Idol hands...

So if you'll remember a while back I had a whole internal debate over whether I'd gotten over a bunch of things, including American Idol. While I'm not sure about the other four I listed, I was about this one -- until last week, when I totally, thoroughly broke that resolution.

Top to bottom: Lambert in all his glory; Rikki Rockett circa 1989; Fashion and style inspiration for Adam from the L.A. Guns; Taime Downe of Faster Pussycat; Bang Tango. Click to see full-size.

I'd managed to make it to the finale knowing only the two contestants' names, and that at least one of them had an ambiguous sexuality. That was it. But I knew I wasn't going to be able to avoid finding out who won, so I decided what the heck, I'll watch the finale, and possibly this will stop me from watching the rest.

Long story short: Oh no it didn't. Why? Because Adam Lambert is like no other Idol contestant I've ever seen before (and by this I don't just mean hot). His performance with KISS literally blew me away. I've heard many, many versions of "Beth," but none like this. I had to see the rest.

So in a 48 hour all-out binge, I watched just the performance shows (who cares about the results) from the top 13 on down, and with each one, damn. I can't get enough. And somewhere between "Ring of Fire" and "Whole Lotta Love" I realized: Adam Lambert is glam metal's best shot at a comeback in years, and possibly ever.

Admittedly, just the other week I finally got a copy of the Hollywood Rocks! book (to go with the CD boxed set, which I've had and loved for a couple years), so I was in a frame of mind to go gaga over dyed black hair, eyeliner, and tight clothing. And on all three, Adam delivers (on top of already having a strong resemblance to Poison's Rikki Rockett -- they currently share the same haircut more or less).

But more to the point, I haven't heard someone with a voice so suited to lyrical metal in well, possibly ever. He can hit high notes in the range of someone like Michael Sweet or honestly, King Diamond. He can do the melodic stuff really well -- think Don Dokken or Ronnie James Dio. He can even do the growly stuff a la Axl Rose or Tom Keifer! (But since he doesn't do it all the time, he won't sound the way they do when he's their age.)

My advice to Adam: Grow your hair. Hang out on the Sunset Strip. Find a really good guitarist (on second thought, find one who won't get in fights with you), a reliable drummer, and a bassist who can hold his liquor. Then start a band that will finally get me to listen to new music. Do it. Do it.

P.S.: You get it, right? Do the devil's work? Or at least don't get their own work done 'cause they're watching Idol?

Sex Is(n't) Violent

I mean, it certainly doesn't have to be, unless you're really, really into the Jane's Addiction song I named this post for. But if you've been watching Vh-1 (or I suppose MTV) lately, you wouldn't know it. I put it on while I was at the gym this morning, and it really brought home something I've been kind of noticing for a while -- the whole sex/violence nexus that's been with us for wayyy too long in Western culture appears to have turned some kind of corner. Suddenly it seems women don't just like it rough, they are in fact the instigators and/or perpetrators of violence.

Exhibit A: SafetySuit, "Stay"
I know nothing about this band, they were one of Vh-1's "You Oughta Know" songs. Since just the band's name for me was a tip-off I wouldn't like them, I wasn't going to watch the video -- until I saw that it started with the lead singer's battered, bloody face. Wait, wha...? So he's on a road trip with his girl, the car breaks down, they check into a motel straight out of a Rob Zombie movie. It alternates between her being all sweet with him, and shots of her looking at the singer with undisclosed malice. Then -- whoops -- turns out she's a criminal, and he's a cop. Next thing you know, he's bound to a chair, and she's whacking him over the head with some kind of bad motel decor. He's spitting up blood... so of course she goes in for the makeout. Ick.

Exhibit B: Pink, "Don't Leave Me"
Somewhat of a spoof on Misery but possibly more disturbing, Pink's partner threatens to leave her, so she proceeds to push him down the stairs (twice, once is while he's in a wheelchair), break his leg with a golf club, mutilate him, and dress him in bizarre makeup then shove him into a roomful of baby dolls (you can't make this stuff up!) all while repeatedly coming back to him, cooing at him, and touching his face lovingly. That last bit of textbook domestic abuse really pushes up the ick-factor. She continually ups the ante until he pushes her off a balcony, which she appears to recover from, ready to go at it again save for the appearance of the police.

