the rix mix

Glad I kept TV on for the Late Late Show last night. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood for Craig Ferguson's humor, which on many nights relies too much on fart references & Hollywood gay jokes. But he takes chances in his long opening monologues, & on occasion he's even serious, or at least real. His Emmy nomination last year was for the show he did after his father died. Last night he talked about how he's capable of feeling bad after kicking around celebrities who don't deserve having their feelings hurt by him, & why he would not be doing Britney jokes. He didn't know whether or not Spears had substance abuse problems, but he, Craig, had been a drunk until he was 29. He then gave a pretty graphic account of a bender he went the year before he dried out, waking up on Christmas morning in a pool of his piss; "I hope it was mine, " he said. Although it would be a year until he went into rehab, it seemed to have marked a nadir - he had been expecting to get home for Christmas, & instead decided to commit suicide, but was sidetracked from doing it by getting drunk all over again. Staying drunk - "self-medicating"- literally saved his life that Christmas Day. It was the start of a slow turning that finally culminated in his phoning an old friend & asking for help, & his friend saying, "I've been expecting this call." Ferguson looked at Spears & instead of some laughable, absurdly easy celebrity target of his humor he made himself see a fucked up human being with a toddler & a baby, in her mid-20s but still a teenager, really, with hundreds of "friends" to be sure but maybe no one at all to call for help except her own mother.