Mean Girls Monday: Sluts of the world, unite

No shame in a name.

Mean Girls Monday: Let ’em down easy

Very smooth decline. No Big Deal.

Mean Girls Monday: Jingle Bell Rock

Jingle Bell time is a swell time.

That’s the Jingle Bell Rock.

Mean Girls Monday: Tell it like it is edition

Yyyep.

Mean Girls Monday: “Look, Ma, no gag reflex!” Karen edition

So my daughter is completely obsessed by Amanda Seyfriend due to her being in Mean Girls and Mamma Mia!, and she made me buy her this month’s issue of In Style magazine because Amanda Seyfried is on the cover. She is six and has never read a ladies’ make-up and hairstyle magazine, and, as she is the girliest-girl on the planet (I assume that’s some sort of rebellion against me), it has blown her little mind.

During Mass as we took our seats after the gospel in preparation for the homily, kidlet leaned over and said, “I think Father Khoi is a heart-shape like me.” I whispered, “What?” And she said, “His face. Like me. Heart-shapes. We are not supposed to have bangs on our foreheads because it will make our chins look sharp.” I shushed her and assured her that I doubted Father Khoi is considering cutting bangs, but if I heard of it, I’d let him know.

Continuing on the topic of bangs, she told me very seriously later that day, as we sat by the pool in the evening, that I needed to cut bangs again. She looked at me critically and said, “You are an oval but your face is too long. It will look smaller with bangs.” Thanks for the tip.

Teevee Time: Tonight, tonight won’t be just any night, or, Ready to get “Lost” … Final Ed.

Portions of this entry have appeared before.

When I overhauled my life last year, I discovered that I am not a big guy for the television (except for 30 Rock, though even that I just periodically catch up on using the hulu), so I — without fanfare or officialdom but just mainly and casually — quit it nearly altogether in favor of holing up under the covers with a book or lurking in the batcave on the computer. However, the one show I stopped watching but have never stopped thinking about is Lost, the final episode of which airs tonight.

Nevermind the crisp and bullocks. Give me that rum. Mmm — Dharma Initiative-y.

I’ve mainly kept up this year and now I find myself looking down the barrel of the final episode. The thing is, almost literally everything in my life has changed since I first heard about and, a few months later when it premiered, began watching this show. I mean everything. Like, other than my gender, I have changed pretty much every other aspect of my life. I’ve had a child, earned a degree, married, moved, moved again, split up, shook up, sometimes I even throw up, overhauled career and self, set new goals, I mean, jeebus — I’ve been all over the map physically and emotionally since I first tuned in to this program.

L to R: Almanzo Wilder, Nellie Olson, and Laura Ingalls “Half-Pint” Wilder.

(Not pictured in the above shot: Velociraptor cyborgs and the ghost of Abraham Lincoln’s clone. Yes, clone — the Good One. The Evil One went rogue and was shot by government agent and island native John Wilkes Boothe. Oh, historical snap! Eventually they killed the Good One too and his ghost haunts the island now because it is all just Agent Mulder’s dream.) I remember one time a friend telling me that he’d hit rock bottom and I agreed I’d done the same — but we also concurred that suicide was for neither of us an option because then we would never know what happens on the last episode of Lost. Does Gilligan pick Ginger? Or Mary Anne?? Aw, just kiddin’, rabid Losties. He picks the Skipper, duh!

Who is a pretty princess?? Daniel Faraday is a pretty princess! I ♥ this character in an embarassing way, the sort of way for which I would mercilessly mock others.

It is sobering to consider how different a person I am now than I was when this interest began. I cannot even begin to count the ways, and it’s actually starting to freak me out. So now I am preparing to throw on pyjamas, pick up pepperoni pizza, and slide on down to Gorgeous George’s with the kidlet to watch the finale of Lost, and, in a wider sense, take another step toward closing what has been a very tumultuous chapter in my life.

Catch you on the flip side. (“See you in another life, brutha.”)

