ELLEE DEAN

Lipstick bungle

ELLEE DEAN — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:13:35 GMT

The Candace Bushnell-based series is no better than a cheap knock-off
It’s impossible to discuss Lipstick Jungle without making comparisons to Sex and the City.

Brain gloss

ELLEE DEAN — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:04:25 GMT

Two new Boston mags aimed at women beg the question, why not the perfect women's magazine?
The merger of thought and glossy spreads of girls in streaming, DIY couture.

What is the perfect women’s magazine? The merger of thought and glossy spreads of girls in streaming, DIY couture. Aqua fabric that eddies around Christian Louboutin heels, or Converses, and articles upwards of 5,000 words — on anything but ourselves.

Any given month Elle, say, might get it right. From this January’s issue: a profile of Hilary Clinton by Katha Pollit (whose byline appears in the Nation, the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper’s, and Ms.), and a black and white pictorial of Miss Universe in a Marabou feather coat. What’s irksome in the January issue? Neither Clinton, nor Miss Universe are on the cover. Victoria Beckham (Posh Spice) is.

Add Beckham to the corseted rotation of Jennifers (Aniston, Garner, Lopez, Love-Hewitt) and the like, who reinvent themselves as cover girl multiple times a year. And then: where are the articles — not blurbs — on art, music, culture, philanthropy, anything besides: acting and looking young, like a dodo heiress? Magazines like Bitch and Bust might feature more of these sorts of pieces; but they’re blameworthy of other things — how many articles on Beth Ditto can I read? That there are racks of women’s mags, none worth reading or revisiting monthly, befuddles. Such is the redundancy of role models, moppet-like, and topics (fashion, fame, plastic surgery), and the decline of magazines like Ms. — now a quarterly — hatching rampant ho hum when it comes to mags that, supposedly, cherchez la femme.

No matter cluttered covers — what to eat and wear and surgically alter — the insides of the glossy girls’ girl mags (Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Vogue, etc.) remain more hackneyed than their indie counterparts (Bitch, Bust, Venus Zine). Popular is: short editorial, short fashion spreads, short on mind-catching content. Cosmo remains chauvinistically steeped in sex with a section of the Web site devoted to “Sex Tips from Guys” and a blog called “Joe Hottie.” Models wear stretch bustiers from Bebe. Even the knits misbehave: “You’re about to learn how to ooze sex appeal even if you can only show a sliver of skin.”

Cosmo’s good-girl real-girl counterpart Glamour has at least got guest-entries on the “Glamocracy” blog by presidential candidates Hilary Clinton and John McCain and interviews with the late Benazir Bhutto and Michelle Obama. But the everybudget fashion and lifestyle mag sometimes reads like an Oprah-script: “I chased down my identity thief! Read one woman’s amazing story.” Or “Cleavage: Should you flaunt it if you’ve got it?”

Three Wise Women

ELLEE DEAN — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:08:15 GMT

The Girls Next Door bring their gifts to the Playboy Mansion
Watching the show is like falling down the bunny hole ― everything socially acceptable (monogamy, independence, daywear) is naught.

DUMB BUNNIES?: (from left) Kendra, Holly, and Bridget.

There’s something beguiling about the girls in The Girls Next Door (E!, Mondays at 10 pm), the Hugh Hefner-created-and-produced reality show about his multiple live-in girlfriends. All three — Holly, Bridget, and Kendra — are pretty, but not; unique, but not; and dumb bunnies, but not. To each their own stereotypical interest: Bridget likes school; Kendra likes sports; and Holly loves/wants desperately to marry Hugh Hefner. To each their own room: except Holly, who lives in Hefner’s walk-in closet. To each their own Playboy-funded future: Bridget wants to be a voice-actress; Kendra a celebrity rap superstar, clothing designer, massage therapist, and sports announcer; and Holly wants to be Hugh. Holly is Hef’s number-one girl.

Watching the show is like falling down the bunny hole ― everything socially acceptable (monogamy, independence, daywear) is naught. For this reason, I’ve spent nights worrying about Hefner. There he is, an 80-something man living in the Playboy Mansion with the three women above, plus video cameras, fake breasts, and giggles. At one point during Season One, I imagined I saw the horror on ex-girlfriend Barbi Benton’s face (now 57): who are these modern and largely plastic women? And what have they done with Hugh? Couldn’t the man-magnet do better with the rest of his life than this and reality TV? But then I remember episode three of Season Two, “80 Is the New 40” — also the theme for Hefner’s 80th birthday party.

