Dancing Brave

Maddening. I Know About Maddening.

Here's the thing: I love musicals. Love them. Wanted to star in them when I was a little kid, back when I could actually sing; have been in a bunch of them in school, thanks to the glories of drama classes; listen to the soundtracks whenever I'm on a road trip or a long drive because I can sing and sing and sing to pass the time. And Wicked might be really awesome. I'm sure it is, in fact. I know a lot of people who love(d) it, and the idea seems creative, and there's a reason it's been around this long. But at this point, I am never, ever going to want to see it.

Part of the reason: That Ugly Betty episode where they rammed it down our throats annoyed the crap out of me. But another prong of the problem comes from the TV commercials they're running ad nauseum in Los Angeles right now -- which are shortened versions of the little trailers that occasionally would run a year or two ago in front of movies at smaller theaters. And they do the thing zero justice. Never, ever film a musical at close-range. All the overacting that's for the stage, where you're playing to a large room and you have to go big, comes off so hammy and awkward and awful when you're right up in their faces. I think that's one reason the remake of The Producers, with much of the Broadway cast, flopped so badly -- none of them toned down the performances for film, so it came off terribly overdone and clumsy. With the Wicked ads, it's no different. Kevin and I were sitting in one, waiting for the film to start, and they ran the Wicked promo twice in a row. We wanted to slit our wrists by the end.

Also, the jokes and the songs probably work great in context, but seem so cheesy when you isolate them or montage them, chop them up, stitch them together. It's almost too earnest. And the sets! I have nightmares about the close-up of some horrifying and cheap-looking puppet mask rocking around while some dude booms, "THE WIZARD WILL SEE YOU NOW!!!!!!!"

So through all of this, I don't think I can ever hear someone sing, "Popular... I know about popular," without having acid flashbacks to how cringeworthy the ads are. This is the problem with working at home and preferring background noise to silence. My blogging job has ruined Wicked. Thank God nobody's advertising Les Miserables right now or I'd have nothing left.

Sorry, Samantha, But I Need to Vent

So, the latest celebrity who drives me to an almost irrational annoyance, except for the fact that in my mind it's totally rational: Samantha Harris.

You may know her as the cohost of Dancing With The Stars, and if you don't know her from that, be thankful, because she is really terrible at that job. And she's always sort of grated, in large part due to how lousy I think she is on that show, but also because she managed to irk me thoroughly during and after her pregnancy.

No, seriously, hear me out on this one. Jessica and I used to talk about this a lot: During her entire pregnancy, from about the minute she announced around the 3-month mark, Samantha Harris posed on the red carpet in the same strange stance. She would put this really sort of glassy smile on her face, and almost cup the underside of her belly with her hands, but with the palms turned out more than usual toward the camera. We agreed that this stance conveyed a very neurotic message of, "NOT FAT! PREGNANT! NOT FAT! ... LOOK, STILL NOT FAT! JUST PREGNANT!" It was like she was a Barker's Beauty, showing off her wares so as to convince you that they are indeed magnificent and very much worth their actual retail price, thank you very much.

Then Jessica and I decided that maybe we were being unfair, and that we were extrapolating too much, so we dropped it. But then other stuff trickled out, like the fact that after her baby was born, Miss Samantha was back to work after a whopping three weeks, or how she worked out four days a week throughout her entire pregnancy. And when at year's end, some tabloid -- Us, I think? -- decided to highlight her as one of the year's massive diet success stories, the gist of it was that Harris was some kind of hero for only gaining 21 pounds during her pregnancy and then losing it all really fast, hitting the gym two weeks after giving birth, going back on her show at three weeks (presumably so that Drew Lachey didn't waltz away with her job, since he was apparently so much more charismatic at it), and then adding some sort of pat, perfunctory line at the end about how, although she was nervous she wouldn't ever get all her pre-baby muscle tone back, her daughter is worth the sacrifice.

