Girls Next Door

Right now, since it's Monday night, I'm at Degeneration, Patrick's party at Scenic, getting wasted and dancing my pants off and ingesting all manner of household substances through all kinds of orifices. I'm certainly not at home, watching The Girls Next Door, the new reality show about the Playboy "girlfriends" - Playmate-hopefuls who live in the Playboy mansion and act as concubines to Hugh Hefner. I'm pretty sure I overheard someone saying that it seems like there are currently three such girlfriends, though at the start of the season there were seven, all of whom say they are "dating" the Hef. There is clear competition between new girlfriends and old ones. The dynamics are as follows (from right): 25-year-old Holly Madison, a 50's style blonde bombshell, similar to Barbara Bel Geddes from Vertigo, who's clearly the smartest and most ambitious of the girlfriends. Then there's 31-year-old Bridget, a singularly despicable character who is simultaneously cheerful, catty, jealous, ambitious, and perfectly idiotic. And then there's Kendra, who it seems is Hef's newest and favorite girlfriend, and no wonder: she's new, 20 years old, athletic, and has a certain air of nonchalance, as though she just expects good things to happen to her and they do. The dynamic in the house is layered, complicated, and competitive, and all centered around the oft-absent, mythic figure of Hugh Hefner. The whole thing reminds me of the Yimou Zhang film Raise the Red Lantern, an historical epic about concubines in feudal China. Who woulda thunk.

That's a nice, pithy observation - until you remember how that movie ended. Hmm.

But I'm not even thinking about that, because I'm at Scenic. Drinking. There's no way I'm watching Aqua Teen or anything like that. Noooo way.