Though he is old — his cadence more like that of an unsteady casino geriatric, less like editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine — Hefner is still having some fun in the vein of his famous brand. Amidst Holly’s ducky chuckle, Bridget’s fairy-dust giggle, and Kendra’s nervous hee-haw, Hefner seems at ease watching WWII-era movies and throwing the occasional Playboy Mansion party. The theme of last night’s Season Four premiere was: Fourth of July meets Iraq meets bikinis on two giant, inflatable slip-and-slides. As Holly dons a tiny bikini to test the novelty of the slip and slide, Bridget’s dad watches from the lawn. As Bridget dons a bunny suit to support the US marines shipping out to war, Kendra reconciles her desire to drink beer with the troops, instead of dressing up. At the end of the episode, we’re treated to a special homecoming: Bridget’s brother returns from Iraq. First stop, the Playboy Mansion.

If we had our way . . .

ELLEE DEAN — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:48:25 GMT

Three wishes for improving winter sports in New England
However tempting, I do not wish for movie stars.

Western mountains: big like a Haakon flip. Eastern mountains: small like 2000 to 4000 feet. Admittedly, I've skied out West.

I've bought lift tickets costing upward of $80 — Aspen's tickets are rumored to be $87 this year — skied the long, boulevards and bowls. Stuff we don't really have here in New England. I've pored over descriptions of lift tickets with miniature prints of what were possibly, Degas's ballerinas because, well, I don't know why. But I've also spent Christmas hooked up to an oxygen tank on a pull-out couch. Thank you, Breckenridge.

It's not just for that last mishap that I now prefer skiing in the East. I favor our mountains, tacked with snow like lace that's full of holes. Avoid the granite, avoid the roots, avoid the pine trees, and — it used to be — avoid the kid in the Starter jacket. Skiing in the East is unpredictable, due to the Mod Podge terrain. And so, for some, it's smarter. For others, maybe, it's just charming.

Charming or not, there are still things I wish for in the East. However tempting, I do not wish for heated sidewalks or movie stars. I also do not wish for a lift up Tuckerman's Ravine. Or, for Massachusetts’s highest peak, Mount Greylock, at 3491 feet, to be any higher — it's fine right where it's at. But I do wish for a few simple and technical things.

WISH #1: more green, more white
As Aspen and Vail compete for green chicness and national accolades — Vail is on the US Environmental Protection Agency's top-25 list of green-power purchasers, Aspen is not — last week, Spruce Peak at Stowe in Vermont was the first ski resort in the US to win the Audubon Green Community Award from Audubon International. Stowe is not the only Eastern mountain "going green." In Maine, Sugaloaf/USA and Sunday River both underwent $4.8 million in renovations, which include 70 to 85 new low-energy snow guns per resort. What does this mean? While ski resorts in the West reduce their carbon footprint by purchasing Community Energy wind credits to offset their carbon production, resorts in the East are reducing their impact on the environment by purchasing low-energy equipment. What this also means: longer season, more snow.

This Halloween, Maine’s Sunday River was the first ski area to open lifts in the Northeast for the season. (Even though Sunday River's message board read something like this: "Dust on crust? Sawdust on plywood? Ribbon of death? Either way you serve it up, spin it, or hype it, this is still skiing in October for the East Coast!" Thank you, username Dave.) The Halloween opening was Sunday River's earliest in 11 years.

Britney Spears

ELLEE DEAN — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:00:36 GMT

Blackout | Jive
Spears’s fifth studio album is a witchy electro-pop wonder as suspect as those prescription pills photographed in her purse a few weeks ago.

Arts and craftsmen

ELLEE DEAN — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:22:40 GMT

Stars and New Buffalo, Berklee Performance Center, October 19, 2007
The stage at the Berklee Performance Center last Friday was strewn with Stars and bouquets of flowers.

