I get an email from Salon daily; with over 2,690 pieces of unread mail* in my beleaguered GMail account, I’m likely to open these newsletter-y missives approximately twice a week. Those two instances hardly ever coincide with Sunday’s “I like to watch”-edition, but I was feeling peevish while waiting for the laaaast loooooad of laundry to dry at 2:30 am, so I thought, “why not peek…it might mention my beloved ‘Mad Men‘, which was the best show ever until season two started and kind of weirded me out, man.”

Right.

So I’m skimming “Critics’ Picks”, and I see no shout-outs to AMC’s finest, but my finely-honed browndar immediately zooms in on the following blurb, about Bravo’s tatti-est reality show:

Jaclyn Smith on “Shear Genius”

“Shear Genius” (Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EDT) may be the weakest of Bravo’s professional reality competitions — the contestants are almost uniformly uninteresting, and the hairstyles they create are almost uniformly ugly. Even so, its host, former “Charlie’s Angels” star Jaclyn Smith, stands out as a kinder, gentler alternative to Bravo spokesmodels Heidi Klum and Padma Lakshmi. For some crazy reason, Smith has great wells of compassion for these bad people with their bad hairstyles. When she informs a hairstylist that it’s his or her “final cut” at the end of each episode, Smith’s eyes invariably well up with tears and her voice wavers as she carefully chooses a few comforting words as a send-off. Forget Klum’s curt “auf Wiedersehen” and Lakshmi’s indifferent “Pack your knives and go” — Smith’s tearful goodbyes seem to remind us, “What could be more human than empathizing with the untalented?” — Heather Havrilesky

Whoaaaa, there HH. I know that all girls are supposed to lose their minds over Charlie’s Angels (the inspiration for a million mediocre facebook pictures) and Grease (I will never understand the obsession with that film or its annoying-as-soulja boy-soundtrack), but are we giving the gorgeous Jaclyn a bit too much credit? Let’s not so soon forget or forgive that unfortunate casual line she released years ago– there’s a reason why so many pairs of elastic-waist pants give “mom jeans” a run for fug and part of that responsibility lies with the otherwise glamorous Jaclyn Smith.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong with Heidi. If anything, far too much is right with that woman. She has squeezed three babies out of that ridiculous body and she has the cutest, most impish smile. As for pulchritudinous Padma, girl, she ain’t indifferent or cold…she’s HIGH. The Mutiny could’ve told you that, last year:

According to a source who worked on the set of Top Chef, the ex-model turned trophy wife turned hostess Padma Lakshmi allegedly enjoys smoking pot on set, giving a whole new meaning to the term “Quickfire Challenge” — see, cause she’s allegedly lighting up a joint instead of a stove! Anyway. Exactly how often this happened is disputed, though we were assured it was allegedly “fairly regularly…” [BWE]

That explains the sloooow, slightly slurred speech and her gracious, always-ready appetite to try potentially smack-nasty food– it also provides an explanation for why she doesn’t share Ms. Smith’s penchant for saltwater…she’s happy!

::

I have disabled comments on this entry.

Soon after I put this post up, at 3:45 or so, the need to delete commenced. I removed the offending comments and left up what I thought was a cautionary message, to get the thread back on track and moving in the right direction…it didn’t work.

One of you, who appears to be new, inspired this move; it just reminded me that my hunch about our readership cycling is true, that in the time I’ve been ill and away, many new people have started reading the mutiny and with all of our busy schedules and inability to moderate as intensively as we did in the past, certain guidelines which are important, but more subtle than those explained in our commenting policy have fallen by the wayside.

One of those is the distaste/impatience for unproductive comments which consist of “I’d hit that” or which focus solely on how “hot” someone is. Perhaps some of you newer mutineers don’t understand that discussions like that can become uncomfortable for female- hell, even some male readers. Yes, this is a post about Padma and there is a picture of her; that does not mean you get to go to town talking about what you’d like to do to her and the obvious reasons why. Mentioning that she’s pretty is one thing (I did that, too!), certain other comments…well, let’s just say that if you wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking your words aloud, at a party, in a group of men and women, because you’d sound like a douche– it’s safe to state that’s the kind of comment which creates an awkward and unwelcoming environment online, as well. 🙂

On a final note, complaining insinuating that I was asking for it asking a blogger “what’s the point of this post if I can’t talk about how hot she is, especially when you put up a picture, what did you expect” achieves nothing positive. Actually, “what’s the point of this post?”-comments in general don’t achieve anything positive. We do this for free and for fun (note the category: humor), if the mood and subject strikes us (note the category: musings) and the topic might be of interest to our readers (see: brown person in fotooo)– this is not a newspaper where we have assigned beats and we must. cover. breaking. and. important. news. only.

Less confrontation, more conversation…that would be ideal. If that’s challenging, then perhaps Padma has the right idea. 😉

.

.

.

* Now do you understand why I’m awful about writing back? Oy, with the poodles already!