"I never sleep on planes."

"I don't want to get incepted."

For those of you who watched the entire episode, I too would like to have a baby in Canada with John Cho, the famous Québécois mobile meth dealer.

.

Two months later

I wish my illegitimate TV dad could be played by Alan Alda. And I've never even seen M*A*S*H.


.

"We need to go far, quickly."

Indeed we do, Mr. Vice President.

I wish NBC had clips of Nate Corddry's guest appearance last night, especially with his "this is what a feminist looks like" t-shirt. Who doesn't love a gay hipster cop?

.

"The lady will have two tickets to the gun show!"

Not a real gun show; Alec Baldwin's 25-year-old arms.

If only I had bubble problems, my life would be dreamy.

Don't get on Jon Hamm's motorcycle, Liz Lemon!

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"Here comes the Funcooker!"

I hope my workplace never gets that bad.

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"You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition at."

I loved this episode! My favorite quote of many:

Tracy, regarding the new former-investment-banker interns: "I have a rep to maintain. If I can't keep up with a bunch of Wall Street frat boys . . . Uh oh. Here come the roofies."

And one more!

Tracy: "So if I'm going to keep my hilarious reputation, these interns got to go!"

Kenneth: "But where? They don't know how to do anything. And there are no jobs left on Wall Street."

Hee! Also, more Jonathan please!

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I'm not "aggressive",

but I do give off a "nerdy vibe." I would totally date a small, clever UN officer, and I can find the Brooklyn Bridge.

.

"Please welcome Liz Lem-ooon!"

I learn so much from 30 Rock. Apparently it's illegal to be black in Arizona. Good to know.

I could totally be a 12-year old Oprah, bringing black men and white women together. Wait a minute . . .

.

How sad is my Thursday night

without 30 Rock and The Office? I can't even find a good show on Logo. I have seen every episode of Rick and Steve, The Big Gay Sketch Show and Exes and Ohs at least twice. They really need fundage for some new original programming.

"I'm talking about Big Companies, and their Two-Faced Fat Cat Executives."

Because I'm too lazy to write my own Gossip Girl recaps:

"What's with the business formal? Are you being arraigned for something?": Gossip Girl, by Carrie at South Dakota Dark.

You can read my feelings in the comments section that follows.

~

Victor, Victrola, by Jacob at Television Without Pity.

"What if there was this gay serial rapist who accidentally fell in like with his best friend's girlfriend, who was kind of his best actual friend, because they were kind of rapists together, and they got together in the seamiest, creepiest way...but you were cheering them on the whole time, and kind of got teary when they sealed the deal, even though it was presented in weird '90s Nine Inch Nails jumpcuts played against weird '00s emo-punk-rock crap? Like their creepiness cancels each other out and it's kind of...sweet? Like, 'Way to lose your virginity to the gay best friend of your shitty boyfriend'?"

~

‘Gossip Girl’ Exceeds Our Expectations … Again!, from New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer.

• Okay, so Vanessa sneaks in while Dan and Serena are making out, which brings to bear the question we've been wondering since she first stepped foot through his window. What if he were masturbating?? This is high school, not Clarissa Explains It All; you can't just sneak through a boy's window without warning if you don't want to see some frighteningly awkward hunching maneuvers and a flash of low-grade Internet porn. Minus 5.

• Aha! Only a few minutes later, Vanessa comes in and Dan is looking at porn. Except he's still not masturbating. Not to be vulgar, but in what world would that happen? Minus 5, for willfully and repeatedly ignoring the libido level of a high-school boy. These creatures will hump APPLE PIES, people.

Josh, if you're reading (fingers crossed!), did you write this third one? Because I don't know many bloggers who can work in an effective Clarissa Explains It All reference.

#

My thoughts on this week's 30 Rock:

"A whale is trouble! I have to go." Love love love Al Gore.

"What do you do with the Pop-Tart?!" Ewww. Poor Liz Lemon.

