The OC, Madonna and me: more TV in Madang

Until recently the household here in Madang revolved around an 8 PM screening of MacLeod 's Daughters, the outback soapie that made sheep dips sexy, and which cast such a spell on the everyone from Uncle Ray to Leonard to visiting neighbours, that all myths about PNG time were finally laid to rest. Food was not cooked, soccer balls were still, and mobile phones were switched off for the hour of 8-9 PM each and every night. And while I kind of liked the fact that Nelly and Joyce, both in their twenties, saw rugged women on cattle stations as role models, and the men as secondary characters (its very much an Amazonian series) I was also worried that even these outback girls' preoccupations with youth and beauty, however subliminal, might be taken to heart. But ever since the New Year and some programming reshuffling, our early evenings are rededicated to a new show: the OC. The OrangeCounty. A saga of wealthy suburban Californian kids who, thanks to impeccable makeup and great clothes, not to mention botox and personal trainers, look a lot older than their own parents. Now I'm always happy to watch Peter Gallagher, whose blue eyes, big brows and pouty lips make him McDreamy, I agree (here he is blanching in B&W from my flattery), but I'm less happy to hear the sharp sardonic tone of teenagers in conversation with their parents or, for that matter, themselves. One lad told the new kid at a Christmas party today, Welcome to a life of paralyzing insecurity and self doubt.- This was only moments after girls served each other eggnog as one balked, That's disgusting! and the other said, I know! Walking to the kitchen I overhear one partygoer scream, Of course I'm screwed up, I'm the daughter of a diva slut!

Boy is that one going to haunt me.

Meanwhile, Nelly watched Brokeback Mountain on DVD last night. She was gutted by Heath Ledger's death, after having seen Casanova on Star Movies, and I brought back both DVDs from Canberra recently. Can/t remember what I told her about Brokeback, except that it was a serious picture, and this morning, god how I love these kids, she said it was so good, so different, how he kissed the guy madly behind a building in town and all. I told her he met and fell in love with his co-star wife during this movie, which I suppose was my way of reassuring her he was straight after all, but I still think her reaction to this man-man affair was brilliant. Are they lesbians? she wanted to know, fetching a new word for a new category of gay. No, just two cowboys who fall in love I think. She smiles, Yeah, it was good. Now, as fate woud have it, the OC has introduced a lesbian character.

Leonard has found the Harry Potter merchandise insert in his DVD and wants to buy the Lord Valdemort magic wand, which looks very much like an old Sepik carved cassowary bone dagger. But I know from experience this item will arrive beautifully packaged, but plastic, not some hoary natural substance with the appropriate flick of the wrist weight. Why don't you carve a bone dagger yourself? I ask. But it won't magic then! But Leonard, you have more magic in the Sepik than Lord Valdemort ever did, and if you make it yourself, the wand will have Sepik magic, not Hogwart's magic, which is even stronger. He shrugs, refolds the mutlicolored advert and walks away.

We have a new member of the family: Madonna. Last year I met her in Kaningara, in the Blackwater area of theSepik, where she was living with relatives away from her home in even more remote Mariama. She's albino and adorable, and wasn''t going to school or anything, and had no sunglasses or protective clothing at all, so I suggested to relatives (and then her parents in Mariama) that she come live with us, to which they agreed. I wanted to bring her in from the sun, see the doctor, get more school. She walked through to Yimas recently from whence our cave team leader, Josh, brought her by plane and PMV to Madang. What a brave kid, and already we're smitten. She giggles a lot, and Uncle Ray is especially taken by her, he's nicknamed her Maddox. So Maddox she is.

I have spent years, by the way, talking about Madonna Ciccione, the other Madonna, as someone who used to live in my East Village building in NY, and who hung her underwear on the fire escape, played a thumping boom box on the floor, and later, when she'd hit the big time, told a reporter she was so pleased to have escaped that East 4th St dump. But before that interview, she also ensorcelled my boyfriend, Rob, who, as the First Assistant Director on Desperately Seeking Susan, having suggested her to the director, Susan Seidelman, would come home from work every day with another cheeky story about that crazy Madonna on set.     How she told an extra, Wouldn't you want my life right now? (echoes of my fave narcissist, Julian Schnabel, around the same time, in Artforum, where he declared that he was cruelly envied for his talent, his beautiful French wife and his overpriced dinnerware....appropriately Schnabel has moved on to be a Hef-like pajama-clad film director--to be heckled by a drunken Sean Young----there is a god ) and said of a party with David Bowie and Mick Jagger, They're old people!, and then took the bait when Rob eluded to his time in 'Nam ---even if he'd have had to enlist in grammar school (we think it was his buzz cut). We'd chuckle away over dinner as if only the erudite, self-conscious East Villagers, people who watched Quadraphenia and adapted Beckett (Desperately notwithstanding) , deserved the attention this Madonna was then getting. She was the ditzy one of us who made it big and was now being called a marketing genius. It annoyed me no end that I'd go to a club and some queeny hairdresser would be gushing about her impeccable skin; and it unnerved me that Rob could be enthralled by her narcissistic charms all day. I showed up at the set one day, but Madonna was oblivious, and yet Rosanna Arquette's teenage sister, Patricia, was strangely unsettled (I think I was wearing something she envied). Then at the wrap party for the film, while Madonna flirted up Rob and I played the mousy girlfriend (sensu Tina Fey), it occurred to me that I should dance the night away with Jellybean Benitez, her celebrated and ever so cool sound producer boyfriend, in spite. Alas, he did not follow the script. Still, Rob went home with me, and we had a Christmas card on the fridge for months of Ms Ciccione holding crewmember's infant: Greetings from Madonna and Child.

So I'm pleased to say that Madonna now refers to another charismatic blonde, this one  natural, no eyebrows, no designs on Rob. Favorite shot for the day: Jacob and Maddox, with no white balance.