Dusts Off the Old Blog

For those of you who wondered where I was from July until now (and by "those of you" I mean "no one"), here is a brief recap:

-I moved from a tiny apartment to a slightly less tiny apartment.

-School started again and sucked up more time than I cared for (what, with watching hours and hours of Mardy's PowerPoint presentations on Elder Law and Estate Planning)

-I helped plan and attend my sister's bachelorette party and then her subsequent wedding at which I won the award for "Most crying, tattooed Maid Of Honor."

-Fall programming started, and I would rather watch Gossip Girl than think. Or type.

-The holidays (Family Winter Drunkfest 2009).

Now that we're into the most barren part of the year (at least it is in northeastern Ohio)and I've set a few lame-o goals for myself (How many Oscar movies can I see? Can I read 50 books this year?) I figured I'd shine up the blog and start chronicaling some of my adventures in tedium.

Also, I got a Roku Player, so the possibilities are endless!

Adulthood

Adulthood means eating leftover mexican food for breakfast while wearing only a presentable blouse and a pair of boxer briefs, right?

I Love Television

This sentiment may be totally square. There was a long period in my life, during college, that I didn't watch much TV because I was trapped in the bubble called Baldwin-Wallace College. It seemed that when I began emerging from this bubble, I encountered many people who claimed they "didn't watch TV" and they always said it with this air of superiority that didn't sit well with me. I don't necessarily scoff at these folks, because really, the early and mid-2000's were rife with a lot of crap that did seem to want to eat away at your brain (Fear Factor, Wife Swap, Flavor of Love, just to name a few mindless reality gems).

However, when a television show is good, and I mean REALLY good, I would potentially trade it for a quality film or book. A good TV show combines the best of both media: in-depth character development and plot-lines, with visual stimuli. For me, there are four television shows that I hold in higher regard than all others, even though I love a good many more.

My So-Called Life is arguably one of the best teen-oriented dramas to grace the small screen. It's a show completely of its time and place (the 90's, the midwest) and can't be separated from those things. Angela Chase could not have existed today. Granted, it looks a little dated now, but that's part of its charm. For a child of the 90's, looking back feels like a happier, warmer place, a place where the Twin Towers are still standing and Bill Clinton's comfortable drawl lulls us to sleep at night. But MSCL is not, in and of itself, a happy, warm show. It's raw and realistic (except for when it's not, i.e., the Halloween and Christmas episodes) and pulls at your heart because you know an Angela, Rayanne, Patti, Brian, or if you're lucky (or completely unlucky) a Jordan Catalano. Its gritty realism and angst is what earned it a cult following and critical acclaim; it's probably also what got it yanked off the air after only 17 episodes.

Freaks and Geeks has a few parallels to MSCL: a teenage female protagonist who, when we meet her, is shedding who she was for something more subversive; a jilted former best friend; and outcasts no one's parents would trust. However, F&G somehow still doesn't look dated even though it was created in the 90's and set in 1980. There are more laughs, more character development, and more crushing blows to everyone's ego. The painfully real scenes are somehow MORE painfully real (Nick's rendition of "Lady", Lindsey's out of it parents).

Six Feet Under...I have few words for. Its only really weak spots were in Season 4, its the only thing that maybe made me feel even remotely okay about dying, and watching it feels like coming home. Cap it off with the best series finale in the history of time, and SFU is probably my favorite show of all time.

LOST hasn't finished up yet, but there isn't much that could happen in this final season to make me regret my utter enthrallment with the show (unless it's all a dream, or in a snowglobe, or the thoughts of Vincent). LOST watches like the best Stephen King novels read. The characters are all lovable and hateable and as equally developed as the most beloved King characters.

So why the rant about TV? Because I may have just added a fifth show to my list of all-time favorites. When my friend Kat first recommended Friday Night Lights to me I said "What? Really? Football?" But saying FNL is a show about football is like saying LOST is just a show about an island or that MSCL is just a show about a girl with a crush on Jared Leto. Any show could have any of these premises: it's what the writers do with these premises that makes them great. FNL is gritty and intimate. It's a take on slice-of-life, in the way plots enter unceremoniously and occasionally exit unceremoniously. It's a show about characters, in which the town of Dillon plays the starring role. The emotional reactions of the viewer don't usually come from grand gestures or major developments, but from the minutiae of the characters' reactions to things, from a pep talk by Coach Taylor, from small triumphs and defeats.

