There was a time – I think maybe it was a Thursday – when I truly believed that an original storyline and complex and compelling characters were essential when it came to getting a television show on the air and allowing it to be renewed for about eight seasons.

I also used to believe that a monster lived in the back of my closet.

I got over the monster fear eventually, but I’m not certain that my subconscious has because sometimes in the very dead of the night I find myself picturing the most horrifying hybrid creature ever seen outside of a James Cameron movie. It’s vivid, this image. It has the hardened eyes of Tamra and the pursed and ever-angry mouth of Shannon and it sounds exactly like Vicki and it wears Meghan’s headband. It is nothing short of terrifying and I shake and tremble when I think about that blonde creature, so I sometimes try to calm myself by remembering the days when things on television brought me comfort, like the Smoke … Continue reading →

I attended a Game Night once. There were about twenty of us gathered in a rustic living room, one of those great places with wooden beams across the ceiling and a roaring fireplace in the corner, and all of us were splayed out comfortably across the rug. I don’t remember seeing any theme decorations on the tables, but I know there was alcohol on the counter in the kitchen. We played a bunch of different games, but my favorite was the one where we were all presented with some initials and we had to come up with what those initials stood for and one person had the actual answer and the point was to guess who had the correct response. The one I remember the best was P.A.S.S. Turns out those initials stand for a group who call themselves “Parents Against Subliminal Seduction,” which I guess holds sit-ins outside of Disney movies in an effort to finally put a forever stop to animators doing shit like making Aladdin get an erection or from having the … Continue reading →

Is there a woman out there who hasn’t once emphatically believed that a once promising relationship plummeted headfirst into the mucky black abyss due to the size of her thighs? (If someone somewhere is now staring at her computer screen in puzzlement while caressing her perfectly sized thighs, I hope she knows that it’s her terrible breath that always ruins things for her.) The truth – usually, unless you’re dating a complete douchebag – is that a couple of pounds are probably not the reason things died a horrible, screaming death in the love department. Something else went wrong between two people and it takes a very special kind of human being to attribute the totality of the misery only to a growing tummy and then meet on camera with a holistic trainer in the hopes of reviving a relationship that looks more like road kill than the dead possum I saw on the side of a highway last Tuesday.

I think Shannon is a very thin woman, but she raised her tank top on … Continue reading →