Hey Now, You're An All-Star

Well it's All-Star Weekend in the NBA. Time for a little dunk-contest, 3-point shootout, and all-star action. Nice, gotta love it. Too bad I missed Sir Charles on the Tonight Show this week ...


PAGE PROGRAM ROUNDUP:

Well, I did have a few big-time celeb encounters while working as Ellen CB yesterday (otherwise the most boring job ever aside from said encounters ...). Exchanged hellos with Sean Astin, aka the kid from Goonies, aka Rudy, aka SAMWISE GAMGEE from Lord of the Rings! Seemed like a nice guy. I actually talked to his hair/makeup guy for like 20 minutes about how Sean was an underrated actor and should have received more acclaim for his LOTR work. I was talking about how beloved Goonies is to members of my generation, and the guy had never even seen it! So now he's going to check it out on my recommendation. Funny stuff. I also had a brief encounter with Mr. Saturday Night Fever himself, John Travolta - probably the most surreally bigtime actor I've yet met. Before he arrived, about ten of his friends / managers, etc. arrived and were waiting for Travolta. Finally he comes, fashionably late, decked out in leather jacket. Myself and another page hold the double doors at Ellen open for him and he walks in, says hello to each of us, trailed by his large posse / entourage. Very surreal.

Today was not the most fun day at NBC. I had to arrive at 8:30 am to "open" and it was a loooong day. By the time I had to deal with the crowds at the Tonight Show it was hard to put on my corporate happy face, and what should have been a simple job doing tape and hold turned into a stressful excercise in crowd management. While I do really enjoy working the Tonight Show, all the logistical stuff we have to deal with combined with the time pressure on us is not my favorite thing in the world.

Parents are on the guest list for Monday's show, featuring Chris Rock. Should be a nice, family-friendly time.

DANNY'S O.C. ANALYSIS:

OK, what's wrong with The OC? Unlike some people, I still enjoy the show, but I am getting annoyed with some of the stuff goin' on. Such as?

1.) Seth Cohen is becoming annoying as hell. Originally he was a sympathetic geek who couldn't get the girl and had to deal with being tormented by his peers. He was funny and witty, but also the show's emotional center. Now, he is just a self-parody. His character does nothing but whine and complain and has become weird and creepy (as was POINTED OUT in tonight's episode) in his infatuation with Summer and with his own problems. Give him some REAL problems to deal with and make him more than just comic relief.

2.) Mischa Barton still can't act. And now she is supposed to be carrying this hyped-up lesbian storyline, and it's just not happening.

3.) Too much inbreeding. The show is becoming too insular. Everyone is becoming overly connected, and it's as if no other people exist outside the world of the core OC characters. Which is why Alex is a breath of fresh air - she is completely removed from everything else that's going on in the show. On a sidenote -- where's the EVIL Julie Cooper we all know and love to hate? Bring her back in all her rich-bitch glory.

4.) Aren't they in high school? Again, the characters on the show are becoming so removed from any real-world setting that they apparently no longer go to school or interact in any kind of larger world. I don't think Marissa has gone to class in about four months.

5.) New characters too two-dimensional. On one hand Zach and Lindsay are a breath of fresh air. But of late they have been swept up in Ryan and Seth's soap operas and seem to just be cruising along, waiting to be involved in other people's drama. Neither has the dimension of last year's breakout character, Anna.

So yeah, fix that stuff. BUT: Lindsay is a pretty good new character, Alex has a lot of potential, Ryan has become a lot more likable this season, and the Sandy-Kirsten marital drama is the best storyline the show has going. Still a very entertaining show, but they need to become a little less self-aware and self-referential before the shark has officially been jumped over.

Wow, wrote WAY too much about The OC there.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

I need to find an apartment! Help!

LOST - another excellent episode, with a nice twist ending to wrap up the Sawyer-centered flashbacks, but what happened to the mystery of the island / Ethan Rom? These character pieces are cool, but come on, get on with it already. Bonus: appearance by Robert Patrick, aka Agent Doggett of the X-Files, in a pretty sweet role as a sketchy associate of Sawyer. By the way, kudos to the cool/creepy music they use on this show.

Okay, so in the NBC page lounge they always put up pictures of actors or whatever on the wall that either look like or capture the personality of the new class of pages. So today they put up ours, and I'm ... Ray Romano, with his head tilted back and a weird smile on his face? Oy ... is that an accurate representation of me? Well, it could have been worse, I guess.