Honey, you're either going to "get" me and know my heart and my intent or you're not going to "get" me at all.  If you don't, know your limitations and just back away from the keyboard after clicking the little "X" in the box on the upper right corner of your browser window, ne'er to return again.  May you have happiness all of your days.  If you enjoy what I do, then pull up a chaise by the pool and stay a while.  If that's the case, you're the very person I'm writing this column for anyway.  I don't write to please the masses or kiss anyone's ass.  Everything you read here will be from my heart, off my cuff and dead on honest.  If you want a good read designed to offend no one, go to ABC.com because they are great at what they do.  If you want to hear what I really think about soaps, life, etc, then WELCOME!  This is an opinion column filled with gossip and rumors and, well, my opinion.  It may not agree with yours and I'm good with that.  *Please also note that this is NOT a spoiler or "exclusive info" site...it's a GOSSIP page and what we are discussing might be a RUMOR or a SPOILER, but isn't guaranteed to be what hits the screen.  I'm NOT in the business of or interested in breaking the exclusives.*   I suggest that if you want to read on, you make peace with that as well and leave your weapons with my Marshall, Lenore, before you enter town.  You'll get them back when you leave.  Believe me, you'll need them for some sites on the net and I don't want my loveys to go unarmed into war!  Remember to click that smiley globe in the links above to help EOS!

Note:  Due to the large volume of e-mail he receives, Sage regrets that he is unable to personally answer each e-mail.  He wants you to know that he reads each and every one (some 2-3 times) and greatly appreciates your communication.  Please DO NOT ask Sage for further info on what is going to happen on the shows.  Any information he has that he can share will be put into his column or on the message board right away. 

Some GH tidbits fell into my lap:

Just when you thought it was safe...Kristina returns for two days in November.  

Brenda stays by Jax's side while we fly the not-so-friendly Skyes.  

Brenda makes a heartfelt confession while Jax sleeps.

Carly leans on Jason after misunderstanding a close moment she witnesses between Brenda and Sonny.

Ned offers Jax advice on the Brenda-Skye dilemma.  

Jason tries to get Brenda to leave for Europe, but she has another idea...

Who *is* Courtney's stalker?  Jason thinks it's Coleman, who takes a cue from Jason!

Steel your stomach, darlings!  Jason and Courtney...*gulp*...kiss.  (If that's not gratuitous, I don't know what is)

Alexis has a hospital stay, resulting in a skirmish between Ned and Sonny when Ned misunderstands Carly's intentions.  Sonny actually threatens Alexis while she's in the hospital bed.  

I'm Mad as Hell!

...and if it wasn't for you guys, I'd have turned this show off a long time ago.  Yes, this should be an "Uncensored" column, but since I have very few scoops, I'm going to fill in the blanks with some good old bitchin.  Darlings, I am just on a tear and after the day I've had (one of my Ho's was SHOT, I have a bad headache and my computer has been giving me grief since I woke up this morning...If anyone out there works at Dell or Gateway or something and wants to pass on a good computer to Sage as a company write off, I won't frown on the charity (or tell your boss).  This Compaq P.O.S. is about to get a tree rammed through its motherboard).  Anyway,  *big breath*, after an afternoon of chanting, "all is peace and love" and drinking gallons of  chamomile tea, I've managed to curb my anger at the myriad of bad stuff and have channeled it down to one victim and it's initials are A-B-C.  A lot of fans are pissed and rightly so.  Lord knows there are plenty of reasons to pick from lately.

GH is the strongest offender by a long shot.  It's not that anything is ever assured, but this whole atmosphere of throwing junk against the wall to see what sticks is just offensive.  Does ANYONE on this show have a plan beyond, "Let's build the show around Sonny, Carly, Jax, Skye, Brenda and Jason?"  