If you like any of the shows I've listed above, I implore you watch at least the first few episodes of FNL. It's a show about characters, about sad people in a sad town.

I think revisiting Dillon, Texas on my TV may eventually feel like coming home. Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.

An Extrapolation of a Facebook Status Update

My updated went something like this:

"Dear Kristen Stewart: Please stop touching your hair."

And I mean it.

I watched the Comic-Con Twilight:New Moon panel on the interwebs and I wish I had counted the number of times she ran her hands through her hair, or tousled it, or just generally hid behind it in an attempt to not talk. Even though you are on a press conference panel. And all you are supposed to do is talk.

Overall the panel was disappointing. Of the three panel members (including Miss Touchy Hair, R. Patts., and Taylor Lautner) Lautner was the only one who seemed to have any enthusiasm. About anything. At the very least, he knew how questions were supposed to be answered. R. Patts. mumbled and Miss Touchy Hair stammered her way through every answer, sometimes just coming to a stop in the middle of a sentence.

She mentioned that she cut off her hair, but those of us in the know realize it's because she's playing Joan Jett, and the 'do is THE Joan Jett 'do. The highlight was when some reporter blatantly asked if Hair and Patts. were dating and some lady came out and yelled at him while the panel looked awkward, and Hair looked pissed. Not that that looked any different from her usual face.

In other Twilight news, goodbye Actress Who Originally Played Victoria, Hello Bryce Dallas Howard.

Single Or Not, All Women Are Cathy

Tonight at the grocery store my purchases consisted of a cheap bottle of cabernet, a pack of cigarettes, a dozen eggs, and a Stouffer's French Bread Pizza. This depressed me.

I am not single. I have been in a loving and committed relationship for over two years with a wonderful man. Yet standing in line at the store I felt like the worst kind of single woman. The kind you can smell a mile away. Even though I am not single, I live alone, which can lead to all sorts of single woman tendencies. (Not that being single is in any way in and of itself depressing).

Tonight my tendency was to get a bottle of wine, because I had studying for a final to do. My undergrad instincts must have kicked in, allowing me to believe that any study session must involve some sort of self-medicating substance. The wine and the cigarettes alone would not necessarily look desperate, at least not any more desperate than the guy in front of you at the corner store buying two 40's at 11 a.m. I chose to go to the actual grocery store because I know they have really cheap wine on sale always, and because I was also out of eggs.

Somehow, having turkey bacon and hash browns for breakfast does not seem as wholesome has having turkey bacon, hash browns, and eggs.

ANYWAYS, so I had my cheap cabernet ($3.29 a bottle) and my eggs and realized that it was 9:30 in the evening. I was not about to go home and really cook for myself. So I scanned the frozen food section for something tasty and quick. I ended up with the Stouffer's FB pizza because I could not, COULD NOT, bring myself to buy a DiGiorno's For One. I was already on to the fact that my purchases looked desperate. Adding a single Pizza For One to the mix might just push me over the edge. (Meaning, it would be one thing if I bought a bunch of them, creating the illusion that perhaps I take them to work or something).

So I'm standing in line with my wine, eggs, and pizza feeling one bag of M&M's and two frazzled lines around the eyes away from being a real-life Cathy cartoon. I finally get to the cashier (how could the people in front of me, with 12 items or less, take so freaking long?) and ask for my cigarettes. This VERY large cashier woman saunters over to the cigarette cabinet like she's got all the time in the world. I think the round trip took her at least five minutes.

She was gone for so long that the people in line behind me (with 15 items, ahem) started looking agitated and the frazzle lines around my eyes almost started appearing.

While I waited, I thought about how my situation could be worse. I could have one of those extra large bottles of wine, a carton of cigarettes, and an actual Pizza For One. Throw in a Ben & Jerry's and a few tins of cat food, and you have my worst nightmare.

To top it all off she returned with a SOFT PACK of cigarettes and she put my wine bottle in a brown paper bag, driving home the message that I'm a loser drunk smoker. I may as well drink my wine bag and do my cigs on a street corner, or in a back alley.

I have to admit that I did not help my own cause, as once I got home I proceeded to drink my wine, eat my pizza and smoke my cigarettes while in my underwear watching reruns of Friends.

