Jill Abbott News Archives - 2004
See also: Katherine Sterling  Arthur Hendricks  Liz Foster

What Have I Done?

November 30, 2004
by Brent Kellogg

Everything in interwoven. Potent juicy mystical secrets are everywhere. What supposedly sacred truths are available are often behind the facade of convoluted reality that the likes of Jill Abbott always discover long after it's too late.

Having run her father out of town on a rail Abbott decided to call Judge Arthur Hendrick's step-son at his place of work, the God Have Mercy Medical Center. Problem was: Harrison Bartlett no longer works there as an orderly - or anything. Just up and quit. Moved out of town too. Gone. Just like that. Left no forwarding address. No phone number where he might be reached.

Would Mrs. Abbott like to leave a message? She was actually asked this by whichever nit wit answered her call. Oh, sure. I'd love to leave a message. If the man you say quit and left town ever comes back would you please have him call me? Stupid freak.

As Abbott presumably digested this new fly in the ointment and maybe wondered, my, isn't that strange? All this time Bartlett ragged on my papa and warned me what a wife-killing bastard he is, Bartlett mysteriously disappears within hours of the judge? Shouldn't I have known from the start that Bartlett was radiant, irrefutable proof that I don't know nearly as much as I think I know about the judge? Shouldn't I have known that what I've been force-feeding my mother about the judge has been a gargantuan, sticky, carefully orchestrated deception?

I know, I'll make all my mistakes go away by simply telling Katherine Sterling that she can't shut me out of her life just because I chased the man she could have lived a happy life with away. I'll tell the old woman that the man she was about to marry wasn't really an evil bastard as I'd alleged, and for this Ma will stop blaming me which she has begun doing as it was destined.

I've changed my mind. Harrison Bartlett was lying. Papa could never do any of those nasty things.

What's that you say, Katherine? It's too late? You mean the judge won't be coming back? You mean he isn't going to maybe run away three or four times like Brittany Hodges did when she couldn't decide between Raul Guittierez and Bobby Marsino?

What's that Ma? Papa is only a memory? How can that be? Didn't he, didn't you know how much I wanted us to be a family? Didn't you both know that I poked around into the past because I had to be sure it was safe? Don't you know that searching for my mother was just more of the bogus swill I wallow in? That it was never about finding my parents but about finding myself? Don't you know how self-centered I am or how I've destroyed every relationship you've ever had with a man? C'mon, Katherine. Stop being so naive.

And who's the ding-a-ling at the door with a wedding gift? Is Jack Abbott not the dumbest person of the day? Who buys a gift when he's heard only that two people have set a wedding date? Why wouldn't he wait to be invited and give the gift at the reception or after the deed has been done?

Not that it mattered to Jill that Jackie had rubbed salt in her mother's wound. She needed to change her story again. Not five minutes after saying the judge couldn't do those awful things he'd been accused of, Jill let it rip.

If Hendricks didn't commit a crime why did he leave so suddenly? Did it have anything to do with Bartlett having forged the judge's signature on those insurance documents? Could it be he didn't want to get caught? Couldn't the judge have stuck around until she'd made a complete fool of herself? Could it be he'd grown tired of her badgering and innuendo and overall hatred?

Not knowing a damn thing about what's going on Jack only made matters worse when he slimed the judge too.

"Is does seem strange. Maybe he was guilty. Maybe he couldn't take the heat any longer," Jack smirked, agreeing with every conclusion in Jill's horror story and assuring her that in time Katherine will "come around" and forget what an insidious and soul-delimiting witch Jill is.

Then Jill began to see the signs, the divine winks and the enormous hidden worlds of belief and interconnected history just under the manufactured and carefully orchestrated surface of things. She realized that the time had come to cover her ass.

"What have I done to our family?" she blathered innocently.

Jill knows damn well what she's done. She knew from the outset nothing good would come of dredging up the past. On the off-chance she didn't know all she had to do was look around the neighborhood. See? There's Nikki Newman poking around in the past and getting stabbed with sharp sticks of pain. There's Phyllis Summers poking around in Damon Porter's dark world and getting slapped with criminal charges. There's Malcolm Winters probing his sister-in-law's past and getting bad vibes shot at him from Dru Winters' powerful hate gun.

So why don't these people learn? Because Genoa City it is indeed a wildly animated, kaleidoscopic, convoluted, maddening, ever-morphing place. After all, where is the mystery, the raw edge of the seat-burning drama unless they delve into the abyss, always backwards while continually espousing that they should move on with their meaningless lives.

