10/20/10 -- Tyler Perry

A funny thing happened on the way to writing this post. Fourteen minutes and thirteen seconds into the episode, I paused it, looked at Katie, and said, "I can't do it. I hate this guy. I don't want to have to write about him and look like an asshole."

Seriously, though, have you ever tried to sit through an episode of Tyler Perry's House of Payne or Meet the Browns? Have you actually laughed at any of the Madea movies? I haven't. I've seen clips, and I've cringed. Tyler Perry is so, so rich because he makes terrible movies, and people go see his movies because the black community is underrepresented on film and television. But do you really wanted to be represented in that way? Ugh. It makes me crazy.

Okay, but there I go writing about it, which is exactly what I'm not planning on doing. When I said I couldn't handle the idea of an entire post about Tyler Perry's molestation, Katie had a brilliant plan. She told me to write about the rules I have established for myself for this blog, and then to add the new rule we just came up with: veto power.

The rules are, obviously, self-imposed. No one, with the exception of maybe Katie, is making sure I obey them. They are as follows:

1. I must watch the episode on the evening it airs.
2. Except on Fridays. I do not require myself to watch the episode on Friday night, so I try to watch it and get the post up at some point on Saturday.
3. I must take notes in the Ope-book (except on the occasions, like with J.K. Rowling, when I decide to "live blog" the episode).
4. I am not allowed to fast forward through anything but the commercials and really painful musical performances.
5. I must write the post before 11:59 p.m. on the day the show airs. Again, except on Fridays.
6. I am allowed two vetoes over the course of this farewell season. This means that I can decide to just not write about two episodes. I still have to watch the episodes, though I don't have to take notes. And I still have to write about something that day.

Last night, I obviously broke rule #5. I watched Oprah, begrudgingly, all the way through, and was finished by about 7:30 p.m. Then I had to finish up some work, and then I just completely forgot to write a post. I only noticed that this morning when I woke up and instantly checked Sitemeter, and discovered that, for the third time in the last two weeks, someone from Harpo Studios had come to the blog. 

Gayle, if that's you, I appreciate that you're reading. Please make sure to forward the link to Opes.

When I realized that the person at Harpo had searched "Tyler Perry on Oprah," and that I had not written a post on that very subject, I was devastated. I woke up Katie and said, "Do you know what I forgot to do last night?" 

Thus, she spoke her first words this morning when she gasped and said, "Oprah!"

Can you tell this project has deeply engrained itself in our lives?

I did not intend to break rule #5. I only intended to create rule #6 and invoke it for the first time. The troubling thing is that Tyler Perry is coming back on November 5, and the audience will be filled with 200 men who were sexually abused as children. Will that be too soon to exercise the second veto? There will be a lot of episodes to go after that, so that could be a dangerous game. But, good god, is there any chance they could have come up with a better way to promote Perry's new movie, For Colored Girls, which (coincidentally, I'm sure) comes out the same day that episode will air?

Thursday: Lisa Marie Presley. Okay, seriously. How many vetoes am I allowed?