My Review of the 2014 Primetime Emmys

Lena Dunham, under that skirt.

I have never hidden or denied that I love TV way too much for my own good.

Plus, this blog, from its inception, has faithfully reviewed award shows as though I were getting paid for it (if only) so why then did I not present a review for Monday night’s Emmys on Tuesday morning???

I’ll tell  you why---nothing all that much happened on the Emmys this year.

In addition, I was still in recovery from the previous evening's MTV Video Awards and, to be honest, I assumed no one would notice.

But I am both happy and somewhat annoyed to report that several of you have inquired as to where my Emmy review might be.

Thanks for asking. I think. But where are my notes?

There is a roll of toilet paper under
her skirt.

Think what you will but I take notes during awards shows lest a detail slips my mind and I forfeit an opportunity to be snarky when I am later seated and --  having flexed my fingers like Liberace at his baby grand -- ready to type my heart out here at my little desk in the corner.

My notes...right before I send them
to the Smithsonian.

But, yesterday I'd spent hours tidying up my desk which included corralling no less than 11 assorted lip balms into a zip-loc as well as chucking my Emmy notes right into the garbage.

Christina Hendricks.
Weird, beautiful
or both?

I had to fish them out but they were both soaked with, and partially disintegrated by coffee from this morning's unrepentant caffeine binge.

Luckily they were scrawled in Sharpie and I can still make them out. I am going to transcribe them almost exactly as written since the hour is very late and, according to some of you, so is my review. Ready?

Zoey and Allison.

• I am very proud of Seth Meyers.....liked him as anchor of SNL's Weekend Update...happy to see his career going well.
• Clear, horn-rimmed glasses are definitely trending right now. Good call, Fred Armisen, you weirdo.
• Hmmmm. Not so sure how well Seth Meyers actually is doing but I am still proud...kind of.
• Tony Hale (Arrested Development, Veep) is totally under-appreciated. Why?
• I hate Lena Dunham. 
• Am I the last to know that Hayden Panetierre is pregnant?? And who is responsible?
• When did Matt LeBlanc go gray?
• Uzo Aduba aka Crazy Eyes from "Orange is the New Black" looks great as herself.....not crazy at all.
• Jimmy Kimmel was so much better than Seth Meyers. Uh-oh.
• The camera just caught Lena Dunham saying “wow” (like an idiot) for the second time. Get over it, Dunham.
• Matthew McConaughey is just so darn pretty....a little off but definitely pretty. Is it the marijuana?
• Julia Louis Dreyfus simply does not age....gorgeous.
• Allison Williams (in a quirky dress) and Zooey Deschanel  (in simple and elegant) appear to be wearing each other’s clothes.
• Lena Dunham looks hideous as a blonde. Plus, I really hate her.
• Steven Colbert has two distinctly different ears*
• I love Laverne Cox.
• Who does that bitch Lena Dunham think she is?
• Oh, no. Even Jay Leno was funnier than Seth Meyers.
• The Amazing race wins again for best reality show??? How did the nominating committee forget about the single greatest reality show in the history of the medium---“Hardcore Pawn?”
• Who, in the name of Helena Rubinstein, did Lena Dunham’s make-up? I hate her.
• How good can Jim Parson really be to win the Emmy so many times?**
• Why is Lena Dunham dressed exactly like a toilet paper cover that someone's grandma crocheted in 1962?
• Damn, Louis CK looks great in a tux....who knew?
• Who exactly is Cary Joji Fukunaga and why am I strangely attracted to him?***
• Why does Brian Cranston have a porn-stache......I hope it’s for a role.
• Gwen Stefani is almost unrecognizable (More plastic surgery, Miss Hollaback, really?) and is a bit dumb, no?
• Why doesn't Jon Hamm marry his girlfriend of 15 years? Because he's Jon Hamm, that's why.
• Christina Hendricks is starting to weird me out......
• If I ever run into Lena Dunham on the street, I’m going to punch her smug little face right off.
• Why is Matthew McConaughey wearing so much self-tanner....is his wife too busy designing over-priced handbags for QVC to tell him to knock it off?
• Amy Poehler wasn’t all that funny tonight without her accomplice, Tina Fey, now was she? Ha.
• Could it be that I am jealous of  Lena Dunham?****
• Damn. Seth Meyers was awful.

Boom-chicka-wow-wow.

See. I told you....there were no wardrobe malfunctions, pretentious political statements or awful gaffes. Kathy Bates wore pants with a caftan. Ricky Gervais was under control. The status was very quo at the 2014 Emmys.

I hope something crazy happens at the Golden Globes next spring.

....something like this.

