I’m Not a Cat Lady

I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here Day 13: The Rise of Long Tall Salley

Well, the already-low numbers for IACGMOOH are slipping, but audience viewership was down last night across the board. Could it be all those poor wretches who weren’t ready for the big digital conversion on Friday? Whatevs, it’s a week since the departure of the Desperate Duo, Heidi and Spencer, and IACGMOOH’s numbers haven't plunged all that much. Last night's two-hour extravaganza begins with drama: The set is besieged by a major tropical storm! Damien and Myleene's cushy little studio location has been flooded! Everyone's hair is frizzy! In this weather, Damien promises us, literally anything can happen. Literally!

But not till we've recapped what happened waaayyyy back on Thursday night: Daniel Baldwin was voted off. We get a post-mortem of his brutal execution. His little bro Stephen  is so choked up about it, he can't even swallow right now. Just like LouDi back in that nasty food challenge. They need to do a swallowing trial; that's one Janice Dickinson would totally take.

And here she is, with her kabuki eyebrows again, rasping to camera, "I couldn't be happier that Daniel Baldwin is gone because he's a big bully." We cut to everyone in camp wringing their hands over Big Bad Daniel's absence. Everyone but a jubilant J-Dick, of course. Stevie B. says he'd better not catch anyone going through his big brother's things. J-Dick barks, "I already did!" "You went through his stuff?" gasps Stevie B. "Hells to the yes!" she ripostes.

Okay, off topic for a minute: J-Dick has to be the only person in the land who is still using Whitney Houston's cracky catchphrase from Being Bobby Brown way back in 2005. I don't know about you, but I've noticed that catchphrases don't have the same shelf-life as they used to. Everyone was saying "Hell to the no" when BBB came out. When's the last time you heard it? That's four relatively short four years ago. Expressions like "way... no way" and "...not!" from SNL's Wayne's World were all over the mainstream for almost two decades; variations on Jerry Maguire's "you had me at hello" are still being written into scripts. But remember when everyone was saying "high five!" and "sexytime" after Borat just a couple of years ago? Wouldn't you feel like the proverbial douche saying them now? And wouldn't you feel like an even bigger douche uttering any single line from Juno, like the execrable "honest to blog"?

But I digress; back to J-Dick. She's lying on her back and rasping out orders from her sticky glossed lips non-stop. She's aged yet another five years over the weekend; the perma-scowl is not helping, nor is that cooking oil she's got slathered all over her face. It's all about J-Dick and her vile temperament tonight. This is bad. The producers are clearly having a problem eking out a storyline if this is all they can come up with two weeks in.

And then, more wind-baggery. In an effort to lecture sweet innocent Holly on the pitfalls of celebrity, LouDi harkens back to his heady heyday on La Bamba. Which he pronounces "Lammaammmbaaa" in that way people tend to over-emphasize Lad-tiiiiino names or words of any kind. J-Dick chimes in about TMZ going through her trash and robbing her of her privacy, which she pronounces "privvacy"— she probably picked that up from her British ex-husband Simon Fields. Patti rabbits on about her deadbeat husband again… She really wants that sympathy vote.

Out comes the scroll and LouDi's reading glasses. It's a luxury trial, and the reward is a massage. LouDi says he fancies getting a rub. I'll bet. Long Tall Salley wants one two. It's the two old guys versus the alpha chicks, Torrie and Patti. Muscle queens LouDi and Torrie go head to head cranking a lever to pull an ever-shortening plank out from underneath Patti or Long Tall. Long Tall tries the charming courtside trash talk on Torrie but he drops like a sack of bowling balls, yelling "Mutha—!" on the way down. 

Back to camp. J-Dick's lifting dumbbells. Word to the ladies: Want good muscle tone in your 60s? Take J-Dick's lead. Suddenly, she opens up to LouDi about her lousy marriage and her messy past. He's honored. Such a good daddy.

Again with the scroll and the reading glasses. Another trial. My mind wanders for a millisecond and I miss the details, but it's some kind of a scavenger hunt. Everyone has to find a particular item, all of which seem to be in J-Dick's bag: tweezers, hand-mirror, brillo pad. J-Dick sets off to find her item while clutching her crotch for some reason. They win smores.

