songs about buildings and food

“The Eiffel Tower is often a symbol of romance, a site of romance, or a backdrop to romance. But in this case it becomes the object of romance itself.

Channel 5 brings us a documentary on the woman who has married the Eiffel Tower. Erika La Tour Eiffel, like Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer - the woman who married the Berlin Wall, is an “objectum sexual”, people who fall literally in love with buildings and objects. They have sex and relationships with them; their passion as ardent as any human relationship.”

…

“She mused that someone must have loved the Wall to bring it into the world; what made them not love it now? Political history meant nothing to her, the Wall was a simple victim of neglect. She didn’t care if people called her “cuckoo”, and while the programme could have easily done that and turned the women’s stories into a guffaw-a-minute freak show, somehow it strove for understanding. There should have been easy laughs, but instead it was moving – particularly when a priest counselled Amy after finding her sexually communing with his altar rail. This was absurdity not treated absurdly – and the Empire State Building did look mighty thrusting and fine.”

part 1

part 2

The Hills: Off The Record

“Join Lauren and company for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at some of your favorite ‘Hills’ moments.”

But Baker never answers the questions that he asks. That is, he has not undertaken the historian’s task of hearing multiple arguments, listening to myriad explanations, looking at a wide range of evidence and then marshaling the evidence in order to draw a conclusion. He has not even carefully examined, as other historians have done, the various arguments about the aerial bombardment of civilians–the military tactic that appears to bother him most–to make a judicious argument against its use. Instead, he has used his license as a “novelist” to excuse himself from all of the tedious work of genuine knowledge. By way of research, he has read back issues of The New York Times and The New York Herald Tribune, along with a notably limited group of other historical sources, all long familiar. From them, he has plucked bits of information, shards of the historical record that he finds compelling, or perhaps contrary to what he imagines to be the conventional wisdom–and left his readers to draw their own conclusions.

this description of nicholson baker, from anne applebaum’s new republic review of his book, “human smoke,” is unpleasant. the whole review is unpleasant for many reasons, but the part quoted above is particularly unpleasant because it seems like she’s not talking about nicholson baker but is instead talking about me, because to hear myself described so specifically is kind of disturbing and uncomfortable. one of her barbs (”he has plucked bits of information, shards of the historical record that he finds compelling, or perhaps contrary to what he imagines to be the conventional wisdom”) echoes uncomfortably against what i wrote recently when i felt intellectually intimidated by another blogger (”i am kind of trying to be academic and meta in a kind of have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too sort of way (i.e. when i can flip a couple quotes from some theorist to support some hare-brained idea of mine, i will; i’m aware this is not, like, real scholarship, but again, that’s not my goal.)”)

anecdotal bloggy digression: the event that cemented my decision to not try for an MA or PhD in literature was a term paper i had to write the second semester of my junior year of college. the class was an honors course about the way literature and philosophy deal with everyday life: we read debord and lefebvre and some other theorists, “mrs. dalloway,” georges perec, frank o’ hara, ron silliman, some other shit i can’t remember. also, “the mezzanine” by nicholson baker. i really liked “the mezzanine” by nicholson baker, so much that i checked out all the rest of his books from the library before i had even finished reading it and then i read them all, one after the other, over the course of a few weeks. i liked all of them (except “the size of thoughts,” which i found really boring and quit about a third of the way in) and so when it came time to write the term paper, i knew that i wanted to write about nicholson baker.

the problem with doing this was that i knew too much and too little at the same time, that i was too smart and too stupid, that i was both expert and amateur. if i had just read the one book by nicholson baker then i could have easily written some bullshit term paper about, i don’t know, the way nicholson baker describes paper clips or something. but that wouldn’t do; i had read everything this guy had written and i wanted to talk about everything this guy had written. after much frustrating deliberation, i sketched out some retardedly complicated plan which used david foster wallace’s “e unibus pluram” essay (another obsession of junior year) as a kind of jumping off point to show that baker’s work was the kind of new “moral fiction” that foster wallace described in his essay. as i worked on the essay, the list of things that i had to read to be able to write grew and grew. i knew foster wallace’s reference to moral fiction was a reference to some john gardner thing and i knew that john gardner had been an asshole to barthelme who i loved and who was an influence on baker and whose death was actually the inciting event for “u and i” and so i had to go find gardner’s moral fiction essay and then i found out that oh shit, it wasn’t just an essay, it was a book, and so i had to read the book and then i had to find some way to include all of this in the paper because i knew it all. i would read about something like reader-response criticism somewhere and think that it sounded interesting and could maybe support some point i was making and so to be able to talk about i had to read this book by fish i didn’t understand and to be able to try to understand that book i had to also read some book by barthes that i didn’t really understand. as the deadline grew closer and closer, the stack of books, the books i had to read to make the important points that i knew i could make if only i could figure out how to make them, grew larger and larger. the last twenty four hours before the paper was due were a coffee filled blur that i don’t remember. the essay was a disgusting mess that i can’t even look at now and the only two things that it coherently communicated were that 1) i really liked nicholson baker and 2) i desperately wanted to be smart and wanted my teacher to think i was smart and to tell me i was smart. i don’t know what grade i got on the paper, but my teacher was kind and gave me an A in the class.

so, nicholson baker was my favorite writer when i was a junior in college (both before and after the paper writing event) and he remains very dear to me. i haven’t read “human smoke” and i don’t know if i will anytime soon. if i do read it, there’s a good chance i won’t like it at all, since the main thing i like about nicholson baker is his ability to write really kickass sentences and there are only six paragraphs of his writing in the whole of “human smoke” and also it is big and heavy and expensive and the other reviews of it i have read, the more measured ones styled as book reviews instead of polemics, have all said it’s pretty crappy. but still, anne applebaum’s review pisses me off, which i’m sure is intentional, but still, gosh damn hell, it pisses me off. it is interesting that in condemning a writer for being selective and unscholarly, she does not pause anywhere in her 4000+ word review to consider said writer’s oeuvre, and does not deign to mention, in fact, any of his other books (although she does mention his NYRB wikipedia essay - perhaps a friend e-mailed her a link). i don’t know why she doesn’t discuss his other books, other than a desire to use as much space as possible to get her big, important point out of her big, important mouth. if she did read some of them, she would probably find yet more fuel for her fire (pyre?). she could kindle the flames of her anger with baker’s book “u and i,” possibly one of the source texts of this radical anti-intellectual movement she warns us of (this rash of library burnings, it’s so frightening. i’m sure nicholson baker is involved - i heard on w.a.s.t.e. that he lights small fires in periodicals sections, that’s how much he hates those dead trees newspapers). “u and i” is so boldly anti-scholarship that baker doesn’t even read - that’s the conceit of the book, that he’s going to write a book about john updike without reading anything by john updike. it is literary criticism without the literature to criticize. what a self consciously joe-six-pack sort of stunt, right, anne? it’s no different than morgan spurlock’s chugging milkshakes for a month and calling it a documentary or a.j. jacobs growing a beard and reading the bible and thinking that it’s such a big fucking deal.

