Don't Make that Indian Cry

Do you watch Mad Men? If not, you should. If only for the clothing. I wish I could wear a bra that made my boobs look like bullets, although not as severe as Madonna. But I digress.

Last week's episode included a picnic scene with Don, Betty and their kids. They took the new Caddy out to the park and had a bucolic scene with children running around the grass, water running by in the background. Before getting into the car, Don makes Betty look at the kids' hands, to make sure they don't wreck the upholstery. I empathize with Dan, I must tell you. If you don't know about my stain removal festish, you're better off.

So the kids run off to the car after getting Betty's approval and she is left to gather up whatever Coleman camp gear they brought to carry lemonade and sandwiches, etc. There are paper plates all over the plaid wool blanket they laid upon for the afternoon, napkins, wrappers for foodstuff. Good ol' Betty. She shakes off the blanket, dumps the garbage on the grass, packs up and heads off the luxury of the Caddy.

The point, of course, is to make us gape at the changes in society. It equates to the earlier scene in which Betty scolds her daughter for playing with the plastic dry cleaning bags. Not because they're dangerous. But because she wants to save the bags to use later. And, of course, we're supposed to think about the things we do now that, in thirty or forty years, we'll realize were absolutely ridiculous, thoughtless and dangerous. That we're currently subjecting ourselves and our children to needless risk and polluting our environment unknowingly and uncaringly.

And I got all that. I really did.

But, honestly, the first thing I thought of when I saw Betty leave the rubbish on the grass in the park and drive away? I thought, "well, there's a girl that never saw the commercial with the crying Indian."

Shoot the Boot

I've recently declared my love for 90210 here. Old school 90210. "I HATE YOU!" "I choose me!" Kelly taking diet pills in the Peach Pit Bathroom. Donna losing her virginity at graduation. Hell, Donna Martin graduating at all. Brandon and his many women. Brenda, Kelly and Donna singing about Brandon and his many women.

In college? We were obsessed with 90210. Only two shows were don't miss: Days of Our Lives and 90210. Melrose was later.

We were so obsessed that one year, for Christmas, my friend Smithy bought my other friend Vanessa the holy grail as a gift. The Brenda doll.

I wouldn't say Brenda was our favorite. Back then, she and Kelly were kind of equally bitchy. Kelly was all pouty face and leading Steve on and talking about being date raped and being mean to Andrea. Brenda was loving on Dylan and bitching at Brandon and hating her parents because she was loving on Dylan. They were both...fairly awful. But Brenda, for some reason, got scorn heaped upon her more than Kelly. Then Kelly began her walk up the ladder of deification once she fell for Dylan and manfully gave him up for Brenda's sake when she came home from France. Despite the fact she totally cheated on him with...Rrrriiiick. You should read that with a rolled rrrr at the beginning.

So we got the Brenda doll. She would watch the shows with us. She got moved from the dorms to their apartment. Eventually, she got a bit battered from getting tossed around at parties.

Then, one day, someone got the bright idea to drink out of someone's shoe at a party. This, somehow, transformed itself into an idea: shooting the boot.

Brenda doll came with white boots. Like Nancy Sinatra boots. She never wore anything like that on the show. The closest she came was when she was slumming and wearing Doc Martins in college. Whatever. She came with boots.

You always knew that a party at their place was nearing culmination when someone would start to yell, "Shoot the boot." It would gain voices, raise in volume, become a rythm. "Shoot the boot! Shoot the boot!"

And we would. Put a little vodka in the white boot, a little beer, a little Purple Passion. And take a swig.

Nothing like the plasticised taste of vodka from a Brenda Walsh boot to really get a party rolling.

I wonder what happened to the Brenda doll. Did she end up in the trash when we graduated? Did she go into a box, never to be unpacked, wedged between Chemistry texts?

Brenda, I miss you.

Joyful?

I just spent the last fifteen minutes reading though comments over at Jezebel and laughing my ass off. Apparently, the Guardian just did an article on the new edition of The Joy of Sex. The Jezebel commenters were relating their memories of having snuck into their parents rooms, stolen this book away and being instantly creeped out by the guy on the cover, as well as illustrations of various hippy dudes smelling women's underarm hair.

I don't think I've ever read The Joy of Sex. After having read the comments, I am more than a bit happy about this. I have, however, seen the cover. It is not pretty. As one commentor noted, he bears more than a passing resemblence to one of
my favorite historical figures, Mr. Charles



Manson. I mean, honestly, could this cover be any less sexy? I doubt it. I suppose the thought could have been, "if we make the cover too porny, no one will actually read it for its purpose. They'll just hide it in the garage under the toolbox, to be opened on those long winter afternoons when the wife takes the teenaged daughter to the mall and he's left, all alone, with an hour or two to kill." Who needs Playboy when you can get The Joy of Sex with a hot blonde on the cover. Besides, if he's too good-looking, no wife will actually buy it to share with her husband.

