ON SCREEN

My devolution continues. Last year I slid away from snotty small theater film to big budget mega-hit action-movies, my particularly faves featuring pumped up actors with foreign accents. This year favorites included True Lies and Speed. Others: Red Rock West, Jennifer 8 for John Malkovich; Darkman for Liam Neeson; After Dark My Sweet see with Gun Crazy.

But I've sunk even lower: After living without cable for two years, and formerly sticking my nose up at such a blatant time suck activity, I've been transformed into the full-on channel-surfing futon- bunny. My faves: the "cheesily hypnotic" The Real World on MTV. You can't find a more inane and entrancing program. I can't stop watching. I sit there, saying to myself: change the channel, get a life. Do anything. Watch Full House, infomercials, anything. But it's too late. I've been sucked in. The posturing and open hostility of New York, the arrest, the fights, the honesty: "My roommates are pigs." Then there was Venice where our "real life" characters lived right down the street from Kelly Taylor and Donna Martin and Claire (where did she come from anyway?) from Beverly Hills. The Venice had a revolving door, more contention and always the wide-eyed interpretation through the eyes of the impossibly clueless Kentucky-naif. "Hey get your butt off the couch" John. Then, my favorite, the season that sucked me in: San Francisco. Even with Puck, San Francisco was the warm, fuzzy "feel good" season. It was all about support, hugs and communicating. The Real World is on repeats on MTV practically all the time. Make time to watch it. I also like Beavis and Butthead, but will decline to discuss further at this time.

GREATEST TV SHOW IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE: My So Called Life If you never saw it you don't know what you're missing and probably never will as it has been holding court at the bottom of the ratings and should be canceled here pretty soon.

To Compliment last year's Tissue Box Rating System, I've developed the Velveeta Cheese-Block Rating System.

Cheese-blocks are earned, as you might guess, for the overall cheese factor of the movie. Velveeta moments are those sappy episodes intended to pull the heartstrings of little old ladies but make people like me roll my eyes and groan, "This is so lame." For example, 1994's big winner: It Could Happen to You With a full 4 possibly 5 cubes. I mean, please. Bridget Fonda could have used a good kick in the pants. Rosie Perez was the only good thing about the movie. Terminal Velocity gets two blocks, one for the scene in the cafe where Natasha weeps out her story and second for the end. Given the choice, you might want to avoid both these films.

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PHOTOGRAPH: Jenny, Me and Kathy before the Prom. Photographer: Aileen

This page was made on December 3, 2000. Featured artist: Paul Westerberg. Featured beverage: water. My computer is a much loved lime iMac named Yoda. My software is BBEdit 5.0 which I am barely competent at using and Dreamweaver at which I am even worse.

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