Isn’t it nice how John said yesterday that he didn’t know any moms who were half-assin’ it in Parentville?
And here I am, sitting just several states away.
Because that’s what friends do, kids; they pretend they don’t notice each other’s glaring flaws. Although…OK, it is possible that John doesn’t know I have kids. I do though, right? I’m so confused. Can we talk about something else?
Starting Five
1.She’s Fifty Years Old
She likes to kick, she likes to streeeetch…Molly Shannon, AKA Sally O’Malley, turned 50 yesterday.
You couldn’t kick this high at any age
Remember when you first saw that sketch, and you were like “Ha ha ha! That is so hilarious, she’s just like my deranged aunt who’s constantly telling me about her sensei! Pass the beer, my rock-climbing final is at 8 a.m. and I need to get at least an hour of sleep first!” And now, Sally’s creator is actually 50 and you’re sitting in your TV room, watching the older woman who lives down the street from you fly by on her bicycle while you ice your hip.
2. The Search History On My Phone
My searches over the past few days, in order, are: 1. What is up with Erica Christensen’s hair? I started watching Parenthood on Netflix last year, and I got completely sucked in even though I can’t honestly say I like the show. Except that I love it. Arrrg! I love it even though I hate it so much! I hate all the characters, I hate everything they say and do and wear and think and I spend every episode yelling at the screen. Craig T. Nelson and Bonnie Bedelia play the mom and dad. It’s hard for me to write that without thinking of her:
Anyoots. They live in a super cool house in Berkeley and are former hippies, I think–I’m not sure if that was ever explained, but it seems like they are. He’s a crank and she’s a whiner. She yells things at him like, “I’ve been painting for 20 years, and I’d like to paint something (she likes to paint, of course–that’s what all former hippies do) other than this yard!”
Then do it. Why is it your husband’s fault you don’t know how to drive, walk, or buy a plane ticket? No wonder he’s crabby. Peter Krause is their oldest son, and he is very responsible. You know, because he’s the oldest. He’s married to Monica Potter, who has the personality of a bag of wet leaves. She gets teary-eyed a lot.
There was a story arc last season that concerned her battle with breast cancer, and the stylist put her in a horrible bald wig so obviously crammed full of her luscious blonde mane, instead of feeling the emotion the show wanted me to feel, I couldn’t look at her without laughing.
My, what an enormous and perfectly round head you have. It’s almost like you don’t have cancer at all.
Next is Lauren Graham, playing basically the same character she played on Gilmore Girls but with inferior writing. Dax Shepard is third in the lineup, he’s a goof, and lastly is Erica Christensen, who is actually my favorite character because she’s the only one I never want to slap. But her hair looks like dryer lint. Or that hair that comes out of a spray can, remember that stuff?
Only 14.99 a can!
Am I wrong?
(Ed. Note: Forgive me, Katie; I don’t watch Parenthood –I’m still attempting to master “Adulthood,” but I found this video that allows us newcomers to learn to insta-hatewatch the show in just five minutes; perfect song choice, by the way…it takes me directly to Season 2 of Extras)
2. What’s so great about a Carl Zeiss lens?
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I got a new phone. It’s a Nokia, and I bought it because I didn’t feel like taking out a second mortgage on my house for another iPhone. I was also promised that Nokia had the best cameras of all phones because they have Carl Zeiss lenses. So, imagine my dismay when all the pictures I took with my fancy (but less expensive!) new phone were just as blurry and flat as the pictures I took with my crummy old phone. Are you imagining it? So you know what I’m saying.
An actual picture of my dismay
But never fear, Medium Happy readers! I spent all last evening googling how to properly use the camera on my new phone, and I am thrilled to report it still sucks.
