Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum

Emmy Nominations: Where's Friday Night Lights?

2009-07-17T22:07:00.024-04:00

While many of my favorite TV shows received Emmy nominations this week -- Mad Men, Lost -- one particular program, Friday Night Lights, got snubbed in all the major categories and I'm pretty steamed. Connie Britton, who kicked some serious Texas butt as Tami Taylor, the new Dillon High School Principal, got no love. Ditto for Kyle Chandler, who played the restrained and pained Coach Eric Taylor who had to wear a phony let's-just-go-along-to-get-along smile when dealing with J.D. McCoy's crazy dad. The ensemble FNL cast deftly dramatized the gamut of authentic teen angst spanning various socio-economic strata and had one of the most uncomfortable yet realistic feeling mom-daughter sex talks I've ever seen. Shame on the Academy for blowing off this show.

Other things that got my undies in a bundle about this 2009 slate of Emmy nominations:

-- I was pleased as punch to see Gabriel Byrne from HBO's In Treatment among the nominees for lead actor in a drama. I likewise thought it appropriate to honor Hope Davis, who played an unstable New York lawyer who was a patient of Byrne's, but it was a criminal oversight that John Mahoney, who played a disgraced yet proud CEO in the grips of a nervous breakdown, was overlooked in the supporting actor in a drama category. Mahoney acts circles around William Shatner for goodness sake.

-- Big Love had a stellar season, complex and surprising and poignant. The intricately interwoven stories took viewers to fascinating places. Hence it was great to see the HBO drama receive a best drama nomination, but curiously, none of the individual actors or actresses received a nomination. Surely Sally Field could sit one year out from playing a terribly predictable character on Brothers & Sisters to make room for one of the Big Love wives. Maybe for Jeanne Tripplehorn who had a strong season where she faced the threat of a recurrence of cancer, embraced the notion of a fourth wife, was excommunicated from her faith (that Temple episode was something) and had communication problems with her teenaged daughter who got pregnant then lost the baby. (Tripplehorn's Barb should ask Britton's Tami for pointers on how to conduct a good teen sex chat.)

-- This season's Rescue Me on FX has been a revelation, a detailed, painful examination of the long-term impact of 9/11 on the FDNY. A journalist working on a book about 9/11 came into the firehouse and stirred up recollections of that day caused Denis Leary's Tommy Gavin to give up a year's worth of hard-earned sobriety, as Gavin coped with massive personal losses in his life, so overwhelming that he worried that he was losing his capacity to feel anything. And no one, other than Michael J. Fox who played Janet Gavin's boyfriend, gets any Emmy nom love? Not even Leary, especially after the blow-torch scene? That's just cold.

-- Others who got the dramatic acting shaft: Terry O'Quinn from Lost, Patricia Arquette from Medium and January Jones from Mad Men.

Okay, now onto the positive. The rest of the major nominees can be summarized thusly: Mad Men, 30 Rock, cable channels, 30 Rock, Breaking Bad, Tina Fey, Matthew Weiner and the major networks need to take some cues from their cable breathren.

Dramas:

My two favorite shows -- Mad Men and Lost -- are both nominees in the most competitive category on the board. Every show on the expanded best drama category is top-notch. Plenty of super-quality shows didn't make the cut. It's worthwhile to note that among the seven shows nominated, only two are from broadcast networks. Here's the list: Big Love (HBO), Breaking Bad (AMC), Damages (FX), Dexter (Showtime), House (Fox), Lost (ABC) and Mad Men (AMC).

As for dramatic acting nominees, Mad Men's Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss got top nods, awards I hope they wind up receiving on September 20, although both of their leading dramatic categories contain tough challengers. In addition to Hamm, the other actors nominated include AMC pal Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad (AMC), Michael C. Hall from Dexter (Showtime), Hugh Laurie from House (Fox), Byrne from In Treatment (HBO) and Simon Baker from The Mentalist (CBS). On the actress side, Moss is competing against Holly Hunter from Saving Grace (TNT), Kyra Sedgwick from The Closer (TNT), Sally Field from Brothers & Sisters (ABC), Glenn Close from Damages (FX) and Mariska Hargitay from Law & Order SVU (NBC).

In the dramatic supporting acting nominations, I'm going to pick up the pom-poms and cheer for Michael Emerson as the delightfully fiendish Benjamin Linus on Lost. The episode, "The life and death of Jeremy Bentham" and "316" showcased Emerson's talents.

Comedies:

This category is all about Tina Fey, 30 Rock (got 22 nominations) and Saturday Night Live. In this category, the major networks fare better than they do with dramas, mostly thanks to 30 Rock. Ms Fey is having a year isn't she? She's nominated as best leading actress in a comedy, best guest actress in a comedy (her Sarah Palin bits on SNL), her show was nominated as best comedy and its writers snagged four out of the five nominations for best writing for a comedy series. Riding the Fey train are Alec Baldwin as lead actor, Tracy Morgan and Jack McBrayer as supporting comedic actors, Jane Krakowski as supporting comedic actress, three out of the five guest actor in a comedy nominees (Steve Martin, Alan Alda, Jon Hamm) and two guest actress nominees.