Suddenly Long Tall is talking about leaving the game. He's too proud to lose and being on the bottom two last week shook him up quite a bit. "I'm not the white girl with the pretty face and the blonde hair," he grouses. Wow, bitter much? And also, by the way, do either LouDi or Sanjaya or J-Dick—none of whom has hit the bottom two—fit that description? I'm sorry but that is lame.

Sanji feels bad that Long Tall is down, though, so he offers to do the cooking and decides to fry some chips. Chips of what, it's not clear. J-Dick chides his one-chip-at-a-time frying style. He loses his temper for the first time and threatens to throw hot chips in her face. Well, she's already got the oil! Holly stands by her little man: "These are sowww good, Sanji. Soooowww goooouuud." Bleh. J-Dick takes a bite and announces, "You are Lord of the Fries." Every now and then, the old girl hits one out.

Coming up: What’s wrong with Janice? We see her doing something unspeakable. Has she got the crabs?

And... back. Long Tall retracts his idle threat and decides to stick it out and "man up". About time. Then old lady Dickinson waddles into the woods. Seems she's all clogged up. "I haven't had a shit in 7 days!" she rasps. Everyone but LouDi exits camp in disgust. She doesn't miss a beat: "I sure know how to clear a room, don’t I Lou?" She shows off her distended belly. She scarfs down the papaya and the prunes. Nothing works. " I’m surprised she doesn’t have some yoga pose that doesn’t make it come flying right out," yuks Stevie B.

Ooh! An iguana on a log. Finally, some new stock creature-footage. Patti's rabbiting on about Blago issue again. Fast forward. We’re an hour in. Let's get on with it!

The public voted Torrie and Sanji into the Tunnel of Terror. Sanji thinks the public want to see his breaking point. That's what you get for being so damn competent, Jungle Boy. Actually it's a joy to watch him kill it every time. So, we have  stars hidden in all kinds of scary places in an underground tunnel. Myeene warns: "You won’t be alone in there." Reeeerrreeeerreerrrrrrr! There's that screechy-violin noise from Top Chef and Kitchen Nightmares and every other reality show again. A few critters await, alright already, we know the drill, please stop that noise! In goes Sanji. And: spiders, iguana, snakes, oh no, a tarantula on his back, crayfish. Wait, crayfish? In the jungle? And then the weeny baby crocodiles. Watch out Sanji! They might bite your pinky toe!

Sanji, of course, kills it again. How anyone could crawl through an underground tunnel full of water and mud, in the dark, is beyond me, critters be damned. It's Torrie's turn. We hear her wimpering and gasping and breathing heavily.  I’m worried the neighbors will think I’m watching porn. She does extremely well but Sanji wins. The camera pans slowly up Torrie's mud-soaked frame, a loving journey from feet to face. Subtle. But I have to say, she looks as gorgeous coming out of that filthy tunnel as she did going in. She is stunning.

Unlike J-Dick. She's not looking so good. The campmates are worried about her and choose their words verrrryyy carefully. Patti: "She looked... really... frail." Torrie: "She looks....horribly sick." Stevie B. gets to the point: "She's sick, dude." Long Tall concedes that "she's not crying wolf today." Eat your words, mean campers.

But J-Dick isn't running for the jungle door. "I've made it this far," she whimpers. Girl's a trouper in her own messed-up, scowly, angry way. But she's sent to the medico. She’s got a virus. They're keeping her there for the night.

It's night at camp, and we've got on our night-vision goggles. Everyone's sleeping. Ooh! A snake slithers into camp. Some men in camouflage stealth-creep in. They're identified: "onsite security."  They’ve got sticks, they’re prodding in the bushes, Patti wakes up. They sneak off wordlessly with the snake. It's a bizarre little pantomime, completely surreal. Patti tippy-toes over to Long Tall's bed. He wakes up just long enough to exchange a word with her. "Did you see those ninjas over there?" she asks. "Snake?" he goes. "Snake," she confirms. He sinks back into his jungle coma, leaving Patti alone and awake in the dark.

Morning. The camp talks about the Great Snake Invasion. It finally hits Stevie B. like a mallet to his low-hanging brow that he's not on a movie location. Holly's hair is in a full-on frizz, she should have used her sister's dry shampoo. J-Dick comes bounding back. She must have had an enema: She is walking on air. The old-lady droop is gone, too. Amazing what a good movement can do.