it’s also a wonderful book that is touching and human and obsessive and weird and wonderful, that sentence by sentence, page by page, is a pleasurable and joyous experience that while making you smile and laugh also makes you think, maybe not in pulitzer prize sized thoughts or world war II sized thoughts but not in toenail clipping sized thoughts, either. it’s been a long time since i’ve read it, but they seemed like just the right sized thoughts to me, then. but, ok, back to anne for the finish:

But if we have arrived at the point where a solemn and excited individual can cobble together anecdotes from old newspapers and Nazi diaries, and write them up in the completely contextless manner of blog posts, and suggest that he has composed a serious critique of America’s decision to enter World War II, and then receive praise from respected reviewers in distinguished publications, then maybe it is time to say: Stop.

a lovely flourish at the end there, anne, absolutely chilling, but please, do tell me, what the fuck does it mean? stop? stop what? stop the presses? stop the clocks, stop the wheels of time? stop living, stop moving, stop breathing? stop the blogs, stop the internet, stop technology? stop writing, stop writing self consciously repetitive passages as a rhetorical flourish, stop doing that, stop it? stop? how? will you be kind, rewind, anne? are you superman, anne applebaum, are you going to fly around the world and go back in time and kill al gore before he could invent the internet? should those of us without pulitzer prizes not be allowed to write without some kind of license? maybe we should have to wear some kind of marking so that we can be identified from a distance by those who are policing the “stopping.” wait, believe me, i really don’t have any of this unearned bloggy hauteur or contempt for the mainstream media or intellectuals or academics that a lot of these other bloggers do, anne. i often find them embarrassing, like all those ron paul assholes or when edward champion went off on terry gross for no reason, that was just stupid and ridiculous and awful (i know i should make a citation, but i can’t find it within a couple of google searches so i just gave up. lazy, i know, i’m just making your argument for you). i respect people who are smart and know lots of things and are trying to learn more things and teach other people those things in a respectful way. i will admit, i will be the first to admit - i am not smart as you, anne applebaum, and i may not ever be as smart as you, but i want to be, i really do. and the way i know how to do that, to get smarter, is to keep trying, to keep reading things and talking about things and writing things. i know that through all this trying and talking and writing i will say really fucking stupid shit that is embarrassing, like all this shit i am saying right now, and i will be embarrassed not only by the solipsism and the vapidity and linty-ness of the content but, even worse, i will be embarrassed that all my personally revealing blog posts all seem the same, formally, and all end with this overheated passage where i sort of figuratively climax in a horribly cliche way, and that all my shitty short fiction that i used to think was great does this same thing too, this one move is seemingly the only one i can do right now, that i seem to only have two volumes as rhetorician, quiet and loud, like a fucking pixies song, and that i would make a pixies song as a reference to binary dynamics, i’m sure looking back i will be embarrassed by that, and will be embarrassed that i don’t go to the trouble of putting an accent mark over the e in cliche even though i write the word cliche a lot or i that enclose the names of novels and books in quotation marks because i’m too lazy to italicize them. but, fuck, i’m trying, anne, i’m doing the best i can for now, damnit. stop? can’t stop, won’t stop.

• i’m so sad that lisa love and lauren didn’t have a final moment in lisa love’s office before lauren left teen vogue. it’s really a travesty. LL deserved some kind of speech (a chance to do it better than she did when whitney left, a real mentor-y “i’ve seen you grow so much” sort of speech) if only for coining and delivering with such power that whole “girl who didn’t go to paris” line which was such great shorthand for who lauren was for so long. where is our closure?

• there’s not even a “packing up the desk” scene where lauren can look at the objects in the room with deep longing and attachment - it’s not in scene at all, it’s handled in lauren’s opening narration (”…and after helping whitney during fashion week, her new boss ended up giving me a job. now i was back working with my friend again!”). she says it and it is so.

• of course maybe those rumors about teen vogue being fed up with the girls and pushing them out were true (although why you would put a cash cow out to pasture is beyond me) and LL just didn’t want anything to do with them anymore and wanted to fill the space with real interns that would do real work for her. i don’t buy it, though, she seemed to relish her scenes way too much.

• i will never not be entertained by watching beautiful women fold expensive clothes and talking about their personal lives. if i am, just shoot me (or make me watch “just shoot me,” that other TV show about working at a fashion magazine)

• notice how lauren characterizes audrina and heidi’s friendship when talking to whitney. first she says that audrina “keeps running into” heidi when she’s out at clubs. this is a lot of spin, since obviously audrina is actively making plans with heidi and i doubt that she’s lying to lauren about it (although maybe). then after whitney, totally out of the loop (but no, she and LC are great friends!), asks whether audrina and heidi are fighting, LC is like, “oh, no, they’re friendly,” and then when whitney seems surprised, LC clarifies it even further, to “they’re friends.” it’s as if it is such a big deal she can’t admit to herself all at once but has to do it in stages.

• i also love love love when lauren goes into that sort of breathy, higher pitched “i am being so serious and rational but i am also about to cry” vocal register that she uses when talking about how the apartment belongs to both her and audrina and so she doesn’t want to tell audrina what to do but at the same time she REALLY wants to tell audrina what to do. she uses it a lot, more this season, like, it’s the same tone as when she was talking to stephanie about how bad she felt that spencer made her cry and how she should know that it’s not her fault and blah blah.

• whitney, on her reunion with lauren: “i never thought we’d be together again.” lauren, goofy, knowing smile. producers, rolling on the floor laughing. audience member, annoyed at unnecessary bullshit.

• i am so fucking tired of this theme song and i know it will never, ever change.

• i always like the scenes where the girls are getting dressed to go out. maybe it is that when they are talking about clothes, not just in general but the clothes they are wearing and about to wear, there is that glimmer of the real that is so enticing when you can taste it. like the tiny moment when audrina suggests that lauren wear the dress audrina is wearing but in a different color and lauren says, “i’m not going to wear the same dress as you” and then, audrina’s back presumably turned, lauren looks at lo, shaking her head and rolling her eyes, like, “god, can you believe that stupid bitch?”

• lo, on stephanie pratt coming out: “oh, that’s good, maybe she’ll bring heidi!” in the mouth of any other character, this would feel like a forced line, something whispered in an ear by a producer to trigger a dramatic reaction. but i totally believe it from lo. she’s been established as the plucky, spunky, say anything, make up annoying nicknames for people, make out with frankie in vegas, coke-snorting-sorority-big-sister ball of fun and excitement and i feel that, cameras or not, she would have made a smart ass remark like that in her high, chirpy voice.

• also perfectly in character is lauren basically commanding the girls to praise her for doing well in school (”say good job, lauren!”). she also describes herself as “so scholarly.” L O L. of course the class discussed is her computer class, the only class we ever see her taking, which provides an oh-so-convenient segue into discussing stephanie pratt. ditto lo’s clarification of “stephanie…stephanie pratt,” just in case someone at home was too stupid to follow.

• across town (whatever, i don’t know the geography of LA) stephanie and heidi are playing out, as if through the looking glass, exactly the same scene, the “getting dressed to go out and also let’s foreshadow important issues coming up in the episode” scene. it opens with heidi saying, “i don’t know what to wear,” echoing audrina’s comment in the previous scene. “all girls have fashion in common,” et cetera. heidi, again, wants to have “a girl’s night, a good night out.”