                                          * I actually googled Steven Colbert's asymmetrical ears. He is deaf in one as a result of a punctured ear drum. That, according to further research, however, should not have caused their lack of symmetry.

                                             ** I remain the only person alive who has never seen an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" and I plan to keep it that way. I have also never seen any of the Star Wars movies. There is no real intent behind either of these choices but now I want to keep my streak going.
                                             *** I realize my attraction to Cary Joji Fukunaga is purely narcissistic---his braids reminds me of myself when I was in second grade.
                                             ***** Yes. Extremely.

Cary Joji Fukunaga wearing his hair like I did when I was eight.
He is also the creator of "True Detective" on HBO.

The MTV Video Awards: The Night of the Ass

I just deleted several opening paragraphs for today’s post because, despite my efforts, I cannot sugarcoat my review of the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards with a flowery opening or even some age-deprecating excuses as to why I didn’t enjoy what I saw.

The only thing that kept me from using the vomit bag I keep handy was my hope that I was either imagining the whole thing or that the entire world will agree with me. Neither scenario, I suspect, will redeem us. I fear it all actually happened.

Contrary to the belief of many some, I am not an idiot. I understand that young people are sexual beings. I have long believed that abstinence is less likely to become a successful method of handling horny teens than a solid attempt to educate them about protection from unwanted pregnancy and damaging STDs but what I and millions of adolescents saw last night was an un-doer of all the good we try to impart to teenagers everywhere as well as shockingly vulgar for someone like me…no prude but a product of a decidedly different age.

Ugh.

On last night’s MTV Video Music Awards, at best, female sexuality was represented by glaring, sneering, snarling women who appeared to interpret “sexy” as looking as mean as possible. But, as a woman, what do I know? Maybe men are turned on by really scary, angry looking women. I hope not. What I do know was that last night’s show was a celebration of the profane and obscene, interrupted by commercials for pimple creams, fast food and promos for madcap sitcoms about teen pregnancy.

So, obviously, MTV knew who their audience was. It was kids.

Jokes were even made about certain artists who look like jail bait. They repeatedly emphasized that specific, very youthful looking performers were genuinely of legal age. Maybe the diminutive, talentless and bland Ariana Grande actually is 21 but another, who goes by the moniker of Becky G, is 17.

Nicki in one of the more tasteful moments
of last night's ass fest.

Kicked off  by senior citizens Snoop Dogg and Gwen Stefani, the evening was a total mess.

One of the first numbers was some kind of insanity with the detestable Nicki Minaj whose appeal I will never comprehend.  

Her giant and terrifying derriere was the star of the performance and, I (again, I am a woman) was more grossed out than impressed. Hers used to be the kind of rear end that women would strive to camouflage with the right clothes but Nicki worked both it and the audience into a frenzy with her ass-robatics as the camera cut to the dead-eyed but also generously tushied Kim Kardashian. I wondered if there might be an “ass-off” later on.

After last year's spectacle with Robin Thicke, Miley Cyrus, toned down in a leather bra, provided the most contrived moment of the evening as she sent up a young homeless -- or something -- young man to accept her award and read a statement about being homeless  -- or something – while she conspicuously sat nearby  trying very hard to squeeze out a tear or two. The whole thing made me cringe. As another social statement, Common (who I love…especially as the brooding Elam on the epic television show, “Hell on Wheels”) asked this sexed-up crowd for a minute of silence for the recent unrest in Ferguson that lasted all of 13 seconds. If you ask for a minute, take a minute, Mr. Common. I am a very literal person.

The entire evening was a showcase for countless asses, crotches, humping and bumping around, simulated sex and the aforementioned sneering and glaring. If my mother were still alive and watching this show with me, it would have  – without question – killed her.

Lorde, looking gleeful, at
last year's Grammys.

The only ass-free portion of the evening was Taylor Swift who, taking a semester off from country pap to put a skinny toe into the waters of bouncy pop, attempted to shake her invisible booty to a new hit which, shock of shocks, I did not hate. 

That doesn’t mean I’m softening toward Miss Swift. She was as incredibly annoying as ever, acting coy and earnest from the front row, applauding enthusiastically as her “friend” Lorde (whose fashion and make-up choices make Morticia Addams look bright as a new penny) accepted an award. My advice to Lorde: watch your back.

Nothing could save this show for me. Not Adam Levine. Not some recently landed extraterrestrial named Iggy Azalea who appeared to be channeling an angry rapping robot...not even Usher who I usually love and was the only one all night who smiled while performing. By the way, he also interacted heavily with yet another appearance of Nicki Minaj’s ubiquitous ass.

This was, indeed, the night of the ass.