Exhibit C: Lady GaGa, "Pokerface"
I fully admit to liking this song, even if GaGa appears to be the bastard daughter of Donatella Versace and Christina Aquilera. But if you listen even, well, not that closely -- "when it comes to love if it's not rough it isn't fun." Is this really a great message in the age of Chris Brown and Rihanna? When 1 in 5 high school girls reports relationship violence?

These all just weird me out, especially given that men, not women are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of domestic, relationship, and sexual violence. I'm hardly one to argue for direct media effects, but I do think it's disturbing that the current zeitgeist seems to imply that women are violent, sexually predatory, and like it that way.

Let's do the time warp again

So Monday night's Gossip Girl -- the second-to-last of the season! -- was mainly given over to a pilot for a new series to be called Valley Girls, focusing on Lily Rhodes/van der Woodsen/Bass (long story short, Serena's mom) in the 80s. I'd been praying for an It Girl spin-off (even starring the ever-annoying Jenny!) 'cause come on, a boarding school tv show? Who wouldn't watch that?

You're right to be perturbed by the lack of wardrobe accuracy on this show, younger version of Lily.

Instead, we're going to get (assuming the CW picks it up), a hodgepodge of 80s cliches that makes Lily's chronology -- already a sticking point for me on Gossip Girl even more confusing. I'll tackle these in order, but for both, keep in mind, the year is 1983.

They did do a decent job with the music -- a mix of really good (e.g. "Mirror in the Bathroom" [1980]) and fairly crap (e.g. "The Safety Dance" [1982], leading to obvious, over-exaggerated dancing) 80s music. My real beef though was with the clothing. As per anything where they try to make it look like the 80s, they WAY overdress and over-accessorize the characters. It's like they got their wardrobe ideas from watching the heinously overdone (and mercifully short-lived) 80s spinoff That 80's Show, which likewise dressed its characters as bad cliches (if you don't know what I'm talking about, click here). This is sort of a shame, since (excepting a little bit at the very end), That 70's Show actually did a great job with wardrobe. I have watched many an episode of that show just to see what Jackie wears. (Similarly, Freaks and Geeks [which based on John Bonham's date of demise takes place in 1980 through 1981] does a fantastic job with the everyday fashions of the late 70s/early 80s.)

But anyway. During the pilot sequences, the only characters I felt were actually dressed like it was 1983 were the parents and a few people in the background at the party (mostly men, really). Otherwise, characters were dressed like a nightmareish version of 1987. It's absurd to dress people as "Boy Toy"-era Madonna, since the Like a Virgin album isn't going to come out for another year. So take off the layered pearl necklaces, please! Couldn't they have just watched Valley Girl (the Nic Cage movie) to figure this out? That is actually from 1983, and all the characters' clothing is much more understated that the garbage they were putting on these people. Honestly, they probably got a whole mess of vintage when they should have just gone to American Apparel and called it a day. It was too early for all that neon and spandex, too. Brittany Snow looked like a Lisa Frank notebook threw up on her (see the Blossom hat on that girl in the ad? Yes 'cause it's the 90s).

Somehow though, even more annoying to me (since we can all change our clothes) is that this makes Lily's backstory even more implausible. Let's get this straight: She's supposed to be an UES princess (made slightly still plausible by the move to California being recent), mother to Serena and Eric, have had at least 5 husbands, have had an affair of some duration PLUS an illegitimate child with Rufus, and have slept with like a hundred guys, including Slash, Trent Reznor, assorted members of Jane's Addiction, and of course Rufus, during a period of being more or less a groupie. When does she have time for all this?

If we guess that she's about the age of the characters on Gossip Girl or even a little younger -- we'll say 16, since we know she can drive -- okay, so if Lily is 16 or 17 in 1983, she was born in 1966 or 1967. Her current age is 42 or 43. If we assume Serena and Blair are the same age, Blair turned 17 in season 1, so she's 18 now. So Lily would have had Serena in 1991 or 1992 (if Serena's younger than Blair). Of course, before this she has to meet and marry Serena's dad (we'll assume they were married, since we're never told otherwise, and it's assumed Serena and Eric are not half-siblings and have the same father) at least 9 months prior. And before that, she must have a child with Rufus -- however, according to the show Lily has some overlap with Allison (Dan and Jenny's mom), so whoa, Rufus must have knocked her up after he'd known his future wife for some time (remember also, Dan and Serena are the same age, so we have to put Rufus on this same timeline).

