the ocean

Tube Time

Can we talk about the fall TV season for a minute? And by "talk," I mean that I will type and you will do nothing. I haven't gotten too involved in fall TV for the past few years because my abandonment issues prevent me from investing in shows that may quickly disappear, but this year I guess the bus ads were just too intriguing. It started with Ringer, which I knew would not be good, but felt sure would provide some delightfully ESL-sounding line readings from Sarah Michelle Gellar, and I have not been disappointed. Unintentional humor abounds, whether it's from the amazing greenscreen scene that takes place on a speedboat where no one's hair moves in the wind or from the FBI agent who doesn't find it at all suspicious that the target of his investigation is mopping up blood right in front of him. So three episodes in I am sort of hooked, and not just because I'm trying to figure out if SMG did something to her nose.

There's also Revenge. I've only watched the pilot, but it was pretty good. It's got the chick from Everwood, which I may never before have admitted I used to watch from time to time. (I'm huge on family values.) There's lot of passive aggressiveness and aggressive aggressiveness and secrets and lies and great looking beach houses. Plus I enjoy watching people struggle to emote.

Up All Night I'm sort of undecided about. All three of the actors I appreciate, but the show still sort of feels like it's trying too hard. Every week they have to drive home how they're the show about how life changes when you have a baby. Why can't they just be the show about these three people that I sort of like? Also I'm not generally big on babies.

And I watched the first episode of Terra Nova. If you liked LOST but thought it didn't have enough actors who used to be on Degrassi, this is the show for you. If you liked Jurassic Park, but thought the CGI wasn't quite fake-looking enough, you are also in business. So see, there is something for everyone!

Secretarial Services

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but I've had a new secretary for a few months now. My old secretary was out on medical leave -- she had knee surgery and was on so many painkillers she would alternately laugh and cry in the same sentence -- and then they reorganized all the secretaries and I ended up with someone new. On the plus side, my new secretary answers my phone very professionally instead of forcefully quizing callers about their reasons for calling or engaging them in ten minute conversations. On the minus side, she frequently loses her voice and then is able to greet callers with only a tortured squeak. Another point in her favor is that she's very organized and even made a little file folder that says "reimbursements" on the tab to bring me my reimbursement forms. But I do sort of miss the caustic wit and constant carping of my old secretary; it did sort of make the day go faster.

The good news, I guess, is that my old secretary is just across the floor now, so I can still go visit if I want to borrow a Star magazine or hear snarky comments about what other secretaries are wearing. But she's in with a group of secretaries now and I always feel like they're talking about me behind my back. And one of them actually referred to me as her "boyfriend" today. And then they were all laughing and trying to make me eat pound cake. Maybe I should just stick with the nice boring lady who sends out my faxes.

Swimfan

I've recently taken to swimming at my gym. Now, I am not what I would call an especially strong swimmer; there tends to be a lot of splashing and gasping for breath that goes on when I am in the water, and I did almost drown at a birthday party in eighth grade. But I find it to be excellent exercise for precisely the reason that I feel like I'm dying after about two laps. Also I think it's fun to wear goggles. They make me feel sporty.

Swimming at my gym is less than ideal, however. First, you have to parade through the upstairs lobby in your trunks to get to the pool. Second, people are always asking if they can share a lane with you, which is fine and all, but I very often end up veering into the lane divider, which has very little give and can be surprisingly sharp. Third, they never have any towels in the pool area, fearing I guess that towels are secure in the locker room areas but 100% certain to be stolen a mere ten yards away. Fourth, they have deck chairs all around the pool and though one might think that people would hesitate to "lay out" at an indoor pool, in fact people frequently hang out there and make me feel as though I'm being observed when I stop halfway through a lap so I don't have a heart attack.

I realize that it's likely that this hobby won't last any longer than latchhooking did in the fifth grade, but I'm still sort of rooting for it, in a weird way.