Also, Mr. Pancholy, please get more press so I can link to you in a Joseph Gordon-Levitt manner. You are so funny and talented. You're like a primetime broadcast version of Lloyd.

I didn't realize until right now that David Schwimmer wasn't playing himself. He was playing a previously out of work actor named "Jared." Right.

#

I haven't finished watching The Office yet, but my initial thoughts include these: Jim, everyone likes to have their own special day on their birthday. I know I do. (Winky-wink.) Kate from Jon & Kate + 8 acknowledges this, and she has eight kids who share two birthdays. You only have thirteen employees for an entire year. Plus, party planning is Angela's entire reason for being. Let everyone have their own day and their own cake.

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How would Liz Lemon strike?

Strike Watch: This Week on at 30 Rock, by James Poniewozik at Tuned In. Emphases mine.

"Yeah, to the outside eye, I guess this looks like some pretty lucky people arguing with some very lucky people," Fey said. "We have dream jobs that most people would want to have. That doesn't mean that it's OK for the conglomerates that produce our shows to rip us off." Rip-off, of course, is a subjective term, with the networks and studios arguing that the online distribution of shows--the money from which is the central issue of the strike--is still a financial question mark. Fey, unsurprisingly, doesn't buy it: "These companies clearly smell that the Internet is where their future profits are coming from. If you look at NBC breaking off with iTunes and trying to start their own thing and raise the price, it's because they know this is where the money's going to be."

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His Girl, Freaky, Night Lights, After Next.

Stories I liked today:

From WireTap Magazine, A Big Tent With No One in It, by Ally Klimkoski:

In November of 2004 there was one age group that voted for John Kerry. Only one. One group decided that George Bush was an unequivocal moron and should not return to the White House. Only one. What we've now learned is that it's not only the standard to believe the president is a complete moron, it's actually quite fashionable.

What is surprising is that this same age group is the one age group that is most often ignored by the Democratic Party, Democratic candidates and most political organizations.

That's right -- it's us. It's the 18- to 30-year-olds.

My favorite part of the article, under what the DNC can learn from the Calvin Klein IN2U campaign, targeted at the 18-30 demographic:

5. Listen -- don't lecture...I am holding out for the day I see a candidate begin a college lecture by walking up to the podium, grabbing the mic and saying "You know, I'm not going to sit here and lecture at you. You get that all day long. I'm curious in what you think and what you want out of me. And before I leave this lecture, I want to come out with some reasonable action items that I can work with you on."...

...7. Age doesn't equal issue. 23 isn't 18, and it's not 25, and it's not 28 and it's not 30. There is more diversion between the 18-30 age group than any other group because so many things change between those times. A new college freshman is nothing like a 21-year-old; being 21 is not the same as someone who has just graduated at 23; and someone who graduated at 23 is nothing like someone who's 25 or pushing 30. They each have different issues that concern them. Student loans will appeal more to the 23+ crowd, but kids who aren't paying them off yet aren't thinking about that yet.

8. Students are not the same as nonstudents. Targeting college students who are 18-25 is nowhere close to targeting working 18- to 25-year-olds. The issues are different; a few people target them differently. Similarly, the working college students who attend tech schools, community colleges or night four-year schools are also different than the regular 18- to 25-year-olds at regular four-year schools. Similarly, those who attended colleges are different than those who didn't yet fall in that demographic, and their issues aren't the same.

From WireTap Magazine, via Feministing, U.S., Denial and the Culture of Violence, by Samhita Mukhopadhyay.

What some are calling the worst shooting in United States history, the death of 32 Virginia Tech students was indeed deplorable. The media circus that followed was also deplorable. Shouldn't the families and victims be given some privacy to deal with the tragedy?

But also what is it about these isolated incidents that capture the national imagination? As other bloggers have noted, last weekend 65 Iraqis died and just yesterday another 183 in Baghdad alone. Why the hypocrisy? So far in 2007 there have been 27 deaths in Oakland County alone. Why have none of those deaths made headline news? Why does America only care about certain people's death? Do some people just deserve to die?