Sidenote–I am watching Parenthood while I write this, and whiney Bonnie Bedelia, in a Chaka-Khanish show of womanly independence, has gone to Italy with her painting class because she has had it with painting that yard! And now Craig T. Nelson is going crazy in a ‘when the wife’s away, the man will play’ montage–he’s eating ice cream for breakfast! He’s not wearing pants! He’s taking a leak in the yard! He is little more than an animal without her. Couples never do anything alone! Never. I hate/love this show.
3. Wrist Cyst
Are you sure you want to hear about this? Fine. A few days ago I woke up with this weird bump on my wrist. This is the sort of thing that makes me want to immediately go out and buy a bald wig so people will feel sorry for me, but apparently it’s something called a ‘ganglion cyst’ and it’s harmless. My sister, who is also an artist, told me she gets them all the time.
Where’s my ice bucket challenge?
Craig T. Nelson is now eating whipped cream out of a can. I am not making this up.
3. Mid September
I was out on my run today, looking around me and thinking “Today, this is the most beautiful place on Earth.” Now, let me tell you something about where I live– the weather stinks. Like, really, really stinks, almost all the time.
But sometimes it doesn’t, and on those days it’s so gloriously beautiful, I feel like the luckiest tic in the mattress because I live here. Today was one of those days. And it got me to thinking, my town is a lot like my younger sister. I spent my youth playing sports and lying on my parents’ roof, slathered in baby oil, cooking my skin into rashy oblivion.
My younger sister didn’t move or go out in the sun until she was in her mid-twenties. Now she’s got beautiful, peaches-and-cream skin and since she started running a few years ago, kicks my can several times weekly. She isn’t always plagued with injuries or constantly looking for the fountain of youth at the bottom of a bottle.
Ahem. What were we talking about?
The point is, maybe if my town wasn’t entombed in bad weather 97% of the time, it wouldn’t be as completely perfect as it is on days like this. Well! As analogies go, that was total crap.
4. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa
This guy again? Uh, YES PLEASE
That’s right, Steve Coogan again. You didn’t think I was going to do it, did you?
And then I went and did it.
Watched this on Netflix. Fantastic; that is if you like hilarity and good times.
“Hey, I like hilarity and good times,” you might be thinking. “Maybe that Adam Sandler movie Blended would be fun for someone like me!” NOT SO FAST, hilarity-and -good-times lover. Blended might actually be the worst movie of the year, and I saw Tammy.
The only thing funny is how much we got paid
No. I’m sorry. Tammy is worse. But Blended is a close second.
5. Robin Thicke
“I didn’t actually write any part of that rapey song because I was high the entire time!” That’s not a quote from Mr. Thicke, it’s a quote from my 19-year-old daughter, paraphrasing Mr. Thicke. It made me laugh so hard I had to share it.
I’m not gross and skeevy, I just look and act that way!
Kind Regards,
Katie
Who will be intrepid journalist that reveals that Dax Shepard is just Zach Braff in a blond wig and he’s been punking us all this time? “C’mon,” he’ll say when caught. “I mean, who would be named ‘Dax?’ Besides, Dax Shepard is just an anagram of Zach Braff! I mean, it’s SOOO obvious.”
OMG ! I’ve been reading this blog for 47 years and not until Katie nailed Parenthood have I fel the need to poke my head from my undersea cave ! Bravo ! I’ve sufferred through more episodes of this than I care to admit, for the sake of letting the spouse control the remote on a Tuesday !
3 more things :
1) The quirky son, and his incessant pouting about needing to have things done his way, and the parents enabling it, to the demise of every other human being they come in contact with. This is why the terrorists hate us, and I have to give them that.
2) THE INCESSANT ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC TO LET YOU KNOW THIS A TENDER MOMENT !!! It’s like pavlov’s bell for chicks!
3) Everyone talks over each other, like there determined to squeeze eevry bit of dialoque in no matter what ! No pauses, ..no one talls like this ! This is right out of the “Westwing” playbook of having the camera walk in front fo everyone, who are constantly walking, to give the illusion of urgency, to dead conversations !
AAAHHHHHH !!!!