Romance Meets Timely Death

October 15, 2004

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition! After vigorously reporting how Jill Abbott's instant love to the point of accepting a marriage proposal from Elliot Hampton is so far out in space, the GCN is pleased to report: it's over!

Little trollop that he is, Hampton must have been loopy on some drug if he thought Abbott would conspire to embezzle money from her own mother's company - or any company for that matter. It wasn't as if Abbott didn't want to. She did admit to being "tempted" to take the money since doing so would only have amounted to what Hampton termed, "an early withdrawal" from her inheritance.

Like Enron executives, Hampton didn't care that the money isn't Katherine Sterling's but rather belongs to investors and employee retirement funds. But when you're as sleazy as Ken Lay, who in hell cares that thousands might lose their entire life savings?

Of course, the end of what had to be Abbott's shortest love affair on record couldn't have taken place without a dose of absurdity tossed in.

In a hurry to get out of town because the walls were caving in, Hampton urged Abbott to drop everything and go with her. In the process of delivering a vehement "no" Abbott dropped the coffee cup she was holding. The shattering china made such an uproar it could be heard by Jack Abbott who was outside the mausoleum door.

Pounding feverishly Jack threatened to huff and puff until Jill opened up. His eyes blazing, Jack looked around. What was going on? Well, nothing. Hampton was just leaving after confessing his sins. Was he worried the Feds or maybe Nick Newman might catch him? Hell no! It will take months to prove any wrongdoing at Chancellor Industries. By then Hampton will have been long gone. Pity the sheep who follow establishment rules, Hampton muttered before leaving - just like that.

It wasn't immediately known if Hampton will be charged with a crime. Most likely not, or, if he is, news of any criminal investigation and subsequent debt to society charged to him will be mentioned only in passing. Unlike Victor Newman, Hampton won't get to remodel a paint factory as payment.

Why Jill's New Act Doesn't Fly

October 13, 2004

All those who remember when Jill Abbott was searching for her mother and when she found Katherine Sterling couldn't accept her and never really did, raise your hands. All those who thought this was the worse aspect of Jill's life and you're damn glad it's over, raise your hands. All those who wish Jill would go back to those days because it was a hell of a lot more interesting than what she's doing nowadays, raise your hands.

My, but aren't we the hypocrites? Except for learning exactly how disgusting Katherine is - paying someone to dispose of her baby - the daughter finds mother story was a bore. Little did we know. No wonder they say be careful what you wish for. We sure got it. An even more boring, more convoluted story than the last.

Newly separated at her own behest from the one man she was meant to be with, Jill, who's run the marital gauntlet and who came out the other end stronger and better and clearer but also emotionally wrung and torqued and bummed and who should have stayed with Larry 'Big Dog' Warton has, overnight, fallen in love with a man she knows nothing about. This, as we've come to learn, is all the rage in Genoa City. It's the new black. Fall head over heals for a stranger so that as the years wear on you can bawl and whine when the skeletons crawl out of the woodwork.

In Jill's case it would have been the one sensible thing had she stayed with Warton who was reduced to helping Sharon Newman move a corpse just before disappearing off the canvas for good so that Jill can marry Elliot Hampton. From the outset Jill suspected Elliot was no good and later learned he's been cooking the books as CEO of her mother's company. Despite enough emotional spankings across the spectrum to make Jill sigh more heavily than usual and order another drink and wonder if something is indeed deeply askew in the world and not just for obvious reasons, she became, in a matter of days, deeply in love to the point where she accepted Elliot's marriage proposal.

Jill sought and obtained her father's blessing for the wedding and even Arthur Hendricks, a judge who probably has seen more divorce cases in his time then he cares to admit, did not utter a single warning about marrying someone you've only known a few days.

So there's the newly and happily in love Jill with her new kinkyfun lover and a new casual romantic interest and who is having a blast and seems wildly happy and reborn and free at last, free at last. There she was Wednesday at the Chancellor mausoleum having what has to be - although Christine Blair's I don't know if I can marry you a third time let's be friends speech ranks a close second - the most contrived conversation on record with Elliot.

Already acting as if they're married, Elliot said how happy he was to have been given a walk through the door kiss and hopes it'll always be like that. Of course, Jill promised it would, but then Larry wasn't there to say "that's what she told me last year and look where it got me."

