Teen Sees It In The Stars
Poor, poor Shiri. The darling of the teen-mag cover spread for a good three hours during Roswell's first season, The Human Without A Cause now sits trapped at her grudge job in the civil service sector of Lady Whittaker's office, rotting away like so many thematically ambiguous discarded Skins. Meanwhile, the show's true breakout stars have emerged as the alien characters, Katherine "C Cup" Heigl, Jason "D Cup" Behr, and Brendan "Loving Cup" Fehr, appearing on the cover of the November issue of Teen Magazine just to the left of the linguistically "Wha?"-inducing blurb, "Roswell's superstars: their revealing astrocasts." Finally settling on a set of stars who don't require gauzy femme DW Griffith lighting or the careful selection of a frilly pastel sundress that will adequately cover the back panel of a Vicki The Talking Robot fuse box (poor, poor Shiri), Teen took these three actors and employed the vast clairvoyant acumen of "Susan Miller of Astrologyzone.go.com to chart the astro-stars of Roswell's extraterrestrial trio." On the cover, Jason is clad in black leather everything and a question mark at the end of the words "hair and makeup," Brendan is sporting a white long-sleeved t-shirt, black leather pants, a belt buckle so big and silver and gaudy that the Parton family is still sitting around Memphis wondering what ever became of their beloved family crest, and Katherine separates them, her blonde tresses (I beg to differ…check the roots) falling over her blue zip-up jacket and her even bluer skintight pants. She may look like she's the only remaining member of an ill conceived, never-executed shot at playing the title role in a Samantha Fox cover band, but I can't complain about the breakout star's outfit too loudly; she's the least of numerous casting evils, and at least they put her in front.
In the article itself, titled "Heavenly Creatures" (the original title, "Yeah, We GET IT" must have been scrapped due to MBTV shamelessly co-opting said phrase), we join the three cast members in conversation with aforementioned astrologer Susan Miller and Teen interviewer Jodi Bryson, as Dr. Susan offers astrology readings in an out-of-this-world center spread. See you on page 48. Try not to herniate a disc flipping too fast. I'm excited, too.
Katherine Heigl is an "angel-faced Sagittarius." We learn in the introduction to her section that "[I]t's not her fault, but Katherine Heigl can make a girl feel so doggy and butt-ugly." Though beautiful, we learn from the carefully worded brief her publicist so thoughtfully prepared, she is "so modest about it that you're forced to like her because she's undeniably down-to-earth (her most prized possession is her dog)." So because she didn't leap into the interviewing fray citing her love for "her native Hindi healing stones" or "the collected works of L. Ron Hubbard" or "my hotty gams…you want a closer look?", we are instructed to believe in her innate even-keeled nature. Good enough for me…it's not like I know the girl. But I mean really: didn't Napoleon have a dog? The point?
Dr. Susan believes, "As beautiful as Katherine is [Enough! She's pretty and all, but it's not like you can hear the quiet yet pervasive beat of the Song of the Sirens start to play when she enters the room. And isn't it at least a little important for women to be viewed as good at something else besides being really, really pretty? Like in their ability to cook up some mean buffalo wings for her boyfriend's buddies on Superbowl Sunday, for instance? She's pretty. We get it. Put down the The Rules], the girl is a thinker." Yeesh. Thank you. "She's very detail-oriented, and can tackle any crisis knowing she can figure things out. She's very responsible." Katherine responds that it "depends" on the situation. Strike one, Dr. Susan. And this from the girl who is a self-described "believer in the stars." She responds that her room is a mess and it's driving her "insane," and that she has a drawer in her room in which "I've thrown crap in there and just shut it, so every time I open it things slide out. It's killing me." The Teen interviewer (we'll call her "Jodi" because I can no longer stand inserting the HTML tags every time I reference the magazine) debunks astrological theory in a more radical twist than this piece will take credit for, announcing, "That's not very Sagittarius of you!" So Susan decides to reach for the stars (which shares amazing physical characteristics with "grabbing at thin air," if you stop and think about the imagery), hazarding now, "Katherine is also a very public person. She'll always be in the spotlight." Which is a pretty radical assessment, considering that tall, blonde television actors with a sackful of cleavage-revealing dresses on hand and a history of being in the public eye since the time they were, like, null set years old, tend to be your textbook definition of a shrinking violet. Dr. Susan's late night infomercial 1-900-STAR-SIGN hotline will never leave her 1-900-STAR-VING. She's just too good.
Dr. Susan takes another chance: "Her creative life dominates everything else." Katherine agrees with this, telling us, "I'm very focussed on working," before going on to plug a film she's making with David Boreanaz entitled Valentine. "I'm just going to really let loose and be terrified and scream at the top of my lungs." Well, bully for you. Way to answer the astrologist's claim that you "really let loose and be terrified and scream at the top of your lungs." Oh, wait. That's not what she asked at all. Perhaps Katherine should have her agent contact the magazine's advertising director, if she wants so badly to advertise it. Sure sounds like that film is going to be a winner, though. If by "David Boreanaz" she means "Gerard Depardieu" and by "Valentine" she means "My Father the Hero Two: Cette Fois il est Personnel." And I don't know why. But I have a sneaking suspicion that's exactly what she means.