The other comedy nominees include: Entourage (HBO), Family Guy (Fox), Flight of the Conchords (HBO), How I Met Your Mother (CBS) and Weeds (Showtime).

In the leading comedic actor category, in addition to Baldwin there's my personal favorite, Steve Carell who was so good as Michael Scott this past year on The Office. After his work following Scott's departure from Dunder Mifflin and the starting the short-lived Michael Scott Paper Company, Carell added so much new life to an older comedic franchise that Carell definitely deserves this nomination and the award.

I'd be stunned if someone other than Fey walks away with the lead comedic actress honor, but I admired the inclusion of Toni Collette who plays a challenging role which could easily slide into camp, on Showtime's United States of Tara. Rounding out the rest of the lead comedic actress nominees are Mary-Louise Parker for Weeds, Sarah Silverman for Sarah Silverman Program (Comedy Central), Julia Louis-Dreyfus' The New Adventures of Old Christine (CBS) and Christina Applegate for Samantha Who (ABC)

Anyone or show about which you're thrilled received an Emmy nomination? Any snubs you're particularly upset about?

Image credit: AMC.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Is It Sexist to Question Sotomayor's Judicial Temperament?

2009-07-15T11:54:00.012-04:00

That was the question raised on MSNBC's Morning Joe this AM: Whether South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham would've asked a male Supreme Court nominee about his reputed tough demeanor in the courtroom and then inquire if the nominee had "a temperament problem."

Co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough asked author and former Clinton spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers -- she wrote Why Women Should Rule the World -- about whether a double-standard was at work with Sotomayor's questioning. After noting that of the 111 Supreme Court judges ever to hold office, only two have been female, Myers discussed the importance of getting more women to serve on the highest court in the land:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Below you'll find the video of Graham's confirmation hearing questioning so you can make your own call on the matter. Citing the comments of anonymous lawyers who called Sotomayor "a terror on the bench," "abuses lawyers" and is "a bit of a bully," Graham said, "I never liked appearing before a judge that I thought was a bully . . . Do you think you have a temperament problem?"

Is this a case of holding strong, tough women -- who insist that those around them exhibit the same level of excellence as they do -- to a different standard than we do to men? The classic "she's a b*&%$" while he's a striving, high-powered executive with smarts?

UPDATE: Salon's Broadsheet blog puts an interesting twist on the "temperament" question, pointing out two examples -- questions about John McCain and John Bolton's temperaments -- which say that simply raising the issue of a hot temper doesn't necessarily make the questioning sexist.

The web site Feministing quoted a former Yale Law School dean who looked into rumors about Sotomayor being "overly aggressive" on the Court of Appeals and said he didn't find any substantial difference between her questioning of attorneys and male judges' inquiries.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Entourage, Wired & a Small Film With a Kid Named Potter

2009-07-15T10:09:00.010-04:00

TV:

-- The sixth season of HBO's testosterone-heavy Entourage premiered on Sunday and I've got to agree with a blogger from New York Magazine who said that it felt a bit dated with stuff like Vinnie appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, given that Conan O'Brien has taken the reins. Ari made reference to his agency signing the star of My Name is Earl, a show that's now cancelled. "For a show that derives a great deal of its energy from the fact that it's supposed to feel recent and insider-y to viewers, these two factual slipups have us thinking that the show's creators are committed to once again running this season on autopilot," wrote Mark Graham.

That being said, it was a surprisingly mellow, low-keyed Entourage premiere, which quietly established the groundwork for the boys to finally be showing some inklings of budding maturity and no longer acting like, in Sloan's words, they live in "a frat house." It's about damned time. The women on this show always seemed light-years more mature than the men, except for E, who seemed like the only responsible boy in the bunch, though he has been susceptible to caving into pressure to be cool and go out with the dudes. (Vinnie is JUST getting his driver's license? How much arrested development does Vinnie have?) Will something like a suddenly mature Turtle change the dynamics of the show? Of course, but change can be good. Just ask the Lost people.

Additionally, I loved the Mad Men reference when Ari defended drinking the office in the middle of the day and Lloyd quipped that it won't seem so cool when the AMC show flashes forward to the 1970s and Don Draper & Co. have heart and liver disease.

-- Watched some of the episodes from the final season of Gilmore Girls that I DVRed over the past few weeks. ABC Family, which has been running Gilmore Girls repeats for years, in June finally got permission to air the final season, the one which saw Lorelai and Christopher marry, then divorce; Lane have twins and Rory graduate from Yale and turn down a marriage proposal while she went off to cover the Obama campaign. I only saw those episodes once after they were aired, so it's been nice to see them again, though the seventh season wasn't one of my favorites. Whenever I catch episodes from the first two seasons, I realize how much of that distinct, fresh, quirky something the later seasons were missing.