In the event Jill might not have been acting like herself, Elliot noticed something askew. Was she okay? Acting right out of $.99 romance novel or an inconsistent soap opera Jill said she was fine now that her knight in shining armor was there. Crafty devil he, Elliot picked up on the bad vibes that Jill's former step-son and recent lover has been spreading around and just like Kevin Fisher told Lily Winters that Colleen Carlton "is not your friend" told Jill that Jack Abbott is not her friend.

"Jack is jealous. He can't make you happy like I can" was Elliot's mantra of the moment, and Jill's shining star to which she clung for dear life while oozing, "you make me so happy" leeches through her nose.

Oh my, but the world was one big happy campground this morning for the new lovers. They had it on a string and couldn't wait to hurl through the universe like Victor and Nikki Newman - or something.

"I have a beautiful, smart, sexy woman who wants to be my wife. Together, we can see the world in a way very few people will," Elliot climaxed as if marriage will be an explosively healthy relief and end-all-be-all emotional balm and a guaranteed security blanket for life.

But when Jill balked, when she said she just can't go globetrotting with him at a moments notice as he wanted, Elliot went into blissful overdrive.

"Don't do this to me. I want to be with you forever and ever. I want to be married and travel all over and have wild sex and be totally free," Elliot swooned and, had he not already wasted so much time on mindless babble, might have added, "just before we head into therapy, and you take over mama Katherine's business that will keep you at the office 12 hours a day seven days a week and I realize I'm not really that attracted to you physically and never really was, and you start bitching you don't understand how this could possibly happen and we become like countless others who've been wedded and have that weary sort of flatline look in their eyes and talk about how marriage is fine and sigh, but they sure miss being able to have casual sex and watch something besides ER and maybe 10 minutes of Letterman before zonking out."

If Jill couldn't tell by now that she doesn't want to become a walking talking SUV-driving security mom who thinks a day without a new crack in the driveway is a good day and who never has good sex anymore, the next words that came rolling out of Elliot's lying mouth should have set off her rocket's red glare.

In his warped mind, sitting in two hour each way traffic jams twice a day jobs is for common people. Appointments to keep, people to see, cosmetic wars to wage are, "Like stones in our pockets. Let's get rid of them," Elliot actually said. Then, objecting to Jill's objection that they just can't leave their families behind, said, "They're only important because we say they are. Once we get rid of them you'll be so glad."

So what's the damn point? Why am I still reading this story, you may be asking?

Here's the point, same as it ever was but some of us need to be reminded: Jill has said a number of times that marriage is the weight that holds her down; the clog in her drain. It made her old before she was 40. Marriage is serious and it takes work and it ain't easy but in the end is one of the few things really worth having in life so long as there was love that lit the fuse.

If Jill lights anything it should be the stick of dynamite she shoves up Elliot's butt just before she tosses his ass and his Martha Stewart-clichéd line of blandness out the door and if she's smart she'll be dialing Warton's number at the same time because this is one woman who needs to be reminded what a real man is like.

Abbott Will Marry Total Stranger

October 1, 2004

If you've been staring out the window with great anticipation, sighing heavily, waiting for something to happen in God's fetish garden known as Genoa City that won't make you scream with your camera ready and everything, the wait is over.

Yes friends, Jill Abbott is getting married. At least that's what she said Friday following Chancellor Enterprises CEO Elliot Hampton's proposal.

How sweet. Another Genoa City wedding. Wonder who'll be on the guest list given that Abbott has few if any friends? Let's see. There's her mother, Katherine Sterling, who rarely passes up such social events. There's Jill's former step-son, Jack Abbott, who Jill has had sex with a number of times. And who will give away the bride? Probably her former husband, John Abbott or Fred Hodges, the banker who so desperately wanted to commit adultery with Jill. That's four wedding guests, at least.

What about the best man? Hard to say since Hampton doesn't have any friends at all.

If you didn't know better you might be right now saying to yourself it's about time these two decided to tie the knot because their engagement was quite possibly the longest in Genoa City history. Except you'd be wrong. Abbott has only known Hampton for something like three weeks.

Three weeks! Do people really get to know someone so well in 21 days they're ready to marry? Shouldn't the bride at least know a little something about the man she's presumably going to live the rest of her life with like, whether he's been married before and if so if any of the former wives mysteriously died? Shouldn't there be some meltdown? Wouldn't the power go out, or something?