And now, on a very special Teen Magazine cover article, Dr. Susan turns talk of the frivolous things in a more personal direction: "Her mother is a very strong presence in her charts." Which would actually be a nudge in the direction of incisive charlatan-ism (rather than the blatant version we are privy to here) if we didn't learn in the line of the interview that Katherine -- wait for it -- brought her mother along to the interview WITH HER. Sigh. Anyway, Dr. Susan sees Katherine's mother start to cry, and takes a stab that she sacrificed something in her life to make her the person she is today. So Katherine's mom brings down the house a little: "Katherine's older brother was killed when he was fifteen and she was seven. It shifted everything." Yikes. Bummer. She continues, "If the astrologer saw that shift, then this is legitimate." At which point the present cast of Roswell and the attending personnel of Teen Magazine take a gander out the window to see the word "IF" in giant red neon letters plastered across the night sky. 'Cause that's what I call one pretty big "if" right there. See, go Mrs. Heigl. A cynic, a diplomat who obviously doesn't believe word one of this, and a staunch supporter of her daughter, who she is willing to admit is her favorite person in the room. Raise your hand if you're feeling it for Mrs. Heigl right now. Damn, now it's going to take me twice the time to finish this damn thing.
Shut up, Dr. Susan. Now is the time in which we learn that Katherine is "a saver, cautious." Katherine agrees that she is a saver, "until I find something I like!" Rather than something she hates, like saving her dough until she runs across a big ol' gift-wrapped box of horse dung she just can't live without. Dr. Susan represents further: "She also likes precious stones." Heh. Dr. Susan thought she was going to get away with that one, seeing as this is print and all, but Katherine raises her hand and announces, "Two years ago I bought this really beautiful ring with my birthstone, topaz. And my watch! See? It's got diamonds all around it." Yes, Katherine. I suspect she did "see" that. In the stars. And on your hands. I suspected she saw it all along. Yes, Dr. Susan, I suppose you did.
And so, bereft of actual factual information to supplement her knowledge of the stars, Dr. Susan cedes her final question to Jodi, who asks what superpowers Katherine would have if she were really an alien. Hence: "I'd fly. I love the sky, I love the stars. It would be awesome to be up there. Maybe I'd fly all the way to Paris. Just hang out, eat the food and watch the people. I don't want to do the tourist thing. I'd fly to France and just be in Paris." And what better way to catch up with ol' Gerard?
Jason is a "cosmically-cool Capricorn." He has "a serious shy-guy quality," which is a pretty easy personality characteristic to cultivate during puberty when all of your now strangely melded features are growing at a different rate and all the girls are giggling at you. "Hi, my name is…" "Ears! Tee hee hee hee hee!" "Hey, where're all you girls…aw, never mind." That'd make me something approximating "shy" also, I guess. We also learn in his introduction that "[h]e also thinks astrology can foresee his life's path as accurately as stepping on a crack will break your mama's back." So much for the moony-eyed dreamer theory. And, while we're talking, so much for non-clichéd writing. I'm sorry, were the truly overused, underdeveloped, overwrought expressions of the "Jason believes in astrology like the horse led to water who won't count his chickens before he has an apple a day" already trademarked by the Roswell writers themselves, or what? Must have been tricky to write any introductory patter crap at all, if that was the case.
Dr. Susan launches right in versus this "guarded, non-believer," telling us with absolute metaphysical certitude that "he's cautious by nature. He's reserved, careful and doesn't do things on impulse." And so Jason wastes no time before retorting, much to the general overall hilarity of me, "I'm into fast cars. I like to go fast. I drove a stock car once up at California Speedway. There's something about the fact that you're close to death that I like. The speed and going so fast…Some people don't like it. I do." Ha ha ha. Snot-nosed brat 1, age-old star-crossed farce 0. And so Jodi leaps in on damage control, asking him what his favorite car is. It's a Porsche. Isn't he dreamy. Like "friend of your middle-age dad who hit it big on the market in the eighties" dreamy? Oh, Jason. The Ivan Boesky of latter-day automotive fetishism. Funny and sad. But not too sad.
But look! Dr. Susan's feeling like a big smarty after Katherine's reading skyrocketed toward thirty-five percent accuracy, though, and she's not going to be shown up by some disbelieving heretic when her tens of listeners on Sunday morning AM radio believe every darn word she has to say. So she takes the leap of faith to guess that he is "very loyal, nurturing, and big-hearted," causing him to lapse into a story which fans of the "hot…or not" thread over in the forums will point to as proof of his "awww, puppy dog" general adorability. Well, there's still room in my car if you just ain't driving there. Anyway, the name of his dog is "Ronin," which, blessedly, comes from "a dark comic book" and not from the 1998 Robert DeNiro turkey of a movie after which nothing but the aforementioned gift-wrapped box of crap should ever be named. Damn, he used to be a talented actor. What kind of world do we live in where an educated aesthete of that thing called cinema should be talking about "the new DeNiro film" and be referring to The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle? A sad and depraved world, one in which two TV actors appear on the cover of a magazine, each wearing a dead ferret on his head and fresh from hours in Hair and Make-up repeatedly yelling some permutation or another of "More bangs! No, I said MORE!" over and over and over again. That kind of world, is what.
