The Rob Simone Talk Show

In my late twenties, I waged a bitter struggle for the affections of a belly dancer named Lotta. This “battle of Lotta” cost more time, money and self-respect than any crusade for companionship from the opposite sex I’ve undertaken before or since. Reflecting on it now with my 53-year old brain–and my 53-year old libido–it’s hard to characterize the battle as anything other than a pointless, idiotic conflict. I’d like to reach back to 1987, grab hold of my younger self and demand, “What were you thinking?”

I’d like to do that, but it would pretty much be an act. I know what I was thinking. I was thinking that I was lonely and rudderless after my divorce, that Lotta was more sexually alluring than any woman I’d ever been with, and that she was a complete kick in the pants–spontaneous, adventurous and sometimes just plan crazy. The fact that she was a part-time belly dancer–doing gigs at Middle Eastern restaurants and performing “belly grams” for birthday parties while I held her boom box–didn’t hurt. Everyone wants to be with a celebrity.

And that was exactly the problem. I met Lotta while waiting for my divorce to be finalized and since I was still married–she often reminded me–I couldn’t expect an exclusive arrangement. As a consequence, I had a number of rivals during the battle, the most persistent and formidable of which was (unfortunately) another guy named Mark. Mark II, as I will call him, was younger and better looking than me, but (if you will trust my judgment on the matter) did not test quite as high in the IQ department. He worked as a shoe salesman, which paid less than my job as a computer programmer, but did give him access to discounted women’s footwear. And Lotta loved her footwear.

I first became aware of Mark II at one of Lotta’s performances at a Greek restaurant when he “happened” to be in the audience. After Lotta had changed out of her gold-spangled belly dancing outfit (the construction of which had been underwritten by me) and returned to our table, Mark II came up to tell her what a swell performance she had given. Lotta gave him a smile that probably warmed a lot more than his heart. After he mooned off, I asked who he was.

“Oh, just some guy I met at church,” said Lotta.

The next time I ran into Mark II–or, more accurately, he ran into me–was when I was over at Lotta’s house for Sunday dinner. Dinner at Lotta’s house was usually something to be avoided. It wasn’t so much that Lotta was a bad cook, it was that she was so incredibly cheap. She spent a good two hours every Sunday morning clipping coupons, which meant that the side dishes–or even the main courses–were always some sort of crazy, ersatz packaged item that the supermarkets or one of the big food companies was pushing. Think potted meat or clam jerky. Another manifestation of Lotta’s cheapness was her insistence on buying fruits and vegetables that the supermarket had discounted because they were nearly (or, in many cases, already) past their prime. I choked down more overripe zucchini than I care to recall–and I don’t even like fresh zucchini.

But Lotta’s pièce de cheapness was her insistence on saving the aluminum wrappers from margarine cubes. These were hoarded so that they could be slapped onto chickens and turkeys like so many sections of aluminum siding in order that the tiny bit of residual margarine would soak into the skin of the unfortunate (cut-rate) fowl during the roasting process.

In any event, on this particular evening I had not managed to avoid dinner at Lotta’s. She was in the living room setting the table with her best china, and because the dinner was intended to be “special” (or as special as it could be where the repast included a side of clam jerky), I was in her bedroom doing my best to look presentable. At the particular point in time that Mark II came up to stick his mug in Lotta’s front-facing bedroom window (unbeknownst to me), looking presentable for dinner involved ironing my chinos while standing pants-less in my shirttail and boxer shorts.

Apparently it was news to Mark II that my relationship with Lotta was such that I might stand in her bedroom in my boxer shorts, and shortly thereafter I heard the doorbell ring, and once the door was opened, a great deal of yelling. The yelling increased in volume as the proximity of the yellers grew nearer and nearer to the (closed) bedroom door. I struggled to pull on my pants to fend off the attack I was sure was coming, but just when I expected the bedroom door to be flung open, the yelling stopped and I heard steps retreating down the hallway. The front door opened and closed again, and I rushed to the window in time to see Mark II flipping me off as he went down the sidewalk to his car.

Once I returned to the living room, I naturally asked Lotta what the hell was going on. She tried to play it cool. She said Mark II had assumed their relationship was more serious than it was and didn’t understand that she was seeing other people.

“Are you sleeping with him?” I snapped.

“Of course not,” she said. “Now relax and have some clam jerky. The roast chicken will be ready in a minute.”

Having fought the battle of Lotta long enough by this point not to accept her explanation at face value, I decided a little independent verification was in order. Later that evening, I asked innocently when we were getting together again, and by carefully shifting her responses about when she was free over the next week, determined that her cover story for Thursday evening (“girl’s night out”) seemed the weakest. Sure enough, as I sat across the street from Lotta’s house in my car reading Bret Easton Ellis’ “Less Than Zero” by flashlight that Thursday evening, Mark II pulled up and bopped inside.

If reading Ellis’ dispiriting book by a wavering yellow light in a freezing car wasn’t depressing enough on its own, I made sure to get the full measure of ego-nullification by staying past the time that all the other lights in the house except the bedroom went off, past the time that beacon went off–and I presumed the sex began–and well into the early morning. I briefly considered letting the air out of Mark II’s tires before I left at around 3 a.m., but couldn’t quite bring myself to stoop that low.

I was too embarrassed to admit that I had staked out her house, but eventually I confronted Lotta about Mark II, citing evidence I had obtained through less craven means. When I laid the accusation out on the table, she just shrugged, and said, “What do you expect? You’re married.”

And so I was–for another few months anyway. Somehow I made peace with the situation and life continued, Lotta now doing little or nothing to conceal her relationship with Mark II from me. At one point, she went so far as to ask for advice.

“You know your nose hair?”

“Yeah?” I said.

“How do you–you know–trim it?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Mark’s nose hair is sticking out all over the place. I want him to cut it back, but he says he doesn’t know how.”

