Lindsay Lowdown

I was in the gym a couple of days ago and the following news item appeared on MSNBC's news ticker as I was watching the tube from my treadmill. Lindsay Lohan, currently serving time in jail while trying to overcome her penchant for booze and speaking to Vanity Fair, says she wants her career back.

I love it when the cable news channels give me a little nugget I can build a blog entry on.

You might be expecting me to write a nasty entry about Lindsay Lohan in light of everything that's gone down with her . You'd be wrong. There are plenty of "it" girls in the past three decades whose careers have thrived and prospered because they either avoided the same pitfalls Lindsay Lohan fell in or got out of them rather quickly. Yet they all have one thing in common - they have no talent. Britney Spears? Pluh-EEZE!

Lindsay Lohan is not a bad actress or singer. Anyone who caught her performance in Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, the last movie Robert Altman ever directed, knows she can entertain audiences with the best of them - and did, since that movie (like most of Altman's pictures) was an ensemble. Lohan can and should get her career back, provided she can overcome her drinking once and for all and get into a good Alcoholics Anonymous program. To those who doubt her ability to do so, I urge you to consider Robert Downey, Jr., whose career was left for dead and that came back in a big way. Heck, if Downey could do it, anything is possible.

Please, Lindsay, get your career back and work your way to becoming the great twenty-first century entertainer you were meant to be, and do it as fast as you can - as fast as the justice system lets you - before Lady Gaga ends up starring in Desperately Seeking Susan 2: Daughter of Susan. You don't want to leave a void for someone else to fill, do you?