-- Are money and ratings the only reasons for the MLB All-Star Game to start at 8 p.m.? (Actually, the first pitch didn't happen until 8:50 p.m.) If this is supposed to be "America's favorite pastime," why is it on TV so late? Why can't it take place on a weekend day so that kids and people who work for a living can watch it? My children went to bed at 10 p.m. and only were able to catch an hour of actual play. (I DVRed the rest of it for them and they'll watch it later.) I'm completely on board with a column Stephen King wrote a while back in Entertainment Weekly lamenting this late-night practice and how TV had "ruined" baseball.

-- I'm eagerly anticipating the arrival -- via snail mail -- of Mad Men's season two DVDs. (Is it time for that show to premiere yet?) I'll be sure to post here after I've soaked it all in.

Films:

-- There's a minor movie that just came out last night, at midnight to be exact. You might've heard of it. The lead character's name is something like Palmer? Or Puddy?

My twin 10-year-olds have been literally counting down the hours until we go to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince tomorrow afternoon (tomorrow's the earliest when we can get someone to watch our nearly 8-year-old for whom I believe the film might be too intense). I must admit that I'm kind of psyched to see it as well. Brings out the kid in me. Here's to hoping the film's solid.

-- Over the weekend, The Spouse and I watched Iron Man with Robert Downey Jr. This was one of the films he'd added to our Netflix queue after he found the list to be too heavy with thinky, independent films, TV shows (The West Wing's on the list), romantic comedies and kids' fare. He joked that he'd injected more action-oriented testosterone into the list.

When we sat down to watch Iron Man, I fully expected to hate it, but surprisingly didn't. In fact, I found it very entertaining -- I had no idea there was an Iraq/military arms supplier backstory -- and stayed awake throughout the entire thing. (This is significant because we didn't start the movie until 10 p.m. after a long day of running around with the three kids.) The other Netflix movie sitting next to the TV: Milk. Might have to ply The Spouse with some caffeine beforehand.
Books/Magazines:

-- I finally finished re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and have commenced my second pass through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I'd forgotten how deeply depressing the seventh book of the Potter series is. Nothing but downer after downer. Bleakness everywhere. Kind of puts me in a dour mood. In that world, it sucks to be Harry Potter.

-- I just got the August issue of Wired Magazine in the mail and found it to be packed with intriguing stories and blurbs. (FYI: My liking it has nothing to do with the fact that Brad Pitt is on the cover.) There are pieces on the etiquette of social media -- like should you follow your boss and your boss's boss on Twitter AND friend them on Facebook? -- and a brief musing on something I'd never heard of: a single-serving web site.

What's on your Pop Culture agenda this week? You planning on seeing THE movie of the summer?

Image credit: Warner Brothers via the Examiner.

It's Coming . . . 'Mad Men's' Third Season

2009-07-14T17:03:00.003-04:00

And here's the AMC art to prove it.

Image credit: AMC via the New York Post.

'Army Wives' Monday: Family Readiness

2009-07-13T20:44:00.012-04:00

* Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Army Wives *

While the title of this episode was "Family Readiness," I think a better title would've been "Power Struggles . . . and Hey, Denise and Frank Got Back Together." Other title suggestions could be, "Let's All Act Passive-Aggressively Toward Our Spouses and Didja Hear About Denise and Frank?" Speaking of which . . .

Denise and Frank

The reunion of Denise and Frank overshadowed everything else that happened in the episode. The way their story was built up, with the soft music and the longing, heartfelt glances, if those two had not reunited, I would've been mighty steamed.

There was Frank looking forlorn in his bedroom after Denise moved out, peering in her empty closet, handling the family heirloom locket he'd given her -- their wedding photo inside, and breaking into tears. Then there was the sadness that seemed to be oozing out of Denise's pores when she was packing up her things and moving out of the house. She told Claudia Joy, "I had this overwhelming desire to put on one of Frank's T-shirts and crawl into our bed and smell him on our pillows and to fall asleep feeling safe again."

I suppose it takes a serious threat to a marriage to make you realize the things that made you fall in love with the person in the first place, make you remember the good times. Will this saved-from-the-brink 20-year-marriage have a happy ending? Can it erase the difficulties that they've had, like for example, the disagreement over the changes in Denise's life and her desire to be more independent while Frank wanted her to remain the same gal he'd married?

At least we know that Denise'll be back in the Fort Marshall fold, but she'll need a job, as I don't think the hospital will be taking her back any time soon.

Chase and Pamela

Talk about lack of communication, the Morans were suffering from this in spades, as well as a major case of passive aggression.

Consider this exchange after Chase unilaterally announced that he was going to Texas for six weeks for a voluntary training session soon after he got home. When Pamela asked him why he decided to leave again so quickly when he didn't have to, he said, "It's pretty obvious I'm not really needed around here . . . Ever since I came home, everything I do is wrong. I throw bottles in the wrong trash can. I put clothes in the wrong part of the closet. . . I can't even find things in my drawer."

