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July 14, 2003
When it’s a joke, it’s funny… While Faith took abuse in more than one way, Liz again had her drink tampered with (how old is that game?), Gia lost at love (well, 3 days worth), Carly looked disheveled and cheaply clothed, Georgie dumbly ran off with the ever cool Dillon, Skye hasn’t learned a damn thing in how many years, Alexis is still a man, Big Alice wore a hat and Emily continued to make that face. Mac wore jeans, Nikolas looked hot and really showed Lucky up in the acting department, Ric is hmm…crazier than a fox, Sonny is hmm…still yelling, Alcazar is beyond cool and should be kept on the show with whatever amount of coaxing and sacrifice of Sonny’s machismo it takes, Zander’s back in the sun for a bit and Jason needs to be reminded that he goes to the gym and works out that beautiful golden boy body for a reason – now show it to us. It’s nice that Skye has been clothed so beautifully, as her storyline becomes progressively idiotic. I suppose she’s glad to have a storyline, but this business of scoring Alexis’ medical records was pretty dimwitted. Ah well, she at least had a gorgeous pale blue and green cardigan set and cream colored palazzo pants that looked incredible. Skye is the picture of cool class – it’s a shame that she can’t be afforded half a brain as well. As predicted, I’m disappointed with the recast Lydia. While Jessica Ferrarone played sardonic rich girl with a style of her own, over enunciating and capturing the dry, bored tone of a reluctant debutante, J. Robin Miller leaves me with the impression that she just bicycled to the organic market for some ripe avocado. How Los Angeles does this girl look? Too, in my opinion. Bony shoulders and short saucy haircuts do not a socialite make. My husband’s comment was “She’s cuter”, which (snort) probably tells the whole story. She’s too cute, too thin, too actress/waitress and though I’m given to fickleness, you know what they say about first impressions. But hey, she’s almost got Jessica’s smirk down pat.
And so I’m reminded of a little jingle that my grandpa used to sing… “Lydia, oh Lydia, oh have you seen Lydia…Lydia the faboo (ok, he said tattoo) lady?” We all have our favorite moments in General Hospital history. I started watching the show in the mid-eighties so it was those years of intrigue and investigation that left the greatest impression. I’m sure my mom would have raised objection at Frisco and Felicia’s (chaste by today’s standards) pillow talk, but she was at work while my dad was sleeping off the midnight shift, and I had the 3 o’clock hour to myself. Coming in from the chaise lounge (when sun worship wasn’t the worst thing you could possibly do to yourself) and settled in with a grilled cheese (with fresh tomato..mm) and a can of Coke, I was enraptured in the lives of Anna Devane, Robert Scorpio and Sean Donelley. Tiffany, Bobbie and Felicia were there too…being smart and coy all the way. I shudder to think of the lone 10 year old watching today’s GH. My heart leapt a bit when I read the spoiler that said Lucky Spencer would be joining the PCPD. It’s been an ongoing thought of mine that having a young, interesting character joining the ranks would do wonders for changing the tide of things. I’d been hoping for Zander because if anyone needs a life and a uniform, it’s him. They were giving me Lucky and I was psyched…I was really, really hopeful and sitting on it because I don’t usually do spoilers in my column (not that this one has been about fashion anyway, so what the hay?). Then yesterday, Scott and company barged into the Lansing home, had Jason remove one audio device, and then left the two notorious mobsters in the house… The police department is not heading for a change, I’m afraid. We may see Mac burst through a few more hotel room doorways (and look mighty fine doing it), but is the addition of Lucky going to rival Jason’s contemptible stares and Sonny’s high decibel demands in the face of the DA, the feds or any other man in blue? Pfft. Don’t kid yourselves. My suggestion to Lucky is to hold on to your hemp necklace my dear, and run far and fast from the police academy. And you can grope and kiss Lydia or anyone else, anytime. My blood hasn’t run that hot over a network television snog in quite a while. DaYUMM! I was going to leave the subject alone, since I touched on it in my last column. Then a thread showed up on The SageBrush Ranch discussing it. Then, Coggie wrote this about All My Children’s use of the character, Bianca’s rape. Life is fair game for soap operas, and I was bearing that in mind when I first heard they were bringing cancer to General Hospital again. When Monica had breast cancer, it was poignant, but I wasn’t personally affected, beyond it being about one of my soap characters. I hadn’t yet developed my phobia for movies like “Dying Young”. It was sad that people died, sadder that they died young. My aunt (my mom’s favorite sister) died from leukemia when I was four and it affected me mostly because a chunk of my mom’s hair went from sandy to silver in the days of her funeral. She went from my smiling, laughing mom to the mom who was nervous and consumed with sudden bouts of sadness. It didn’t last forever or probably even for very long, but I can still remember those days very clearly. She was desperately scared of ‘catching’ cancer. She wouldn’t (and never again did) watch movies about people with cancer. Yet she smoked. Out of habit, nerves…whatever. She kidded herself into believing that ultra light cigarettes wouldn’t… just couldn’t be enough to kill her. Throughout my adolescence, I wished that she’d stop…not because I thought my mom was ever really going to die, but I hated to leave the house smelling like cigarette smoke. I was 25 when she found a lump under her arm. It was lung cancer that had already begun to spread. Dreadful, dreadful months of consulting with cream of the crop Baltimore doctors, then chemotherapy, radiation, body scans, different chemotherapy, having to cut her gorgeous, trademark silver hair off in the hall bathroom so that it wouldn’t fall out in drastic chunks, more radiation, wig shopping, twice daily subcutaneous shots of blood thinner, Oxycontin for the pain, surgery for blood clots, surgery for fluid accumulation around her heart, Christmas in a hospital bed while my two year old baby boy still ran to her screeching “Grammy!! Santa!!” interchangeably, ...and then she died. Was there drama? A lot. The kind that evokes a gamut of emotion? Yeah. Do I personally want to see it on my television screen? Nope. Yet, I can see the purpose and benefit of a cancer storyline, and I was willing to see a summer’s worth of Emily’s struggle and (of course) survival. I was banking on it being palpable, reminiscent and real so I geared up for feeling the pain. And it never came. Silly me. I watched Em brush her hair and look at her hairbrush, pulling out strands. I waited to see her become the person that chemotherapy makes you. A month went by and she’s pulled a few more strands of hair out of that brush, but there’s no evidence to suggest that her pretty hair is going anywhere. She sleeps a lot, throws up a bit. She makes that face. She waxes poetic about life…but mostly, she’s the damsel in distress, toying with the hearts of two men who care very deeply for her. Cancer is ugly and Emily is just.. not. Unless you count the way she’s treating Zander. And with that, I guess I’m finished for now. I’ll try not to be so dire next time around ;). I hope you have the chance to drop me an e-mail and let me know what you’re thinking about the lads and lassies in our favorite little hamlet of Port Charles.
PS – You still really need to check out the www.internetbumperstickers.com site that Kathy found. I love that place. GH photo credits go to… http://groups.msn.com/GHWorld3/shoebox.msnw.
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