(no subject)
I lost about four hours tonight because I got sucked into the marathon of season 1 America's Next Top Model and when I looked up it was ten o'clock. I loved Elyse so much, and I also loved the way Janice Dickinson always seemed on the verge of saying, whenever the topic of Elyse's skinniness came up, "So what if she's got an eating disorder? We've all got eating disorders -- we're models!" And, of course, how she seemed offended by the very idea of a plus-size model, like every time she looked at Robin she thought, "I can't believe I haven't eaten for forty years and this girl gets to be a model."
And in other pleasant holiday time-passing, I did this icon meme (from wearemany) where you put all your icons in alphabetical order and then pair them up. Really, I did it because I saw she got Britney Spears/Bruce Springsteen, and I thought I might end up with Bruce Springsteen/Justin Timberlake, but I did not. I'm not going to post them all, but I did end up with a bunch of interesting pairings.
Christina Aguilera/Ryan Atwood -- This would be so much fun, especially with Ryan's late interest in cage fighting! And really, he needs a dirty girl like Xtina (pre-marriage, of course) to help him get a little distance from the emo whiners he's so taken with.
Lance Bass/Warrick Brown -- How fantastic would this be? I don't know what they'd talk about -- maybe Warrick's interested in the science of space? Or if it were a while ago, they could talk about gambling. But really, the most amusing part would be Warrick bringing him around the lab. Nick would be very polite and friendly, maybe a little overly chatty, Warrick would think, and as soon as he was alone with Warrick Nick would start laughing and laughing and he wouldn't stop, not even when Warrick said, "all right, enough," not even when he fell over off his stool (with a little help from Warrick).
And Catherine would also be very polite, but a day or two later she'd say without looking at Warrick while they were working side by side, "You know, my daughter said if you were going to -- you know, she said you could have at least tried for Pete Wentz." And Warrick would laugh a little, like it was a joke, but Catherine wouldn't. "I don't know who he is," she'd say, still not looking up. "But I just thought you should know -- if you want them. You have options, you know," and she'd leave quickly with Warrick looking after her.
And Grisson would say to Sara, later, "Warrick's friend is a famous person?"
"Yeah, he was in *nsync -- the boyband. Screaming girls, sychronized dancing, it was a big thing."
"Yes," Grissom would say. "An interesting sociological phenomenon."
"Do you mean boybands or Warrick and Lance Bass?"
"Actually, both," Grissom would say.
Calvin/Nick Carter -- To make this work you'd have to age Calvin up a little, to 16 or so, and keep Nick the same age or a couple of years younger. Because you know the first thing Calvin would say when they met:
"How old are you, like forty-two? Can you buy me & Hobbes beer?"
"You better be nice to me or I'm not buying beer for anybody."
"Oh, who's that going to hurt? Cause I'm used to not being liquored up, and I'm used to how obnoxious I am. I'm not the one who's going to suffer."
"You've got a point," Nick would say.
Later they'd lie out in the field behind Calvin's house and trace spaceships and monsters in the stars and talk about all the things they'd done and all the things they'd like to do. After two beers and twenty stories, Calvin would say, quietly, "So your best friend -- is he a tiger?"
"No," Nick would say, just as quietly, with no surprise in his voice at the question. "No, his name's Brian."
JC Chasez/Julie Cooper -- This just might be my favorite pairing of all time and space (barring, you know, my real favorite pairing). It'd have to be old-school Julie Cooper, though, not current sad Julie Cooper but sleep-with-my daughter's-boyfriend Julie Cooper. And it works with a variety of JC characterizations, too -- she seems to me like his type. With my favorite JC characterization, the two of them would hang around the house drinking fruity drinks and making snide remarks after Marissa and Ryan left the room. "Off to another day of pain at Ingmar Bergman High School." And then they'd go out by the pool and Julie Cooper would demand that JC go down on her forever, and he'd willingly oblige, kneeling naked near her chaise while she gripped the top of the chair with both hands, wearing nothing but her bikini top and a pair of oversized sunglasses.
And it's fun even if we've got sensitive artiste JC. Julie Cooper would pick him up at some bar when she was drunker than she thought she was, and he'd stick around. After sex he'd play a new song for her, and she'd close her eyes like she was listening really closely and when he was done she'd say, "Oh, sweetie, how nice. Now go get mama a drink, that's a good boy." While he was gone she'd try to figure out if she could somehow subtly make Marissa think that the best way to get back at her mother was to steal her boyfriend, but of course Marissa never did what Julie wanted when she wanted it. Instead she'd decide to pawn JC off on Seth Cohen. Julie'd always been convinced that Seth was at least three-quarters gay, and he and JC would hit it off, she was sure. They could call each other "dude" and "cat" and teach each other about the virtues of tight pants and T-shirts for bands no one who hadn't been bullied in school had ever heard of, and keep each other company while they waited for their best friends to realize who they were really in love with.
