Abandonment, Season 1: CANCELED.
n my world, the joyful holidays would not be complete without the inevitable, inescapable feelings of abandonment.
First, you go “home” again. There, you convene with family and friends, try “festive” on for size and, for a few brief moments, feel like it might even fit. Then you stumble upon the cornucopia of stupidly fattening foods that will eventually make your @ss explode, but your mouth says carpe diem and you stuff five more cookies in your face before you even think about caring. Suddenly, while sinking into your food/dessert coma, you find yourself singing along to sappy lyrics from sappy songs about being “snuggled up together like two birds of a feather could be,” which really marks the beginning of the end as you recognize that you’re one bird of a rather flimsy feather, and there ain’t no snugglin’ goin’ on. And then you drive your freakin’ cracked-windshield Honda Civic back to Boston in the bitter cold and stop for a fill-up and some food, and the Golden Arches promises hope in the form of a giant Egg Nog Milkshake, but the nameless voice of doom at the other end of the speaker tells you “NO MORE.” No more bird of a feather, no more cookies à volonté, no more Grandma hugs, and no more freakin’ Egg Nog Shakes, got it??? Sh*t.
Either you’re leaving someone, or someone’s leaving you at the holidays. And that just SUCKS. Especially when that “someone” is an angelically flavored ice creamy anti-depressant.
So, in light of the severe mild abandonment issues I’ve been coping with lately (and by “coping with,” I mean “watching TV to escape from”), I thought I’d jump on the Listless Monday bandwagon and make a list of all my favorite TV shows that have also cruelly left me hangin’, dry-mouthed and broken-hearted.
Television and movies have always been my escape method of choice. And of necessity, really. And, before the days of TiVo and DVR, you had to rely on the weekly network schedule to produce that escape route. When shows got pre-empted because of some mindless, long-@ss football game? I was pretty much traumatized for days, suffering the most severe forms of escape withdrawal. Which usually involved foaming at the mouth and downing a whole box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. But when network execs decided to play Robespierre and hack the heads off of the friends fictitious characters to whom I most profoundly related, well… I couldn’t take their Reign of Terror lying down! Oh no. I stood up. And ran to the nearest video store. Once the shows were on VHS. D@mn it.
Anyway, the following amazingly brilliant shows were wrongfully guillotined in their infancy, after only the first season, thereby leaving me to weep in despair and overdose on Reese’s Pieces in my bedroom. Oh, I’m also including a favorite quote or two from each show. Just for kicks. Just because I can.
Top Four TV Shows That Abandoned Me (yet occasionally visit via DVD):
1. My So-Called Life (1994). Quite possibly the best coming-of-age television drama EVER, let alone the best one with a female protagonist (The Wonder Years takes my carrot cake for best coming-of-age show with a male protagonist). Honestly? I firmly believe that every single character on this show was complex enough to have his/her own show. There could have been a ton of spin-offs if anyone felt like it. Particularly with Brian, who was hilarious, and who did, in fact, have “his” own episode, “The Life of Brian,” narrated entirely by him. But, of course, Claire Danes was as brilliant and awkward as they come. Also, two words: Jordan Catalano.
Angela: People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is even.
2. Relativity (1996-1997). Relativity birthed itself into existence my junior year of college, just after I returned from my semester abroad in France. I didn’t have culture shock when I arrived in France, but I definitely had some type of thunder bolt hit me once I came back to the US. 
But Relativity centered on a girl who had gone to Italy to pursue her passions and just so happened to meet magnificence-in-the-form-of-a-dude while she was there, and… well, the girl was played by the insanely likable Kimberly Williams(-Paisley, though I prefer to think of her as NOT being married to a country singer). You know Kimberly Williams… she was the one in the Father of the Bride movies? Oh, and Randall Batinkoff was in it, whom I had been mildly infatuated with ever since seeing him in School Ties and the TV adaptation of the book series Christy (which is another show that got prematurely canceled, after just two seasons, and which starred Kellie “Becca” Martin and some oddly attractive, older Scottish dude). Anyway, I’m pretty sure the Friday scheduling was Relativity’s kiss of death. Isn’t that ALWAYS the kiss of death? I mean, *I’m* always a loner at home watching TV on a Friday night, but… I recognize and acknowledge that the general public has a life. ps) Same creator/writer as My So-Called Life. Go figure. I don’t have a quote for this one, d@mn it. It was too short-lived, and IMDB.com isn’t being nice to me.
3. Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000). I discovered Freaks & Geeks, rather randomly, on ABC Family, after it had already originally aired on ABC. I couldn’t believe I had never even heard of it… let alone that ABCFamily had the balls to broadcast a show that included intelligent adolescent and societal commentary on a bunch of pot smokers (led by the then-anonymous James Franco, Seth Rogen, and Jason Segel). Freaks and Geeks was the brainchild of Judd Apatow. You might have heard of him. He went on to make a gajillion dollars with movies such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Anchorman, Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall… I’ll stop. Another intelligent coming-of-age show with a female lead, AND it was set in the 1980’s Midwest? You had me at “Freak.”
Sam: What am I gonna say to Cindy?
Bill: Don’t say anything. Be dominant. It’s all, all about dominance. I saw this monkey show on PBS, if you talk to her first, it’s a sign of weakness and she will not pick you to be her mate.
Sam: Are you drunk?
Bill: I think so, yes I am.
Sam: Aw, man, go into my room, lock the door, and don’t drink any more.
Bill: [after Sam leaves] That’s very dominant.
4. Related (2005-2006). I’ve mentioned this show to people recently, and nobody knows what the h*ll I’m talking about. Except for my friend M, who bore a similar obsession with the Sorelli sisters. It was an hour-long drama on the newly minted WB/UPN hybrid, the CW, so… I think people were generally skeptical and expected that all new shows would resemble Dawson’s Creek or something. Which is, I would guess, the main reason for the failure of this show. It was picked up by the wrong freakin’ network. The CW is home to rich-b*tch high schoolers who OD on sex, drugs, self-absorption, and Louis Vuitton (not necessarily in that order). The CW is also home to America’s Next Top Model, which I suck down like Courtney Love and her crack pipe, so I better be quiet. But Related was a compelling family saga about four sisters and their widower father coping with life after Mom and a lot of unsatisfying identity-searching. And Lizzy Caplan played Marjee Sorelli! And she RULES! (and then she was in a little sitcom called The Class on CBS, scheduled just after How I Met Your Mother, and I thought it was hilarious. But then that got hacked, too) So… that was sad.
Rose Sorelli: I transferred from Pre-Med to the Experimental Theater wing.
University Registration Lady: Your parents must be so proud.
—–
Rose: Why am I always at the bottom of the phone chain?
Marjee: Because you’re the youngest and we don’t care about your feelings.
*NOTE: I placed the above shows in chronological order per abandonment date, NOT in order of residual abandonment issues. Though I’m pretty sure My So-Called Life would still be number one.
And there are a TONNNNNNN of shows that got canceled either in their prime or after they had run their course, and those were sad too. (I’m talkin’ to you, Arrested Development, Wonder Years, Gilmore Girls, Felicity, Once & Again, Everwood, et al.)
But the four above hurt the most. They were so young and bright-eyed, with so much potential… and yet they were ruthlessly killed into TV oblivion, thereby abandoning me and so many others. WHY WHY WHYYYYY?!? I mean, sure, there are some shows that should DEFINITELY get the axe. Like, who the h*ll thought Cavemen would be a good idea?!? Seriously. Issues. I didn’t even notice that the Cavemen had abandoned me. That was fine. But Angela Chase and then Lindsay Weir?! Way to kick a girl while she’s down, TV people. MEAN.
Happy HOLIDAYS ARE OVER!
When the year renews itself…
ew Year’s is, hands down, my least favorite holiday. No contest, really. In my experience, with the exception of only one very special year, New Year’s has inevitably proven to be a LARGE disappointment. There seems to be an inescapable need to reflect upon the ending year and to define it by the hallmark experiences and events that took place and made the year what it was. For some reason, though, those defining moments always seem to weigh more heavily on the negative side of the scale than on the positive. Each year, I think, “OK, don’t worry, next year will be better…”. But then… sadly, it’s usually not.
And 2008 proved my worst year yet.
