Picture, if you will, a 1980s slumber party in the `burbs starring Miss Pop Rocks and her best gal pals. The snacks? Ho Hos and Doritos. The music? Tiffany. The movie? Grease. The T-Bird Miss Pop Rocks was way hot for? Kenickie, naturally, played by Jeff Conaway. What a bad boy! What a stone fox! What a rebel!
So imagine the hell my inner child experienced when she saw her tween crush –now sporting brown teeth and a gut – have a tech at his rehab rub Icy Hot all over his bare ass. Seriously. That’s the shit they’re showing on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, and man, is it hard for the little teenybopper inside of me to take.
The show in and of itself isn’t so bad, I suppose. Dr. Drew actually seems to want to help people. (Full disclosure: I interviewed the man years ago when I was an intern at The Kansas City Star, and he was totally sweet on the phone, so I guess I’m biased.) Anyway, Dr. Drew actually seems to care, and if you can handle Daniel Baldwin walking around telling everyone what to do all the time (shut up already!), I suppose it’s an all right program. Most of the “celebs” (and I use that term loosely) seem relatively sane and willing to help themselves.
But Jeff Conaway? My God! Here’s Bobby Wheeler from fucking “Taxi” having the DTs and refusing to pee standing up, threatening to walk out of rehab if his scary ass girlfriend can’t come when he calls her. It’s frightening and more than a little depressing.
There’s not much more to say here other than something tells me I won’t be reveling in my Rizzo/Kenickie skinny dipping fantasy too much anymore. (Nnaturally, I played Rizzo.) Sigh… — Jennifer Mathieu
This article appears in Jan 24-30, 2008.