Hard to Face

I have to say that I really envy those for whom the many and various changes to Facebook's user interface are the most significant problem of the day. For me, where Facebook might choose to place the string of inane updates about who bought what new pair of shoes and who hated which Sarah Jessica Parker movie is probably about 179th on my list of concerns for today, tied with what I fear might happen to my digestive system as a result of eating that half box of Nerds and whether Anderson Cooper has what it takes to make it as a daytime talk show host. (Significantly higher on the list are if I accidentally left that highlighted note to myself to consider "is this argument stupid?" in the draft brief I sent to the client this afternoon and whether my cab driver is muttering under his breath because he plans to kill me.) But for many, the layout of a free internet service primarily designed for preteens to play Farmville is apparently the greatest crisis since the Iranian hostages were freed. (The actual Iranian hostages, not those two guys who apparently only hike the great trouble spots of the Mideast.) I know this because the all caps and exclamation points were out in full force on my Facebook feed today. Many people even threatened to quit, which would of course be a huge blow to the online Scrabble industry. I'm hoping cooler heads prevail before I have to, I don't know what, reactivate my Friendster account? You have to admit that 2004 was a much simpler time.

TV Time

Ah, the Emmys. The night when we celebrate the magic of television through three hours of terrible television. They're just like the Oscars, except any actual movie stars in the room look vaguely irritated to be there. (Seriously, either Kate Winslet was passing a kidney stone or she couldn't believe they denied her request to have the damn thing FedExed to her.) Also they don't even bother to give out the technical awards on live television, since they understand all too well that it's a medium best devoted to pretty people (and Steve Buscemi, apparently). On the plus side, somehow they always wrap it up in three hours flat. Those affiliates WILL NOT TOLERATE having their local news teams cooling their heels for even one minute.

I have to admit that I was doing other things for most of the broadcast (that condo association water bill is not going to pay itself here, people), but I still managed to pick up a few things:

-- Julianna Margulies got a bedazzler for Christmas last year.
-- Gwyneth Paltrow is going as a medieval underwear model for Halloween.
-- Just because people are comedy writers does not mean they are going to give funny acceptance speeches.
-- Now that Friday Night Lights is gone, the Emmys have finally noticed that it was around in the first place.
-- I genuinely wish that all of the ladies in the Best Actress: Comedy category could win. Even though I've never seen some of their shows. They just seem cool and nice.
-- Julian Fellowes himself seems like just the kind of guy who would end up writing British period dramas for a living.
-- The Emmys have finally redressed the historical wrong of Maggie Smith being denied award recognition for her fine work in Sister Act and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.
-- The Amazing Race is still on the air.
-- Guy Pearce has consistently made himself look weirder and weirder ever since LA Confidential.
-- I am very much out of touch with current television.

I also finished a couple of loads of laundry, so it was all in all a very worthwhile night.

Model Citizen

Well, the greatest television program in the history of the medium debuted this Wednesday. I'm referring, of course, to America's Next Top Model All-Stars, which existed in my head long before it ever existed in life. In what is likely the saddest bit of information I will ever share about myself (in a fairly crowded field), I had actually drawn up lists of potential all-stars for such a season with some friends a couple of years ago. Of course, my lists looked very little like what we're now seeing on the screen. I mean, come on, there are really people who were dying to see Bre again? The girl best known for engaging in an all-out brawl over energy drinks? And seriously, the Laura pimping has to stop. Just having the same fake Southern accent Sandra Bullock used in the Blind Side does not make her a "country cutie." And where is Natasha? She may or may not have been a mail order bride, heaven's sake. And don't even get me started on Melrose, the robot sent from the future to win America's Next Top Model. It's criminal that they're trying to do this without her. I can't even mention Jade for fear that I will begin softly weeping. Give me a moment here.

Anyway, the show itself is much as one might have expected, nay, dreamed it. There's lots of fighting, speechifying, and general sassiness. The "challenges" involve a high level of absurdity. I'm pretty sure the house is where they filmed one of the I Love New Yorks. (Remember them?) Oh, and Tyra is still insisting on making everything about her. Which is not so far off, from where I'm sitting.