And look at this woman. There is no way on God's green acre that she is giving this guy the time of day. Even in the 70's. I'm sorry. This illustration is like an early-day casting of "Yes, Dear." Gimme a break. Charles you may be due a Squeaky Fromme as you sexual partner but this chick looks more like...well, kind of like the dark haired woman from Knot's Landing, Michelle Lee. Charles, you could never be so lucky to find a girl like that in prison. Particularly not with a big swastika on your forehead.

Anyway, the newest edition has apparently removed all of the golden oldies, such as sex on motorcycles and sex with hookers. Now it has gotten all liberated and actually discusses the clitoris. Women have one! Who knew?!

There is also a fairly large discussion on penile injuries caused by vacuum cleaners. Sounds like hours of entertainment.

I have not, however, learned what the current edition's stance on body hair may be and if they still advise men to smell it. I just hope they advise men to, you know, bathe. Unlike ol' Charlie up there.

Ninety-Thousand Two Hundred and Ten

I watched the new "90210" last night. First off, it is fairly horrible. I can't keep track of anyone. Further, I don't understand why this Naomi chick is so upset that her father cheats. Donna didn't get that upset when she found out her bitch of a mother, Felice, was tramping around on the sainted Dr. Martin.

Further, any character named Naomi is instantly associated with "Showgirls" and she is eerily reminicent of old what's-her-face from "Saved by the Bell." I was waiting for her to stop crying, then run off to a stripper poll somewhere.

The biggest horror of the night was the realization that they were going to bring one of my favorite television mothers of all time, Jackie, back. And that, in order to do so, they were going to make her a drunk again. This totally pisses me off.

First of all, are you telling me that this girl is running around, sleeping in shelters and cars rather than move in with her sister in the first place? Come on. This is the sister that Kelly stayed home from Europe for, the sainted child that David Silver almost lost in a playground once upon a time. This child would be looked after and cared for, if not by Jackie, then by one of her less screwe-up siblings. Instead, we're supposed to believe that she's running around, living in shelters in Beverly Hills. And who knew such things existed!

More importantly, the scene with Jackie all drunked up? Sucked. Jackie does great drunks. She shows up at mother-daughter fashion shows drunk. She does epic drunks! She should not be made to play drunk scenes, alone in her apartment with her bitchy daughters. She should be given a grand stage on which to play: a restaurant, a bar, a school function. The girl playing Silver was fairly pathetic and the script even called for too much from Jennie Garth, not ever known for her acting chops no matter how much we love her. Let's face it, the only one who was ever really good at historonics on this show was the girl we loved to hate, Brenda Walsh.

Frankly, I was really sad they made Jackie a drunk again. I mean, I understand that they needed to give some dramatic underlay to the Silver character. Give her some conflict in her life. But to do it at Jackie's expense pisses me off.

I was always pulling for the old girl.

I Know Why the Caged Office Worker Sings

I spend most days in an office. Sometimes I get to leave. Do "field work." But many of my days are spent sitting behind a computer, reading publications, writing summaries and correspondence, looking at the clock every fifteen minutes.

What am I looking forward to? Usually? Lunch.

The reason that people that work in offices get fat isn't because they don't get exercise. So many places now have workout areas. Or gym memberships. Or insurance breaks for those who join gyms. Or let people leave for 2 1/2 hours in the middle of the day when their underlings are looking for them to ask questions in order to finish that project that is due? You know?

Wait, that's just me.

Anyway, I look forward to lunch. I look forward to dinner, too, but only because it is something I do after I leave the office.

We have nothing else to look forward to. No other major breaks from the grind. No other time-waster that is so universally recognized. No other time in which we can sit, unmolested, at our desk. Left alone with our left-overs and thirty minutes to read Defamer or Television Without Pity.

So we rock out at lunch. We go out to lunch. We escape. By car, by foot and by calories.

We spend the morning dreaming of cheese sauce and french fries. Of ranch dressing and onion rings. Of hamburgers, hot dogs, cashew chicken and nachos.

Because, for the most part, we have nothing else to look forward to during the day.

I gain weight when I don't have field work. I gain weight when I sit here all day, day after day, with nothing to do but read and write. I gain weight despite time on the treadmill because the only thing that will feed my soul is a nice 6 inch sub with chips. And a pickle.

