“This is a love story. It began on a hot summer night in Santa Barbara, Calif., when Tamara Langman helped kill the yellow-eyed demon known as Prince Malchezaar. She was logged into World of Warcraft, the multiplayer fantasy game, and her avatar — Arixi Fizzlebolt, a busty gnome with three blond pigtails — had also managed to pique the interest of John Bentley, a k a Weulfgar McDoal.” Are you ready to have your world rocked? Happily ever after, those two! (Also a hetero-fellow met a lady World of Warcraft avatar and she actually turned out to be IRL biofemale!) So we encourage you to go out and meet that person/troll/furry that you’ve been flirting with via computer and do them in person this weekend. Sure, it helps if you’re open to all forms of genitalia, but it’s 2011, don’t be so judgmental. Live a little! Parts is parts! It’s like the poet said: What do you say to taking chances? What do you say to jumping off the edge? Let Celine Dion be your spirit animal!

Here is a nice Times rave for Matthew Zapruder’s latest collection of poems, Come On All You Ghosts. You will remember him from, yes, the poetry section. Don’t you just want to spend your weekend laying down, with your feet out the window, reading some poetry? Like, starting now?

My fondest childhood memories involve staying home sick from school and getting to watch TV on the couch. There were always four “I Love Lucy” episodes in a row at midday, which made me extremely happy. It’s a show that is so commonplace in the firmament that we tend to forget just how influential and innovative it actually was. Anyway, trailblazing writer Madelyn Pugh Davis, who had a hand in every episode, has died. She was 90.

by Daniel Roberts

27. “Dead Like Me” (Showtime)
26. “Early Edition” (CBS)
25. “Blind Justice” (ABC)
24. “The District” (CBS)
23. “Windfall” (NBC)
22. “It’s Like, You Know…” (ABC)
21. “The Tick” (Fox)
20. “Terriers” (FX)
19. “Undeclared” (Fox)
18. “Titus” (Fox)
17. “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” (NBC)
16. “Greg the Bunny” (Fox)
15. “Everwood” (WB)
14. “NewsRadio” (NBC)
13. “Rome” (HBO)
12. “Firefly” (Fox)
11. “Lucky Louie” (HBO) [reworked as “Louie” on FX]
10. “Party Down” (STARZ)
9. “Kitchen Confidential” (Fox)
8. “Mr. Show” (HBO)
7. “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” (NBC)
6. “Flight of the Conchords” (HBO)
5. “Futurama” (Fox) [resurrected by Comedy Central]
4. “Jack & Bobby” (WB)
3. “The Sifl and Olly Show” (MTV)
2. “Arrested Development” (Fox)
1. “Freaks and Geeks” (NBC)

Daniel Roberts is a magazine reporter in New York.

“’Look I am getting old. This morning I was chasing my secretary to do her on the table and she said: ‘Prime Minister we only did it two hours ago.’ So you see my memory is going.”
 — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, currently facing charges of paying an underage prostitute for sex, is not going to let some silly scandal keep him from yukking it up. The man was born to entertain.

It’s Valley of the Dolls, everyone! This is definitely Gateway Classic Trash. It’s that first friend who hands you two pills and tells you that what you REALLY need is just one good night’s sleep; the next thing you know, you’re doing European “art” films to support your loser boyfriend, and your bookshelf is stuffed with Themes And Variations On Flowers In The Attic. Valley of the Dolls goes down pretty easy, lovelies. I’m going to get the basics out of the way, and then you should all have at it in the comments.

I’m sure that some of you cheated and just watched the movie. And what do I care — who am I, your librarian? I initially wrote four breathless paragraphs about the movie, and then had to say, hey, step off, Nicole, no one wants to talk about how Judy Garland lost the role of Helen Lawson for being, um, Judy, much less argue about whether Patty Duke was actually a little more adorable than Sharon Tate (who, to be fair, looks, correctly enough, like a Dippy Angel From Gawwwd in this movie). So we’ll stick to the book, but, trust, you want to Netflix this. Harlan Ellison wrote the original screenplay before running in terror! They forced a happy ending on us! Patty Duke is Sean Astin’s mom! She had NO idea who the father was! (That doesn’t even have anything to do with the movie, it’s just that the casting alone on this movie is like being inside Carrie Fisher’s mind for a couple of hours.)

