Wedgwood

We've been watching "Upstairs Downstairs," the British series from the early 1970s, again. It's about the Bellamy family and their servants as they negotiate the changing world of the early 20th century. The two Bellamy children grow up to reject their parents values. The daughter is filled with upper class guilt and a desire to shake off the stifling restrictions on upper class women. The son acts like many spoiled second generation wealthy sons. He gambles, drinks, finds work boring, and knocks up one of the servant on his way to ruining his life. The servants have their own adjustments to make, but in some ways they have some flexibility to put their lives back together when change blows their lives open because there is no safety net and no rescue from a mistake.

The Wedgwood teapot reminds me of the refined and stratified existence in the Victorian England of the Bellamys. I have one cracked teapot that I love for its color and detail, but not an entire prestine set that Mrs. Bellamy would have possessed.

Nurse Jackie

Oh yes. Edie Falco is back and luminous as a no-nonsense nurse with an attitude on a new Showtime series "Nurse Jackie." She's the scrappy nurse that will save your life while practicing her own form of justice. It's funny and dark and worth every second of your time.

The doctors are cartoonish, but hey, this is from the nurse's POV. My sister is a nurse and, while nurses aren't all saints, some doctors are baffoons.

My favorite line is when Jackie is talking to a barely out of the womb yappy intern: "Let me ask you something? Shut up. I like quiet and mean. those are my people." Priceless.

http://www.sho.com/site/nursejackie/home.do

What Should You Do?

There’s no denying it, with three pee stories, I have officially moved into the realm of too-many-stories-about pee.

I was worked on a show called “What Should You Do?” for Lifetime TV. It was a great show about women overcoming the most difficult situations they would ever face. They were attacked, stalked, survived fires, hurricanes, rapes, and robberies. You name it, the women we profiled survived it. The premise of the show was to answer the question, what did these women do to save themselves? I admired every woman that I spoke with.

One day I was working on several stories at once and ran to the bathroom to pee. I was distracted and busy and slouched on the seat. When I pulled up my jeans, the back waistband was wet. What the H-E-L-L? I had peed on my jeans. Ick.

There was nothing for it but to go back to work until I dried off. Lovely. Once back at my desk, I tried to forget that I had a pee-soaked waistband. Needless to say, I sat perched on the seat and away from the back of the chair. One of the directors going out to tape a story came into my office to talk. She stopped mid sentence.

“It smells like beer in here,” she said.

“Oh, does it?”

Note to self, pee smells like beer.

What would the heroic women think if they knew that, for one afternoon, they were talking to a woman that “smelled like beer?” They'd tell me what to do.

Flat as a Board

There's a shift that took place without any of us noticing. Every tv starlet and movie actress is with boobage (with the exception of Debra Messing who had a bigger ass than she did breasts so was considered flat chested, that is until she had a baby and she's probably full figured by now).

Watch the '80s nighttime soap opera Falcon Crest and every woman on the show is flat as a board. I mean no curves of any kind. That's what skinny girls look like. Stick with me, the Bio channel (we know it's Biography, and changing the moniker to Bio isn't going to attract the 18-35 year olds who, according to the suits, see the word "biography" and their minds turn off) is showing episodes of the mid-1980s sitcom Kate & Allie. Jane Curtin and Susan Saint James have nothin'. There as flat as their teenage daughters. My friend, B, says it's the hormones in the chicken, milk and cows we grew up eating. Are vegetarians the only women left with pale complexions and tiny tits? What happened in the last 20 years? Discuss.