Reality Matters_ 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can't Stop Watching - Anna David [29]
One visit to the section of the MSNBC Web site devoted to Lockup, I’m happy to say, and it’s clear the producers have preserved the family-friendly nature of the enterprise: “Hi, everyone, My name is Elise Warner. Rasha Drachkovitch, of 44 Blue Productions, and I are the executive producers of MSNBC’s Lockup. I hope you will find Newsvine to be a great source of information about the shows…and an even better place to meet other Lockup fans.”
That’s right. If you don’t have a family of your own, you can hook up with other Lockup aficionados. Talk about a match made in heaven! Am I the only one sniffing romance? Here’s Elise opening her heart to a coupled-up fan who just wanted to share the magic, on April 7 of last year: “Hi Scott! It’s so great to hear how much you and your girlfriend love the show…”
I’m not usually such a puppies-and-buttercups kind of guy, but, damn it, when I think of the possibilities of a bond based on a shared love of watching grown men in chains, condemned to a lifetime behind bars—well, where are the words?
If I were one of those big-city mayors cutting tax deals and land-use exceptions to lure corporate-based ballparks into their districts, I’d say you’re backing the wrong pony, Your Honors. Why not hitch your wagon to the one dependable growth industry this nation has left—incarceration? Forget the Mets or the Raiders, how about putting those corporate boxes in a penitentiary—stepping things up to the next generation of incarcer-tainment, Prisons with Stadium Seating?
Sure, it’s exciting to watch outlaws in Pelican Bay and San Quentin play hide the trazor with COs, but, as the professional sports fans will tell you, there’s nothing like seeing something under the lights, with the roar of the crowd—in this case, the peculiar must generated by the stale socks-and-flatulence of a few thousand overcrowded inmates. Sooner or later, some enterprising governor—my money’s on Schwarzenegger—looking for ways to tug his ever-diminishing budget back from the brink, will hit on the idea of combining Folsom with Dodger Stadium.
Which is a whole new reality.
8
BECOMING A LADY
Amelie Gillette
WATCHING LADETTE TO LADY ON THE SUNDANCE CHANNEL one lazy Saturday afternoon, I was instantly reminded of Princess Diana’s death—which probably isn’t the association the producers were hoping for. Still, it happens.
I was at an after-party for a rave in New Orleans when I found out that Princess Diana had died. I’m not bragging, obviously. “After-party” and “rave” are words that haven’t been used boastfully since about 1997, and even then it was mostly among teenagers in parts of the country that were the absolute last to get the raves-are-thumping-neon-nightmares memo: high school kids in pacifier necklaces and bright yellow SUGAR DADDY T-shirts—which is exactly who I was when a skinny blond kid named Jason, who looked like he was being swallowed from the feet up by denim, ambled across the dewy green grass of the lakefront, flopped down on the blanket beneath the tree where my friends and I were wasting our lives, and exhaled, “Y’all, did you hear? Princess Diana is dead.”
This being an after-party for a rave, none of us moved for about the next twenty minutes or so, at least until the sky stopped spinning and the ringing in our ears went down to a mildly pleasant hum. Finally, someone spoke. “I know how to curtsy to Princess Diana.” For me, this sentence was especially surprising to hear, mostly because I was the one saying it. Still, I did know how to curtsy before royalty: hands at your sides to keep your skirt full but also to steady yourself, the right foot tracing a slight semicircle on the floor before coming in behind the left foot as your knees bend in almost a crouch, your head bowed gracefully. (Only actual royalty gets the head bow—an important distinction in New Orleans, where Mardi Gras kings and queens walk among the plebes.) Within a few minutes, I was on my feet, fluffing out my oversized