This is Sunday's Really Serious and Important News Show

The day before my dinner with Amos et alia at the Royal Club, I managed to catch him on TV. It was another of his appearances on Michelle Jones’ This is Sunday’s Really Serious and Important News Show. I could not figure out why someone as brilliant and high profile as him would waste his time with Michelle Jones. But he appeared to be a regular on the show. Michelle Jones was like a self-parody -- a cartoon anchorwoman. She was Brenda Starr without the brains, without the depth or as many dimensions. She never stopped smiling, even if she was discussing people being hacked to death in Rwanda, she never stopped bobbing her stupid head, she never spent more than a fraction of a second out of camera range and everything that came out of her mouth was pat and predictable. Oh, occasionally, if a segment was particularly tear-jerking, she attempted faux gravitas by furrowing her brow and looking compassionate.
But with Amos Loewenstein, she was discussing something altogether not serious: More Belinda Stronach. More attempts by the Tories to bring the government down. More of what Canadians had been ignoring and wishing would go away for weeks already. Amos was beside himself at Belinda (though thankfully, he didn’t make his Peter Mackay "conservative bone" joke again). He wanted his election, and he wanted it now. Amos was truly amazing on TV. He was much as he was in real life: Pumped up, funny, cute, intelligent, quick-witted and unique (though he didn’t look as rosy-cheeked as I remembered. They must have gone heavy on the pancake makeup).
On today’s show, he was wearing a pale yellow suit. With his rotund form, he looked like an Easter egg -- tempting, sweet, springy, edible and fattening. Oh goodness, was I getting a stupid crush already? I hoped not, for two reasons, no, three. 1) Amos was married, as far as I knew...though he had made that funny face when I mentioned his wife in London. 2) Amos lived in Red Deer. 3) I was too old for crushes, and hated the vulnerability they imposed upon the person with the crush. You could be destroyed in a flash when you had a dumb crush on someone, no matter your age, and no matter theirs.
Ah, whatever. What can you do? The only thing worse than a crush is living in a crushless state, living a life where you don’t feel. At least this is what I told myself.
Anyway, Michelle Jones came across awfully hard on TV. And she was sure nowhere near as attractive as Rebecca Chestnut. Chestnut, for all her lunacy, was gorgeous, telegenic and natural. You could tell Jones was reading off a teleprompter and wouldn’t have a hope in hell if she ever had to be spontaneous or think for herself. She and Amos appeared to have some kind of pre-set, or agreed upon, banter. That was the only moment at which he didn’t seem at ease.
Again, though -- and because I am nothing if not someone who wants to accentuate the positive -- I have to give kudos to Michelle Jones for her hair. It was sort of an icky, muddy brown, and sort of a pedestrian, banal "anchorwoman length," (i.e., shoulder length), but it had a flip at the bottom that never moved. It was like That Girl’s hair, only without the movement. Remember at the end of the That Girl opening credits, when That Girl scrunches up her hair? Well, if Michelle Jones tried to do that, her hair would snap in two. But left untouched, it was remarkable in its rigidity. As someone whose hair never curls, I was kind of envious. What kind of miraculous, nuclear-powered, industrial-strength hair products did Michelle Jones use, I wondered? Agent Orange, perhaps? Did she have some deal with the Pentagon? Somehow I doubted it. If she were in cahoots with the Pentagon, she wouldn’t be stuck hosting This is Sunday's Really Serious and Important News Show, out of Alberta.