The Inside Edition website is updated, and “Cross Dressing Husbands” made the preview video, even. If you’re not laughing so hard at the Drunk Dial clip, you’ll be able to see a split second of Betty zipping up her boot – which I’m going to take as confirmation that we will be on, as will Shirene and Shayla (who are the couple shown in the video).
None of us have ever dialed drunk, I promise.
Looks Likely
It’s looking likely that the bit we filmed for Inside Edition will air on Friday’s show, as well. It’s not certain yet, but nearly.
You can check Inside Edition’s website to figure out when you need to be near your TV! Here in NYC it’s on Fox, at noon and again at 1:30 AM.
Shayla & Shirene
When I was researching My Husband Betty, I went to the SPICE conference, and there we met a young, enthusiastic couple named Shalya and Shirene. (Okay, she wasn’t Shayla then, but I can’t remember her original femme name.) But Shirene nodded at everything I nodded at when we were in workshops, and then the four of us – plus the lovely Penny (whose name wasn’t Penny then, either) & Jayme – sat in the hotel lobby and talked about sex the rest of the night!
Shayla & Shirene are going to be on Inside Edition this coming Friday, February 10th. Do watch them; they’re a lovely, articulate, optimistic couple, who are (if I do say so myself) fantastic representatives for the trans community – especially the much-neglected crossdressing set.
^ me, Shayla, and Shirene, at IFGE ’04.
Lisa Jackson Rocks (on Mondays in February)
Lisa Jackson + Girl Friday are playing every Monday in February at Arlene’s Grocery at 8pm, and there’s no cover.
Do go. I’ve told you how good they are. I’ve told you more than once, in fact.
A Moment With Betty
I was busy writing a post about Jill Barkley and the Philly Trans Health Conference when the President’s appearance was announced. With my back to the TV, I heard Betty crack a beer open and then say, “It’s like a parade of evil.” Indeed.
We decided not to play do the Presidential Drinking Game suggested by Heather Havrilesky of The LA Times. Here are the rules:
- Every time Bush says “terror,” “terrorism,” “terrorist,” “war on terror” or “Terror Dome,” you drink.
- Drink when the president winks, nods and points at someone in the audience in rapid succession; drink each time he refers to 9/11 or uses the word “nuke-u-lar,” and drink something bitter when he says that “the state of our union is strong.”
- Whenever there’s a close-up of a sour-faced Democrat, drink. If it’s Hilary Clinton, Ted Kennedy or Harry Reid, drink twice.
- When Bush says “protect” as in “protect America,” “protect the lives of Americans” or “protect our right to eavesdrop on the phone calls of any American,” drink. If he refers to his solemn right to spy on antiwar activists as the “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” drink three times.
- Also, drink whenever the president uses the word “security,” as in the “security of all Americans” or “a secure nation.”
- When the president alludes to “tax reform,” “tax credits” or “tax relief,” give a big shout-out to the federal budget deficit — then drink.
- Drink each time the president begins a charming anecdote about some folks from a small red-state town; drink twice when the camera cuts to said folks.
- Every time the president smiles or chuckles when he’s talking about something scary and awful, like giant battlegrounds and forces of evil, smile and chuckle along with him — Haw haw haw! — then kick your dog.
- Drink each time the president mentions “free elections” in Iraq.
You really should read the complete rules, though. But both Betty and I have to work tomorrow, so this one just wasn’t an option. I’d be drunk by now (9:17 PM) if we had.
Apparently It Is a Secret
Tonight I caught a Secret deodorant commercial and noticed the tag line is now: Strong Enough for a Woman.
I had no idea they’d changed it, but bravo!
Way, WAY Too Much TV
Okay, I’m going to hope this is the last installation in my recent series about my TV viewing. (Previous installations includes posts about Coke and Adam Ant, Jenny Craig and street harassment, Beauty & the Geek, and one about a reality show that never aired, despite its feel-good homo-friendly vibe). Okay, I might still write about the Abigail Adams biography that’s been running on PBS, but not right now.
Right now I want to talk about the most lovely and bizarre – and uniquely American – merging of capitalism and philanthropy I’ve ever seen: Extreme Home Makeover.
Here’s the premise: family beset by hardship or doing really cool stuff is recommended to the show and its host, Ty Pennington, by a friend or neighbor and occasionally a member of the family.
The Extreme Home Makeover team show up at the family’s door, send them on vacation for a week, and during that very same week, completely re-build their entire house.
They use products that get prominent display during the show and on the show’s website: tools from Sears, and appliances from Kenmore. Basically, it’s free advertising in exchange for donated goods to use for the home makeover.