Genoa City is perhaps the only town in the civilized world where people who have just met expose the most intimate details of their personal lives. The list of those who have done it is long. It's a wham, bam, thank you mamn kind of town. Most notably are women like Sharon Newman who, after having met a total stranger in a Denver bar, allowed the man to have sex with her.

It's not like Mrs. Abbott doesn't know. She told Hampton on Friday it was hard to believe he's fallen in love with her in such a short period of time. But he swore that he had and that while they could live in godless sin there'd be many advantages to being married.

Fully aware that Hampton is crook, milking her mother's company he runs dry and there are about fifty red flags flapping in the breeze, the look in Abbott's eyes was unmistakable. She can hardly wait.

So, here they are. Approaching a full month after first meeting the wedding bells are about to ring for Hampton and his gal. The city is shrugging. A great time will be had by all including the new Mrs. Hampton who it turns out will be truly had as lo and behold the marriage becomes really just a continuation of her mother's marriage to Phillip Chancellor who in the end had to be driven off a cliff to his death.

Mob Contracts Hit On Cosmetics Exec
August 25, 2004

Following the revelation this week that Jack and Jill Abbott have launched a private criminal investigation into Chancellor Industries related to possible charges of money-laundering, corruption and terrorist financing, local mobster Lewis Bertolli has, apparently from his Genoa City jail cell, ordered a stooge identified only as "Moe" to put out a hit on Mrs. Abbott.

Who placed the order with Bertolli remains suspect. But informed sources tell the Genoa City News it's a good bet Chancellor Industries CEO Elliot Hampton contacted Bertolli the moment Abbott began snooping around.

At the Chancellor Mausoleum on Wednesday, Hampton advised company owner Katherine Sterling that he doesn't like that Abbott has been poking around and should Mrs. Sterling be dissatisfied with how he's been running the company he will step down.

Recently set up for a hit by his own partner, strip club owner Bobby Marsino was alerted to the threat on Abbott's life by bar jockey, Angelo who was asked to perform the hit but passed. Marsino immediately warned Abbott of the impending doom and was reportedly told, "We corporate types are a little tougher than you think."

The Abbott's disregard for threats against their lives was thought to be based on the many empty threats they received in the past from the likes of power broker Victor Newman and the recent failed attempt by the mob to eliminate strip club songbird and stripper, Brittany Hodges.

A preliminary look in Hampton's dealings shows he may be guilty of nothing more than malfeasance in that he has moved company money into offshore accounts for tax purposes. A practice routinely lavished by American firms. Covering up profits is nothing new and generally accepted by the American government.

Additionally, an inspection of Hampton's contract with Chancellor shows he negotiated the infamous "golden parachute" provision which basically states that if he gets nailed for theft the company would have to buy him out at a rate which, according to Abbott, could bankrupt Chancellor Industries.

Asked what her next move is, Mrs. Abbott said she wants to tell Mrs. Sterling but fears doing so would cause the recovering alcoholic to have a relapse.

Abbotts to Takeover Chancellor Industries, Bury Jabot!
August 13, 2004

The Genoa City News is projecting that the fall of Jabot Cosmetics will be imminent once certain personnel changes take place at both Jabot and the heretofore much unknown about Chancellor Industries.

Item: Ousted Jabot CEO Jack Abbott will soon grow tired of playing the aging tennis player and begin thirsting for corporate blood.

Item: Ashley Carlton is in line to succeed Abbott as Jabot CEO.

Item: Jill Abbott will grow tired of taking lip from Carlton and announce her termination from Jabot.

Item: Jill Abbott will move the ducks around the boardroom at Chancellor Industries until she has them in a row at which time she will elevate to the throne much like she did at Jabot but with far more grace and effectiveness. In a position to take on the big boys, Mrs. Abbott will employ her former step-son and lover to be her right-hand henchmen and go after such warriors as Newman Enterprises and if Mrs. Carlton doesn't watch her mouth, Jabot too.

Item: Jabot will fail eventually without an opponent due to Mrs. Carlton's poor leadership and lack of knowledge of how to do anything more than sniff toxic fumes in the laboratory. What little company money remains will be sucked dry by the gold-digging Gloria Fisher once she gets her greedy hooks into Jabot's Founder and Chairman of the Board, John 'Yawn" Abbott.

The Return of Billy Abbott?
March 8, 2004

A full year has not passed and already there are rumors swirling. People are tossing and turning in their sleep, kneeling at their bedsides, asking God to tell them it's only a dream.

The return of Billy Abbott?