So… one would think that the end of an incalculably yucky year would make one excited to ring in a large-scale-clean-slate-of-a-new-year, but… yet… somehow, the glimmer of optimism becomes quickly extinguished by both internal and external pressures to “change” and “improve” and “rectify” and, you know, lose weight and spend less and finish my dissertation and stuff. And that’s not anxiety-inducing at all. (PFF…)
Oh, and let’s not forget the pressure to have someone to kiss at midnight, because that’s the most fabulous New Year’s component of all. (PFF…)
Ugh.
So anyway… my sincere apologies for the Debbie Downer nature of this pog. It’s just hard to see the lighthouse through the fog lately, you know?
But that doesn’t mean I don’t wish ALL OF YOU a very happy New Year filled with peace and joy for you and your loved ones. I definitely look forward to reading you all, that’s for d@mn sure. 
I leave you with this profound thought/image for the New Year:
Although it’s been said many times, many ways…
(Image: Currier & Ives, 1876)
You may have noticed that I have taken a bit of a “Pogging Pause” (PP) in recent weeks. Mega hi-tech equation: end-of-the-semester academia chaos + procrastination on making/buying of Christmas gifts + the earlybird birth of my impossibly cute niece & nephew (!!) = an epidemic known as Unfortunate Pog Deficiency (UPD). But I promise I’ll be back very very soon. Just as soon as the cookie coma wears off.
I hope you’re all enjoying the loveliest of holidays (and the yummiest of foods — especially cookies)!
10 Things my mom would say if she walked in my living room right now
ith Christmas looming (TEN FREAKIN’ DAYS, ARE YOU FREAKIN’ KIDDING ME WITH THIS?!), I have entered the annual phase I like to call: MomPrep (MP). There are several components of MP, none of which I care to share with you at this juncture (you’re welcome); however, a residual effect of said MP is that I unfortunately “hear” my mother’s voice in my ear pretty much constantly so that I may begin to anticipate potentially frustrating/enervating/absurd motherly confrontations that would make me want to slam a candy cane up my nose. So to speak. The whole point is: once I can successfully identify Crazy Mom Patterns (CMPs), anticipation and recognition of predictable CMPs will allow me to save myself (and my gram, and my sister if she’s around) and our collective sanity and, therefore, our familial Christmas experience as a whole. So, basically, MP and recognition of CMPs represent the means by which I shall become my own Christmas Savior.
Amen.
So, as I sit now in my living room, ruminating on this Monday list, with ungraded student papers strewn about and CNN on in the background, I can’t shake my mom’s running commentary. Which really just means that I’m progressing nicely through my MP, don’t you think? Thank you.
Here are 10 things my mom would definitely want to tell me RIGHT NOW (because nothing can wait with my mom — that’s, like, step 1 of MomPrep.):
1.) “I like what you’ve done with the place. It looks cute. But… (adjusts plant-lamp ratio on end table) … there, that’s better.”
2.) “Wow, you’ve received a lot of Christmas cards… (goes to mantle and pretends to read/appreciate the cards… thinks I do not notice when she “fixes” the card order). Very nice.”
3.) “What’s that bright orange ticket sticking out of your mail file?” (umm, a parking ticket that is 99% hidden behind other envelopes, thereby further proving the existence of Mom-(ra)Dar)
4.) “Have you paid all your bills this month?” (yes.) “HOW have you paid all your bills this month? Do you still owe a bunch of money on your credit cards?” (ugh.)
5.) “Are all those papers graded?” (no.) “Well don’t you think you should stop typing and watching Larry King and get them graded? Aren’t grades due on Wednesday? Isn’t it going to take you a long time? How long does it take you to grade one paper? Why have you waited this long to start grading them when you only have a little over a day? Come on… how long have you been in school and teaching? You’d think that over a decade in higher education would teach you a thing or two about procrastination.” (you’d think.) *note: notice that my mom strings along a ton of questions without a break for me to have a chance to answer. This is a common CMP.
6.) “Why do you have my wedding picture hidden in the corner behind your coat rack? You can barely see it!” (umm… because, I don’t know, I guess, for some reason, I thought that maybe a photo of you with step-dad #3 could be viewed as an optional design feature that probably wouldn’t gel with the overall comforting aesthetic that I’ve tried to create for myself in MY HOME.)
