The L-Word

m_shell and I have been doing the tv-from-Netflix thing (fun! far, far cheaper than getting HBO and Showtime!) and recently received the first disk of The L-Word.

And. I mean, we've only watched the pilot so far but. Ugh. This has been getting rave reviews and called controversial and tons of people say they like it, but it's basically a soap opera with more sex. And lesbians.

And most of the sex we see isn't even queer! I mean, the pilot introduces us to (la la spoilers ahead la) a lesbian couple suffering bed death (that's not a stereotype or anything, nope) and a het couple with a really nice guy who have sex a couple times but then the girl is STOLEN AWAY by an EXOTIC LESBIAN. With an accent, yet. Just before her boyfriend proposes. Oh, and one can't forget Shane, the evil heart-breaking lesbian. Oh, or the way the LBD couple who want a kid try to trick a guy into making one of 'em pregnant even though neither one of 'em likes boys. Hey, that's some hot sex. Or not. A threesome with total ick. End result: more sex with boys in the pilot that sex with girls. What's up with that?

Notice that none of the lesbians who get to have sex is... a good person? (Actually, I didn't like any of 'em except one half of the couple and the straight guy, who was uber-nice, but somehow I don't think they're going to hook up. I mean, far be it from me to rule out ridiculous plot points in soaps, but that seems a bit too far.)

So, it's basically Sex and the City, except with lesbians. They sit around a table in a coffee shop and gossip a lot about who's having sex with whom. And about how you have to trim your pubic hair to have self-confidence. (As we all know, one cannot be self-confident without bodily modification.) Fun.

Actually, my personal favorite comment on it comes from this Netflix review. This fellow gave it five stars and said: "For all their brilliance, accomplishments, and fantastic careers, the characters on the show, when they aren't actually having sex, have nothing on their minds but lesbianism, the women they lust after, and their lesbian friends. Just as in real life, these lesbians run the gamut from very attractive to drop-dead gorgeous. Even the most masculinized of them are non-threatening, appealingly pouty tomboys. None of them are man-haters. If you want to see beautiful women kissing, flirting with, fantasizing about, and having sex with women (all tastefully done of course), this is the show for you."

It's like... lesbians are such a Weird Thing that surely all they do is Lesbianish. They don't ever, like, talk about politics, or about makeup (except how to use it to pick up girls), or about the World Series.

End grumpy Feminist-Queer Moment.

And today in Weird News...

Russell Crowe says Osama bin Laden wanted to kidnap him. You know, you just can't make shit like this up.

Ever weirder, Crowe says that he was threatened pre-9/11. As a prominent American. And that this was why he had FBI protection -- they contacted him, not the other way around.

I. There are no words.

(I do notice, tra-la, that the FBI is not being quoted, just paraphrased, which rather makes one Wonder, but it also seems unlikely that Russell Crowe made the whole thing up, so. On the other hand, this may be the best headline on the subject EVER: "I was al-Qaida kidnap target, claims Crowe" -- from Ireland online. I mean. One can just see Mulder getting involved.)

***

And here, Three siblings in their seventies lived for ten years with their dead father. Still can't make this shit up.

I mean: "Kanaoka's three elderly children, all in their 70s or older, told police they thought their father was still alive but that one of them recently had consulted a relative about the possibility that he might be dead, the spokesman said."

That concludes today's broadcast of People are Weird.