THE BOOK, people. You can really think of it as a sequel to Peyton Place, should you wish, with Anne Welles arriving in New York fresh off the bus from her wee New England town in order to experience Life. Lawrenceville, to be fair, seems to have involved fewer sheep-pen-murders and secret abortions and enemas, but I’m sure that Jacqueline Susann could have sexed it up if given a little time. Anne herself, of course, starts out so aggravatingly naive that you WANT to stuff pills down her throat. Oh, what, the 40-something actress WON’T appreciate it if I tell her I’ve loved her since I was a little girl? THOSE people are LOVERS? I might make a perfectly decent salary in Manhattan and still not have enough money at the end of the week? Honestly, within two chapters you’re all “Christ, Anne, just marry the super-rich douche you don’t really love, don’t sign a pre-nup, divorce him ASAP, and then buy pretty hats.” Which sounds terrible, but then again NO ONE gets out of this novel with her dignity intact, you know?

This, obviously, is why you like Neely O’Hara best, because she’s Just Like Us!, but with, you know, the ability to sing and dance and act. Here’s her bitching about men in New York: “I’ve never had a real date. The only men I know are my brother-in-law and his partner Dickie. And Dickie’s a fag.” (People say “fag” a lot in Valley of the Dolls. They also say things like, “There’s nothing like a wop in the kip.”) She adds “O’Hara” as her stage name as soon as she finishes Gone With The Wind. She eats whatever the 1940s equivalent of four sleeves of Thin Mints is! Until, obviously, she goes on her obligatory-ingenue-crash-diet — which, and I can only speak for myself, gives you a real complex if you’re ALSO 5’5, and had no idea that being 118 pounds would make you a fuckin’ whale.

Jennifer North, love her, is a gorgeous Ralph Wiggum. She would pronounce it “Ver-sayce.” She has adorable vanilla lesbian sex with a nice Spanish girl, because, well, why not? She has no guile (until she gets hooked on the dolls, obvi). She does that thing you always imagine stunningly beautiful people do: “She dropped her bra and pants to the floor and stood before the full-length mirror. She surveyed her body with clinical interest. It was perfect.” She’s the one your ex gets engaged to fifteen seconds after you break up, and then you have that YOUR GIRL IS LOVELY, HUBBLE moment, and you feel like a tool because you’re not even original, you know? Don’t bother hating Jennifer — obviously, she winds up dead. But a SELF-SACRIFICING kind of dead.

Fun, right? It totally is. Valley of the Dolls is All About Eve mixed with The Best Of Everything mixed with “Gypsy!” mixed with… Ralph Wiggum. And, for the most part, the characters keep their shit together until (respectively): p. 220 (Anne realizes that her boyfriend is a jerk who has no intention of committing to her), p. 227 (Neely starts the dolls), and p. 336 (Jennifer gets accidentally caught in her blouse and suffocates to death. JOKE, she kills herself rather than lose her boobs, which her weirdo Senator boyfriend calls “his babies,” to cancer). Before then, it could really be Valley of the Bi-Coastal Friends Who Have Sexy Adventures. When it starts to get rough, though, it gets rough fast.

Important Topic Number One: Sex!
Mad props to Jacqueline Susann for Neely’s description of losing her virginity to her adorbs Jewish boyfriend:

“It hurt a lot and I didn’t come. But Mel made me come the other way.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He went down on me.”
“Neely!” (ed.: SHUT UP, Anne)

Neely even goes on to say, “I bet coming the other way won’t be half as great,” and you think, God, Neely, you are the coolest.

