The week I almost didn't sum up

This week I experienced that kind of mid-week fatigue that makes a person rank his or her pajamas based on how dangerously comfortable they are.  (For the record, my cream and maroon star pajamas are now for weekend use only.)  So, I didn't sum up the week on Friday like I usually do.  But since I have things to write about that happened during my lazy Saturday, I'm going to stand by my decision to put things off.  So, without further ado, lets look at the things I missed, hadn't gotten to yet, or simply didn't know I wanted to write about until now.

1.)  All week, I meant to write  the response to this piece in The New York Times, "When Chocolate and Chakras Collide" about "foodie yoga" got on the internet.  I personally enjoyed this satirical piece from Gawker's Adrian Chen (writing as not-Adrian-Chen), "The Singular Delights of 'Foodie Yoga.'"  Honestly, as a yogi and as an eater, I'm not totally sure what I think about the idea of pairing yoga and fine dining.  As some one who plans her dinner during savasana (I know, I know, that's not the point) and I probably wouldn't turn down a dinner at the yoga studio if it was offered to me and it involved wine and chocolate, the trend seems to be taking things to a level that's slightly more pretentious than it should be.  It also makes me wonder if "foodie yoga" is actually a trend or just really smart marketing.

2.)  The man who wrote this passed away.

Many of us nerds - and some of our non-nerd friends - were sad.

3.)  I started watching season three of The Tudors.  I've only seen the first disc of the series on DVD (so, three episodes), but all I can say is: WHERE'S THE SEXY?

Remember this?  Now, I'm just hoping Jane dies by Episode 4 so we can all get on with our lives.  When did this become a political drama?  As someone who can actually get her info about Early Modern Politics elsewhere, I believe this needs to be a LOT soapier.

On a related note, I figured out the direction Jonathan Rhys Meyers has been given for the past three seasons: 1.) Start slowly, with something sarcastic but sort of dangerous-sounding, 2.) Fire up the crazy eyes, and 3.) Yell menacingly and as though you have unchecked power and the divine right to rule (and execute).

4.)  Jon Hamm hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend, and for the first time in a long time the show was funny.  There was a lot of joking about Don Draper, which is always welcome, but there was also a lot of very funny.  Here's the best sketch of the night, Ham and Buble:

 

And while I'm limiting myself to one sketch from last night as to avoid posting the entire show, I am going to go ahead and remind you about Jon Hamm's John Ham.

A Special Message from Hank and Dean Venture

I'm a little too pooped to write my usual weekly round-up tonight, so I will do my summing up tomorrow.  Until then, I leave you with this public service announcement from The Venture Brothers. 

English, Junior Year

First thing first, I know that that is a cartoon rendering of Thomas Pynchon.  I wouldn't want anyone thinking that I'm confused about my Simpsons episodes or my reclusive authors*.  But pictures of reclusive authors are hard to find and honestly, if The Simpsons could have worked it out, I'm sure that sign would read "J.D. Salinger's House: Come on In."  And today is a day when we're remembering the reclusive author of our high school years, so you'll have to forgive me the inaccuracy of the picture and appreciate the spirit in which it was posted.

Like many people who survived high school, I read The Catcher in the Rye in English class my junior year.  The big life lesson I learned from the book was that that people who protest books are likely to have never read them.  On the literary front, I found that I liked Holden Caulfield.  He sounded like an actual teenager and not an approximation of an teenager written by an adult.  And I've found that many of the students I teach have read and enjoyed The Catcher in the Rye, which is pretty easy to understand.  Unlike much of what is assigned in high school English, it's relatable and not Shakespeare**. 

The power of  The Catcher in the Rye, I think, is in its uniqueness, especially an audience already hardened by texts that seem old-fashioned and feel more like chores than reading***.  For a good number of high school students, the novel captures their imaginations in a way that few things in an English classroom (or much of high school, for that matter) do and they feel less alone knowing that on the page Holden is saying much of what they've been thinking about the world.  But probably the best thing about The Catcher in the Rye is that it can be a five-year book - something you pick up once every five years and basically discover all over again.  The second time I read it, I understood who Holden was and that I wasn't him and I didn't want to be him.  But I could sympathize with him, because the things that were going on in Holden's life were making him lose his shit.  Unlike the first time I read the book - where I only saw the world through Holden's eyes - the second time I read it I saw the world around him and how he was going to have a lot of trouble in that world.  And the power of the novel comes from the effects of both of those readings, which are vital functions of literature in the first place - to make us feel less alone and to help us understand other people.  The Catcher in the Rye does both of those things, and continues to do that for generations of readers****.

