Don’t mind me

Reinventing this poor old blog again. Need a place to write about what we’re watching (Mr. David Copperfield and I), what I’m reading, whatever.

We’re watching Alias. About halfway through season 2, I think? Via Netflix. Never saw it when it was airing. Love Jennifer Garner, love spyfulness, so this was inevitable viewing for us sooner or later. Am really enjoying it, despite certain eye-rolling flaws. For one thing: it’s so tee-vee. I’m seeing that TV drama has come a long way since the early part of this decade—actually I’m seeing techniques mature quite a bit over the course of these first two seasons. Fewer wide-eyed, gape-mouthed closeups before commercial breaks. I really do love Jennifer Garner, and I like the vulnerability she brings to her badass secret agent awesomeness, but she does do a lot more Shocked Face than I’d think Sydney Bristow really has time for. How can she simultaneously be a superb actress undercover and have a terrible poker face when something catches her by surprise?

I don’t like how the show takes torture so lightly. Characters are brutally tortured and bounce right back. Marshall, Will? (Ha—all we need is a Holly.) Where’s the post-traumatic stress syndrome? The jumpiness, the nightmares, the fearfulness? I have to wonder if this show is part of what dulled society to the horrors of torture (along with 24, oft criticized on this point) in a way that made things like Gitmo and Abu Ghraib easier to ignore. We did ignore them, on the whole.

What Not to Watch

I’ve been reading the Baby Shower posts for Liz, Christina, and Tammie, and cracking up over the collections of stupid parenting advice people are posting in honor of the event. This made me think of some of the dumbest advice I’ve ever heard, which I witnessed the other night when I watched an episode of What Not to Wear. In my defense, I was trapped on the couch with a wakeful baby. All 347 other channels in our cable package were airing either sports highlights, infomercials, or infomercials for sports-highlight DVDs. What Not to Wear was, I thought, the only reasonable option for keeping myself awake while getting the baby to sleep.

So I watched this show with the two snarky hip New Yorker hosts sniping their fashion expertise at the supposedly ugly duckling they’d lured into their Room of Humiliation with the promise of a Whole New and Very Fashionable Wardrobe. And at first I thought it might prove mildly informative, because this week’s guest sucker was a thirty-something mom like me. I’m the first to admit I could use a clothing makeover. My wardrobe pretty much amounts to a uniform these days: Eddie Bauer V-neck tee over jeans or capris. Naturalizer Mules coming apart at the seams. Sometimes (forgive me) a cardigan because I run to the chilly.

A fashionista I ain’t.

But this show, it made me want to scream. First we had to listen to twenty minutes of Stacy and Argyle (I cannot for the life of me remember the male host’s first name, but it doesn’t matter because his whole identity is expressed by his sleeveless-sweater-over-short-sleeved-button-down anyway) brutally mock their makeover subject for her bulky sweatshirts, nondescript jeans, and basically for being such a dumb cluck as to have ever allowed children to affect her waistline, her budget, or her daily schedule.

“You’re more than just a mom,” they kept telling her, the condescension dripping like blood off their pointy, bleached, metrosexual teeth.

It was clear Stacy and Argyle have swallowed some Mommy Wars line about all the poor women who’ve “lost their identities” through having children. They were on a mission to do more than de-frump; they quivered with sarcastic zeal to rescue the club-hopping twenty-two-year-old they seemed certain was trapped inside a prison made of minivans, Christmas sweaters, and diaper bags.

And all the time I’m watching this attractive, intelligent, good-humored woman talk animatedly and happily about her life, which involves both raising her children and serving as spokeswoman for the American Heart Association, and it is perfectly obvious she has no identity angst at all; she’s very happy with her life and basically just needed a hot outfit for an AHA event where she was going to make a speech.

“Here’s the real you,” Stacy and Argyle informed her, decking her out in an “everyday” outfit consisting of $200 pair of jeans, a smart blazer, and high-heeled boots that probably cost more than a year’s worth of Huggies.