Important Topic Number Two: Drugs!
First up, MOST barbiturates aren’t really any fun for anyone. My elderly dog is on a decent regimen of seizure-preventing phenobarbital (one of the original dolls), which, although basically lacking in any recreational potential — not that I would know, or anything, but you have to take about six of the dog-size pills with a glass of wine in order to feel sort of warm and snuggly THE NEXT DAY — and he shows no sign of being amused when you tell him to “SPARKLE, DENALI, SPARKLE!” I have no personal experience with Seconal, Nembutal or the other faster-acting barbs, but, generally, you should probably ask yourself, “Did Edie Sedgwick take these drugs? How did that work out for her?” Honestly, most of these fall more in the category of “drugs given to you by Louis B. Mayer so that you’ll dance with Mickey Rooney for 18-hour days, followed by drugs that will knock you out for a few hours,” than they do “drugs you take to have an awesome time.” (We’ll save those for Classic Trash 3: Hammer of the Gods.)

Now we come to the fundamental question posed by Classic Trash: Is it any good?

Sure, why not? The characters are pretty broadly drawn, but some of them ring reasonably true (Helen Lawson, especially), and it ticks along merrily at 120 mph, and people wind up miserable, so it seems artistic! What more do you want?

Things Men Often Turn Out To Be, According To Jacqueline Susann

1. Drunks.
2. Mental defectives.
3. Secretly Jewish.
4. Secretly Catholic.
5. Revolting kissers.
6. Uninsured.

Susann was rumored to be bisexual, but probably in that sort of Evan Rachel Wood way. The strongest evidence, as far as I can tell, is that she reportedly found it sensual to stroke her friend’s breasts (who doesn’t!), and that she tried to start something with both Coco Chanel and Ethel Merman, which, honestly, just makes her sound like she was super fun to have at your drug-fueled theater party.

Okay, kids, let’s talk. Some questions to get you started!

• Wait, IS it any good?
• Who, in your opinion, makes the stupidest decision in the entire book? GENUINELY CURIOUS.
• Any quibbles with the canonical list of who’s based on who?:
Neely O’Hara — Judy Garland, Jennifer North — Marilyn Monroe, Helen Lawson — Ethel Merman, Tony Polar — Dean Martin (ouch).
• Is Evan Rachel Wood really bi?
• Did she really have sex with Marilyn Manson, not just once, but many different times?

Discuss below and then let’s meet back here in two weeks to talk about HAMMER OF THE GODS.

Nicole Cliffe is the proprietor of Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews. She lives, mostly willingly, in Sandy, Utah (much like the Henricksons — she sees herself as a “Margene”), and her favorite work of Classic Trash is Jilly Cooper’s Riders.

“The front label of Mommyjuice features a drawing of a woman juggling a house, teddy bear and computer. The back label advises moms to ‘tuck your kids into bed, sit down and have a glass of Mommyjuice. Because you deserve it.’ The wine is available in a white Chardonnay and a red mixed blend.”
 — Wine wars! The folks behind “Mommy’s Time Out,” an Italian wine whose label “shows an empty chair facing a corner. A wine bottle and glass sit on a table next to the chair,” are suing the Mommyjuice people for trademark violations.

Scre4m’s task was never easy. Not only was it rebooting the first “self-aware horror franchise” and hauling the institutional weight of a generation, it was also selling its shtick to a new batch of teens so savvy they can plug their tongues directly into iPads to sync their brains. Remember the halcyon innocence of 1996? How tickled we were that a horror movie was listing slasher-flick rules and mocking Richard Gere? Yeah, kids now consider that about as edgy as a Nu Shooz reunion tour.

And sure enough, no one wanted to see it. Opening weekend was dismal, grossing a mere $18.7 million (which ain’t bad for a horror flick, ’til you consider the projections were for over $40 mill). The youngs are apparently too busy planning Green Beret death missions on Rebecca Black. As for us olds, well, we’re famous for not wanting to be reminded that we’re old — no one wants to see Sidney Prescott as the hoary 30-something with neck wrinkles and a book deal.

Still, despite the fact that it bombed harder than a convent donkey show, Scre4m is nontheless an important contribution to the Horror Canon. In fact, I’m gonna go ahead and dub it the first mainstream feminist horror film.