This actually works, in a strange way, and really, not in a way that makes me happy with recent developments on Gilmore Girls. Lorelai has a bit of a Marianne Dashwood vibe about her, but with more sense and more experience, and Luke certainly has the older, slower, lumpier guy who turns out to be the good guy thing working for him. But thinking about it makes me think that we might see a chastened Lorelai turning back to Luke after she's learned her lesson with the feckless rogue who can't help himself, and I don't like the idea of Lorelai chastened.
Chris Kirkpatrick/Veronica Mars -- Veronica's working alone in the office one day when a guy walks in and says, "I need you to dig up some dirt on my sister's bastard of a boyfriend so I can feel justified when I hire someone to break his kneecaps, and so if my sister ever finds out it was me I can prove to her that I was in the right. It's very important to me that I be able to maintain a feeling of smug righteousness when I have someone beaten with a baseball bat."
"You know," Veronica says, "if you tell us you're going to use the information to commit a crime, technically we're not supposed to help you. We'd be aiding and abetting an assault -- and that's just the a's."
"That's a shame," Chris says, "because this guy's twenty years older than my sister and he never showed an interest until he realized how much money I had and now he's making noises that sound an awful lot like blackmail to me, and frankly, I'd rather get the jump on him. With a team of hired thugs and some baseball bats, as I mentioned, but now I guess I've just given you the b's to add to your alphabet of unhelpfulness."
"No, I don't think you have. Because all I heard after the word blackmail was lalalalala," Veronica says, opening a new file folder. "Let's start with the name of the gentleman you'd like us to research, for reasons that really only concern you. Oh, and your name, of course."
When Veronica hears his name she writes it on her form and then looks over at him. "Do I know you for some reason?"
Chris leans back in his chair and smiles a little meanly. "Yeah, I was in a little band called *nsync. And now's when you tell me how much you loved us when you were little, even though for a few years you were too cool to admit it."
"Oh, I was never too cool to admit it," Veronica says. "Just too cool to like that bubblegum crap."
"Hey, that bubblegum crap has made me the richest man who'll probably ever walk into this office."
"So rich, in fact, that your family has become magnets for gold-digging blackmailing bastards."
"Yeah, well, I guess there was a flaw in my plan."
"That's my special power," Veronica says. "Finding the flaws in other people's plans."
"You must be real popular at parties."
"Oh, you have no idea."
Of course, after a series of wacky misadventures they fall for each other, and one night in bed Chris says, "I love you," and Veronica says, "when I was little I had a whole dance number worked out for Bye Bye Bye," and Chris laughs and insists on seeing it right there.
AJ McLean/Marilyn Monroe -- This'd be an AU, I think. Maybe 1969 or so, AJ made it big years ago in one of those well-scrubbed white-boy vocal groups where they all wore short hair and ties, and since that ride ended he's been trying to make it on his own as a singer-songwriter but no one takes him seriously. He feels like even more of an outcast, because it's 1969, summer of drugs, and here he is at an AA meeting in the basement of a church in a small town in Arizona, not even listening to the guy who's talking but thinking about how there were twelve people at the show last night and idly watching a woman sitting across from him. She's a little older, mousy brown hair and a nose that looks like it's been broken, heavy through the hips and she looks like she's seen a little too much sun lately. He's just thinking that she doesn't look worn out, just worn in, when she smiles at him over her cup of coffee and he smiles back. She must have been a beauty once.
In her little house in her little bedroom the sun streams in through the windows and she's the oldest woman he's ever been with. He would have thought that she'd want the curtains drawn but she throws her arms out and welcomes the sunshine like a lover. She throws her arms out to him and he's reminded of something, of someone, but he can't remember. Later, even though it's a cliche he has to say it. "You remind me of someone."
"Do I?" she says, her lips pouting out and her body twisted toward him and suddenly he remembers. It was a party, right after he and the fellas hit it big, a party none of them had ever dreamed they'd be able to get into and once they were in they wandered around dazed by the glamour. They'd hit it big but they were the smallest people there. AJ had seen her then, she hadn't seen him but she wouldn't, of course, every eye in the place was on her but she was looking at just one man. The man said something to her, low, and she laughed and answered him, her lips pouting out and her body twisting toward him like he was the sun. You can only fantasize about something five, six thousand times before it's burned into your brain completely and AJ knows it's crazy but he also knows who she is.
