the singer changing his name to Yusuf Islam and embracing the Q'ran instead of Patti D'arbanville. I'd have thought the same thing if they wanted to bring Peter Frampton, ELO, or stage a Bee Gees revival in this country.
I was fine with all those things back then, but once was enough.

That doesn't mean that I'm fine with the current mainstream status of country music. While I love roots country and even outlaw country, with things like Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue" once is too much. Can we maybe put him on a plane and send him to the front lines for several weeks of actual duty? I'm sure no one put Toby on the "no-fly" list. Country music used to be about simple people making the best of messed up lives. Corporate country seems to be about people living in a messed up country and letting it happen anyway by letting Jesus take the wheel.

I know at some point, I'll listen to the new Cat Stevens album "An Other Cup", likely through e-mule or you-tube. I know that this is an opportunity for the world to see a Western musician who embraced Islam show us the middle way to international peace and understanding and all that other great stuff, but part of me fights it. It says, "If I ever lose my mind, it'll be because they'll be playing Cat Stevens again everywhere you sit down for a cup of coffee in between takes from Claude Bolling's Suite for Jazz Piano and Flute.

If we're going to have a soundtrack for the future, I just want it to have a bit more kick. I wasn't necesasrily a fan when the guy was alive (I was just too big a nerd), but can't they bring Jimi Hendrix back from the dead instead? I just read this excellent biography, Roomful of Mirrors, Charles R. Cross that details every song Jimi played, every drug he took, and every woman he slept with until he more or less spontaneously combusted at age 27 in 1970 a little bit before Cat Stevens quietly retreated into Yusuf Islam. Now, Hendrix was a musician for the current world-angry, unimaginably fast, loud, untameable!

Of course, the really scary thing as far as I'm concerned is that I'm going to listen to the new album and really like it. Then I'll have to look at myself and think about how my heart hardened in the last 30 years to the possibility that popular music could be sweet, hopeful, and gentle. What happened to that time and that me?




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Friday, November 10, 2006

The Bachelor Rome Episode 5.25 "Sweet Fantasies" (tv review)


(Jean Cocteau's 1946 version of the Bachelor is still considered the best)

Weird episode of the Bachelor last night, I couldn’t believe the look on Faith Hill’s face when Lorenzo didn’t give her a rose at the end.

I personally didn’t think it was fair to bring in all those new ladies just before the fantasy dates, but I have to compliment Mike Fleiss on the American Idol tie in with Lorenzo giving a rose to Carrie Underwood. That was especially good tv to have the camera briefly cut to Anthony Federov in his tux waiting for the coming romantic showdown between the immigrant Ukrainian crooner and the Italian Prince who doesn’t speak Italian. I have to also say that the new bachelorettes on the show sure sang a lot better than the old ones did on opera night with Vitorrio Grigolo.

I have to complain that this week’s show was a couple hours longer than necessary and I have no idea why they switched from Italy to Nashville so suddenly, but maybe Chris Harrison will explain some of that when they do the “Women Tell All” in a couple weeks between thirteen minutes of the Erica outtakes and the five minutes of let’s bring Lisa and her timetable to tears on national television.

On Tuesday, the American people delivered my idea of a great fantasy date. They handed out blue roses instead of red ones. It even looks like one of the Bachelorettes, Nancy from San Francisco, might take over the house instead of keeping the guy. If you ask me, I have no idea how that guy Dennis stayed on as long as he did. It’s got to be a deal breaker when you go on a one on one date with a guy and he reveals that he ignored the fact that his middle-aged Bachelor brother was making passes at sixteen year old boys.

Now that Prince Lorenzo has had two reality television weeks to rest up for his fantasy dates, the show’s writers have had the opportunity to reinvigorate the show. An anonymous informant who calls herself Doctor Rotting Eggs e-mailed me a pdf document that apparently is a list of suggestions from Mike Fleiss’s secret crew of scriptwriters. She explained to me that she is not a real Doctor at all, but an actress who has now been unable to get roles other than one offer to be a combination secret government agent and swimsuit model for some reality show.