The Bends

So I forgot to mention something wonderful that I saw in South Bend. There was a video store with a big sign out front that said "Kate Hudson in Something Borrowed: We've Got It, Redbox Doesn't." I tried to take a picture, but it turns out that big glowing signs don't photograph well on your cell phone at night. But regardless, when your business model hinges on people's interest in Goldie Hawn's less talented daughter, you know you're in trouble.

The wedding itself ended up being really nice. They greeted us with alcohol when we arrived and the ceremony itself was only like fifteen minutes long. Then the dinner was set up at stations around the room and there was no assigned seating, so I didn't have to meet new people, which every thinking person of course abhors. I did finally meet the groom, though, which was nice. He's exactly the sort of person that I've only spoken to for about ten minutes that I would want my friend to marry. Oh, and I danced with a relative of the bride's who looked a whole lot like Donatella Versace. It was most glamorous, I assure you.

I wish you could write reviews of people's weddings for a living. I've got enough experience.

Remember September

Well, yesterday was the ten-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It falls to me to let you know this due to the complete media blackout on this subject. I have to admit I was less than enthused about the repeated airing of the World Trade Center footage in the past week; I barely even enjoy watching pretend people get pretend killed in horror movies, even if they are sometimes played by Drew Barrymore. But fortunately real tragedy has no place on the Lifetime Movie Network, where they prefer to stick with more mundane tragedies like Delta Burke being disrespected due to her mass. A date rape and two abusive husbands later it was September 12 and the media had returned to obsessively covering the presidential election that is still more than a year away.

So where was I on September 11, 2001? In my advanced civil procedure class, with no greater worry than that I might get called on to talk about the Erie doctrine cases I hadn't read the night before. I can't remember for sure, but I'm guessing I was on my laptop playing Word Whomp on pogo.com or visiting amihot.com with AOL instant messenger running in the background. And someone came in and told us the news and suddenly I was transported from a world where war meant Desert Storm preempting Highway to Heaven for a few weeks to one where I genuinely worried that evildoers were planning to steal crop dusters and spray poison gas on Champaign, Illinois. This was not a positive change.

Transitions

We have new neighbors. I don't really know anything about them yet other than that their mortgage lender needed me to fill out a bunch of paperwork and that they pay their assessments on time. I hope that they like impromptu roof parties and people singing Disney karaoke in the dead of night. We're planning to take them half a pan of brownies (the other half is for us) and a bottle of wine as a welcoming gift to sort of prime the pump. I don't need to be liked by everyone, just everyone that I ever meet. It's also fine if fictional characters dislike me. But I get a definite "real people" vibe from these folks. Such is life.

Anyway, I'm headed to South Bend, Indiana for a wedding today. This is the second of only two this year, so I feel rather fortunate. People don't get married between October and April, right? I think in the future I'm just going to tell people that I have scurvy and am too weak to attend. Regardless, I have purchased the loveliest card that Jewel had to offer and written a delightful check on the "antique" background to boot. (I strongly considered the Garfield checks but then recalled that it is not 1988.) I have been to South Bend before but don't really know what I can expect. Perhaps they have primitive Hoosier mating rituals that are utterly unknown in Illinois. If there's a human sacrifice, that is where I'm drawing the line, depending on who they're suggesting it should be.

Baby Love

It seems like everyone I know is having babies these days. I can think of at least ten friends who've had babies in the past year; two had babies last weekend alone. In most cases, I approve of the addition of these babies as being appropriate to the personalities involved. There have been a few, however, where I felt like placing a preemptive call to social services. I guess it's just difficult to see someone who double teamed a stripper in a friend's living room after doing whippets off a Reddi Wip can as a paternal type.

But regardless, I tend to find babies somewhat difficult to relate to. Forgive me, but it just doesn't seem like they're trying. A lot of time they just kind of lie there. They're rarely into literature or the fine arts. And while they do occasionally laugh at the things I say or do, they're much more into the low comedy (i.e. strange faces, falling down) than, for instance, my various witty remarks about the cinematic contributions of '00s icon Amanda Bynes. Plus, for some reason people generally don't want you to drink or swear around them. If there's some other way to function socially, I'm pretty sure I haven't heard of it.