"You're dead," he says. "Years ago. You're dead."
"In a manner of speaking," she says, and she smiles at something, someone she sees over his shoulder. "You'd be surprised what enough money and power can do."
"You wanted people to think you were dead?"
"No," she says, a little sharply. "No, but I knew things I shouldn't, and there were men who thought I should be. But they didn't want to kill me so much, they just wanted me gone, and so I convinced them to help me just disappear." The smile's there again and she says, "I've always been good at convincing men to do what they already wanted." It's like she sees AJ again and she laughs a little and says, "So a little plastic surgery, a lot of payoffs, and here I am."
"Did you want to disappear?"
"No," she says, "no, but I wanted to be dead even less, and if there's one thing I've learned in my life it's how to settle for what I can get. So I disappeared, and now, you know, I almost like it. It's restful, disappearing."
"But aren't you worried that people will recognize you? I mean, I did."
She looks at him a little sadly. "You're only the second man to recognize me since I've been gone. When you've disappeared as thoroughly as I have, there's only one type of person who can see you." AJ doesn't ask, just looks the question. "People who are learning how to disappear themselves." He doesn't say anything and after a moment he reaches out and touches his arm. "It's not as bad as you think it's going to be," she says. "A person can get used to anything when you have to."
Britney Spears/Bruce Springsteen -- Okay, when I was done laughing hysterically, I thought that they could actually end up talking. Because old Bruce has struck me recently as a kind man, and Brit's got the type of trashy working-class-girl-made-big-if-not-good vibe that he might like, and at some awards party someone introduces them as a kind of mean joke, but Bruce doesn't even really smile when Brit tells him that her dad really likes his stuff. There's some songs she really likes too, when she hears them, and someone snickers a little too loudly and Brit's voice gets a little high. "I been working every day since I was nine years old, and I was on top of the world and then I was the punchline to every joke and I married a man who let me down in every way possible in front of everybody in the world, and you know what? I'm still going to come back and everybody's going to love me again, and if you don't think that's the American dream then you don't know as much about it as you think you do."
"It's American, all right," Bruce says. "Jury's still out, though, on whether it's a dream or a nightmare. Depends on whether you tell the story or you let someone else tell it."
"Yeah, well, no one's ever really been interested in teaching me how to tell my own stories."
"Some things nobody can teach you," Bruce says, and she looks at him but then someone calls his name and hers and they both go back off to where they belong. The next day, though, there's a package on Britney's front porch with an album by Patti Smith and one by Bessie Smith and an electric guitar and a note. "You got a story to tell, little girl. Look me up in a few years when you've taught yourself how to tell it."
And in other pleasant holiday time-passing, I did this icon meme (from wearemany) where you put all your icons in alphabetical order and then pair them up. Really, I did it because I saw she got Britney Spears/Bruce Springsteen, and I thought I might end up with Bruce Springsteen/Justin Timberlake, but I did not. I'm not going to post them all, but I did end up with a bunch of interesting pairings.
Christina Aguilera/Ryan Atwood -- This would be so much fun, especially with Ryan's late interest in cage fighting! And really, he needs a dirty girl like Xtina (pre-marriage, of course) to help him get a little distance from the emo whiners he's so taken with.
Lance Bass/Warrick Brown -- How fantastic would this be? I don't know what they'd talk about -- maybe Warrick's interested in the science of space? Or if it were a while ago, they could talk about gambling. But really, the most amusing part would be Warrick bringing him around the lab. Nick would be very polite and friendly, maybe a little overly chatty, Warrick would think, and as soon as he was alone with Warrick Nick would start laughing and laughing and he wouldn't stop, not even when Warrick said, "all right, enough," not even when he fell over off his stool (with a little help from Warrick).
And Catherine would also be very polite, but a day or two later she'd say without looking at Warrick while they were working side by side, "You know, my daughter said if you were going to -- you know, she said you could have at least tried for Pete Wentz." And Warrick would laugh a little, like it was a joke, but Catherine wouldn't. "I don't know who he is," she'd say, still not looking up. "But I just thought you should know -- if you want them. You have options, you know," and she'd leave quickly with Warrick looking after her.
And Grisson would say to Sara, later, "Warrick's friend is a famous person?"
"Yeah, he was in *nsync -- the boyband. Screaming girls, sychronized dancing, it was a big thing."
"Yes," Grissom would say. "An interesting sociological phenomenon."
"Do you mean boybands or Warrick and Lance Bass?"
"Actually, both," Grissom would say.
Calvin/Nick Carter -- To make this work you'd have to age Calvin up a little, to 16 or so, and keep Nick the same age or a couple of years younger. Because you know the first thing Calvin would say when they met:
"How old are you, like forty-two? Can you buy me & Hobbes beer?"