I saw the “more than just a mom” suppress a smile, which was a charitable response in the face of such idiocy. Stacy, honey, if you think a thousand-dollar outfit is necessary for personal fulfillment, I weep for you. Twenty-five bucks at Target and a baby smeared with cracker crumbs will fill your heart with more mushy happiness than the most fab pair of boots ever ripped off a cow’s back.

Look, I like to look good. In fact, I feel somewhat obliged to make an attempt at looking, if not on the cutting edge of fashion, reasonably well put together and attractive. I like to bust stereotypes, you know? It is possible to have five kids and still be hot. In fact, the fact that I have been impregnated numerous times probably attests to my hotness.

But Stacy, Argyle, DUDES. Guess what. I am more than just a MILF. I am also the owner of this thing called a BRAIN. It is so highly advanced that it can, you know, reason. And do math. Like this equation: $1000 outfit + 2T (where T represents number of toddlers under same roof) = complete waste of money.

Admit it, you missed me.

All, um, two of you? who read this. I missed me too. What happened was, I got sucked into a black hole called We Got Cable. The Food Network! Battlestar Galactica! My Cousin Vinny for the eight hundredth time and it’s still hilarious!

And then, and then…oh the horror. I discovered Grease: You’re the One that I Want. I am now mildly obsessed with this show, which is an adventure in awfulness. And the thing is, I officially disapprove of Grease. Oh, sure, it was MY favorite movie/album/achievement of humankind in 7th grade, and yes, I killed as Miss Lynch senior year of high school, and yes I know every lyric backwards and forwards and if you pull out a guitar I will burst into Summer Lovin’ without any arm-twisting whatsoever.

But as fodder for the beautiful unsullied minds of my children? I think not. See, daughters, all you have to do is tramp yourself up and that boy you like will be totally into you. No, even if he caves first and decides to get respectable on your account (where “respectable” = “wearing a varsity letter jacket over his black muscle tee”), you should still frizz your hair, start smoking, and gyrate in black leather. Trust me, that’s what solid relationships are built on. Also! That’s the best route to heaven. No, really!

It’s the most pathetic message in Broadway history, I think, and it sets women back about 800 years. That Victorian “angel in the house” freakishness had nothing on Grease.

Which is, of course, part of why the train-wreck factor of You’re the One that I Want is so high. You can’t believe you’re seeing this, even in brain-dead America. Big-eyed girls belting it out for the privilege of playing the ultimate role model, Sandy, before a panel of vampire judges who take sadistic pleasure in saying, “We need to see more of Sandy’s wholesome innocence” when a contestant sings something sexy, and “remember, you’ve got to show us Sandy’s edgy side” when the same girl sings something flirty and sweet.

So last week they ditched the one girl who can really, really sing, because she obviously has a witchy streak backstage and also, Broadway stars aren’t allowed to have egos, right? Did you see how shocked Kate was when they let her go? And then the flicker of rage in her eye before she slapped on the “hold my head high” mask for the final, brutal singout. I can totally see her secretly sabotaging the stage show when it opens on Broadway, buckets of blood in the rafters, that sort of thing.

And can we just stop pretending that poor Max has any shot at making Danny? Yes, he’s the most likable (when he isn’t trying to make us see how sexy can be by chirping, “And I’m sexy, too!” every time someone holds a mic in his general direction), and yes, he probably has the best voice, but come on. He wouldn’t get cast as Danny in HIGH SCHOOL, much less this Broadway show. Given a choice between really-good-but-against-type and meh-but-looks-hot-in-leather, the directors will go with Hot Meh every time. And so, I believe, will the American people.

Oh, oh, I can hardly stand it, only 12 hours until tonight’s nightmare begins. Who will get the boot tonight, do you think? Spiritual Sandy is a goner, I’m sure, and hmm, I’m thinking they let Max go with many almost sincere-sounding regrets. 12 hours. I may not make it.

Now I have to go get ready for church.

Tags: grease tv you’re the one that i want reality tv