It's not like it was a secret that a lot of fans very much wanted Jason and Elizabeth together.  The powers that be knew.  Now they are working like mad to build a story that does not involve Jason getting intimate with anyone so that the big frickin sissy, Steve Burton, doesn't have to take off his shirt.  Evidently, The Lord is cool with Steve portraying someone who kills people for a living, but forbids anything that might actually make other people feel good, like watching a little ROMANCE in their otherwise boring-ass lives.  Let's see a show of hands.  Who remembers when "Love in the Afternoon" really meant something?  Now we have "Mob in the Afternoon."  Who remembers, back in the olden days, when there were easily 5-6 stories on the canvas at any given time and they didn't all bleed together?  We would have very different stories to jump around through between commercial breaks and often one had nothing to do with the other.  They weren't all just extensions of the same story.  If you watch some of the old episodes, even one as consuming and vibrant as Luke and Laura's wedding, you'd see subplots having nothing to do with the wedding at all.  It was very much a composite show and there was a reason why there were more than 6 people on the show.  

This change will be entirely evident when the next Daytime Emmy Awards are aired because I can guarantee you, there will be no GH nominees in the supporting actors categories.  That is because there are no supporting actors.  There are only stars, props and PNS's (People Never Seen).  It was kind of quaint and funny when Amy was NEVER on the show.  She was always, at best, an annoying character, but one everyone could relate to because most people have a relative like her somewhere down the family tree.   It was like a running joke to wonder where Amy was.  Now, there are probably a good 15 plus characters in exactly the same boat.  Lessee (I did not count ahead of time, so this will be a surprise to both of us):  Mac, Tony, Dara, Florence, Whatever Courtney's Mother's Name Was, Alan, Reginald, Leticia, Audrey, Elton, Lesley, LuLu, Maxie, Georgie, Lucas, Coleman, Zander, Monica, Alan...there.  That's 18 people who are presumably still on the show, but are seldom anywhere to be seen.  I suppose we could include Edward, Alexis, Ned, Courtney and AJ as supporting characters since they are basically there to hold up the spaces b1etween the bricks, so maybe I spoke too soon.

But like I said, it was pretty well a given that we were going to at least get a decent taste of Liason and not just the smell once in a while.  This is like coming to your mom's house for dinner, opening the door, smelling the home baked bread, spicy lasagna and hot apples over ice cream, bellying up to the table and having her plop down a child sized TV dinner in front of you...not even cooked.  Or she brags and says, "But look!  The eyeball soup and chicken beak casserole is almost done!"  Um.  Thanks mom.  

So we get all revved up for Liason, from that moment that she slapped the shit out of Lucky (startin' off good!!) then running right smack into Jason and going off for some hot lovins.  We could even hold faith when she put him off until she was ready because, well, that was just Liz.  Now, we've got nothing.  We put up with all of that Zander and Elizabeth crap and we've got nothing.  We got a few crumbs, some eyeball soup and some chicken beak casserole and now...nothing.

It was as though they were trying to find something, anything to do with Jason (figuring Liz was expendable, I guess) BESIDES Liason.  Protect Sonny, protect and advise Carly, confront AJ, protect Courtney, now he's even bonding with the damned dog...ANYthing but getting intimate with someone.  Why should they have to be working this hard?  Why come up with a hundred different ways to keep him out of Liz's arms just to kowtow to an actor's personal issues and agenda?  When does it stop being about the actor's wants and start being about the show again?  At least give us some good Liason, then break them up so we can feel like we had a shot at it!  Don't make us feel like we didn't see what we've seen for 3 years and that the feelings between Liz and Jason weren't what we thought they were!  Go back to that bridge where she chose Lucky over Jason and remake the story from there.  

But this isn't just about Liason.  Sure, I'll confess.  This was actually a story I could get behind because it looked like it might actually involve some passion.  I caught a little "zing" between the characters and would really have liked to have had that explored.  I'm not even sure they are going to dump it altogether.  Since they will have Jax and Brenda pulling on the Jason and Brenda "marriage," I'm sure the counter to that will be Liz and Jason pulling on the marriage as well.  It's the mixed marrieds all over again.  Guza has a penchant for throwing the wrong people together and hoping they will work out while ignoring those who obviously DO work, like the beginnings of the real Jason and Carly just prior to the Sonny/Carly hatesex fest  (now THERE is a fan base that got screwed).  Here we had Jason coming to terms with his very real feelings for Carly and his desire for the three of them to be a family, only to get shot and find Carly sleeping with Sonny all in the same night.  Another unlikely pairing that hit big was when Emily fell in love with her drug pushing kidnapper and they both became superstars.  Seeing what sticks to the wall isn't something new.  Guza has always loved to gamble big and pooh pooh his losses.  