I should have told her I used a Zippo lighter like a flamethrower to burn it out. Instead I mumbled, “Tell him to get a pair of nail scissors at the drug store. Those work fine.”

Surprisingly, the trend of talking about Mark II’s shortcomings continued–and even accelerated. First, Lotta mentioned that she thought that Mark’s neck was too long and scrawny. Later, she said she thought he wasn’t very mature and he had a dead-end job. I began to think the tide of the battle might be turning my way–although there still seemed to be plenty of new shoes from Mark II’s so-called dead-end job in Lotta’s closet.

I went on the offensive by funding a trip to a bed and breakfast in the Napa Valley and the acquisition of several new dresses. Lotta was too cheap to buy nice things for herself (and if the truth were known, her taste wasn’t very good), so the dresses had a double-impact: they were both nicer and more stylish than anything she would have bought for herself. When an ex-boyfriend told her she looked the best she ever had while wearing one of them, she was extremely pleased and I thought I had turned the corner.

It was about that time that her parents came to town. I joined them for lunch–which seemed to go well–and Lotta said she was going to take the rest of the day to show them around the area. She invited me over to dinner the evening after they flew home to Iowa, and for once, I had a pleasant meal at her house: I insisted on ordering pizza and paired it with a six pack of my favorite beer. Lotta told funny stories about her dad working on her car and playing handyman, and things seemed more relaxed between us than they had in a while.

Until I got up to go to the bathroom.

After taking the opportunity to inspect my nose hair–to which I now paid an inordinate amount of attention–I realized that I had a “bat in the cave” and went hunting for a tissue to aid in its extraction. I opened the cabinet under the sink, and rather than locating a box of Kleenex, found Lotta’s diaphragm sitting out to dry on top of its little plastic dish.

Lotta had told me that her parents had been over for dinner the previous evening and then had returned to the hotel where they were staying. It now dawned on me that there had been another guest at dinner–and this guest hadn’t gone to any hotel to spend the night. He’d spent it in Lotta’s two-hundred gallon water bed.

I snatched up the diaphragm and carried it back to the kitchen table, where I tossed it onto Lotta’s plate, right on top of the greasy pepperoni. “What’s this doing out?” I demanded.

Lotta tried countering with the “how dare you paw through my stuff” argument, but I wasn’t having any. Eventually it came out that Mark II had been there, and when I accused her of using her parents as a sounding board to help her pick between us–first showing me off at lunch followed by him at dinner–she pretty much copped to the charge.

I got up to storm out of the house, but she wheedled and pleaded and managed to talk me into staying. I guessed that maybe her parents had thought I was the better catch, even though I’d been given the less desirable spot in the dog show. Now she was working a little harder to keep me on the leash.

After cleaning the greasy diaphragm and entombing the leftover pizza in Tupperware like organs preserved for transplant, we retired to the den to watch a rerun of The A-Team in almost complete silence. Then we took ourselves off to bed, where (for once) I resisted Lotta’s attempt to use sexual favors to assuage my righteous anger.

“Look,” she said. “I’ll wear the lamb slippers again if you want. Baa-baa!”

“No, damn it. The sheep thing is not going to make up for this. And besides, I’ll bet you got those slippers from him, didn’t you?”

Lotta just shrugged and returned the woolly, two-toed slippers to the closet. She dropped off to sleep almost immediately, but I tossed and turned for hours, unable to shake the conviction that she was turning me and Mark II into a couple of emasculated drones for her hive. Finally, at about two in the morning, I decided I was leaving. The only problem with that idea was that Lotta had given me a ride to her house. My car was still in the parking lot at work.

But, having made the decision, I wasn’t going to let this deter me. My close friend Terry lived about two miles away, and I thought the air and the exercise would be a good way to clear my head. How Terry and his wife Mary would feel about me presenting myself on their doorstep in the middle of the night didn’t figure in my calculations.

Now your true reconstituted man, anxious to throw off the chains of drone-dom, would have shaken Lotta awake, boldly pronounced that he was leaving, and then marched out of the house in a testosterone cloud. What I did instead was slip out of the covers, dress quietly in the dark and sneak out the door with my garment bag. I even felt guilty about leaving Lotta’s front door unlocked–but only slightly.

The walk to Terry’s was a straight shot down a major road that was completely deserted. Now that that die was cast, and I was marching inexorably towards the hoped-for sanctuary of Terry’s abode, it finally occurred to me to worry about the reception I would get. What if he wasn’t home? What if he didn’t answer the door? What if he called the cops?

None of those things happened. I tapped quietly on the door, whispering, “Hey, Terry, it’s me,” until the porch light came on. I heard the safety chain being taken off and then the door yawned open. Terry stood in his pajamas, gripping a baseball bat in one hand while rubbing tousled hair with the other. “What the f—, Coggins?” he asked (reasonably enough I had to admit).

I explained that I had come from Lotta’s, and no sooner was her name out of my mouth, than he said, “Okay, okay. You can take the hide-a-bed.” You see, Terry had heard a story or two about Lotta by that point.

It developed that Terry and Mary had also had a fight earlier in the evening and he had been sleeping on the hide-a-bed when I knocked on the door. I was now doing the important service of reuniting him with his wife. A further irony was that my ex-wife and I had given Terry and Mary the hide-a-bed when we moved from our old house. I was being reunited with it–at least for what was left of the evening.

I steered clear of Lotta for the next few weeks, feeling virtuous and remasculated. She emailed me once asking about some stuff I’d left at her house, but she didn’t make any serious attempt to get us back together, nor did she ever ask exactly what happened the night of my disappearance from her bedroom. I guess there wasn’t much ambiguity about the message I had sent.

Then, around eight in the morning one Saturday, I got a tearful call from her. She’d been arrested the night before for drunk driving and had spent the night in jail. She was all torn up, she said, and would I come over and spend some time with her? I told her I was sorry, but no. We were done.