I also liked this article linked inside the previous one: "It's like when 9/11 happened", by Joe Eaton, on Salon.com...

Ko, a senior accounting major, said he and other South Korean students are afraid to stay on campus. Ko said many of their friends in a Korean Christian group were also planning to leave Blacksburg for Northern Virginia.

"It's like when 9/11 happened," Ko said. "Arab people are victims even though they didn't do anything wrong. It's just the same to me." Ko said Korean students have been e-mailing and calling each other since the release of Cho's name this morning. He said he wanted to attend today's convocation at 2 p.m., where President Bush was scheduled to speak, but friends warned him against it. "People said don't attend because it could be a bad situation," he said.

...as well as this student at Virginia Tech writing in his livejournal in real time about the event. It's a sensitive, human account of the tragedy, more so than the breaking stories from NBC and the other American "news" outlets, who have been plastering the killer's mugshot and gun porn photo on every show and website they own.

All of the above reminded me of this exchange featured in Bowling for Columbine:

Michael Moore: If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine or the people in that community, what would you say to them if they were here right now?

Marilyn Manson: I wouldn't say a single word to them, I would listen to what they have to say and that's what no one did.

Here's the article from Reuters that gave me a sardonic giggle: Catholic Church buries limbo after centuries. Sucks to be those people who believed in limbo for hundreds years. I wonder what will happen when the next Popes declare that gays are A-OK, women can join the priesthood, and contraception might be a good idea?

Even though I enjoyed the rerun of The Office last night, I would have appreciated a new episode. I totally related to 30 Rock, though. I don't think Bill Cosby and Oprah are coming after me, but I can understand feeling like a supermodel in Cleveland. "Well played, Garkel."

Though I don't see how Jack Donaghy can talk himself out of this one: Alec Baldwin calls Dora the Explorer.

Hey there, buddy. I love Dora the Explorer! All she said was, "Hola." There was no need to call her a "rude, thoughtless little pig." I guess once Mr. Baldwin's book is published, I will understand "the incredible strains created by parental alienation."

BTW, Jack's assistant Jonathan is my new TV crush. Move over Psych guys.

This expresses my sentiment.

From Feministing, You will not shame me, by Samhita:

I have gotten email upon threatening email to rescind what I said last year about the Duke Women's Lacrosse Team and their uninformed support for the accused rapists in the Duke rape case. The case that was mishandled, manipulated and finally dropped on Wednesday...

...I just want to say first and foremost, I still stand by what I say and have said. It does look bad for people to support accused rapists, at that point we didn't know the facts either way. Furthermore, women of color are in fact OFTEN sexually assaulted and usually the criminal justice system and/or the media either overlook it or mishandle it. Women of color often have a higher burden of proof that they are not lying about rape. Case in point (as Amanda and others stated ): when the lack of DNA evidence was announced -- before we even knew whether the players were innocent or not -- people were quite quick to accuse the accuser of being guilty of lying...

...And what is the outcome of all of this? The general public now believes that black strippers ARE in fact lying whores and the worst thing that could happen to a strapping Duke lacrosse player is that his lily white reputation is marred by false accusations. Beyond this being a terrible precedent set for women that bring up rape accusations (still something underreported) to never ever report rape again, the racist and sexist reaction from the media and public have been to say the least profound...

I also liked this comment that followed by The Law Fairy, emphases and expletives hers:

...These guys were accused, potentially falsely. They got a lot of publicity for it, and now they're sobbing about their poor tattered reputations.

Um.

These guys all but BEGGED for the publicity they got. They did media interviews OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL. They whined and screamed the whole time that the simple existence of charges against them was itself discriminatory. And because they are rich and white, the [MainStream Media] ate it the fuck UP. Make no mistake: these assholes WANTED the publicity. They MADE the publicity happen. Their LAWYERS made the publicity happen. This was a calculated media attack meant to intimidate the DA into fucking up, and guess what -- he did. Now, instead of taking their victory and going home, they want to re-write history and pretend that the MSM was against them this whole time.

