Bitter Patter

AFTER A MONTH OF RERUNS

(YOU KNOW YOU LOVED THEM)
A NEW SEASON
BEGINS WITH
IS FACEBOOK DEAD?

AND CONTINUES WITH
SUPERMAN:
COOL OR CRUEL

FREE ADVICE
FOR FRESHMAN

BUT YOU CAN STILL CATCH
THE RERUNS:
THE ELEVEN STAGES
OF PACKING
AKA:I'm Packin'

BRING COLACE!
AKA: Trouble in Paradise

CIAO, BABY!
AKA:Oh, You're Supposed To Toss COINS!

FABULOUS FOURTH
AKA:Fireworks 'R Us

Meanwhile . . .
ARE YOU SMARTER
THAN BETTY WHITE?

We're on YouTube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvaxQfQgto0

Attn: Oliver Clark
Check out
The 13th Floor

WHAT'SWITH
"THE WEIGHT?"
Click the link on the post to see TheBand on YouTube

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The Kids Are All Right: "Alright!"
Despicable Me: "Delightful"
The Secret In Their Eyes: "Wow!"
SATC2: "(What) City?"
Crazy Heart: "Heartwarming"
Up!: "Uplifting!"
Hurt Locker: "Nerve-wracking"
The White Ribbon: "Brilliant"
Precious: "Semi"
Ghost Writer: "Engrossing"
A Single Man: "Poignant"
Julie & Julia: "Delicious!"
It's Complicated: "Scumptious!"
Whatever Works: "Doesn't"

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and because woman does not live
by martinis alone,
I like this blog:
grapesandgreens.blogspot.com

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Sat

Jun

2010

Are You Smarter Than Betty White?

Written by Pat Fortunato

Nobody doesn't like Betty White.

Hell, she inspired an unprecedented Facebook campaign to get her on SNL, where she said — with wide eyes and perfect timing — that before all this she didn't even know what Facebook was. And now that she does, it sounds like "a huge waste of time."

She's saying worse things than that:
She blames technology and our "over-reliance on gadgets" for making people unable to play Password anymore. CBS tried to revive the gameshow recently, upping the ante to Million Dollar Password. Well, inflation and all that.

Ms. White says that "kids today," and I take that to mean all of us, can't keep up with the fast pace of the game because we've created a generation who "can't think on their feet." In other words, unless we can look up the answers on Google we're dead.

To those of you who actually are kids, Password was a really popular game show in the 60s and

70s hosted by Betty's husband, Allen Ludden. A contestant would feed clues to a partner who'd try to guess the secret word.

Odd Couple Alert: there's a great episode called, appropriately, "Password" (Show #58, first aired in 1971), where Felix gives really weird clues like "Aristophanes" for "birds." Huh? Well it's clear to him: Aristophanes wrote a play called "The Birds." Everybody knows that. Really? Not the steamed and frustrated Oscar, who lost the game — to Betty White and her partner.

That was a long time ago, and 99.9% of the audience wouldn't have gotten the ancient Greek playwright/bird clue then either. Felix, the original metrosexual and know-it-all, was always more learned than the rest of us. But to Ms White's point: Is technology making us dumber?

I'm not so sure . . .

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Bathing Suit Blues

Written by Pat Fortunato

No matter how colorful they are — and they are very colorful this year — buying a bathing suit will give you the blues.

What can I say?
A few adjectives spring to mind:
Dreaded, humiliating, humbling (not exactly the same as humiliating), life-negating, tiring, stressful.
(Please feel free to join in!)

And then there are the nouns:
Disaster, failure, disappointment, compromise, defeat.

The sentences might as well be 20 to Life:
I came, I tried, I wept.
I came, I saw myself in the 3-way mirror, I fled.
I came, I saw a lot of suits, none of them fit.

The people who design bathing suits for women are sadists.
Every year, they decide that a certain style is in, and you're stuck with it whether it fits or not.
It never fits.

Take the halter top. If you're flat on top, it just lies there, looking useless. If you're large, you hang out. You want to hang out on the beach, not out of your bathing suit.
I hate halters.

For a while, the bottoms were being cut higher and higher, higher and higher. This was supposed to "elongate the leg." What it did was show more cellulite. Now, bottoms are cut a bit higher, and some suits even have ruffles on the bottom. Do you remember the pictures in children's books of elephants in tutus? You will, if you try on one of these.

