Category Archives: television

Jul 25 2 comments
television

Time to Celebrate Misogyny on Sunday Nights Again!

I’m waiting for Katie and Sebastien to get up, and for Matt Matt to come over, so that we can crash Greg Goodin’s pool. Again.  So basically it’s noon and I’m sitting restlessly on the Cockpit Couch in my bikini and sundress, smelling of Coppertone and itching to be outside outside outside outside, c’mooonnn, wake UPPPPPP.

While I’m waiting, a little blurb:

If you know what’s good for you, you’ll be watching the Mad Men season premiere tonight. And if your experience with Season Three is similar to mine, you will have NO RECOLLECTION WHAT HAPPENED BECAUSE YOU WERE DRUNK FOR EVERY EPISODE. (This is what happens when your primetime show airs during football/mimosa-and-jalepeno-poppers season.)

Here are:

My Top Three Favorite Mad Men Scenes, I Mean Maybe, This is Just Off the Top of My Memory, There are Probably Better Ones

THREE: ONE, TWO, CHA-CHA-CHA

See also: Every scene Joan Holloway is in.

TWO: THE PITCH

A) Okay, who WROTE this, because they should be given BJs on the reg. Straight up.

B) I watched Mad Men Seasons 1 and 2 in a whirlwind, streaming back-to-back episodes for days on end, and I worked at an ad agency at the time. I was telling my dad this story about how our creatives gave a pitch to a potential client, and how it was so good that they canceled all their other interviews. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized I was TOTALLY CONFUSING MY REAL AGENCY LIFE with MAD MEN. Proud moment for my father, to be sure: “Oh shit. Nevermind. That didn’t actually happen. I was confusing it with a cable tv show.” whatevs, I heart you Don Draper.

ONE: THE THREATENING FINGERBANG

THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE.

  • Share/Bookmark
Jul 21 0 comments
Dialogue, smells like quarter-life-crisis, television

TODAY IS! WHERE YOUR BOOK BEGINS! THE REST IS STILL…

There’s a reason There’s Your Karma has a tag for “quarter-life crisis.” While I’ve been cringing at that term nowadays, there’s no better moniker for these little pockets of restlessness that seem to pop up on an all-too-frequent basis. The pattern is always the same: I’ll settle into something in my life, follow my tail in a circle three times before sinking into that bed of stability, thinking that it’s going to tide me over until my “real life” begins.

It never does.

I get anxious to start the next chapter, to push the re-do button until I stumble upon a Life that makes sense to me.  Luckily, I’m not alone in this one. My beautiful BFF Katie and I have spent endless hours on the Cockpit Couch, imagining a total overhaul of our lives. We don’t know where it will take us — or if we’ll take on the adventure together or apart. We just know things need to change. And when we get tired of talking about it?

We watch The Hills.


…like for 6 hours, on a Sunday. Both of us were fair-weather Hills fans, only tuning in for a couple episodes here and there. But a few Sundays ago, we needed complete, mindless escapism. Enter MTV. We got so into it that we planned our entire Tuesday night around the series finale, complete with a bottle of wine (PER PERSON). We laughed about it, mocked ourselves…until three glasses in, and Kristin says something like “I need a change, y’know?” and we slurred, “Oh my gaaaaah, this is SO US. SO. US.”

Hence, this G-Chat conversation:

Jenn: We need a theme song.

Katie: Something like…’feel the rain on your skin.’

Jenn: Oh yeah. DUH.  We already have one.

Katie: Hahaha.

Jenn: Shit…and then when we’re feeling super emotional, we have to find that unplugged version.

Katie: Oh man, the unplugged version! Omg I’m listening to it right now…why does it somehow make me feel better? This is sick.

Jenn: I don’t know. This is totally one of those things where we like it ironically until we start to like it unironically.

Katie: Okay, I’ve hit a wall. That must mean lunch time.

Jenn: GO GIT IT! Your lunch is still uneaten.

Katie: Wow.

  • Share/Bookmark
Dec 02 0 comments
Video, television

Tore My Heart is RIGHT.

Let’s face it - love sucks, a lot of the time.

It also inspires some  gorgeous artistic tributes, like one of my favorites -  Veronese’s Scorn.

Cupid FTW

Lately I’ve been playing with the idea that love is only romantic when it’s unrequited.