Now, clearly, I've never been pregnant, and I'm not on TV, so I don't know the pressures. I know it's good to stay active while pregnant. And taken separately, I get all that stuff -- you want to keep your muscles working, so you go the gym, and everyone's body is different, and she has a very public job. But I had heard doctors prefer that new mothers wait six weeks at a minimum before going back to the gym, for one thing and for another, I feel like trumpeting the fact that you obsessively hit the gym and only gained 21 pounds while pregnant -- going so far as to have your trainer customize your regular workout so that it's viable for a pregnant lady -- has a slight air of, "I REFUSE TO GET FAT I REFUSE TO GET FAT." It seemed sort of unhealthy to me, especially since it was all in aid of getting herself back on the air faster.

And again, maybe she's just That Way -- maybe she doesn't gain weight, maybe her doctor told her he didn't care when she went back to the gym. I am trying to be understanding. But since she already sort of vaguely bugged me, all that other stuff tallied up suddenly made her sound a little dysfunctional. In an uncomfortable way. The kind of way where I really wish Us Weekly weren't trying to tell me -- and tell HER -- that she is one of 2007's greatest diet stories. Because to me, she sounds like one of 2007's women most obsessed with not letting a baby screw up her photo opportunities for very long.

Who knows, maybe it's irrational. But Jess and I worked each other into quite a head of steam about it the other day, and I just felt the need to blow some of it off. And now I can wish Samantha Harris and her baby a very long and happy life together that I hope is devoid of any kind of weird body-image issues.

After-School Special: Hookers Are People, Too

This weekend, as I flipped around through different sports talk-radio stations, I stopped on AM 570 because it was the only one not on a commercial. I don't think I'll be going there again.

The host was talking about former D.A. Mike Nifong and all the lives -- including Nifong's -- that have been totally upended after the disaster with prosecuting the Duke lacrosse players for rape. In the course of discussing the details of the case, which involve a stripper or a hooker (I'm not sure which, but he called her a hooker) accusing the men of sexually assaulting her, the radio host said with contempt, "First of all, I'm not sure how you rape a hooker."

This completely galled me. Removing that statement from the details of the case, because the men were found not guilty and the girl proven to have lied (if I remember right), I object to the notion that a prostitute can't be raped simply because she's a prostitute -- that her profession implies round-the-clock consent, denies her the right to say no, and decrees that she can't feel as though someone is forcing himself on her. That her vagina is open for business 24/7, whether she wants it that way or not.

I understand there's a business transaction involved -- cash for sex, and so if cash changes hands first, sex is expected. (Again, this is separate from the Duke case; I don't remember if the girl was actually a hooker, or was paid for anything.) But let's say she's paid for one thing and the guy attempts another. Something more painful, more dangerous. Is she not allowed to say no? Let's say she's working her corner and gets dragged off to a dumpster. Is she not allowed to feel violated? Or let's say he tries exactly what he paid for, but she changes her mind. Where is the line drawn?

As consumers we can change our minds when we buy something, but H&M can't call me and say, "You know what? We decided we don't want to sell you that dress. Bring it back and we'll hand back the money." Does that extend into the sex trade? Those are goods, pieces of cloth -- not a person's flesh, psyche, or self-esteem. Does a prostitute lose basic human rights because she sells her body?

It doesn't seem fair to me that she should. And so his condescending remark seemed like a completely thoughtless -- if not irresponsible -- comment to make, regardless of how the hooker/stripper/lady in question conducted herself with regard to the apparently false accusations she made. And it rather put me off, frankly.

Who knew I was so defensive on behalf of prostitutes? Clearly, Pretty Woman struck a chord.

Update

I got this e-mail yesterday morning:

Dear Ms. Cocks,

Thank you for contacting Marriott Customer Care regarding the Pentagon City Residence Inn by Marriott.  We appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns.

Please accept our apology for the frustration and disappointment this experience has caused.  We have forwarded your comments to associates in the Executive Office of the hotel for review and have requested that someone from that office respond to address your concerns.  You should be contacted within three to five business days.

If we can be of further assistance, we invite you to reply to this email.

