HIATUS

Blog on temporary hiatus due to:

Aries Camille
Born 1/16/07
7 lbs. 11 oz

In the meantime, please visit the PGP Classic Soap Blog at http://pgpclassicsoaps.blogspot.com/ for all your soap news and gossip needs.

TURN, TURN, TURN

In the mid to late 1980s, at the Academy Awards, Chevy Chase (you know it was 20 years ago because not only was Chevy asked to present, he was allowed a couple of minutes to ramble freely) did a bit pondering whether film-critics, as children, were told, "Son, when you grow up, I want you to spend all your time going to the movies, then telling people what a miserable time you've had."

Well, thanks to the Internet, "everybody's a critic" is more true now than it's ever been before. And a majority of these newly minted experts do seem to get off on telling people what a miserable time they're having.

Take the "fan" message boards for every television show in existence (and a few that were cancelled seasons ago). Easily eighty percent of the messages are people going on and on and on and on about how much they hate, hate, hate watching the show in question.

I'm sorry, are they all at Abu Grahib and this is their daily torture session? Does their television set only broadcast one channel for one hour a day? Are they under house arrest wherein their ankle bracelet offers electro-shock if they attempt to exit the reach of their cathode ray?

Why are people watching shows that make them so unhappy? (For the record, these are the same "fans" that cheer when the show's ratings go down -- for it proves what they've been saying so insistently, the show sucks and fan fiction is obviously the only way to save it; and are downright glum when the ratings go up; but -- but -- but, how could that be? How can anyone anywhere be enjoying what's being broadcast? Don't all people want exactly the same thing out of their entertainment?).

All this carping not only makes "fan" message boards a bummer, it does something far worse: it makes them dull. The same people posting the same thing, often three, four, five times a day, beating the same horse until it's not only dead, but stripped and reduced to powder, isn't my idea of a good time.

But then again, I'm one of those weirdos who, when a show I love goes bad, at least for me, (Chicago Hope, Buffy, Desperate Housewives, Battlestar Galactica, Seinfeld), I simply switch the channel.

Or delete a message board's URL from my favorite places.

THE GRANDMOTHER CLAUSE

This isn't The Santa Clause 2. It's isn't even Groucho and Chico Marx's bit about "Sanity Clause." This is the clause that, in the 1970s and 80s, several actresses had put into their soap contracts, stating that they could not be made grandmothers on the show.

Eileen Fulton (Lisa; ATWT)... demanded that a "grandmother" clause be put into her contract stipulating Lisa never have a grandchild. When Lisa's son Tom and daughter-in-law Margo suffered through a miscarriage in the mid 1980s, Fulton was flooded with hate mail, although she had dropped the clause years before the storyline occurred.

GH's Denise Alexander (Leslie) also had the clause in her contract. (No wonder Luke & Laura had to have little Lucky off-screen).

Rumors whisper of similar deals for Susan Lucci (Erica; AMC) and Michelle Lee (Karen; KL).

If that was the case with Lucci, it obviously disappeared before Bianca gave birth to Miranda. And now that Lucci is a grandmother in real-life, it's probably unlikely to reappear.

Besides, haven't these people heard? Grandparents are hot on daytime. Take a look at how many greats some of these characters have hyphenated to their names:

GL's Alan Spaulding is a brand new great-grandfather now that granddaughter Lizzie has given birth to little Sarah.

ATWT's Nancy Hughes would have been a great-great grandmother if Gwen's baby with Casey had lived.

Asa Buchanan on OLTL is grandfather to Kevin who became grandfather to his ex-wife, Kelly's son, Zane, courtesy of Kevin's late son, Duke. Making Asa Zane's great-great grandfather.

DOOL's Alice became a great-great grandmother all the way back in 1977 to little Scotty Banning. He was played by Rick Hearst in 1989, so it's very conceivable (pun intended) that he's had a passel of kids by now (off-screen), making Alice a great-great-great grandmother.

And they all look great!

Must owe it to a terrific moisturizer.