This did, however, enable me to relive my youth, as I got drunk and did no real studying, but wrote this blog instead.

My New and Intimate Relationship with The Boss

I can't stop listening to Bruce Springsteen lately. This is new for me, as I used to feel generally apathetic towards him, at best. Prior to recently, my feelings went as far as this: I could kinda rock out to Born to Run, and have sentimental feelings towards Glory Days because it makes me think of my mom.

Prompted by my sister, I bought The Essential Bruce Springsteen and I can't bring myself to take Disc 1 out of my player.

Here is why I think I love it, and the way it makes me feel:

It is perpetually summer, circa roughly 1967. I wear white sundresses and no makeup, or if I do, it is limited to frosted lipstick. I spend my time on boardwalks, or amusement parks, or anywhere I can find a Ferris Wheel. I smoke cigarettes when I'm not around my parents. My name is Sandy, or Mary, or Wendy, or Jane, or some other simple American name that people don't name their kids much these days, or any other girls name that ends in a hard "e" sound. Boys like me, boys that wear blue collars by day and white tee shirts by night, who come around in the humid evening and ask me out to ride in their Chevy, or perhaps their new motorcycle. They are going nowhere in a small nowhere American town.

We feel lost, but we have hope that we will not always. That maybe we can escape the fates of our parents. That maybe we can escape the fates of Americans everywhere.

These are the truths I have found in the lyrics of Bruce. He writes about simplicity, heat, anger, passion, and hope. He writes about all of us.

Fabulous Cadavers!

I just finished reading "Stiff:The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach and it may or may not have changed my life (and by life I mean death).

The book is a study of various things that cadavers have been used for over time and the many strives they have helped the living to make in science and research. This may be the only thing I've ever read or watched or researched that made me slightly LESS afraid to die. Roach glorifies the cadaver and the decision to donate one's body to science. This does not means she leaves out all of the gory details.

I think my favorite chapter (Crimes of Anatomy) discusses the messy history of cadaver dissection. Sometime in the 1700-1800's anatomy schools, particularly in England and Scotland, became very popular, but the overgrowth of students had no way of obtaining cadavers (lots of laws on who could be dissected for science). This turned into the lucrative business of body snatching. Body snatching is a wholly different thing from grave robbing: the latter involves digging up graves to steal jewelry and whatnot from the deceased; the former requires stealing the entire body and selling it to anatomy labs.

I'd never considered donating my body to science. I think at some point my father even discouraged me from being an organ donor. This book has made me think twice. Mostly, I think I like the idea that after I'm dead, I can continue to do good despite the fact that I won't know about it. But at least as I'm dying I know that somehow I'll be put to good use once I'm gone. Even if that good use is just being cut up by a med student, who, from what I can gather, will respect and revere me, get to know me, and miss me when the semester is over. It seems a nice feeling that I can go on to touch one more person's life after I'm dead, or to help make cars safer, or military armor stronger, or bullets less deadly.

I had an issue with one thing in the book, which came in the final chapter. Roach talks about her possible plans for her death, what she may or may not do with her body. She believes that if the surviving loved ones are uncomfortable with whatever choice has been made for after death, that it should not be done. The dead are dead and have no say anymore, why not make life simpler for the living? I think I disagree. I would hate to be dying and thinking "Well at least I'm going to science", or "at least they're going to shoot me out of a canon", or "I finally get to have my ashes spread at Graceland" and then have that not happen. I know technically it doesn't matter. Technically we've said goodbye to our bodies and to our loved ones, but why not do what the dead person wanted?

She states a specific instance, a woman who's husband died and wanted just to be burned up in a plain pine box: no funeral, no memorial, no burial or ash spreading. He was not religious and she was very Catholic. She felt shunned by her fellow churchgoers for not having a memorial, she felt horrible that his ashes weren't buried, she even left the ashes in a closet for a long time, not knowing what to do with them. How is it that you were married to this man in life and could deal with the differences between you, but not in death? You respected his opinion for years, and cannot honor it when he's gone? I find this angering. Roach's point was that the woman should have just done what made her comfortable. I would say this would piss off her dead husband.

We don't know what happens after death, if anything, and maybe I'm just superstitious but I wouldn't want to risk pissing off the dead.