So, it's no surprise that people were genuinely moved when an author who lives out of the public eye and who hasn't produced anything new in decades passed away.  While Salinger doesn't fill our bookshelves, he produced a work that many of us understand, acknowledge to be good, and that many readers feel explain the world at a time when little else manages to do so.  Because seriously, most teenagers can't see that Holden's losing it.  Because they're feeling a little desperate themselves and Holden's genuine outrage at the world comes as a bit of a comfort.  Because a lot of adults are phonies and that becomes pretty clear as one starts to make the move from the kids' table to the adult table.

But enough with the seriousness.  While there have been many tributes to J.D. Salinger and his work today, I will offer you the one that I found to be short, direct, and affectionate.  Here is "Bunch of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger" from The Onion.



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* Pynchon's voice is featured on an episode in the fifteenth season titled "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife" in which Marge writes a romance novel.  Pynchon is asked to give a blurb for the book.  Also, I think the episode is hilarious, especially as the plot of Marge's romance novel about whaling unfolds. 
** My apologies to Shakespeare fans.  But, as I've tried to certain parties in the past, Shakespeare in high school is not an enjoyable experience because 1.) Everyone's down on it, 2.) The teachers assume you're not smart enough to get it so they sort of build it up to be something impossible to tackle, 3.) It's not cool, and 4.)  For the most part, you only get to read tragedies and honestly, the comedies would probably work better with teenagers.
*** Again, I'm not getting down on Shakespeare (or Arthur Miller, since I was sort of thinking of him too), but King Lear for 17 year-olds?  A very rare teenager finds him or herself in that play.  And while I'd like to think I was mature, I was definitely not that kid.  And I suspect that most kids are not that kid.
****Fun fact: My dad's copy of The Catcher in the Rye from high school is sitting next to my keyboard right now. 

Wherein I let go of my dream of owning an iPad

Today, I'm going to skip the obvious big story about the iPad and head off in my own direction.  I mean, yes, the iPad is cool (even though everyone's now embarrassed about getting their undies in a wad over it and are all claiming it's not as cool as they thought it would be).  And I would like one, but that won't be happening anytime soon, so I'm not allowing myself to care.  It would just hurt too much.  And yeah, the name sounds like a feminine hygiene product.  But you know what?  A lot of things do.  So, best of luck to those luckier than myself.  I hope that 10 hours of battery life really works out for you.

While I will admit that I'd really like to teach a class Steve Jobs presentation-style, it's time to get to matters I found more pressing.  I just read this really nice piece on Gawker, "Ugly Betty Got Canceled Because American Television is Broken," by Brian Moylan that discusses how good shows tend to outlive their goodness.  And I have to agree, especially in the case of a show like Ugly Betty that was interesting and creative (and even worth writing an academic paper about) in its first season, but then sort of lost the thing that made it special as material and creativity ran thin.  Last week's clip show for The Office made me wonder about what's going on with that show and whether or not we've moved beyond the point where we can mine characters in an American office for humor.

I started to think, like Moylan, that something needs to change.  And, in the case of a show like The Office, there is a perfect contrast between the way American and British television are produced and structured.  While the American version of The Office has been on the air since 2004 (I won't do the actual math to figure out how much of The Office there actually is), there are only 12 episodes and 1 special produced under the title of The Office in England.  That version of the show never gets old because there's never too much of it.  Another good example of the right balance of television (or, at least, an alternate model to consider in some circumstances*) is Canada's Slings and Arrows**.  Some Canadian television runs on the same model as British television, so every season is only 6 episodes long, which you wouldn't think is enough, but it's just right.  And the whole show is carefully plotted out, so the whole series maintains a steady rhythm.  And, at the end of the run of Slings and Arrows, things feel like they should end and not like someone's trying desperately to tie all the loose ends together.  Here's a little for fun.

The thing to remember is that when shows go on too long, bad things can happen.  We can have fun shows like Scrubs, with fun moments like this one turn into that terrible thing with the same thing that's on ABC these days.






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*But not all circumstances, because I want 30 Rock to go on forever.  Actually, I want Tina Fey to Skype into my house every day.  She wouldn't even have to be funny.  She could just tell me how things are going.
**I believe IFC runs it on a semi-regular basis.  You can always tell when they do because The New York Times does a review of the reruns like they've just discovered it.