I hung up the phone–and immediately felt I’d been too harsh. The circumstances of the arrest sounded arbitrary and miserable: she’d abandoned her Pontiac Fiero on the side of the road when she decided on her own she was too drunk to drive, but was arrested when she came back to get something from it and an officer happened by. She’d been handcuffed and spent the night with other drunks until she was allowed to make a phone call to a girlfriend to post bail.

I decided it wouldn’t be the crime of the century to go see her. I wasn’t getting back with her, I was just going to comfort her for old time’s sake. I swung by the supermarket on the way to pick up her favorite–Haagen-Dazs ice cream bars–and then drove to her house.

As I came up the sidewalk, I saw through the kitchen window that someone was sitting at the kitchen table. The someone didn’t have his shirt on, and as I looked at him from the back, I realized that Lotta was right: Mark II’s neck was long and scrawny.

I dropped the Haagen-Dazs bars on the welcome mat and hot footed it back to my car. I drove to the nearest pay phone to call Lotta to tell she could find them there, and furthermore, exactly what I thought about her having Mark II come over after she had called me.

“But you said you weren’t coming–” was all she managed before I slammed down the phone.
I’d like to tell you that that was the last day I spoke to Lotta–that I never had anything to do with her again. I’d like to tell you that, but I’d be lying. My addiction continued in fits and starts–as addictions will–for another three years over two different continents. (Lotta took a temporary job in Germany, where I traveled several times to visit her.)

When she came home, I agreed to meet her in a bar in Palo Alto and there I told her once and for all that we done, finitio, finished. It took her a while to grasp that the worm had had turned. But when she did, her face dropped and she stormed out of the restaurant, leaving her Kahlua and Cream (and the bar bill) behind.

The bar has long since closed, but the building now houses a popular Asian restaurant. My (new) wife and I eat there occasionally, and whenever we come in, I glance involuntarily at corner by the door where I had that final conversation. I didn’t meet my wife until years and years later, but I know we’d never be together if the battle of Lotta hadn’t ended at that spot.

Maybe they should put up a plaque.

(Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt. CC 2.0 licensing.)

Read more: Drunk Driving, Stalking, Love Triangle, Singles, Divorce, Belly Dancing, Comedy, Sex, Dating, Relationships, Living News

This was an odd week, as the penultimate week always is. We had a live eviction on Wednesday, then a second live show without an eviction on Thursday. Just one more column, I keep telling myself, and I’ll never have to see or hear or discuss Boobiac ever again.

Sunday: Britney never had a chance at this Decorate-Your-Xmas-Tree challenge. I’ll give her this, she passed the ever-lame Penguin.

Poor Beast. He had to emcee the HOH contest, which meant using big words like “ornament,” and “breaks,” and “supercalifragilisticexpialadocous.” “Christmas ornaments! I hate that word!” said the Beast, unable to count to two.

Bitchney: “I’ve been called a ‘ball-buster’ before, but who knew that I was actually that good at it?” What’s your fiancé’s name again, darling? And the name of every boy you’ve ever dated? And every waiter who has ever had to take your order?

Hayden credits 22 years of experience decorating Christmas trees for his runaway lead, though it took him two tries at the mathematical poser: 24 – 2 = ? to get the answer right. So, is he telling us that for 22 years, he was never allowed near a Christmas ornament nor tree except through chicken wire? It seems an odd condition to lay down, but perhaps his parents knew best. After all, some Christmas music is actually that dreaded Classical Music, aka “Hayden’s Bane”! What if Handel’s Messiah came on without warning, and Hayden suffered a seizure that sent him spiraling out of control into the family Christmas Tree? Then, that chicken wire might be all that could save Christmas!

Hayden’s years of experience at stuffing his fingers through the wire mesh of his various cages paid off, and he became the Head of Household. He asked us: “When I busted into this joint, did you ever think I would make it this far?” No, Hayden, I didn’t. If I had, I might have taken my own life then and there.

Having become aware that perhaps there are not “500 dead presidents with my name on them,” as The Penguin announced back in episode one, he now has to figure a way to spin reality where he can still be the winner, even though he’s going to lose.

“I’m just happy just to be part of de Brigade. I’m happy to even come up with de name … Boom! Boom! Bra-Gade. When Hayden wins, dat’s like me winnin’!” Ironically, it’s also him losing! “We’re de Brigade. I started dis ting from de beginning. I’m de mastermind of de whole Brigade!” Actually Mr. Mensa was the mastermind of The Brigade. That’s why they got rid of him. They didn’t dare compete with someone smart.

Speaking of being a Mastermind, here’s a tidbit The Penguin said to Bitchney this week, heard on the live feeds and told back to me, sadly not used on CBS. It seems (prepare for a shock!) that both Bitchney and The Penguin have ambitions to become actors. What are the odds? The Penguin asked Bitchney: “What kind of actor are you going to be, a methodist?”

He’s a mastermind!

Bitchney was now channeling her inner-Ragan, and having a teary self-pity party, though she at least understood that it was an immature reaction.

Hayden is not the only houseguest facing the horrors of complex higher mathematics. Said The Beast: “There’s no word that could describe how excited I am, ’cause I’m in The Final Four. I have one out of – what is it? – Three chances? Or four? I get them mixed up. Like, do I count myself? ‘Cause I can beat myself, so do I count myself?” He can beat himself, and has, as many a You Tube visitor has seen him do in the shower. But should he count himself? It’s not an easy answer. A number representing him would probably be an imaginary number, so I say, no, don’t count him.

Luxury Competition: $10,000 will buy you some luxury. The Beast is almost showering at the idea: “A chance to win ten grand? You know how many cases of beer I can buy with that? Plus Muscle Milk? Oh my gosh. This is Heaven.” No wonder I’m not religious.

This game was just a pimped-up version of hide-and-seek, with coins instead of people. At some point in the past The Penguin may have played this, so he knew he had it smoked. “The Meow Meow doesn’t get his name for nothin’. Hide-and-Seek is my game. Let’s do it.”