Thank you for choosing Marriott.

Regards,

[name redacted, because none of this is his/her fault]
Marriott Customer Care

So, we shall see. I haven't heard anything yet but it's still early; if by this time next week I've STILL heard nothing, I'm hitting reply AND contacting the BBB. Don't mess with Texas, bitches.

I Forget What This Is Even About

I'm absent-minded to a fault these days.

1) I left my water bottle open in my gym bag, and it proceeded to soak everything inside -- including my cell phone, which drowned swiftly and took with it all my paid-for ringtones and everybody's phone numbers, which the Cingular guy had apparently transferred off my SIM card when I bought that phone. I had to buy a new one -- thank God I still had insurance from the last time I screwed up a phone; it only cost me $50 to replace it with the same model, as opposed to paying $300 for a brand-new thing. But still. Kids, close your water bottles. Your phones will thank you.

2) As I was hurriedly packing on Sunday at the hotel, I left two dresses in the closet: one new as of last week and worn only once, and one new as of Friday that my Dad paid for as a birthday present. I felt like an idiot, especially for losing something that still had on the tags and was still in the dress bag from BCBG.

With a jolt, I woke up early Monday morning in L.A. realizing that I hadn't packed them, and immediately telephoned the hotel. My urgent query was met with total unconcern and a hollow promise to call me back if anything turned up. They did not. I called that evening and was shunted off to a voice-mail system, on which I left a message that was unreturned. The next day at lunchtime, my father and I separately called and each got somebody who knew nothing about it. When I spoke to them, I asked why the maids didn't check the closet when they tidied my room after I checked out. "Oh, but they do -- they look everywhere," the woman said. "Well, I don't know why they didn't see my dresses, because that's where I left them -- hanging in the closet," I said.

I was careful not to accuse them of stealing, because for all I know, the next guest grabbed them. But the desk clerk basically just sat there yawning while I asked for her help, so finally I snapped: "So you're telling me my clothes were stolen on your premises? Because that's the only explanation I can come up with. They didn't walk off by themselves." She was like, "I don't know what you're talking about." That's when I got into a huff and said, "Well, then you'll be HEARING FROM MY ATTORNEYS," and hung up. Which, of course I'm not getting a lawyer involved, but it seemed like a dramatic way to exit in the absence of a door to slam. I don't know. I was possessed by a diva.

Dad asked to speak with a manager and was told, "The manager is too busy to talk to you." Then he was told it would be impossible to figure out which maids cleaned the room and which guest next stayed in it; after he got in a raging fury, they put him on hold for five minutes -- he timed it -- and then came back claiming to have found BOTH missing persons in that time, questioned them thoroughly, and concluded there were no dresses anywhere on the property that belonged to me.

So of course, I wrote an angry letter -- a firm screed decrying their careless treatment of the issue.

The next day, Security magically decided to call and tell me that the maids swore there was nothing in the closet, and that they didn't see a way that they could help me any further. I pointed out that contacting me on Wednesday was not as helpful because it was so far after the fact. I then noted that the fate of my dresses must be a mystery. "Well, I don't see the mystery," he said. "I do," I replied. "I don't have my clothes. My parents don't have my clothes. And your staff claim my clothes weren't there when they went to clean the room. So something mysterious must have happened to them in between, and I just can't imagine what it was."

Ergo, we're at an impasse: The hotel, understandably, can't assume that every person who claims something went missing in their room is telling the truth. It's totally my stupid fault for leaving them, but you know what would have been nice? Some sort of polite treatment from the hotel, perhaps an apology that I can't locate my clothes, or an acknowledgment that the situation has been troubling for me. I know they have to stop short of stating culpability, because again, from their POV, I could just be some extortionist jerk who's trying to make some cash by blaming the maids or a guest for ganking my stuff. But at the same time, it's frustrating, because I am not lying. It's my word against their word. But I know I AM telling the truth, and that somebody walked off with my dresses. Somebody who did not pay for them.