"You better be nice to me or I'm not buying beer for anybody."
"Oh, who's that going to hurt? Cause I'm used to not being liquored up, and I'm used to how obnoxious I am. I'm not the one who's going to suffer."
"You've got a point," Nick would say.
Later they'd lie out in the field behind Calvin's house and trace spaceships and monsters in the stars and talk about all the things they'd done and all the things they'd like to do. After two beers and twenty stories, Calvin would say, quietly, "So your best friend -- is he a tiger?"
"No," Nick would say, just as quietly, with no surprise in his voice at the question. "No, his name's Brian."
JC Chasez/Julie Cooper -- This just might be my favorite pairing of all time and space (barring, you know, my real favorite pairing). It'd have to be old-school Julie Cooper, though, not current sad Julie Cooper but sleep-with-my daughter's-boyfriend Julie Cooper. And it works with a variety of JC characterizations, too -- she seems to me like his type. With my favorite JC characterization, the two of them would hang around the house drinking fruity drinks and making snide remarks after Marissa and Ryan left the room. "Off to another day of pain at Ingmar Bergman High School." And then they'd go out by the pool and Julie Cooper would demand that JC go down on her forever, and he'd willingly oblige, kneeling naked near her chaise while she gripped the top of the chair with both hands, wearing nothing but her bikini top and a pair of oversized sunglasses.
And it's fun even if we've got sensitive artiste JC. Julie Cooper would pick him up at some bar when she was drunker than she thought she was, and he'd stick around. After sex he'd play a new song for her, and she'd close her eyes like she was listening really closely and when he was done she'd say, "Oh, sweetie, how nice. Now go get mama a drink, that's a good boy." While he was gone she'd try to figure out if she could somehow subtly make Marissa think that the best way to get back at her mother was to steal her boyfriend, but of course Marissa never did what Julie wanted when she wanted it. Instead she'd decide to pawn JC off on Seth Cohen. Julie'd always been convinced that Seth was at least three-quarters gay, and he and JC would hit it off, she was sure. They could call each other "dude" and "cat" and teach each other about the virtues of tight pants and T-shirts for bands no one who hadn't been bullied in school had ever heard of, and keep each other company while they waited for their best friends to realize who they were really in love with.
This actually works, in a strange way, and really, not in a way that makes me happy with recent developments on Gilmore Girls. Lorelai has a bit of a Marianne Dashwood vibe about her, but with more sense and more experience, and Luke certainly has the older, slower, lumpier guy who turns out to be the good guy thing working for him. But thinking about it makes me think that we might see a chastened Lorelai turning back to Luke after she's learned her lesson with the feckless rogue who can't help himself, and I don't like the idea of Lorelai chastened.
Chris Kirkpatrick/Veronica Mars -- Veronica's working alone in the office one day when a guy walks in and says, "I need you to dig up some dirt on my sister's bastard of a boyfriend so I can feel justified when I hire someone to break his kneecaps, and so if my sister ever finds out it was me I can prove to her that I was in the right. It's very important to me that I be able to maintain a feeling of smug righteousness when I have someone beaten with a baseball bat."
"You know," Veronica says, "if you tell us you're going to use the information to commit a crime, technically we're not supposed to help you. We'd be aiding and abetting an assault -- and that's just the a's."
"That's a shame," Chris says, "because this guy's twenty years older than my sister and he never showed an interest until he realized how much money I had and now he's making noises that sound an awful lot like blackmail to me, and frankly, I'd rather get the jump on him. With a team of hired thugs and some baseball bats, as I mentioned, but now I guess I've just given you the b's to add to your alphabet of unhelpfulness."
"No, I don't think you have. Because all I heard after the word blackmail was lalalalala," Veronica says, opening a new file folder. "Let's start with the name of the gentleman you'd like us to research, for reasons that really only concern you. Oh, and your name, of course."
When Veronica hears his name she writes it on her form and then looks over at him. "Do I know you for some reason?"
Chris leans back in his chair and smiles a little meanly. "Yeah, I was in a little band called *nsync. And now's when you tell me how much you loved us when you were little, even though for a few years you were too cool to admit it."
"Oh, I was never too cool to admit it," Veronica says. "Just too cool to like that bubblegum crap."
"Hey, that bubblegum crap has made me the richest man who'll probably ever walk into this office."
"So rich, in fact, that your family has become magnets for gold-digging blackmailing bastards."
"Yeah, well, I guess there was a flaw in my plan."
"That's my special power," Veronica says. "Finding the flaws in other people's plans."
"You must be real popular at parties."
