random, oh so random n pissy

I can't believe Troy Garity is Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden's son. He's so...subtle. And his parents are not, whatever they are. I spent all weekend devouring the Jane Fonda bio THANK YOU SKIP. It is kind of fascinating to be inside the head of somebody who was going through such enormous changes that could look darn--not fickle--but kind of...too malleable to be genuine on some level. I ain't talking about sitting on the tank in Hanoi, exactly. Chapters about Ted Turner very funny. Annoying (qv talk w S) that she doesn't note that--strangely--her bulimina stopped just at the same time that her exercise anorexia whoops I'm sorry workout tapes started. She doesn't seem to bring quite the same candor to this issue that she does to everything else--feels disingenous. (I swear to God, the phrase "as long are you're not fat" should be added to any declarative sentence to accurately reflect most American beliefs. "Do unto others--as long as they're not fat. You deserve a break today--as long as you're not fat. I've grown to love and accept myself...as long as I'm not fat" [is the flava of Jane's subtext--sometimes--despite the talk]). I would, however, like to heartily thank Jane for a word to sometimes replace "seminal," which I don't *want* to use but for which I have never found as strong a replacement. Jane kept using "germinal." I can do that.

Proof that this cute misanthropy stuff isn't a crock of shit: I *hate* the Honey Bunches of Oats commercials. I hate them all, I hate the jolly cereal factory worker in her hair net who delivers the happy buy-me line in her cheerful yelling voice, and I hate the noun adjunct in the cereal's name. Hate. Go away.

Proof that this obsessive pointless media-watching stuff isn't a crock of shit: TV stations have started placing the first commercial break for The Fugitive a few minutes earlier. Where it used to come (right after Tommy Lee Jones delivers the "hen-house-out-house" line and then says "...go get him") made for one fantastic 20-minute batch of expository filmmaking. Now where they cut it--after Kimball starts running, before TLJ gets there--it cuts the tension in half too early. You need the Gerard char. to show up and make it the ballet a deux that it is. God, I love a good movie opening.

Proof that News is really only disturbing: 100,000 media hrs about JonBenet for every 10 about the war. First rule in American filmmaking: individualize the conflict and then people will watch. Also: too much footage of hunted, sad-looking animals with no habitats to roam in anymore as humans gobble it up. That's much sadder than nature red in tooth and claw in the end. Makes my heart break.

There. That oughta do it for now.