Overall, the hotel was crap anyway -- don't stay at the Residence Inn in Arlington, across from The Pentagon. Among their other annoying offenses: charging $8 to use the "business center," which consists of a box-like room with one computer and an old printer that has no ink; acting like our request that they put in a new ink cartridge was almost impossible; neglecting to put up a sign informing other patrons that they would print at their own risk; and then -- upon learning that the only reason my father had paid for access in the first place was to print out his Times UK crosswords, which he could not do without ink in the printer -- informing us they couldn't possibly refund the $8 charge until 48 hours had passed... and then not bothering to do it when the 48 hours DID pass.

Also, I want my dresses back, bitches.

3) When I went to The Gap to see if they still had the other dress in stock -- they did not -- I left my sunglasses in the dressing room. Thank God I noticed when I got to the car. If only I'd had the same epiphany with my clothes.

4) I totally had another item for this list, but somewhere on the ride home from The Gap, I even forgot that. Well done.

5) Oh my God, just kidding, I totally just remembered. The other day, I was writing myself a check from my corporate account to my personal account, so that Kevin and I could pay our estimated quarterly taxes (sadly, WaMu won't let me transfer funds online between my business and personal accounts, which stinks). I deposited the check and then saw that two days later, the funds were canceled from my personal account and had never been withdrawn from the corporate one.

The reason? I had neglected to write in the date.

Fast-forward to two days later when I went to the ATM with a new version of that check and another one to deposit as well, and two seconds before licking the envelope, I realized I had forgotten to date Check #2.

Note to self: WAKE UP.

Also, I am weighing whether it's overly bitchy to report the Arlington hotel to the Better Business Bureau. Because, like I said, I'm the numbskull who left her clothes behind. But still, I'm bristling at how nobody seemed to care about helping me until I sent a complaint letter. A concerned phone call should have been enough. I was more than willing to assume the best until they treated me the worst. But getting the BBB involved is bigtime -- people seriously seem to fear that organization -- and I can't decide if that's over the top or not. I probably just need to let go.

Maybe first I'll put some harsh reviews of the hotel's service on Expedia.

Look, See, I Am Using The Space Bar RIGHT NOW

So, apparently, TV isn't quite like real life.

I realized that this weekend while watching part 1 of the Ghost Whisperer season finale. You might think it was the presence of ghosts in the show that tipped me off, but Jay Mohr told me himself during that hour that I lose nothing by believing, and I can't remember the last time Jay Mohr lied to me. No, it was a few other things about that show that shattered my illusion:

1) Melinda never turns on any lights. She sees ghosts for a living, and they live to freak her out, and yet she's constantly skulking around in a dimly lit house. For one thing, her husband is hot, so I can't imagine her not wanting to illuminate the hell out of that sweet, chiseled hunk of flesh. For another thing, GHOSTS. Seriously, when I was home alone the other weekend, the noises of my house freaked me out so badly that I slept with lights on in the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen, as if that would really deter a mad, bloodthirsty axe-murderer from coming in and hacking me to bits. If he wants to, he will, whether or not I can see him coming. But it made me feel better, so I accepted that I'm pathetic, and I did it, and it calmed me down even after the squirrels on the roof made me think for a second that a big burly dude was walking around up there trying to figure out how to behead me. And that axe-murderer is, for the moment, completely theoretical. Her ghosts are actual. Well, to her. And they often like to do scary and unpredictable things. SO TURN ON A LIGHT. It will make things seem less frightening, I swear. It might run up your power bill but you can pay back the world in other ways.

2) Melinda never uses the space bar. Presumably Jennifer Love Hewitt knows how to type, and has taken time out of her rigorous weave and breast-fluffing schedule to sit down at a computer and punch out a few sentences. And yet, whenever she's typing on her laptop as Melinda, she does that irritating Actor thing where she just sort of tickles the middle keys with her fingertips while the screen claims she is typing something with lots of vowels and spaces in it. If Melinda needs to type, "Mary McConnell Boat Accident," can't Jennifer Love Hewitt ACTUALLY type that? Is it so hard? She doesn't need to be good at it. Can't she just sit down for a second and take a deep breath and Method act or something? PEOPLE NEED SPACES. Look, I just used a bunch.

