Yes, it's been months since I've posted. Yes, I've been a bad blogger. I think I'm going to try and post every Tuesday since it's a pretty easy day for me. In November I'll try to post every day again and see how far I get. I think that I get blocked because in my public blog I like writing about something instead of updating about my day to day life, like, "This week I worked a bunch of days, and then I went to class and it was pretty boring, and then I went out to dinner with some friends." No one wants to read that.
About three weeks ago, I finally joined the future and bought an e-reader. I decided to get the Nook instead of the Kindle, because you can download library books on it, and also you can buy books from other stores, not just Barnes and Noble. I got the latest one, which is smaller and has a touch screen, and so far I love it. I was one of those people who hated the idea of an e-reader when it first came out. "Nothing will replace books for me! You'll have to pry paper books from my cold dead hands!" But e readers have advanced since then, and now I love the idea that I don't ever have to be in between books till I get to a bookstore anymore, the entire world of literature is at my fingertips. Also, I'm a very bad library grad student who never uses the library. Now I can download library books, and not worry about late return fees if I'm too lazy to bring the book back on time. Another perk is that I can download pdf files onto it to read instead of killing more trees by printing them. This makes it very handy for the mountain of journal articles I have to read for school, so I can write the Nook off on my taxes, woot!
So far I've waded in slowly. Trench recently got me sucked into the first season of Game of Thrones, so I bought the first book and have been reading it on my Nook. I didn't know if I would like reading fiction on a screen, but if you are a person who likes to read, you will read anything as long as there are words printed on it. I like that the Nook is so slim, so I never have to leave it at home, like I do sometimes when I'm reading a fat book. I've even been reading in bed, although in a fit of sleepiness the other night I reached up to the corner of the Nook to turn a page instead of swiping the screen.
All the same, when I finish this and go to read the second, I think I'll get the paper book instead. As handy as the Nook is, at the end of the day it's still another screen to stare at. I'm excited to use it for non-fiction, and even for hardcover fiction that is too difficult to carry around everywhere, or silly chick lit that I don't want people to catch me reading. As for really good fiction that I can barely put down, I think I'll stick to paper.
Showing posts with label pop culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pop culture. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Friday, July 15, 2011
Theater of Yesterday*
I'm watching the first season of Ally McBeal on Netflix. I watched most of this show when it first aired, though I stopped at some point. Whatever shark they jumped was so boring that I can't even remember what the shark was. Oh wait...it was when she suddenly had an eight year old daughter out of nowhere! At that point I think that Sex & the City was on the air, and everyone had stopped watching poor Ally.
In fact, it's really interesting watching the show in that context...S&tC aired just a shade after Ally premiered. Fall of '97 vs. spring of '98. Network television vs. cable. Both shows were about single women finding love, but say what you want about S&tC, it resonated with women in a way that few shows have. Possibly because it showed different types of women. If you didn't like Carrie, you might still identify with Miranda or Samantha. Ally McBeal is what happens when a show is centered on Charlotte. And although there are different types of women on Ally McBeal, they all still agree that single = lonely = sad. Even Renee, Ally's sassy and confident best friend, will say things like "She's marrying him because she just turned 30." "We hate weddings because we're single." "If you're not careful you're going to end up alone." The S&tC crew were allowed to be happy without men. To this day my friends and I will be talking about a situation and be able to relate it to a S&tC episode (seeing that the show went off the air in 2004, this says a lot about the need for a new show centered on women), but no one ever says, "That's just like the time Ally had a meltdown in public and smacked someone for saying her skirt was too short!"
