Hannah’s favorite show on cable is LOVE IS IN THE HEIR, which comes on the E! channel 10pm (PST) Sundays. She’s seen every episode PLUS every rerun. But now she’s in England for the next few months and so she can’t watch the new episode that I saw tonight. I promised her i’d email her a sort of synopsis but i also wanted to do a diary. well, tonight i’ve done both. So, without further adeau….my open letter to my wonderful girl about the new episode of her favorite show….

So, you have to understand that the show is about Princess Anne Claire, a Iranian Princess who wants to be a Country singer. She lives the good life and has a queer assistant named Michael who could easily have his own show.

Now, Michael and Anne Claire fly in Nashville for the sole purpose of performing a show case for labels and publishers in order to land herself a big record contract and a fat music publishing deal. Her and Michael show up at Sony Records and have a meeting with a woman who’s job is to sign artist. She’s an A&R person and her duties include “Artist & Reportois” and things like that. So, inside the Sony office they all listen to Anne Claire’s song, WHERE THE RUBBER HITS THE ROAD. I personally like the song but the woman at Sony was far from impressed and seemed to go out of her way to put the tune down. The woman called it ‘mediocre’ and poor Anne walked out of there and looked like she was ready to quit. Anne Claire looked at Michael (who always looks like he’s ready to put out a fire) and thought out loud about going back home (to LA, where else?)

A few hours later the two of them were at it again, playing ‘RUBBER’ for another woman who was the A&R person at Capitol records. Thsi woman, however, was a tad more supportive but she also hinted that our Princess was gonna need more than one song to land a deal in Nashville. After that, Michael and Anne Claire took their Limo over to a Nashville music publishing house called BIG TRACTOR PUBLISHING. Big Tractor thought the song was good and asked her to ‘come back’ when she had more songs. But they were by far the most supportive. And they got the humor in her music, which was a first (Labels with Money, heck ANYBODY with money that’s in the music business , have no sense of humor when it comes to THEIR money.) The Big Tractor folks promised to see Anne Claire at the showcase the next day.

The day of teh show case, Anne Claire was very nervous, smoking and doing shots. Some of the labels saw her getting f*cked up and you could tell that wasn’t a good thing. It was show time and Michael introduced her to the typically tough Nashville crowd. The faces in the crowd were mixed but most were puzzled. She came out and did RUBBER (what else would she do?) with her hand on her left hip and i thought that was really cool and sexy-like. As the camera panned, i noticed some women frowning; I reckon they didn’t like the hand-on-hip thing. Unfortunately she sang kinda bad and out of tune, probably due to nervousness. The labels frowned and some in the crowd laughed at her. Now, “RUBBER” was the Hi-Light. The rest of the material was awful and had the audience cringing. it was under-rehearsed and the Nashvilled people had had enough after the 3rd or 4th song. The next day, Nashville’s local music paper reviewed her show: SWEET GIRL, ROYAL MESS.

After reading the review, Michael looks at Princess Anne Claire and says, “We gotta pack our bags and go home.” She gets worried about breaking teh bad news to her parents. The former King and Queen (i’m assuming they were since she’s a princess) are waiting for her to find a proper husband and she feels she has to make it big in the music business to show them that she can accomplish fame and fortune on her own. of course, she’s trying to acheive all this on her parents dime. She looks worried and depressed and keeps mumbling about finding a soulmate or something. For the first time, she looks vulnerable. But not pathetic. Just vulnerable. She starts crying and again looks more and more defeated. Some of the people at the club said she was ‘the worse thing i ever heard in my life.’

Michael reminds her that she has an appointment at a local pre-school to show the local kids what a real princess looks like. She arrives and teh kids are impressed. There’s a guitar player in the room and he and Anne Claire launch into ‘Old Mc Donald.’ This goes over really well with the class, as everyone seemed to know all the words, which made the Princess rock even harder. Afterwards the kids asked her things like ‘did she live in a castle’ (she said she lived in the hills with a view of the city) or did she have any pets? (she told em she had a mean dog who acted like a dragon)

Fresh off the ‘high’ from the pre-school gig, our princess was convinced that she would go back to LA and hone her skills. See, as she intimated to the camera, singing with the kiddies reminded her of why she came to Nashville (i thought it was the record/publishing deal?) She told the kids she’d be back and then her and Michael went back to the hotel, packed and flew back to LA. Anne Claire mentions that ‘nashville is a tough town.’ (no sh*t!) Michael agrees and later on her opens some of the mail, one of which is a letter fomr Anne’s parents. They are tired of supporting her. They want her to come to London for some sort of function. Anne feels like she cannot sho wher face and knows if she doesn’t show, her ass is grass. She takes a a risk and tries to get a job at Mel’s Drive In diner on the sunset strip (remember when it was called BEN FRANKS’?? That’s where tv left us last. Until next sunday, this is Hannah Milman’s boyfriend signing off…

Mike Randle