Sex and The City, Golf Guys & Little White Balls

Remember how awesome "Sex and the City" was back when?

I'm talking about the early years, when it was an HBO series and actually somewhat ground breaking.

The time and place were special. It was turn-of-the-century America, circa Y2K, and though women had obviously been having smart, candid conversations about sex since... well, since sex was invented (ie. forever)... those conversations had never been the basis for a television series. ~ So it was quite shocking...but so well written that once the shock wore off, it resonated with almost everyone.

Collectively, the world seemed to realize that, like it or not, women probably do talk... or at least think... that way.

Then there were the clothes... the labels, the luxury. New York in the late nineties was the best of all possible worlds for the young and hedonistic. It was there... at the overinflated apex of the dot.com bubble... that Sex and the City was born, popularizing designer shoes, syrupy pink cocktails, vibrators and the objectification of men. ~ And, at the time it all seemed pretty awesome.

The tag line was "Are you ready for more?" and I think that's where things went wrong. ~ Because before long the Manolos were replicated in plastic and available at WalMart, supersized Cosmos were a menu item at Applebys and frumpy female tourists from around the world were being draped in pink feather boas and ferried around Manhattan in SATC tour buses.

Meanwhile envelopes were pushed ever more aggressively and we entered the era of epic-overshare and full blown TMI. Late night infomercials began to tout vibrating massagers and online booty calls... complete with compelling testimonials. (my current favorite is the one where a girl describes the Trojan Vibrating Touch as being "like a little hummingbird... just loving you.")

OK. um... I think we got our more, and I think it showed us the truth behind that old adage, "more is not always better." ~ But apparently that doesn't matter, because the second SATC feature film is set to come out at the end of the month.

The photo at the top of the page is part of a series of 42 new stills that offer a sneak peek of the film. The creative minds at Hollywood Crush captioned it with a made-up factoid: In this scene, the husbands of "Sex and the City" react to a golf-related joke about "tiny white balls". ~ So the thing is, now I'm dying to know the actual context of that scene, but don't know if I can stand sitting through the rest of the movie.

The creators traded the NYC setting for Abu Dhabi... probably because it was the only place still symbolic of luxury and unbridled excess back a couple of years ago when they wrote it... but even the once resilient desert kingdoms have lost much of their economic luster. And I'm pretty sure golf won't be portrayed in a favorable light either. In fact, I can hear that lilting Carrie voice-over now, "So I wondered: How do you go to bed one night with the elegant, urbane man of your dreams... and wake up the next day with a dumpy, suburban duffer in dockers and an oversize polo shirt."

Nope, that's it. No more sex for me.