That makes it sound like I think the show sucks. Well, I think that Ally sucks, but everyone does. Did anyone ever like Ally? The show ran on the steam provided by the secondary characters. I've been squeeing over John Cage listening to the bells, and the first time he dances to Barry White in the co-ed bathroom. Richard Fish (who I have decided is basically who Jeff Winger was when he was a lawyer, before he had to go back to community college because he didn't really pass law school) with his "Fishisms" and brushing off everything with "bygones". Jane Krakowski's portrayal of Elaine, the attention seeking secretary, which is the exact same character she plays on 30 Rock, and I find myself not minding. The beautiful thing about this show was that it was about very odd, quirky people, and that's why it worked. In fact, I think we should bring back "bygones." Say there's a huge blow up in an internet chatroom. Just write "bygones", and it'll all be diffused. And it goes without saying that there should be more impromptu dance parties. Maybe not in public bathrooms, but hey, that's where the mirrors are.
I've forgotten almost everything except for the main plotline (Ally finds herself working with her first love and his wife, hijinks ensue!), but there's one plot that everyone remembers whether they watched the show or not. The dancing baby. Full disclosure, I do not have a biological clock. Trench and I have agreed that we're mad about each other enough that we don't want any tiny being taking our attention away from the other. I finally got to the dancing baby episode, and it scared the crap out of me!
Honestly, I don't even think the lack of biological clock has anything to do with it. This is very early CGI we're talking about. That baby is terrifying! Remember when that was on everyone's screen saver for awhile? What the hell were they thinking? The baby is Ally's biological clock hallucination. This hallucination happens because she has sex for the FIRST TIME ALL SEASON with someone just because he was hot and she feels guilty about that. Yep, this is definitely pre-S&tC. She's standing in the office, and suddenly the pitter-pat of little feet goes off like a gunshot. And then there's the OOGA CHAKA OOGA CHAKA from Paul Simon's "Hooked On a Feeling." And that CGI baby runs out and starts dancing in this very jerky way, moving its limbs in ways that limbs were never meant to move. I screamed. And for the rest of the episode, every time I heard the pitter pat or the OOGA CHAKA, I screamed and lifted my feet off the ground, as if the baby would run out and grab me.
Think I'm exaggerating? Check it out here, if you dare. Just don't blame me if you aren't able to sleep tonight. But if you think the baby is cute...that you found Ally dancing with her biological clock to be liberating...that it was your screen saver back in the 90's...well, what can I say? Bygones.
*Title stolen from Rebecca T. Thanks Bekka!
In fact, it's really interesting watching the show in that context...S&tC aired just a shade after Ally premiered. Fall of '97 vs. spring of '98. Network television vs. cable. Both shows were about single women finding love, but say what you want about S&tC, it resonated with women in a way that few shows have. Possibly because it showed different types of women. If you didn't like Carrie, you might still identify with Miranda or Samantha. Ally McBeal is what happens when a show is centered on Charlotte. And although there are different types of women on Ally McBeal, they all still agree that single = lonely = sad. Even Renee, Ally's sassy and confident best friend, will say things like "She's marrying him because she just turned 30." "We hate weddings because we're single." "If you're not careful you're going to end up alone." The S&tC crew were allowed to be happy without men. To this day my friends and I will be talking about a situation and be able to relate it to a S&tC episode (seeing that the show went off the air in 2004, this says a lot about the need for a new show centered on women), but no one ever says, "That's just like the time Ally had a meltdown in public and smacked someone for saying her skirt was too short!"
That makes it sound like I think the show sucks. Well, I think that Ally sucks, but everyone does. Did anyone ever like Ally? The show ran on the steam provided by the secondary characters. I've been squeeing over John Cage listening to the bells, and the first time he dances to Barry White in the co-ed bathroom. Richard Fish (who I have decided is basically who Jeff Winger was when he was a lawyer, before he had to go back to community college because he didn't really pass law school) with his "Fishisms" and brushing off everything with "bygones". Jane Krakowski's portrayal of Elaine, the attention seeking secretary, which is the exact same character she plays on 30 Rock, and I find myself not minding. The beautiful thing about this show was that it was about very odd, quirky people, and that's why it worked. In fact, I think we should bring back "bygones." Say there's a huge blow up in an internet chatroom. Just write "bygones", and it'll all be diffused. And it goes without saying that there should be more impromptu dance parties. Maybe not in public bathrooms, but hey, that's where the mirrors are.