It’s all very tragic and stupid.

AHEM.

THAT SAID? Go watch this awesome piece on last night’s So You Think You Can Dance, before the big bad network pulls it. Beautiful. Choreography by Sonya Tayeh.

(Link to video here.)



  • Share/Bookmark
Jun 30 5 comments
Nostalgia, Video, television

Finally, a explanation why so many of us are f*cked up.

Bess and I were sharing our childhood career dreams at lunch today. I wanted to be a cashier at Meijer because I thought you got to keep the money that was handed to you.  Nice gig, I thought, at age four. Bess wanted to be a tightrope walker. This was based on her obsession with a character she saw on a children’s show in the 80s.  As she was describing it to me, the faintest of memories came back --yeah, it was live action puppets, and the cat was a tight-rope walker, and there was a dog and a lion, and a circus, and…We couldn’t remember what it was.

It was like my television memories were being held nicely for twenty years like water in a reservoir, until that one hole that I patched with gum had just sprung a leak. Then we consulted YouTube and the whole damn thing busted open. And I’m all, “YEAH! THIS WAS IT! TOTALLY…THIS..this…wow.  This is sh*t is f*cked up.”

[Link to Video.]

The more these memories come flooding back, the more I realize that a lot of the shows I watched as a kid were seriously creepy. Today’s Special, anyone?

[Link to video]

Then there was The Letter People.  Readers, I can’t tell you what I had for breakfast this morning, but I can tell you that the first day of Kindergarten in 1988, we watched The Letter People episode featuring Mr. M.  Granted, by the time I got to Kindergarten I could already read.  I like to imagine my five year old self, clad in Oshkosh B’gosh, sitting with crossed arms on the back row of floor mats and looking at my fellow classmates as if to say, “Can you believe this sh*t?”

[Link to Video]

Seriously — What was with the disturbing puppetry of the 70s and 80s?

What odd childhood memories of television have resurfaced for you lately?

  • Share/Bookmark
May 21 1 comments
television

American Idle

I didn’t really care who won American Idol, and to be honest I was more excited about Cyndi Lauper.  Okay, and Lionel Richie. I was very bitter after Jorge, the Puerto Rican with a heart of gold, was voted off like week 2 and totally effed my chances of winning our agency’s Idol pool.

There seems to be a good deal of people on the Adam Lambert Love Boat, and I’m kind of with the people on the shore who are waving gleefully as it sets sail on the sea of Hair Metal and Octaves That I Can’t Reach. Is Lambert talented? Very.  Would I love to see him doing “Rent” or something? Totes magotes. But really, it’s all a little over the top for me. Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you always SHOULD. Certain songs command respect.  We get it, you can wail. What else ya got.

I recognized the Elvis Presley references at first, but then I watched the ‘68 Comeback special and remembered how awesome Elvis is and HOW DARE YOU COMPARE ANYONE TO HIM.

(Direct Link)

I mean, look at him. I would lick the sweat off his face.

Also, this is a good entry to bring up one of my favorite videos of all time, “La Plus Horrible Jour de Ma Vie.” Which is weird, because it’s in English, but nevertheless relevant in this space.

(Direct Link)

  • Share/Bookmark
May 08 8 comments
television

Doing a Body Good

At home, my parents still use dial-up.  They’re going to make “the big switch” to high-speed relatively soon, and I was telling my mom how much it will open up her world, and by “open up” I basically meant “waste away your time.”  I explained that, before, when you had a brief moment of nostalgia for a song or television show — something you figured you’d never see again — you’d just let that moment pass.  But now? Now you can spend HOURS on the minutae of something you saw twenty years ago! IT’S GONNA BLOW YOUR MIND, MOM!

SEGUE!

Do you guys remember Slim Goodbody?

He was the dude who taught us about human anatomy and health.  He did this by wearing a skin-tight, flesh-colored unitard with all the organs showing.

[photo via  The Ladybug Picnic]

I don’t know whether to look at his jew-fro or his printed prostate gland. I mean, if anything, this get-up screams, “Hey. Lady. Eyes up here.”