Step Away

When I was in college, I was all about politics. I was in student government. I helped in voter registration drives. I didn't go quite so far as to watch C-SPAN because, well, why would I? Later, I worked as an intern for a company in DC that was a large cog in the political system of the country. I worked with PACs. I reviewed FEC filings. I filed complaints with the FEC...not that anyone ever looked at them...

But I stepped away, after a while. It is too hard. It is difficult to put your heart and soul into something and watch people discount the cause for which you've worked. You can't help but have your soul die just a little when your candidate loses. Or your law fail to pass.

Now I'm down to caring only every four years. And even that is getting to be too much. I've spent the last two weeks reading everything on the 'net about the conventions. I've read fact sheets and pundit sites and watched video and listened to replayed speeches. And I cannot do it anymore. Thank God the conventions are over.

I got into a fight last night with someone over politics. And then I agreed with people whose political positions I'd never known before. You know how you can work with someone or be friends with them for a long time? And an election comes up and you start talking? And, all of a sudden you see them completely differently? Funny, isn't it?

People think differently. I wouldn't have it any other way. Even though sometimes I want to hit myself in the head with a rock with frustration, everyone has different views on stuff. That doesn't make me love them less. Instead, it opens up new and interesting possibilities and lets you know even more about them than you did before.

But I still have to step away from the internet. Otherwise I'm going to start looking for a big rock.

Old School

This time of year makes me think of moving into dorms, of leaving home for the first time, of buying sheets and laundry baskets and shoes and books and deciding whether I was going to write in blue pen or black pen for the year. Would I get another pair of Bass bucs or branch out into something similarly preppy but different? Suede Adidas, perhaps?

I wrote about living in the dorms, once, for my school newspaper. About how no one on my floor knew anyone else when we first got there. We were from all over: Okemos, Michigan; Elkhart, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland, Ohio. From the smallest small town in Indiana to the biggest of the old rustbelt cities. Our dorm didn't have suites. We had one big bathroom, down at the end of the hall. Four sinks, two toilets, four showers.

I wrote about how, if it weren't for those bathrooms, I don't know whether I ever would have had friends in college. My first weekend there, someone was hurling into one of the toilets, getting babysat by her new roommate. I walked in, having just gotten back from my friend from high school's room. We ended up sitting in the bathroom for hours, making sure the sick girl didn't get puke in her hair and learning everything there was to know about each other.

Remember how hot it always was? When you moved in? How miserably hot it was and how no one had air conditioning? Except the one girl, whose grandfather was a doctor and wrote her a prescription for one? She always moved in early and we'd sit in her room during frequent brakes, drinking beer our fathers bought for us at the corner store to drink after lugging boxes up three flights of stairs. They thought the beer was for them. How little they knew.

And how happy everyone was to see each other, after that first year? And how the first weeks were flurries of exchanging phone numbers? And looking people up? Gazing around huge lectures to see if you recognized anyone? Figuring out if you could make it back to the dorm for lunch during the hour break you had or if you had to go to the freak dorm to eat? Finding out who moved off campus? Who was throwing the party? Who was putting together the football tickets so we could all sit together?

I miss those guys at this time of year. I miss them badly. I miss celebrating Smithy's birthday right when we got back to school. I miss lounging on couches with everyone, watching bad talk shows. I miss walking to Taco Bell with Vanessa. I miss the first party of the year at Terra Trace. I miss football games and parties and just...being...with those people. We're scattered now. We don't see each other much anymore.

I wish I could change that.

Sunrise

There is nothing like the day after a party. A really good party. A party that goes on for hours and hours. Where the food is great and the conversation is better. Where there is a great stockpile of wood for the fire on the beach. Where there are plenty of marshmallows and unbent hangers to go around. Where you don't have to think about going to the grocery store in town to get beer at 10 p.m. because it looks like you might run out in the near future. Where you sit outside under the dark night sky and can see the most amazing display of stars you can imagine. Where you have a contest to see who can find the most shooting stars. Where you can see a reflection of the entire night sky in the amazingly still water of the lake.

And then? There's the next morning. Where you collect beer cans. And dump out beer onto the grass. And smell that beer for the rest of the morning. And find a million cigarette butts everywhere. And you step on hot coals that blew outside of the firepit and continue to smolder. And the marshmallows got wet from the morning dew. And someone left three unopened beers on the ground, letting them get skunky. And someone is talking about breakfast, where, really, all you want to do is vomit quietly in a corner or behind a bush. And the people next door have a saw or something going and, damn, it is really LOUD.

At least we have the sunrise to comfort us.