I was about to write a post about how I’m not sure I should participate in NaBloPoMo, but then I looked back at my post for the first day of last year’s NaBloPoMo. And I realized that all of my fears from last year are exactly the same as my fears for this year which means:
a. My fears are totally unrelated to experience
and
b. If I did it last year, I can do it again this year!
Plus, I want a new 2015 badge. Okay, let’s do this!
Okay, so I know I ragged on Netflix the other day, but honestly I do love them. They’ve helped me cut the cable cord and for that I’ll always be immensely grateful. But lately, I’ve been trying to give Amazon’s original programing a chance too. I really enjoyed Transparent, so I thought I would give Red Oaks a whirl.
Red Oaks is a coming-of-age summer tale about a suburban college kid. It’s a story you’ve heard 200 times before, but the characters are intriguing and the writing is pretty funny. Jennifer Grey is in it and I’ll love her forever even with her new weird-nose. Also, this show is pretty. The clothes have fantastic colors and the hair is fun. They even have one character with a Molly Ringwald cut (but she throws more of an Ally Sheedy vibe). Suffice it to say, it’s not all big perms.
While I think you should check the whole-thing out, the 7th episode of the season really sings to me. And while it’s not a bottle episode, it does stand a bit alone from the rest of the series so I think I can share it with you without too many spoilers.
David (played by Craig Roberts who I’ve only ever seen in this show) is with his family at one of those Benihana type restaurants, celebrating his father’s birthday. (Dad is played by Richard Kind, who you’ve probably seen in literally everything but most recently Inside Out where he made everyone cry in his riveting performance as Bing-Bong). Things get weird when the sample some Asian liquor.
Pretty earlier on in the series (like first 10 minutes) we learn that David’s parents are in a loveless marriage, and it quickly becomes apparent that many of David’s current decisions are based not wanting his parents’ future. So when I read the episode description for “Body Swap” and realized that David and his father would literally be swapping bodies, I rolled my eyes. Come on! We’ve seen this so many times since the original (and amazing) Freaky Friday. The 80’s were full of lame body/brain switching: Like Father Like Son, Vice Versa, 18 Again, and even to some-extent Dream a Little Dream and Big.
But then I realized that this over-inundation of fish-out-of-water films is exactly why this show decided to step outside of their standard-fare. It doesn’t get more meta than literally transforming into the type of dramady popular in the time period of your show within the context of your show. It’s kind of like, well maybe there were so many of these movies in the 80’s because this was a real problem.
Or for those of you who don’t want to read so deeply into meta-think, this is a really great pastiche. This body-swap isn’t played for laughs…at least not anymore-so than the natural humor this situation creates for the viewer. This isn’t a gimmick and in some ways it gets more real than any of those 80’s movies ever could have. The major conflict of the episode turns out to be that David’s parents’ marriage therapists have instructed them to “Go home. Turn off the TV. Pour some wine. Light a scented candle. And make beautiful, sweet love.” Ick. So that’s the worst possible thing I can imaging happening in a body-swap situation.
So David and his dad are left scrambling to track down a bottle of the weird Japanese liquor made of “humpback” that they drank the night before swapping bodies. Of course, they gain a greater understanding of one-another along they way. (And right when they gain that understanding, the man who originally gave them the liquor mysteriously appears again…)
In 25-minutes Red Oaks fully steps into an 80’s movie trope without sabotaging the original narrative it is establishing for itself. With all of these new quirky, yet heartfelt comedy-dramas, it’s hard to determine what will be a cool show and what will try too hard (looking at you, Scream Queens). But effectively pulling off a pastiche to an entire sub-genre of films is a pretty good sign. It means the writers are more self aware of their show, their context, and their viewers than the first few episodes could demonstrate. And that’s a really, really good sign.
P.S. this episode was directed by Amy Heckerling, so I don’t know how to any further convince you of it’s excellence.
I was perusing the Facebook when I noticed that “Netflix” was trending due to a $1 per month streaming-only price-hike. That’s $12/year or 4 grande blonde roasts from Starbucks. How dare they force me to reallocate my coffee money! So of course, I clicked the trending tag to see what the eff they were trying to pull. And this is when I saw “Posts from Groups and Friends.” For those of you unaware, this is where Facebook creepily shares things from people you may or may not know amongst the “news” you were looking for.
This peaked my interest so I decided to check out his timeline. What I found was so intriguing that it momentarily distracted me from the price-hike to a much more important cause. A friend-of-friends from college has been engaged in a quest to see the last 45 seconds of Fraiser Season 11 Episode 12 (or “Fraiser-Lite) for the past few weeks. After first learning of the incident on September 28th, Netflix cannot or will not solve this issue. But Netflix didn’t realizethey were dealing with the Don Quixote of internet causes.