• just like lauren revealing that audrina is friends with heidi, stephanie is trying to slowly break this news of lauren being at the club to heidi. she says “literally everyone goes to goa on thursdays.” which is so funny because it provokes heidi to deduce, sherlock holmes style, “you don’t think, um [quieter] that lauren would go with her?” and all i am imagining is a sort of abacus in heidi’s brain working out, well, if literally everybody is going to the club, and lauren is part of literally everybody, oh no that means lauren might be going to the club! then, instead of cutting back to stephanie, we stay on heidi and watch her react to stephanie saying solemnly, “she told me she is.”

• stephanie looks kind of bad in the scene; maybe her ugly eye make-up is supposed to signify how troubled she is about the possibilities of this night?

• the idea that lauren would suddenly be cool with heidi because spencer is out of the picture is so inane that it could only come from heidi. the issue is not that heidi moved in with spencer, it’s that she rejected lauren to move in with spencer. the issue is not that audrina is going out with justinbobby, it’s that she’s doing it even though lauren told her it’s a bad idea. the issue is not that audrina is friends with heidi, it’s that she’s doing it when lauren has made it clear she doesn’t want audrina to. it’s that cliche’ action movie trailer phrase, “it’s PERSONAL!” made real - it’s always personal, it’s never logical.

• as usual, all heidi has are her cliche’s, her scriptlets (”it was so long ago,” etc.). she goes totally miss malaprop when she accidentally crams together two of them and says, “it’s old water under the bridge.” she and stephanie both laugh. this is funny for two reasons. one because OMG how stupid. two because it’s a clear allusion to the scene at lauren’s birthday party when stephanie, cementing her nascent friendship with lauren, says “water under the bridge…is that the expression, water under the bridge?” it shows that stephanie and heidi talked about that night in close enough detail heidi can later make a semi-knowing reference to an offhand remark of stephanie’s from some days before and they will both get the joke immediately.

• (p.s. i was looking for a youtube clip of the “the crunge” (have you seen the bridge, etc.) to make some sort of pseudo-pun about “water under the bridge” but that’s too elliptical, this is “the hills,” it’s about direct adolescent emotion, so here is a video of a teenage girl’s first song which she wrote about some boyfriend who obviously things didn’t go well with and so she wrote a song about water under the bridge and it’s called “water under the bridge.” she’s canadian, she should totally be on “the hills: aftershow,” way better than ana marie digby.)

• at the beginning of the club scene, stephanie and heidi’s remarks about justinbobby are obviously both dubbed and subtitled (and this dubbing is really bad). we see them at a distance, from an awkward angle, in the dark with a harsh little highlight to pick up their faces, with people in the foreground blocking them. then cut to lauren and audrina talking, where lauren is softly lit, in close-up, speaking without dubbing or subtitles. the visual hierarchy - who is important, who is not, who is in the inner circle and who is on the outside, scratching at the studio gates.

• so lauren goes for another glass of champagne and heidi swoops in to drop her gossip about justinbobby. just like last week, even though this is a bad thing for her “friend” audrina, it’s a great thing for heidi, it’s an opportunity for bonding, for connection, for becoming “friends” and not just “friendly.” just like last week, she overplays things but to hilarious effect by asking audrina, “like, do you want me to make sure he doesn’t come in this room or anything?” like she is club security or something, like she is man police. it is also a subtle attempt to entrench herself into the area where lauren will be and where the good camera angles are. of course, audrina blows her pathetic overture off, saying, “it’s fine.”

• god, i don’t even know how to parse the scene where lauren and lo come back with stephanie. ok, first of all, as lauren, lo, and stephanie approach, audrina is telling heidi about justinbobby’s stalkerish tendencies, how he wouldn’t leave her alone. this is of course exactly what heidi is doing to lauren in this scene; lauren has made it as clear as she can without a restraining order that she wants nothing to do with heidi and yet there is heidi, at her table, waiting for her. heidi responds, as usual, with a cliche metaphor about pain. “it’s like a wound, still, it’s not like it’s healed.” she is tacitly empathizing with audrina, about how spencer wouldn’t give her “space,” but really she’s talking about herself, about her relationship with lauren, about the pain she feels that lauren won’t interact with her.

• again, this scene is visually really confusing. i’m having to write it down just to figure it out. okay, so heidi and audrina are sitting on the (camera) right side of the couch having their powwow. we find out from a cutaway later on that stephanie is actually sitting next to heidi while this conversation is going on, at the right edge of the couch.

• 

• lauren and audrina enter in a medium shot from stage left, lauren first, closer to heidi and the traitor. they are cloaked in shadow. lauren more tells than asks, “hey guys, can you make some room?”

• 

• then back to the close-up of heidi and audrina. neither want to give up the (literal) spotlight. heidi is staring at the space where lauren should be and smiling, audrina is looking off vacantly.

• 

• then a really brief medium shot of lauren from the right. this is not really heidi’s POV, but it stands for it and it has that effect. lauren stands there all chiaroscuro, lit from the right and underneath, but half in the darkness of the club. she holds her class of champagne in her jeweled hand and seems to look at heidi down her nose for an instant, then turns away to the left, into the darkness.

• 

• this is where it gets confusing. okay, the angle is of the right corner of the booth. we see lauren entering from the right side getting up into the elevated booth and carefully squeezing past audrina to get into her seat (audrina actually helps her through, briefly placing both hands around lauren’s waist, presumably so she doesn’t spill her champagne) heidi is absent during the shot, but we know where she is, she was sitting right beside audrina near the outside of the booth. thus lauren is literally climbing over heidi to get into the center of the booth. obviously, the meta-implications of this are strong (lauren climbing over heidi to reclaim the spotlight, the center of attention, her close-up, mr. deville) but also just imagine how uncomfortable that would be in real life, to climb past this person you hate and then have to sit at the same table as them.

• 

• then we have a short close-up of lauren settling in and smiling at the reclamation of her “space”, from the camera angle used during the audrina-heidi conversation earlier.

• 

• then, in an overhead angle, she immediately leans in to her left to talk to stephanie pratt. this at first seems like a crazy, disorienting continuity error, because two shots before (so, like two seconds before), this blond nobody with glasses was scooting over to give lauren more room. it seems as if this girl is by the magic of editing with stephanie pratt. after watching this about five times, i’ve figured out that the blond girl actually slips out of the booth and stephanie pratt is sitting to lauren’s left and quickly slides twoard her. lauren moves closer to the center of the booth, probably to put more “space” between heidi and herself. she whispers to stephanie, “i just didn’t really think that you’d bring heidi”

• 

• then a wide shot from the left. lauren, slightly obscured by some girl in the foreground, says, “it’s just really hard for me to be at a table with her.” as she and steph have this conversation in the light in the center of the frame, heidi is hard left, in the dark, watching their conversation intently behind audrina’s back.

• 

• then there is some wanking around with the focus on a new close-up of lauren and stephanie, from the right side. lauren says, “i’m sorry, that’s really awkward to say to you, i know.” the camera pans to the left to center around stephanie and lauren. lauren seems to be sitting on the edge of the chair, leaning to the left, as if she is trying to get as far away from heidi as she can without actually getting up. stephanie says, “no. i mean, i know, exactly what it is…”

• 

• stephanie’s subtitled voice (”i just kind of thought we could all get along”) continues over a cutaway of heidi and audrina talking.