This set Pamela off: "Chase, I moved this whole house all by myself. Do I get so much as a 'thank you?' No! You just complain about the furniture."

"It's furniture that I paid for okay?"

"Oh," she said, "you do NOT want to go here."

"I can't even take my own son to football practice. I can't even control my own schedule," he said, referring to the fact that Pamela's now coaching football and he had to take his daughter to ballet class.

"You can't just come back in and take over," Pamela said.

In a move I completely did not buy, Chase apologized to Pamela in the middle of Roland and Joan's baby's christening. "It's gotta be hard to be both mom and dad when I'm gone," he said. "I called off my trip to Fort Hood." Something tells me that it just can't be that easy to paper over the Moran family power struggle with a single kiss on the hand.

Claudia Joy and Michael

Claudia Joy made a decision, get this, without Michael's advance okay. She agreed to have an injured Iraqi girl who needs surgery -- whose family risked and subsequently lost their lives via a bomb blast for serving as interpreters for the Army -- stay at the Holdens' house. Claudia Joy felt a special kinship to the lost girl and agreed to take her in, no doubt thinking about how she lost her own daughter in a bomb blast. When Claudia Joy first raised the subject to Michael, he vigorously objected, until she informed him that it was already a done deal. "Michael, it's the right thing to do," she said.

What did you think of the recent Army Wives' episode, particularly the Denise and Frank reunion?

Image credit: Lifetime.

Parents of Teen in the Infamous "Leering" Photo Reportedly Furious

2009-07-13T12:42:00.007-04:00

The parents of the 17-year-old high school student who appears to have had her behind ogled during the G8 summit last week by Nicholas Sarkozy and maybe/maybe not Barack Obama (you've got to see the video tape before making a call on Obama) are livid that their daughter, who they described as "timid and ashamed of her body" and "dedicated to helping the poor, not to seducing world leaders," is at the center of an international booty scandal.

The New York Post caught up with her parents, who are seriously steamed. The Post quoted her father as saying: "Why are they looking at her like that? This is a girl who is articulate and intelligent and just wants to to the right thing. Instead, they are forcing her into a negative light."

He added, "That photograph has ruined my whole family."

She's collateral damage in a tabloid world.

Image credit: New York Post.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Palin's Meta-Working Mom Tale & Women on the Supreme Court

2009-07-13T10:16:00.008-04:00

Palin's Meta-Working Mom Tale

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's shocking resignation continues to generate comment, analysis and interest. An image of Palin signing a toddler's dress takes up a third+ of the top half of the front page of the New York Times, 10 days after her ambiguous July 4 Eve press conference. The Times story paints a woman who's feeling so besieged and stressed out that her hair has thinned and her friends worry that she's become underweight.

I joined the fray of analysts and deconstructed Palin's resignation in my Pop Culture column this week by saying that what you think about her and her decision to quit mid-way through her term, depends largely upon your political perspective and your life's experiences. For me, I view her story through a working mom prism.

Women on the Supreme Court

The only female jurist currently sitting on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsberg gave a fascinating interview to the New York Times Sunday Magazine in which she talked at length about her experience on the Court and how being female has affected her experience. Among the questions she fielded was about how having only one or two women on the Supreme Court affects deliberation.

When asked why it matters to have women on the Court, Ginsberg invoked the Sotomayor confirmation hearings saying, "It matters for women to be there at the conference table to be doing everything that the court does. I hope that these hearings for Sonia [Sotomayor] will be as civil as mine were and [Justice] Steve Breyer's were. Ours were unusual in that respect."

The exchange below I found particularly intriguing:

New York Times: Did you think that all the attention to the criticism of Sotomayor as being "bullying" or not as smart is sex-inflected? Does that have to do with the rarity of a woman in her position, and the particular challenges?

Ginsberg: I can't say that it was just that she was a woman. There are some people in Congress who would criticize severely anyone President Obama nominated. They'll seize on any handle. One is that she's a woman, another is that she made the remark about Latina women. [In 2001 Sotomayor said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."] And I thought it was ridiculous for them to make a big deal out of that. Think of how many times you've said something that you didn't get out quite right, and you would edit your statement if you could. I'm sure she meant no more than what I mean when I say: Yes, women bring a different life experience to the table. All our differences make the conference better. That I'm a woman, that's part of it, that I'm Jewish, that's part of it, that I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and I went to summer camp in the Adirondacks, all these things are part of me.

Once Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor was questioning counsel at oral argument. I thought she was done, so I asked a question, and Sandra said: Just a minute, I'm not finished. So I apologized to her and she said: It's okay, Ruth. The guys do it to each other all the time, they step on each other's questions. And then there appeared an item in USA Today, and the headline was something like "Rude Ruth Interrupts Sandra."

Ginsberg is likely to be joined soon by Sotomayor, who's going through the Senate confirmation process where she'll be asked to defend/explain some of her more controversial statements, particularly the Latina woman quip. One thing's for sure, the Court needs women. I cannot imagine what men would say or feel if the highest court in the land didn't have anyone representing the male half of the citizenry.