Spoiler: I can’t believe Darth Vader is Charles Widmore’s father.

Mean Girls Monday: Kevin Gnapoor’s rap (A true unlikely G!) and a riff for the forgotten male perspective

Kevin Gnapoor’s rap at the Winter talent show in Mean Girls. I love how the other Mathletes are his backup dance and beatbox team.

Ought not my honeypie Jason Sudeikis, or my suddenly-slimmer honeypie who needs to eat more sandwiches again, Seth Rogan, or even goodtime guy and genre-reinventing patron saint Judd Apatow write a sequel called Mean Boys about the complexity of guys’ relationships in adolescence? I feel like the topic gets overlooked. Of course, there is the fantastic Superbad, but that is in a category all its own, like a unique and special and hysterically funny bildungsroman that moved me and also made me laugh until I had to run to the bathroom to wash off my mascara because I kept crying from laughing.

One of the best movies I’ve ever seen (and don’t start me on how women complain there are no positive females in the frat pack flicks like Old School and Anchorman or in the new breed of bromance movie, because that is such straight up egg salad — yes, males are the comedic protagonists but women are their motivating factors and ultimately their redeemers; sorry that the heroes win the lady but also keep their guy friends and still like video games, you emasculating and controlling slags; a dude does not have to collapse his personality into yours in order to be a good boyfriend. Cheese wheels! Ease up.)

Anyway, yes, I love Superbad. It’s like an American Graffiti or Dazed and Confused of bromantic friendship. I love it to death, especially because it focuses on a close friendship between key characters, but what I’m talking about here is a movie for young men which, Mean Girls-style, explores and breaks down more various types of the male cliques and hardships of social maturation for teenage boys. It’s really unfair that they’re constantly shunted to the sidelines in favor of the primacy of female bonding in this period. They’re out there suffering, too, you know? I’m just sayin’.

Mean Girls Monday: The Devil Wears Prada edition

Mean Girls Monday: Inaugural Edition feat. Gone With the Wind

Last week was a rough one, so I asked my husband to mail me some of the DVDs sitting around our house in Portland and he graciously did. One of them was Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2001), a movie that I am not ashamed to call a guilty pleasure. Introducing … Mean Girls Monday! A maybe-weekly feature directly or indirectly referencing the film. Because I can.

First Edition. What if every movie were Mean Girls? As Picard would suggest, make it so. This is a wonderfully dorky meme that’s been floating around where people juxtapose lines from Mean Girls with screencaps from other flicks and I’m loving it. Thought I’d kick it off with a little classic Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939).

(God, Vivien Leigh’s faces are so priceless. I’m planning an upcoming The Way They Were on Vivien and Laurence Olivier. Mad love for my Vivs for-evvvv-errr.)

This has been your first Mean Girls Monday!

Teevee Time: 30 Rock, “Black Light Attack!”

30 Rock, “Black Light Attack!” Season 4, Episode 10.

When Liz and Danny (Cheyenne Jackson) further their relationship, Jack becomes jealous and plans to break them apart. Meanwhile, Tracy recruits Sue (Sue Galloway) into his entourage, and Jenna auditions for a role on Gossip Girl. (the wiki)

Went to Alice this weekend with Special K, as I mentioned, and there was a trailer for the upcoming sequel to Tron. I’d heard about this before and was apprehensive, but this was my first time seeing any material from the new film.

Color me wrong. It looks amazing and I can’t wait. I know what I’m doing December 17th!

Tonight, tonight won’t be just any night, or, Ready to get “Lost”

When I overhauled my life last year, I discovered that I am not a big guy for the television (except for 30 Rock, though even that I just periodically catch up on using the hulu), so I — without fanfare or officialdom but just mainly and casually — quit it nearly altogether in favor of holing up under the covers with a book or lurking in the batcave on the computer. However, the one show I stopped watching but have never stopped thinking about is Lost, the final season of which begins tonight.

