It’s national donut day! The best day of the year! Today I seriously considered that maybe I had made a mistake by not being a patrol officer. But then I remembered all the things that police(wo)men have to do and it didn’t seem like such a good fit for me anymore. So now I’m thinking that my ideas job is working at the Twin Peaks sheriff’s office. Preferably, I would work in a job like Lucy’s. I’m sure Lucy was responsible for setting up this lovely spread:
And if you haven’t had a donut today, what are you waiting for?? Go get your free donut and be proud you’re American!
Garrett studies French cooking and the girls are supposed to be studying at one of Eastland’s sister schools. But these girls decide to runaway from the school because it’s too “rigid” and “structured” like most boarding-schools would be. But they are used to doing whatever the hell they want. Out of financial necessity (and the fact that the school has their passports) they crash with Mrs. Garrett. And she, as per usual, lets them get away with this insanity. Jo spends the entire trip trying to walk from Paris to LeMans to see car racing. She meets a random cute guy and, in what should be the beginning of an episode of Criminal Minds, hops on the back of his motorcycle and spends the night with him in a hotel, sharing a bed. But this is The Facts of Life so it is totally innocent and he’s a perfectly upstanding gentleman. Mrs. Garrett struggles to cook well enough for the French but she meets a French boyfriend and he helps her ace her test. Natalie and Tootie stalk a writer that Natalie thinks is cool. They didn’t even give Tootie her own plotline. Blair decides she can have fun by herself without trying to get guys to pick her up. And Jo, in the only remotely interesting story-arc of this 90-minute sans-laugh track drudgery, shares a chaste kiss with that perfectly upstanding gentleman. Oh and she never makes it to LeMans because he has to go back to Paris early for work and she decides she would rather be with him. Who are you, Blair?
Vacation Attire
I have an HBONow largely because Silicon Valley is the funniest show on television. But I’ve also been justifying the membership cost by expanding my movie horizons. That’s how I found Satisfaction, a 1988 film starring Justine Bateman, Julia Roberts, Liam Neeson, and a bunch of other people. Julia Roberts caught my eye on the movie poster, Liam Neeson lent this a shred of credibility, but it was Justine Bateman who drew me in. I love her and I want to go back to 1988 and marry her, but I realize I’ll have to settle for this movie instead.
HOLD ON A MINUTE. I felt like the stoned guitarist had such a familiar voice. It turns out that she is the singing voice of Jem!! Maybe I judged this movie too hard. Plus, the stoned guitarist is also on pills, so they’re starting to raise the dramatic stakes.
Ugh, now I’m listening to Justine Bateman butcher “Dedicated to the One I Love.” Really, if they were going to nominate a Family Ties cast member to head up a girl rock group movie, it should have been Tina Yothers.
But actually, this is the worst script ever. It’s so horrible. Although, they did manage to get Debbie Harry to make a cameo. She’s Liam Neeson’s friend who acts all icy to Justine Bateman. But he’s all like noooo it’s not like that. So he and Justine make out and then we have to endure her singing over an acoustic guitar in which a lyric is actually “like the birds sing to be free talk to me.”
So Justine goes back to the city to go to college and hang out with her band. She tells Liam that she’s keeping his shirt and by forever. I guess that worked out for the best since she’s like eighteen and he’s like thirty-four and them moving in together like she wanted would have been a disaster.
Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) is having a bad day. He appears to be going through opiate withdrawal. But he tells the rest of the “sweat hogs” that he’s just groggy because he’s taking some pills that the doctor gave him for a knee injury.
Their master plan is to pretend like they are all also on drugs. Interesting approach. For a bunch of inner city kids, they sure seem like they’ve never seen anyone on drugs before. Their bizarro drug imitation works on Freddie for about 5 seconds until he realizes that they’re just being weird. So when that didn’t work, Arnold decides to do some like weird acrobatics. He plans to jump from Mr. Kotter’s classroom window to the window across the courtyard.
The Very Special Blog 