At first, Netflix seemed genuinely interested.
But then he probably became too much of a nuisance and they allegedly kicked him off of the Netflix account he shares with his sister. Nevertheless, he continued to pursue justice:
When Twitter failed him, he wrote a detailed letter.
And submitted it via the “Problems Watching” form.
As of 9:59 CST tonight, this issue has not been fixed. As someone who loves TV and loves college and loves people from college who love TV, I feel that I must take up this mantle. And friends, if you too experience issues with Netflix do not stay silent. Tell them that you will not stand for an increase in price without an increase in quality!
Tonight, I decided to give up crafting for good. I used to have a knack for it, but something’s gone wrong. When I was trying to make a pop-up book scene with Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan warming up for the ’94 Lillehammer Olympics, I realized I was out of my league. Nancy was fine and moved along her little figure skating track with poise and ease. But Tanya’s glue got stuck on the edge of the track, and when I tried to move her piece across the page, she ripped the whole bottom of the rink. She’s always having problems. I tried to glue everything back together, but all hope was lost. And honestly, it didn’t match my vision to begin with. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the crafting yips, so I’m just going to give up and point. I’m not even going to fail gracefully or persevere until the job is done. And you know what, I’d also like to apologize to Tanya Harding. Even in pop-up books, I’ve managed to create a world where the odds were stacked against her.
But before, I go. I’d like to share with you my swan song. Oh, how I wish it had all ended here and that I hadn’t tried to follow it up with an overly ambitious task prompted by having too much card stock. As Tanya knows, ambition can make us do stupid things. But let’s now remember a time, last week, when things were simpler and I still felt skilled and adept with my use of craft products. I give you my final achievement: The Ms. Pac-Man Flower Vase:
And now I’m going to sulk myself to sleep.
90’s children rejoice! Nickelodeon has finally indulged us and plans to rerun the stories of our youth on a new segment called “The Splat.” Beginning October 5th the programming block (including VSB favorites Salute Your Shorts and Clarissa Explains it All) will air between 10 pm and 6 am to perfectly align with your quarter-life-crisis induced insomnia. For the well-adjusted of you who have to go to sleep in order to make it to your jobs on time, you’ll probably need to DVR this.
I searched for an eternity just now and couldn’t find the article I read earlier this week that basically explained why millennials love the TV shows of our youth so much. It was a lot more profound than this, but it boils down to the fact that we lack the financial resources to meet all of the “adult” milestones we feel like we should (i.e. house-owning, loan paying-off-ing, marrying and acquiring offspring, etc). Basically, we’re comparing ourselves to how we imagined adults to be when we were youngsters and we’re failing because we don’t live in that world anymore (see: mountains of student loan debt et al). We’re also overly educated, underemployed balls of anxiety who’ve put tremendous amounts of pressure on ourselves under rules that don’t exist anymore only to also be told by society that we’re whiny, extendedly-adolescent people.
And you know what, that makes us feel bad. It literally feels like being kicked when you’re down. I’m sorry for the douche bags who make our generation look bad, but most of us are quietly spinning our wheels and trying to figure out how to adjust. So we watch TV shows (which costs way less than a vacation) that remind us of a simpler time. Also, I know I joke about a lot of the stupid crap messages these shows were sending, but their hearts were in the right place. And some of them (Boy Meets World, Clarissa Explains it All, The Secret World of Alex Mack) had really great writing that I can still legitimately enjoy today.
So that was all a very long introduction to say that I feel like The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo was wrongfully overlooked on this lineup. Shelby Woo lived with her grandfather (Pat Morita from Happy Days and The Karate Kid) in Cocoa Beach and she solved mysteries. But we’re not talking dinky The Adventure of Mary-Kate and Ashley mysteries. We’re talking like genuine thrillers. Okay, well like thrillers for kids, but I found this show to be like a 7.5 on a 1 to Are You Afraid of the Dark? scale.
For example, the episode I’m watching right now (The Haunted House Mystery) starts with a bunch of cuckoo clocks going off and an old lady screaming alone in the middle of the night. That’s genuine horror, right there. But I could always trust that Shelby would solve the mystery and put things right. She finds out about this scary case when the old lady (she’s no longer screaming at this point) checks into her grandfather’s B&B and says she likes her house but she can’t deal with the haunting. Shelby is fearless so she spends the night in the haunted house and solves the mystery. I’m not going to spoil it for you (like I do every other episode of everything) because there’s no very special lesson. It’s just a cool show. And I’m hoping “The Splat” decides to air it on Halloween.
