Moot Point

So you guys? Did you know that MuchMoreMusic is running ’80s series Fame like three times every day?

It is a great show. It has all the bad teen drama of your 90210, but with musical numbers! I can’t believe I never watched this show when I was on, even though I was not even born when it premiered. I had a pretty highly developed sense of irony as a toddler.

Luckily, I discovered that there is someone at YouTube called FameChannel, who basically uploads clips from Fame all the time and has Doris as her icon. This person makes me so happy.

To wit:

I’m not sure it’s ever explained why they’re wearing such random insane costumes.

My favourite Fame hobby was making comments about how super-gay Leroy (the one in the tights in the video above) is, despite his character’s supposed hard-knock life beginning, but then I found out that a) Gene Anthony Ray, the actor who played him, was HIV-positive when he died of a stroke a couple of years ago, and that basically his life went downhill after the show, and b) he actually did grow up in Harlem and his character is basically him, and then I felt really bad for mocking the dead.

Also, I can’t believe that Erica Gimpel (aka Wallace’s mom on Veronica Mars) ever appeared in public with hair that profoundly bad.

Not much to add. We made some soup, I did a couple of seminar presentation things that didn’t go horribly, I have a bunch of essay-grading, and so of course I’m blogging.

Oh and I dyed my hair brown. It’s a few shades darker than my natural colour; I look really sad in that picture, but it’s the guilt about how much work I didn’t do last night while I went coat-hunting at the mall. I didn’t find a coat, but Alex found some nice shoes.

I’m kind of obsessed with the Thermals right now.

So awesome, you guys.

Why didn’t anyone tell me grad school was going to be hard? I kind of pictured myself like, discussing theory and then going out for beers with smart people and then having totally ample time to do all the exciting, challenging work that I would naturally produce. I do get to do the theory-discussing and the beer-drinking, but the ample time? Not so much.

But there’s all this paper-grading, and grant-applying, and giving seminars on kung fu movies, and giving seminars on psychoanalysis and The Matrix, and mountains of dense dense reading, and you can’t really have an off day because if you don’t talk a lot or just want to fall asleep, everyone notices because there are 5 people in your class. And apparently because you’re in grad school now, you’re supposed to be a grownup and no one’s going to hold your hand. (Except, in my case, Alex, who is literally holding my hand).

(A bunch of rambly stuff about food after the jump). Continue Reading »

Today I rented Enter the Dragon and Fist of Legend (with Jet Li reprising Bruce Lee’s star-making role). For school.

Remind me of this next time I start complaining about my life.

Dear Colbert Report:

This is basically the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.

Dear Studio 60:

Thanks for making an episode that wasn’t actually about how great you are. The show works a lot better when it’s about the interesting characters played by talented actors and their foibles than when it’s about how smart everyone on your show is compared to everyone else in the entire world. Also, it’s smart to not show any more than tiny snippets of the show-within-a-show, because honestly, I think the entire world is unanimous that the show works better when can imagine that Matt’s writing the actual best comedy show ever, rather than showing concrete evidence that he’s not in fact a genius. Things like “Meet the Press with Juliette Lewis” are much funnier as titles than as actual sketches that we have to watch parts of. I hope this is the direction you’re going to continue taking, because even if you aren’t the greatest show to grace television, you can be pretty good if you get your head out of your own ass.

Dear Battlestar Galactica:

Thanks for being totally awesome. I like that the whole Cylon occupation plot where we’re cheering for the insurgency obviously echoes Iraq, but that the show doesn’t have a really facile political point to make. Also, the whole Starbuck-trapped-in-a-domestic-prison storyline is, like all the other stories, great as allegory because it’s actually about the character and not about being allegory, if you know what I mean.

Dear Gilmore Girls:

A lot of people have talked about the drop in quality in the past season or so, and I have to agree with them. I’ve kept watching out of loyalty, and also because I would watch Lauren Graham read the phone book every Tuesday. The Luke’s daughter storyline seemed below the show from the get-go and honestly, Luke’s speech about how insecure he was about Lorelai being in his daughter’s life was too little too late in terms of explaining what had happened between them. After waiting so long to get them together, you really owed your viewers something more. Also, I hate Logan so, so much. But I’ve really enjoyed the way the new showrunner’s handled the whole thing: that scene from last week’s episode where they run into each other at the grocery store and Luke is all: “You go back to being Lorelai Gilmore, and I’ll go back to being the guy that serves you coffee”? Actually broke my heart. So sad. Keep it up, Gilmores, even though I kind of still don’t like Christopher.

Dear Veronica Mars:

Oh man, you are so awesome. You are handling the college transition so much better than Buffy. Also, Piz already has 100X more personality than Riley. And he wasn’t even on the show this week. (Seriously, psyched. But if it turns out that the bitter feminist who was driving the “safe ride home” car is somehow involved in the rape, I am going to be really mad at Rob Thomas.) Also, Rider Strong? How did you get him? And did you style him to look exactly like he did on Boy Meets World on purpose? Because if you did, awesome: I think the fact that it was Shawn Hunter the Nazi security guard made the whole thing that much more effective (not that his acting was great or anything); you’ve always been good about using your actors.

Dear Heroes:

I didn’t think I was going to like you, because I thought you looked pretentious in the bad way, not in the way that I like, but I watched you when you were on before Studio 60 and you are strangely compelling despite your pacing problems and the fact that one of your stars is Jess. Seriously though, the autopsy table — I was not prepared for that.

I’m back from my first Thanksgiving at home since I was in high school, and also Alex’s first trip to Calgary, ever. I think we may have overwhelmed him with the food though, what with the Galaxie burger and large Italian meal on Saturday and the whole turkey dinner thing last night. Also, about 80 bottles of wine. We were setting the table, and my dad was all “We’ll probably need at least two bottles of wine, don’t you think?” And I was all “I’ll die of shock when if we don’t, with six people.” (Tim’s parents had left him alone, so he came over too.) I think we went through like five. Or six.

Coming back from somewhere always makes a new place feel more like home. After our thrilling trip down east Hastings, I was pretty down on Vancouver, but I’ve decided that every city has its problems and being hugely negative about a city I’ve lived in for a month is probably not going to amount to a very happy masters degree. Obviously, Vancouver has its problems and I don’t want to be blind to that, but everyone here isn’t a jerk and a hypocrite just because of the complacency and smugness that Alex and I (and Rach, when she lived out here) have all felt.

Probably having an actual nice time having dinner with Kev and Will and Will’s friend Celia helped us to soften up toward the city. Also, my desire to not be that person who keeps whining about how everything is better in Toronto. “Where are all the falafels? In Toronto, you could get falafels for like, 2 dollars, and they were good.” “Why is all the pizza crappy?” “Why don’t they have as many movie theatres?” “I wanna go to Bookcity!”

Meanwhile, there are lots of things that don’t suck, like the coffee, the fresh local produce, the moderately-priced restaurant options, the still-pleasant weather (there was frost in Calgary) and the fact that the city is undeniably gorgeous. Maybe if it’s still nice we’ll make it out to Stanley Park this weekend?