Oprah Watch
By Margaret Hicks in Miscellaneous on Jan 20, 2008 7:16PM
The fun never stops at Oprah Watch. Earlier in the week, Ellen was rated the number one television personality, knocking Oprah out of the number one spot she's held for five years. Oprah, never one to be held back, made the announcement that she will be working with Discovery Communications to have her own cable network channel. Oprah will take over the Discovery Health Network, changing it to OWN -- the Oprah Winfrey Network. We're curious to see what OWN turns out to be. Will it just be hours of Gayle eating cookies in different states? Will there be movies, like the Lifetime Movie channel? We expect to see OWN sometime in 2009, and wouldn't be surprised if Oprah's network show ends about the same time. If OWN turns out to be anything like Oprah's show this week, then it will be a little bit interesting, a little bit disparate and little bit ridiculous.
We started the week with Bob Greene's best life challenge. Oprah and Bob are getting a million viewers to sign up, and Chicagoist has signed up as well. During this first week/month -- we're not sure -- our rules are pretty easy: 1) Get moving. 2) Stop eating two hours before bedtime. 3) Stay hydrated. 4) Eat three meals and two snacks a day. 5) No alcohol for at least a month, but we're told not to worry because we can work this back in. Alrighty then! We've got the first four pretty down pat, that 5th one laughs at us with shining eyes. We'll let you know how our best life challenge works out for us.
Tuesday was another one of those strange Oprah show where she pulls a bunch of things together to fill an hour. We started with the Cold Stone Creamery owners; the duplicity of Monday's best life challenge not lost on us, Oprah paraded delicious ice cream in front of our faces. Then Oprah showed us the shoes of Christian Louboutin -- shoes we will never be able to afford in our lifetime -- but if we could it would be these ones. Then we watched Gayle eat sandwiches. Sigh.
Depressing Wednesday consisted of watching Marion Jones struggle through an interview. Then we watched Natalee Holloway's mother struggle through an interview (and found out that she dated John Ramsey for a bit). And then, in classic Oprah-variety fashion, we got to see an interview with the stars of Juno! Strange. Chicago native Diablo Cody seemed right on the money though, how fun to see a woman who doesn't fit into Hollywood quite right.
Thursday was what we had been waiting for all week: Dr. Christiane Northrop, Oprah's OB/GYN. We think shows like are what Oprah is made for--ladies sitting around talking about lady issues. We like Dr. Northrup because like Dr. Oz, she incorporates physical health with spiritual with mental health. We thought her explanation for fibroids being repressed creativity is fascinating; we wish she would give even more information like that. We were with Northrop until we found ourselves standing in the middle of the living room, with our hand on our lower abdomen "smiling in our low heart" to stimulate sexuality. Guess we need to turn our low heart's frown upside down.
Friday we just stared at Suze Orman's fascinating hair.
Next week is a tribute to Martin Luther King on Monday and on Tuesday Dr. Oz will help us quit smoking. Too bad he's 9 weeks and 6 days too late, not that we're keeping track. [Ed note: Go Hixx!]