From the ultra-meta opening to the semi-ridiculous ending, this is a woman’s show. The ladies dominate nearly every scene, bitching, snarking, joking, and [WARNING, HERE COMES A BIG FAT SPOILER] stabbing with rapturous abandon. And, most important of all, they’re not being punished for it. There’s no comeuppance for hitting on another man’s husband or telling the hot jock to fuck off. The notable one-liners, ballsy moves, wisecracks — all are made by girls (with the exception of a “Please don’t kill me, I’m gay!” crack from Erik Knudsen and Anthony Anderson yelling “Fuck Bruce Willis!”)

The male characters are bumbling, depth-free distractions, there to look like fools, or look like fools and then get killed, or just serve as continuous reminders of the ’90s. (It’s David Arquette looking like a washed-up gambling addict! And look! They even cast a Culkin!) Meanwhile, the chicks get to shout and punch and spout out lists of classic horror films and treat boys like dryer lint and generally act AWESOME. And they don’t get killed for doing so (well, ok, some of them get killed — but Jesus, it’s a horror movie).

Even ’90s weep-queen Neve Campbell adds a bit more gravitas to Sidney’s trademark watery squint. (Funny how Neve looks exactly the same as she did in ‘96… or is it just that I’ve aged at the exact same rate? Don’t answer that.)

But the true femme accompli here is Courteney Cox. She slashes her way out of the 40-something female stereotype, and takes over this movie with a flick of her scorn-ready (albeit Botox-ed to the hilt) brow. Let’s face it: Few film archetypes are more brutal than the “older woman in a horror movie” — either you’re the psycho nutcase (Friday the 13th, Carrie, Rosemary’s Baby) or you’re the pathetic victim (nearly every other movie). And no matter what, you’re ALWAYS an obsessive mother.

Cox pulls off a pretty impressive coup, upstaging not only the cute flouncing teens, but also her 15-years-younger self. Her character — now successful, childless (!), and utterly bored with the “middle-aged wife” role — shrugs off all orders to “stay out of it” and leaps back into the murderous fray, husbands, younger blondes and kitchen knives be damned. She takes nothing for granted, and thinks not a second about sneaking into dark corners to catch homicidal fruitcakes (and bitch is 47!!!). While Arquette and Campbell slide into their ’90s cliché groove, Cox reinvents and one-ups, kicking this meta-fest to life and providing the only sexy thing onscreen, gelatinous lips and all. Gale Weathers is shrewd, aggressive, cunning, but never heartless;despite it all, she still loves that stupefied ass clown Dewey. And she does it all while sporting a better ass than the 20-somethings. And [yet another spoiler coming] she doesn’t even have to die for it!

Oh yeah, and there’s not a hint of sex or drugs. Seriously. Not even a half-finished joint or awkward boob-grab. Apparently teens today have moved on to other pursuits — like creating Internet memes and starring in reality shows.

Melissa Lafsky wants to be scared by your movie.

“That rabbits like to hop, of course, is hardly a secret. Kaninhop, though, involves bunnies barrelling their way through courses consisting of several small jumps of varying height and breadth — not unlike horse jumping. And it is a hobby which has spent the last few decades slowly spreading around the world from its origins in Sweden in the early 1980s. In addition to several countries in Europe, the pasttime has also become popular in the United States and Canada — and there are even chapters in Japan.”
 — Welcome to the world of competitive bunny jumping. There are photos!

Jens Gyldenkærne Clausen, from Flickr.

France (or as I like to call it, Cheesecrime Nation) is the worst country on the planet, and now this worst country is all hopped up in a scandal and growing worser, because they are planning on denying the right of their riot cops to drink alcohol with lunch.

Is there really more to say on this topic?

The police union is — sorry, some of the MULTIPLE French police unions are — calling for keeping the right to get toasted at lunch, which will come in handy, because it’s so much easier to go searching for women in headscarves to treat poorly when you’ve had a few. Honestly I’d rather take my chances in Ciudad Juarez than Paris.