All the houseguests picked good hiding places. The Penguin hid his behind some huge metal wall-sculpture that will remain in place until the house is demolished. Hayden put his into an unopened cereal box. The Beast hid his in the trash. Bitchney combined the Hayden and Beast approaches, and hid hers in a cereal box in the trash. Hayden later did her the favor of hiding it more for her by taking the garbage outside, and dumping it in the bin.

The Penguin found Hayden’s coin.

Poor Beast, he said that the contest was so long “It’s like waiting for the ending of one of the Harry Potter movies. It’s forever!” Does he mean the wait for the next movie, or the wait once the movie starts, for it to end? I suppose it wouldn’t occur to him to just read the books, like every other ten year old in the world has.

Bitchney found The Penguin’s coin and eliminated him. So much for it being “The Meow-Meow’s Game.”

Then Bitchney found The Beast’s coin, and won the $10,000. The Penguin was pissed, and indulged in a little Diary Room sour graping: “Okay, Britney, you won. Good for you. Now you got ten Gs, another target on your back. You just won a vacation to the Jury House. See ya!” And this differed from her situation before the challenge how? Oh yes. She has the $10,000 that The Beast just lost. She was already fated to the Jury House unless she wins the next POV. But then, I’m sure The Penguin will win the next POV challenge. If this be madness, yet there’s Methodism in it.

CBS used five minutes of national air time to show us Hayden, The Penguin, and Bitchney having an energetic pillow fight.

Hayden finally proposed to The Penguin turning on The Beast, and keeping Bitchney. It had to come, though I never saw the reason being that he might be too smart for them. I’m not saying The Beast isn’t smarter than Hayden and The Penguin, I’m just saying that those would be the only two people on earth he might be smarter than.

Nominations: Bitchney and The Beast were nominated. Showmance #3 is on the block. Hayden loves everybody there.

Wednesday: This was a special, live eviction show.

Bitchney’s plan is to win POV. Good plan. The Beast’s plan is for Bitchney to win POV. Brave warrior, oh Texan one. The Beast has let more of his true self show this week. It made me pine for the days when he kept his mouth closed, and I could pretend there was a nice dumb guy in there, instead of the uncivilized creature who has emerged. Trust me. We will be discussing The Beast’s “8-Second Game” before we are done.

The Wisdom of Hayden Moss: Hayden to The Beast: “I hope me, you, and Enzo can get in the Final Three, because then that means that we got a good shot to get in The Final Two.” There is no arguing with this pointless statement.

Lazing back on a well-padded chaise lounge, by a swimming pool and a Jacuzzi, well fed and well-wined, mellowed-out, in loose, comfy clothes, outside his air-conditioned home, while enjoying the very-warm summer evening, The Penguin said: “I feel like a Spartan goin’ to war tamarraw.” I have seldom witnessed anything more Spartan in my life. I see my Facebook chum and future ex-husband Gerard Butler screaming to the gods: “We are Sparta! Tonight we dine in STUDIO CITY!!!!!!”

The Beast told Hayden and The Penguin he wanted to go in and take a shower, but he didn’t want to leave them alone to plot behind his back. The Beast should stop mentioning the shower altogether. Whenever he says he wants to take a shower now, it makes all America giggle, like Beavis and Butthead hearing the word “teabag.”

Bitchney tried brokering a save-her-butt deal with Hayden, to take her off the block, by playing numbers games with him to make it sound like he’d beat her in the final round. She told Hayden that The Penguin would win unanimously. What a horrible thought. Could a jury reward such terrible game play over Hayden, who has at least won three HOHs? Or was Bitchney just snowing The Frizzied One?

Said Bitchney of The Penguin: “Enzo played a very different game than everybody, but he played an immaculate game.”

He did play “a very different game” than the other players. They were playing Big Brother; he was playing Big Loser. It was like they were playing Scrabble (a stretch for most of them, I know), and The Penguin was playing 52 Pick-Up.

And what is playing “an immaculate game”? Is she planning to tell her fiancé that The Beast’s Love Cub was immaculately conceived?

Power of Veto Competition: A vital competition, since the winner decides who goes home and who stays into the Final Three.

Movie Marquee asked simple and not-so-simple questions about the housemates, and the players had to choose two-faced posters (perfect for these two-faced players) to line up for answers. Perfectly good quiz, and Bitchney has a real shot at it.

Except that rather than adopt a policy of get-the-first-one-absolutely-right, slide in answer, and move on, she decided to get all the answers before sliding in any posters. Plus she had no sense of urgency, and went at it like an afternoon’s crafts project, setting out all her materials, organizing her tools, doing everything but spreading out newspapers on her workspace. The result: She had no answers at all slid in when Hayden rang in for the win. The Penguin did better than she did, and he got five-out-of-seven answers wrong!

But The Beast was the most-pathetic. He doesn’t retain memories like a fully-evolved homo sapian. His family are planning to use home videos to reintroduce themselves to him when he comes back to Texas next week. They know that to The Beast there is tomorrow, today, yesterday, and “Ago”. And “Ago” is just a gray blankness. So he figured out the answers to exactly none of the questions. He is lucky to remember who he himself is.

By his own testimony, The Beast got into an argument with his own brain. I don’t know which horse to back in that race!

The Beast: “My brain is mixin’ me up! My brain is backstabbin’ me! My brain is throwin’ this. It’s throwin’ it for me! I’m thinkin’, I know that answer; my brain’s sayin’: ‘No, you don’t.’ I’m thinkin’, yes I do.”

I’m thinking his brain is right. He should stop arguing with it and try listening to it. It can’t be more wrong all the time than he is.