"Oh, you have no idea."
Of course, after a series of wacky misadventures they fall for each other, and one night in bed Chris says, "I love you," and Veronica says, "when I was little I had a whole dance number worked out for Bye Bye Bye," and Chris laughs and insists on seeing it right there.
AJ McLean/Marilyn Monroe -- This'd be an AU, I think. Maybe 1969 or so, AJ made it big years ago in one of those well-scrubbed white-boy vocal groups where they all wore short hair and ties, and since that ride ended he's been trying to make it on his own as a singer-songwriter but no one takes him seriously. He feels like even more of an outcast, because it's 1969, summer of drugs, and here he is at an AA meeting in the basement of a church in a small town in Arizona, not even listening to the guy who's talking but thinking about how there were twelve people at the show last night and idly watching a woman sitting across from him. She's a little older, mousy brown hair and a nose that looks like it's been broken, heavy through the hips and she looks like she's seen a little too much sun lately. He's just thinking that she doesn't look worn out, just worn in, when she smiles at him over her cup of coffee and he smiles back. She must have been a beauty once.
In her little house in her little bedroom the sun streams in through the windows and she's the oldest woman he's ever been with. He would have thought that she'd want the curtains drawn but she throws her arms out and welcomes the sunshine like a lover. She throws her arms out to him and he's reminded of something, of someone, but he can't remember. Later, even though it's a cliche he has to say it. "You remind me of someone."
"Do I?" she says, her lips pouting out and her body twisted toward him and suddenly he remembers. It was a party, right after he and the fellas hit it big, a party none of them had ever dreamed they'd be able to get into and once they were in they wandered around dazed by the glamour. They'd hit it big but they were the smallest people there. AJ had seen her then, she hadn't seen him but she wouldn't, of course, every eye in the place was on her but she was looking at just one man. The man said something to her, low, and she laughed and answered him, her lips pouting out and her body twisting toward him like he was the sun. You can only fantasize about something five, six thousand times before it's burned into your brain completely and AJ knows it's crazy but he also knows who she is.
"You're dead," he says. "Years ago. You're dead."
"In a manner of speaking," she says, and she smiles at something, someone she sees over his shoulder. "You'd be surprised what enough money and power can do."
"You wanted people to think you were dead?"
"No," she says, a little sharply. "No, but I knew things I shouldn't, and there were men who thought I should be. But they didn't want to kill me so much, they just wanted me gone, and so I convinced them to help me just disappear." The smile's there again and she says, "I've always been good at convincing men to do what they already wanted." It's like she sees AJ again and she laughs a little and says, "So a little plastic surgery, a lot of payoffs, and here I am."
"Did you want to disappear?"
"No," she says, "no, but I wanted to be dead even less, and if there's one thing I've learned in my life it's how to settle for what I can get. So I disappeared, and now, you know, I almost like it. It's restful, disappearing."
"But aren't you worried that people will recognize you? I mean, I did."
She looks at him a little sadly. "You're only the second man to recognize me since I've been gone. When you've disappeared as thoroughly as I have, there's only one type of person who can see you." AJ doesn't ask, just looks the question. "People who are learning how to disappear themselves." He doesn't say anything and after a moment he reaches out and touches his arm. "It's not as bad as you think it's going to be," she says. "A person can get used to anything when you have to."
Britney Spears/Bruce Springsteen -- Okay, when I was done laughing hysterically, I thought that they could actually end up talking. Because old Bruce has struck me recently as a kind man, and Brit's got the type of trashy working-class-girl-made-big-if-not-good vibe that he might like, and at some awards party someone introduces them as a kind of mean joke, but Bruce doesn't even really smile when Brit tells him that her dad really likes his stuff. There's some songs she really likes too, when she hears them, and someone snickers a little too loudly and Brit's voice gets a little high. "I been working every day since I was nine years old, and I was on top of the world and then I was the punchline to every joke and I married a man who let me down in every way possible in front of everybody in the world, and you know what? I'm still going to come back and everybody's going to love me again, and if you don't think that's the American dream then you don't know as much about it as you think you do."
"It's American, all right," Bruce says. "Jury's still out, though, on whether it's a dream or a nightmare. Depends on whether you tell the story or you let someone else tell it."
"Yeah, well, no one's ever really been interested in teaching me how to tell my own stories."
"Some things nobody can teach you," Bruce says, and she looks at him but then someone calls his name and hers and they both go back off to where they belong. The next day, though, there's a package on Britney's front porch with an album by Patti Smith and one by Bessie Smith and an electric guitar and a note. "You got a story to tell, little girl. Look me up in a few years when you've taught yourself how to tell it."