Sadie
  1. By far the best tv would be for the Prince to pull a Marquis de Sadie and seduce the San Diego bachelorette into a Dangerous Liaison then dump her because he feels so guilty about getting her to give up her virtue.

  2. Second best possibility, Sadie disappears to ponder the Prince’s offer of time in the fantasy suite and reveals to the Prince that she was born “Sam” and they wind up watching the “Crying Game” together while talking through the night.

  3. Sadie realizes that she wants the Prince to love her on her own terms, bids him good night, and he gives her a rose anyway, but just before the final rose show it’s revealed that the Prince called Desiree from his room that night.


Jennifer
  1. Agrees to go to the fantasy suite, but they both fall asleep from boredom after Jennifer discusses her teaching career. Jennifer’s father knocks on the door the next morning without using his knuckles.

  2. Reveals to the prince that for several generations her family has been werewolves and it just happens to be a full moon.

  3. Lets the prince know that she really really likes him and could see herself moving to New York to get to know him better.


Lisa

  1. Brings her wedding dress to the fantasy suite, but Prince Lorenzo doesn’t notice. It turns out that he’s been enchanted by an evil sorceress and after midnight turns into a hideous beast. Lisa asks him if he will still keep to her timetable. He nods. She stays anyway.

  2. Discusses her timetable at length with the prince. He asks her about breaking up with a boyfriend just three weeks before going on the show. Lisa reveals that she was dating the same man who was engaged to Susan Edds during Dr. Travis’s season.

  3. The Prince gets an aside to the camera where he begins to question Lisa’s motives and whether or not she has actual feelings for him or if she’s just interested in “winning”. As he questions her, Lisa pulls out a single edged razor blade and begins swiping wildly near Lorenzo’s mid-section. A SWAT team is called in and Lisa finally turns Lorenzo over when they offer her a stack of bridal magazines. She comes to the ceremony anyway and Lorenzo surprises everyone by giving her a rose.




Sirlinksalot bachelor stories

other Chancelucky reviews




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Thursday, November 09, 2006

Heckuva Job Rummy




(Madame Speaker, how's that for a change?)

Well, at least when it come to Donald Rumsfeld, the President has no fear of cutting and running. In fact, he was against letting his Secretary of Defense go before he was for it. After running around the country telling America that a vote for a Democrat would be a vote for terrorists and defeat in Iraq, the President explained that he had simply lied a week ago when he told reporters “Donald Rumfeld and Dick Cheney are doing fantastic jobs and will stay through the rest of my term.”

He revealed today that in fact he had been in discussions with Rumsfeld and had been seeking possible replacements for him since well before the election. The W’s excuse? “I didn’t want to inject a major decision about this war into the final days of the campaign.”

Did Tony Snow and Karl Rove secretly go on strike? If this explanation is the President’s own best attempt at spin, my head is definitely spinning. In the meantime, last I heard the Vice President left for a hunting trip while everyone else of significance was campaigning this week. Is the president looking for a replacement for Uncle Dick as well? Even Rush Limbaugh turned on the administration by saying that he’d felt uncomfortable having to tout some of the now deposed congress’s policies. Apparently it was James Talent who forced Rush to make fun of Michael J. Fox’s tremors.

Wow! I’m being a bad sport. This is a time to be gracious. One of the hallmarks of American democracy has been that except for the election of Lincoln a lost election has never started a civil war. This tradition of orderly transition from one party to the other after an election may be our democracy’s most valuable asset. I congratulate both Conrad Burns and George Allen for respecting the spirit of that tradition by conceding their very close races.

While the results speak for themselves, one sign to me before Tuesday that the left was learning how to strategize in a 21st century election was my experience with Moveon’s Call for Change, a phone bank program that married flat rate long distance to the internet. The idea was very much around in 2004 when I made 200 + phone calls on behalf of John Kerry, but the database, script, and method were far cruder. This time, the script changed as the days passed, had several categories of useful information, and I stopped reaching people who were already the chair of the local party or who had gotten seventy four calls on the same day. It told me that the grassroots people had been listening, refining, and thinking through the technology very carefully and possibly matched Karl Rove’s firepower for once.