3) Melinda is always in a different climate than everyone else. The show is set in what I believe is a Connecticut town, but the point is, it's a tony small 'burg on the East Coast, somewhere that should have actual seasons. And indeed, Camryn Manheim's character is constantly swaddled in seasonally appropriate coats and scarves. But Melinda trots around in tiny sundresses from which her breasts spill forth eagerly. And although I have no problem with cleavage, I do have a problem with it getting frost-bitten. Not that she's ever cold. Apparently the sun beats down on her hotly wherever she walks, leaving everyone else to shiver sadly in whatever temperature it actually is.  And the kicker? No one mentions it to her. Motherly Camryn Manheim never says, "Hey, if you're running out to the coffee shop in that tiny little thing, do you want to borrow the heavy wool coat I wore to work this morning over my sweater?" Once or twice she'll be in a dramatic coat that looks like livery from an old English estate, but mostly, she's walking around baiting pneumonia.

It's so crushing when TV turns out to be false. At least Heroes would never lead me astray with falsehoods.

Water, Water Everywhere, And Plenty Of Other Stuff Also So Please Consider Carbs

I love the good folks at New York magazine online. Not only are they completely cool, but the content they have there is always fascinating.

Take this, for instance: Given the scrutiny on weight, they had four different people do a Fashion Week food diary, and oh my GOD, Elle's Anne Slowey is off her tree. She eats water. Sometimes hot water with lemon. And an entire pharmacy's worth of supplements, and almost nothing else. Which is confusing since I bet all these pills aren't supposed to be ingested on an empty stomach:

7:30 A.M. Home
Two 1,000-mg. Emergen-C with seven mineral ascorbates and 32 mineral complexes, one ounce of Super KMH, Mona Vie (berry extract), aloe juice, chlorophyll, two Nature’s Way Fenu-Thyme, one advance natural FloroMax, three Wellness Formula tablets, twenty drops Super Lysine Plus, two Theraveda Usha daytime stress formula tablets.

The rest of the day is like, "Water. Water. Water. Soup. Water. Water. An ounce of guacamole. Water." I would pass out after half a day if I lived like that, but first, I would alienate every single person in my life because of how unpleasant the hunger made me. Then I'd just give up and lie down and wait for the end to arrive. Is it even possible that this woman enjoys her life? Does she float through all of it on a raft of liquid meals? Will she ever know the divine satisfaction that comes from biting into, say, a Bic Mac with a lovely order of freshly cooked french fries? Or an awesomely huge steak with Bearnaise sauce? Or, I don't know, anything with texture?

Surely this is borne of some kind of obsession with weight, and the maintenance thereof; I don't know her life, though, so I guess there's a chance she's deathly allergic to almost everything, but if she were, you'd think that'd merit some kind of editorial note at the very least. Maybe she's a vegan; still, there are still plenty of vegans who manage to eat more food that requires chewing. I am running out of excuses for her lack of intake. Allergic to nutrients that don't come in capsules? Once savaged by a loaf of bread and now unable to look at one without diving for cover and trembling? Afflicted with a rare ass-arm coordination ailment that limits her ability to sit down and eat an entire meal? Anyone?

So, I'm going back to the old chestnut, "It's an obsession with size." To which I say, Anna Wintour looks amazing, and she eats a steak every day for lunch, or so the legend goes. Point is, she eats her share of delectable protein. Genetics obviously have something to do with it, but if your genes demand that you starve yourself in order to fit into a size zero, why not search for a happier medium? And I mean that quite seriously, as I maintain that on that little of actual tangible deliciousness, I cannot imagine that this woman is genuinely happy.

