Stay Tuned

If I see one more Activia commercial with Jamie Lee Curtis, I'm going to run screaming from the planet.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I love Jamie Lee Curtis.  Activia may or may not be a very fine product.  And, yes, intestinal health is very important.

 

It's just that it hurts me - really hurts me - to see Ms. Curtis, a woman who defines hotness and does so with grey hair, who has been taken seriously as a love interest for the likes of Arnold Schwartzenegger and John Cleese, whose great legs and fun fashion sense has inspired me for decades, be relegated by society and the entertainment industry to discussing irregularity with people in "mom" jeans. 

 

That is not the kind of inspiration I need right now.

 

I have spent the last five weeks helping my mother through a crisis point in a long-term illness.  I will roughly translate that as, "watching a lot of TV".  Lest I be accused of being a patronizing and condescending bitch, allow me to say at once that I don't think watching a lot of TV is  a necessarily a bad thing - at least not for me, who only does it in spurts. Certainly not enough to risk couch-potato status, although the idea is tempting, like surrendering oneself to a sort of oblivion involving '60s reruns and snacks.  I have come to understand that television can be a valuable conduit to the outside world for those with limited mobility and/or imagination, and I look upon the time I spend watching it as crucial to my understanding of current affairs and cultural trends. Clearly, I would have never known about the python crisis in Florida without TV, although it still remains to be seen how much I actually care. But give me a few more days of python-crisis updates, and...well, who knows?

 

I have also learned that "amazing" has replaced "awesome" as the prevailing overused and highly annoying adjective (note to linguistic self:  another word one should try to avoid using).   And, come to think of it, my son is going to Orlando for spring break (Orlando?  Really?) so I guess I do care about the pythons in Florida, inasmuch as I don't want them to eat him.

 

But the BIG news, the news that is going to shape our futures for the next six months, is the baby news.  Who, in their wildest dreams, would have imagined that the Duchess Kate and Kim Kardashian would both be giving birth to babies in July?

 

A tabloid publisher's dream.  For this, Rupert Murdoch clings to life.

I have an idea about how weird things may get as we approach the blessed events, based on my memories of the royal wedding and a snippet of news I heard involving Ryan Seacrest.

 

Now, just to show you how out-of-the-loop I am on popular culture issues, up until recently the only thing I knew about Ryan Seacrest was that Sacha Baron Cohen spilled powdered pancake mix on his tuxedo at the Oscars last year.  I admit that, at the time, seeing how upset Mr. Seacrest was, I felt a little sorry for him, though I think that - personally -  I would have been pleased-as-punch to have Sacha Baron Cohen spill powdered pancake mix on me, for whatever reason, but especially in any connection with "The Dictator".

 

I have since learned that Mr. Seacrest is the person who is responsible for inflicting the Kardashians upon us.  And that there are rumors about him filming the delivery of Ms. Kardashian's baby as he did, if I understand this correctly (and I'm afraid I do), with the delivery of both of her sister's children.  I admit to being amazed (aaargh!) by this, and have since recovered from my moment of compassion for him.  As a result of this discovery, I have taken to fantasizing that the pancake mix was not really pancake mix but, instead, ash from a deadly volcano eruption - say, Pompeii - and Mr. Seacrest is now safely buried beneath it, to be discovered a thousand years from now when, hopefully, people have more sense.

 

I predict that the real hullabaloo will begin when both ladies are "showing", providing the visible evidence needed by middle-aged American and English women to arise from their normally dormant states and whip themselves into a frenzy over maternity fashion, diets, nursing etiquette, room decor, and baby names.

 

Speaking of baby names:  Kate, Kim, Kardashian, Kanye.  Am I seeing a pattern here?  Why, yes, I am, although I think it only applies to the heir of the Kardashian legacy.  The Duchess will have her own pool of dead royal people's names to choose from.  If it's a boy, he will be Henry, John, Arthur, Richard, Edward, George, Andrew, Philip, or all of the above.  A girl will be Elizabeth, Anne, Diana, Victoria, Margaret, or Matilda.  And whichever girl's name is chosen, it will be the most popular girl's name for the next 20 years.

 

So here's to hoping it's not Matilda.  Anything but Matilda.  Stay tuned.