George, you are so right. And I don’t even watch it to appease the spouse. What is my problem? Why do I need to watch it so badly??
We can’t help but watch it. I think the music soothes the wife as she cradles her wine jug, and it triggers latent memories of “Northern Exposure” which blazed the trail for drama-coms with no map leading to a final destination. Is Ray Romano’s struggling print shop the best a single mom in her 40’s can hope for ? We’ll have to wait for season 11.
Remember Thirtysomething?
“1) The quirky son, and his incessant pouting….”
Yep, such an annoying character portraying a real life disability. I hate his quirks almost as much as I hate how Jason Street never stood up from his wheelchair in Friday Night Lights.
I hope you take this as the compliment it is intended – several years ago ( I think late 80s?), I became a “charter” subscriber to a new monthly magazine called PREMIERE MAGAZINE. It was about movies & the movie industry. I loved it. One of the regular features was a movie review (mostly, it wandered a bit) by one Libby Gelman-Waxner. I thought “she” was hilarious & that feature quickly became one of my most anticipated parts of the monthly mag. PREMIERE sadly died in the big print-journalism culling of the last decade but a few years ago “Libby” began appearing once again in another of my magazines (of which I am also a ‘charter’ subscriber) – ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. You don’t just remind me of Libby, you are ‘Libby’-enhanced, Libby-2.0, the new & even better version that one didn’t even know was sadly missing but desperately needed. Also, in case you’d like to make more money than here at MH (sorry jdubs), Entertainment Weekly could use you immediately. 🙂
Sad to say I’ve only ever watched one episode of Parenthood (think it must be on the same time as something else I watch?). However, I may need to start as your feelings for the show are exactly how I feel about my actual family – “love it even though I hate it….I hate everything they say and do and wear and think and I spend every episode (week) yelling at the screen (them over the phone).”
You mention Gilmore Girls. I may have mentioned this a while back, but one of (the many) reasons I kept reading jdubs’ NBC blog, lo those many moons ago, was his unabashed & vociferous admiration for GG. I figured any one SO astute was worth overlooking his tragic dismissal of the need for a CFB playoff. (Did you watch the now-defunct ‘Bunheads’; the next Amy S-P show which eventually employed most of the ex-actors of Stars Hollow? I liked it too.)
So, Robin Thicke was taking co-credit (& the money) for that song up UNTIL they are sued for copyright/plagiarism? And NOW he’s got nuthin to do with it? Who wouldn’t want to be married to that guy?!
Susie b. ! I love me some Ms. Waxman-Gellner. I too used to look forward to reading her in Premiere, and was so happy to see her column land in the pages of EW. I haven’t been getting my copies of EW lately–something about “not paying the bill” or whatever.
Loooooved Bunheads. My daughter and I (other daughter–younger-) ate it up–she was my Gilmore Girls binge-buddy too. Plus I’m a slathering, blathering Sutton Foster fan and I very much hope that if I am spared coming back in my next life as a cockroach, I come back as her. Though most days I’m sure whoever is in charge of that sort of thing thinks a cockroach would be far too kind.
Another cotton-candy TV we are now completely enamored of is Hart of Dixie, starring the too-cute-to-be-believed Rachel Bilson. It even uses some of the same sets as Gilmore Girls–we checked!
Robin Thicke is that gross guy at the dance who sticks his tongue in your mouth without your permission.
thought you might enjoy this update on Libby G-W . . .
In 1988, the playwright Paul Rudnick began producing satiric film criticism for Premiere Magazine under the name Libby Gelman-Waxner, a deranged Manhattan wife, mother and “Assistant Buyer of Juniors Activewear.” A collection of Libby’s columns was published in 1994 under the title “If You Ask Me,” and Janet Maslin, in The New York Times, wrote that, “Mr. Rudnick weaves many a trenchant thought into Libby’s comic screeds.” Premiere folded in 2007, but Libby resumed writing a monthly column for Entertainment Weekly in 2011.
What! I love that!