• 

• back to the close-up of stephanie and lauren, stephanie making light of the situation, lauren trying to look pained but in a fun way.

• 

• rack focus onto an extreme close-up of audrina’s face. heidi, represented in the frame by some of her hair, says, “i think i’m gonna go soon. it’s pretty clear lauren doesn’t want me to be friends with you.” well thanks, captain obvious.

• (one wonders here whether these rack focuses are meant as authenticity signifiers or to create some sort of visual drama or if they are just a necessity of shooting in a poorly lit nightclub)

• 

• then the most sort of composed, painterly shot in the scene. in the center is lauren, talking to stephanie on her left. on the right, audrina. at far right, heidi, in her black dress almost merging with the background. at far left, anonymous man in black, who has been sitting at the table the whole time, following the scene intently while saying absolutely nothing (obviously our audience stand-in). in the foreground, some carafes of girly drinks.

• 

• then a sort of telephoto extreme close-up of lauren looking pissed off but beautiful, obviously reacting to what heidi has just said. in the right edge of the frame, audrina, out of focus. heid, out of frame again, says, “oh my gosh, here comes justin.”

• 

• then a close-up of audrina and lauren. lauren is in the background, out of focus, drinking quietly. audrina does an awkward openmouthed smile at the right side of the frame.

• 

• now, here, the obvious choice in a movie would be to cut to a reverse of justin bobby to catch his reaction, from somewhere around where audrina and heidi are sitting. this is obviously impossible, because, like, audrina and heidi are sitting there. so instead we get a wide shot from the back of justinbobby looking like fucking hipster zorro, in all black and a stupid hat. heidi gets up and is all welcome-wagon and smiles. she’s excited because it’s someone else lauren hates, it’s someone on her “team,” it’s someone to absorb some of the hate rays lauren is sending from her powerful, expressive eyes.

• 

• then an out of focus overhead shot of justinbobby taking heidi’s seat. this is really weird because it doesn’t seem as if the club is two levels. is the cameraman standing on a ladder in the middle of the dance floor? is the camera hanging from the ceiling? where is it? heidi says again, “i think i’m gonna go.” she’s just waiting for someone to say, “no, don’t go,”

• 

• we cut back to the wide shot, where our view of heidi and audrina, and justin is blocked by people, and where, miraculously, audrina actually does say, “heidi, don’t leave, we’re having fun.” i am about 50/50 about whether this is a dubbed line, but the audio on mtv overdrive is not hifi enough for me to be able to tell.

• 

• either way, we come with a snap zoom back to the close-up of lauren from the right, reacting strongly to this. of course, if it was dubbed, she’s not actually reacting to it, but obviously audrina said something because she is reacting. she is facing left and looking left, but she is totally taking all this in out of the corner of her eye. we hear heidi say, giddy, “or i’m gonna stay!” and lauren looks up at the ceiling, beyond annoyed.

• 

• back to the wide shot where heidi sits down, beaming. she asks justinbobby how he’s doing.

• 

• back to stephanie and lauren. they are seemingly shocked and are uncomfortably laughing at, like, heidi’s audacity, or that justinbobby is sitting there. lauren looks like she’s about to explode.

• 

• then heidi and justinbobby are BFF! heidi talks about how “we should all hang out in a group sometime.” justinbobby says “i’m down, whenever. it’s up to this one, though.” and points at audrina. his greased lightning patois never ceases to dazzle. he doesn’t say “audrina” or “her,” he says, “this one.”

• 

• then a close-up of audrina clutching her giant right earring for dear life and looking all dreamy and moony and remembering the good times with JB.

• 

• heidi, total huckster, says, “luckily, i am talking to this woman.”

• 

• then, as we watch a close-up of lauren looking to the left, heidi goes even further and trots out her favorite sentence about audrina, “her and i were friends before her and lauren were friends.”

• 

• back to heidi and justinbobby. justinbobby says something incomprehensible. note here that he doesn’t get subtitles while everything heidi says is subtitled. zorro is mysterious, we don’t have to understand what he’s saying. or, men aren’t important, no one cares what they have to say.

• 

• back to the close-up of lauren with more heidi speech for her to react to. heidi says, “i told audrina it’s silly can’t be friends because you live with lauren. she’s like, ‘i know.’” lauren is agape.

• 

• back to justinbobby and heidi and over them we hear lauren, finally reaching her breaking point, say, “oh my god.”

• 

• back to lauren and stephanie, lauren says emphatically, “I need to leave the table, immediately,”

• 

• in the wide shot, lauren, consummate hostess, says, “you guys, have a great time” as she’s getting up. justinbobby and heidi, who have seemingly done their work and don’t have to talk to each other anymore but are content to just stare into space.

• 

• in the overhead shot, we see lauren adjusting her dress and getting the hell out.

• 

• lauren crosses the frame and exits stage right. stephanie scoots over next to audrina and whispers, dubbed, “i think lauren’s totally upset.” no fucking duh.

• 

• whatever, i’m done with this shot for shot shit. lo and lauren meet up in the darkness of the floor and lauren, as she often does during emotional scenes running her hands through her hair, says, “i can’t pretend it’s normal that we’re all sitting together.” and that she wants to go home. because of the angle, we can see neither her face nor lo’s for the entirety of their exchange. it’s like they have merged into a unit. it also seems to me their lines are the live audio and not dubbed. lo goes to get her stuff to leave.
  

• 

• lauren stares off at the table, back at…

• 

• team heidi, in her base, in her light. back to…

• 

• lauren, watching them and then turning away into the darkness of the mass in the club as the scene ends.

• god that took a long time to do. what did we gain? anything? i hope. fail better.

• morning after scene with steph and heidi is a snooze. heidi pronounces audrina differently than everyone. she says ah-drina while everybody else says aw-drina. is this because she was friends with her first?

• the parallel lauren-lo afternoon after scene is much better, mostly because lo is wearing an absurd scarf and then in close-up unwinds it. but then they talk about getting a house and lo unloads another perky yet bitchy comment, this time about audrina. lo: “maybe she’ll bring heidi and justinbobby to the new house” and lauren gives this “egads!” kind of eyelook and then lo does a kind of pseudo-mock-serious “that’s not allowed” (kind of like her mock-chastizing of frankie for having a girlfriend a couple of weeks ago) and lauren picks up on this whiff of rigorous judgement of others actions and loves it and loves lo for it and this is why they are good friends from so long ago.