I don't think I've EVER read an MSM story where a stripper was believed over a rich white guy she claims raped her. I read a few blogs supporting the woman in this case. Please, if someone could point me to an MSM article that ACTIVELY SUPPORTED THE NOTION THAT THESE PRICKS WERE GUILTY, I would really appreciate it. I'm not talking balanced articles. I'm not talking articles reporting the facts. I'm talking articles that came out and said "these scumbags did it. Listen to the stripper." I mean, crazy I haven't seen one, I know, Time and Newsweek print stories like that all the time, right?...

Someday I'll write about happy things again, like this week's episodes of The Office and 30 Rock. I need to get my own Floyd, because this VapoRub isn't going get under my nose by itself.

This is Bad News.

Bravo nabs popular TV Web site: Television Without Pity bought by cable station.

[Co-founders Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting] will remain as editors of TWOP, overseeing all content. Bravo execs said the site will maintain complete editorial independence, despite now being a tiny little division of General Electric.

I feel quite uneasy about this takeover. Having a multi-billion, multi-national corporation like GE owning a previously independent forum for speech and ideas sounds very, very wrong. How can we snark on the TWOP boards about 30 Rock riffing on NBC being owned by the Sheinhardt Wig Company when the boards we are snarking on are now owned by the very same company?

"If Television Without Pity didn't exist, we would have built it," said Bravo exec VP Jason Klarman, who's at the center of Bravo's online strategy.

Then why didn't you build it four years ago, when Queer Eye for The Straight Guy took off and pretty much made your network?

[Bravo President Lauren Zalaznick] said she wants the cabler and its Web sites to speak to people who, like many TWOP visitors, don't necessarily watch a lot of TV--but who get worked up over the shows they do watch.

"They have to get smart and rich by reading a lot, going to movies, going to school and having big jobs -- therefore they have less time to watch TV sometimes," she said. "But they seem to have infinite bandwidth, so to speak, to love television, talk about television and go places and spend time deeply with their kind of most essential core television connection."

Um (which is a word forbidden on the TWOP boards), doofus? I learned about TWOP from my fellow TV obsessed friend three years ago, when both of us were unemployed.

While searching for more news about this development, I stumbled upon this article in the LA Times: 'Real Housewives of Orange County' eye greener pastures.

I don't really care about the battles between those fame-whores in Coto de Caza and the cable television network they are contractually obligated to obey. What I am concerned about is the passage that appeared towards the bottom of the article:

"Internet blogs have blazed with crass and incendiary comments about their looks and their past and present personal behavior. After attorneys for one participant contacted Television Without Pity, the fan-based website shut down a "Housewives" thread. (Bloggers on the Orange County Register's website complained their negative comments were not published on Bravo's website in favor of more favorable ones.)"

So supposedly, "No massive changes are planned to the site in the near future," but TWOP coincidentally shut down the Housewives thread last month because people were speaking about negatively about the show. I thought maybe this was a temporary closure, as is done from time to time on the TWOP forums when discussions get overly heated. But no. The still locked Housewives thread states: "In response to concerns raised by various show participants' lawyers, we're no longer hosting a thread about the show. Don't start one." posted by Wing Chun (aka Tara Ariano), on "Feb 8, 2007 @ 1:58 pm."

This sucks.

In even creepier, more twisted news: Halliburton will move headquarters from Houston to Dubai. For those of you who aren't what the words "Halliburton," "Dubai," or "Houston" mean, please look them up, then tell me your take on this story. There are as many theories floating around as there are blogs on the interwebs. The Halliburton discussion is still going strong at Daily Kos.

This news is bad, but not at all shocking to anyone who owns a working television set: Black leads still absent from network dramas. And network comedies. And non-syndicated comedies on cable.