The people who run the bathing suit departments are also sadists.
There are so many suits, you can't believe that there isn't ONE that will work. There isn't one.
Nevertheless, you take 20 or 30 into the dressing room. One lives in hope.

And that's where the real heartache begins . . .

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"A Wedding Tonight!"

Written by Pat Fortunato

I wasn't afraid of getting married. I had, after all, lived with this guy for 19 years. But I was terrified about planning a W-W-W-Wedding!

Be afraid, be very afraid.
Let's face it: You are expected to have what is essentially a coronation, complete with engagement parties, rehearsal dinners, and an elaborate reception that would make Don Corleone proud.

I got hives just thinking about it.

But before I had a ch

ance to become The Runaway Bride, a miracle occurred: I got a great dress! Not a white, full-length gown (What do I look like, the virgin bride?), but a fabulous silvery outfit — first shot out of the box at Lord & Taylor. With coupons! And free alterations! This had to be an omen that everything else would go along just as easily.

As you may have guessed, they didn't . . .
This wedding was going to be a small, intimate affair at the apartment of my very good friend, the Shopping Queen, who also had found the dress. Perfect! We'd get a terrific caterer and serve lots of champagne. My two buddies and I would write some of our famous song parodies to perform for the assembled not-so-massive masses.

Simple, right? Nothing is simple . . .

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Sex And WHAT City?

Written by Pat Fortunato

Samantha doesn't have sex until the end of this not-so-hot sequel, and then, it's not even in The City — but on some sand dune in the Hamptons with a guy she met in Abu Dhabi, played in the movie by Morocco.

You know what? That steamy scene seemed gratuitous. The most sexual thing in SATC2 til then was a kiss between Carrie and Aidan. And Carrie is so freaked out by this kiss (this KISS!) that she calls Big, her husband of two years whom we now call John because that's his name, to confess the terrible, horrible, awful thing she did. So it's not just What City, but What Sex?

Come on ladies, we came to see a spin-off of a show that was really frank, often outrageous and sometimes hysterically funny about sex. The scene in the taxi when Charlotte, the conservative one, reveals what her new boyfriend wants to do to her derriere — just as the cab hits a bump in the road — is priceless. "What was that?" she asks, and the girls respond as one, "A preview." Even the cabbie smirked. The girls were funny then.

And where did these women and their endless supply of hot-to-trot men have all this many-splendored sex? In.The.City.

The title was not, however, Sex IN the City, but Sex AND The City, because Manhattan (and occasionally Brooklyn and Staten Island too) was a character in the show. We loved it! New Yorkers got to see all the "in" places and out-of- towners got a glimpse of a life that never did and never will exist.

It's too bad about the "Scary Sadshaws" —
young women who come to NY looking for SATC, and are, to put it mildly, wildly disappointed.

But some wannabees do seem to be having a blast, don't they? I know this: the TV show was pure fantasy, and it sure worked for me.

I lived vi-Carrie-iously for 6 sexy seasons.

And then, there's the movie . . .

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ARREST THAT WOMAN!

Written by Pat Fortunato

Picture this:

Yours truly going mano a mano with two armed security guards in the Emergency Room at New York Hospital.

Here's how it went down:

My husband, who, unlike me, is pretty stoic about pain, was in serious pain. We managed to get to the Emergency Room, and harder still, get admitted inside, where he was put on a gurney in a hallway and pretty much abandoned. He was writhing and moaning; I was helplessly standing by, hyperventilating.

After watching this for a few minutes, I made my move. I walked over to the first doctor I saw, who was busy on a computer and didn't take kindly to the interruption. Mind you, I had already made a scene just to get us admitted, but had assumed (silly me) that once we had reached the inner sanctum, Lou would be looked after.

So now I had to deal with an overworked, exhausted doctor who basically told me to wait my turn. Hello? EARTH TO DOCTOR: Does the term "Lioness" mean anything to you? I took a deep breath and explained the situation, staying as calm as I could, considering that I was hysterical.

Unmoved, he told me that my husband's name wasn't even up on the computer yet, whereupon I told him precisely what he could do with the computer. I probably added a few other well chosen words, but who remembers. Anyway in what seemed like seconds, two guards, one short and one tall, rushed in to apprehend me, now to be known as The Mad Woman Of The E.R. . . .

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Are You Smarter Than Betty White?

Bathing Suit Blues

"A Wedding Tonight!"

Sex And WHAT City?

ARREST THAT WOMAN!