“Sex,” 52 times!

Have you seen the new teen drama on ABC called “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”? It’s attracting quite a throng of teenaged fans – my 16-year-old daughter, included. “Critics are raving about it!” screams the 20-second promo. My teenager makes sure she DVRs it every Monday night, just in case she has too much homework to watch it live.

I had never seen “Secret Life,” but assumed it was about all the normal teen-angst stuff: boys, school, bitchy girls, fashion trends, anxiety over college, that kind of thing. So one night after my daughters were in bed, I decided to watch one of the DVR’d shows.

OH. MY. GAWD!!!

The lead actress is this 16-year-old girl-next-door (with a WEIRD sister) who had a baby with a guy at her school, who happens to now be in love with some other girl who hates the baby momma and creates all kinds of drama.

It's like “Juno” meets “Dallas.”

Then you have all these subplots involving other teenagers who are all trying to get laid in one form or another. It’s a stupid and ridiculous storyline, if you ask me.

Which has me wondering . . . are the writers in Hollywood on strike again? Because I think they replaced REAL writers -- you know, people with an imagination and a gifted facility for words -- with unimaginative idiots who know only three words: sex, condoms and masturbation. Because that’s really all these teen stars ever talk about.

It’s an hour-long show, and when you subtract commercials, there’s probably about 45 minutes of the actual program. Just for grins, I thought I’d count the number of times the word “sex” came up.

Ready for this? I kid you not, the word “sex” was mentioned 52 times in 45 minutes! For all you math dunces, like me, it means that more than once every minute, someone on that show squeezes sex into the conversation somehow.

I mean, really! Is that even remotely realistic? I wonder, when my teenaged daughter is watching this, does she think this is NORMAL? How many times do YOU use the word "sex" in a normal conversation on any given day? Yeah, I know. "Sex sells!" But this is overkill. And believe me, it makes for a VERY BORING hour.

Let me tell you, if this is even the slightest bit representative of what is really going out there in Teen Land, I think we parents should give some serious consideration to sending our teens off to that nice little resort where Tiger Woods has been spending much of his time lately, trying to recover from his own addiction to . . . . SEX!!

There. I said it. Seven times.

Another Stressful Day In Southern California

This past weekend, I took a very long drive down to my old stomping ground in Southern California. My daughters had a scheduled visitation with their father and I had some business to take care of. At the top of my "To Do" list was getting my hair done.

Yeah, I know. Seems like a long way to go for a few highlights. But you have to understand . . . I have been going to my stylist for more than 20 years! I’m having a very hard time giving him up for somebody local. He’s like a brother to me, or maybe more like a sister because he’s gay. He’s been with me through my single years, and all those crazy perms and experiments with reds. He did my hair for my wedding. He talked me into getting my first bob. And he made me look good through two pregnancies and one divorce. He's worth the drive.

The whole point of this blog is to share with you a certain perspective I acquired from this 400-plus-mile trip. And that is this: Southern California is a meat grinder! Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s the entertainment capital of the world. But it was only after I left it and returned for a short weekend did I also discover that it is the STRESS CAPITAL of the world, too.

The minute I came down off the Grapevine and got into the Mulholland Pass, I noticed a distinct physiological change in me. I gripped the steering wheel tighter and I could feel my blood pressure rise. Or maybe it was bile. Most noticeably, I became angry. Really angry. (How did I live like this for so long?) This asshole behind me who was driving a convertible BMW with a pristine-white leather interior was tailgating me so closely, we were practically spooning. I could see him in my rearview mirror gesticulating wildly and pounding his steering wheel as though that would intimidate me into speeding up.

I could hear him thinking, “Hey, You, the Nobody in the Honda! Move the hell over for me, a very important Hollywood type in a fancy car who just had an illicit nooner with my production intern and now I have to make up the time on the freeway to get to the charity auction that my trophy wife is hosting.”

(I lost track of how many stereotypes I just used.)

So I did the only thing a Northern California girl could do . . . . I slowed down. Just slightly. Ha! Take that, Mr. Prematurely Balding.

Once my wheels hit the 405 Freeway, my daughters noticed the change in me immediately. They had just told me days earlier that since we moved up north, I seemed calmer, more happy. My teen even told me that she thought I had become “less strict.” But once I entered the crazy, frantic gravitational pull of Southern California, I became my old self again. And it didn’t make me happy.