Videos my lady brain understands

As a big fan of the "Target Women" segments at Current*, I was both sad and happy when I read this funny interview, "'I Murdered a Screenwriter & Slept My Way to the Top': Getting Funny and Frank with Sarah Haskins" yesterday on Jezebel.  Haskins spoke to Jezebel's Dodai Stewart about how she'll no longer be doing "Target Women" and what she's got going on in the future.  On the one hand I thought, Al Gore, how you could let her go? But, on the other hand, the chance that there might be something else, like a really smart comedy starring Sarah Haskins sometime in the future makes things sort of okay.  In honor of her tenure as the host of "Target Women," I'm going to go ahead and post some of my favorites.

I found this one particularly hilarious since I like to spend my weekend evenings doing my laundry.


I really liked this one because I thought I was the only person who thought that the Today show was asking Ann Curry to take unnecessary risks.**  Actually, that's sugar-coating it.  Like Sarah Haskins, I thought they were trying to kill her, especially during the South Pole story.


Oh, and this one.  Because, well, poop jokes crack me up.  And she uses the word "poopadox." 


And I just like this one.


This one, too.




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*The "Target Women" segments are part of Current's show "Infomania," which I have never seen , if you don't count the "Target Women" segments.
**As a daily Today show watcher, I've had a lot of time to formulate my opinion.

A Case of the Yips

At the beginning of the semester, it's very, very, very easy to get into one's own head about one's teaching ability.  Especially if one's class in the previous semester ran freakishly smoothly.  A solid class can go steadily downhill as the sufferer of the yips gets into his or her own head and dismantles the pedagogical foundation on which his or her class is built.  Right now, I am suffering from the yips.

For those of you who don't know, the yips are defined as "an apparently baseless sudden loss of ability in one of a number of different sports."  I got that definition off of Wikipedia.  And while I would seriously discourage the use of the Wikipedia in any other forum, in this case it's fine.  Due to the deep breathing and running I've been doing to overcome the yips, I've been a bit distracted from formulating interesting things to say about popular culture.

To apologize for being distracted, I will now present you with a series of videos of songs I taped off the radio in middle school.*

First, a word from my serious 7th grade self:




And now, a song I made sure to listen to on my Walkman because even though I didn't quite know exactly what was being discussed, I had a feeling it was slightly raunchy:


1993 was CRAZY.

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*For fun, I checked to see what year these songs came out and was surprised to learn that I picked three songs from 1993 pretty much randomly.  I think this might have a lot to do with my family getting cable that year.

The week Martha Stewart (Living) desperately wanted me back

Is it a bad thing that an offer for a special magazine subscription rate makes me feel special?

It was back to school this week, which has meant meeting a new bunch of students, explaining my master plan to them (and convincing them that said master plan does NOT include the destruction of their academic careers), and adjusting to a new schedule.  The return to the semester grind also has me checking the skies in the evening to see if it's getting dark later.  Because when 5pm rolls around and it's still light out it means that May is almost here.  I guess until that time comes, I'll claim every 40-degree day is evidence of Spring's arrival and continue to wear short sleeves indoors while blasting the heat. 

Since I can't frolic and play outside without my jacket, here are some things that caught my eye this week:

1.)  We say goodbye to Conan O'Brien as host of The Tonight Show tonight.  His run was far too short, but I look forward to finding out where exactly he'll turn up.  If these past two weeks prove anything - aside from the fact that it's very interesting to watch late-night hosts dissect the events unfolding at NBC and The Tonight Show - wherever he turns up, he has an audience.  Here are some clips in case you need a reminder to watch him when he resurfaces.

Since Conan is trying to spend as much of NBC's money as possible before he leaves, he's started doing a bunch of sketches that have little to do with being funny and a lot to do with spending lots of money.  Here's the most expensive sketch to date (since Friday's show hasn't aired yet).


Oh yeah, and this week, the Masturbating Bear, who was not allowed to migrate to The Tonight Show from Late Night with Conan O'Brien, returned.


And, because I think this is brilliant, here's the cold open from the first episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. 


2.)  My friend Kim posted this great cartoon from The Oatmeal titled "10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling."  If only I could tattoo this on the brains of students.

3.)  The Office ran a clip show.  It annoyed me.  Don't tell me it's a new episode when it's really just pieces of old episodes strung together within a crappy story matrix.  It makes a show look like it's stalling for time before sweeps.  It also reminded me that the old episodes that were used to make the clip show were far better than the crappy clip show.  The Office, I thought you were better than this. 

4.)  I'm still trying to figure out if I like Gawker's Gawker.TV site.  I think I do, but I'm still trying to figure out the rhythm of the site.  Pros:  Really nice posting about the late-night TV situation.  And I really like that they end the day with a really good stand-up clip.

5.)  Heather Armstrong of dooce announced today that she signed a development deal with HGTV today.  It's like my TV world and my internet world are having a love child.