I’m fairly shy, so it’s still hard for me to call total strangers, but as far as I’m concerned any strategy based on regular people talking directly to other regular people has to be good for Democracy not just democrats. Hopefully, these kinds of strategies will always beat things like robocalling and spending billions on ad time.

Even more impressive, my friend Mr. Pogblog made more than 2,000 dials and over 600 actual live contacts with voters. In any case, she called so many times that she wound up number one on Moveon’s list of individual callers, something they tracked in the software (another good idea, if you’ve ever played arcade video games and looked at the hall of fame you know what I mean). She’s worked on political campaigns for more than ten years and has attacked every elective cause with the same level of energy. Up to now, she’s lost most of the time. Mr. Pogblog was one of many unsung heroes of the 2006 midterm elections. Call for Change claimed that over 6 million calls got made, so if Mr. Pogblog was at the top of the list an awful lot of people made calls.

I don’t know that having Democrats in control of both houses of congress is necessarily a cure all. I am, however, quite aware of the fact that for the last six years, they weren’t the disease. It was nice to wake up on a Wednesday morning and not cringe at the news. While it’s great fun at times to make Karl Rove and George Bush jokes, it would actually be far nicer not to have to for a while.

Still, I have to say that the election likely wasn’t about liberal vs. conservative. I suspect most of us just want public servants who actually serve the public. I hope both parties keep that in mind.






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Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Robo-Karl the Robo-caller (another Karl Rove Adventure)









(Help make the Pombo an Endangered Species in Congress today)

Like anyone else, I hate getting calls at three in the morning. Much to my wife’s annoyance, we can’t turn the ringer off at night because of my job with the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (VRWC). Karl doesn’t call often, but like the time he had to steal the Declaration of Independence I sometimes have to help him on a moment’s notice. When it rang last night sometime between midnight and sunrise, I fully expected to hear the mastermind’s voice on the other end, but didn’t expect to hear,

“Hi, I’m calling you with some important information about Lynn Woolsey, Democratic incumbent for Congress in California’s 6th Congressional District.”

My wife grabbed the phone and hung it up. The phone rang again. She grabbed it again and hung it up. It rang again. This time, I beat her to the phone and this time before he finished saying “Woolsey,” I recognized Karl’s voice.

CL: Karl, why are you calling me on behalf of a Democrat? Did you switch teams like Ted Haggard?

KR: Did you know that Lynn Woolsey wants a timetable for the US to disengage from Iraq? Are you aware that she has one of the most liberal voting records in Congress and is rated even more likely to agree with the Sierra Club and the ACLU than John Kerry? Did you know she believes in limiting American corporations based on speculation about global warming?

CL: Karl, why are you telling me all this positive stuff about my congresswoman?

KR: Lynn Woolsey once attended a gay wedding and has even had campaign workers who were openly homosexual. Did you know she actually once accepted welfare?

CL: You know, Karl. I’m glad to hear this stuff but it’s sort of late and you’ve been telling me about Lynn Woolsey for the last ten minutes and it’s 3:30 in the morning out here. My wife’s not too happy about this.

Karl’s voice kept going and in my early morning stupor, it occurred to me that this wasn’t actually him but a robo-call so I hung up somewhere between Karl’s talk of “Despite her support for the Dry Creek Indians and her writing a letter on behalf of a rapist, Woolsey has consistently opposed the war and even gave Cindy Sheehan a guest pass to the President’s State of the Union Speech this year.”

This time the phone didn’t ring.

Mrs. CL: Okay, enough. Can we turn the ringer off. I have to get up for work in the morning.

CL: Dear, this is my work or it might be.

Mrs. CL: I thought you were working on that show for the gourmet network,”Cooking with Karl”.

CL: I am. I was supposed to be helping him with his recipe for October surprise.

Mrs. CL: So….what do calls for Lynn Woolsey at three in the morning have to do with that?