Nevermind the crisp and bullocks. Give me that rum. Mmm — Dharma Initiative-y.

I had not seen the last few episodes of last season, but the rabid fandom of the show means that excruciatingly detailed episode descriptions (and conspiracy theories) abound on its very own wiki, so I read all those and I feel pretty caught up — and both smug and confused as to what it all means.

Who is a pretty princess?? Daniel Faraday is a pretty princess! I ♥ this character in an embarassing way, the sort of way for which I would mercilessly mock others.

The plan for tonight’s reintroduction of E’s regularly viewing television, just like an actual social human being, is this. Gorgeous George and the kidlet and I are going to meet up for dinner at the pub, come back here and enjoy us some geeky season premiere action, and then I am hitting the hay early because I have my first sub job tomorrow, about which I am very nervous. Catch you on the flip side! (“See you in another life, brutha.”)

Edit: “4 8 15 16 23 42 are all Yankee retired numbers.” via RiverAveBlues on the twitter, one of my most trusted, beloved, good-humored and APPARENTLY like-minded baseball resources.

Unlikely G: Liberating Negative Space and Farewells, Tina Tuesday edition

Liberating negative space will never stop being a thing, no matter how much some people (read: Gorgeous George) may hate on it. Ain’t no shame in a name, Tina Fey!

Tina for Empire magazine. Here are two other images from the same photoshoot, you can click them to see them larger: they are brighter than this other shot but the pose or the cropping obscures the fact that she is writing that someone is “a bitch.” (Which makes me suspect the set of photos dates from around the time of Mean Girls.)

This concludes Tina Tuesday, farewell and adieu!

Daily Batman: 30 Rock Edition

(Reading Jack’s childhood list of life goals) Liz: There’s only one left — “Be friends with Batman.”
Jack: There’s still a couple of hours. Jonathan, could you get Adam West’s agent on the phone, please?

Adam West: (introducing Jack at his birthday party) I can’t stay long, I’m on a case. The Penguin is in town.
(the guests stare at him in silence)
Adam West: (gestures to Jack for money)
— 30 Rock, “Apollo, Apollo.”

Star Wars on 30 Rock: it is a Thing

Liz: I never get put on a jury. I wear my Princess Leia costume and they dismiss me immediately.

Liz: I don’t think it’s fair to ask me to be on a jury because I can read thoughts.
Judge: Dismissed!

But that was in Chicago. More recently, the character was called to jury duty in New York. This ensued.
Other references abound. Here’s a few.

(Liz Lemon talks with Jenna Maroney about being asked out by the good looking guy that works for MSNBC upstairs, whom they refer to as “The Hair”)
Liz: I had to say yes. I mean, he looked at me with those crazy handsome guy eyes. It was like the Death Star tractor beam when the Falcon —
Jenna: No, Liz! Do not talk about stuff like that on your date. Guys like that do not like Star Trek.
Liz: Wars — Star Wars!

Liz: (videochatting with boyfriend Floyd) Is that how far apart my eyes are?! I look like Admiral Ackbar!

edit: The Gentleman just found me this on thinkgeek.com: a kids’ Tauntaun sleeping bag.

I will not truly rest until I have one. It even has intestines decorating the lining. (I thought they smelled bad on the etc) Siiiiiiiiiigh.

“I ate weaker girls for breakfast” — Tina was one of the Mean Girls

Mr. Duvall: So, uh… how was your summer?
Ms. Norbury: I got divorced.
Mr. Duvall: Oh. My carpal tunnel came back.
Ms. Norbury: I win.
— Mean Girls, 2004.

Ms. Norbury: [after implying that an elderly biker is her boyfriend] I’m kidding. Sometimes older people make jokes too.
Damian: My nana takes her wig off when she’s drunk.
Ms. Norbury: Your nana and I have that in common.