• AUDRINA WEARS A BLACK LEATHER JACKET TO MEET JUSTIN BOBBY. HE SAYS, “LIKE YOUR LEATHERS.” HE IS WEARING A BLACK LEATHER JACKET, TOO, AND THAT STUPID HAT FROM THE CLUB. LIKE YOUR LEATHERS. ROCK AND ROLL. I AM GOING TO WRITE A SONG ABOUT AUDRINA AND IT IS GOING TO BE KIND OF STOOGE-Y AND I AM JUST GOING TO REPEAT THE WORDS “LEATHER JACKET…EYE MAKE-UP…ROCK AND ROLLLLLLLL” OVER AND OVER AGAIN OVER A REALLY HEAVY RIFF. HE SAYS, “LOOKS LIKE YOU MISSED THE BIKE, HUH?” and when she demurrs, he says in a fonz-y kind of syllabic elongation, “COME ONNNNN?” you can tell by audrina’s facial expressions that he has already won her over, that he won her over at the club, that she wants him back. he cleverly makes mention of how “no one’s been on the bike since you,” like I WONT CHEAT ON YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE IMPORTANT, BABY. “I’VE GOT A SOLO SEAT,” he says, “I HAVEN’T HAD ANYBODY ON IT” audrina continues to play obsessively with her earrrings as at goa earlier. JUSTINBOBBY SAYS, “needed to get my priorities straight,” and does a sort of eye pop, like, “get it, audrina?!?” he wins her over more by coming out as anti-gossip and commenting on “all the BS that’s gone on” and she notes “i’m over all this stuff and i’ve got my own stuff and i don’t need all this drama. TO SEAL THE DEAL, JUSTINBOBBY USES METAPHORICAL LANGUAGE LIKE FROM A BAD ROCK SONG: “it’s not nice when you FALL AWAY FROM PEOPLE, but when you, kind of, REGROUP AGAIN, it’s…” audrina, finishing his sentence, vibing, on his wavelength: “…good company.” justinbobby: “absolutely.” THEY ADMIT THEY MISSED EACH OTHER. JUSTINBOBBY ASKS WHAT AUDRINA IS DOING LATER AND SHE IS ALL COY AND “I DON’T KNOW” AND HE EYE POPS AND JAW TWISTS SUGGESTIVELY AND AUDRINA LOOKS AT HIM VACANTLY BUT WITH A HINT OF SEDUCTION AND THEY PROBABLY HAVE SCREAMING FEEDBACK FLAMING GUITAR ROCK AND ROLL SEX LATER.

• spencer and stephanie split a sandwich last week. lauren and audrina split a grapefruit this week. aww, roomies. i also love how “he didn’t burp at all” is a major improvement for JB, on par with getting off drugs. i also love the way lauren eats her grapefruit, first randomly stabbing it with a knife and then at the end of the scene doing this weird sort of modern dance routine with her spoon.

• when audrina says, “it’s like you and jason and stephen” and lauren has her big line we’ve heard so many times in previews and promos, “no, because i stopped going back to jason,” it’s totally undercut by the fact that in the preview for this week we see her…going back to stephen. L O L.

• and spencer is, again, on the couch. it is just great characterization, to put him in this place over and over again, to define him by it. his manner is great (”can i help you?” as if a butler and not her pseudo-ex-boyfriend). his wounded, defensive thing (”you said you were here to see steph and now you’re pretending to talk to me?”) she starts to tell her story about going to a club, the exact thing she blew up at him for doing the previous week, and he totally shuts her down (”cool, did you have fun?”), denying her the right to relate her narrative. she keeps going, playing him for sympathy and connection by talking about lauren and how stephanie made her uncomfortable by talking to lauren. he shuts her down again from his reclined position (”i know you want to vent about this, but i really have no sympathy for you. i mean, who did you expect to find at goa?”) heidi tries some of her cliches on him and he blasts her by crushing the sort of fantasy that she probably has had about lauren (”what you think you guys are going to move back in together and everything’s gonna be hunky dory?”). she is stunned silent. he goes in for the kill, says again, “no offense, i really don’t want to talk about you out at clubs,” he raises his eyebrows so high in agression, and says, “maybe you should wait for my sister to come back,” i.e. this conversation is done. heidi says her “ok, i’ve gotta go” and this time there is no dumb audrina to beg her to stay. spencer says, quasi-sarcastically, never moving from his groove in the couch, “it was great seeing you, enjoy your space,” and heidi leaves and we see her leave. walking out the door in these absurd tight, white short shorts. this particularly male gaze objectifying camera angle is picked up on by spencer, who adds, genuinely, “you look great” which gets some wordless angst from heidi as she exits.

• at the restaurant where lauren, lo, and audrina are eating, the banner outside says “authentic” mexican. ha ha ha ha, i’ll add that to my list. silly girls, don’t they know don antonio’s is life changing mexican food?

• that is an ugly fucking hat lauren is wearing. did she borrow that from audrina’s closet? the scene is interesting at first because what lauren is tacitly trying to do is to convince lo that audrina should not live with them (by telling stories about JB). but of course, it’s been obvious from the inception of the idea that lo, as lauren’s oldest, dearest friend, doesn’t want audrina in the house and needs no such convincing. what lauren, in that UGLY PINK HAT is doing, is convincing herself that audrina should not live in the house, even as she’s about to invite audrina to live in the house (lauren just doesn’t want to be happy!). they pause talking shit about audrina’s dirty boys when audrina herself appears. she is stuck in the middle of them in her black garb with her dark hair, flanked by blondes in white clothes giving her the third degree about her morality and relationship choices.  she tells lo about going out with justinbobby and lo questions her with an authenticity thing, “really?” and audrina looks to lauren for help and lauren is just staring, silent, sipping her drink and playing with the straw. and honestly, i’ve never really liked audrina, but it’s pretty awful how they are ambushing her here, bumrushing her, and you know part of it is for the cameras, like they could be a lot more subtle and less “mean girls” but they are playing it up because they’ve seen “mean girls” and the editor and the producers are playing it up too. and god, all the awkward stares and drink sips and pregnant pauses, which are actually effective satirized by the remix on “the hills:aftershow” and the scene ends with lauren and lo just chewing their food awkwardly and not talking but poor audrina, ahdrina if you’re heidi and awdrina if you’re everybody else - she has no food to chew, she’s having soup, and it hasn’t even arrived yet. le pain quotidien, indeed.

my song this week is called “sadness” and it is about sadness. i watched that documentary about daniel johnston last weekend and really loved it and was moved by it. afterward i wrote this song in about 5 minutes and this is the first take i recorded. it’s no daniel johnston, but i was happy with it.

commenter jared wrote in with a comment and also reminded me that i never commented on his previous comment. i feel bad! first, his previous comment, about my margaret seltzer post:

Aw, go groan alone. There’s a difference between 1) making a claim of reality in order to play with genre conventions or question modes of representation or whatever, and 2) making a claim of reality in order to make money by taking advantage of a widespread fetish of authenticity. A fetish that you rightly criticize. If James Frey had gone on Oprah and said “It was all an exercise in media hype. Got you, suckers!” we would have declared him a genius. Actually, we probably would have just assumed he was still lying, and we would have been right.

i respect his opinion, but i disagree. as i see it, the point he is making is largely about intentionality - i.e. if james frey thinks he is making some serious point about how memoirs work or how much bullshit people will buy then we should respect him but if he is just an ex-junkie trying to cop some cash, well, he should fuck off, but personally i just don’t care about intentionality - i have no interest in this classic author figure sitting in his room smoking too many cigarettes and masturbating about all the big important thoughts he’s having and how his big important words are revolutionary and going to challenge what people think about society blah blah vomit.

