The TV Zone

Sure you want to know what a TV writer for the Newsday does, don't you? Well, I sit around, watch DVDs, think deep thoughts about "Smallville," and occasionally even get out of my foxhole to see the real world.

Today was my Lohan day. Yes, I interviewed Lindsay Lohan's mom and kid sister, and it was pretty much the highlight of my entire morning. They were over at the Waldorf to promote this new reality series called "Living Lohan" which - I can assure you - is a frightening show, though not quite the trainwreck I anticipated.

Quick impression of Dina and Ali. First, mom. She's gimlet-eyed, shrewd, and not even remotely the Mommy Dearest I expected. She also has a certain facility with the press - an uncanny ability to anticipate any question because (no doubt) she's heard every one a thousand times (I believe I was twelfth in line in a highly orchestrated junket by E!, which is fronting "LL.") She affects an extreme distaste for the paparazzi though I was left with an inescapable impression that she secretly courts these press demons from hell; she calls all the pap attention "hurtful," though just outside the door lurked TMZ and "Extra," and...

Ali seems like a great kid - lanky, reed-voiced, and somewhere still in that halfway world between childhood and adulthood. She talks about how much she adores her older sister and her mother, and the unmistakable impression one is left with here is that she’s absolutely sincere.

The show (bowing this Memorial Day)? It's one those typical reality grab bags, featuring all these slice-of-life "reveals;" there's Dina arguing with some record producer ("I'm not gonna jam some album down [my daughter's] throat.." An assistant scrawling down notes. Kids arguing in the hallway. Ali taking a meeting with some musician, Jeremy, who wants her to record his music (it has sort of a Maroon 5 sound.)

The narrative turns creepy when Jeremy turns up on some Internet site bragging about how he's dating Lindsay.

The frightening part? That Dina would seem to display such spectacularly poor judgement by allowing cameras in her home, and ushering her 14-year old daughter into that cesspool called the music business.

Here's what she said in response to all this:

"Initially if you'd asked me two years ago, would we do something like this, it would definitely be a no - I never even thought reality [TV] would be existence now. But there are so many rumors about us, and I feel that we're in the power seat right now so I'm able as a mom to say - this is our life, check us out and move on so we can be normal."

"We live a normal existence in suburbia [Merrick, natch]," she says. "I do the food shopping, the laundry. There is so much sensationalism out there and people are so obsessed with celebrity. This doesn't consume us. It really doesn't and by showing our life [on E!] we'll show that I don't get up and crack the whip and say, 'wake up Ali and go be a star.’"

You almost don't even have to ask Lohan about the rumors; they hang about her, like a thick fog. Of her other daughter's well-publicized drug and alcohol problems, she says, "I don't mean to go in depth with that, but with any family across the country, it's a problem. It would happen no matter where you are or what business you're in, and God willing, people learn form their mistakes."

So why tempt fate a second time with your youngest daughter ("Living Lohan" also follows Mom and Ali to Las Vegas, where the fourteen-year old aspiring singer records another album?)

"If I told Ali, 'you're a singer and you want to be an artist but you can't because [the paparazzi] are going to trip you up. But that's with any career. It's like me telling my son, you can't play lacrosse because you're going to get hurt."

Here's Ali on her mom:
"She's our manager and like any other mother in the world she's trying to help her kids fulfil their dreams. I just hate it when people twist that and make her into some kind of crazy backstage mom. She's a mom like anybody else and I want people to know that she's the greatest mom in the world."

[Mom and kids; AP photo]