Image credit: Ruven Afanador/NYT.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Did He Or Didn't He Ogle That Gal's Behind?

2009-07-10T16:45:00.007-04:00

Everyone's been talking about it.

The photo.

Of Barack Obama, Nicholas Sarkozy and that shapely gal.

DID Barack Obama ogle that woman in the way it appears in the photo that's been the lead image on the Drudge Report all day?

Look at ABC's Good Morning America's video and judge for yourself:

Image credit: The Drudge Report.

'Rescue Me:' Having a Great Fifth Season

2009-07-08T16:49:00.019-04:00

I've been extremely impressed with the fifth season of Denis Leary's gritty firefighter drama Rescue Me on FX. It's had more than its share of insanely dark moments, from Tommy Gavin (Leary) announcing to an AA meeting that not only had he resumed drinking but that he was enjoying it, to Tommy seeking to prove that he wasn't dead inside, that he still had tears left to shed, because he could feel his thigh being scorched by a blow torch. There's been Sean Garrity's (Steve Pasquale) kidney cancer, which was thought to have been caused by the rescue work he did at Ground Zero in the days after 9/11.

But there have also been ample moments of humorous awkwardness:

-- The unorthodox back "treatment" at the chiropractic offices.

-- The we're-so-happy-and-a-walking-Talbots-ad charade Tommy and Janet Gavin (Andrea Roth) put on when they visited Katy's super-snooty boarding school, including Janet's kick-ass verbal take-down of the insufferable snobby parents.

-- Michael J. Fox's turn as Janet's psycho, violent boyfriend Dwight who gave new meaning to the word "ball-buster."

-- The sheer illogic behind the Janet-Tommy-Sheila (Callie Thorne) sex-with-no-strings troika that's bound to blow up at any moment. Seriously, not a single one of them is completely sane. I predict major ugliness by the end of the season.

-- Shawn (Larenz Tate) has been trying to woo Colleen Gavin (Natalie Distler), despite her, shall we say, daunting amount of sexual experience which initially turned him off. (Do you seriously want to know what was up with the peanut butter?)

-- Can't forget Garrity's drug-induced song-and-dance fantasies, where he donned a top hat and tails and belted out show tunes, as he lay in a hospital bed after his cancer surgery.

However it was the return to 9/11 as the source of many of Tommy's issues which have grounded this drama, returned it to its raison d'etre. The presence of a French journalist in the firehouse, pressing people about their recollections of that day and inquiring about its lasting impact, stirred the pot. The sexy French journalist, over whom Tommy and Lou fought, handed Tommy a DVD with some 9/11 footage to review. While watching it, Tommy realized that his cousin died when the second tower collapsed, not the first, because he saw Jimmy, alive in the footage. Later, as he and the writer were sitting in a restaurant overlooking Ground Zero and discussing the loss of his cousin that day, Tommy ordered and drank a scotch, poignantly leaving his one-year sobriety chip inside the glass.

In that moment, Tommy decided to resume his drinking ways. His lunatic Uncle Teddy (Lenny Clarke) only made matters worse when he told Tommy that the best way to come to terms with Tommy's father's death was to watch a DVD (again with the DVD) of family home movies with a big scotch and have a good cry. However when Tommy couldn't cry, he worried that he'd become devoid of feeling in the wake of 9/11 and the deaths of his son, his brother and his father, hence his drunken application of a blow torch's flame to his bare thigh, so he could feel something, literally and emotionally.

After the "Torch" episode, the most disturbing of the Rescue Me installments this season, the show didn't flail around in hopelessness. The very next episode was largely devoted to the guys from the firehouse breaking the rules in order to give kids battling cancer some joy by bringing fire trucks to the hospital where Garrity was recovering from cancer surgery. When a kid with absentee parents took off with the rig and Tommy chased it down in the department SUV with a "cancer kid" named Timmy riding shotgun, there was an essence of gallows humor when Timmy, who said he knew he was going to die from cancer, told Tommy that after that thrilling car chase, he could now die, satisfied.

What have you thought about Rescue Me's fifth season? How does it compare to previous seasons?

Image credit: FX.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: HawthoRNe, Two CBS Pilots, Mad Men, Time Traveler's Wife

2009-07-08T10:46:00.022-04:00

News:

The dominant news story of the week -- Michael Jackson's memorial service -- was also dominant in my house as I had it playing on TV and am not ashamed to admit that I was moved by several aspects of it, from the displays of genuine emotion from usually polished performers, to the raw, heart-rending pain exhibited by Jackson's 11-year-old daughter. I downloaded some of Jackson's biggest hits to my three kids' iPods this week and have periodically found myself unconsciously humming either "Billie Jean" or "Wanna Be Startin' Something" as I feel as though I've been marinating in Jackson music.

Of course there was also the Sarah Palin bombshell dropped late Friday -- that not only was she not running for re-election, but that she was quitting the Alaska governor's post by the end of this month. I'll have more on that in my next Pop Culture & Politics column. Stay tuned.

