Viggle Room

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

“I used to think I had narcissistic personality disorder,” James Tuttle once commented to a post of mine on the subject.  “Then I discovered I just enjoyed being good-looking.”  Tuttle is not just good-looking.  In online parlance he is “VGL,” or Very Good-Looking, which from the early years of hooking up online I have been calling “viggle.”  This is because invariably some total tool who would refer to himself as VGL in his profile is not that at all, and is therefore worthy of ridicule.

If you ever need a dose of viggle, ohlalamag.com is the place to go. This detail is from a recent Dolce & Gabbana campaign, a.k.a. Me and My Boys (I wish).

Indeed, one of the first rules of online dating is that a guy is rarely the adjectives he uses to describe himself.  “Hot,” “sexy,” “hung” are common enough delusions/mendacious cacas, but my alarm bells sound loudest when some dude describes himself as “sane,” “normal,” “fun,” “smart,” or, worst of all, “cool.” 

Love The Unknown

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | INDIA FILES

by James Killough

According to Indian Railways I shouldn’t be writing this.  It’s not like I’ve ever misbehaved on an Indian train, unless you count the time my mother and I were taking an overnight local from Jaipur to Bikaner—which would be a three-hour drive on American roads—and I was hoisting her up to the top bunk of the sleeper, and she kept falling off, and we were laughing so hard she said, “Oh, no, I think I’ve wet myself,” which meant she had to get down and the whole process was repeated again.

No.  The reason Indian Railways doesn’t think I should be writing this is because, according to them, I have been dead for twenty years.

This masterpiece of assemblage art is entitled "Attack of the Killough Blog, 2011," an homage to five months of PFC, by James Killough.

This is, of course, entirely the Raja of Kotwara’s fault.  Creepy bastard.  I’m not talking about the New Raja, but the old one, the New Raja’s father.  I never knew his name because I just called him Raja-sahib like everyone else.  But he certainly knew mine.

La Migra Migraine

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | REVIEW

by James Killough

There is nothing inherently wrong with A Better Life, the new film by writer-director Chris Weitz, also known in some industry circles as the Man Who Killed New Line Cinema, although I suspect he just delivered the coup de grace with his underperforming Golden Compass.  He got right back in the Hollywood crap saddle with New Moon, which I don’t think I’ve seen, or maybe I have but I was thirty-five thousand feet over Greenland in a Xanax cloud, and my attention was derailed by why I am more attracted to Kristen Stewart than I am to Taylor Lautner.

If my shrink were playing a game of association with me and said, “Taylor Lautner,” I would instantly reply “guinea pig.”  I think it’s his nose.

I know, I should have put a pic of Taylor Bloody Lautner with his shirt off here. But I can't bring myself to do it. So I'm putting in Mexican actor Gabriel Garcia Bernal and asking, What's up, man? Where have you gone? We love you.

A Better Life isn’t just about immigrants from Central America, both Salvadorans and Mexicans, it’s about Los Angeles, the real city, not the West Side/Hollywood bubble that is most often portrayed in film and on TV. 

If You Dare Wear Short Shorts

TUTTLE MODE

by James Tuttle

Gentle Reader,

Are you sitting down?  If not, maybe you should be.  I have something to tell you.  You may have come to know me as an icon of taste and style over these past weeks but I have a terrible admission.  I’m not actually perfect.  For one thing, my left thumb bends a little crooked, the result of a nasty childhood break.  And that’s not the worst of it.  I am also recovering from an acute addiction problem.

The last thing I wanted to do was disappoint you, especially now that we’ve become so close.  If you think back over our history, we’ve been betrayed by Balmain together, dealt with trampy Housewives, and confronted drag as an art form.  You and I have even learned some tricks for the over-40 guy and gone on the lam from the damn mafia, so I feel I should be honest with you.  I’m just going to say it.  I was addicted to HGTV.

I don’t know how it started.  I can’t even remember which show I first watched on this seductive network but it was quickly followed by another and then another until HGTV was on whenever I was home.  You have to admit that Candice Olsen does very glamorous work with her gas fireplaces and crystal chandeliers.  David Bromstad designed great rooms in the Bay Area, especially when he wasn’t wearing his shirt, before he tanked on the Miami season.  Maybe he started wearing his shirt too much.

David Bromstad could really warm up a room without his shirt on. Then he put one on and went to Miami and... ho hum.

And don’t get me started on Sarah’s House!  Unbeknownst to them, I was involved a love triangle with Sarah and her witty sidekick Tommy, as they overhauled a sixties suburban split-level one season and then a Victorian farmhouse the next.  

The Circumstantial Exile

How crunchy delicious does "The Borgias" look? It's gonna kick the shit out of "Tudors," I reckon.

BLOGIRADE

by James Killough

Tomorrow will be the season finale of Californication, after which I shall willingly slip into watching Nurse Jackie and less willingly United States of Tara; I find most of Tara’s personas to be more annoying than she does, and I don’t believe her husband loves her so much to put up with that. I’m really psyched about The Borgias.  Jeremy Irons’ voice makes me regret I don’t smoke any more.  He sounds like a total industrial accident.  So glamorous.

I’m going to discuss Californication and its plot, so if you don’t want to read further, please don’t make me say SPOILER ALERT, a term that is equally as annoying as “blog” or “hater.”

The basic story line over four seasons so far: a sexy, rakish writer, Hank Moody (David Duchovny), moved with his girlfriend, Karen (Natascha McElhone), and their daughter, Becca, from New York to Venice Beach in Los Angeles because they were adapting a book of his for the screen.  Hank is deeply in love with Karen, but can’t stay out of trouble much less out of other women’s pussies.  Many, many other women’s pussies.  Snatch is thrown at him like roses at an opera singer.  Hank is basically the wet dream/pet project of almost every male producer in LA I have ever met: the Casanova character: talented, louche, up to his eyeballs in cooch despite himself, chased by the law for things he did but weren’t really his fault.  This is the reason 90% of these guys get into film to begin with: to get laid.  A lot.  And all they end up with is three simultaneous alimonies and a litany of crap on their filmographies.

Duchovny is good at this because he is entirely believable and sympathetic; apparently he checked himself into sex addiction rehab a couple of years ago, so the role of Hank isn’t a stretch for him.  Even better than Duchovny, and someone I would give a molar or two to work with, is Natascha McElhone.  What a revelation she is, and so beautiful to look at.