Here is the excuse given:

"There is a feeling that the vast majority of the audience is not black, and having a black lead dominating the show makes most viewers feel shut out since they don't work with an African-American in a dominant position in their daily life," TV historian Tim Brooks says.

Who is having this "feeling?"And can this person or persons back up that feeling with any statistics proving their racist theories?

Furthermore, this theory that "black people don't watch black dramas--therefore they fail" is ridiculous. Happy Hour and 'Til Death and 20 Good Years didn't fail because "white people don't watch white comedies." They failed because the shows sucked.

Lastly:

Latinos, who overtook blacks as the largest minority in the U.S. in 2003, have a good chance at landing their first drama series on commercial broadcast TV this year with CBS' untitled family drama pilot featuring an predominantly Latino cast, including leading man Jimmy Smits.

So let me get this straight. Latinos (all of them, regardless of their countries of origin) have been the majority minority in the United States for four years now. And they have chance of getting a drama on broadcast television for the first time ever. Over 35 million people in this country identify as "Hispanic or Latino," and this is the first drama series that they might get on the air? It's not definite, even though Jimmy Smits has starred in three of the biggest network television series in the past three decades?

Yes, I'm sure that they're aren't many black people or Latino people on primetime because black people and Latino people obviously never watch TV. I obviously don't. And don't get me started on the lack of Asian people anywhere in the media, and yeah, having Hiro on Heroes and that guy on Lost is great, but that's two people.

It's nice that these articles never question how many non-white people have Nielsen rating boxes in their households. I don't know anyone of any color with a box on their TV. The articles also never mention that most of the people in charge of writing, directing, greenlighting, producing, casting, and advertising on these television shows are straight white men. Not that the race, gender, ethnicity or orientation of the people who control corporate media would have anything to do with the type of people who are shown on our television screens. Clearly these issues are unrelated, so there's no need to bring them up.

Springing Forward.

Yes, I did forget to set all my clocks before I went to bed on Saturday night. But I did set them all after I woke up late on Sunday morning.

Did y'all see 30 Rock on Thursday? One: Anna Chlumsky as Liz Lemler, or, "Other Liz." I'm never sure of how to pronounce her last name, but I am glad she is working. She's not so bad at the writing thing, either, as evidence by her essay, Peaking at 10, found at Sirens Magazine, and in the book, Before the Mortgage.

Two: the episode was called, "The Fighting Irish," but I would have titled it, "The Black Donaghys." Hee!

Have any of you all seen Maxed Out? I learned about this movie on Pajiba, then I heard the director talking about it on Air America. It's a documentary about credit card companies and American debt. I'm hoping to see it soon.

Last night I watched The L Word, and I so identified with the control freak in Bette. My favorite character is still Alice, because she's funny. For those of you who haven't been watching the show...you should be watching the show! Rent the DVDs, or make a friend with someone who has Showtime. It's so dramatic. And, where else are you going to find this many strong women's roles on TV? Nowhere. Anyway, Bette is a perfectionist, and so am I. We have other things in common, like a half-sibling and a deceased father. That's about it, though. I've never dated anyone who was deaf. I've never hosted a dinner party with place cards for eleven of my friends. I don't have her stylish, expensive clothing, or her fabulous hair, or a cute baby (pictured above). Oh well. Some day.

Stuff that I Can't Stop Talking About: The Prep Edition.

Last weekend, during my trip to Albuquerque to visit my mother at one of her many nursing conferences, I read Prep, a novel by Curtis Sittenfeld. I certainly had a lot to say when I got to the end of the book, especially after perusing the "Reader's Guide," which included "A Conversation with Curtis Sittenfeld" and a list of ten "Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion." I'm guessing the Guide was less an insult to the reader's intelligence and more a opportunity for Ms. Sittenfeld to avoid invitations to speak at someone's book club.