7.) “And why do you have that horrible, old picture of me and your father on your bookshelf where everyone can see it?” (umm…)
8.) “Are you still seeing that guy who’s friends with your good friend?” (no.) “Well, what happened? I thought you really liked him? Do you think you’ll get back together.” (NO.) “Why not?” (ugh.)
9.) “I know you don’t have much money, so why don’t you just make Step-Dad#3 and me something for Christmas?” (because I almost feel more pressured to make you something?) “Well, Jesus, I’m trying to help you here. Fine, then spend $20 or $25 on us, tops.” (gee, thanks.)
10.) “You spend an awful lot of time on that computer. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get paid for it? Have you still been looking for a part-time job? Have you called the temp agency? Do you know for sure if your Writing Fellowship will be renewed next year? because, if it’s not, that means you need to look for a full-time job, have you thought of that? and if you have a full-time job, how will you find the time to write your dissertation? and you need to finish your dissertation. What are you going to do???” (*coma ensues*)
Yeah… definitely still a lot of work to do in my MomPrep before I hit the road on Sunday.
Think happy thoughts, please. And I will think happy thoughts for all of you and your family (dys)functions this holiday season.
GLORY TO ANNA IN THE HIGHEST!
It’s a handmade Christmas!
ell, after much back-and-forthing, I decided to make my own holiday cards after all… sponsored by The Paper Source, Briarpress.org, and my trusty Scotch Craft Stick.
Most of my near-and-dear ones will receive them tomorrow, so I figure I’m not ruining any top-secret info or anything.
Here’s a little sampling:
15 December associations I tend to make
1. December = the smell of pine, which is mildly orgasmic. For me, anyway. Lucky me.
2. December = Egg Nog Shakes at McDonald’s. Other than the Shamrock Shake for St. Patrick’s Day (and the sadly fleeting Arctic Orange Shake, which I haven’t seen since my adolescence), the Egg Nog Shake encompasses McDonald’s best achievement. I mean, other than that whole Super Size Me thing.
3. December = SNOW HATS. Snow hats provide me with infinite comfort and protection from the elements. And by “elements,” I mean, well, everything. Truth of the matter is, I’ve been known to wear a snow hat even during the summer months. Whenever I feel like I need some heavy-duty protecting, the snow hat is there for me. The snow hat does not discriminate by season. The snow hat loves me, unconditionally. I love you, snow hat.
4. December = Andes mints. I’ve been to Peru, but I didn’t see any mint. What I did see, though, were mountains of sheer awesomeness. It is, therefore, no surprise to me that the extensive South American mountain range produces this smoothest of chocolatey-minty decadence all wrapped in a thinly veiled, metallic-green wrapper. One love, Andes. One love.
5. December = A Charlie Brown Christmas. You’ve probably noticed that I’m sort of a Peanuts fan. Pretty much no holiday would be complete for me without Vince Guaraldi’s accompaniment and that spotted beagle jigging around. But A Charlie Brown Christmas takes Charles Schultz’s brilliance to a whole other level: not only do the Peanuts characters make an impressive statement about the over-commercialization of Christmas and holiday depression, but they also take part in this incredible dance number that could put all Dancing With the Stars coaches to shame. For real. That kid in green was doing the Running Man before the RUNNING Man was doing the Running Man! And the mohawked dude in orange had some crazy-@ss double-jointedness happening with his shoulder that remains inexplicably innovative. I mean, you try that sh*t!
6. December = unfortunate and excessive lawn ornamentation (particularly the blow-up variety), which serves as a physical manifestation of the yard owner’s insatiable need to be coddled and also his/her inability to streamline. The result is terrifying and nightmare-inducing. See my previous pog.
7. December = boots that inevitably make my socks fall down inside of them and, therefore, drive me insane. Thanks a lot, boots.
8. December = homemade Christmas gifts when I’m too poor to buy any. Which I am every this year. I hope my gram likes her homemade family tree this year.