Now we get to go through what is bound to be months of Jax doing the macho bullshit, "But I can't WAAALLLK" crap that has now earned him the name of "Jaxass" on a million message boards.  We see Skye looking at someone with the cleanest, purest, most honest love she's probably ever mustered up and it's going to get thrown back in her face in a big way because of this guy's stupid pride.  How about we just say, "Skye, you're a peach.  Thank you for being so ready, willing and able to selflessly help me through the challenges that are to come."  Otherwise, bringing Jane and John down from Alaska to formally kick his ass would be a real plus a this point.  We hear that Jax is going to enlist Brenda to convince Skye that they are back together again.  If one more bo-hunk does one more thing on these shows for a woman's "own good," I think I'm going to have to kick someone's ass. . .for their own good.

Now we hear that Lucas is going to come barreling out of the closet, announcing his gayness to Maxie and Georgie, who both have a crush on him.  Since GH has yet to tackle a gay storyline (although both AMC and OLTL have done so), I am sure it will be lauded as groundbreaking.  I don't really expect Guza to have any balls about him on this one and it will probably he a sterile Bianca story where the whole context surrounds "the announcement" and the horror felt by all of Port Charles as one of their children accidentally wanders to the dark side.  I sincerely doubt that Tony will be at all involved in the situation and God forbid it be as simple as, "I'm gay."  "Oh really?  Wow.  Wanna check out the double feature at the cineplex?"  No way can we have a character who just happens to be gay without that being the main focus and no way can that character ever once actually act on their gayness, for we know in our hearts that all gays are celibate.  The one thing that this situation has going for it that might allow it to be brushed over quickly without much ado is that it does not involve Jason, Brenda, Sonny, Carly or Jax, so it can't really be worth any air time.

Here's my question about it.  Why can't it be like this chick, Patrika DArbo from Days of Our Lives?  She's fluffy.  She's not plump.  She's FAT.  She's a fat actress playing fat character and she has a hunk of a husband and (unless I was ill-informed) there was never a big deal made out of the fact that she's fat.  She just is.  And I think that's totally the coolest thing I've ever seen.  I mean, why can't we have at least some people who are gay and just gay?  Why can't some people be gorgeous and NOT come from the bulimic cookie cutter??  I LOVE that Dorian gets sexy air time and Viki gets good airtime and they are NOT in that all important 18-40 demographic that seems to have to hog up the screen.  I LOVED that Dorian was put with Joey Buchanan instead of the usual thing of hooking up Bo with some 20-year-old who doesn't even pre-date his oldest pair of socks.  I love that we have Hillary B Smith paired up with gorgeous Ty Treadway, who is 10 years her junior.  We have Kassie DePaiva is almost 20 years older than Teddy Sears (Chad) and they had some hot and steamy moments in the alley, not to mention her randy adventures with David Fumero, who is almost 10 years younger than she is.  Linda Dano is 59 and John Bolger is 48 and they had some cuddly moments.  Kamar de los Reyes is 35 and Barbara Niven (Liz) is 49 and that was probably the sexiest scene I've seen on OLTL in a good long time.  My point is that OLTL is more than willing to go out on a limb and try something different, but GH hides shaking in its demo(n)graphic boots, insisting on shoving the same stereotypes at us until we're choking on them.  All of the women on screen must be painfully thin and must turn to subintelligent jelly over their men.  The men must be dark, brooding and have to put the smack down from time to time.  If there is any age difference to be had, the man must be older, except in that one scandalous Katherine Bell moment that got her killed (Bad!  Bad Katherine!!).  Helena doesn't count because, well, she's Helena, but where is she now?  Nowhere.  One could argue that the character of Elton was obviously gay and no big deal was made over it, but I think to qualify, it has to at least be mentioned that the character is gay, not for double-standards purposes, but just for clarification.  Again, I ask...where is he now? Nowhere.   Now, more than ever, slowly but surely, anyone who isn't thin, perfect and intense is fading away.

