A friend of mine, B., has a special talent for punctuating serious comments with pop culture references, which is jarring and often hilarious.  After writing to me that he enjoyed reading about my recent thoughts on how we, in a consumer society, accumulate too much stuff, he wrote:

Apparently Gwyneth Paltrow has a blog about things you can buy to have a beautiful life like hers.  Maybe you could get rid of the thinking and learning parts of your blog and add more pictures of stuff to buy.

His comment actually made me feel a little sheepish about one of my “guilty pleasures,” which is the TV show Lipstick Jungle. Oh, to live the life of Wendy, Nico, or Victory! (No, I actually don’t envy a glamorous or celebrity life, but it was a fun soap opera to escape into with women my age who are dealing with career and love problems just like mine…………although mine doesn’t include a six-figure-salary, press conferences, private jets, designer clothes, Page 6, celebrity friends, etc.)

I blame my sister and Andrew McCarthy (who plays Victory’s love-interest, Joe) for this addiction. I blame my sister for telling me that it wasn’t as silly as it looked and it might be fun for me to watch and then I got hooked, and I blame a lingering nostalgia for my 1986 crush on Andrew McCarthy in Pretty in Pink.

Alas, Lipstick Jungle has been canceled by NBC. I’ll have to find some other show to fluff my brain.