Our BFF, actress/writer Alison Arngrim is in the Puget Sound area for the next few days promoting her just released memoir, “Confessions of a Prairie Bitch”. Check her out on New Day Northwest on King5 TV at 11am TODAY, and she’ll be at Swank in Kent Friday night for a personal appearance.
First of all, let me just say that I love, love, love the “Little House” books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I devoured all of them as a young homo and naturally I was very excited when they announced it was being made into a tv movie. I was less happy when I saw the movie because I was furious that Michael Landon, who played “Pa”, did NOT have a beard! He looked NOTHING like Pa Ingalls; he looked like a Hollywood actor sort of pretending he was Pa and he had PERFECT, tousled, feathered and highlighted hair…I HATED him for ruining my favorite book and I was never a big fan of the subsequent series. (Ironically, our founder and publisher, Bill W. is a BIG fan of Michael Landon as Pa Ingalls; different strokes for different folks!) But, I did tune in occasionally and I usually ended up watching the entire episode if it had a lot of the evil, nasty Oleson’s in it, meaning the rotten, snooty shopkeeper Mrs Oleson and her even rottener and more spoiled bitch-daughter Nellie who was super vicious towards our innocent, spunky heroine Laura Ingalls. These nasty, vile prairie bitches were the ONLY reason to watch the show, in my opinion! They were such a nice counterpart to all the other syrupy sweet characters and their pious platitudes… My favorite episode of “Little House” was the Halloween one where someone was convinced that sweet, pussy-whipped Mr Oleson had finally gone off his nut and killed and beheaded his bitch-wife. Of course, it was a misunderstanding and soon Mr Roper believed Jack still WAS a gay man living with two hot chicks and everything was back to normal in Santa Monica, but…oops! Damn! I slipped into “Three’s Company” mode there for a minute! It’s easy to get lost in reverie when remembering your favorite 70’s tv show moments!
Anywho, back to Nellie Oleson, aka, the delightful actress/comedian/writer Alison Arngrim and her visit to town to promote her new memoir, “Confessions of a Prairie Bitch”. I haven’t read it, but I did thumb through it at Elliot Bay last week and it looks like it’s a hoot, and it has some awesome candid shots taken on the set of “Little House”. And, of couse real life being perversely kharmic, Alison Arngrim and Melissa Gilbert (Laura Ingalls) were and still are, very good friends. And they were both mean to the awful Mary! (kidding…I think.) You have a couple of hours to preset your Tivo to record her appearance on KingTV’s morning talk show, “New Day Northwest”, (I refuse to watch any KingTV shows unless the host is Grant Goodeve…grrrwl!) but you can also catch Alison at Swank in Kent on Friday night at 9pm where she will sign copies of her book. There will also be some sort of raffle to win a lunch date with Alison and proceeds will go towards battling HIV/AIDS, a cause that Alison has supported for many, many years after losing many, many friends and colleagues to AIDS in the 1980’s and 90’s including actors she worked with on “Little House” including actor Steve Tracy who played Percival. Nellie might have been a “fun” bitch, but Alison is just freaking AWESOME!
She’ll wrap up her Puget Sound visit Saturday, with an appearance at Ravenna Third Place Books, 6504 20th Ave NE at 7pm. Sadly, she is NOT making an appearance on Capitol Hill…Elliot Bay Books screwed up! They should have booked her in the store and they would have had MOBS in there, half of them DRESSED like Nellie Oleson! It would have been off the charts fun…Instead, they have Rick Bass. Yawn. We want BITCH, not BASS!
-Michael Strangeways