In other pop culture/news for the week . . .

TV:

-- I caught up on TNT's HawthoRNe, starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Michael Vartan (Alias). I'm willing to give it a little latitude because I like both Vartan and Pinkett Smith. But other than laudably portraying a strong working mom role model, Nurse Christina Hawthorne seems too good to be a modern leading TV character.

I've grown way too accustomed to seeing leading characters who engage in anti-heroic behavior. Like Gregory House who's an excellent doctor -- someone you'd want to take care of you or someone you love in a medical crisis -- but he's got the social skills of a wasp, is horrifically inappropriate and is hooked on pain meds. (Plus he was sent to a mental institution at the end of the season.) Then there's Showtime's Nurse Jackie who's a dedicated nurse who'll do whatever it takes for a patient even if it means risking her job, but she's got a nasty Percocet habit and she's cheating on her husband. Her flaws make her seem more down-to-earth.

I'm not saying Pinkett Smith's Hawthorne has to start drinking (a la Rescue Me's Tommy Gavin), taking drugs or behaving in wildly inappropriate ways, but I tend to gravitate toward more realistic, flawed character. Let Hawthorne get a little more messy, and I'll be on board. Plus I like Vartan, did I say that already?

-- I watched screeners for two new CBS shows premiering in late September. Loved one of the pilots and need to see more before rendering a judgment on the second.

The Good Wife, starring the always-compelling Julianna Margulies (ER), Chris Noth (Sex and the City) and Josh Charles (Sports Night), is gonna be a regularly DVRed show in my house. I was really disappointed last year when Margulies' gritty Canterbury's Law was canceled after only a few episodes. That show -- set in Rhode Island about a troubled lawyer who was in the midst of divorcing her husband after the pain of their young son's disappearance became too much for them to bear -- was fantastic but the ratings, eh, not so much.

I'm hopeful that The Good Wife has better staying power. It seems to have a timely hook: Margulies plays a lawyer who gave up her practice as a defense attorney in order to raise her two children and to support her husband's -- Noth's -- political career . . . until his career as a state's prosecutor went down in flames following his affairs with prostitutes and criminal charges that he abused his office. After selling the family house to pay his legal fees, moving to an apartment and with her husband incarcerated, Margulies has to re-enter the workforce after having been out of a courtroom for more than a dozen years. She doesn't appear to be planning to divorce her lying and cheating spouse, but the sordid taint of his actions sticks to her professionally and personally. I have my fingers crossed for this one.

Accidentally on Purpose is a sitcom with an on-paper interesting premise: Jenna Elfman's Billie Chase is a thirtysomething newspaper movie critic who, after dating her newspaper's owner (Grant Show from Melrose Place) for three years, broke up with him when he said he wouldn't get married. In short order, she picked up a twentysomething boy toy at a bar and "accidentally" got pregnant. He moved into her tastefully decorated apartment because she didn't think she could, in good conscience, allow the father of her unborn kid to live in his beat-up van. Elfman's character is winningly fast-talking -- a la Lorelai Gilmore -- but the pilot seemed like was trying too hard and larded itself up with forced jokes about cougars and "young candy." The premise reminded me of the Uma Thurman movie Prime, only with too many bad puns. I'm going to wait to see more episodes to see if the forced artifice gets dialed back before I deciding whether this one will earn my regular viewing.

-- In preparation for the beginning of the third season of the exquisite Mad Men, I've been again watching season one episodes on DVD. I realized that I miss Rachel Menken and Midge Daniels. They had a lot more going for them than Bobbie Barrett, a character who I despised and who I think was an overt indication of the swirling despair into which Don Draper was sinking last season.

Books:

I'm almost to the end of my second reading of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and am kind of putting off finishing it. If you've read it, you know why I'm procrastinating. (I'm at the part in the cave, with the green liquid.) Once I've finished with the sixth Potter installment and feel prepared to compare and contrast the book with the film being released next week, I've pulled The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger from my bookshelf to re-read because the film's coming out next month. I haven't read it in years, so I'm wondering how much I'll remember.

What's been on your pop culture/news agenda this week?

Image credit: TNT.

'Away We Go' Taps Parents' Paranoia

2009-07-06T14:51:00.007-04:00

Full disclosure: I went into Sam Mendes' new film Away We Go with low expectations. After having been burned by my sky-high expectations for the period film Revolutionary Road, which starred Mendes' Oscar winning wife Kate Winslet, I girded myself for a sanctimonious head-scratcher that would leave me feeling disappointed.

I'm happy to report that I was thoroughly charmed by Away We Go.

The film had its heart in just the right place. Though I did not buy John Krasinksi (of The Office) as a guy who successfully sells insurance to insurance companies while walking around looking like an unmade bed with a mop of untidy hair, huge beard and rumpled outfits, I found the relationship between Krasinski's Burt and Maya Rudolph's (SNL) Verona as pitch perfect. They portray an unmarried thirtysomething couple in search of the right community in which to raise their unborn daughter, though the film winds up being more about finding the right mindset in which to start a family.