Time for a new camp leader. LouDi's reached his term limit. We have a eulogy for him that goes on way too long—yeah, yeah, he's Obama, he's been cool, we get the point. We have a quiz stolen straight from Survivor—match the adjective with the player as voted by America. So we learn that America thinks John Salley is the hardest worker, the most famous, the best team player, has the best strategy and is the smartest. What was it you said about pretty white blonde girls again, John?  Plus: I'm not sure what show America's been watching, but it's definitely not this one. I'd have thought LouDi would take the vote for smartest, what with the reading glasses and all. Strangely, the majority of the campmates thought Patti was the smartest. And as if to prove it, Patti's vote for the most vain is "Stephan."

Long Tall voted for himself in just about every category so he wins. Ever humble, he declares, "I was already a leader in so many ways."

The camp plays "who's your best friend?" It's a lovefest between Stevie B. and LouDi. John's BFF is Patti, and she's all "right back atcha." Torrie and Stevie B. have bonded because they're both—take a guess—Christians. Holly and Sanji call each other out all googly-eyed. J-Dick, the gooseberry, declines to call out anyone... and goes off to take a dump. Which, under the circumstances, seems completely appropriate.

Immunity trial. But first, an IACGMOOH promotion. Get jungle gossip on your phone! There’s Heidi and Spencer. They’re still using them for the interstitials? More proof that NBC was bankng on them, hard.

Back to Damien, who shares shares a lot of irrelevant information about things we can't see, and... out.

photos courtesy of NBC

I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here Day 10: The Great Granola Bar Mystery Continues

I'm a Celeb was up against both So You Think You Can Dance and the NBA playoffs last night. How do you think it did? Yep, pulverized. So, anyway, we pick up where we left off—with the Great Granola Bar Mystery. The wrapper is found, outside the confessional. The Bully Baldwins do what they do best—asking Janice questions about it and muttering over and over again, really fast, “where’s-the-granola-bar? where’s-the-granola-bar?” and cracking up laughing, right in her face. She glowers and grimaces and scowls as hard as she can and avoids eye contact at all costs. It's taking quite a toll of J-Dick’s looks—she’s looking 65 today. Then Daniel shoots her a look that would turn a rabid Grizzly bear’s blood to ice and says, quiet seriously, “You’re dead to me.” Oh. This is not funny anymore; if anyone looked at me that way, I’d age instantly too.

We get a bug-bite montage next, with a night-clip of Long Tall Salley manically swatting some kind of prehistoric winged creature from his face. The camp is given bug patches and tubs of what looks like calomine paste. The guys' backs are covered in a Milky Way's worth of white dots.

Food trial! It’s a shopping challenge. Sanji and Holly step up because, you know, if there’s one skill this hre young generation has mastered, it’s shopping. They’ve got to push a bamboo trolley across a cable and pick off big pieces of fake food. Sanji, who sprints across as if he was born on a tightrope, kills it. There really is nothing this wood nymph can’t do. 

Back at camp, J-Dick is regaling the group with every detail of her career, all 85 years of it. “Is it time for Janice’s meds?” Meanie Daniel Baldwin asides. Apparently the game they’re playing now is “What was your career-defining moment?” Holly shares that it was when her sister Heidi invited her to L.A. after her step-brother was killed in Iraq. Actually, that’s sad. She cries, and everyone wells up with her.

Patti dashes from the group, because it’s making her think about her husband’s career-defining moment, which is probably going to land him in the hoosegow. She hides in the confessional to have a good cry. J-Dick is waiting for her at the door when she comes out, all ready to console her, but Patti cuts her off. “I’ve just composed myself, I don’t want to hear it.”  J-Dick is stunned. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.” It’s a pretty raw and deeply uncomfortable moment. Talk about “let’s get real.”

There’s a silly segment about a potential romance blossoming between Holly and Sanji. The whole camp and even the hosts are rubbing their hands about it. Now wait a minute. Is it just me, or is Sanji unmistakably…. a wood nymph? Next: some of the campmates get to Skype home. Sniffle, sniffle, boring, next?

We’re live, time for the elimination. Holly, who’s been on the show for two seconds, is safe. Ben Silverman must have been working those phones. Torrie’s climbed up from the bottom; she’s safe. Cut back in time to last night’s dinner: Everybody except Janice sits around the campfire telling each other what they love most about them; tears and bonding, family talk, next?