This leads to a different problem with last night’s MTV Video awards. They were boring as hell. Yes, yes, America’s youth, to me…not you. Or, maybe you were a little bored.  

Did you enjoy Beyonce’s marathon of grinding and thrusting (once you’ve seen one thrust, you’ve seen ‘em all) or did you fall into a mercifully dreamless coma like I did? 

Luckily, I'd recorded the whole thing in case I missed something wonderful so I rewound Beyonce and watched again later. Nope. It was more of the same:  mad faces, flared nostrils, sidelong glares and moves that will land Miss Bey, as well as her dancers, in traction one day. Yawn.

Mean Face #74

More yawning for Blue Ivy and her Daddy who presented “the greatest living entertainer” with a Moon man for something or other.

So, despite all the people with initials instead of last names, all the videos  “featuring” people with initials instead of last names and one Mr. Riff Raff who won the “Susan Says…”  for the "Most Ridiculous Looking Human Ever,” I was bored and antsy or bored and fully asleep or bored and grossed-out which is why I am never going to watch the MTV Video Music Awards ever again.

Riff Raff.
Aptly named, no?

The Box...

I had one job to do that day.  

If it were your job, you might not have worried at all. In fact, you might be good at this sort of thing, even consider it a challenge…but I was worried.  

This job, literally looming before me on the indoor-outdoor carpeting, was to wrap one enormous, unwieldy, huge monolith of a box in order for it to join other gaily dressed  boxes at a baby shower. I did not want my box to be embarrassed among the other pretty boxes. This was serious.

I am a terrible gift- wrapper. 

Years ago, I lasted but one pre-Christmas day in the wrapping department of Macy’s. Truth be told, I was a fill-in while the others were either gift wrap prodigies or, apparently, had devoted their entire lives to the science of neat corners and hand-tied bows but I soon had tape tape in my hair and was warned to never return.

I learned to wrap gifts at the famous "Three Stooges Gift Wrapping
Academy.

Based on this memory, I should not have been so cavalier about my chore, allowing the hours to tick by until the event was the following day. But, no worries, mate---I had Seth and his freakishly long arms and good nature to help me through it. Read that as do it for me while I sat back with a glass of iced and a cat on my lap.

But, what are the odd--Charlie unexpectedly called to lure Seth up to Massachusetts  for a male-bonding weekend and --  poof! -- Seth was gone, leaving nothing but a cereal bowl in the sink and the faint scent of banana in the air.

...notoriously tricky to gift wrap.

Now, all alone with the box, I got nervous. I anticipated, quite correctly, that my task would involve bending and lifting which are the two things I hate most in this world…so, I decided to tackle it the evening before in case I hurt myself and needed time to recover.  I was glad I’d bought enough paper to wrap the Taj Mahal since I knew there’d be mistakes.

Sometime after midnight and multiple inner pep talks that would have made Dale Carnegie look non-commital, I grabbed my scissors. 

The cats gathered and perched on the back of the love seat upon which I’d recently been sprawled when, suddenly, we heard an ominous thump upstairs on the deck.  Frozen, the cats and I exchanged fearful looks and shared the thought that on the one stinkin’ night Seth is gone, something scary is happening. And, here we are, with nothing for defense but three rolls of bunny-themed wrapping paper.

The cats scattered as the thumping morphed into the sound of deck furniture being shoved about and even though I soon deduced that my visitor was probably an animal and not the ghost of John Wayne Gacy in his clown suit, I was still shaken up. 

Oh, hey....can I come in?

I didn’t want to waste my one true emergency call to a neighbor on a raccoon (or even a sasquatch) so, instead, turned off the lights and cowered beneath a crocheted afghan under which I ultimately slept until morning. I woke with the cats around me again – a signal that the danger was over -- and emerged. The threat was gone but the box, still unwrapped, looked even bigger.

Relief , however, propelled me forward. After all, I’d  survived  with a possible sasquatch rearranging the deck so what’s a box, albeit a gigantic one? Plus, I had to leave for the baby shower very soon.  

After coffee and a phone call to Seth recounting my travails, I stood to circle my prey, roll of paper in hand and fire in my bell. Before you knew it, I’d figured it out. My shame as a poor holiday wrapper behind me, I was all about snipping, folding and taping and – boom! – the box was done. 

The cats and I took numerous selfies with it until I accidentally tore the paper and had to make a minor repair. The box had nothing to be ashamed of at the party later and I discovered that I had left the tub of bird seed on the deck after filling the feeders and a raccoon (or sasquatch) had chewed through the plastic and done some serious partying during the night. The end.

The actual box which exists now only in my memory....and this picture.