Guilt and Guts, Part One: I Watch Big Brother 11.

As of April 2010, I've shied away from this blog for almost a year.
Last time,I stayed away from my own blog for five whole months, because I feared lack of quality. In blogland I think that's called "Guilt and Guts Syndrome".

One can't write badly and feel guilty about it around here. In blogville roam countless readers who are experts at separating the good-bad from the bad-bad. They tend to gravitate toward writers with the guts to post both.

So I'm back, with something I truly should feel guilty about, according to most of my highly educated and wise-from-birth friends. I watch "Big Brother". I don't know when I started. I don't know how I do it. But at least now I know why.

I was one of those kids who didn't get picked much for teams, having worn glasses and undergone eye surgeries since age 3. No eye-hand coordination. I wasn't terribly interested in teams, anyway, being one of those artsy types. Art done by teams: that's where bad advertising is born.

Lately it's dawned on me that knowing how to function in teams makes up a critical part of the maturation process. It also helps you to survive retail jobs. So I'm fascinated with some of the reality television series semi-grounded in teams. "Big Brother" pits individuals against teams -- often the teams they're in. But the team lessons are there to be had, so I'm fascinated.

Tonight showcased a first-time surprise. A house resident deliberately got herself expelled from the game. Fired from her gig on the show itself. Or as I immediately thought of it, out of current need and greed: "she just killed her source of paychecks!"

It was one of the two Whiner Sisters, Chima. Like the other Whiner, Natalie, she's a "Big Brother" player who probably got hired for her lack of ability to discern between a game and real life. When one of the other players got her favorite human in the house "evicted" (BB term), Chima's brain shifted just enough on its axis. Yelling, moaning. Cursing. Weeping. Groaning. Public displays of anguish. And so on.

She became most notorious for ignoring various producers' voices over the house system, politely commanding the cast members to go here or there, do this or that -- directing the cast members, in other words, so that they could do their jobs.

Chima topped off her "Rebel Without A Clue" siege by tossing her body microphone into a pond in the set's back yard -- while the director of the moment urged her to put it on her body.

The next morning, she was ultra gone. Her Whiner Sister, Natalie, became uncorked.

I whine and get dramatic sometimes. Compared to the Whiner Sisters of Big Brother 11, I am the mistress of team cooperation and workplace self-control.

Television as therapy? Hey, I'd gladly pay Chima ten bucks for the therapy session she provided. Of course, CBS was paying her more, which would be part of my point.

I would have worn that microphone clipped to my upper lip if the bosses had asked.

Adam Lambert Took Temporary Control of This Blog.

I don't really want to write about Adam Lambert twice back-to-back.


He's making me do it.


I wanted to see him go into musical and visual areas that might risk his confidence, that would at least shake up his
Phantom of the Eighties eyeliner shtick. I wasn't sure he could do it.



He did it. Twice. The last two "American Idol"-casts, Lambert changed a lot without changing what seems to be real Adam.



The week after my mini-fit post, Smokey Robinson mentored the Idol cast through Motown week.



Hey, talk about a natural spot for glam/theater rocker Lambert to oversing, over arrange, overdress, and blow himself to bits. Instead, he wiped
off the eyeliner, ditched the nail polish, swept the black
bangs back into a patent leather pomp. He wore a suit
coat.

The arrangement and the vocal he created for Robinson's "Tracks Of My Tears" quieted
everything down to a few instruments (with cello providing much of the melancholy) and a reigned-in piece of singing.

Smokey Robinson himself gave Lambert a standing ovation.

This past week, the final nine had to choose from the vast world of iTunes downloads. Like
it's often said, give anybody enough rope...The judges found their mantra early in the night:
"I just don't think that song choice works for you."

Lambert kept the brushed-back pomp hair (one small victory for dragging him into the 21st century). He took the goofball classic "Play That Funky Music White Boy" (Wild Cherry) and switched the time signature, for most of the song save the guts of the choruses. Singing it in 2/4 gave the song a transfusion of modern funk/hip hop. Unexpected, and just too much fun.

Lambert himself was having more fun than anyone else in the Kodak Theater, which is saying a whole lot. His falsetto chased the high passages of the original out of town. He remade a version that's legitimately his own.

The guy may have hideous taste in hair, eye make-up, manicures, and some stage clothes. He may have questionable taste in musical heroes. He may say too much when asked questions.

Those things matter less each week. Not only can Adam L. sing just about anything, he co-creates (with the "Idol" house band) pretty original arrangements and instrumentation.