I went to YouTube, God Bless it, to jog my memory:

And now a part of me just wants to get stoned and watch this again.  Which, I realize, Mr. Goodbody, defeats the whole “treasure the pleasure of being me” part, but hey. As you can tell from the TWENTY YEAR JUMP IN AGE in that video (you look awesome, buddy, but you ain’t foolin’ nobody), Slim Goodbody is still educating the masses, touring all the way through 2010.  I’m thinking our agency should get our healthcare client to book him for their sponsored pavilion at the State Fair.  Although I’m not sure much would top “Coco the Colossal Colon” with “Polyp Man” and “Eneman.”

[photo via geardiary.com]

Obviously, the original Slim Goodbody can’t do it all, so he has minions (Slimions?) doing school assemblies. This Slim is kinda more, um, muscular than the original.  Oddly, I got turned on for about .25 seconds until I got a weird feeling with so little clothing between a grown man and all those children…..Also, his nickname is “Goose.”

[Link to video.]

  • Share/Bookmark
Apr 06 3 comments
Video, television

I Can’t Really Explain Why, but…

I would like nothing more than to be the principal lady dancer in this video.

I think we all would.

Scrobble to the 1 minute mark and see what I mean.

Hair teased out to here, spandex and legwarmers, effeminate sweaty latin dancers vying for your attention, flight simulation, HALL AND OATES.

The only thing that’s missing, clearly, is Oates’  ’stache.

[Link to video]

  • Share/Bookmark
Feb 27 0 comments
Health, television

A Bunch of Posts I’ve Started

but haven’t completed because I’m too busy trying to distract myself from the fact that I haven’t eaten solid food in seven days…

1) I just started watching How I Met Your Mother and even halfway through Season One,  I’ve decided that it is WAY better than Friends. While I liked Friends, I was never one of those girls that was like Squee, best show evarrr. Friends was a great, timeless sitcom, but every episode I’ve seen of HIMYM has been brilliantly written and makes me want to write for television.

2) Damon and I were wandering around the Whole Foods the other day (getting my 324234 pound bag of lemons) and he pointed over at a huge chunk of parmagiano reggiano.  I mean, HUNK of CHEESE.

It was a block, like this:

So we laughed and joked about whether or not it was for sale. An employee in a white coat came out of nowhere and proceeded to tell us it would run us like $1250 or something.  Then, probably the best thing to happen to me that day:

Him: “I carved that myself, actually.”

Me: “Oh, really? Cool.”

Him: “I hold the world record for carving parm, actually.”

Me: **cartoon double take** “Uh-whaaaa?”

Him: “It’s a group world record.”

Me: “That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.”

He then went on to recommend six or seven fabulous cheeses. And then I died. Because I was on the Master Cleanse. And you know what put me in the position to go on the Master Cleanse? That wheel of brie you’re touting, Parm Boy. I’ve learned from experience that people who are into cheese? Are reeeallly into cheese. (See Russell and The Cheese Cart, March 08)

3) Speaking of Master Cleanse, I am on Day Seven. This day is supposed to  be particularly hard detox-wise, but I think I felt worse last night. While my energy has increased and I definitely feel good, I still don’t have that surge of crazy new energy, that joie de vivre that I got last round.  A question I get asked often is how many pounds I want to lose or how much I have lost. The answer is, I don’t have a clue, because my scale is busted.  That’s okay by me.

  • Share/Bookmark
Jan 12 0 comments
television

Mah TV Boyfriend, Let Me Show You Him.

I don’t know what the opposite of a “cougar” is.  What would you call a 20-something woman going an older man? I suggested “bobcat,” a term which which [amazingly] is backed up by Urban Dictionary. Either way, that’s what I am for Anthony Bourdain. Rawr.

It was a love I hid, a crush I only revealed to those closest to me, but now I can’t hide it. He is too brilliant.  I shout it from the rooftops: I love this man.    Yes, I got it bad, but I never realized how bad until I caught my face inching closer to my monitor while reading his blog entry on Venice.  Like I was leaning in for a kiss.

Even in the middle of tourist season, we managed, I think, to make Venice look hauntingly empty. A single street sweeper in an otherwise deserted Piazza San Marco, backstreets populated only by Venetians, sipping their drinks and looking idly out at the world, a private world of simple good things set against a backdrop of Europe’s most beautiful living museum, slowly sinking into the Adriatic.

Source: Anthony Bourdain’s Blog on TravelChannel.

  • Share/Bookmark