All apologies

Your forgiveness, please, for not writing yesterday. (Strange, isn't it, that I'd be apologizing for missing a day when I used to frequently go a week or more between entries.)

I really meant to write something last night, but for some inexplicable reason my net connection crapped out around 1:30, and with no signs of life by 2:30, I gave up and went to bed.

Fox evidently has a new series due out next month called "The O.C.", which can only be based on the Orange Curtain, behind which I was born, raised and (regrettably) again reside. I'd like to elaborate more on this sure-to-be masterpiece of the silver screen, but Fox's site doesn't want to cooperate. So I'll speculate on what this plot might be instead.

Picture the Jack Black classic "Orange County" to get a sense of the scenery: Million-dollar homes in the hills, kids driving $40,000 cars to high school, new depths of family dysfunctionalism. This is very much true to life. Not my life, maybe, but if one were to attempt to describe the Orange County experience in 100 words or less, that would be it.

Now, since Hollywood screen writers lack a grasp of reality *unintentional reality TV pun alert* they'll ascribe to the protagonists of this fair series a level of intellect and character unbefitting of anyone actually from the O.C. So while the soap opera (and could it be anything but a soap opera in Drama Queen Capital of the World Orange County?) centers on the quest of a small group of "outsiders" (only in the O.C. can "outsiders" be popular, win election to Homecoming Court, etc.) to find teen-age redemption, the show will be doing a disservice to the rest of the world. That's right, no sense whatsoever of the utter vapidity -- it truly does boggle the mind -- that characterizes 99 and 44/100ths of the high school crowd in the O.C. In other words, people are going to think far too highly of the folks who hail from here.

Now, I might come across as sounding a bit jaded, but frankly, how can I not? I mean, I watched "Orange County" with great excitement, amazed that Hollywood would produce such a startling exposé. But in the end, I was sorely disappointed. Redemption from Orange County? Redemption in Orange County?! Puh-leese! If a movie were to be true to life, the only means of redemption in Orange County is probably to jump off a cliff into the surf of Dana Point and kill yourself. Either that or to leave town. (My preferred route.) But no one redeems themselves by rejecting the outside world in favor of Orange County. No one.

You look at all the known Orange County success stories. We're going to ignore musicians, since they're part of the dissident subculture, though unfortunately embraced and co-opted by the mainstream, and the Anaheim Angels, who really don't belong to the culture. The people who spring to mind when I think of people who've overcome their O.C. roots to attain greatness are all people who jumped ship at the first sign of land. There's the Gramulous One -- who also scores major points for being distantly related to John Reed, the only American buried in the Kremlin -- and Comrade Peter, both of whom moved away. I'd like to think of myself as another phoenix who has risen from the ashes of the Orange Curtain, but then, I'm still living here. How pathetic.

To wit, "The O.C." will misrepresent life in Orange County. Most of the people who live in the O.C. won't get "The O.C." because they're too shallow to understand "Stupid Behavior Caught on Tape 6", let alone "The O.C." Finally, because the appeal of the O.C. barely extends beyond the O.C., "The O.C." will fare miserably in ratings and fail to survive its summer of crap.

My handicap: a half-dozen shows before they pull the plug on "The O.C." Hopefully even less time till I get to pull my plug on the O.C.

Moral of the story: I shouldn't attempt cultural critiques at 4 a.m. I can be much more scathing when I have my wits about me.