so, intentionality. listen, i doubt the creators of “the hills” are holed up somewhere watching “masculin feminin” and “last year at marienbad” and reading back issues of ‘film comment’ and dreaming up ways to really fuck with the parameters of truth and authenticity, with how the audience handles narrative. maybe i’m wrong, maybe they are, maybe they’re hardcore theory wonks and meta-televisionaries, but what i think they’re probably trying to do is create a show that a lot of people will watch so it will make a lot of money so they can have jobs and support their families and eat and buy beach houses in malibu. yet the fact is that they are creating art that does fuck with genre conventions and that does, however consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or not, question “modes of representation or whatever.” moreover they’re not doing it with some obscure, difficult novel published in a limited run paperback by fiction collective or a lo-fi indie brooklyn snuff film that gets reviewed in the village voice and some asshole’s blog, they’re doing it with one of the highest rated shows on cable television, they’re doing it with a popular culture phenomenon that is enjoyed by a lot of people and mostly by teenage girls. they are engaging teenage girls, who are fed the most facile, ridiculous pepto-bismol bullshit from their magazines and TV shows, to think about the modes of production of television and film and how editing works to affect meaning and how the paparazzi and the media machines operate and what rights celebrities should have and what is a story. obviously not all of the girls are doing this, i’m sure there are some cindy-lu’s in mimetic trances and “team lauren” t-shirts drooling along to “unwritten,” but i don’t think that’s all of them or even most of them or even many of them. and even if there are a lot of them and they are getting nothing out of this besides the joy of watching the show, well, they’re still watching a really well-produced TV show, so good for them.

beyond all that, what i was responding to with this post was really only that quote that i include from the article. professor blah blah i’m old was saying that he thinks it’s difficult to make successful art that straddles the line between truth and fiction. i can think of three ways we can define successful art (in the pop culture realm, when art is inextricably linked with commerce).

1. it makes a lot of money (commercially successful).

2. it moves people/makes them feel something (emotionally/aesthetically successful).

3. it inspires discussion and debate (culturally? successful).

i was simply making a list of works of art that, off the top of my head, were/are successful at doing all those things while playing with the truth/fiction line. whether or not this use of the truth is morally “right” or “good,” well, you might have me there, but again, that’s not what’s interesting or relevant to me; what’s interesting to me is asses in seats, tears in eyes, and words in ears. if james frey’s work challenged this “widespread fetish of authenticity,” even if he didn’t really mean for it to and was really just trying to tell a good story to make a fast buck, if it made a vast swath of society, from men in tweed jackets at the new republic or the atlantic to soccer moms in oprah’s book club to an idiot friend of mine who was obsessed with this book and “the game” think about what narrative is and what is true and false and to have a public discussion about this, in fact have this discussion on “oprah” and on “the today show,” doesn’t that make this “fake” work more important and successful than some dime a dozen “true” redemption narrative about an asshole who got a root canal without novocain? even if he’s taking advantage of us, if the end result is more thought, more discussion, more reaction, doesn’t that make it more worthwhile than if it was true?

now, his current comment:

My experience watching Juno in the theater, FWIW, was not as bad as you think yours would have been. Yes, the first 15 minutes were cloying and unfunny, but most of my anger was directed not towards the movie itself but towards that half of the audience that thought “honest to blog” was such a hilarious joke that they laughed over whatever the next line was. So once these people got over how totally awesome it was to be watching a smart, funny movie that, like, gets how they and their friends feel to be totally smarter and cooler than everyone else, well then the real movie starts and it’s probably a little better than it deserves to be.

Sorry, my main point isn’t hipster-mocking. My point is I think the contrast between Juno and The Hills and Napoleon Dynamite is very interesting if you think of them as depicting three different strategies for relating to pop culture. (And every work of art is first and foremost a lesson on how to experience that work of art. The medium is the message, etc. etc.) The urban/suburban/rural settings are important here–The Hills comes from within the culture industry, Juno is somewhat insulated from it, N. Dynamite is from so far away you have to get it by mail order. Of course the divisions aren’t set in stone. Everyone who discusses The Hills, or blogs about it, or buys US magazine to read about LC or Heidi, is engaged in co-authorship, or is complicit (if you want to put it that way). Conversely, even (or especially) Hollywood stars are snarky and cynical about the industry.

Everyone is simultaneously inside and outside (even Jackie Harvey) and must constantly negotiate their position. The Hills people try to construct and enact (as we all do) a seamless (or minimalist) persona out of a million previous personae (fictional or not); Juno’s pregnancy is such a crisis because it forces/allows her to become a (re)productive member of the culture industry instead of remaining forever ironic; Napoleon’s triumph is a radical reformulation of a distant (both spatially and racially) culture. I agree that ND is the weakest, because it relies on the Romantic myth of the mystical creative genius, but it’s pretty genius to create an entire alternative system of cultural references for teenagers who feel themselves left behind in the race to master cultural references.

p.s. To make this schema work for ska, just replace “culture industry” with “Jamaica.” Skatalites=The Hills; English Beat=Juno; Reel Big Fish=Napoleon Dynamite. The difference is that here, increased distance from the center (Kingston->London->LA) means a weaker (rather than stronger) claim to authenticity, for those who still think authenticity is a meaningful concept.

jared, i don’t exactly understand what you’re arguing here but it all sounds really good, so you can take that as a tacit admission that you’re right.

jared has an interesting post about “the hills” on his blog. he notes:

The narrative is never confined to what we see on the show–every single tabloid piece, every public appearance, every blog entry, is actually part of the show.

absolutely true. and this is the reason why the show is such a powerful cultural force, because it is that, a force, a mass of images, an army of reproductions, not just a show that comes on a half hour every week at 10:00. all of this conflicting data complicates the essence of the show, but it also makes it bigger, more enveloping, more powerful. the show (and the filmed lives of britney and lindsey, paris) is a living, breathing refutation of “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.”

The first question I have–and it may seem trivial given all that lit theory, but I want to start to try to bring visual analysis into the discussion–is why do so many characters make entrances with their faces obscured? Entrances are obviously planned and staged, so why create that second of confusion when you see that a character has entered an apartment but don’t see who it is? To create a reality effect?

i thought about this during episode 22, when the lauren-brody lunch scene starts. we open on brody sitting at his lunch table and calling lauren, who he thinks is late but who is actually at the other side of the restaurant. through some awkwardly framed shots of her from behind, at an angle (i don’t have time to look at the show itself right now) she gets to the table and sits down and then the scene begins. the thing is, why is this a part of the episode? it could have easily been chopped off and we would have just started with the two of them saying hello. as we know, scenes can be restaged, so why not just do that? i don’t have the answer either, although my best guess would have something to do with your idea of creating “a reality effect.”

or it could be the production of the show responding to the demands of reality. think of all the times we see a waiter bringing characters food in a restaurant and the scene sort of stops to acknowledge the waiter and that this, the bringing of food, is going on. in a fiction film, there would be none of this acknowledgment or recognition of such a basic everyday thing unless it was in some way important to the plot or the characters (i.e. if the reaction to the waiter revealed something about the attitudes of one or both of the characters, if the waiter interrupted some crucial moment, if the waiter is secretly a spy or has some relation to the characters etc.) but here it’s just a waiter, and why is it necessary for valuable storytelling time to be taken up with characters accepting food? it could be creating “a reality effect” (i.e. viewers will be confused and/or disoriented if food just appears out of nowhere) or it could be the effect of reality (i.e. the characters were in the middle of a first take with a really fresh, authentic feeling that you get in the first take and the producers want to use that, even if we have to sit through a waiter presenting drinks and salads and listen to the girls thank him/her.)

anyway, thanks for commenting! “I appreciate people taking time to write any kind of comment. Do you know how much effort it really takes to sit down and write a comment? I’ve never written a comment in my entire life…you really have to have a lot of passion and thought to write any comment, so thank you.”