Lord of Delusions: Bitchney: “Even though I didn’t win the Power of Veto, I still feel like I have a really good chance of staying in the house, because I’m really close with both Hayden and Lane, and I don’t think that Enzo realizes that he could still end up being the person who goes home this week.” Aren’t they adorable when they’re that deluded? How has she never come up against a boy’s club before? Has she never heard of “bros before hos,” the motto, both in gameplay and in Life, of The Brigade? Bitchney is about to get a very jarring awakening.

The Brigade, flush with victory in their winnowing down the house to just themselves without anyone ever learning of their existence, decided to come out to Bitchney. I can’t think why they feel compelled to do this. It’s not like it’s gonna be a vote-winner with them. (That anything might lose you jury votes is not a concept that ever sinks into The Penguin: “Hello. My name is Enzo. I engineered your blindside eviction. I hope I have your vote.”)

What it is is this: The Penguin has won almost nothing all season, except a lovely flat-screen 3-D TV. So The Brigade’s victory, must be his personal victory, and He Who Created The Brigade From The Dust, and Lo, It Was Good, must brag about it to someone, and Bitchney is the only person he can brag to about it.

So the whole point of telling Bitchney was really just so The Penguin could preen. The Beast would have preferred drowning himself, or drowning The Penguin, and the Penguin didn’t even wait for Hayden to arrive to spill his guts. “Personally for me, I think it’s greatness,” said The Penguin, oblivious to the emotions rising in Bitchney as she contemplated the depth of their deceit, realizing that the alliances she thought she was forming hither and yon were always being trumped by the silent voting unanimity of The Brigade, and faced her own inevitable eviction.

Even Bitchney has admitted in subsequent interviews that her first reaction was not her best, as she tearfully whined the boys an earful of angry self-pity between sobs: “I mean, how does it feel to know that you just wasted three months, and you have no shot at $500,000, and it’s the only reason you came here? And it’s like a guarantee, to know 100% you’re going home? That you came all this way for no reason? I left my fiancé, my family.”

How does it feel? My guess is that it feels exactly like every evicted houseguest feels: how Boobiac feels, for instance, how Brendon feels, how Monet feels, how Andrew feels, how Mr. Mensa feels, he who now has no money to donate to the foundation for his wife’s imaginary bone disease. And you didn’t come for “no reason.” You won $10,000 a few days ago. I’d hate to be wailing my eyes out in angry, aggrieved self-pity less than a week after winning $10,000. I’d hope still to be in a good mood, or unconscious, or both.

For the record, I know exactly how it feels to know I’ve wasted three months. I know what it’s like to wake up not remembering the last three months. I know what it’s like to wake up not remembering the last 24 months. I’ll be damned if I can remember anything at all of the 1970s! Did I miss anything good? And I can assure you, I have no shot at $500,000 in the immediate future either. But you don’t see me getting all whiny and self righteous about it, do you?

And then, we beheld the emotional depths of The Beast, and learned his True Regard for The Fair Sex.

The Beast: “To see Britney hurt that bad, was like one of my good dogs died. It crushed me.”

“To see Britney hurt that bad, was like one of my good dogs died.”

At least it was one of his good dogs. It would be terrible if hurting Britney was only like one of his bad dogs died.

Let’s talk about Lane Elenberg, whom, thanks to The Penguin, I’ve been calling The Beast all summer long. I’ve wanted to like him. Gee, how I wanted to like him. He is gorgeous, no question about it. His shoulders are larger than my head. He has a country charm to him. He can be quite funny. He’s upfront that he’s stupid.

But stuff kept coming out of his mouth, about the joys of getting liquored up on Saturday night (I’m with you so far), and then careening about roads and fields in a pickup truck, shining a light about and then shooting at “anything that looks like it has eyes.” (I’m off of this bus!)

We began to get a clear sense that his idea of a good time is going to bars and picking fights and beating up strangers, a job he’s certainly built to win every time.

This week on the live feeds was an amazing conversation betwixt our lovely Brigadesters and a clearly reluctant and disgusted Bitchney, on what The Beast calls “The 8-Second Game,” which CBS saw fit not to broadcast. Let’s see what you would call it. (I’ve edited it down some):

Lane: “You ever play the.. 8 second game with her?”

Enzo : “What’s the 8 second game? … You gotta drop.. Oh.. The 8 second game, when you pull your pants down and.. uh.. I forgot. What is it, yo? What’s 8 seconds?”

Lane: “Four of your buddies bring a girl back..”

Enzo : “Oh, ok”

Lane : “…and then you get her in the bed, and all of us are waitin’ at the door, and we bust in on ya, and you gotta hold the girl down for 8 seconds.”

Enzo: “Oh!”

Lane: “You know, cuz the girl’s tryin’ to squirm and tryin’ to get under the covers..”

Enzo: “Oh sh**! I’m definitely gonna do that.”

Lane: “8 second ___”

Enzo: “Oh! I wanna do that. You just hold her down? Down?”

Lane: “Yeah.”

Enzo: “Isn’t that rape?”

The Beast laughs uproariously. It goes on, and gets more graphic, but the ending is the stinger:

Enzo: “Nah.. I’d be divorced. I can’t do that.”

Lane: “She has to ride back with you.”

Britney: “If that happened to me, I would kill myself.”

Lane: “It’s all fun and games.”

Did that sound like “fun and games” to you? It sounded like sexual assault to me. The Beast is a beast. It’s not a joke. It’s not fun and games. It’s subhuman.

If you’re planning on voting for “America’s Favorite,” think of “The 8-Second Game” before you vote.

But I digress…

Final Veto Meeting: This was the beginning of beauty-pageant-pro Bitchney’s Veto Meeting speech, which she knew would really be her house farewell address: “I would also like to say hi to my mom, brothers, Dad, all my family, I love you guys, my friends, I miss you so much, and I’ll see ya soon. I can’t wait!” Conspicuous by his absence was her fiancé, What’s-His-Name. She gave The Beast a lot of airtime, but had not one syllable for the Love of Her Life.