Maybe that’s why people in Southern California seem so self-absorbed half the time. It’s not that they really are, it’s just that they are entirely focused on rushing from one place to the next. There’s no time for niceties and common courtesies, because God forbid you should slow down and get trampled by the angry mob.

And if you do slow down it's usually because you're STUCK on a freeway somewhere. They should post road signs that say, "Welcome to Southern Calfiornia. Now turn off your engines because you're not going anywhere!"

Another interesting observation . . . we noticed the thick smog for the first time. When you live down in SoCal as long as we did, it’s not smog. It’s “morning haze.” Well, I can tell you after living up in a smog-free town that boasts fresh air and bright-blue skies, that stuff they’re trying to pass off in SoCal as “haze” is really disgusting, choking air pollution. Don’t be fooled by the lure of the beaches.

What, you say? You want me to say something NICE about my weekend in Orange County? OK . . . the hotel where I stayed was awesome. The Quality Suites at John Wayne Airport. Nothing fancy, just a nice, clean, roomy room at the right price. For $71 a night (which included a Triple A discount), I got a living room with a TV and a separate bedroom with another TV and a king bed. PLUS, a free, cooked-to-order breakfast every morning. Fresh eggs, hot pancakes, coffee, juice, you get the picture.

The only complaint is that on Sunday morning, the line for breakfast snaked way out the door, as everyone had the same idea: to sleep in on Sunday and rush down to breakfast 10 minutes before they closed.

A stressful start to another crazy day in overpopulated – but beautiful! -- Southern California.

Zac’s New Movie – NOT Cute!

Wouldn’t we all love to go back in time to when we were 17 and make decisions that could have altered the courses our lives ended up taking? That’s the premise behind Zac Efron’s new movie, “17 Again.”

Nice premise. But here’s the problem (and you’ll want to click out of this quickly if you haven’t seen the movie and you don’t want to know what happens in the end): Zac’s character got his girlfriend pregnant when they were 17, and he married her. Two kids and many years later, this guy is filled with regrets and “what ifs.”

After two hours on the screen of Zac reliving his very predictable glory years in high school, he realizes that getting a girl pregnant at 17 and marrying her was the right thing to do, after all. And suddenly he has a new appreciation for what he had all along.

Leave it to Hollywood to glamorize teen pregnancy once AGAIN in “17 Again!” Two years ago, it was “Juno.” And wasn’t that smart-mouthed, sassy Juno so adorable, you just wanted to be her – the young girl who accidentally got pregnant, had the baby, then gave it up for adoption right before she went to Senior Prom?

“Juno” and “17 Again!” are the kind of movies that make you all warm and fuzzy inside about teen pregnancy. And THAT’S the problem! These movies are aimed at the teen set, and the danger is, these teenagers leave the theaters thinking that it’s OK to get pregnant when you’re 16 and 17, because it all works out in the end. Just like it does in Hollywood. Life all wrapped up in a pink or blue bow.

My 15-year-old daughter saw this movie with her girlfriends. I didn’t know what the movie was about (except that it was rated PG-13) until I picked them up afterward and they spilled the entire plot and ending for me. Surprised by it all, I asked one of her friends in the car, “What did you think of the ending?”

“It was SO cute!” she gushed.

CUTE?! Since when is getting pregnant at 17 a cute thing? How can my sensible message of college-career-marriage-and-THEN-babies possibly compete with the multi-million-dollar-mega-watt-charm of Zac Efron, who is basically telling these young kids that it’s OK to skip to the end and have babies, first?

Is it any wonder that teen pregnancies are on the rise again for the first time since 1991?

How about if Hollywood made a movie about a teenager who does everything right – gets good grades, stays away from drugs and alcohol, respects her parents, graduates from college, lands a decent job, moves out on her own, falls in love with a great guy, gets married and has babies, in that order?

Or is that just TOO boring??

Related articles by Zemanta

• Zac Efron Tested For Swine Flu (ithinkheblogs.com)


• Zac Efron: The Tweens' Dream (time.com)


• 17 Again Review - Sweet and Funny (filmgecko.com)


• Zac Efron '17 Again' New Clips & Interview (juniorcelebs.com)