• sadly, i watch “the hills” on MTV overdrive instead of on real television. don’t get me wrong, i’m glad that i can watch it that way and they’ve really improved the technology since last year for a far superior viewing experience, but i am not one of these internet-TV convergence lovers and i miss watching it on a regular TV with regular commercials, live. anyway i don’t know what the ad packages are like during the television airing of the show, but i have to say how extremely weird it feels that my viewing of this week’s episode of “the hills” is sponsored by “juno.”

• i know, talking about the movie “juno” is so three months ago, but whatever. my experience watching “juno” was, like my experience watching “the hills,” affected by the fact that i downloaded it from the internet instead of seeing it in a theater. everybody talks about how the first fifteen minutes are the worst part of “juno” and i totally agree and thus when i watched juno for the first time, after that nauseating first fifteen minutes, i just turned it off. in a pre-tivo/torrent world, this wouldn’t have happened. if i had been watching juno on TV, i would have just changed the channel and forgotten about it and then maybe caught it a year or two later. if i had been watching it in a theater, i would’ve sort of grinned and bore it because i am way too middle class to ever walk out of a movie i’ve paid for, but i probably wouldn’t have been able to recover from that first fifteen minutes and enjoy the movie because i hold a grudge like crazy.

• when i eventually rewatched it a few weeks later, skipping the first fifteen minutes, i went on to enjoy it. it made me cry, the first time a movie had done that in a long time, although i attribute that crying way more to things external to the movie, to personal circumstances and a desire to cry about something, than to the movie itself, i would feel remiss not noting that it made me cry since that is a popular way for many people to note the emotional impact of a movie or TV show or other pop culture manifestation. so it made me cry and i enjoyed it. that doesn’t mean i think it was great or unimpeachable or worthy of an oscar (especially an oscar for writing), but whatever, i’m being honest.

• anyway let’s get to the part where i skip all this meandery subterfuge and get to comparing “juno” and “the hills”

• stylistically, they are totally disparate: the glossy, costly minimalism of “the hills” vs. the muddy, middle class maximalism of “juno” (LOLitteration!) obviously you know which side i trend to. yet i was not prepared for how much the dialogue would piss me off, how noxious i would find it. two of my favorite TV shows ever are “gilmore girls” and “the west wing.” i am the kind of person who liked “studio 60″ and was pissed off when it got canceled. thus, i have no problem with stylized, idiosyncratic dialogue; i, in fact, lap that shit up. but i hated the way juno talked. i have no explanation for this.

• (although i had a weak theory for a while about why this bugged me, which had to do with repetition. like in real life, people, even smart people, repeat the things they say. when they think they have said something clever or interesting, they repeat it even more. but “juno” and her clever friends, they never repeat anything and i found that unnerving. my other theory about this had to do with the way my little brother and his friends appropriated things from the movie “napoleon dynamite.” personally, i hated the idea of “napoleon dynamite” and didn’t see it for about a year after its DVD release, after which i hated the actual movie as well as the idea of it. but my brother, who is three years younger than i am, loved the movie and all his friends did too. a snapshot of them from this period would have revealed them making the sort of odd references and conversational allusions and having the sort of conversational tempo and back-and-forth that sounds a lot like “juno.” but the main difference is that they were taking these things from a popular movie, the way tons of other teenagers around the country were, whereas juno’s statements are all so subcultural and “original” and could have seemingly come only from her. if you want to hear the way “indie” teens really talk, don’t listen to “juno,” listen to kids now as they appropriate their favorite soundbytes from “juno” and integrate them into their regular conversation.)

• “juno” and “the hills” have been praised as feminist works and derided as anti-feminist works. i’m not going to get into that whole thing since my intellectual background leaves me more qualified to discuss third wave ska than third wave feminism (also remember that i think “the hills” is largely humanist art), but i will say that they are both womanistic in the sort of tangible way that we can actually measure: screen time and plot precedence. michael cera is in “juno” for what, like 2 minutes? jason bateman’s character literally disappears from the film when he does something the women controlling the plot (both inside and outside the screen) disagree with. i have talked in the past about how men on “the hills” aren’t important before, so read that if you need to. let’s just say that if you think heidi choosing spencer makes spencer an important character, you’re wrong. it’s wasn’t heidi choosing spencer that was important, not really, it was heidi not choosing lauren. spencer was just a catalyst, something that was used to set much larger and more important events into play. female relationships trump everything, as the slow (faux?) dissolution of speidi and heidi’s yearning for a female friend illustrate. (this use of men as objects and status symbols is more palatable on “the hills” where the men are basically douchebags and losers than in “juno” where, come on, it’s fucking adorable michael cera acting adorable and jason bateman is playing the one character in the movie with a shred of complexity and who actually talks and behaves like a genuine human being. also, while i am ranting about actors i’ll just say that i have hated jennifer garner in basically everything but i thought she was fantastic in “juno,” one of the best parts.)

• onanistic analogies:

  • “the hills”: “the devil wears prada” edited by gordon lish

  • • or, an episode of the “clueless” t.v. show adapted for the screen by david markson and directed by a 50-50 collaboration of madonna and guy ritchie, with madonna twisting guy’s balls when she doesn’t get her way making the ratio more like 67-33.

  • “juno”: a judy blume novel rewritten by mark leyner

  • • or, an episode of “degrassi” adapted for the screen by napoleon dynamite and then script-doctored and directed by amy sherman palladino as she is repeatedly hit in the head at a moderate speed with a foam covered yet still solid baseball bat

  • • • (or, a YA adaptation of “the return of jezebel james” set in suburban oregon instead of new york)

• other bizarre “hills”/”juno” “connection”: both “juno” director jason reitman and lauren are currently blogging about…their love of hockey? i don’t really have any words for this one.

• ok, i’ve got that out of my system, sorry

• it is amazing how fast heidi and spencer are talking in that scene of theirs. the other thing that strikes me is that they arguing about the terms of their relationship, they are arguing about the definition of their relationship. this happens all the time to real couples in real life and it is complicated then but here it is exponentially more complicated. spencer and heidi have three relationships: they have their relationship as it is presented to us in the world of the show (time-delayed a few months) and then they have their other public relationship, which they are actively presenting to the tabloid press, and then they have their own private relationship, whatever the hell that is. and i have said it before and i am sure i will say it again, but it seems impossible to me that these different relationships do not react with each other and rub up against each other and things from one plane slip into another and there is, as juliana hatfield put it, “identity confusion.”