I don't have the energy to repeat the caustic prose about Prep that I launched at any of my friends and associates who would listen to me this week. I like to call my interpretation of the book the Studio 60 effect. No, Aaron Sorkin was not involved. I mean that I was affected by the hype surrounding the book and the author before I actually read the material. I had owned the book for over a year, but I never had time to read it. But during that period, I did have time to read other shorter writings in the challenging world of Fiction Written by Women Authors. And, oh, what I learned about Curtis Sittenfeld.

Cutting to the chase, here is "Sophie's Choices", Ms. Sittenfeld's review of Melissa Bank's book The Wonder Spot:

"To suggest that another woman's ostensibly literary novel is chick lit feels catty, not unlike calling another woman a slut -- doesn't the term basically bring down all of us? And yet, with ''The Wonder Spot,'' it's hard to resist. A chronicle of the search for personal equilibrium and Mr. Right, Melissa Bank's novel is highly readable, sometimes funny and entirely unchallenging; you're not one iota smarter after finishing it. I'm as resistant as anyone else to the assumption that because a book's author is female and because that book's protagonist is a woman who actually cares about her own romantic future, the book must fall into the chick-lit genre. So it's not that I find Bank's topic lightweight; it's that Bank writes about it in a lightweight way."

The rest of the review only gets better from there. (Is better the right word?)

Here is how Jennifer Weiner, a prolific writer of "chick lit" (I hate that moniker even more than "chick flick") responded on her blog:

"...Curtis Sittenfeld’s quote-unquote review of THE WONDER SPOT – a nastier-than-it-needed-to-be takedown in which the book is dismissed as lightweight, inconsequential fluff -- is less about the book, or its author, than it is about Sittenfeld’s anxiety about how her own work has been perceived.

"Think about it. Sittenfeld's young, she’s educated (Stanford and that obligatory Iowa MFA), she taught English at St. Albans, published in all the right places (Salon, The New York Times) and was reviewed and profiled, or both, in all of them as well.

"But when her book went out into the world, was it perceived as high-minded literature, a la the Jonathans (Franzen, Safran Foer), or sparkling satire a la the Toms (Perrotta, Wolfe?)

"It was not."

Now that one definitely only gets better from there. I LOLed repeatedly.

My condensed take on the book? It was really long. The main character complained in her head a lot, but never did anything to change what she didn't like about her world. I like the It-Girl series better, even with its insidious brand-name dropping.

Additional stuff I can't stop talking about:

The Pajiba review of Black Snake Moan, by Dustin Rowles. What happened to the Christina of The Ice Storm and Now and Then? I miss her.

But White Possum Scream looks like a can't miss!

The last two episodes of 30 Rock: Capturing Obama before he strikes again? Osama in 2008? Oh, Jenna. And then came "The Source Awards." Wait till I tell Tupac about this.

I'd never had any interest in CSI:Miami until I spotted this series of clips on Defamer in which David Caruso displays his acting ability by repeated putting on a pair of sunglasses. I then watched the original seven-minute clip show of David Caruso's ridiculous cold open one-liners. Wow. Mr. Caruso is something. He actually made Jim Carrey look funny.

I tried to watch an episode of the show when I was in Albuquerque, beleaguered by the dearth of programming called hotel cable. But I couldn't get through more than 20 minutes of bad dialogue. So I won't be doing that again. Sorry, Rory Cochrane.

I have found yet another show on Logo that I enjoy: First Comes Love. From the website:

"Hosted by stand-up comedian Elvira Kurt and wedding planner extraordinaire, Fern Cohen, this series challenges about-to-be-married gay and lesbian couples to fulfill a long-held wish to have the wedding of their dreams. How will they express their love for each other? Will it be old-fashioned wedding bells or a brand new sense of style and tradition? Find out on First Comes Love."

Elvira Kurt makes me laugh. I saw her Comedy Central Presents special, and I was so thankful that my Mummy didn't raise me like hers did. My mother never crocheted me a back-to-school outfit. I would have pitched a fit if she had tried.

Note to readers of my blog (all three of you): Feel free to leave comments; I like discussion. Also, if you notice any typos, or have any questions about my grammar or syntax, please let me know. Thank you!