the ocean

I am currently watching the pilot for Phil of the Future, the Disney kidcom of the mid-zeros that was, as it turns out, not actually entertaining in any way. I had remembered it fondly for being defiantly strange and introducing the world to Alyson Michalka, although perhaps not well enough that anyone but me remembered who she was. (She was in the singing group Aly & A.J. with her sister that also made the Disney Channel feature Cow Belles, which I swear to God I have not actually seen.) But seeing it again now I realize that it is in fact just bad. Also that I had one of the sweaters the principal wears. Mainly the badness thing, though.

This wonderful opportunity has been brought to me by Disney+, which Ian subscribed to today after it was announced that it is where Beyonce's new album will premiere. (This is totally healthy, obviously.) They have many Disney series of days past, also including That's So Raven and Lizzie McGuire. (They were even working on an LM sequel, until they reached a creative impasse with Hillary Duff over whether Lizzie should be allowed to fuck or not.) They even have the Disney movies I grew up watching on VHS, including Escape to Witch Mountain starring Kim Richards before she became a Housewife or a complete wreck of a human being. So I anticipate many happy hours ahead discovering that I totally overrated things in my nostalgia.  

If you're having a day where you're feeling just a bit "down" or "blah," perhaps reading a New Yorker piece about Josef Mengele isn't the thing to perk you up. And the piece about Flannery O'Connor's racism isn't exactly the most chipper chaser, either.

Playing MarioKart and eating generic fruit sours from CVS still seem to work just fine, though.

I'm not sure what exactly threw me into a funk today. We ordered delivery for breakfast, which combined my passions for bacon and other people doing things for me, and the new part for my record player came yesterday (since I am writing this from the 1930s), so I was finally able to spin some discs again. (That's a phrase people use, I swear.) I even had a decent on-demand workout, even if there was a pregnant lady in the video who seemed to be handling it better than me. But I hit a wall late afternoon, and even the photographs of all the empty seats at the Trump rally couldn't quite get me past it.

Part of it may be the fact that someone in our neighborhood was shooting of fireworks from midnight to 1:30 or so last night, which was not the most conducive to sleep. This also led to the dog demanding to be in bed with us, which in turn involved lots of dog claws in my back at inopportune moments. But I did sleep until after nine, so come on, that can't be the whole story.

Maybe it's just the continuing realization that life isn't going back to full normal anytime soon, and that this won't just mean avoiding things I don't like -- like going to the office five days a week and traveling to places like Sherman, Texas for work -- but also missing out on things I do like. For instance, Fourth of July parties, live theater, and brunch buffets. This all started so quickly that it was easy to do magical thinking and convince ourselves it would only be a matter of weeks. But here we are three months later, and the numbers are still only going up.

Anyway, maybe I brought you down too, now. Probably you should go back and read one of my posts from when I was younger and sometimes ingested random things given to me by strangers, with hilarious consequences. Wouldn't we all love to be dumb and frivolous again?

This is not going to be easy, but I want to address what I feel is one of the most challenging and important issues of our time: the summer 2002 departure of Naturi Naughton from the R&B super group 3LW.

You see, 3LW made a name for itself as one of many early '00s artists who sounded vaguely like Destiny's Child and appealed to pre-teens who used their parents' dial-up internet connections to vote for the videos that would appear on MTV's Total Request Live. (This is where I admit I once engaged in a one-man campaign to drive Christina Aguilera's "Come on Over, Baby" to the top of that chart.) They broke big with "No More (Baby I'ma Do Right)," a tribute to semi-controlled lisping and kickflair jeans, and followed up with the philosophical wisdom of "Playas Gonna Play." They were on top of the world, as were we all, frankly.

But then it was as if a bomb dropped with Naturi left the group or, if you believe her account of it, was forced out by "the two light-skinned girls" after being pelted with a KFC two-piece fried chicken meal with mashed potatoes and mac and cheese. Former bandmates Kiely Williams and Adrienne Bailon meanwhile claimed ignorance, insisting that they had no idea why Naturi departed or why there was mac and cheese ground into the upholstery of the Econoline van they had rented for their tour. But Naturi was adamant that she had been chided and marginalized for failing to be enough of a "ghetto thug girl." (All quotes from an archived MTV news dot com story I accessed through Wikipedia.)

The resulting maelstrom thrust this country into a frank and at times unpleasant discussion about race, class, and gender that, frankly, forever changed the way we as people interact with one another. No, actually everyone lost interest fairly quickly and moved on to wondering if Jessica Simpson was really as dumb as she acted on Newlyweds or something. Kiely and Adrienne went on to be members of The Cheetah Girls with Raven Symone, a girl group that also broke up under dramatic circumstances, although this time perhaps not involving airborne foodstuffs. Naturi I think tried to have a solo career but is now best known (by me at least) for a guest appearance on Mad Men that I didn't know was her until years later when I was randomly IMDBing Mad Men episodes to discuss with my sister, who had just started watching it.

Anyway, things worked out, I guess? But the KFC-flinging remains a hotly debated topic today, with Kiely having only recently explained that she was attempting to reach for Naturi's neck (no doubt to give her a calming massage) rather than intending to throw food. Adrienne did apologize to Naturi in an exceedingly non-specific way on an episode of her talk show The Real, though. Our nation is healing.

So apparently everyone has just decided that Coronavirus is over? The ads on the Hallmark Channel have gone from praising me for staying at home to telling me that America is getting moving again. Instagram is slowly moving from scenes of domestic coziness back to general thottishness. And I have to fight the instinct to count the groups of clearly more than ten I see gathered in the park while I run. Last I checked, we're still turning out new cases in the hundreds every day, but I guess everyone is just bored with it? I mean, I get it. Refreshing the Johns Hopkins website every few minutes to see the latest state by state counts can get old quick. But I mean, reality is still a thing, isn't it?

Anyway, we're in Phase III in Chicago now, for better or for worse, so I went ahead and got myself a haircut. I had to get my temperature checked and sanitize my hands before I could have the pleasure, but it was completely worth it. In fact, wearing masks for the entire process seems to reduce the general chattiness, so I feel like the virus has actually made it better. I don't know how many more anecdotes about my stylist's tattooing history I can listen to.

We also had a birthday party for my nephew, since gatherings of less than ten are fully permitted now. It was just me, Ian, my mom, and my sister's family. But that was more than okay, since the only guests that mattered were the legos. Right around the time my nephew opened the third set he got so excited I thought he might throw up and shouted "I really can't even believe it!" I choose to take the high road by not mentioning that I only got like one set of legos for my entire childhood, except that I did actually just mention it, and I'm still mad.

Anyway, life goes on. Sort of, and for now.