CL: I know this is crazy, but I’m pretty sure that was Karl. It was his voice. Just the other day, he was having me spread butter on these three hundred quail that Dick Cheney had shot one morning and Karl said, “You don’t spread butter in my kitchen, you smear.”

When he said “smear” it sounded just like “year” in the robo-call.

Mrs. CL: But Karl Rove wouldn’t call on behalf of Lynn Woolsey. Anyway, what happened with this October surprise thing? John Kerry maybe said the right thing the wrong way, Saddam got the death penalty even though they hadn’t finished writing the decision yet, and Ted Haggard….some mastermind!

CL: Never underestimate Karl Rove. I’m sure there’s more to it than that.

Mrs. CL: Well they were talking about a second 9/11, bombing Iran, or capturing Osama?

CL: Trust me dear. No one in the White House even mentions Osama.

My wife went back to sleep. Five minutes later the phone rang again.

Mrs. CL: If you don’t turn that ringer off, I’ll personally vandalize Lynn Woolsey’s campaign headquarters.

I picked up the receiver.

KR: So CL what do you think of the new me?

Mrs. CL then grabbed the phone and ripped the line cord out of the wall. I got up, pulled on my robe.

CL: Sorry dear, but we have a mortgage to cover.

I went out to the kitchen and called Karl back on our wireless phone.

CL: Karl, what the heck are you doing?

KR: It’s the new me. It’s Robo-Karl.

CL: You mean like the Peter Weller movie Robocop?
KR: (makes shooting sounds into the phone) You have the right to remain silent, anything you say or do will be used against you. (makes more shooting sounds)

CL: It’s almost four in the morning Karl. This is inhuman.

KR: That’s exactly the point. Robo-Karl doesn’t need to sleep. I’m beyond human. Go ahead, try to waterboard me.

CL: Karl, honestly I don’t understand.

KR: The media and public opinion are just the software. Robo-Karl controls the hardware now. Your phone line, the voting machine, your finances. People in America don’t vote, it’s the machines that count and I’m controlling the machines.

CL: As your friend, I have to tell you this sounds crazy.

KR: I don’t have to spin anything anymore. It’s mine, it’s all mine. I mean it’s all ours.

CL: Karl, I really need to get back to sleep. We have your cooking show rehearsals. We’re doing October-Surprise, remember?

KR: I am beyond October-Surprise now. We have control of the vertical, the horizontal. Welcome to the Outer Limits of Republican power. We don’t even need people to work in our campaigns, just money.

CL: You’ve lost the war, you’ve destroyed the economy, a good half of your leaders have been exposed as either hypocrites or simply corrupt….It’s gotten hard for me to make you seem friendly, funny, and likeable.

KR: It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter anymore. In a couple weeks, we won’t even need writers. We’re going to replace all you humans with…..he was pounding on something that sounded hollow and metallic.

CL: Karl, can I call you back after it’s morning?

KR: No problem CL. I just need to make another 186,000 calls myself in the next hour or so-----Set hands for speed dial!

CL: Karl, can I ask one more question?
KR: Always.
CL: Why is it that you're so good at fighting and planning an election war and so bad at carrying out and justifying a real war?
KR: The party has its priorities CL. I now have 146,000 calls to make in the next few minutes. Great talking to you.

>My wife was sound asleep when I got back to bed. My mind was spinning, but I was so tired that I fell asleep myself anyway. She woke up first,

Mrs. CL: Dear, it was horrible. I had the worst nightmare. It felt like it went on for six years. People took over our country, but they weren’t really people. All they wanted to do was kill people and destroy their world, but they kept saying “We will keep you safe, we will keep you safe.”


KR: You mean the phone ringing?

Mrs. CL: What phone?

KR: You know, Robo-Karl?

Mrs. CL: Dear, it’s time to wake up. It’s election day. We’ve got to vote today while we still can.

As we leave the house to go to the community church that serves as our polling place, I’m sure it was just a nightmare, but somehow I keep hearing the hollow thunk of metal as Robo-Karl was showing me the place where his heart was supposed to be.

CL: Right dear, it’s time for all of us to wake up.

