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December 27, 2004 

If you are obnoxiously rich and live in Genoa City and your child doesn't get into one of the ultra-elite preschools like the Newman Wreck Center you might as well just give up.

Because clearly your spoiled children will most certainly not get into the right grade school or high school and then Princeton and Harvard will just snicker and sneer and tear up your applications, laughing and pointing at your tiny genitalia and humiliating your family honor and your status at the country club for all eternity.

And of course said kids will likely not become overprivileged corporate drones or the proper kind of Vioxx-popping upper-class automatons and will be forced to attend GCU or a school for kids of all ages and social status like Walnut Grove Academy.

If you happen to be 14-year-old Colleen Carlton living with your mother and step-daddy in New York most likely you'll be tossed into some public school with nothing but a number for a name. And if, as it was prior to 2001, all is going well that will change when you find out that step-daddy is cheating on mommy.

From that point on Steve Connelly, the only father Colleen has ever known since Brad Carlton dropped her like a year-old pet rock, will become hated and despised. Colleen will throw many fits, her grades will drop, she'll be busted for smoking dope behind the school and Traci Connelly will start blaming herself for not being a better mother.

As the new year rolled around there was so much consternation Traci had to call old man John 'Yawn' Abbott to whine and generally wonder what would become of them? Worried that his granddaughter might be on her way to becoming a hippie Abbott flew to New York to suggest that Colleen return with him to clean and sinless Genoa City.

With only the clothes on her back Colleen took off with gramps. No sooner had she arrived but what Colleen got into more trouble and became so annoying her caretakers wanted to send her back to New York. Vowing she'd only go back "there" in a body bag Colleen ran away. Brad Carlton hired clueless detective Paul Williams to find her but as usual, the limited looking Clueless did not look into the Our Lady of the Worthless Miracle homeless shelter.

At the shelter Colleen met Mac Browning. A former runaway who miraculously found her rich granny as the result of running away, Browning gave Colleen tips on how to survive on the street and promised, as shelter management did, not to tell anyone where a minor child on the lam was hold up.

Skipping ahead a few years Colleen changed her ways. She became the all America girl next door eventually meeting up with college student and much older hunkmonkey, J.T. Hellstrom. After a torrid and trying love affair - during which she offered up her body as a sacrifice - Colleen returned to New York in 2003 when Hellstrom gave her the impression that his mostly big joke singing career was more important than she was.

During the year since Hellstrom never once called Colleen. Never sent e-mail. No card, nothing. As it so happened on Christmas Eve while he was dreaming about Colleen it was truly a miracle when she showed up at his door without so much as a hint from her parents to gramps, Brad or any authority figure.

Taken by complete surprise, Brad said Colleen's return was the best Christmas gift he could have asked for. He felt bad having to tell his daughter that as it was a year ago, his marriage to Ashley Abbott had gone from bad to worse, that the sperm stealer had moved back into the Abbott home and for the sake of the baby he'd been spending every day at the Abbott home since then.

Like all teens in Genoa City with distraught parents, Colleen offered to play the adult. Because she'd graduated early from high school and wouldn't be enrolling at New York University until the Fall, she'd have plenty of time to hold daddy's hand.

But Brad wants her to do the things that matter. Things that all rich kids get to do like, traveling and dancing. That is, unless Colleen had come home for J.T.'s sake. If that's the case she's free to do as she pleases. Screw getting an education. Screw J.T. and have lots of babies if that's what Colleen finds most meaningful.

Indeed, while J.T. wants to throw a party to celebrate Colleen's 18th birthday, it's been said both will assert that their relationship is purely platonic. Of course, it has to be this way given that Brittany Marsino is still trying to convince Mac Browning she loves J.T and that this worn out puppy love story must be given one final spin.

It's not about love. It's about bragging rights, name dropping, social status and prestige and about how in the hell so many kids with Genoa City connections get to graduate early.

You could argue who is the most gullible, easily duped group in this city, who is most effortlessly baited and manipulated and cajoled. The unaware parents who keep asking why their kids aren't in class, then give them permission to skip class, then slap them on the wrist for skipping class, or the confused kids who are more concerned about exactly the wrong things?

Not that it matters as kids here don't need an education. Why they bother going to school once or twice a month nobody knows because they are destined to get fancy jobs running big empires.

But let's pretend you care deeply about the smarmy prefab Colleen. Let's say you can't wait to watch J.T. ogle and cringe as she transforms from cutesy Brittany-like tease bomb to skanky well-oiled gyrating sex machine. Fast-forward and here Colleen is announcing that she's innocent no more, has remade herself and is merging into a totally unpleasant little cloy just like, you know, she was before.