My Pop Culture & Politics column this week discusses Burt & Verona's attempt to figure out if there's a way they, or anyone for that matter, can raise a kid together without screwing her up.

'Army Wives' Monday: Disengagement

2009-07-06T13:42:00.017-04:00

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Army Wives*

The gals made up. Joan felt spiritual. Roxy resurrected The Hump Bar. Pamela moved furniture.

The Gals Made Up

You knew this Cold War wouldn't go on forever. The show IS called Army Wives. And if a bunch of the wives are acting like knuckleheads and ostracizing one of their own -- a star of the show -- you know that, eventually, they're going to have to make up. Just like you know that Denise isn't really going to go to Denver to work as a traveling nurse. Like the Holden family didn't really move to Brussels. The mere suggestion that one of the main characters will go anywhere other than to the front lines -- the show has two locales: Iraq, where the spouses are serving and Fort Marshall -- is, to me, simply an attempt to provide dramatic tension. Let's face it, Denise isn't going anywhere and it was only a matter of time before those unfaithful, intolerant friends of hers came to their senses. (If Denise does move away, I'll be shocked.)

Anyyyway . . . The apology Claudia Joy, Pamela and Roxy gave Denise for their collective cold shoulders (prompted only AFTER Roland called BS on their behavior and abandonment, which they continued to defend) was lukewarm at best. "The last few weeks have, um, they've been hard on all of us," said Claudia Joy, who irritated me with her disingenuousness, particularly when Denise is living in a hotel, lost her job and her life is in tatters. "Maybe we could've done things differently. I know I could have. I'm sorry."

Pamela came the closest to truth telling when she said, "We're pretty much idiots."

This "apology," along with the group hug that concluded the fifth episode, was the only bright spot for Denise who had to watch her husband Frank sign their divorce papers (effective in 30-60 days) without blinking. She'd been hoping he'd change his mind, rip up the papers and declare his love for her. But he and his pride simply signed on the dotted line. Previews for next week hint at a possible warming of relations between the two, but it's hard to tell if they'll reconcile. If they don't, as far as the storyline is concerned, Denise will have to move off the base and find work nearby in order to remain in the loop with the other Wives. My bet is that she and Frank will eventually reconcile in order to keep the core group of wives together. But I could be wrong, it's been known to happen. We'll see.

Joan Felt Spiritual

I really like the way the writers have been quietly and gracefully depicting Joan getting herself emotionally and mentally prepared to redeploy to Iraq. Now that she has a baby, everything about her deployment is different than her previous tour of duty, and Joan realizes that, hence her determination to get her baby baptized and find her a spiritual community before leaving for Iraq. And by portraying Joan as someone who's not a church-goer -- though her husband is -- but who feels strongly spiritual, I think nicely dovetails with all the emotions she's feeling right now as a loving mother and wife who willingly chose to go to a war zone out of duty.

Roxy Resurrected The Hump Bar

Betty's -- which looked like a suburban chain restaurant with tasteful, multi-colored walls and a slightly upscale menu -- has been transformed into a skankier version of The Hump Bar, particularly with the creepy new "chef," named Chief. Peanut shells are on the floor. Tin buckets serve as centerpieces. Beers are in plastic cups (which reminds me of college keg parties). A Ladies' Night with a free drink to women has been instituted and a hot waitress in a tight shirt has been selected to work the tables. That's all quite a bit of change in a small period of time, not all of it desired or approved by the bar's actual owner, Roxy.

What puzzles me is how and why Roxy is willing to continually allow people she barely knows to assume such big roles in her life. Roxy, a mom of two, married Trevor after knowing him for all of four days. After the original bar owner Betty died and left Roxy her bar, Roxy let someone who claimed to be Betty's "nephew" assume half of the business -- almost let him buy "her half" from her for a song -- only to later learn that he was a con artist. Now has Roxy befriended Viola, who seems nice and pleasant and has an economic hardship story (her son invested her life's savings in hedge funds, the money's gone and she's about to lose her home) and who has begged to work with Roxy. Roxy handed her the keys, then, in a matter of hours when Roxy was attending her kids' school play, Viola made unauthorized drastic changes and got ticked and huffy when Roxy balked at Viola's ballsy power play. This is no way to run a business, especially with someone you barely even know but in whom you've already pledged your faith. Maybe I'm just being cynical.

Pamela Moved Furniture

Just how many times did Pamela move the living room furniture back into a family-friendly arrangement to make it easier for she and the kids to watch TV together while sitting on the sofa? How many times did her husband Chase -- who just returned from duty to the new home Pamela had gotten for the family -- selfishly rearrange the furniture to assert himself as the head of the household by relocating his recliner right in front of the TV and the sofa off to the side of the room?

"So Chase is gone for weeks at a time," Pamela fumed to Roxy, saying Chase complained about the sofa, the new dishes and how she throws the football. "I look after the kids. I look after the house. I move the damn house. And he comes in and he thinks he can change everything. He even hates where I keep the toilet paper."