More Karl Rove adventures




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Friday, November 03, 2006

Haggard Shadows (Ted Haggard, John Kerry, and double standards)


Two stories hit this week, John Kerry and Ted Haggard.  While every commentator and blogger in America seems to have expressed an opinion on Senator Kerry’s slip of the tongue, the Haggard matter started surprisingly quiet.  Haggard is the head of the New Life Church  in Colorado Springs, a place many consider the capital of the American evangelical movement.  While he keeps a low profile relative to James Dobson and Pat Robertson, Haggard actually has much more political pull than either in that he controlled an audience of some 30 million members as the head of the National Association of Evangelicals.  He has been closely aligned to President Bush over the last six years. In fact, he once joked that the “Only thing they haven’t agreed upon was about which pickup truck to cruise in.”

Haggard and his flock have been front and center in Colorado’s current ballot initiative to ban gay marriage.  This week Mike Jones, a gay male prostitute, came forward to tell the world that one of his clients was Ted Haggard.   Haggard immediately took a leave so his board could investigate the claims.  At first, those around Haggard denied the claims categorically and hinted that as a celebrity, Haggard, had simply been targeted.

Today, Haggard admitted to buying methamphetamine from Mike Jones and having gotten a massage from him after being referred to Jones by a Denver Hotel. He insists that he never used the meth nor did he have sex with Jones. He just bought the meth out of curiosity. By the way, I looked it up and Colorado Springs is a one to two hour drive from Denver.  I wonder if Mike Jones knows Jeff Gannon.  There seems to be some sort of odd network that keeps happening gay male prostitutes into the midst of conservative leaders.  

Before we suggest that Ted Haggard is a hypocrite straight out of Elmer Gantry or Billy Hargis, let me make a couple points.  

  1. Haggard is married to a woman and has children.  He has never sought to marry Mike Jones or any other man.

  1. He only bought drugs from a male masseuse who happens to advertise his sexual services on the internet.  There is no proof at this point that Ted Haggard actually uses meth or had sex with a man.  

  1. There were similar likely unfounded rumors about the President with whom Haggard agrees on everything and his college friend and ambassador to Poland, Victor Ashe.  There are also rumors that the President has been sexually involved with his Secreatary of State, who is female.  Clearly, they can’t both be true.  This would suggest that neither rumor is true and therefore Haggard couldn’t possibly be secretly bisexual.  I’m sure the President will continue to stand behind Ted Haggard or vice versa depending on their preference.

  1. In any case, I’m virtually certain that if Ted Haggard did anything that Mike Jones accused him of, this is the exception that proves the rule that Republicans are simply more trustworthy than Democrats.  I also point out that Mike Jones was never Ted Haggard’s intern and none of this happened in the White House.  Mike Jones is also not a Congressional Page as far as I know and is well above the age of consent.  There’s also no suggestion that Ted Haggard took a bribe from defense contractors or that he ever attended any party sponsored by Playboy Magazine.

  1. Most important this week, Haggard’s misstep was not a public slip of the tongue.  I know we would have liked him to say that he had no idea who Mike Jones was, but Haggard refused to cut and run.  He set things to rest by announcing, “I did not have sex with that man, I merely bought uppers from him and paid him to give me a massage.”  Obviously, Jones has no credibility and must be a liberal plant.  While it’s been a couple days since Haggard went on leave, I’m sure he will apologize if it turns out that he did anything wrong.  Perhaps, he’s doing it this way so he can continue to collect his salary like that other victim of circumstance, Bob Ney.

To me like waterboarding for Dick Cheney, this is a no brainer.  It’s obvious to me why there’s been so much more written about John Kerry than Ted Haggard, the spiritual leader of 30 million Republican voters.  What John Kerry did was so much worse and so much more disturbing than what any Republican has done or been caught doing in the last few months.  Obviously a decorated vet’s attitude toward soldiers in the field should be judged by ten ambiguous misread words from a script rather than say pulling someone out of the water in the midst of enemy fire.  After all, our slips reveal so much about who we really are and what we really feel and words always speak louder than actions.  