Of course most of us are all too familiar with teen popsters trying to grow up and be taken seriously, breaking from their prepackaging and their embarrassing hair and trying to define themselves. The effort is laughable in how often it crashes and burns and the popster vanishes forever, most of them, as it should be, to make room for the next collective teenage insult everyone loves to hate.

Can't Smile Without You
May 17, 2004

by Vicki Johns

Don't you love that paragon of parental perfection, Brad Carlton? His 17-year-old daughter Colleen gets a romantic version of a hangnail, and within the span of a few magical hours, Colleen Carlton travels from California to Wisconsin, remove every vestige of her life there for the past several years, and relocate to New York City.

Nice, Bradley. Guess you missed the Parenting 101 class where students were instructed, when such common-place life events like the break-up of a teenage romance occurred, to say to their offspring: "You'll get over it and you're too young anyway. Now go do your homework. You're not gonna pass that SAT on your looks, you know."

The romance of J.T. Hellstrom and Colleen Carlton, after years of attraction, self-denial, sex with an older woman, locket swapping, vomitous 'gift of the Magi' scenes, and pseudo-stardom, has now come to a very anti-climatic end. Thank God that Shakespeare can stop spinning in his grave - these two star-crossed lovers never even came 2 million light years close to eclipsing his own.

And the end was pretty laughable, too. Colleen, so broken-hearted and devastated that the love of her life may have a shot at about 7.5 minutes of fame (Andy Warhol would have definitely reduced the amount in J.T.'s case), has decided not to be one who comes between her dream-lover and fame, and it's best she ride off into the sunset, or to a very crowded and overpriced place like Manhattan. Poor thing doesn't know that actually it's an overwhelming lack of talent which comes between her dream lover and fame, and that J.T. is likely to be home and schlepping panties at the boutique before the month is out.

But regardless of all of this, Colleen has announced to her father that she is leaving Genoa City, and leaving today. Finals at school? Ah, heck, no problem. Her teachers, whom she has not even consulted with, have just assigned 'papers' for the semester's end which Colleen will compile at her leisure and FedEx Ground to Walnut Grove – no gut wrenching worry about troublesome finals at all!

And has anyone consulted with Traci Connelly about this move? Doesn't that woman have a right to decide whether she wants a child she hasn't displayed a rat's ass worth of interest in for more than a year dumped on her front stoop? Could it be that she and husband Steve might just need more than a few minutes' notice to clear out their sex toys from the living room or evict the Nepalese chanting Sherpa they've been renting Colleen's room to?

What a line-up at the airport, too. Space shuttle missions should get such press. Everyone from multiple-fathered and utterly confused toddler Abby Carlton to the ultimate in crazy stepmothers/aunts, Ashley Abbott, to octogenarian John Abbott, taking a break from playing with himself in the corner, were in attendance. As were the other two members of the Teenage Three Stooges, Sierra NLN and Lily Winters. Frightening that the Transportation Safety Administration didn't make a call straight away to Tom Ridge's office after getting a look at that motley crew.

Lastly, there was what we can only assume was meant to be the touching final scene between J.T. and Colleen as they said their final good-byes. Full of such tired one-liners as "but you make me happy;" "I stand between you and your dream;" "I can't be happy without you;" "don't give your dream up for me," one could only hope that the plane Colleen was getting on didn't take her to NYC but to wherever Katherine Valentine, Nate Hastings and Ricky Williams were and that no return flights were ever possible because quite frankly, the problems of these two young kids don't amount to a hill of beans to anyone and never did.

Good-bye Colleen - Don't Come Back
May 11, 2004

by Brent Kellogg

Can you hear the outcry? Can you feel the snippy puritanical heat? Can you feel J.T. Hellstrom's hot, predatory breath bearing down on Colleen Carlton and her box of vibrators and his adult DVD collection and snatching away Brad Carlton's copy of "Weapons of A-- Destruction #2" and smacking Colleen across the face with a Bible, all before skipping off to Los Angeles to feed the flying monkeys?

With any amount of luck this is Colleen's last hurrah. Her final week of wallowing around in self-pity whining that J.T. doesn't love her and wants to dump her because she's an ignorant, sexless high school student who should have known the day she fell for the adult hunkmonkey that it wouldn't last.

And how will Brad explain his daughter's sudden disappearance if at all? Easy. A nearly constantly bawling Colleen will return from L.A. (if she makes it that far) brokenhearted. Distraught, Colleen makes a snap decision to go back to live with her mother in New York - and that - will be that.

Unfortunately, there is nothing in the wind about a similar falling off the earth of Hellstrom. He'll still be around to kick as he struggles to make his way in the music industry far from undeserving of any scrutiny or persecution or questions like, "How do you promote a music video that hasn't been recorded?"