“I ate weaker girls for breakfast. I really was a snarky girl. My whole thing was, if I really liked a guy and he had the audacity to like someone else instead of me, I would hate that girl and devote hours and hours of time to picking her apart and talking about her behind her back and canvassing my friends to dislike her. Just a waste of time, ridiculous, but when you’re going through it at that age, you’re making yourself sick with bile and hurting other people and their feelings.” — Tina Fey, Washington Post article “Tina Fey, Specs Appeal,” by William Booth (April 25, 2004).

Advice: Tina on specs

“Glasses make anyone look smarter. You put glasses on Woody Harrelson in Indecent Proposal and he’s an architect. You put a pair of glasses on Denise Richards and she’s a palaeontologist.”

“I don’t wear them very much in real life because I need them to see only far away. And I don’t wear them when I am dressed up, because then I would look like Tootsie.”

Music Moment: “Dancing With Myself,” cover by Nouvelle Vague

Nouvelle Vague – Dancing With Myself
Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself” cover by French collective Nouvelle Vauge with lead vox by Camille Dalmais, who I reckon we will see around these parts again, soon.

Oh, dancing with myself
Oh, dancing with myself
Well there’s nothing to lose
And there’s nothing to prove
I’ll be dancing with myself

If I looked all over the world
And there’s every type of girl
But your empty eyes
Seem to pass me by
Leave me dancing with myself

So let’s sink another drink
’cause it’ll give me time to think
If I had the chance
I’d ask the world to dance
And I’ll be dancing with myself

Oh, dancing with myself
Oh, dancing with myself
Well there’s nothing to lose
And there’s nothing to prove
I’ll be dancing with myself

Now I’m all disgruntled and pretty soon I won’t be the only one

Tina didn’t go on a huge amount of dates before she met Richmond, whom she married in 2001. “I went to a formal once in college where this guy came up to me — this really handsome, nice guy — and asked me to go to his fraternity’s formal. I said something like, ‘You are gay, right?’ He was like, ‘What? No!'” She pauses. “Then he came out — not during the date but almost that same night. His straight-dar was off.”

“Yeah, it’s tough being smart and sexy, too. I have to say, I’m really not that attractive. Until I met my husband, I could not get a date. I promise you it’s true. My husband Jeff Richmond saw a diamond in the rough and took me in.”

That quote warms my heart and makes me think of my husband. Then I remember that even though I wanted to believe that if I kept trying, he would remember the things I said and respect my fears and dreams and be there for me, and I would be safe and feel taken in, the reality was that he couldn’t make me feel special or taken care of if both our lives depended on it, and I always had to be the strong one, and nothing I said really seemed to make a dent or matter, and I kind of want to smash something against my head. I really shouldn’t write this early in the morning, I think.

Now I’m all disgruntled and pretty soon I won’t be the only one, I wager. Can I just apologize ahead of time? It’s like 7 a.m. I reckon I will have time to get back here and fix this before it publishes.

A confession

A confession: I have this recurring dream that I work for Tina Fey. She still has her old job as head writer for SNL in the dream and I’m always a lowly peon. Nonetheless, I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty amazing.

“If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push him down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.”

One of these dreams a few months ago went all the way to the end of a week, including watching the show from monitors in a different room, to the point that it was an afterparty situation and one of the host’s friends asked me out to some club to see a midget do stand-up, and I was all pumped, and as I exited the floor I noted that Tina Fey was still in her office working, but I totally wanted to go with the host’s cute friend and see the midget do stand-up, so I skedaddled anyway, although I felt compunctions of guilt about it.

Then we were walking down this very realistic skeezy street to the comedy club, and suddenly I thought, “Oh, no! This isn’t right, I should tell him I’m married,” and I woke myself up. Cheez-its! I totally missed seeing the midget, and maybe even smoochytimes with the guy! I kill my own game in dreams constantly. I need to think about this.

Math is hard, y’all

“I like to crack the jokes now and again, but it’s only because I struggle with math.”

Is Tina Fey gonna have to kung fu kick a bitch?