Classic chic

ELLEE DEAN — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:23:10 GMT

Regina Spektor, Orpheum Theatre, October 14, 2007
Regina Spektor was of nervous, twitchy mien when she arrived on stage at the Orpheum last Sunday, next to a piano and a disco ball on the floor.

Will.i.am

ELLEE DEAN — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:34:04 GMT

Songs About Girls | A+M
There’s something melodious and calm about Will.i.am’s third solo hip-hop/R&B album — but there’s also something boring about its euphonic electro-funk dolor.

Disorientation 2007

ELLEE DEAN — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 22:01:40 GMT

Guster, Bleu, and Hooray for Earth, Bank of America Pavilion, September 8, 2007
With unsimple, shiny-synth songs like “Simple Plan,” Hooray for Earth are behemothic.

Finding dignity

ELLEE DEAN — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:16:29 GMT

Hilary Duff, Bank of America Pavilion, August 30, 2007
Of her fans — bespectacled little girls with glow sticks at Bank of America Pavilion — Duff exclaims, “It’s very, like, empowering!”

Pet Projekt

ELLEE DEAN — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:53:50 GMT

Gerard Way talks about the Projekt Revolution tour
What Gerard Way, lead singer of My Chemical Romance, had to say about the upcoming rock/hip-hop tour, pyrotechnics, and anti-ambition.

Gerard Way

Slideshow: Projekt Revolution at the Tweeter Center, August 24, 2007

Inpreparation for the Projekt Revolution tour — at the Tweeter Center, August 24 — thePhoenix.com talked with co-headliners Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, and Taking Back Sunday via teleconference. Below is what Gerard Way, lead singer of My Chemical Romance, had to say about the upcoming rock/hip-hop tour, pyrotechnics, and anti-ambition. (And Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park, rambled on mainly, about himself. Highlights at the bottom.)

On choosing to join Linkin Park and Taking Back Sunday as co-headliners on the Projekt Revolution tour:
Well, I think maybe the only thing that is atypical about the choice is the fact that we usually try to pick tours that are extremely different for us — and I think that’s very atypical of our band to do.

It was an amazing opportunity and a real honor to be asked to join the tour with Linkin Park… and then as far as joining it with Taking Back Sunday, that’s a no brainer because those guys are some of our best friends.

On the return of a sense of ambition to music:
Basically, from a younger band’s perspective, coming up — or even before we started MCR — there weren’t a lot of [ambitious] bands. There were a few bands that had ambition. I think Linkin Park is one of them. I think there are a few other bands, too, that had a lot of ambition. Green Day, obviously, is one of them.

But coming up and starting a band, there weren’t a lot of bands [like that]. It was almost like there was this anti-ambition put out there. And it was almost the point to be the least ambitious as possible. And that was extremely frustrating for us even back then. So, I think that is kind of why, at least from our perspective, our growth spurts have been so dramatic with each record because we couldn’t wait to get to a record like this. And I think we pretty much cant wait to get to the next in that regard.

We felt like we had to make up for a lot of lost time of [not] making ambitious records. I think it’s an exciting time in music for that reason. I think a lot of people are now really wanting to make ambitious records.

Black lights

ELLEE DEAN — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:51:14 GMT

Cold War Kids + Muse, Agganis Arena, August 11, 2007
Grids pulsed behind them on three screens, and Matthew Bellamy keened softly, “You will burn in Hell.”

Reality ingenue

ELLEE DEAN — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:53:55 GMT

Lauren Conrad on MTV's The Hills
What is it about MTV’s top-rated reality show The Hills , premiering its third season August 13th?

REAL LOVE: Conrad is just herself and that's why we can't stop watching her.

An internship at Teen Vogue, a job at Bolthouse Productions, fake breasts, fake noses, and a rumored purple engagement ring: the stars of MTV’s The Hills are not typical 20-somethings. But then, they’re not atypical, either. What is it about unhappy, affected, poor-little-rich girls? Or, what is it about MTV’s top-rated reality show The Hills, premiering its third season August 13th? Perhaps it’s just one girl.