This may seem strange, but I wish Ted Haggard and his family well.  All of us are human and fallible.  I also believe that whole Jungian business about having a shadow self.  The louder someone proclaims or protests something, the more likely it is that whatever they’re being vocal about is something they’re afraid of in themselves.  I suspect Ted Haggard, like Roy Cohn, worked too hard to banish his own shadow and left him a tortured soul (though I point out this kind of torture does not violate the Geneva convention).    

For the last 5 years, I’ve heard one thing from Republicans.  “We’re the ones who care about your security.  We’re the ones you want to trust to protect you.”  Every time I check the facts, I’m made all too aware of the shadows these boasts leave behind.

The act looked pretty good in 2002 and 2004.  I have to say that in the first week of November 2006, it’s looking more and more haggard.  If you study hard and do your homework well, you'll see the candidates clearly enough to see their shadows before you go to the polls, maybe we won’t get stuck sending our children to Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Lebanon in the next six years.


link to Harper's article on Haggard and Colorado Springs





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Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Bachelor 9 Episode 5 Romance Jumps the Shark (tv review)

(It must be said that she did look really lovely in that wedding dress)




First, apparently it’s not true that three bachelorettes tried to leave the show after the news broke that Ryan Phillipe and Reese Witherspoon have separated.  There is also no truth to the rumor that the ladies said anything about Ryan being a real celebrity and not just some guy from the home shopping network.
btw Ryan Phillipe as the Bachelor would be huge. Can you imagine an episode where Reese comes by to choose his one on one dates? They could even use the house from Cruel Intentions.

  Second, John Kerry apparently has cancelled his appearance on the finale after his diplomacy lessons with Erica encountered some sort of snafu.  Come to think of it, Erica is college educated and has had a good life, why are  people with her “breeding” and talent volunteering for overseas duty that includes fantasy suites but not for the war in Iraq?  It’s good that hard working, college educated, young people like my friends Jenna and Barbara have volunteered in Iraq.  Otherwise people might get the wrong impression of wealthy young Americans.  

You’re a student of the Bachelor and you’ve made the final four which means you get a hometown visit.  Your best friend just happens to appear at the door mid-date with a wedding dress for you to try.  A real student of the Bachelor would refuse to try on any gown that wasn’t pink.   I’m sure everyone is talking about the wedding dress, the bridal magazines, and the repeated revelation of Lisa’s timetable as the kiss of death for her ambitions on the show.  I do agree that Lorenzo is more likely to “cut and run” with Lisa than he is to “stay the course”.  For one thing, Lisa’s plan doesn’t seem to figure in anything about actually having feelings for Lorenzo himself.  Men are funny that way sometimes.  Many are okay having sex with strangers even if it’s on a floatie in the middle of the lake, but most would rather not marry one, a stranger that is.

I’ll tell you the real kiss of death for Lisa Borghese’s plan.  She brought a dog along on the hometown date and Lorenzo, the dog lover, appeared to be completely uninterested.
In fact, he was so uninterested that he passed up his chance to include Lisa’s dog in mom’s pilates session.  

They’d also have a hard time convincing me that the producers didn’t put Jennifer’s dad up to the whole gun thing.  You’re going to be on national television and you naturally want America to think you meet your only daughter’s date with a  cocked shotgun?  I mean the guy’s never going to get to be the coach on next season’s installment of Two a Days. By the way, Jennifer’s family has a dog, or a rat with hair dressed like a dog, and Prince Lo, dog spa magnate, basically ignores this one too.  This guy’s a bit on the cold side.  It would have been great tv for Dad to have taken a shot or two at the dog.  I’m not saying hit the critter, just make the animal think twice about licking Jennifer’s toes in front of the tv camera.

By the way, I don’t blame Dad.  He asks the guy, “What do you like about my daughter?”
Prince Lo’s basic answer is “Well, she looks really hot and well, uh, um….I can’t find anything wrong with her personality.”  I wouldn’t get out the shotgun, but that answer was down there with “He totally rocks my world.”  