That really pisses me off.  I mean, stop telling me that this is beauty:

This is emaciation.  I apologize to whoever I swiped these pictures from.  People come in all shapes and sizes and I think that we need to totally revamp our image of beauty.  To reverse a stereotype, we could be looking at the women in these pictures and saying, "What a shame!  And she has such a pretty face."  I'm not saying these women don't have lovely faces.  I'm saying that these examples do not give the impression of healthy bodies and should not be what is held up to us as the standards for beauty.  

[For More Of Sage's Rant on Fat vs Thin, Click Here]

So, that all being said ( I decided to save those of you who were bored or offended by the topic from further persecution), I'm moving on to the bit of good news:

That being this guy, soap vet Lane Davies who is coming on board as a character named Cameron.  We have yet to hear of what GH has planned for Cameron, but who cares, really, because he is handsome, hunky and a very well seasoned and talented actor.  I pray they don't screw him over like they did Jensen Buchanan and Chris Robinson.  Personally, I'm thinking Zander's father and love interest for Skye.  

In the WTF arena tonight, we have the actual RECAST of Gia that is going on pretty much now.  My question is "WHY?"  It was announced at the GH Fan Event that there would be no Nia wedding this year and certainly the duo is doing little more than holding up a few scenes with Lucky here and there.  I understand the why, being that Marissa Ramirez bagged a prime time gig, but WHY when they are obviously not doing anything with Nikolas and Gia.  Could they possibly be getting story or will this simply be another actor brought on the cast to not work?

It's good that the Jessica-Natalie mystery actually seems to be moving at a decent clip since Viki's arrival back home, so I really hope they can keep up the pace.  One of the biggest drawbacks to OLTL has always been how lonnnnnng they drag out their arcs, taking forever to resolve the simplest of issues (like Matthew's paternity).  

Dare I even bother to hope?  Robin Strasser has tied up yet another stint of Hecuba on Passions and has voiced an interest in returning to OLTL.  What has changed?  Two things of importance.  One is the appointment of Brian Frons, a huge Dorian fan, as head of ABC Daytime and another is the November return of drama whores Mike Malone and Josh Griffith to OLTL as creative consultant and head writer respectively.   Nothing would make this kid happier.  Malone and Griffith also have an intensely different impression of Nora and Todd than do Chris Whitesel and Lorraine Broderick, the current writing heads of the show, so look for changes to ensue from mid-November on.  Who knows.  Maybe they'll hate Jen.  (I hope I hope I hope)

Bye Bye Babies...It was over much, much too soon.  There is still so much story to be told for both Vanessa and Leo and no way can it possibly be wrapped up sufficiently in the next two days.  I can't even imagine Pine Valley without Vanessa in it and Leo's laugh will definitely be missed as well.  Just when he was firmly establishing himself as caretaker of family who has long needed care, he's too soon gone.  Someone, he was always the one in that nutty bunch that managed to make some sense.  Tell me the Proteus story will finally culminate!  Let this loss not be for naught!

FINALLY, it looks like the attic secret will be solved once and for all.  When Luke comes back to town and the character of Summer shows up, the info will finally be revealed.

And that, my friends, is all I've got to say about that.  Thanks to everyone who signed Ma's guest book.  She's tickled pink!

October 12, 2002 11am

At Her Majesty's Request... I told my mom that people were wanting to wish her Happy Birthday and that she needed to set up an e-mail account so they could.  She started to fret, worried that people would e-mail her and she wouldn't be able to respond and would feel bad.  I told her that we'd set up a guest book instead so that people could post their messages to her without her needing to respond.  If you want to send a message to my mom, you can click on her picture at the right and get to her guest book.  You may also read what other have left.  Don't give her a big head or anything, OK?  She's hard enough to live with already.  (ow)

 

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