Five o'clock on a Friday afternoon is no time for a twenty-five-year-old male to freeze in his tracks on the corner of 72nd Street and Broadway, peer in the window of a packed Cosmetics Plus, mutter "What in the name of Filene's Basment" in a tone that sounds more like an anguished scream than much of a mutter at all, and walk purposefully to the section of the magazine rack specifically designated for that swath of society known as "teen" (which I'm not) "girls" (which -- wait for it -- I'm actually not, either). And yet, it was the Siren's Song of teen mag behemoth
Seventeen that pulled me, helpless, into the store, and three dollars and ninety-nine cents later (Plus tax. Oh, and plus the additional $3.50 for a copy of
U.S. News and World Report, which I bought solely to wrap around my primary purchase so I could read it on the subway), I walked back into the nowhere-to-hide sun with the March 2001 issue, featuring Shiri and Majandra on a cover trumpeting, "
Roswell's duo (Shiri and Majandra) share their prom memories and passions." Thanks for the parenthetical, by the way. Because I had just started to fear that the article was going to feature three pages of girlish, giggly "prom memories and passions" with Bill Sadler and Charles freakin' Napier. Really. Thanks.
The cover that instigated such a primal response features Shiri, looking a bit overly waifish in her off-one-shoulder gold lame (I know there should be an "ay"-indicating accent over that "e," but doesn't that word really mean the same thing with or without it, here in the harsh light of the new millenium?) diagonal-striped dress. In fairness, we all know she's not an ugly girl, really. But whoever chose this picture for the cover of the magazine has as almost MBTV-sized vendetta against her, it seems, and I take a moment to muse on the tiny differences in the computer coding for the Lizbot's smile chip that changes "the pretty though defiant smile of the perpetually B-list celeb" to "unhinge jaw, devour photographer" with the simple addition of just a few zeros and ones. Those are some serious choppers right there, man. To the Lizbot's left stands Majandra, smiling The Pretty Though Defiant Smile Of The B-List Celeb and wearing a dress in the maroon family that features several NASA-approved belts and ties and cords and levers and pulleys I wouldn't have even taken out of the box until I had a chance to review the manual and contact a professional installer. And it clashes pretty egregiously with the
Seventeen logo, is all. Stoked yet? Page 158 awaits.
But, sadly, the Cover Blurb Specialist was never introduced to Holly Richmond, the article's author. Because after a hundred and fifty-seven pages of Christina Aguilera's "I Put Out On Prom Night" and Sheryl Crow's "Ruffled Prom Dress, Feathered Hair: A Study in Formalwear, Extraneous Textures, and the Merciful Death of the '80s" (limiting this week's skin-care-ad tally to an unusually limited seven hundred billion…damn pestering editorial content, keeping Sarah Michelle's pearly whites from appearing on three or four whole pages), the article -- entitled "Passion Players" -- mentions not so much as one word about Majandra or Shiri's "prom memories and passions." Instead, we are faced with another carefully-worded publicist's press release about Liz's altruism and Majandra's love for music, in which we are sure to find out more on the matter of how these girls, "friends on and off the set, put their downtime to good use." Oh, joy. Prom night's not even over; why has the hangover already begun?
Okay, Teen Gandhi. We
get it. You're good and great. You save animals. You donate your entire salary and several quarts of plasma to cancer research. You single-handedly construct houses for indigent (and, no doubt, adorable) orphans, plank by painstaking plank, with environmentally-sanctioned soy balsa wood fashioned out of sand and stones and discarded hospital syringes removed from America's beaches with your own two manicured hands. The set-up for the article, meanwhile, is that Shiri and Majandra are to accompany each other to an activity they are frequently found to enjoy on a day off from work. While Majandra takes Shiri to a recording studio, Shiri, "an ardent volunteer for many social causes, takes an opportunity to read to children at a local library." And though Shiri's one of Heaven's Little Helpers, the keen editorial eye of one Ms. Richmond insists that she's got a tough side. We learn that she was "up until 4:30 A.M., celebrating her birthday," and once she hauls ass out of bed, she and Majandra enjoy "a seriously un-PC breakfast of chocolate cake, tortilla chips and soda." "Un-PC"? What lacks political correctness about having soda for breakfast? Was the soda carbonated by underage Malaysian factory workers for three cents an hour because they were the only people in the village with small enough hands to undertake the arduous process of adding the carbonation, bubble by tiny bubble? With tortilla chips carried across the Mexican border in violation of NAFTA guidelines? And served on a bed of interned Japanese hostages from World War II? The "P" stands for "political," Holly. Look it up and do your research or move to ad sales. There's a
lot more work in it, anyway. Just ask Sarah Michelle.