I've forgotten almost everything except for the main plotline (Ally finds herself working with her first love and his wife, hijinks ensue!), but there's one plot that everyone remembers whether they watched the show or not. The dancing baby. Full disclosure, I do not have a biological clock. Trench and I have agreed that we're mad about each other enough that we don't want any tiny being taking our attention away from the other. I finally got to the dancing baby episode, and it scared the crap out of me!
Honestly, I don't even think the lack of biological clock has anything to do with it. This is very early CGI we're talking about. That baby is terrifying! Remember when that was on everyone's screen saver for awhile? What the hell were they thinking? The baby is Ally's biological clock hallucination. This hallucination happens because she has sex for the FIRST TIME ALL SEASON with someone just because he was hot and she feels guilty about that. Yep, this is definitely pre-S&tC. She's standing in the office, and suddenly the pitter-pat of little feet goes off like a gunshot. And then there's the OOGA CHAKA OOGA CHAKA from Paul Simon's "Hooked On a Feeling." And that CGI baby runs out and starts dancing in this very jerky way, moving its limbs in ways that limbs were never meant to move. I screamed. And for the rest of the episode, every time I heard the pitter pat or the OOGA CHAKA, I screamed and lifted my feet off the ground, as if the baby would run out and grab me.
Think I'm exaggerating? Check it out here, if you dare. Just don't blame me if you aren't able to sleep tonight. But if you think the baby is cute...that you found Ally dancing with her biological clock to be liberating...that it was your screen saver back in the 90's...well, what can I say? Bygones.
*Title stolen from Rebecca T. Thanks Bekka!
Friday, September 17, 2010
"You look good wearing my future"
This week I watched a couple old favorite movies on Netflix. The first one was a very old classic...Adventures In Babysitting! Unfortunately I watched it at home with Trench instead of at a slumber party with girlfriends, where it would have been more fun. Trench only saw it once when he was a kid. My bff and I watched it about 95 times when we were in the sixth grade. We thought that Chris (the babysitter) was the coolest girl in the world, and I desperately wanted her hair. I still enjoyed it, in a nostalgic sort of way, but man did it ever not age well. Or maybe I'm just old enough to notice terrible writing, fake looking backdrops and the whitest blues song ever filmed. Though I really think that someone needs to dress like Sara, the Thor-obsessed kid who is being terribly babysat, for Halloween.
Then last night I watched Some Kind of Wonderful. In some ways, it's like a poor man's Pretty In Pink. In other ways, it's more satisfying because Mary Stuart Masterson's character, Watts, is every bit as cool as Duckie, possibly cooler because she's more tough than pathetic, and she gets the guy in the end. And the guy is Eric Stoltz, who I always had a crush on in pretty much everything he's ever been in. His character, Keith, is soooooo dumb, though. Aw, poor baby has a dad who really wants him to go to college! How terrible for him. "That was your dream, not mine!" Let's see what you say about that in ten years, sweetie. Then he blows his college money on diamond earrings for his dream girl, even though he's fairly certain she's only going on a date with him as a joke. Argh! Someone punch him in the face! He convinces his dad that he should trust him, and his dad is stunned by this logic and agrees. Oh, John Hughes, it's like you're holding up a mirror to the way reality works. And the most beautiful girl in school? Is Lea Thompson. No offense to her, she was pretty damn cute in her day, but it's obvious the director wasn't able to get Molly Ringwald for the role. The director also wasn't able to afford any type of soundtrack, except for the song "Miss Amanda Jones" by the Rolling Stones. No Psychedelic Furs in this 80's flick. But still? It is a satisfying ending, with the most beautiful girl in school turning down the love interest so that she can be alone for awhile and find out who she is, while the incredibly cool, quirky girl who drums and wears ass-kicking boots and has a star tattoo on her neck gets the boy and the diamond earrings.
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