9. December = crazy fabric wreath that my maintenance dude always hangs up on my porch, which leads neighbors (and fellow tenants) to believe that I have masterfully bogus holiday decorating taste, which is CLEARLY not true. I mean, come on. I have nothing against fabric wreaths, mind you. I am all about the handmade. Still, just because I support handmades doesn’t mean all handmades are good. It’s sort of like how, in the past, my family would just buy me anything they saw that had any French language on it. Including a Celine Dion CD. Their logic being: she likes French, Celine speaks French; thus, she must like Celine. Umm… faulty syllogism, family members. Likewise, Maintenance Dude’s fabric wreath has no relevance to anything even remotely pleasing — to the eye, or otherwise. It’s sort of like your old elementary schoolteacher’s tacky holiday sweater barfed a wreath. So, I let the fabric pseudo-creation have its day (or ten), and then I stealthily swipe it off its hook and stash it in the shed… until Maintenance Dude resuscitates the wreath next year. It’s this little game Maintenance Dude and I like to play. Four years and it hasn’t gotten old yet.
10. December = 10.5-hour trek to Ohio to see family and friends for the holidays. Always therapeutic and often amusing (what with my various interpretations of Broadway show-tunes, first in a French accent, then in a British accent, then in a Pakistani accent, then as my mom, etc.), the drive from Boston to Cleveland has become almost automatic by now. Which just seems wrong, doesn’t it? Ten and a half hours of wrongness.
11. December = birthdays. Lots of good friends with birthdays this month. Yeah, Scotty and Denise, I’m looking directly (and accusingly) at you two. I’m sure you’ve gotten the shaft over the years because, let’s face it, birthdays around Christmas pretty much equate to “combined present,” and that just blows. Sometimes quantity is better than quality, ya know? So I feel pressured to get you two separate gifts (or more), and to make them awesome and meaningful, first as a birthday gift, then as a Christmas gift. And it’s so hard to decide which gift equals birthday and which gift equals Christmas, so I ultimately end up in a near-catatonic state, choking on my own saliva. Umm… as opposed to someone else’s saliva? I don’t know. But it’s not pretty. So… thanks a lot. Way to be born during the holiday season. Poor planning. Your parents’ libidinal clocks BLEW. And you can tell them I said so.
12. December = holiday hours. And holiday hours RULE. Not even because I necessarily want to go Christmas/birthday shopping at 10pm, but it’s nice to know that, should the urge pinch me, I could hop in my really loud car, barrel past a ton of scary-@ss blow-up ornaments that have no business infiltrating my field of vision, and go buy my friend a Homer Simpson Chia-Pet. Awesome.
13. December = my gram. Gram comes to visit us from South Carolina each Christmas. Ninty-years-old, and the woman still mows her lawn and landscapes. In pumps. STEP OFF. Gram is my favorite person in the world. No contest. And I usually see her at least a few times a year, but… Christmastime is always the most special, because it always equates to literal and figurative strolls down memory lane, made even more poignant by the surroundings: my Gram was born in Cleveland, just as I was. I love asking her questions and hearing her stories. Like when she first went out with my grandfather: she was a bookish high schooler, waiting outside her house for a blind date to arrive and pick her up. Only he was late. And the next thing she knew, here came my grandpa, sidling up in a convertible with a friend of his. He made some comment about how Gram’s prospective date must have been “a real louse” (or some other such groovy term), and that she should get in the car and go out with him instead. And so she did. And they were married four years later. Studs.
14. December = advent calendars, which I will relish till I’m old and decrepit. You should probably check out my other blog for crafty examples of advent awesomeness.
15. December = CHRISTMAS COOKIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! Enough said.
I’m a slacker nerd, CVS steals Halloween’s thunder, & The Hardy Boys
o, it’s Friday. Just in case you didn’t know. The weekend has officially commenced. Those of you who are/have been grad students, please feel free to tune out for a minute. As for the rest of you, allow me to bestow upon you the knowledge that, for a grad student, the term “weekend” is synonymous with “the days when I can finally be productive and do work.” It can also be synonymous with “the days I catch up on sleep that I lost to class prep/grading/research/etc. during the week.” In other words: we are geeks with no social life.
Ok, I should probably only speak for myself, but… I have found this to be true among many demographic samples of graduate students. We are a nerdy, isolated people.