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"It's far from a sleepy Sunday at the Whittier Public Library." No sirree. Shiri sits with her legs out, holding up a book entitled
Cat's Colors, as we discover that "[w]ord is out that that California native Shiri Appleby has stopped in to read to some of the local school-age children." The buzz created by her entrance is roughly in line with the Nielsen figures for her day job, as poor Ms. Richmond writes herself into a corner and has to unironically report in the very sentence, "the seven kids form a semicircle at Appleby's feet." There goes the
Roswell cast, inciting Beatlemania-level hysteria again. Meanwhile, the parents sit outside the room, worrying if a South American soccer match hasn't spontaneously broken out inside. It's fine if there are only seven children in the room, but then it might be in the writer's best interest to avoid reporting what kind of insanity ensues when "word is out." Seven people! People! Keep to your seats! There aren't enough life vests for everyone!
Majandra nods off as Shiri moves on to a book called
The Enormous Potato ("The oblong shape of Brendan Fehr's head has mystified scientists for generations…"), during the reading of which we are told she "adopts dozens of silly voices." Because what better way to hold her audience of seven in rapt attention than with wacky voices describing the farmer's failed attempts at farmink, and how the potatoes just weren't growink. They were shrinkink! Holly Richmond thinks that "this isn't the last time these kids will hear from Shiri Appleby." Just as long as they don't plan on getting within five hundred feet from hearing a damn thing about her prom.
Majandra, you guys. Really. She kicks ass. She really kind of does. We already knew that she was some kind of aspiring musician from her stints on camera jamming out to "Genie in a Bottle" and fronting the Whitss, but it's here that we (well, I) find out some more about her talents with both the guitar and the piano, and that she "just put the finishing touches on her first demo album." Cool. In a photo collage of Majandra in the studio, hair pulled back, ignoring the camera, she looks as if she really does spend every damn Sunday inside, practicing her instruments, doing her musicianly thing. She's kind of a rock star. In stark contrast, the same collage features a picture of Shiri pretending to play the drums, and even though they let her save face by dissing it in a caption, there's no denying it: the girl's missing a chromosome. She should take those talents to Spinal Tap and at least slap an expiration date on all this. Meanwhile, a new respect for Maria DeLuca is born. My whole humiliating tour through Cosmetics Plus is officially rationalized by this enlightenment. Well, that and the cinnamon Lip Smackers. But please don't tell anyone.
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If only the overmatched-by-words Ms. Richmond were able to keep up with her subjects. She takes to describing Majandra's own songwriting efforts as "somewhere between Portishead and Air [and] difficult to categorize." I don't mean to nitpick, but doesn't "somewhere between Portishead and Air" mean you're categorizing the music, quite non-difficultly, as "between Portishead and Air." Or maybe I'm reading into things. I have a tendency to do that. Foul subtext, be gone!
The entirety of Majandra's passion for music is encapsulated in one paragraph. After which we move on to the Web-ravaged remains of guy talk, during which Majandra admits to liking her maybe-boyfriend, Brendan "The Enormous Potato" Fehr, because he reminds her of Harry Potter. When asked about her "ideal prom date" (the head publisher mops her brow in relief for the eventual thematic link), Majandra volleys that it would be "John Lennon" (who always struck me as a totally "prom" kind of guy, too), and Shiri boo-hoo-hoos a few sentences about just having gotten out of a long-term relationship. Thank goodness for the life story. I'm sure the relationship ended when she recycled her lover into an edible paste and served him as a cold gazpacho at a battered women's shelter. Better that he shouldn't go entirely to waste, I'm sure.
The verdict: This article is as boring as a first-season rerun. Way back in the table of contents, we're told to watch out for a future issue of
Seventeen, in which the magazine will arrange a contest involving another storytime with Shiri, and one lucky girl with as much energy and vivaciousness as Lizbot herself (maybe the winner can just send a cardboard cutout of herself, or a particularly shiny rock) will be chosen to read to sevens and sevens of children as well. Maybe that issue will also feature some actual dirt on the barely-alluded-to feud that kept the girls from talking to each other at all for most of the taping of the first season. Maybe that issue will also feature the story about them actually going to the prom.
Buy it for the picture of Shiri playing the drums. And keep it because you'll be giggling too helplessly to remember where you keep the recycling. Otherwise, feh.
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