03/05/2001

someone is always insisting upon laying in your arms so she can gaze lovingly up at you. Okay, the rest of this entry is going to be about the most recent Survivor, the season finale of Temptation Island, and Oprah’s book pick for February, We Were the Mulvaneys. If you haven’t seen one or both of the shows, be warned that there are spoilers. Same goes for the book. As far as Oprah goes, sometimes she picks really good books, and sometimes she just misses "good" by a country mile. This would be one of the ones she missed on. By page three, I was ready to throw the book across the room and gouge my eyes out. By page five, I was ready to send hate mail to Joyce Carol Oates. By page seven, Miz Poo was beginning an interpretive dance to indicate to the world at large that WE FUCKING GET IT. You Mulvaneys think you’re hot shit, the non-Mulvaneys in this book indicate many times. Now, why on earth would they be under the impression that the Mulvaneys think they’re such hot shit? Maybe because we’re told over and over AND FUCKING OVER AGAIN how incredible it was to be a Mulvaney, how SPECIAL it was to be a Mulvaney, how every Mulvaney shat gold upon command three times a day. By chapter three, I’d started skimming the story, and I ended up skimming 9/10 of the book. I came thisclose to putting the book down and not picking it back up, but as always, the thought Maybe something interesting will happen in the next chapter – the last chapter – the last paragraph – the last sentence went through my mind, and I was sorely disappointed. I was in Sam’s Club today, and in the book section, they had a pile of We Were the Mulvaneys. As I perused the other books, I kept my eye on that pile, ready to warn away any other customers fool enough to try to buy the damn thing. No one else was that much of a fool, at least not in the five minutes I was around. I can’t remember the last time I disliked a book this much.

* * * Okay, I was wrong, I’m woman enough to admit it. It, in fact, was not Nick in the water with the crocodile, but rather Michael in the fire with the burning hands. Ouch. I will say that I started to like Elisabeth – doofy Immunity Headdress aside – more than I had when she got in the water with Michael while everyone else was standing around scratching their collective ass. As a side note, his hands, with the nasty skin dangling off of them, looked very much like my right foot did when Fred spilled boiling oil on it 3 1/2 years ago. I was cringing in sympathy when he was in the water, moaning in pain. My favorite Survivors recently are Rodger, Alicia, and Keith. (I said I started to like Elisabeth more, not that she’d gotten to favorite status with me). Temptation Island What. a fucking. gyp. MAN. I was SO SURE Valerie and Kaya were going to break up; that’s why I thought they were doing them last! Valerie got all over my nerves in that last show. I mean, I understand that she was worried about what was going to happen with Kaya the next day, but did she need to be such a dishwater dull date for Dano? Poor guy! And Valerie and Kaya were the couple with zip, zero, zilch personality whatsoever. I mean, how fun must they be to hang out with? You’d have to sit there and watch Valerie do her zombie imitation, and Kaya look all shiny with his closeted self. No one broke up. NO ONE BROKE UP. I want all those hours back, damnitall, I was SO SURE there was going to be a payoff wherein one of the couples broke up. GRRRRRR. You’d think at least one of them would have been kind enough to fake a breakup, wouldn’t you? Okay, that’s all I have to yammer about today, y’all. Until tomorrow, BitchyLand… ]]>