The Goodbye Show

So in the past, I've mentioned Melanie, the PBS babysitter character who hosts the network's evening cartoon lineup. Good ol' Mel was an "enchanted babysitter" of some sort, who always overenthused with gusto about whatever obscure British short was on its way, before launching into a terrifying dance about crafts and teaching us bad sign language. She scared me.



Melanie has been absent for several days, and I was finally curious enough to find out why. For the past few weeks her stock had been rising on the network, and she'd even been filming new segments (they recycle heavily), joined by a new freakish puppet named Star. Why would she vanish at the start of a new season of segments?

Mel, as it turns out, starred in a video called "Technical Virgin". Some sources describe it as a spoof PSA, others as a full-blown Melanie-Does-Dallas foray into the world of anal intrigue. Whatever the case (help me, Google, find me the screen caps!) Melanie is no more, and now the cartoons are unhosted. At least, as a by-product, Star the creepy puppet is gone, too. See ya in hell, Star!



I'd always suspected there was something pervy lurking behind Melanie's spastic facade. But then again, children's television is all about the couched metaphor. Yesterday, Noggin was showing the jumping-the-shark episode of Blue's Clues where Blue started becoming a talking puppet and ripping off Elmo's World. A fairy godmother came to Blue, now a puppy teenager, and told her of her "greatest gift" and to find a hole that her key would fit into. When Blue finally found the keyhole (quoth the key, "It's working! I'm turning!") Blue was enveloped in sparkly blue ecstacy and found her voice. She eventually had to return to 2-D, but was told that anytime she put the key into the hole she could come back.

Um, yeah. Melanie's antics have nothing on the font of filth that is post-Steve Blue's Clues.

Sell My House, Please

I remember a time when the A&E network was about old movies and Peter Graves narrating the biographies of people from old movies. Now, times have changed. People don't want to see old movies or Peter Graves, they want to watch gay designers suck the life out of homes while operating on an obscenely tight budget.

For some reason, we were watching Sell This House, one of about fifty shows to follow this cheapo home makeover theme. It's a show with a simple, yet exceedingly annoying concept. A homeowner is sitting on a half-million dollar home. It hasn't sold immediately in a flagging housing market. Obviously, it's because the doorknobs are out of date! And if you're going to plop down half a million dollars, $70 for new paint and doorknobs is out of the question. And as an owner, you're clearly too stupid to do it yourself! Only reality television can can save your sale.

Sell This House invites a busty hostess and her musclebound gay designer into the homes of the desperate, to remove any trace of evidence that anyone has ever lived there. Hidden cameras are set up to observe what potential buyers think of the place. Without fail, the would-be buyers complain about the color of the paint, age of the doorknobs, the amount of stuff the owners have collected over the years, the fact that there's dirt on the lawn, oxygen in the air, etc. This is all used as evidence to convince the sellers to let Chesty LaRue and Muscles McBearGroin destroy years of memories. Let the fun begin?

Chesty and Muscles strip out anything personal in a home, like an insatiable tag-team black hole of persona-suck. Bye-bye photos, collectibles, even furniture... In the episode we saw, Muscles said the dining room chairs were creating clutter, and removed them. Now the sellers have to stand to eat. Curtains are also a bad thing. It's always better to tear an old bedsheet apart and drape the remains up on an unadorned spray-painted rod. And who needs artwork when you can take sticks out of the lawn and put them into a crappy vase? Can't Muscles just do one single room without putting some sticks in a vase and calling it "design"? I have sincere doubts as to his gayness. Real gay men would slap the crap out of him for doing this to people, and aesthetics in general.

When the house is painted completely pastel (to "open it up") and all of the electronics, chairs, art and tables removed (to "open it up") and there's no soul left (to "open it up"), the work is done.

Total cost of tearing everything out and tossing it into a woodchipper? About $70. The cost of lost emotions, treasured souvenirs, and essentially the lives and humanity of the owners? Priceless.

God, this show makes me bitter.

Completely Useless Movie Previews: Pirates of the Caribbean 2

And now it's time to introduce an exciting new feature here on Improper Pronoun. I'm going to call it, "Completely Useless Movie Previews," and it will involve informing you, gentle readers, about upcoming movies based on my knowing absolutely nothing about them. The value you derive from them will be zilch.

You're welcome.

Our first preview is Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest, which I'll assume features the stars of the first Pirates movie. Or not, don't take that for granted. Gary Coleman could be the hero for all I know, and if you go to see it that's a risk you face. It may or may not also be a cartoon. Do you remember that cartoon Disney did a few years ago about pirates in space? No, me neither. I doubt this one involves space. They're smart enough not to do that again.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you don't like pirates, you shouldn't see this movie. Although they're not really specific about the type of pirates, are they? They could be software pirates, or butt pirates. So if you're into warez and gay anal sex, then by all means, check it out, because this could be right up your alley. And I'd hate for you to miss out just on my saying not to.

Anyway, the plot. There's a dead man, and he has a chest. A chest of booty? Gay anal booty? Or a chest of money? Maybe he has man-boobs. At any rate, there's a chest, and the pirates want it. I think. I mean, why would they put it in a pirate movie if the pirates are just going to spend the whole film avoiding it, like that crazy aunt locked in the attic that no one mentions because then they'd have to acknowledge the odd silence and foul odor coming from up there for the past three weeks? I guess it could be Keira Knightley's chest, but she doesn't have much of one. Now abs, she's got those in spades. But I digress.

Word has it that they're already filming another sequel. Pirates of the Caribbean 3: Tokyo Drift, or something. Much of the above also applies to it, except that there will be different villains and probably a different plot. About continental drift? Likely. But don't hold it against me if it isn't. Maybe it's about Keira Knightley's chest. You can hold that against me.

All in all, on a sliding scale of 1 to 88 stars, with 15 being passing, I give PotC2:DMC two cups of pudding, a piece of lint, and a 1980 Carl Yastrzemski baseball card in excellent-mint condition. Should you go see it, I can guarantee one thing: You'll be seeing a movie. On that, you can bet.

Unless the power goes out, or you die on the way there.

Chained vs. Caged Heat

There's nothing on tonight. We're watching COPS. It's a special episode, "Bad Girls #2", a compilation of arrests featuring psychotic and/or stoned women.

This got me curious. See, the last time I checked, the Chained Heat series of women-in-prison movies was not available on DVD. This was a gaping hole in the medium, an inexcusable void in our cultural collective. At last, this has been rectified. Chained Heat 2, the second and best of the series (featuring a pre-Flav Brigitte Nielsen channeling Ilsa: She-Woman of the SS) is now out on the ubiquitous shiny discs. Rejoice!

Be warned, however. Never confuse the inferior Caged Heat movies with the Chained Heat series. The Chained Heat series ended with #2, but was later revived in the straight-to-video Bound Heat movies (also known as the Girl Camp series, as in the case of Girl Camp 2004: Lesbian Fleshpots and Bound Heat: Tears At Dawn, a.k.a. Girl Camp 2003: Chained Vengeance.)

You will be quizzed on this tomorrow.