So Lily would have to have been only 24 or 25 when she had Serena, and even younger when she had her son with Rufus (and let's remember, according to the show spend like a year in France getting that taken care of). We're down to only like 1983 - 1989 for all of this stuff to be happening. And yet according to the show, Rufus' band is one of the top forgotten bands of the 90s. (He plays a VH-1 show with Lisa Loeb, who plays her hit from 1995). Allison describes herself as wearing steel-toed boots while arguing with Lily (cough! 90s!). Likewise, Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction? More popular in the 90s than the 80s. Unless Lily et al. were really ahead of the style curve, this just doesn't make sense -- it sounds like Lily is being a groupie and cavorting with Rufus after Dan and Serena have been born. It just doesn't compute.

This is even moreso for me now that we have Lily living in LA. Were she supposed to be in Seattle or another part of California, fine, I could see it. But LA? Let's just say her list of all the guys she's slept with probably also includes members of the LA Guns, Pretty Boy Floyd, Faster Pussycat, Bang Tango, and assorted other late 80s/early 90s participants in the LA hair metal scene. Long story short, nothing this show ever says about the parents' early lives makes any sense, unless they were toting all their kids along on the road with them (and Allison does imply at one point in season one that she was raising Jenny and Dan while Rufus pursued his music career).

I know, I'm being really anal about this. But as someone who both watches Gossip Girl and is old enough to remember the 80s and the 90s, come on -- most of your audience is like me. Not actually teenaged. So quit giving us the Forever 21 (literally) version of the past! Ask Andrew McCarthy (who plays Lily's dad in the pilot) for tips -- he was around, and he was freakin' in most of the movies whose style you'd reference anyway.

P.S.: Having a character say a cliche out loud ("this is the part where you fall in love with me") doesn't make it any less of a cliche.

P.P.S.: It's just a jump to the left...

What Chuck REALLY Wore

The gal behind beloved YA-snark-site "What Claudia Wore" has a new site out there that I can't resist commenting on -- "What Chuck Wore." Yes, as in Bass. Chuck Bass.

This fascinates me not only because my bf thinks it would be a good idea to go as season 2 versions of Chuck and Blair for Halloween (could we outdo these season 1 folks? Not sure.) but even more because Chuck's outfits on TV have nothing on Chuck's truly absurd outfits in the Gossip Girl books. Chuck Bass vies with Vanessa Abrams and Rufus Humphrey for the title of most-altered character from the books. However, I think Chuck wins because he's barely a character in the books. Instead of being central to the plot -- bedding Blair, being a step-van der Woodsen, etc. -- Chuck is basically a ridiculous caricature tossed in every now and again for comic relief.

And how does Chuck provide comic relief? Mainly through his outfits. Unlike his pastel and/or purple bowtie'd suite ensembles from the show, in the books Chuck dresses like a SNL skit version of a German tourist. Possibly the easiest way to describe it is that he dresses like Bruno. Oh wait, with a pet monkey. Here, you make the call.

Gossip Girl #4, "Because I'm Worth It"
Dan stopped walking and turned around to see Chuck Bass flipping his signature navy blue monogrammed cashmere scarf over one shoulder and running his manicured fingers through his brown-and-blond highlighted hair. "Nice poem in The New Yorker, man." He gave Dan a congratulatory clap on the shoulder, his monogrammed pinky ring glittering in the winter sunlight. "Who knew you were such a stud?" Was there something distinctly gay about Chuck Bass these days? Or perhaps not. Just because he'd gotten blond highlights and was wearing a slim, cream-colored wool coat by Ralph Lauren and orange leather Prada sneakers didn't mean he'd given up molesting defenseless, drunken girls at parties. Perhaps he was simply expressing himself.