And she said she was sorry she couldn’t have been “an original member of The Brigade,” nor a later one. She lacked the most-basic requirement for entry into any boy’s club. She wasn’t a boy. There was no doubt of her not-boyness. She has no trace of an Adam’s apple.

Anyway, she also had no trace of a hope, and was evicted. All were adults about it, and swore undying love. She repented of her teary eyeworks and went out campaigning for “America’s Favorite.”

Final Head of Household Challenge, Level One: This part of the challenge had me roaring with laughter. The three remaining Brigade members dangled from ropes, while getting slammed hard into canvas walls. When they hit the wall, they were lifted to slide the other direction, and slam into the canvas wall at that end. Last contestant left clinging to life advances to the final challenge, while the early fall-offs faced off in Level Two.

Then they started up a waterfall they had to roll through on their way towards slamming into the next wall. It was like the least-popular thrill ride at Disney’s California Adventure: The Grand Slammer!

We’ve been having triple digit temperatures for the last couple weeks, and that waterfall might have been refreshing, except the heat waved broke the day before, and it was overcast and chilly when they were doing this challenge. We left them, still being slammed into walls. It never grows old.

Thursday: My GOD! They made Julie Chen work two consecutive days this week! What are they, slave drivers? Why is it always the ones who never suffer who suffer?

Final Head of Household Challenge, Level One [cont.]: The Penguin doesn’t think Bitchney would have been much good at clinging to a rope, sailing through a waterfall, and getting repeatedly slammed into walls. I too, doubt she’d have lasted long, but I surely would love to have seen it. I’m picturing it now — vividly! Slam! Wail! Gracious me. I’d go take a cold shower, but Lane is hogging the bath room as usual.

The Penguin on an All-Brigade Final Three: “Tree dodos in De Final Tree, you can’t have wrote a better – ah – script dan dis.” Don’t tell me what I can’t have been wrotten!

Hayden on slamming into walls: “After a while, hitting the wall felt like a frinkkin’ car wreck, without the car.” So it felt like a “wreck”? Which wreck? The Mary Dreare? My career? Your hair?

TMI: The Penguin: “This little wooden seat now, it’s got my left leg numb. My boys downstairs are squooshed.”

Well, see what the boys in the back room will have.

The Penguin continues: “I’d like to find out who designed this little wooden seat, you know, so then I could give him a nice – ah – Jersey beat down. That’s what I do.” He remains a source of charm to the end. He actually still thinks that’s funny or cute. In any event, the only person I know with a little wooden seat is Pinocchio.

But count on The 8-Second Man to bottom even The Penguin: “This is like a Texas bar fight. You get slammed from wall-to-wall-to-wall, people pour alcohol and water on your head, and then you wake up the next morning, and your testicles hurt.” Maybe they got a Jersey beat down from The Penguin’s boys downstairs. TMI

I’ve been slammed from wall-to-wall-to-wall while people poured alcohol in the direction of my head on many occasions, but never in a bar fight. We were just young and in love.

The Penguin fell off first. Hands up, everyone who is surprised. Hands? No one? Okay.

The Penguin: “I have a chance to prove myself in this competition, and I didn’t do it.” Oh I disagree. I believe you did prove exactly who you were. You’re the guy who always loses competitions. You’re the male Kathy.

While The 8-Second Man and Hayden were being slammed into wall after wall after wall, each actually competing full-out to win, the Penguin, alone in the house at last, made himself a pizza. Left completely alone, he becomes his mother. If he’d had a TV, he’d have put his feet up and watched an old Matlock while he ate, but since he didn’t, he went out and ate while watching Big Brother from the front row, enjoying his pizza while they suffered for his dining and dancing pleasure.

At one hour and fifty-eight minutes of being repeatedly slammed into walls, which must be a record, even for The Beast, he suffered an injury he was quite specific about. “I just ripped my whole ass.” What exactly does he mean? Maybe I should see for myself. Now hold still. This may tickle. Stop squirming. It’s all right. I’ve played people in movies who knew doctors, so they know what I’m doing.

At two hours and thirty-five minutes, The Beast slipped off. A mere two and a half hours of being repeatedly slammed into walls? That’s all you got? Pussy!

Okay, The Penguin’s “Wifey” is pretty and appealing. What is she doing married to him? She could do better.

Wifey: “He’s an amazing dad, but he is a mama’s boy.” Tell us something we don’t know.

Mommy: “In school, he was not so much of a A+ student.” I’m flattened with shock! I’m guessing neither was Mommy, though she may have done well in cooking classes.

“Enzo has definitely been underestimated,” said Wifey, overestimating him.

Jury House of Hell!: Kathy is still upset that a man who sits around the living room with people who are not his family, wearing Skull & Crossbones pajamas in the middle of the day, might be what she sees as evil. Is there some way Kathy could be evicted from the Jury House?

“Is Ragan a competitor?” asked Boobiac back at the jury house of the man who got both her and her boy toy evicted, and who has repeatedly won POVs, and outlasted her and Brendon at every endurance challenge. Somehow she never noticed he was a competitor while he was busy wiping the floor with her and her musclebound boyfriend?

“I’m painting a yellow picture,” added Boobiac brainlessly, “so whoever comes in can be cheery and sunny.” Try painting a picture of a house that Boobiac is not in, if you want whoever walks in to be cheery and sunny.

“Another showmance to the Jury House,” announced Ragan to Mr. Mensa. So that’s why Mensie was sitting around in pajamas. He intends to hustle Ragan off to bed, and finally consummate their bromance, before Ragan finds out about Mr. Mensa’s little white fib, and Ragan-poontang goes off the table. Mr. Mensa has probably had to listen to Boobiac and Brendon all week (You just know she’s loud at the, you know, loud times.), and is horny as hell.

“I see Ragan as a bully,” said Boobiac, in a glaring example of it-takes-one-to-know-one in action.

Everyone, even Kathy, laughed out loud when Ragan hit The Penguin in the head with the CD. This is definitely a Three Stooges crowd.

