Cutting: Tweeny Trend or Serious Problem?

ellie4yc.jpgWomen’s social issues have been treated in programs geared towards teens for ages. Remember when DJ Tanner went on a crash diet so she could look good in a bathing suit, and then passed out on a stairclimber?

On Saved by the Bell, Elizabeth Berkley gained pre-Showgirls notoriety, for the famous Jessie Spano Caffeine Pill Breakdown (I’m so excited! I’m so scared!). Of course, Full House and SBTB were heart-warming sitcoms, where everyone learns their lesson in the end, and move away from their self-destructive behavior, never to mention anorexia, bullimia, or drug abuse ever again.

The breakout Canadian teen sensation, Degrassi, which airs in the US on The N network, covers a variety of teen issues, without the cavity-inducing sugary sweetness of the stuff we grew up on. Among the kids who dabble in drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, and bi-polar disorder, Degrassi introduced the world to Ellie Nash, who is a cutter.

I’m too old for Degrassi, but I don’t care. I’m pretty much obsessed with it. The best part about the show is that it doesn’t sweep the issues under the rug at the end of each 22-minute episode. And because the writers have the balls to “Go There.” I mean, come on: we all know the caffeine-pill incident was a stand-in for a harder drug, like speed or something, but hard drugs don’t exist at Bayside High.

I remember when the cutting craze swept my middle school. I have no idea who started it, or why it caught on, but at my school, cutting was the iPhone of the late 90′s. Read More »


Sob Stories Overwhelm America’s Got Talent

Everyone on America’s Got Talent has a tragedy-riddled childhood, rife with addiction, overworked parents, a bout with homelessness, etc. Tonight’s contestants were no exception. The editing, sappy music and tears were actually more entertaining than tonight’s crop of piss-poor talent.

To prove my point, tonight’s episode was only an hour long and here’s how the time broke down:

22 Minutes Of Commercials

35 Minutes of Sob Stories

10 Minutes of The Hoff yelling unintelligible nonsense

2 Minutes of Talent

I’m no statistician but I think that’s about right.

Meet Kyle Rifkin, a prime example of one of the many sad sacks to grace the AGT stage. He’s got talent alright…talent for telling the saddest story ever. He sang on the street for nickels people. NICKELS. Grab a tissue or a free sleeve and let it all out.

Cross your fingers for a better episode next week. We need more crazies!


ZZZZZZZZZZZZ: FOL 3 Recap, Episode 12

ar560×560resize.jpgI forget to watch this show. If I remember that it’s on then I do things to avoid paying attention to it, like cleaning and school work. But I have to face this head on…

Ugh.

So for this episode, the parents are set to arrive and the ladies have to clean.

Seezinz discovered a toilet clogged with Hotlanta drunk puke – it had been there for days so Black and Seezinz clean the stank. I wanna die just thinking about it yet somehow I feel like this is going to be the highlight of the show.

First in are T2’s parents. I’m surprised T1 didn’t show up, too. Flav has his hair done in those braid horns again.

Next, Sinceer’s dad arrives. He’s wearing a hat – is he hiding his klingon forehead? He asks for a beer and we’re probably going to see where Sinceer gets that personality of hers.

Seezinz parents come in and they start questioning Flav. “Why do you wear a clock?” “What are you intentions?” “What you planning from this moment forward with our daughter?” Uh, do they know that this isn’t for real dating? “How many seasons have you done this?” Well, then you should know. “You don’t need to have sex to find love.” Really, Mama Seezinz? Flav and I disagree.

Flav takes Sinceer, T2 and Co. to go bowling. I hate bowling. T2 is surprisingly good at it and Sinceer feels jealous. Ew, don’t make out with anyone in front of their parents. Read More »


House Recap: Warm Up, Writers!

newhouseteam.pngAfter what felt like zillions of months of waiting, there was finally a new episode of House this week. And I’m sorry to say that if you missed it… well, you didn’t miss much. It didn’t totally suck, but the writers must have been warming up before they eased into the really good stuff. Here’s a recap:

The patient du jour was a dude who collapsed during a protest and who appeared to have no major symptoms other than occasional fainting spells. House, however, usurped the patient with the theory that his niceness (yes, NICENESS) was a symptom of a more serious illness.