Gossip Girl #7, "Nobody Does It Better"
Chuck Bass sneered from two desks away. Riverside Prep's dress code was plain-colored khaki pants or cords, brown or black belt, white or pastel-colored button-down shirt, and brown or black loafers with dark-colored socks. Chuck Bass was wearing a black Prada jumpsuit, unzipped so his tanned, recently waxed chest was clearly visible, and creamy white leather Camper sandals that showed off his smooth, manicured feet. On the floor beneath his desk, Chuck's pet snow monkey, Sweetie, poked his fuzzy white head out of Chuck's orange-and-red leather Dooney & Bourke tote bag and bared his teeth.

Gossip Girl #11, "Don't You Forget About Me"
Suddenly Chuck Bass appeared from the direction of the bathroom. What was he doing here? Chuck was dressed in a white tank top that showed off his ridiculously tan and buff summer body, and a pair of aqua-and-pink flowered Hawaiian shorts. A rainbow-colored lei hung around his neck, the petals bright against his dark skin. His ever-present white snow monkey, Sweetie, was perched on his shoulder, pulling at strands of Chuck's over-producted hair. Sweetie was dressed in a tiny black T-shirt with the words SILENCE=DEATH printed in white lettering. The monkey screeched loudly, waving its furry white arms in the air.
P.S. This is how Chuck is dressed to attend Dan's coming out party -- I told you the books were different from the show!

Long story short, Chuck may be everybody's favorite character from the Gossip Girl show (come on, Nate's barely in it and Dan's gone from being a watered-down Seth Cohen to just being a total douche), but he's nobody's favorite from the Gossip Girl books. Except for maybe Claudia Kishi.

Aloha Ms. Hand

I mentioned the other day how the recession coupled with my status as a lowly-non-editor has put some kinks in my beauty routine, such as it is. I've been thinking about this more recently, as I've managed for the first time in many years to pull off a decent self-mani/pedi (okay, with help -- but of the non-professional variety only).

Anyway, I'd bought a couple pairs of the Havaianas Slim flip-flops at a deep discount from Nordstrom Rack (especially considering they were the current season!), and even though I generally have a closed-toe-only policy at school, a) it's San Diego so I'm the only one following that rule and b) we were having one of those weeks where suddenly it's above 80 degrees for several days running. Long story short, I decided I needed to get my Barney Rubble feet (though they're the right shape, they're too small to be Fred Flintstone feet) into shape with a pedicure. Unfortunately, I had no nail polish around -- okay, except for some maybe 5-or-6-year-old Essie where the polish had completely separated into a colorful sludge topped by some sketchy, yellow oil. Yes, that's high-end polish, but let's face it, makeup isn't meant to last a decade (no matter what I tell myself!).

With a budget of no-more-than-$2-a-pop (pretty much my limit on a lot of things) I randomly hit the jackpot with N.Y.C./New York Color quick-dry polish (aka "In a New York Color Minute Polish"). It was on sale for even less than $1.99, so in retrospect I should have bought more than one color, but what can I say, my expectations were low.

Turns out it does indeed dry really fast (though unfortunately in spite of having lived in Manhattan for years, the expression "New York minute" merely conjures images of the Olsen Twins' last movie for me -- no, I've never seen all of it, just um, parts). I bought "Times Square" in spite of it being one of my most-hated places in New York, since I wanted something fluorescent. It definitely looked more neon-red/pink in the bottle -- it came out more neon-coral/orange, which is fine with me. It also dried totally flat and non-bubbly, which I love, as this is usually the downfall of the quick-dry polish.

I can't say I totally agree with the color names -- for "East Village", I would have done maybe a dried blood color for the junkies in "Tompkins Square Park" (or at least, in their memory). They should also add a shiny black and name it "St. Mark's Place". And NYU purple (or violet, whatever) and name it "Washington Square Park"! "Little Italy" shoulda been red -- duh, marinara sauce -- but maybe it's white in honor of duh, alfredo sauce. "Downtown" should be something crazy, like maybe a neon peat green kind of color, though I also want to call that color "Riverside Park" (especially in spring). And where's the color for Harlem? I could go on and on.

But I'll spare you, and just say two coats' "Times Square" plus one coat of e.l.f."Clear" (bought ages ago at Big Lots and used as a crafty shellac on various small items) = I'm so pleased.

P.S.: I recently finally read the book version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High -- so much to say about that I have to save it for another post!