Lucky #7

Here's the thing about me and Vegas: I never bet on seven. I don't think I have an aversion to it or anything. But this one time I learned how to play craps, California style -- meaning with two decks of cards, instead of dice, because somehow that's not really "gambling" according to California law, I guess -- and nobody likes seven in craps. Except the assholes who bet against the tables. But if you don't know craps, that doesn't mean anything to you.

I play roulette, too. Not as frequently as I play craps, but I've been known to become a slave to that little white ball. And at the roulette table, I never, ever bet on seven. It's just not one of my numbers, which are 13, 17, 23, 26, 27, 29, 32, and 33. And sometimes 16 and 20. It just depends. Spread the money around, people. That's the key.

Man, now I'm itching to hit the tables. It's been nine months since I was last in a casino, and before that it had been a year and a half, but I do love me some gambling.

Huh, I guess I might have an aversion to the number seven after all. But I've still left myself with that many episodes of Oprah to cover in this one post. Okay, actually eight, if you count the one that aired today. But I haven't watched it yet, and I don't know if I could write a witty, loosely connected intro about the number eight. So you get seven.

The good news is, I don't actually have a lot to say about most of these episodes. The first one in the bunch was about a woman who was arrested at the age of nineteen for selling drugs, broke out of prison a year later, and went on to live a comfortable, upper class life with her husband and three children, all of whom were in the dark about her true past. But that past caught up to her, and she had to go back to jail. You'd think that aging might have led to some growing and learning, perhaps some reflection on how all that heroin and cocaine you were doing wasn't probably the best thing, but no. This lady just kept denying that she ever sold anything, saying that she was promised a plea bargain even though both the prosecutor and her defense attorney said she hadn't been, and basically trying to play the victim role. Yeah, okay, ten to twenty years for selling a small amount of drugs is harsh. But 32 years later, I think it's okay to admit you were a dumb kid who made some mistakes.

For instance, when I was in college, I would often crawl out onto the brick ledge outside the window of my tenth story college job. And I would just sit there, on this ledge that couldn't have been more than two feet out from the side of the building. Sometimes it would be raining. Sometimes I would talk on the phone. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, but today I am okay admitting that it was a dumb thing to do.

Granted, while I was out on that ledge, I wasn't also selling heroin, but still. It was stupid.



Sometimes I think the Oprah staff needs to just ease back on the adjectives a bit. And the punctuation. Because while I know last Friday's episode did, indeed, feature "follow-ups," I don't know that they were either "incredible," nor deserving of an exclamation point.

Some dude won some show Oprah did called Oprah's Big Give. He got a million dollars, but half of it had to go to charity. So now he's back, talking about some charity he started called GiveBack. As part of this charity, the members of the studio audience each got $1000 to donate to a charity of his/her choice. A fine enough idea, I guess, but hardly the "whopper of a surprise!" that the episode description promised on the show's website.

In 2005, a woman named Carolyn was shot in the face by her abusive boyfriend. Her face was completely destroyed, but she's had a lot of plastic surgery, and though she has to wear a prosthetic nose, she looks surprisingly okay. And she wants to talk to the man who shot her, to get some answers. That's it about that segment. Incredible!

And in 2010, a woman in Oprah's audience went into labor three months early. The baby is now fine and, sadly, not named "Oprah."

Last Monday featured Shirley MacLaine and her impressive properties in New Mexico. She seems like a funny enough old broad, and I don't really give a crap whether she believes in UFOs and crystals or the Tooth Fairy or whatever. Who cares? And who's to say she's not right? I hate that my American conditioning means that I have to slightly cringe when MacLaine goes into her New Age stuff, only because I know how most other people will react to her.

"She's crazy!" they'll scream. And then they'll run off to a tax-exempt building and talk to the zombie they believe lives in the sky with his daddy, both of whom watch over the day-to-day activity of every single human being on the planet. Or at least the believers. Because come on, if Jesus Christ is not your personal savior, what's the point of being alive? Fuck 'em. Am I right?

So, Shirley, go on with your bad self. You don't actually sound crazy to me. I truly believe you've seen some freaky shit out in the middle of nowhere.

I really thought I would have more to say about the "SNL Class Reunion" episode, but...it turns out I don't. Um, I love Tina Fey? And I spent my evening, right up until the point when I started writing this post, reading aloud from her book, Bossypants, because Tina Fey is a genius and I love her? That's all I've got.

