Marissa is my beard.

The following is an e-mail exchange between me and my friend Jenipher, discussing THE O.C.
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RILEY: I got THE O.C. DVDs at Target on Saturday, and I've already watched, like, five episodes. That show is beyond awesome.

JENIPHER: Hello? What do you think I’ve been talking about for the last year?

R: I'm sorry. In matters of culture, I'm not used to being a follower. But, OK, Seth is BEYOND gay, as is Luke and maybe Ryan a little.

J: Did you see this season’s first episode? Seth becomes gayer as the season progresses, even when he is caught in a love triangle. He can’t make up his mind b/c he loves Ryan most of all. I don’t think Ryan is gay at all.

R: Um, OK. Ryan's not gay acting. But seriously, there's the fact that he's the rebellious, vague, muscle-armed tough guy in a tanktop. And that he walks into every scene in the first four episodes and attracts the attention of every man in the room. Including an older attractive lawyer who wants to keep him in the pool house, a overcompensating rich jock, a bicurious and thin geek boy, a muscular, violent Mexican convict in juvenile hall AND a high school water polo team. The fistfights are there instead of foreplay. The whole thing reads like porn.

J: Yes, I will totally give you all of those things. But I certainly don’t think Sandy [Peter Gallagher, the lawyer] is interested in him. That’s icky. Kirsten put him in the pool house, not Sandy.

R: If it were Peter Gallagher from his SUMMER LOVERS period, then THE O.C. would be a different kind of show.



J: What is SUMMER LOVERS?

R: It's a softcore porn movie he made with Daryl Hannah in 1982.

J: I looked it up. Why do couples in movies have these wild, random trysts when on vacation in exotic places? I have been to somewhat exotic places (Orlando does not count), and have never even been tempted.

R: Maybe nobody sees you and immediately thinks of having an affair with you. Maybe some wild, Latin man would look at you and immediately want to play UNO or something.



J: That is not flattering at all.

R: What would you have me say? "Oh Jenny, I'm sure that someday you'll be lured away from your happy marriage for some sort of hot, clandestine tryst with someone while on a vacation on some tropical island." Or maybe this? "Oh Jenny, you've surely caused sensual thoughts in dozens of men, the effect you used to have on those Mexican construction workers when you worked at that store Small Things, but they likely know that you're pure and decent. Try though they might, they know they cannot have you." What do you want? I think it's more accurate to say that you inspire the average-thinking man more of "fun card games you'd play with your favorite aunt" than of "hot desire."

J: That’s not what I meant. I meant Gabe and I have never even thought of having some hot, EMMANUELLE-type wild tryst with foreign people, much like Peter Gallagher and Daryl Hannah in that movie you mentioned.

R: You haven't. I bet Gabe has.