He has fun doing all of it.

Okay, I yell uncle. I may not ever be a devoted
Lambert fan, but the man has my respect.

If he'd lift several shades of black dye from his hair? I'd reconsider the fan thing.

If the Straitjacket Fits

Andy Dick had a happy moment during tonight's episode of "Sober House" (VH-1). House residents' team leader Jennifer was exploding verbally onto resident Seth during a house outing to a paintball game.

Andy stood close enough for a front row view of Jennifer's hurt and anger. He was smiling.

"I love to see people get upset," he said to the camera crew. Then it was something like "I don't know why, but I do."

Thank you, Mr. Dick -- you bullseyed my problem with a lot of reality series.

I love watching people handle competition. I love watching people make big strides in beating their demons, needless inhibitions, career obstacles, etc.. I love watching people find out how to manage big talent, how to manage disappointment about the limits of that talent. If any of it makes me laugh, all the better.

But I don't laugh watching other people melt down. Even if they're being self-indulgent drama kings or queens, which is often the case on reality shows, I feel empathy pangs at times. Self-indulgent drama is a personal talent I'm in the process of extracting. Still, you can book me for possession.

I've seen Andy Dick do the same theatrical melt-down dance that Jennifer was doing, so why was it funny for him to watch her? He seems to like her a great deal, actually. Not today, however.

I know, I know. I'm not supposed to empathize. TV critics always say that these "cast members" are merely exhibitionists. They swear they're trying to get sober or win money for charity or whatever. Actually, the critics shrug, they're just trying to get jumper cables for their careers.

Still, there's some reality in a good deal of reality television. I don't know if Jennifer was being a drama queen tonight or not.

I just know that a version of her straitjacket still fits me. Hopefully, not too much longer.

Mood Meter: down 2 points.

Bret Michaels Boards Bus, Forgets Parts of Brain?

For some odd, maladaptive reason, I still think Bret Michaels wields serious intelligence.

I hung on to that opinion/delusion through seasons one and two of his VH1 semi-reality "searching for love" series, "Rock Of Love". The girls demonstrated classic reality TV lack of impulse control, lack of emotional control, lack of fashion sense, and badly oversized breast implants. Still, a few hinted at carefully disguised smarts and adult reasoning processes under all the hair. To watch natural camera magnet Michaels, to see his sense of the absurd do some dancing with the girls who got it -- tuning in was almost worth the time.

This season, "Rock Of Love" stepped out of the comic-book mansion and boarded a slew of tour buses for "Rock Of Love, Bus".

The bus poses no problem. The concert sequences give the big bang. Michaels is better on camera than ever, on stage or off.

Michaels' lady contestants? The casting stinks to high heaven.

The girls seem as if any sense of self-worth was surgically removed before they were hired. The bitchy meow behavior goes on incessantly. Fights end up noisier, meaner, and creepily humor-free. Drinking too much is never considered "too much".

Mixing "trouble" girls with brighter bulbs made everything more interesting and less predictable for seasons one and two. Bret, Bret. You've got years of a great TV career in front of you if you don't squander it away on a compulsive preference for huge breasts with a side of serious personality disorders.

Your "girls" can't do any better. You can.

The Power of TV Chefs Who Lick Their Fingers

For most of my adult and teenage life, food was wicked.

It made you fat. You had to count calories or even apples would make you fat.

If you had fun eating, if you said "yum" or licked your fingers or smiled with too much obvious pleasure, you were only one tiny step away from losing control.

I still count calories. I like being scrawny. But
I'm beginning to understand the ancient truths about the bonds formed by sharing food, by licking one's fingers in front of others who are also having a good time.

Nowadays, if I were with one of my small-screen food fun heroes, I'd write in my calorie notebook only when alone in my hotel room late at night.

The word "calorie" would not pass my lips in the company of foodies, even those who didn't speak English.

See, I think God explained it beautifully to Eve when He gently told her that an apple was not the problem.

Cure is in the remote of the beholder.

Just to be compulsively clear about this blog's name: of course television doesn't cure depression, any variation of it.

But TV can help.

It's been helping me since my pint-sized self listened to Johnny Carson on my parents' TV, Johnny and his audience's laughter audible in my nearby bedroom.

Assuming I'm using the remote control shrewdly, TV continues to makes me laugh -- a lot.

Reams of studies now state that laughter improves human moods through positive neurochemical changes.

Hey, it seriously works for me. Like the ad used to say, better living through chemistry.