The Aeron Chair Is the Social Worker's Jail Tatt

Gah! James Wolcott linked to my "Breaking Bad" post -- specifically my overheated metaphor involving smoking hot Argentinians and Bryn Mawr sophomores.

For people who don't read Vanity Fair cover to cover and/or didn't obsessively track coverage of "Mad Men" last spring, this is like the Coen brothers spotting your vintage "La Dolce Vita" poster and knocking on your door to see if they can borrow it for their next film. On the one hand, it's hugely flattering, and on the other hand, you immediately realize -- as you shove that copy of "The Simpson's Movie" under an issue of Blueprint -- that everything else in your apartment betrays your complete lack of taste/discernment.

If you're coming from Mr. Wolcott's blog, welcome. Although you'll quickly discover exactly what a pointless backwater you've entered, let me spell it out: This is the blog I wish I could have read before moving out to L.A. -- what it's like to relocate from a very different urban environment (Chicago), the pros and cons of earning an MFA @ USC, the struggle to land an internship and, most recently, the brain-frying good fortune of being hired on as the "Mad Men" writers' assistant. Because I am a decent, if somewhat compulsive human being, there's no catty gossip and way, way too much metaphor-heavy ranting.

By curious coincidence, the remainder of this entry touches on the only other thing (besides my fervent hopes for a fair, timely settlement from the AMPTP) that gets me through the day: Celebrity Rehab. Jesus, that's the stuff. It takes us forever to get through a single episode, there's so much pausing the 'Vo to discuss this or that dysfunctional slight of hand.

My heart thrills to the sight of resident tech Shelly Sprague, coolly regarding the braggart Ricco Rodriguez over her glasses while he flounders for some glimmer of recognition or approval. Ms. Sprague is nowhere to be found on CR's IMDB page or the VH-1's website, yet she provides a vitally important and delicious counterpart to Dr. Drew's own centered calm. As Conway goes off the grid for what seems like the sixth time in three episodes, we cut to her in the next room, telling Dr. Drew "Jeff is being extremely... non-compliant." No drama, no overt judgment, just a measured appraisal of the situation.

I used to joke with some LCSW friends that I thought the government should staff up an elite squad of Navy Seal-grade social workers, to be deployed into stressful situations in order to take things down a notch. Not just to post-Katrina New Orleans or 9/11 NYC, but college dorms where things have taken a "Lord of the Flies" turn or dysfunctional offices where the employees actually think their workplace is a family.

But honestly, I don't think those assignments -- all good, valuable and necessary -- can approach the challenge of working with addicts. It's the mental health equivalent of the sauna fight in "Eastern Promises." High stakes, no holds barred, balls out conflict -- and it takes some kind of unkillable inner strength to get through it alive.

I couldn't do it. MG will tell you, I can't get through two minutes of the show without yelling at the young girls that they're being pulled into the codependent gravitational pull coming off Jeff Conway. He's like a dysfunctional Jupiter, attracting smaller, equally effed up moons from distant galaxies and/or suburbs of Los Angeles.

His addled girlfriend is so strung out on their relationship that she panicked at the prospect of killing two hours in Pasadena, waiting for the start of visiting hours. Hell, I know people who drive out to Pasadena just to walk around aimlessly for an entire day.

Apparently, dating Jeff Conway strips you of any interest in The Container Store. If there's a more horrific consequence to drug addiction, I don't want to know.