Damn, I also have nothing of interest to say about "Rock Goddesses." Loose term, of course, since this episode featured Miley Cyrus, who couldn't even be bothered to lip sync to a slightly better version of her own singing, and Avril Lavigne. Really? I fast-forwarded through most of the musical performances, so I guess the good news was that they let these girls sing some long songs.

My only note from this episode: Joan Jett's speaking voice is truly terrifying.

Oh, and does Stevie Nicks only remember the words to "Landslide" these days? I feel like it's all she ever sings.

Okay, because I'm in such a giving mood, here's a hint for the Oprah staff: if you guys are going to give an episode a title, and then create a graphic with that title, and post that title on the website, could you please make sure Oprah knows how to say one of the words? Because even though the episode was called "Oprah's Bloopers, Blunders and 'What Were We Thinking?' Moments," the host could not say the word "bloopers." And it wasn't like she was struggling to get through it in a funny-this-could-be-its-own-blooper way. No. She just said, at least twice, "Bloops and blunders." Bloops. Incorrect.

And, again...underwhelmed. I guess it was nice to start off the "Official Countdown" with a lighthearted episode (interrupted almost every commercial break by a reminder that it's almost over, with that Paul Simon song playing again and again), but this just wasn't enough for me. Or it was too much Tom Bergeron and Kirstie Alley. I don't know. I definitely laughed, but there was a lot of boredom, too. Mostly with Kirstie Alley showing up to dance with Maks or whatever that guy's name is.

Hey, remember back in 1998 when Oprah sang her own theme song? I actually do. Turns out Oprah considers that to be the biggest mistake she's made on the show. Hard to blame her. It's pretty laughable to look at the music video of the song now.

I became super annoyed with entitled people when Oprah showed a clip from a show that aired almost five years ago, in which the audience for that particular show thought they were going to see the "Favorite Things" taping and go home with a lot of swag. Instead, the show was all about how to do a thrifty Christmas. The audience was not happy, as evidenced by the many, many shots of bored/angry looking women shifting in their seats.

Because...they didn't get a lot of free stuff? Seriously? These people should be ashamed of themselves. Oprah should be ashamed, too, frankly. She had her staff actually track down every member of that studio audience, and send them a bunch of free stuff. Two members of that audience were live in studio, and they talked about how disappointed they had been in that show. It was all treated like a joke, but it really rubbed me the wrong way. No one seemed to notice the obvious greedy American/consumerism factor here, but I sure wish the producers had come to their senses before airing this segment.

I had to illegally download four of the seven episodes I'm writing about, because my TiVo just decided to stop working last Monday. I've been so busy with work that I hadn't had time to look at it until Thursday evening, when I had to reset the thing and learn that it hadn't taped Oprah all week. On Saturday, Katie and I just decided to watch Friday's episode out of order, since it was the only one on the TiVo. We ended up powering through the four downloaded episodes all on Sunday, which was quite the thrill.

Turns out that watching Oprah out of order was not our best plan, but not because we didn't understand a plot point or something. No, it's because Friday's episode was gut wrenching. In fact, we only made it through the first four minutes or so before Katie sobbed that I had to turn it off, and that I would have to watch it by myself later. We managed to get back to it last night, but it was brutal.

The gist: a six-year-old kid was kept in a closet by his father and stepmother. They wrapped him in fencing up to his armpits, and tied a chain around that. He was sometimes left there for over a day, crying and screaming to be let out, peeing and pooping on himself, and eating pieces of a brown paper bag that he found on the floor. His 14-year-old stepsister would let him out when she could, feeding him Cheerios and letting him watch cartoons. When his parents found out that he had peed or pooped on himself, the father would pee on him or smear the poop in his face.

Long story short, the parents got caught, and the kid, Clayton, is now nineteen. He seems reasonably well adjusted, but I don't know what's up with these people who go through these heinous events and then don't seek therapy. Clayton said more than once that he's really good at keeping things inside, and I just wonder when we're going to read the tragic end to his story after he's jumped off a bridge or something. As nice and normal as Clayton seems, you don't go through something like that and learn how to deal with it on your own. He needs help. I hope he gets it.

And on that note, Oprah ended the week and told us that there are now 27 episodes remaining. Which is one of my roulette numbers, as you no doubt remember from above. I'm sure that means something.