Like her loathsome contemporaries Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears, Hills star Lauren Conrad hasarrived with furrowed brow on the covers of tabloids and Teen Vogue. Her feud with Hills co-star and ex-best friend Heidi Montag is reminiscent of the Paris Hilton-Nicole Richie breakup: just last week, she vouchsafed “Her Side of the Story” to UsWeekly. Conrad has found her audience — but is it congruous with the slop-following crowd? Unlike Hilton or Richie, when the camera zooms in on Conrad’s heavily mascaraed eyes, I like to believe I see a glimpse of mind and heart.

The 21-year old, cat-eyed blonde began her career on MTV, vying for friends, boyfriends, and prom dates on Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County — the series that turned Beverly Hills 90210 and TheO.C. into reality TV. As a high schooler, Conrad exhibited a reserve and a notion of right and wrong that her classmates didn’t yet possess. (At least, if she ever did do anything with heartthrob Stephen Colletti while he had another girlfriend, she remained politely mum.) Charity runway shows and broken heartsprepared viewers for what would later become Conrad’s young adulthood in The Hills. Cue the black convertible driving from Laguna to L.A. to the tune of Natasha Beddingfield’s everygirl song “Unwritten.” Unlike other characters on Laguna (not to mention Paris, Lindsay, and Brit), Conrad had done nothing to embarrass herself. So began her own show.

Conrad’s adult role on The Hills, became less romanticthan life in Laguna, though. The Academy of Art University dropout morphed into a West Coast action hero: Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising student by day, Teen Vogue intern by night. And underneath her signature greasy sweep of hair, her expression seemed curiously ambitious for a girl who could have easily decided she already had it all. Of the obstacles she faced in season one, none left viewers more aghast than her decision to forego the summer in Paris for the summer in Malibu with bad-boy boyfriend Jason Wahler. And for an eerily felt, downcast moment in Wahler’s arms — on the porch of the yet-empty beach rental — Conrad seemed, well, real.

Modern enchantress

ELLEE DEAN — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:39:34 GMT

Last Town Chorus, Lizard Lounge, July 11, 2007
It’s no wonder producers picked Hickey’s version of “Modern Love” as a soundtrack to aneurysms, scrabble, and heart attacks.

Wall jumpers

ELLEE DEAN — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:14:08 GMT

Frederick Taylor’s Berlin story
In the center section of Frederick Taylor’s book about the Berlin Wall, there’s a November 1989 photograph of rows of Berliners straddling the high cement barrier.

FAULT LINES: Taylor traces the history of the divided city to its very beginnings.

In the center section of Frederick Taylor’s 508-page book about the Berlin Wall, there’s a November 1989 photograph of rows of Berliners straddling the high cement barrier. One man stands on the Wall, his hands making peace signs in the air. It’s the obverse of the famous image of Peter Fechter taken in August 1962: a young man dying beneath knots of barbed wire. Taylor’s overstuffed narrative tells the history of the Wall, in all its paradoxes. As he quotes a unnamed drinker in an East Berlin bar, just after the Wall came down: “So . . . they built the Wall to stop people leaving, and now they’re tearing it down to stop people leaving. There’s logic for you.”

Beginning with “Marsh Town,” Taylor describes a city that was conceived as two large villages on opposing sandy banks of the river Spree. His chronology of the built-up marshland reads like a draconian catalogue. Sweden’s King Gustavus Adolphus (1594–1632) brought to Berlin the “Swedish drink” — a form of torture that involved pouring raw sewage down victims’ throats. During World War I, “rats became candidates for Berlin’s dinner tables,” and the aftermath of World War II — though called the “golden hunger years” — brought the price of sex with a German woman down to a mere five cigarettes. Taylor’s intro is macabrely well done, and so is its thesis that Berlin had already been badly broken before tensions between post-WW2 allies sandbagged it into two halves.

At the onset of the Cold War, in the mid 1940s, Berlin became two opposing banks once again. The night of August 12, 1961, the leaders of Walter Ulbricht’s German Democratic Republic attended a garden party at Döllnsee — formerly the hunting grounds of Hermann Göring. Sequestered safely north of the city, the men who dreamed up the Wall waited for morning — when East Berliners would wake to “Barbed-Wire Sunday.” Ulbricht’s divided city came true overnight. So did the capitalist West’s worst nightmare. Cue the ensuing “Wall Games,” which read like Taylor’s little-known spy novel Walking Shadows.