Anyway. So I had these high hopes of coming home from campus, changing out of “teacher clothes” and into comfy (read: scuz) clothes, and heading either to a nearby coffee shop or to a nearby Barnes & Noble to plop down in a big chair and finally crack open a book that arrived from Amazon.com two weeks ago. Or wait, maybe three? Whatever. The point is: I’ve been wanting to bust it open for a really long time. Oh, and I should mention that it’s a book related to the course I’m teaching… material I may be able to use, but also some sh*t that I just generally get off on.
So anyway… I was excited about this. But then the inevitable occurred: I got home, changed into comfy clothes, had some dinner (aka, heated up leftover pizza), settled on my couch to check e-mail and cr@p, and now…….. I have officially entered near-catatonic state, whereby the energy required to walk to my car proves roughly equivalent to the exertion necessary to climb Mt. Everest. So yeah, that ain’t happenin’. So now I’m writing this pog, but you can safely assume that in, oh, say 45 minutes, I’ll be nodding off to a CNN lullaby or something.
Whatever. There’s always tomorrow. After I grade a bajillion papers.
So yeah, the other thing kicking around my mind today is that I went into a CVS to pick up a few lame things (precisely what a CVS is for), and I turned the corner of the candy aisle only to find a whole freakin’ aisle devoted to CHRISTMAS CR@P!!!!! We’re talkin’ stockings, Santa hats and beards, Christmas-themed socks, red & green M&Ms… the list goes disturbingly on. What the F?!? I thought the unspoken rule of consumerism was that companies wait for one holiday to be over, and then BOOM!, the little marketing elves haul tiny @ss to make the instantaneous switch of products/marketing for the next big holiday. Like, at 00:00:01 on New Year’s Day, BOOM! Valentine’s Day throws up all over our TV sets.
But Halloween still hasn’t happened, and yet Christmas is already infringing upon it and stealing its thunder in CVS stores. That is soooooooooo wrong and soooooooooo rude on sooooooooo many levels — not the least of which is the fact that Halloween is my second favorite holiday (first = Bring Your Grandparents to Work Day).
A.k.a., Reese's Peanut-Butter Menorah
So, instead of buying my sister a Reese’s Peanut-Butter Pumpkin in celebration of Halloween next week, I was forced by some blasphemous See-Vee-Ess b@stards to skip Halloween and buy her a Reese’s Peanut- Butter Tree instead (*note: Reese’s doesn’t call them Reese’s Peanut-Butter Christmas Trees,” because then they’d also have to create Reese’s Peanut-Butter Menorahs, and the Reese’s people apparently aren’t that crafty. I mean, come on, calling their Trees “trees” is being quite generous. So I can only imagine that an attempt at a menorah would wind up resembling one of Matisse’s leaf designs or something. But, like, Matisse’s b@stard step-brother or something.).
Which brings me to my final story for the day, which recalls an episode of “Writing 100 With Professor Plume” (uh, I just decided to call myself that). So, my students are required to research a tortured poet (one whom we are not already studying), present upon that poet’s life, and then offer a detailed analysis on one specific work that was influenced by aforementioned torture. OK, so one of my students today presented on Thomas Hardy. 
It proved to be a very interesting and lovely presentation, and afterward Presenter Student took questions from her classmates. This is generally when class can go a bit haywire, but in a uniquely informative fashion — I swear, I learn more from my students through their questions than I do through their answers to MY questions. So, OK, Thomas Hardy… my student L. raises her hand and asks (I sh*t you not): “Umm, this is kind of random, but… I was wondering if Thomas Hardy had any relation to the Hardy Boys?”
I AM TOTALLY SERIOUS. This was an actual question.
And I proceeded to almost choke myself with laughter. So then the class basically roared and it was hilarious. I made sure to apologize to L. for laughing and assured her that I was not laughing at HER but rather at the thought of the very fictitious Hardy Boys (whom, by the way, I was surprised my students even KNEW, considering that they were popular when I was a little girl) being related to Jude the Obscure. As it turned out, L. didn’t TOTALLY know who or what the Hardy Boys were; she only knew the name. But some classmates knew… in fact, one said, “Dude, that’s like Nancy Drew and stuff…” . Ahahahahahaha… oh my god. Too freakin’ funny…
Happy weekend.
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