After watching Ragan’s eviction DVD, Mr. Mensa asked Ragan to accompany him outdoors. Off went Ragan, hoping this was, at last, the longed-for proposal: “I’ve decided that when my wife dies of her imaginary bone disease, I want to marry you. My wife’s given us her blessing.” But he had something else to say.

“Take your drink; you’ll need it,” said Kathy, in the first intelligent thing she’s said all season.

View this moment out-of-context for a second: As Mr. Mensa said, “My beautiful wife can not be happier and healthier,” we watched Ragan’s face droop, his smile vanish. He was devastated to learn his friend’s wife was healthy and happy. All his dreams of their post-show-and-bone-dead-wife marriage dashed to pieces. Now he has nothing to show for his time in the house but the $20,000 dollars he got by being the Saboteur, and thereby lying to everyone in the house, including Mr. Mensa. High horse saddled up, ready for mounting.

Ragan: “I feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy pulls the football away.” Two-dimensional? Stuck in childhood forever? Dressed like a dork? What?

Bottom-Feeder Boobiac, lurking at the door, listening to every word, like a nameless horror lurking in a crypt in an H. P. Lovecraft story (I apologize to all nameless horrors in Lovecraft tales. None of you are as hideous as Boobiac.), now calculating that Ragan’s emotions are at their rawest, moves in to strike. I’d liken her to a scorpion, but what has a scorpion ever done to me?

Ragan came clean about his great lie, which turned out to be the forgettable fact that he is a professor, and actually has the PhD that Brendon covets, and Mr. Mensa also lacks, for all his MENSAcity.

But big deal. Who cares? What about coming clean about being The Saboteur? Well? We’re waiting. Oh, how you sewed seeds of paranoia on everyone for an extra $20,000, and lied to everyone, including Mr. Mensa, would make it harder to play the Moral Superiority Card against him, wouldn’t it?

Instead, he and Boobiac went at it over her being a total bitch, and not accepting this fact. She pointed out that there had been no arguments in the jury house, conveniently forgetting the blow ups when Mr. Mensa first confessed his lie.

But here’s a fact, the complaints by regular watchers of the live feeds that the feeds are duller than watching blood dry have increased substantially since Boobiac left the house.

“Ragan, go grab your tiara and be a f***ing queen; I’m over you.” said Boobiac, sashaying off into the house, believing that this witlessness-wrapped-in-homophobia constituted a stinging exit line, though she only showed again her utter lack of any trace of class. And I was left wondering if she meant one of Bitchney’s tin foil tiaras. And if she was actually over him, why was she trying to battle him at all?

Head of Household Competition: Level Two: This involved recognizing who was whom in “funny” pictures in which the houseguests faces had been smushed together, and “Frankensteined,” which is no joke, and I speak as the ex-wife the Karloff family still refuses to admit Boris was ever married to. (That was one unpleasant break-up.)

So this involved recognizing faces and a bit of brain power, and it was between the two prize dimwits of this season’s men, The Beast and The Penguin. The competition seemed to be to see who could lose worse.

The Beast did better than I expected. He got them all right in one minute and thirteen seconds. Ooh. Suspense. How much worse would the Penguin’s score be?

Just a thought on the voting for America’s Favorite Houseguest. I wish, when they announce it, that they’d show all the houseguests rankings on it. I’d love to see Boobiac in last place, and my guess is Mr. Mensa isn’t racking up the votes either.

“We’ll determine the winner when we return,” said the Chenbot, though I can’t imagine what extremely slow children she thought she was addressing, because anyone watching the show already knew that The Beast had beaten The Penguin by 30 seconds. “It was a close game,” was a lie The Chenbot felt she needed to tell.

Okay, as regards this show’s wind-up and Survivor‘s kick-off: I was mistaken when I wrote last week that my last Big Brother column will be on Monday, for I could see no possible reason for the show not to end on Sunday with an evening-long weekend blow-out. But no. Sunday will be a deleted-scenes hour, where we’ll advance nothing, but see hopefully juicy bits of bad behavior. Translation: Lots of ear-splitting Boobiac footage.

Big Brother is ending following the Suvivor season opener next Wednesday. Oh joy. Darlings, I can watch both shows in one night, but I can not write two columns in one night. If I tried, the second one would be even less worth-reading than the first.

So, I’ll be back here next Thursday with my recap of the Big Brother finale and reunion show, and then I’ll be here on Friday also, with the Survivor recapped opener a day late. Live with it. Thereafter, Survivor recaps will appear each Thursday. Who says we don’t have seasons in California?

Cheers darlings.

To read more of Tallulah Morehead, go to The Morehead, the Merrier, or buy her book, My Lush Life.

Read more: Texas, Reality TV, Big Brother 12 Episode 27, Julie Chen, Big Brother 12 Episode 26, The Penguin, Mensa Society, Entertainment News, Cbs, Big Brother, Big Brother 12, Big Brother 12 Episode 28, Entertainment News

When Lady Gaga added this week another sold-out concert in Washington, D.C., to her tour, her mix of flashy pop spectacle and outrageousness still didn’t do much to bail out a troubled concert season this summer. She’s taken the music industry’s emphasis on dazzle and flash over great music that can last (despite her crafting danceable pop) to its ultimate extreme, when image trumps the music every time. Few acts these days are offering music that makes it worthwhile for people to pay the exorbitant prices that they’re charging, abetted by the gouging by the leading promoter and ticket-seller, Live Nation, recently merged with Ticketmaster.

In contrast, there’s another sort of showmanship that still endures, and it’s grounded in rich music delivered with passion and integrity by committed artists at reasonable prices. Bruce Springsteen, of course, is among the greatest live performers in the world, and he’s done what he can to make affordable tickets available for his shows, even though it has inadvertently led to more scalping. Yet this summer, Lyle Lovett’s tour especially offered a model of what a great show should be like, sweetened by the sort of sensible prices that were especially appealing on a recent August evening at Wolf Trap, the national park for the performing arts: lawn seats were just $25 and the covered orchestra seats $45, all under the warm summer sky.