The music world is often disgusting and degrading and full of drugs and exploitation and bad boob jobs and drunken sex and fake orgasms and awful scripts and really bad lighting, but J.T. will have to find that out for himself.

In the meantime Hellstrom can take comfort in knowing that the convoluted petting sessions with Colleen are coming to an end. Gone will be the conversations in which Colleen gives him hell for not going to the airport in a limousine because she's too good to take a cab like everyone else.

Gone will be the conversations in which Colleen bitches that having her father chaperone the trip is really pissy and then says it'll be nice having daddy watching over her while the hunkmonkey is busy with "all your people."

Gone too will be the trite barbs like this one J.T threw at Colleen on Tuesday:

"I hope you don't think I'll abandon you out in L.A."

And her moronic reply:

"I know you won't."

Isn't this what it's all about? Isn't this why Colleen was in such a funk and so worried her daddy decided he'd have to tag along, to be by her side, to protect her when the sky falls?

Maybe they forgot. Maybe the total screaming misery and unspeakable subcultural collapse takes more than a week to sink in. Maybe what they said to each other an hour ago must go through a censor before it is returned to them for processing.

Maybe Satan is taking his sweet time to marshal his leather-clad armies, watching as Diane Jenkins gets in Damon Porter's pants, waiting for a big moment so as to really leverage the coming news flash, the special report, the sudden activation of the Emergency Broadcast System. Something like:

"This just in: Earthquakes rocked the globe today as giant fire-breathing ants of death swarmed the countryside, feasting on homely white school girls mostly from Wisconsin and Genoa City, as the institution of puppy love careened around the mad vortex like a drunken Katherine Sterling high on gin.

You have to pay attention or you won't notice that the day Carlton and Hellstrom were to leave for L.A. was Mother's Day, which it wasn't really, but a special day for families to gather for five minutes of quiche eating before rushing back to their meaningless lives.

You have to wonder why Colleen asked if they'd be rubbing elbows with "celebrities" in California as if celebrities are falling all over themselves to meet unknown singing sensations and their high school sweethearts. You didn't have to wonder why J.T. didn't name one of the many "big artists" signed by BeachFront Records because it doesn't have any. Fact is, BeachFront is a front. A fraud. Oh yes it is - just wait.

You also had to slap yourself to stay awake when Colleen asked if J.T. might have to do some work while they're in Los Angeles, like, well, something rock stars do. If so, he shouldn't feel "obligated" to hold her hand.

And then J.T. nearly slapped himself. What the hell was Colleen blathering about? Why all the innuendo, the sniveling? Wasn't she the one who wanted him to become a star? Shouldn't she know to be careful what she wishes for?

"Are we okay?"
"We're fine."
"No we're not."
"Do we have to get into this right now?

You don't need to know who said what because the words are interchangeable. Just more senseless chatter from two dumb kids living a fantasy. A bad one at that. Blindly massaging the feet of a Danny Romalotti-like gnarled ideology with the oily balms of collective fear and dread and lack of willingness to question just what the hell is really going on.

So, here we are. Approaching the end. Genoa City is smiling madly. Wisconsin is shrugging. Puppy love supporters from all over have sent flowers. Good-bye Colleen. Please don't come back.

This Way to New Rock Star!
April 15, 2004

How do they do it? How do people living in Genoa City manage to find the exact location of persons traveling around Los Angeles but they can't find missing persons like Victoria Newman or Nate Hastings? Do some of those who've left town strap GPS units to their chests? Is this how Colleen Carlton was able to blow into LAX this week and within minutes determine exactly where J.T. Hellstrom was holding a news conference? Was there some guy standing at the airport holding a sign THIS WAY TO NEWEST ROCK STAR J.T. HELLSTROM when Carlton debarked the plane?

Was this the same Carlton who took off for the airport on a whim to catch a We Fly You Anywhere Air flight leaving in about an hour saying her parents wouldn't mind and later told her Oreo-eating pal that she had called her father and told the lie that she was staying at Sierra NoLastName's home for a few days and that Brad Carlton had said it was for the best given her step-mother's baby dilemma?

Was this the same Carlton who told her pal that should daddy call checking up on her to have him call her cell phone? Shouldn't John 'Yawn' Abbott be checking on his granddaughter's whereabouts? There was time when the old geezer didn't trust Brad to raise Colleen properly, followed her around and wanted to know when she potties.

Just who is paying Colleen's phone bill? Who pays the roaming charges? Who pays for the credit card she uses and won't that person notice the $200+ airline charge? It's not Carlton paying these bills because she doesn't have a job. And no teenage girl gets an allowance big enough to cover the expenses this kid racks up.