Again, I don’t think the preview-hyped second amendment lesson had much to do with Lorenzo’s supposed “hesitation” at the end of the date.  This was, after all, a woman who was perfectly comfortable kissing a shark then throwing the creature back in the water.  Can we say “Plenty of fish in the sea, your highness.”

Talk about your metaphors!  If this were a book, we’d call it the “The Young Bachelorette and the Sea.”  Do you think if he were alive today that Hemingway would be watching reality tv? Hemingway asside, had Jennifer not gotten her rose, this would have been the ultimate "jump the shark" moment or at least "kiss the shark".   I could see the guy maybe getting into something like The Amazing Race or Fear Factor.

They talk about the bachelorettes getting a bad edit, but I have to say that the whole Agnese Venice home date really hurt Lorenzo.  The date itself went well enough.  Lorenzo went on with the language barrier business and then this lovely gentle foreign movie scene played out.  Lorenzo and familia Agnese were dancing around the living room in carnival masks.  Lorenzo tasted various northern Italian delicacies.  Most of all he grabs Agnese in the gondola and makes like that whole thing from A Little Romance and Il Ponte Sospiro.  Agnese even channels Lisa briefly and shows Lorenzo the church she wants to marry in (Producers must have been salivating for that wedding)  with Lorenzo voicing over that very moment with “Agnese is the perfect tour guide.”  

The only problem with this whole exercise in feelings and romance somehow being beyond words or language itself is that Lorenzo dumped the woman with whom he appeared to have the most palpable romantic chemistry.  She even gets the most eloquent line in this entire installment on her ride in the limo of shame and its live video camera, “Too much head and not enough heart.”

Lorenzo is sensible enough and appears to be a nice guy, but that summed up the problem with Bachelor Rome.  It’s not supposed to be about accountants.  They were trying to sell us on romance with a prince.  This was the guy who said, “I’m more concerned that a woman have a good heart,” and whom they put through the whole Pretty Woman parody.

Dude, you want to be practical.  Let me give you a bit of advice.  “If you’re going to let your tongues intermingle like that, they’re already speaking enough of the same language."  If this wasn’t viciously edited, you led her on and the whole “I want to communicate more easily” thing was a cop out.  You’re more like a prince who uses your royal name to open a casino or sell toilet paper than any prince from a fairy tale- more Prince Charmin than Prince Charming.

I’m convinced that the main point of the Sadie visit was to have the family say grace at the table shot by the camera crew from Wife Swap.  There’s also this great moment when Sadie tells her mother that Lorenzo reminds her of “Dad.”  Not only is this Electrafying confession a bit disturbing, it’s also pretty obvious that Sadie’s Dad and Lorenzo have like nothing in common.  We next see Lorenzo and Sadie by one of the fire pits after dark at Moonlight Beach.  

I’ve hung around the very same fire pit with my wife and her family.  One of the last times, there was a group of guys by the fire pit next to us who had gotten either so drunk or so stoned that one of them stopped breathing while one of his friends babbled at us incoherently and attacked us for not doing more to help out.  We called 911 and they took the fellow to the hospital while the police questioned his friend.  Somehow, our own cook out wasn’t quite the same after that.  Anyway, I kept waiting for a whole Baywatch rescue scene to unfold around Lorenzo and Sadie instead of “I want you to choose me and kiss me again Prince.”  

I’m down with the whole you can be intimate and affectionate while still ummmmm “guarding your heart” vigilantly, but Sadie is surprisingly physically aggressive. The previews do promise a test of her resolve in two weeks when Lorenzo plays his fantasy suite card.  Nah…..even Mike Fleiss wouldn’t try to make money off of a scene of someone giving up her virginity on television. While were at it, am I the only one who thinks that Sadie might be trying to do Reese Witherspoon's character from Cruel Intentions?   

Finally, after five  “We’ll hear more from Erica”  lead ins to the commercial break, Erica’s actual contribution to this episode was to talk incoherently about milkshakes?  

I say have her volunteer for duty in Iraq instead of putting her on future installments.  Not to turn too somber, but you want to talk about people worth our attention, etc. Between adventures of Lorenzo and his harem, try reading this.

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