All dressed in suits (who does that anymore?), his 15-man Large Band, including a four-man gospel quartet, put on a vibrant two-and-half-hour show that mixed the best American music can offer, from swing and folk ballads to gospel and blues to country and bluegrass. It was an eclectic gumbo of styles rivaled only by, say, Willie Nelson who also draws from across the American songbook. But even Nelson doesn’t play those varied songs in such differing styles as Lovett does.

It was his 19th appearance at Wolf Trap since his breakthrough albums of the 1980s, and the venue was packed. Will Lady Gaga be playing to enthusiastic crowds 20 years from now?

In truth, the pernicious trends that are wrecking the live music industry — stale music at jacked-up prices — just aren’t working anymore, despite Gaga’s current success, as shown by the cratering stock prices for Live Nation and its downgrading this week by a top analyst. As the AP reported on the same day that Lady Gaga sold out her concert:

Shares of concert promoter and ticket seller Live Nation Entertainment Inc. sank Tuesday after an analyst cut his rating on the stock.

THE SPARK: Benjamin Mogil, an analyst for Stifel Nicolaus, lowered his rating on Live Nation to “Hold” from “Buy” over worries that any gains from the improving concert business are going straight to increasing artist costs.

THE BIG PICTURE: The summer concert season was weak amid economic uncertainty this year. Live Nation says it doesn’t have a big-name lineup for the rest of the year. U2 has delayed a North American tour while its lead singer, Bono, recovers from back surgery. And major acts including The Eagles, Rihanna and Simon and Garfunkel, to name a few, have canceled or postponed tours due to poor ticket sales.

THE ANALYSIS: Mogil wrote that he thinks the concert industry’s problem is not one of low ticket demand — it’s that artists with limited appeal are booking too many tour stops to make up for falling record royalties. The analyst said he would like to see signs that the industry is committed to reducing artist payment guarantees.

Gaga’s success has been an exception to a grim concert season, noticed as early as July with the cancellations of at least 10 Lillith Fair concerts featuring women singers. While Gaga has to keep upping the ante with bizarre, skimpy outfits and lurid stunts to keep the customers coming, even though she’s also a talented singer and pianist, Lovett offers something else instead: heartfelt music spiced with his wry humor.

Much of the show was devoted to his last two albums, including his latest, Natural Forces, a sign that he keeps growing as an artist. He opened with a Vince Bell song, “Sun and Moon and Stars,” sung with quiet intensity backed simply by a cello, bass, fiddle and Lovett on acoustic guitar. His slightly strained tenor only added to the melancholy nostalgia of the song as he sang, “Lost to me is how the lives of friends go like autumn leaves in the Oklahoma wind.” But in fact, he didn’t forget Vince Bell, the Houston singer who got his start in the 70s as a follower of Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, and was a musical hero to the then-young Lovett. “He called me on the stage for no good reason,” he recalled. “When somebody like that says what you’re doing is okay, it’s a real help.” In fact, he graciously credited all of his phenomenal musicians and made sure to tell the audience who the composer was of each song he covered.

One of the show’s centerpieces was the latest album’s title song, “Natural Forces,” inspired while watching a beer commercial during a football game, and realizing he and other Americans were not sacrificing anything while troops fought overseas for them. It led him to craft a song, apparently from the point of view of a truck driver, recalling his trips across the American landscape. Now the trucker was watching a beer commercial and wondering: “Now as I sit here safe at home/With a cold Coors Lite an’ the TV on/All the sacrifice and the death and woe/Lord I pray that I’m worth fighting for.” It was a reminder of what the rest of us don’t often think about:

His range was stunning, from his classic songs, such as the ballad “If Had A Boat,” to powerful gospel numbers such as “Church” and “I Will Rise Up.” In fact, he showed that he’s one of the few white singers who has fully mastered the nuances of the black gospel idiom without ever descending to minstrel-like mimicry of a “black” accent to convey the power of the songs.

He ended the show with yet another gospel-style number,” Ain’t No More Cane,” drawn from the Southern work-song tradition, and it powerfully evoked some of the darkest eras of our history — as well as the sort of anthemic, epic songs that haven’t been performed since the heyday of Robbie Robertson and The Band. Almost each member of the band contributed a verse, but Lyle’s plaintive voice was nothing less than haunting: “There’s some on the building/ and there’s some on the farm/and there’s some in the graveyard/and there’s some going home…And there ain’t no more cane on this Brazos/They done ground it all into molasses.”

After taking us through a rich tapestry of of styles and emotions, Lyle chose to end the show with a gripping song like this that shows that you don’t need smoke machines and pianos shooting fire to reach people with your music.

Read more: Country, Pop Music, Folk, Lyle Lovett, Bluegrass, Lady GaGa, Ticket Sales, Live Nation, Blues, Wolf Trap, Entertainment News

Angelina Jolie is in Pakistan, where she has met with the Prime Minister in her role as UNHCR ambassador. On Wednesday she spoke with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta via satellite about the flood victims and how she deals with the tragedy she sees.

“I’ll talk to my family,” she said. “I talk to Brad; he wants to know as much as he can about these issues and every trip. He’s been here as well, he came with me after the earthquake. But I don’t know, I don’t have a lot of friends I talk to. He is really the only person I talk to.”

Angelina said that she lets her older children watch the reports about the floods and tries to teach them about what is happening in the countries they are from.

“I tell my children why I’m going and I explain to them why I was packing flashlights and food. They help me pack some things,” she said. “It helps them to be better people, to understand a little bit about the world.”

See photos of Angelina in Pakistan here.

WATCH:

Read more: Video, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie Sanjay Gupta, Angelina Jolie Pakistan, Sanjay Gupta, Entertainment News