I'm a Slave 4 U

Guilty. Pleasure. Two words that have become so ingrained in my vocabulary, so instrumental to my daily life, that I'm often tempted to hyphenate them and pass the new word off as my middle name (as if my name needed any extra syllables). Nothing is as comforting, relaxing, tranquilizing as a walk down mindless entertainment lane. And last night really drove home how much I'd like to build a house, raise a family, and retire on said lane.


After refusing to drink the American Idol Kool-Aid for the post-Kelly Clarkson years, I sheepishly found my way back to Simon's magnificent V-neck t-shirts last season. And now that season 8 (?!) has officially kicked off with a string of tragic auditions, I'm fully invested. As is my Tivo. Fortunately, I opted for the non-bottom-of-the-barrel/non-actually-impressive recorder that can handle two shows at once, because 90210 was also on at 8 PM. Laugh all you want, but when a childhood obsession is reincarnated as an overacted CW mess, you watch it. My trusty Tivo was chugging along, dutifully recording both embarrassing trainwrecks, when I received a text from my forever-loyal BFF: "Nick Cannon just said Leo was coming up on the Inauguration Ball thing on Channel 7." A snag in the plan! An unexpected DiCaprio cameo?! No! Reliable as he is (and yes, he is a he), Tivo can't handle switching channels when he's busy recording two things at once. Beads of sweat began to form, and every muscle tensed, engaged in full fight or flight mode. What the hell could I do?

The story itself is pretty anti-climatic: I waited for a Leo appearance on snowy, non-cable basic TV while Tivo did his jobs (which Erin reacted to with an "Eww. You're like a poor person" text). But it really solidified the fact that guilty pleasures rank high on my Important Things in Life list (somewhere between family and well-Windexed glass surfaces). But I'm not the only one. For years, I faithfully, yet shamefully, clung to my guilty pleasure, while I assumed the rest of the world engaged only in significant and thought-provoking pastimes. Thank god recent events have proven how shallow and easily amused the rest of the population is. Just like me!

What is it about a guilty pleasure that is so long-lasting, so relentless? It's been almost 13 years since Romeo & Juliet came out, and I still can't quit Leo. A very close, very dear kindred spirit of mine hasn't, after all these years, been able to snuff out her Days of our Lives obsession. Does she appreciate the witty dialogue and the cast's true mastery of the acting craft? Um, are you kidding? She's the first one to ridicule the grandma/granddaughter/doctor love triangle, the pregnant-teen baby commissioning, the evil memory-erasing and subsequent disk storage of erased memories. But her awareness of D.O.O.L.'s (it's not really a guilty pleasure until you have an acronym for it) insanity does nothing to quell her addiction. If anything, each delightfully improbable storyline only fans the addictive flames. This is a woman who by day, assumes the role of a smart, successful, hot young professional. But by night, is consumed by thoughts of Stefano and Patch (I couldn't make those names up if I tried).

And she's not alone. My mom - my ridiculously beautiful, wise, talented mom - can't fully unwind until she catches up on her Russian soaps, which are so over-the-top and animated, even I can understand them - which means they must be really rudimentary. I know plenty of respectable adults that can't live without their US Weekly fix. And the perfect icebreaker for practically every awkward meeting is, "Hey, do you watch The Hills?" So, the moral of the story (or what I choose to designate as the moral because this is my blog, and you'll like it) is that everyone has a lame, lowbrow fixation that brings them unparalleled joy, and we should all learn to accept one another's unique guilty pleasures. And if I want to Windex my apartment while dancing to Britney on repeat, then you should probably learn to respect that too. Thank you.