An old poet

ELLEE DEAN — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:29:33 GMT

Willie Nelson, Meadowbrook US Cellular Pavilion, Gilford, NH, June 15, 2007
Sometime after the lights went out, Willie Nelson walked on stage.

I'm like a bore

ELLEE DEAN — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:39:20 GMT

Nelly Furtado, Agganis Arena, June 5, 2007
The Nelly Furtado concert was off to a fine, Lite-Brite sort of start.

Good vibrations

ELLEE DEAN — Thu, 24 May 2007 19:51:50 GMT

The 15 dirtiest dancing music videos
In honor of dancing dirty, as well as Patrick Swayze’s open-shirt-pelvic-thrusting summer camp fantasy, we offer this list of the dirtiest dancing music videos we could find.

The former Marky Mark, shirtless

This year is the 20^th anniversary of Dirty Dancing — and yeah, we’re celebrating the cinematic ode to the sweaty teenage pastime all year long. And then there’s Dancing with the Stars, the hugely successful B-list celebrity dancing show that had its season finale this week (which obviously doesn’t hold a candle to Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, especially when wet, and practicing lifts in pond scum). So, in honor of dancing dirty, as well as Swayze’s open-shirt-pelvic-thrusting summer camp fantasy, we offer this list of the dirtiest dancing music videos we could find.

15. “Freak Me,” Silk
Doesn’t the title say it all? Nighties and a hot pink set elevate this low budget Silk music video to high-octane bedtime story. Goodnight, and… freak me, baby. Aw, yeah.

14. “Wicked Game,” Chris Isaac
Helena Christensen’s face is a vision in the rolling clouds in this five-minute black-and-white, soft-core wet-dreamscape. When she is realized, shirtless, she runs down the beach, clumsy and stumbling, from Chris Isaac. Both Isaac and his supermodel are covered in sand. Christensen does the ultimate demure booty dance, preparing a future generation of young women for what we now call, fondly, “butt cleavage.” Thank you, Helena.

13. “Candy Rain,” Soul for Real
This music video isn’t dirty dancing, per se. Besides the fact that you’ve got a bunch of adolescent boys singing and dancing to a song about seeing their “candy rain” in too-cute matching black-and-white outfits bobbing before a dazzling, pink tinsel background.

12. “Good Vibrations,” Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch
A large piece of bling rebounds off Marky Mark’s hard, clean-shaven chest. “Can you feel it baby?” Marky asks. To which he answers, “I can, too.” Then, the former male fashion model performs a street water dance, kicking washout into the air. This is the ultimate bench-press/chain-link-fence/moving-window-blind dirty dance. And, it is, in one word: titillating.

11. “I Touch Myself,” Divinyls
You could watch this video and think that it’s not particularly dirty — singer Christina Amphlett prances around fully clothed, by an ironing board at one point. But there are a few subtle touches here and there, mostly involving Amphlett under satin sheets. You know, because the song is so subtle, they needed to make sure the images stayed in a similar vein.

10. “Cradle of Love,” Billy Idol
This video gave hope to the nerds everywhere – if you just sit around and mind your own business, then maybe some day, some hot young woman can come by your house, strip, and wreck all your shit, too!

Grey's red-headed stepchild

ELLEE DEAN — Fri, 04 May 2007 21:16:19 GMT

How could a show so good spawn something so bad?
ABC’s Thursday-night medical drama Grey’s Anatomy is due to have a baby in the form of a spin-off — tentatively, its name is Private Practice .

DID YOU SAY SOMETHING? No, that was just the lame-ass talking elevator.

ABC’s Thursday-night medical drama Grey’s Anatomy is due to have a baby in the form of a spin-off — tentatively, its name is Private Practice. Last night, the network performed a virtual primetime Cesarean section, carefully pulling the spin-off from the womb of a hit. The special two-hour procedure was a backdoor pilot. But, because of high Nielson Rankings, and Golden Globes and Emmys, any child of Grey’s will likely be given a permanent home by the network, on the network — no matter what. The show — of which even Bill Clinton is a huge fan, according to Hollywood Insider — is just too successful for a spin-off to be stopped.