At Fashion Week, Jess and I were really refreshed to see how many people swarming the shoes -- media types, all -- were pretty normal-looking and not a bunch of 6-foot tall twigs dressed in head-to-toe designer black. We had visions of it being a lot more intimidating, but the scary stuff generally came down the runway, rather than filling in the seats around it. And I don't buy the whole, "If you're in an important position in fashion you have to look the part" argument. Fern Malice, who basically runs Fashion Week, is completely regular, and Glenda Bailey of Harper's Bazaar is also pleasingly unemaciated. And we can certainly vouch that Fashion Week offers plenty of time to do more than chug bottles of water. We choked down our share of emergency bagels, sandwiches, chips, and other tasties as we ran around town.

So, seriously, Elle editrix, whither the food? Whither the fuel? If we see you being wheeled around next fall because you can't move under your own power, please allow us to stage an intervention, okay?

It Was A Full-Circle Kind of Day

As I've been home so much more often lately, what with the unemployment and all, I get to catch the 2 p.m. airings of Beverly Hills, 90210, on SoapNet. This is a mixed blessing: I get to catch up on the shenanigans of the old gang (that David is starting to get mighty crabby now that he's in college and not getting laid), but I have to sit through commercials from SoapNet's sponsors.

Problematically, the biggest sponsor is Chico's, whose commercials are all strummy guitar and walks on the beach while a guy drones, "It was a Chico's kind of day... ALL WEEK LONG." He's got a very sated, self-satisfied tone, like he's biting into a divine dessert and letting its decadence melt on his tongue. And there's a woman in all the flowing clothes and tunics we've come to expect from that particular retailer, proving that SoapNet and/or Chico's must feel like the channel's chief audience is composed of women who prefer things with elastic waistbands.

For some reason, hearing this man's voice is like driving nails into my ears. I want to slap him, or at least rip out his larynx. "It was a Chicoooooo's kiiiiiind of daaaaaaay..." What is a Chico's kind of day? The kind where you walk really slowly amid nature and wear flowing scarves? Or where you wear something obscenely patterned while leaning against a tree and staring penetratingly into middle-distance? Those advertisements drive me into suffocating fits of rage, the likes of which manifest themselves in angry instant-messages to Jessica, shouting, "It was a Chico's kind of SUICIDE." Or, "It was a Chico's kind of day... FOR MURDER." Most of the time I'm just begging Jessica to contact SoapNet about getting a new sponsor, because pretty soon, a Chico's kind of day is going to mean, "The day I get a lobotomy."

The other commercial that traumatizes me is the animated one for Charmin, where the mama bear and the baby bear are sitting behind trees, taking a dump about six inches away from one another; the baby runs out of Charmin and starts to get upset, so the mother hands her some and everything's fine. When they're all clean, they get up and dance around while rubbing their asses with strings of Charmin, as if toweling themselves off after a swim in the latrine.

What the hell are they doing taking dumps of togetherness? I want the mother bear to be like, "Go drop a load on your own time, freak." And why does wiping their asses make them go, "Cha cha cha"? Do you think the jingle writer who had to tell this story in surprisingly exact language wanted to slit his or her own throat with the very paper on which it was penned?

That brings me back around to David Silver, who at one point tried to make money using his prodigious musical talent ("You're so precious to me...") to write commericial jingles. The poor guy was creatively humbled, if I remember it right, although at least by then he'd kicked that nasty drug habit.

And that, my friends, is how a lame and rambling entry finds a strained way to come full circle.

"Sorry, kid, nothing rhymes with 'FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SHUT YOUR FACE'."

There are two commercials making me murderous lately, both of which seem to crop up on some kind of fiendish rotation on the Satanic Shitscreen that my work TV has become.

1) The diaper commercial that bastardizes Mozart, putting a hack jingle singer to the task of singing idiotic lyrics to one of his compositions. Is my objection about the fact that a classical composer's opus is being used in conjunction with the image of a child's leaky excrement? No. It's a more shallow matter: The sound of this woman's voice is as annoying as fingernails across Celine Dion's larynx.

Sure, the rape of the synphony is unfortunate for Wolfie, but he's the lucky one in this scenario: He's dead and deaf. This releases him from the painful prison that is my head every time the devil uses the commercial breaks during Passions as his own personal radio station.

