back in the saddle

I bought a new shirt at the Bon lastnight. I’ve been wearing it an hour and a half and have deposited upon it one blob of toothpaste spittle and a mysterious black smear. Both on the left boob. HOW DOES SHE DO IT, FOLKS?! I was trying to look nice for an interview I’m conducting today. Maybe I’ll just hold my arm strategically. Or maybe I won’t give a rat’s hindquarters because SHE’S supposed to be impressing ME. But you know, best foot forward and all that.

MSH has been out of town so the last two nights my project (besides catching up on laundry and season 1 of the O.C.—more on that later) has been to paint the bedroom light fixture. Why, you say? Because the light fixture was, much like the bedroom walls before we painted them, dark reddish purple. It’s been dangling from the ceiling (had to get it off the ceiling in order to paint the ceiling) without its frosted dome now for two weeks. MSH blew his quarterly wad of home improvement energy painting the walls of the room, and I don’t blame him. My motivation sprang from wanting to have it done when he got home. I love a surprise. So I painted the light fixture two coats of primer and two coats of green. This morning, I went to reattach the fixture to the ceiling and—-to make a long story short it didn’t work and now there’s bits of insulation (perhaps) and random feculence (definitely) in my eyes. So---surprise, honey! Now please spend ten minutes cursing and shoving at this light fixture. Since he took it off the ceiling, maybe he knows some trick I don’t.

So, I’m watching season 1 of the O.C., and I have concerns. Like Anna’s green underwear showing through her white dress in one episode. Like Kirsten's horrible dye job. Like the fact that in contrast with his total freakout on Marissa about her drinking, Ryan’s reaction to Kirsten’s drinking second season is totally blasé. Like the fact that the trapped-in-the-poolhouse conceit of the New Year's episode (love the ending, though) is a total fart because--News Flash!--THERE'S A PHONE IN THE POOLHOUSE WHICH HAS BEEN UTILIZED IN PREVIOUS EPISODES!!! And the fact that Summer spends more time in a bra or a bikini top in the first four episodes than she does the whole second season. But I’ve got to say there are more heartwarming episodes in season 1—-I had missed several of these when they originally aired—-I LOVE the New Year’s episode. Can’t we just stay in the rosy glow of the final minute of the New Year’s episode forever? I watched one past that—-the Rooney concert/Oliver busted for trying to buy coke—-and I’m a bit dispirited. It’s because of this Oliver Trask character, Marissa’s buddy from therapy who turns out to be El Freako Manipulativo Numero Uno, complete with an imaginary girlfriend. (Only Marissa is blind to his schemes until he holds her hostage in the penthouse suite!) I can’t stand him. I had to fast-forward portions of lastnight’s episode (admittedly I’d seen this one the first time around.)

Item 1: His skin. He’s wearing 8 times as much pancake makeup as any other actor on the show, but you can still see mottled purply patches showing through. Now if this guy making it in the entertainment world with a skin condition, I am behind him in theory, but as an O.C. viewer, I’m accustomed to the flawless complexion of, say, Mischa Barton.

Item 2: His hair. It’s dyed black, so it looks unnatural and they comb the sides forward so he looks like he’s wearing some sort of weird wig—-he resembles Bob’s Big Boy but with spikes.

Item 3: (Delving deeper---but not too deep!) His face. Sometimes he looks like a ruthless pig (no offense to pigs) but when he looks cute, or rather when he’s TRYING to look cute, he looks like this guy I used to hang out with. In fact, his name and the character’s name are somewhat the same. And that makes me agitated. And his voice bothers me, but that's not worth an item.

Item 4: The usual—-the fact that he’s HIGHLY EVIL AND NAR-NAR, as well as manipulative and childish and, like every other evil character on “The O.C,” reveals his true nature to Ryan while playing nicey nice with Marissa, so Marissa thinks Ryan’s the bad guy for wanting to clean his clock and strand him in an irrigation ditch. I guess that’s the writers, not “Oliver.”