How was it that Colleen managed to find where Hellstrom was holding a news conference and just what reporter would be interested in a nobody? How was Colleen able to appear at said conference at the exact moment Hellstrom was saying he doesn't date and why would this come as a shock to Colleen as it did? Hasn't she considered her relationship with the hunkmonkey beyond the dating stage? Wouldn't a mentally competent person have waited for an explanation before bursting out bawling?

Best of all, how about Colleen's statement that she doesn't like lying to her father and that pig-like porker NoLastName telling Colleen not to worry, she'd cover the lie up?

Aren't they just the sweetest little village idiots you ever did see? With their lies and deception do they not qualify to run a government? Does Colleen forget that her father told her she better play straight with him where the hunkmonkey is concerned or he'd pull the love rug right out from under her?

Granted, Colleen's about to crash and burn. But good god! Why can't it happen without all the incredibility? Why can't Hellstrom just return as this new overnight rock sensation, tell Colleen he now realizes how old he is and that as a rocker it wouldn't bode well for his image to be seen with a minor child. People might talk: people might ruin his career. Time to part ways kiddo. Take it like a woman, Colleen. There, there. That wasn't so bad. Was it?

Carlton kid given driver's license and lecture on rules of the road
February 10, 2004

High school student, and member of a self proclaimed activist group calling itself "Charlie's Angels", Colleen Carlton has passed her first driver's test.

Albeit a license with severe restrictions, the seventeen-year-old twerp immediately rushed to the prestigious Athletic Supporter Club this week to show the plastic card off.

"She really has something to celebrate," quipped ASC manager Gina Roma, as Carlton's grandpa, John Abbott stopped drooling in his cup long enough to exclaim, "Yes! We have such great news."

Also celebrating the news and news of her own, Carlton's aunt and step-mother, Ashley Carlton said she was amazed how one brief meeting with Victor Newman had snapped her out of a fugue-like state.

"It feels like I've just come back from someplace far away," Mrs. Carlton bubbled, as an appallingly inane and hollow Roma gave her a rousing, "Welcome home."

And just in case it wasn't perfectly clear that anything the walking black hole says can make Genoa City shudder, Carlton added, "I'm a lucky woman to have this family and a husband like Brad."

Through stupefied peals of numb laughter, she did not mention that this was the same husband who just a year ago had sex with her best friend, both of whom she gratefully forgave.

For the record, Brad Carlton acknowledged that it was actually he who is the lucky one. How many other men in this city can lay claim to having wed a sperm stealing wife dumb enough to forgive him for porking another woman and sharing her home with the daughter he sired with her sister?

"It's strange. I feels like I woke up from a very bad dream," Mrs. Carlton puked and then, as if their lives are these little slates overflowing with miscellaneous algebra equations to be wiped clean at the end of a long school day, announced how wonderful life is and what a wonderful future is ahead of her entire clan.

"Isn't that a beautiful slight?" old man Abbott asked of his daughter's leaf turning when he had to have known that within weeks something new will be troubling his "beauty."

His pulse racing, maybe because he knows he'll be having sex with another woman soon, Carlton took the opportunity to lecture on the privilege of driving on the city's pothole-filled streets.

"I'm just getting used to my little girl sharing the road with all of those bad drivers," Carlton hacked as step-mommie dearest beamed how proud she was that one of Charlie's Angles had "aced" the driver's test and could even parallel park.

Apparently forgetting that it wasn't so long ago when her daddy's wife plopped her fat belly behind the wheel of a gas-guzzling SUV and smashed head-on into an oncoming vehicle because she was spaced out of Victor Newman elixir, Colleen Carlton oozed that the reason she passed the test was thanks to the "good teachers" who taught her everything she knows.

Listening intently to the conversion the heavily twitching driver's manual-licking Carlton injected that his jubilant daughter had forgotten the most important rule of all; Driving is a privilege - not a right!

And thus did the sanctimonious pseudo-morality cry go out, powerful and time tested by hypocrites worldwide, guaranteed to induce fear and ignorance much like telling hormone-enraged teenagers not to have sex.

Was Carlton's daughter really expected to remember when she's exceeding the speed limit that doing so is a privilege?

In short, why was Mr. Carlton out there clenching his fists and pontificating on the ethics of driving when he himself is involved in an endless array of sociocultural lies and abuses and corporate whorings? Has he forgotten the night he raced at top speed to the Newman ranch as his shot-gun riding sperm-stealing wife urged him to go faster?

If Mr. Carlton weren't so tightly wrapped in hypocrisy his attempt to paint himself as a self-righteous and ethical pillar of the community do-gooder who follows the laws of man and the commandments of God may have turned out well. As it was, he failed miserably.