Holder of the shortest marriage in Genoa City history, young Abbott left town on July 15, 2003. He had discovered just before having sex with teen terrorist Mackenzie Browning that the beak-nosed babe he married was really his cousin. The tragedy left Abbott deeply depressed and frighteningly brain-seared. For days he wandered around aimlessly, finally admitting that everywhere he looked he saw Mac. She was in the park, at the Jitter Joint, on milk cartons.

"I walk around like I'm in a fog," he whined, and then announced he was leaving town.

When asked where he would go, Abbott said only, "I'll get in my car and drive."

As far as anyone knows the marriage was not legally dissolved. Both Abbott and Browning simply left town in different directions. There was no word on whether the college students would continue their education and nobody has heard from or about them since. That is, until this week.

Worried that her "birth father" might move into the Chancellor Estate and that she, Arthur Hendricks and Katherine Sterling might all become a family, Abbott's mother Jill asked old man John 'Yawn' Abbott on Monday if he knew how to reach their son.

Drooling in a cup as usual, the geezer said that he had an old email address for the kid and thought Billy might be in Mississippi. Upon second thought, Yawn said better yet, he knew how to contact Billy's supervisor. That Billy is being supervised has led to speculation that he didn't continue his education and may be working at a job similar to the last he held in Louisiana building homes for the homeless.

Oddly, as Abbott was leaving town he was told repeatedly that "all your friends are here" but nobody seems to know for sure where he is or what he's doing. There has been no contact with his family or friends, the infamous evil pitchfork-wielding teens including, but not limited to, Raul Guittierez, who once loved watching Billy undress.

Asked why she's looking for her son, Mrs Abbott said that Hendricks has expressed an interest in getting to know his grandson and she thinks that by distracting Hendricks long enough she can get him to forget about moving in.

The insane inane circus Jill's year-long desire to learn who her birth parents are has become a huge gaping maw of idiocy and infighting. What person anywhere on the planet would object to the reunification of their parents? On one hand Jill says she wants pa's help to stop ma's drinking, but when he offers to move in she clams up?

The precious family unit. Ha. You will show 'em Jill. Because this is your chance to harness the bitter energy of the bitchy little pundits and the hysterical media stories and the desperately weird ads on TV featuring all those "normal" families sitting around the dinner table. God but what Genoa City is nothing if it ain't strange.

But now is your chance Jill. Leverage the hell out of all of it, make it personal, spin it all your way. Birth daddy wants a family? You shall give him a family. Here is what you do: You ride the recall wave. Hop the glorious supercharged recall bandwagon. Only you do not stop with recalling Billy. You recall Mac too!

You start with, say, beer commercials. Splash a few on the airwaves in Mississippi of dumb beer-bellied carpenters wearing grungy sweatshirts and baseball hats toasting Bud Lights and ogling anorexic frigid beer babes in loud bars. As an image of Billy Abbott is super-imposed on the screen an announcer says, "Have you seen this boy?" followed by an 800 number.

But don't stop there. Run another ad featuring hugely overweight soccer moms hawking giant pizzas and sniffing the slices as if they were a fine perfume. One woman, who will never again have a notion of seeing her toes again, looks into the vast wasteland and says, "Are you out there Mac Browning? Please phone home."

Yes Jill. Recall Glamour Boy and Cosmo Girl. This is just what Genoa City needs. And while you're at it, recall the poisonous notions of guilt, sin and hell. See? Isn't being a family fun? And then, recall god. Not just any god, but the one who has apparently hand-picked Genoa City as his preferred land of swill.

In short, recall the notion that if you have the gall to believe that we need to hear Billy and Mac having feel sorry for us Lily Winters-type fits, you deserve to be shot again. This time dead. We do not wish to witness even a moment of Billy and Mac-like divine open-mouthed whimpering.

This is all within your power, Jill. You can make it stop. They want you to think it's not, that you are weak and trembly and that terrorism is ever ready to swoop in and eat your children. They want you to believe you are powerless and small. This is, of course, utter BS. You can prevent it. Crank your divinity and discover that you don't need Billy. And for sure you don't need Mac. What you need is actually you, your true Self.

Jill, you wanted a family - didn't you? Wasn't this what it was always about? Isn't finding Katherine and Arthur the reason that you - as 20% shareowner of Jabot stock - had no interest or participation in the recent and ongoing cosmetics war? Isn't this why you've expressed no concern that your company - the company that pays you in excess of $150,000 each month is on the brink of bankruptcy? Isn't this the reason you have never told your step-son and former lover to get his act together? Isn't this the reason you've never told John Abbott, look, Jack is destroying this company and we need to do something about it?