Local construction companies help out, and/or volunteer types, and often a celebrity gets involved. The family returns home, their community gathers, everyone shouts “move that bus!” and then everyone cries and smiles and hugs everyone else (especially the Design Team).
It’s the corniest shit ever and I love every minute of it. It’s so bizarrely American. In a way, it’s all win-win: cool families that do things like rescue injured animals get a great house and free dog food and kennels, Sears gets to show off their power tools, and millions of viewers are entertained.
Really, Betty and I have been watching weekly for a long while now, and we fight over tissues. Dunno, maybe during such shitty times, it’s a relief to see nice people who do good stuff get rewarded – and the only strings attached is a little bit of ‘good karma’ advertising for the companies that donate.
I think shows like this are what we should be exporting to the rest of the world instead of Baywatch or whatever other crap we export (there are some cultures, I’m sure, that find those damn Survivor shows insulting, since so much of the world’s population isn’t living in much better conditions than the contestants). We all know that Ford isn’t going to give any trucks to the employees they just laid off when their families apply in a year or so after not being able to find replacement work. No, of course not.
But at least it’s not crap news, of which we’ve got plenty.
Way Too Much TV
When I first saw the ads for Beauty & the Geek, I delivered a predictable tirade about gender and intelligence and how stupid it was that the Beauties were all female and the Geeks all male.
Then I saw a couple of episodes. And now I’m hooked.
This is the first reality show I’ve ever seen where the underlying tone of the show is really very sweet. The premise: socially-challenged geeks helping academically-challenged social butterflies how to learn stuff. In exchange, the socially-skilled pretties teach the guys how to have a conversation with a girl & comb their hair & tell a joke.
It makes me happy to have been a That 70s Show fan from the beginning, since without its success, Ashton Kutcher wouldn’t be Ashton Kutcher, and he wouldn’t have had the clout to produce Beauty & the Geek. Now if I could just talk to him about doing the show with reversed genders…
And while I still wish it weren’t gendered so strictly, it’s a lovely little show – honest and funny. I worry this means I’m softening up in my old age, but then I think – so what if I am? Hey, maybe the beauties are teaching me something, too. Oh, the horror.
Out of the Freying Pan and Into the Fire
Oprah just said that she doesn’t want kudos for admitting she was wrong because it was the only thing to do, and that was after cutting off Nan Talese mid-sentence. (Nan Talese is not the kind of person who is used to be cut off mid-sentence – she’s a Senior VP of Doubleday and owns her own imprint there). But Oprah is angry, and James Frey is starting to feel like the meat industry, I bet.
Frank Rich is angry, too, and just pointed out that being honest is usually the first step in any addiction recovery journey.
Stanley Crouch wants to know how much Doubleday had to do with coercing Frey into publishing it as a memoir.
And Maureen Down suggested Oprah cast Frey out of her kingdom.
A journalism professor (whose name I didn’t catch) just pointed out that when you doubt one memoir, you start to distrust them all; as someone who has put the truth of my life on the line, I really resent James Frey and even more the slick rationalizations of Nan Talese. Her attitude is exactly what sucks about the publishing industry.
Granted, our whole culture cries out for sensationalism: they don’t want to hear one woman’s story of pregnancy and childbirth; they want the post-natally depressed nearly-killed-her-baby mother. More than once members of the media (okay, including a producer from Oprah) stopped being interested in our story because Betty hasn’t had “the operation.”
So this is what I think: Nan Talese and Frey should figure out how much money they made from bullshitting everyone, and they should give it back. There are definitely 12-step programs that need funding and tons of individuals who could use some money to re-start lives that addiction has made a mess of.
And I know there are memoir writers out there that could use a grant. I just know it.
Too Much TV
Okay, so I’m watching way too much TV I guess, because I just caught Kirstie Alley’s most recent Jenny Craig commercial: she is walking down a dark street, alone, when a guy’s voice yells out, “Momma, you’re looking good!” (or some approximation thereof). And she says – here’s the red herring that made me pay attention – “Are you talking to me?”
And when he says yes, she doesn’t hollaback, oh no. She starts into a ‘Singing in the Rain’-styled dance number set to the tune of “It’s Raining Men.”
I guess this is the best you can expect from someone who has had bodyguards for so long she doesn’t remember how it feels to walk down any street alone (much less a dark, deserted one) and have some asshole decide that’s a good time to tell you how good you look.
Connecting being thin with “earning” this kind of bullshit, scary compliment loses her a few more status points. All kinds of women get harassed on the street – not just skinny ones.