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This is a simple column by a complex
woman.
"five nuns”
(I’d originally planned to bullshit for five pages about the sexless statistics of marrieds like me, people who prefer an HBO movie and Thai take-out snuggled next to their significant others to the pounding sweat and lockjaw ritual of the sexual act of thwarted procreating. But – pun intended – I lost that loving feeling between then and now, and besides, this site is called Eye on Soaps. I actually have a more current vent burgeoning within me at the moment...) The infamous Brian Frons SoapCity interview last week caused a storm of controversy amongst fans from the minute his misquotes were posted verbatim, paragraph to paragraph. I’ve read reactions from public and private boards all over the ‘Net, the Sage Brush Ranch, General Shmospital, SoapZone, an MSN invitation-only group—generally, the collective issued swift punishment c/o e-mails scolding the ABC Daytime president for his callous, thoughtless and ignorant remarks designed, as many pundits have surmised, solely for the purpose of damage control in the aftermath of the sudden Port Charles cancellation. One particular soap site, talk! talk!, went a step further in detailing the bone-headed moves by Frons and ABC Daytime in general for the past year-plus. The site’s owner and editor-in-chief, Honeycat/Julie Porter, posted an alert to her newest feature, “Welcome to the Brian Frons Hall of Shame,” at SoapZone’s various boards this past weekend. Instead of applause and kudos for her creativity, criticisms (mostly valid) and cajones in listing problems of nepotism, favoritism, sexism, racism and stupidism—let’s face it, these weren’t newsflashes by any means for the most savvy of soap watchers—a bulk of regular posters read her the riot act for misinformation, libel and just plain tabloid trash. Apparently, it’s one thing to bash in generalities, following the crowd in lock-step safety, but quite another to get specific, which she did in this case, as warranted. A huge uproar kicked in when sacred cows were mentioned, Tamara Braun (Carly II) being among them. Everybody who’s anybody in daytime knows that you mess with explosives when you mess with the hallowed half of the S&C conglomeration. Naysayers have been known to disappear from the Internet or go AWOL while fighting off a sudden burst of virus gunfire out of nowhere, excommunicated from thread exchanges altogether, and, God help you, made a virtual mockery of in an anti-shrine complete with unflattering jpegs and false accusations involving donuts, flab and Palestinian terrorist plots. Not to mention cause-celebre in the letter-writing section of Hitler and KKK comparisons. But I kid. Okay, I kid about 75 percent. The rest of my paranoid suspicions isn’t so sure. Here’s the excerpt, filed under a “litany of sins”: Allowing Tamara Braun, a woman with no grace or natural femininity, to be portrayed as a "soap heroine." Okay, granted. A bit harsh. I’d have reworded the description to reflect her masculine acting choices, which is basically, the point of this unforgivable sin, especially when you juxtapose Braun with the original, Sarah Brown. In such a case, there’s no contest. Braun plays Carly like a mindless thug, in love only with another thug, slinging their 21-inch cocks around, snarling like savage feral animals and generally dehumanizing a once-complex anti-heroine capable of great depths of compassion against her initial spontaneous self-destructive will. Then, Maurice Benard (Sonny, GH) and Steve Burton (Jason, GH), ascribed the troll moniker – tantamount to spitting on the Bible and calling Christ a pimp: Letting trolls like Maurice Benard and Steve Burton publicly humiliate their female co-stars. I wouldn’t stick my 10-ft. pole up that smelly ass. I will, however, gladly point out the stink. Benard (Mr. I Really Need Emmy to Prove My Worth) told the press that he downplayed his scenes opposite Angel Boris (ex-Angel, GH) during the “Loon Lake” story, which he hated with a venom. He really REALLY hated it, you have no idea. Rumors placed him in the middle of several temper tantrums on-set. Burton (Mr. I’m Too Good To Kiss Just Anybody) has indicated numerous times of not digging the love scenes, and not wanting a love story with the first Carly, attributing her character’s being a “psycho” to the major mix. Both have played cheerleader and cynic, depending solely – IMHO – upon how favorably played to them. It’s bad enough that these lead actors are given primetime cable material carte blanche, but to behave so unprofessionally, to do the writers’ jobs for them and, in Burton’s case, lambast co-workers under the lame guise of stand-up, no wonder they’re called trolls. If the asshole fits. GASP! Such blasphemy! What amazed me more than Brian Frons’ comment about OLTL’s Marcie being “overweight” and “not beautiful” – that is, before someone had that phrase removed and altered within days, Journey finally coming into popularity after a hard battle in the beginning with jilted Liaison fans (rightly so), or minorities representing more roles in ABC soaps when clearly, they’re not ... were the fans spending more time doing their own damage control on behalf of their on-screen favorites. Translation: You said something mean about my favorite couple and/or my favorite actor. Therefore, you are mean, evil, and to be completely condemned. With malice aforethought. Had you criticized a couple and/or actor that threatened my favorite, I’d be all ITA, girlfriend! This happens every single time a celebrity runs up against controversy. It doesn’t matter if an actor, an executive producer, or an ABC Daytime president commits a sin in the eyes of nine out of 10 witnesses. There will always be that one standing in the wings, readying the forces for another blind defense. The sexier, prettier and younger, the more blind. The operative term for these kinds of fans is, I believe, star fucker. They hold their dicks, finger their clits, and moan with every breath a celebrity makes. They don’t care about damage control, party line, obfuscation, agenda, spin or basic human fallibility. They merely want their demi-gods on TV forever, so shut up about the negatives, man, you’re bringing them down. Besides, they haven’t gotten laid since the Stone Ages, maybe if they’re real nice and real supportive and always there to throw up those ever-ready blinders... It never fails to amaze and disgust me the lengths to which these fans—an inordinate amount living out their fantasies from soap scripts—go to excuse bad behavior. I wouldn’t even go that far. And I used to admire Maurice Benard unconditionally. But let’s face it, the man can’t act anymore. He’s coasting on his formidable soap reputation in an ongoing frontburner storyline about the mob without the mob repercussions or the mob’s ethnic roots. After he whined about the JFP/MM regime mischaracterizing Sonny, stonewalled Angel and before that, exacerbated the screen-testing competition by refusing to act and making the competitive process unnecessarily tougher on the female applicants... I’d had enough. That’s me though. You have to earn my respect. I don’t suck dick for just anybody, least of all, celeb cachet... When fans weren’t crying foul over the bashing of their favorites, they were throwing out the convenient, clichéd and inappropriately over-used defense of IOAS. They couldn’t believe anyone would go to such lengths to detail the “sins” of an ABC executive who knows about as much of soaps as I do of cooking. Invalidating the importance of one’s choice in entertainment when such a choice leads to wider issues of backstage politics, societal views on minorities, women, religion, sex and violence, back to the good ole white boy network and assorted odds & ends of manipulating the public to spend money, time and energy on what amounts to – entertainment ... How convenient. The larger problem of these litany of sins remains. But some of us are too busy arguing over superficialities, tossing out Oprah simplistics like so much recycled garbage, to notice.
Zip your pants!
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