You've made you bed, Jill. You've driven us to the brink of boredom with your parent search. Now sleep in it. Let your daddy move in, get your mommy off the bottle and try - just once - to live as the family you so desperately wanted. Once settled in all snug in your respective rugs, then and only then should you consider dredging up Billy from the swamplands of Mississippi.

Town drunk seeks help with booze addiction, instant gratification

January 16, 2004

Only in Genoa City can persons with no good reasons become falling down drunks and in the blink of any eye change their minds, call Alcoholics Anonymous and receive immediate one-on-one personalized care.

Such was the case on Friday when Jabot Cosmetics 20-percent shareholder Jill Abbott woke up, decided she didn't want to drink another drop and placed a call to AA.

Without requiring that Abbott so much as attend one AA meeting or complete step one in the 12-Step Program, AA sent a woman over to the Chancellor Mausoleum to tell Mrs. Abbott that like baby-sitters in this town, AA sponsors are standing by ready to respond at a moments notice to drunks in need.

"That's how it works," the AA lady said, and like a double-shot of brandy burning off the DTs, Abbott was instantly cured of her miserable addiction.

As a bonus, Abbott's off the wagon again alcoholic mother, Katherine Sterling agreed to at least "try" giving up the booze and said she will move back into the mausoleum with her loving daughter.

For Sterling it was the plan all along. Make the drunk daughter think the drunk mother had gone back to drinking and presto change-o the daughter would snap out of addiction. Now, let's grab a few towels and have a good cry.

That's how it works in Genoa City. Drunk today, sober tomorrow and next week their battle will be all but forgotten. But who, really, was moved to anything but rigor mortis observing this nonsense?

Face-to-face with mortality
by Vicki Johns  
January 5, 2004

Jill Abbott, 31 chronological years removed since the death of her beloved Phillip Chancellor III, found herself this week at the Gentlemen's Club wistfully wondering out loud if, indeed, she is "over the hill."

She's not only over the hill, she's half way through the desert and approaching the River Styx. Does she think those introductory membership offers received from the folks at AARP and the Red Hat Society were marketing flukes? And does she think, when she wakes up in the middle of the night sweating profusely, that the mausoleum's furnace must be to blame when the real problem is a desertion of proper estrogen levels?

How about those bothersome little whiskers growing at an ever-increasing rate from the right side of Jill's chin? What does she blame that on - some freakish result of global warming? Does she think the Democrats in Congress are responsible for the fact that every few months she has to ratchet up the slide on her bra strap another half inch? And does the quadrupled amount she is spending on bikini wax jobs not yell out a screaming, undeniable, unmistakable neon-blinking message: Over the hill, past your prime, no spring chicken, bring on the rocking chair?

And she wonders what women like Brittany Hodges has that she doesn't? About 4 billion more eggs, for one thing. Skin elasticity, breasts that point east instead of south, age-spot free skin, nails that don't break just because you looked at them, and the lack of a need to wear reading glasses secured by a neck chain. Hands that are still their own instead of their mother's, the ability to walk around in spike heels all day long, and tushes that resemble firm peaches instead of cottage cheese in a baggie. That's what they've got.

For the most part, Jill's had a good run and she ought to be grateful for that. Web guy Sean Bridges was at least 20 years her junior, and the first one had a body you could bounce dimes off of. Same could be said of Larry "Big Dog" Warton, at least 10 years her junior. Any other grandmother her age with half a brain and a quarter of her dough would have stashed them both in some Pocono's themed apartment, replete with temple of worship to Venus di Milo.

Jill should have gotten a hint to her "hill" status when Frederick Hodges was content to blow $200 bucks on a hotel room just for the sake of "cuddling" someone in the night. Which is exactly how men who find women - like their own mothers - to be sexually repulsive, behave. Mothers, i.e., old women.

Jill? Over the hill? Nah. Every totally sober, vital, youthful, exciting woman with a fabulous career and adored by family and friends spends the wee hours of New Year's Day sucking up Scotches alone in a two-bit, mob-run strip club in a questionable part of town hitting on an owner sleazier that Bob Guccione. Yep, you pull a number like that and for sure, you're square in the company of every nubile, juicy, ovulating, pheromone-producing female outside of the third world. You betcha, babe.