After a bunch of tests, the team found out that the guy had neurosyphilis and that the condition was supposedly affecting his brain. Kutner also tested a vial of “House’s” blood that he found lying around and discovered that House had syphilis. Long story short: House planted the blood so he could pretend to get nicer with treatment and make the team believe that his initial opinion of niceness being a defect was correct. Read More »


“Raging Herpes”: Flavor of Love 3, Episode 4

ar560×560resize-1.jpgI’ve gotta tell you all – I watched the last ten minutes of this episode two days before I sat down to watch the whole thing, so I was really looking forward to seeing what I thought would be a nasty entertaining mess of an episode.

On episode 4, the FOL people waste no time introducing the challenge: split into two teams for a Flavorette Roast. Cringe. Each team will be coached by some unfamous comedienne to write jokes about one person from the other team. The winning team gets a date, the master roaster gets the solo date.

Remember the Flav roast on Comedy Central? Snoop saved that mess.

Anyway, team one consists of Shy, the Things, Prancer, Myammee and Sinceer and team two has Bee-Ex, Bunz, Grayvee, Hotlanta and Seezinz.

Team one wants to target Hotlanta. They throw around things like, “Looks like she got ten stomachs”; “monkey hands”; “stripper.” What? Then someone says something about a herpes bump on her lip. Oh. Sh*t. Read More »


“Sex and the City: The Movie” – Yeah, I’ll Pass

satchv3.jpgI think I’m the only chick who rides the ‘I don’t care about the “Sex and the City” movie’ train.

One of my friends lives and dies for this show. I remember one Christmas she got the boxed set of SATC DVD’s and handled them like a newborn as she showed everything to me. Like I half-expected her to put on rubber gloves to handle the box and its contents. She talked about the characters like they were real and they were her friends. And then I looked to her boyfriend. Whose eyes were glazed over because he clearly had been forced to watch — Every. Single. Episode.

She cannot be more set on making a girl’s night out of going to see the movie and then going out for drinks afterward. Cosmos, I’m sure. But there will be no random hook-ups because she thinks that she’s Charlotte and Charlotte wouldn’t ever have fun.

I don’t have the heart to tell her that I don’t share her love for that show and that I thought that it was time to get over it like six years ago. Read More »


Kal Penn Is Hot, So is the New Season: “House” Episode Rundown

In a complete anomaly of the writers’ strike, House was a new episode this Tuesday and will be new AGAIN (!) next week.

Aside from the weird feeling I got from watching a Christmas-themed episode when it wasn’t actually Christmastime, I thoroughly enjoyed watching House get his Scrooge on.

Since no one actually watches the episodes for the “medical mysteries” that make up the plotlines, I’m going to jump right in to making commentary about the new medical team.

Taub: It’s still kind of an enigma to me why this dude is on the show, to be honest. As an actor, he doesn’t impress me much, and as a character, he impresses me even less. I mean, what is his purpose? What is House going to do with a middle-aged plastic surgeon? My guess is he’ll develop some kind of illicit relationship with Thirteen. Read More »


Nip/Tuck Just Keeps Getting Better

3747_19.jpgThis season of Nip/Tuck has been pretty damn good. It’s maintained my interest through all of the kinky sexual escapades (Sean and Eden), the strange plastic surgery requests (hair-plugged mustaches?) and even the guest appearances by Rosie O’Donnell.

But last night, I was reminded of the original, the raw and the murderous side of this sensational piece of show — because of a) Gina’s ‘suicide’ and b) Crazy Agent Colleen.

Ok so, Christian is officially a murderer. Although the whole screwing Gina off a high-rise building seemed unintentional, I can’t help but wonder if he kind of meant to shove her off the edge. She was making his life a living hell, so why wouldn’t he want to get rid of her?

However, when it came to telling his son Wilbur about her death, it became quite obvious that he was mourning. What I’m most curious about though, is whether or not the whole incident will come back to haunt him. Will he ever get caught? Read More »