I was just on the phone with my boyfriend, ranting about how stupid Joey was on Full House–as one does. And asking the age old question of what the hell was he even doing there? And my boyfriend said, “Are you kidding? Because he f***ed the mom.” And my jaw dropped. And I was like shocked at the blasphemy. And what?? But then he laid it all out. “It’s the only way. You think Danny Tanner had all of those blondes? Joey is so obviously the dad. It make sense that the brother-in-law moves in to help out. They’re grieving together, but then this totally random friend moves in too? It’s because he’s the dad.”
I mean it’s kind of the only valid statement I’ve heard for Joey’s continual presence. Like I feel that Danny must not know and is just super grateful for the help in his time of need. But it doesn’t explain why Joey hangs around forever. I mean why would a single guy want to spend eight years raising kids that are not his own?
Joey’s Hair + Pam’s Hair = DJ’s Hair
Is this a thing?? Do other people think this? Is Joey the father of the biological Tanner children?
There are those that say St. Elmo’s Fire is the worst movie ever, while others champion it as a timeless coming-of-age film. I’ve always thought St. Elmo’s Fire as chicken soup for the quarter-life crisis soul. Sure, it’s cheesy but that post-grad confusion/frustration/flailing-about-in-the-real-world is very real. I also love that it depicts that weird assortment of friends you make in college, and then wonder how you ever ended up together. But even though you can’t remember what made you friends in the first place, these people are still your best friends in the world.
Plus, it’s got the best theme song and yes, I do play it on repeat when I feel like my life is at a crossroads:
I most identified with this movie when I was 22/23 but lately I’ve been feeling like Jules in the pink room at the end of the movie. I’ve been working 70-80 hours a week for months and I feel like I’m spinning my wheels. And it’s all like stupid stuff. Like dysfunctional work operations and people bitching about stupid crap that has nothing to do with my job, yet somehow it’s still turned into long days/weeks/months and middle of the night anxiety attacks for me. I’ve had no sick days since I started this job (everyone works “from home” when they can’t come into the office) and finally my supervisor allowed me a few “real” sick days because she could tell I’m kind of falling apart. I liked my job but this volume is just too much, and I’m seriously wishing that Rob Lowe would just show up in my apartment with a blow torch and some words of wisdom:
I’ve been really sick the past couple of days. While working from home, I’ve been watching some awful and some awesome things:
Augusta, Gone-I knew something was wrong with me when I had some seriously fun schadenfreude over watching a 14 year old girl ruin her life with drugs. It was like Go, Ask Alice but with emo outfits. I mean everything turned out okay (whoops, sorry spoilers) so I don’t feel too guilty about it but I’d also like to say that this was the last thing I watched before waking up in the middle of the night and feeling like all of my bodily fluids had turned to ice water and my organs were freezing…so like maybe I wasn’t in my right mind. P.S. This movie was brought to you by The Lifetime Movie Club.
Benny & Joon– I expected more from this movie. Yes, I know it’s a cult classic. But I think I built it up too much in my mind. Aidan Quinn really made the movie for me. Mary Stuart Masterson was pretty remarkable and Johnny Depp was Johnny Depp. So yeah. I mean Aidan Quinn was pretty cool. Also, I now want to attempt to make grilled cheese with an iron.
Roadhouse-This is my new favorite movie. It really shouldn’t be, but it is. I’ve been avoiding Patrick Swayze movies for the last six years because it hurts my heart and I miss him. While I don’t think I can handle Dirty Dancing again just yet, I decided tonight was the night for Roadhouse. I spent most of this movie being like “wtf is happening?” and “is this tai chi scene character development?” I feel like this movie is kind of like Footloose but with violence instead of dancing. It’s like a cool dude goes to a weird little town and makes life better. Also Sam Elliot is in it and The Jeff Healey Band. This all spells a recipe for success.
For the low cost of $3.99 per month (after my 7 day free trial ends) I will have have access to 30 Lifetime Original Movies per month to stream on my iphone. I know. It’s so shameful. I tried to tell myself, “It’s okay. It’s for The Very Special Blog.” Sometimes I use you guys to justify my guilty pleasures.
Honestly, I’m pretty sure some of these movies are too bad to even hate-watch, but I’m in it for the few gems that are so bad they’re good, nay amazing. But then again this might also be the stupidest thing I’ve ever spent $4 on. We’ll see if I make it past the free trial period.
I just scheduled a bunch of things! But I can’t say what they are because it will mess up the schedule. And then after that, I scheduled another thing that I’m also really excited about. But I don’t want to talk about that yet because it needs to wait until after the first thing! Also, does anyone else get really nervous when they use the post scheduler? Like maybe it won’t actually schedule and will instead publish immediately? Okay. Well. I scheduled things! Yay!
The Very Special Blog 