Grey’s Anatomy initially attracted viewers with her sentimental packaging and her strong multiracial cast, including budding film actresses Ellen Pompeo (Old School) as Meredith Grey, and Sandra Oh (Sideways), as Christina Yang. Creator Shonda Rhimes then conceived a story-line with enough mood and chemistry to ignite even seemingly downright corny catchphrases, such as “McDreamy,” and “seriously.” And then, to the wonder of Season One’s 18.5 million viewers, ’80s film star Patrick Dempsey morphed into neurosurgeon Dr. Shepherd/ McDreamy over a one-night stand with the protagonist. So ensued an on-again-off-again affair between characters Dr. Shepherd and Meredith Grey that has survived three seasons, and the return of an adulterous, siren wife — cue, Addison Forbes Montgomery-Shepherd (Kate Walsh). Even mistress Meredith liked Addison, a formidable NeonatalSurgeon/OBGYN /Specialist in maternal fetal medicine/medical genetics fellow.

Addison was a character to respect.

So, it came as no surprise, really, that ABC picked this doctor, with her creamy complexion and long, red hair, to knock-up its primetime success. Grey’s viewers know that creator Shonda Rhimes is seriously unafraid of taking risks: the third season has managed suicide, the afterlife, and a penis fish, to name a few. The writing and the characters have proved dynamic enough to support the stuff. The show’s stayed entertaining through change.

Which was the theme of last night’s backdoor pilot. Addison Forbes Montgomery hops into a red convertible, red hair blowing in the wind and in her face, and drives from Grey’s Seattle Grace, to Private Practice’s Los Angeles medical co-op, which resembles less a hospital and more a medical-themed terra cotta-colored Whole Foods.

One hell of a socialite

ELLEE DEAN — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:07:39 GMT

Pat Montandon's eccentric new memoir
Summer of ’63 with Sinatra, three-times a divorcee, and a gold cape cut from the curtains of the old San Francisco opera house.

A SOCIALITE EVER AFTER: Pat Montandon pens her own Cinderella story.

It’s unclear what Patsy Lou Montandon wanted to be when she grew up — but safe to say the preacher’s daughter didn’t divine her catholic future. The mother of Sean Wilsey — who penned Oh the Glory of It All, a New York Times bestseller, and an oddly heartwarming poor-little-rich-boy yarn — has written her own memoir, titled accordingly Oh the Hell of It All. Pat Montandon’s life story is the “sprawling kitchen sink of a memoir” that the New York Times described her son Wilsey’s to be — but, surprisingly, it’s less her side of the Wilsey family saga, and more the scripted inner-workings of an old-school socialite.

Summer of ’63 with Sinatra, three-times a divorcee, and a gold cape cut from the curtains of the old San Francisco opera house — Montandon’s memoir reads like an American-pop fairy tale . . . except that, ever after, the gold cape does not a Paris Hilton make. Montandon auctions the cape, along with her Rodin, to survive her public break-up with butter tycoon Al Wilsey. Through Jungian visualization techniques and meditations, Monatandon realizes she’d rather save the world — from famine, nuclear war, the Russian mafia, and her former self, in no particular order — than keep the stuff contemporary socialites dream about.

Montandon’s memoir confirms that which her son’s is all about: Al Wilsey left Montandon for her best friend and fellow socialite/philanthropist Dede Wilsey (Diana Dow Buchanan Triana Wilsey). After the divorce, Montandon details her depression, and attempts at suicide — during which she asks her son Wilsey, then ten years-old, if he wants to die, too. It’s no wonder her son’s version of the split renders his mother certifiable — a vision of a teepee in Dr. Sheila Krystal’s Berkley office does eventually save her, though.

Prior to her being saved (from herself), Montandon penned Confessions-of-an-Heiress-like fodder, such as How to Be a Party Girl, and Celebrities and Their Angels. Her only novel, The Intruders, (out of print) deals with the paranormal — a pulp fiction ghost story she wrote to cope with her friend’s mysterious death in an apartment fire. It’s the sort of stuff soap operas (and Montandon’s real life) are made of. But unlike her son, Monatandon isn’t a very funny, nor good writer. It’s often downright hard to take the author-ess seriously. Especially when she explains herself like this: “See A Teepee was the home that could never be taken from me, the home that would always be mine.”