• like, in this scene, spencer is asking if they are really (!) in a relationship because a lot of girls are asking him to go out. so let’s say we believe this scene is completely fake, just part of the plot. yet there is something completely real about it, too, under the surface. because, let’s face it, spencer pratt is kind of famous now and i have no doubt that has increased the amount of women that want to have sex with him. sure he’s famous as a villain, but i don’t think that matters; lots of famous people are assholes and are famous for being assholes and this doesn’t reduce the amount of people that want to have sex with them. anyway, spencer has this fame and on the one hand he knows that heidi is the only reason he has it and on the other hand he knows that there are a lot of woman who would want to have sex with him. he knows this and i am sure heidi knows this too and that there is a tension in their “relationship” because of it, a tension that manifests itself in how they are behaving in real life and how they are physically performing in their scenes together and etc.

• along these lines, in the usweekly report on the launch of heidi’s fashion line, a reporter inquires as to the state of heidi and spencer’s relationship. heidi responds, “i mean, you know, we’re up, we’re down…it’s just the routine.” of course, the multiple meanings of the word “routine”: the daily grind, the quotidian, the habitual, as heidi intends it, but then there is also the theatrical sense, the performance, the choreographed moment.

• (a simple logistical thing that undercuts the whole scene, though is that isn’t this spencer’s condo? like, legally? when they moved in, it wasn’t a joint lease, it was something he already owned or was leasing or whatever, right? so i get that if the relationship goes badly the traditional mores or whatever is for him to leave, to be a man, etc. sure, fine. but the idea of her forcing him to move his possessions and furnishings out of the house he owns is kind of weird; they are not married, this is not common property.)

• the spencer-stephanie pratt domestic dispute was also great. he is so good at being an asshole on TV that it’s hard not to believe he’s an asshole in real life too. it was classic sitcom fare; this is the one instance where “the hills: aftershow”’s genre parody of a scene is actually really good. watch.

• compare these two lines: 1. “It’s not an apartment, it’s a condo.” 2. “It’s not a house, it’s a condo.” my fiction is coming true and it is creeping me out.

• i love the idea of “operation: win heidi back” - the military connotation of other operations, desert storm or iraqi freedom, is too rich in this land of women. we know spencer is informed on the art of war, even if he hasn’t read “the art of war”; we know from interviews and from glimpses of his bookshelf that he has read books about the CIA and the delta force and the situation “over there.” he watches lots of documentaries on the history channel, i’m sure. as for the battle, day one’s operations seem to involve eating take-out and watching “24.” the war is confidential (”like i’m gonna tell your little snitch…”) and yet at the same time aired on television. the outcome may be predetermined/scripted/sculpted/edited/color corrected. the revolution will be televised. the gulf war did not take place.

• of course, “the hills” is the anti-”24.” “24″ takes as its form representing one day in the life of its main character, but it’s not an average day, it’s not the boredom and simple pleasures of the quotidian, it’s an exercise in artificially cramming a lifetime’s worth of major events, of plot, into 24 hours.

• spencer is an example of “the hills” being the opposite of that, a show about nothing. spencer, in this episode and in all the others, is constantly on the couch, either watching television, playing video games, reading a book, or reading something on his laptop. he is the consummate consumer of media; he never seems to actually be doing anything and he doesn’t have a “job” (and when steph weakly asks about him getting a job in this episode, it seems to be one of the moments where the show is really testing my suspension of disbelief in order to match up with classic dramatic tropes).

• this week, further proof that the sole reason kimberly exists is to support and expedite the plot: she’s working the door at lauren’s birthday party so she can conveniently have a scene with heidi at bolthouse later and reveal that stephanie attended the party. poor kimberly. she will never have a last name, she will never be a complete person, she is just “kimberly.” what do her parents think? when i was in college my friend alicia and i wrote a song about alex h. from laguna beach and how she was better than alex m. and how we wanted to know more about her life and what her last name was (the chorus started something like “oh, alex h., what is your whole last name”) and how we thought it unjust that the chyron always identified her as “kristin’s friend” even though she had been on the show a lot and needed no such identification.

• the party scene was fun. i liked the three shot sequence of lauren, then audrina, then heidi pretending to dance. i would really like to do some sort of statistical study of adverbs signifying authenticity (truly, truthfully, genuinely, honestly, really) and how often they pop up on the show. also love audrina and the end telling lo “smile!” like she is trying to help her hit her mark.
  

• after heidi met up with kimberly, the spencer-heidi phone conversation was really hollow and wooden and lame. spencer just wasn’t convincing at all. it makes sense though, because he’s only existing in audio in that scene, he’s cut off from the visual dimension and visuals are so important to the effect of “the hills.” it’s the same kind of thing as when audrina called lauren in paris to tell her about brody being with a girl and how fake that seemed.

• i liked when lauren said “you’re very blue today” to brody. they always seem to be talking about color, i remember when they started a conversation by talking about eye color and how it can be misleading and elusive. they have their usual sexless sexual tension but the most interesting part was when they were talking about steph pratt. brody asks, “do you really think she’s being genuine and sincere?” he is asking a reality star this on her reality show on which he is also a star, great. then he tops himself by asking, “do you ever think for one second that spencer and heidi are trying to get her in to be friends with you to…i don’t know…do something.” with that line, he exposes how overblown this issue has gotten, how trivial these things are, because, really, what are they going to do? this is not some jacobean revenge tragedy, it’s not like they are going to poison lauren or trick her into losing her inheritance or marry a man in drag or something; the most powerful weapon they have had so far was to imply that maybe she might have been in a sex tape.

• but the great thing is that brody is making this remark from inside the aura, wrapped in the very drama he’s deflating: he goes on to talk quite seriously about how heidi and spencer are always planning “schemes,” like they are fucking boris and natasha.

• line of the episode: spencer: “lauren is the crazy one who hates heidi because of me, who’s now friends with you.” or “i’m sorry that you’re making yourself cry.” or maybe stephanie’s line: “water under the bridge….is that the expression, water under the bridge?” it was a very good episode for the pratts

• i liked the whisper scene. it seemed like a nice tweak of the style of the show the way “the whisper song” was a tweak of the style of the ying yang twins. it made it so powerful when stephanie raised her voice to say “he just wants me to feel guilty” and of course showcased how lauren changes the tone of her voice to show emotion.

• lauren, diagnosing spencer, says, “you know, it’s probably because, you know, when like, there’s certain things you’re sensitive about, and he had a really big problem with brody being my friend, and it’s probably just that…” it is such a good diagnosis probably because it is also an exact description of her emotional issues re: friends/betrayal.

• for thematic reasons, i’m going to talk about the last scene in my discussion of episode 23.

• bonus: the mtv “remote control” blog, which tends to be a waste of time, linked to a really good video blog about the show this week. the videos are produced by newnownext, which is a blog for logo (viacom’s gay network). so, it’s a corporate blog, but it’s one that is actually written by real life human beings. their videos, which are called “the heidi chronicles” are really great because they are the exact antidote to “the hills: aftershow”: really lo fi, just these two funny guys reading text messages off their cell phones in front of a wall covered with tabloid cutouts and pinups of girls from “the hills.”