Back to eliminations. Sanji is safe (he was right!), and so are Stevie B. and, shocker, Janice, who screeches, “Are yewewww kidddinngggg meeeee?” Patti, Long Tall and Big Bad Meanie Daniel are in the bottom. I’m convinced it’s going to be Patti. But no! It’s Daniel. He takes his dog-eared black-and-white family photo and says his goodbyes. J-Dick steals his last live-on-air moments by rasping in the background, “Say no to Prop 8! Say no to Prop 8! Perez can you hear me?” No teary goodbyes to Daniel from her. In fact, no goodbye at all. Can't blame her.

Coming up: the contestants compete in the Tunnel of Terror and to demonstrate how scary it will be, a tarantula attacks the camera. We’re told in advance that Janice will be exempt for medical reasons. Again? Are her health concerns mental or physical? Tune in for the next two-hour-long episode on Monday and maybe you’ll find out. But you probably won’t.

UPDATE: It was reported on the Huffington Post today that Stevie B.'s home in Rockland County, N.Y., has been foreclosed and is up for auction. Whoa. I wonder if that will come up around the camp fire.

photos courtesy of NBC

Fighting the Brain Fog

 Not too long ago, I lost both my parents—they died within seven months of each other. (They'd been divorced for 35 years and lived on different continents, but that's another story.) Both of them succumbed to dementia, for very different reasons: My dad's was exacerbated by a brain tumor, and my mother had vascular dementia, the result of a stroke.

It was devastating to see them this way, and it still makes me cry when I think about it too much. Plus, I'm now full of the fear that one day I'll be overcome by dementia, or maybe Alzheimer's, too.

I know I'm not the only one: Many of my friends are seeing their parents become feeble-minded, and we're all convinced that whenever we can't find our keys or stumble over a word, we're showing early signs. This feeling is possibly exacerbated by the fact that any time you flip past a local PBS station, they seem to be airing infomercial-like programs about the aging brain—The Secret Life of the Brain; Brain Fitness and Neuroplasticity; The UltraMind Solution; Change Your Brain, Change Your Life—ad infinitum, telling us all the things we need to do to slow down the process. (Take fish oil! Eat avocados! Learn a new language!)

Now a new report has been released by the Alzheimer's Study Group, headed up by Sandra Day O'Connor and Newt Gingrich (?!), to determine how to deal with a looming Alzheimer's epidemic (it already afflicts 5 million Americans and in 20 years, warns the study, Alzeimer's cases will increase by 50 percent). So, okay, I'm even more alarmed.

I bought a couple of books about keeping the brain flexible and even some CDs: They remain unread and unripped. But recently, apropos of something else entirely, I came across a weekly podcast called—heh—BrainCast, by the folks behind the BrainReady web site, which delivers episodes that run around 30 minutes running the listener through little mind exercises that they promise will help keep your mind sharp. It embraces all the tenets preached by the PBS brain experts hawking their pricey books and CDs and computer programs: Eat certain brain-healthy foods, exercise regularly and challenge your brain to do things it doesn't normally do—the surest route to brain atrophy, I've heard many times, is to stick to the same old routines. Which is exactly what every old person you've even known does.

I've listened to a few of these podcasts and they're kinda great: There are simple math problems you have to solve in your head (and I'm useless at math, I was always put in the dumb math class at school, so that's a serious challenge for me); visualization and memory exercises, and logic quizzes. It seems a little simplistic, but I swear, after listening to the 4th episode in the series, I felt a little clearer minded today.  Maybe it's just mind over matter. But maybe that's exactly the point.

An experiment: I'm going to listen to an episode or two a day until I get up to 20. I'll report back on my progress.

UPDATE: Okay, it's a week later and I was diligent with this for the first, oh, four days? And it's great! But, like everything, it takes commitment—there's homework, for instance, such as drawing a sketch of your living-room layout from memory. Then there's setting that 30 minutes aside each day to just sit still and listen. Harder than it sounds! Especially when you're also trying to carve out 30-minute slices of time all day long for other tasks, like going for a morning run or filing for a tax extension or eating some goddamn lunch.  But I did buy the matcha green tea and have integrated dark chocolate and walnuts into my diet. Brain foods, ya know. That's something!