Anyway, I'm trying to get used to it because it seems unlikely the babies are going anywhere. I've found that people rarely give up their offspring at my request and, regardless, I doubt that returns are allowed without a receipt.

Into the Wild

My parents live out in the country. Like actually in the country, as in our backyard is an oak forest. And every time I see those signs in Grant Park about how they are "restoring wild prairie" it looks exactly like my parents' front lawn. Growing up this was awesome because I learned about fucking long before any of my friends just by watching squirrels (although certain aspects may have been somewhat misleading) and I could hide during hide and seek in such a fashion as to actually require several days' manhunt to retrieve me. Also I learned important lessons about life by catching creatures in our pond and adding them to our aquarium, at which point they murdered everything in sight. Life is a lot like that sometimes, I think.

But anyway, sometimes there is also a bit more country than I tend to enjoy. Such as country inside our damn house. I have had the experience of having a field mouse run across my body while I'm sleeping, which was not nearly as adorable as Beverly Cleary had led me to expect. During junior high, I once looked up from a particularly gripping geometry proof to find a squirrel strutting across our living room. (A door had been left open downstairs, a crime which remains unsolved to this day.) And this weekend, I killed no fewer than four wasps in my bedroom. I'm not all hardcore or anything; I killed them from a safe distance using wasp spray. But really, the point is that there are fucking wasps in my bedroom. I figure that for every four I kill, that's one and a quarter that I've swallowed in my sleep.

It's time to get back to the city, where the vermin live in our trash as God intended.

Boxing Day

I have gone to the Redbox at Wal-Mart with my mother and it has ended with the predictable bloodshed.

I begged her to go to the one at County Market, a mere block away, but it was deemed too distant. What I knew and she failed to understand is that the Wal-Mart Redbox is advanced citizenship. The people of Wal-Mart know their way around a Redbox. You have to be ready.

Ready we were not. The line was four people deep when we got there and I tried to get my mother to focus by browsing the titles displayed on the Redbox sign from behind a rack of crop tops for preteens, but it was hopeless. She kept asking me if I thought we could get The Help or Contagion, which I'm pretty sure hasn't even opened in theaters yet. Then when we got our turn at the 'box, the search function utterly eluded us, and we ended up scrolling through all of the titles only to find that everything my mother thought she might want was already out of stock. And then we ended up in a rather detailed discussion of whether anyone in our family had ever expressed any interest in seeing Source Code, at which point the exorbitantly fat family behind us began sighing meaningfully. By the time my mother began soliciting a full plot summary of The Adjustment Bureau (which she kept calling The Apartment Bureau), things almost came to blows.

We ended up running away and instead purchasing a four-week supply of Crest Whitestrips. We may not have anything to do tonight, but at least we'll have glamorous smiles.

In Sickness and In Health

Thanks to the fine folks at CVS, I believe I have largely recovered from my recent bout with something awful in my chest. (Now I know how Tara Reid must have felt for all those years.) I may not enjoy their bizarrely low shelving units or their nappy carpeting, but I have to give mad props to their staff of sardonic nurse practitioners. I made a triumphant return to my workplace on Thursday, only to be viewed suspiciously by my coworkers even as I vigorously disinfected my hands repeatedly for their benefit. Hopefully the holiday weekend will give everyone time to get used to the idea that I am not a leper; those open sores on my face are just the product of my messy breakup with Proactiv.

So now I am sitting in my parents' living room and enjoying a very quiet weekend. Well, not literally quiet, as my sister was just gifted GPS for her birthday (at her request), and she has spent the last twenty minutes trying to "stump it" by requesting that it locate various obscure restaurants. It appears the GPS has won this round, however.

Actually, every member of my family is on at least one electronic device at present. In addition to my sister's love affair with finding Taco Bells statewide, we have my father pretending to do work but actually playing Angry Birds on his iPod touch and my mother and I on our laptops. God bless the 21st century and the ease with which it allows us to wholly avoid human interaction.