Dr. Susan guesses that Jason Behr is into media! Stop this soothsaying wonder! Dr. Susan guesses he's "all about television and the Internet." Meanwhile, Dionne Warwick sits at home, quaking with fear. Jason responds that "classic movies are very relatable ["relatable"?] today. I love The Godfather. Power, family, loyalty. Those themes are important to me." Yeah, but what about "the Internet"? Didn't someone look up in the sky, gaze to the left of the Big Dipper, and magically discern from the pattern of the cosmos, "This kid is, like, all about the Internet." Jason never said that. Jason never even thought it. A brief pause ensues while the fact checker peruses the files for the name of the Cayman Islands medical institution at which "Dr." Susan procured her medical degree in Raging Self-Evidence.
And so Jodi tries to turn the talk away from the touchiness of the cosmos again, turning this into the non-gimmicky, vanilla magazine profile it should well have remained. She asks if he ever feels limited by the demands of a television show, and he does not answer sadly, "The acting or the dialogue, you mean?" What he does say is that he feels certain freedoms "because we're dealing with alien nature and not human nature." I…eh? Jodi asks if Roswell "equates the problems of being an alien with the problems of being a teen?" Um, hi? Did Gilligan's Island equate the problems of being stuck on an island with the problems of being stuck on an island? Has any more thematic relevance ever been cranked through my unsuspecting skull with a louder, rustier ratchet? Look it up, Jodi. Dr. Susan even hazards another try with a question about miscommunication, which Max does a pretty great job of exhibiting by ignoring her completely and turning talk right on back to Roswell: "My favorite episode was 'The White Room.'" Then he talks a bunch about the intensity of that episode, and since we were hoodwinked into watching it and I was paid a fair price to recap it, we already know that's not true. So how about we move on? I'm the one in the non-hot car. And I've got beer.
Brendan is a "supernova-sexy Scorpio." He is, as his introduction would have us believe, "the kind of guy who scares shy girls." As evidenced, for those of you following along on page 52, by their fear that he'll steal all of their tone-evening base, rouge, and lipstick. But at least he's not shy. He's Harvey Non-Shy-erstein. Also, "he doesn't have a problem saying what's on his mind," his "reclined interview posture says he's not at all worried about what anyone is thinking about him," and he's reported to be "a bit arrogant." Wow, wow, and wow. And I thought I'd read things about how he was only acting on Roswell. Oh, wait. He wasn't acting at all. Because he can't. Wow, that was low. Shmeh.
Dear Susan: if you want him in bed, just make sure he's already eighteen. Jesus. Shameless, much? "Brendan is a Scorpio, which explains the tremendous sex appeal. He also has his moon, Gemini, in publicity. People are literally beating down his door, but it's only the beginning." She also thinks he's going to be wealthy. Brendan recaps my two sections in his following assertion that "the stars and the planets" have nothing to do with his success, in a way that is unbelievably rude to just out with in the middle of an interview. If you truly want to get your message across, you'd better get yourself some bandwidth, build your damn self a Web site, and bitch about the idiots of the world whose so-called "entertainment" you wouldn't procure if it weren't free. And for the love of God, do it behind people's backs, if they suck that bad. Sound familiar, Crown Prince of Arrogantia? Yeah, well, it should.
Escalating non-nice banter ensues. It makes for good filler rather than valuable reading time I could have spent on Kafka, and I decide to find that convenient. Did Jodi ever think she would be playing UN Emissary rather than Fluff Piece Reporter when she came into work today? This chick can park anywhere. She. Wants. And so she turns talk back to exactly what it is they're not ostensibly there to do. My, this whole theme interview is going well, after all. "[B]efore this turns really salty, tell us what your most prized possession is." He's glib again. "My Metallica CD." Onward he goes: "I think I could get rid of pretty much anything and not be upset." Okay, snarky, I've about had my fill. And so, it turns out, has the hopelessly optimistic Dr. Susan, who tries to steer the convo back toward soothing waters. Michael, however, remains woefully lactose-intolerant of the lessons to be learned by drinking in the guidance of the Milky Way. Heh. I can't believe I just wrote that. She intuits, "He's someone who's not going to follow society's rules. And with Virgo rising, he can get things done." Ego sufficiently stroked (though it looks dangerously clear that that's not all Dr. Susan is interested in stroking, har har har), Michael is finally flattered into agreeing: "That's true. Nothing feels out of reach." Yeah, what about acting? Oh, wait, there's more: "Acting was never something I strived for, so it's not a dream come true for me." Dr. Susan tries once more, telling him he isn't in for a meaningful relationship until 2003, and he offers to "blame it on the stars." He then tips over to one side because of the ridiculously unwarranted chip on his shoulder, and I choose to leave the stars alone in all of this. I'm blaming it on him. Jerk.