"Yeeees, yes-yeeeees, yes-yes yes-yes yes-YEEEEEEES..."

Rage bubbles up in my throat. I want to set fire to every pair of Huggies I can find.

"IIIII have gooooot... lots of things to DOOOOOO!"

LOOK LADY. I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE, OR HOW BADLY YOU NEEDED THE MONEY, BUT I ALMOST SAWED OFF MY EARS WITH A HAIR CLIP TODAY. AND THAT WOULD HAVE HURT, YET ALSO WOULD HAVE BEEN SWEET RELEASE FROM THIS AURAL PRISON. I MEAN, HOLY GOD, YOU AND THE AD GOONS ARE TURNING ME INTO A GODDAMN CUTTER, YOU HARLOTS, AND THIS VIOLATES EVERYTHING THE LIFETIME NETWORK, THE WB, "BEVERLY HILLS, 90210," AND VARIOUS OTHER PROGRAMS OF IMPORT HAVE TRIED TO TELL ME ABOUT THE WAY I SHOULD LIVE MY LIFE.

Do not make a liar out of Donna Martin. Please, please, PLEASE dial it down. Like, to "mute."

2) I might also be driven to drastic acts by Megan Mullally singing about M&Ms. Granted, the last part of this ad I can barely hear, as she trills "Chocolate is better in color" in tones so high all the neighborhood dogs simultaneously wake up from their naps and wonder idly if something was calling for them. The long version of the ad is even more irritating, because she sweeps through the colors more slowly and adds Blue to the roster just so that poor Orange feels as left out as possible. Poor, ostracized Orange, who is different and complicated and therefore a waste of Ms. Shrillally's time.

The number of times in a day these ads pop up is truly frightening. Oh, sure, maybe I could watch less television, but it's COLD in my office and there's no thermostat, and sometimes you're just sitting around waiting for editors to get around to your notes, and then you've read everything you wanted to read on the Internet, and then hark! Police Chief Sam Bennett is imploring an unconscious girl to explain to him her version of Last Night's Events and getting frustrated that she isn't responding to him, ignoring somehow that she is NOT AWAKE and therefore CANNOT HEAR OR ANSWER HIM, and all you want to do is keep watching Passions and IM'ing Jessica in fury every time Luis acts like an asshole. There IS no turning off the television! Not in the face of that!

And so I rot in this bog of fury.

USE YOUR NOODLES, People

Gah. I'm so IRRITATED with my office right now.

Nobody here takes the time to do anything RIGHT. For our finale party, nobody bothered to go to the department heads and get updated staff lists, to make sure the invitations were going out to the right people and not, for example, people who'd gotten fired. That seems like a pretty big mistake to me -- in a few cases, people who'd slaved on the latter half of the season didn't get invited because whoever compiled the list didn't bother to actually FACT-CHECK anything, and instead included someone who quit and left us in the lurch.

The latest irritation is the staff contact list. I just got handed a nice Goldenrod revision -- oops, sorry, "**GOLDENROD REVISION**" -- that I casually flipped through, just to see if my suspicious were confirmed. See, it's never a good thing when somebody decides to update things and NOBODY knows about it. Sure enough, it's all wrong: our old supervising producer, gone since OCTOBER, is still on it; old night editors are on it, and new ones are missing; story people are missing but a girl who bailed last-minute on season four is included... an assistant WHO GOT FIRED TWO WEEKS AGO is on it, with the helpful notation that he served in that position until Jan. 17. Which makes it fairly unnecessary to contact him about anything, since his employment with us came to an end that was not of his choosing.

What is up with people? How hard would it have been to photocopy, say, three staff lists, hand them out to a couple department heads, and let them mark the mistakes and add/drops? Wouldn't that be better than printing out a bajillion copies of a staff list on your nice goldenrod -- er, GOLDENROD -- paper, distributing them, and finding out they were all wrong in a hundred different ways?

It's so frustrating when people don't THINK about what they're doing.