All right, stop
what you’re doing because
I'm about to ruin the image and the style that you’re used to…
Rest in peace, Shock G.
I’ve just always wanted to open a blog post with that.
Always. (We all know that I’m not about to ruin any image you may have of me.)
I’m missing Television Without Pity.
The other day I was scouring the internet, attempting to
find someone’s - anyone’s- take on the Audrey/Pacey relationship in the sixth
season of Dawson’s Creek and I just wasn’t able to land on what exactly
I wanted and I realized that what I was searching for was Television Without
Pity.
For the uninitiated, Television Without Pity began as a Dawson
recap site and later branched out into all sorts of shows, including most
importantly to me, my beloved Roswell. I logged onto Television Without
Pity basically every few days and read the snarky takes and felt justified in
my obsession with teenage soap operas (even as, of course, I was a wizened
twenty-one-year-old).
And it is indeed that
snark that I’m missing, that obsessive detail with every line of dialogue. My
most favorite recaps (which were always for Roswell but I don’t remember
who wrote them) included a bit called, “The Best Thing I Watched on TV This
Week,” which never had anything at all to do with Roswell and instead
were nearly always Lifetime movies.
Anyway, I’m missing those recaps, especially as the girls
and I are nearly finished watching Dawson and I desperately am in need
of someone with a much better gift at a hot take than me to take on the
entirety of the idea of Audrey and Pacey and the way that their relationship
comes to an abrupt end as Audrey calls out Pacey for always wanting to be the
good guy while hiding behind the fact that he can’t commit and never, ever
should have pretended that he could. (I maybe carry a lot of my own baggage
into these storylines.)
(I wrote this weeks ago now, and the girls and I have finished Dawson in its entirety. The final two seasons were a bit all over the place, but in the end we cried to let these characters go.)
Things I’m Loving:
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
This was a book that I picked up because so many people had told me how well written it is but I didn't particularly want to dive into this subject matter. So, now it's my turn- I truly believe this to be the most important memoir I have ever read in my lifetime. It should be required reading for everyone, no matter who they are. To sit with Chanel and hear her story is that important.
Decoder Ring: Jane Fonda's Workout
I listened to this podcast over Christmas, and keep forgetting to mention it- it's actually 2 parts, one about the Jane Fonda Workout and then one about the woman who actually created the workout, Leni Cazden. I went into this thinking that I would love listening to a breakdown of why Jane Fonda chose to use her celebrity to create a workout empire. But I found the piece about Leni a much more compelling listen, a fascinating look at a regular person caught up in a moment for which she did not receive much credit or compensation.
The Push by Ashley Audrain
All the caveats: trigger warnings for a host of things, including importantly the loss of a child. But I found it an interesting look at motherhood and mental health and healthy boundaries and insecure attachments. A book to be discussed.
The Tribe
I convinced my girls to watch
The Tribe, which is a quirky soap opera from New Zealand that I fell in love with during college. A virus has wiped out the adult population and left the kids to fend for themselves (it kept surfacing in my memories the entire past year and I found it on Amazon Prime). They surprised me and dressed up like Lex and Zandra on Friday when I got home from work because they are indeed the people that I always hoped would come along and be my friends and watch all the crazy things I love with me.
Showbiz Kids and
Kid 90
Documentaries are one of my favorite things, and these two did not disappoint. Showbiz Kids is an excellent look at the price of fame for kids, and includes interviews with one of my favorite humans, Wil Wheaton, and also one of Betsy's, Cameron Boyce. I watched it by myself, unsure if it would be something that would interest the girls, but I watched it all over again with them when they got home from their dad's because it's a fascinating glimpse at a world that seems glamorous but of course, of course, is full of pitfalls. I'm carrying the interview with Evan Rachel Wood close to my heart, where she says that she was always led to believe that if she didn't want to act it would be such a waste of her talent- I've dwelled on why exactly it is that we insist the things that you have natural talent for should be monotonized. It's a complicated question to me and I'm grateful to have been shown an answer from a different side.
Kid90 is a compilation of home movies from Soleil Moon Frye and it's as wonderful as you would imagine. As I've said many times, I was the girl who carried around my video camera for large swaths of my time in high school, in particular my entire senior year, and so I feel a complete kinship with Soleil's desire to keep a piece of her adolescence close to her heart. (I also understand why she boxed these all up and didn't watch them for years- even though there are plenty of good memories that I have of those days, I don't enjoy reliving them in quite the way I imagined I would.)
Our school year has ended, and it has really been a wonderful year for us. Both of my girls loved remote learning (for many reasons, remote learning worked well for us, and I know that was not the experience of most people, and I remain forever grateful to East Muskingum for allowing us this option).
Grateful always for time with my girls, even as we are silly and crazy and time is moving much too quickly.