Between the battle over the furniture and over who's teaching their son how to throw a football the right way, clearly there's a huge blow-out argument in the works as Pamela and Chase are not dealing with one another directly and are simply behaving passive aggressively. Plus, Pamela's not big on tact.

Are you satisfied with the "apology" given to Denise? Do you think Joan will actually go overseas? What do you make of Roxy's new bar? What'd you think of the episode?

Image credit: Lifetime.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Palin Stuns, Resigns

2009-07-03T17:26:00.014-04:00

If any American governor were to announce a resignation the day before Independence Day, I would've bet you a bundle that it would've been South Carolina's head honcho who would've quit so he could spend more time in Argentina snogging with his gal pal.

I certainly didn't expect, in the 3 o'clock hour on the Friday before a holiday weekend when many people were already on vacation, to learn that Sarah Palin was quitting her gubernatorial post.

After watching the nationally televised speech made in her backyard -- intermittently disrupted by the sounds of a baby and various birds chirping in the background -- here's what I gathered: Palin's angry that she's been the subject of 15+ ethics investigations in Alaska that she said have cost the state in excess of $2 million and have cost her and her husband Todd personally $500,000 in legal fees to fight. (She pointed out that the charges were all dropped.)

"It's pretty insane," Palin said. "My staff and I spend most of our day dealing with this stuff."

Saying that she wanted to spare Alaskans the money and the distractions caused by the multitude of negative attacks aimed at her, Palin said she was removing herself from the ring. "I chose not to tear down and waste precious time," she said. ". . . Life is too short to compromise time and resources."

Palin also mentioned the emotional cost borne by her family -- she specifically mentioned folks recently "mocked and ridiculed" her baby Trig -- as yet another reason to resign and not spend time on "superficial, wasteful political blood sport."

"It hurts to make this choice," Palin added. It did not appear as though there were any members of the media present during her speech to pose questions.

When her speech ended, cable talking heads and political pundits were slack-jawed. Many called her decision "erratic," stunningly short-sighted and "political suicide" to appear to knuckle under to the pressure. Others said it was the first chess move for the 2012 presidential race that would enable her to concentrate on building political support "in the lower 48 states." Over on MSNBC, they've been quoting NBC vet Andrea Mitchell as saying that Palin is "out of politics for good."

Palin's Twitter account said, "We'll soon attach info on decision to not seek re-election . . . this is in Alaska's best interest, my family's happy . . . it is good. Stay tuned." I heard Palin's brother and spokeswoman on various TV interviews and neither would say exactly what Palin's plans are once she leaves the governor's office.

Palin has been in the news as of late following her highly publicized feud with David Letterman where she defended her daughters against some of his crude jokes, as well as for being the subject of a harsh Vanity Fair piece snarkily entitled, "It Came From Wasilla."

I'm stunned and will be interested and intrigued to see what comes next.

Image credit: The Drudge Report.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Jon Stewart's Advice to SC Governor

2009-07-03T12:19:00.010-04:00

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

There's a reason that's a cliche Governor Sanford. And, as a married father of four boys, it's one you should've heeded some time ago before your name evoked tsking and dark humor from coast to coast.

First you disappeared and the cable news networks became like animated milk cartons, bearing your likeness, age and the location where you were last seen. There were reports from your office saying you were hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Then, lo and behold, when a reporter found you at an Atlanta airport and you lied about what you'd been doing. Eventually the world learned that you'd been in Argentina to visit your lover.

At this point, it would've been wise to be quiet.

But you didn't. You gave a teary press conference. E-mails exchanged between you and your lover emerged. Amid the chaos, you then agreed to give an AP interview this week where you talked about "almost" crossing the line with other women and how your lover is a "soul mate." News stories have been published saying that you visited your girlfriend more times than you initially admitted.

If Sanford, once considered a potential GOP presidential candidate, has any political advis0rs left, my best guess is that they're headed for Wasilla where their job would seem easy by comparison.

Jon Stewart, among other commentators, had an amusing take on Sanford's inability to keep his mouth shut.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Shut Up, Mark Sanford

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

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Full Episodes

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Jason Jones in Iran

Three Movie Trailers That Tempt Me

2009-07-02T19:35:00.014-04:00

I was in the theater today to see Sam Mendes' Away We Go (I'll post link to my column in this blog once it's published) and saw trailers for two movies that made me say, "I MUST see that." Unless of course the critics uniformly pan the films, in which case I'll be terribly let down but may go ahead and see them anyway.

The first was for the Meryl Streep and Amy Adams movie Julie & Julia which seems similar in concept to The Hours in that it follows the story of two women's lives simultaneously, though the women are living in different time periods and the older woman's book proves as a guide to the younger woman. In the case of this film, we follow Julia Child's humble start in cooking and a cubicle-dweller's quest-- chronicled in a blog -- to follow Child's recipes for a year. My hopes are high that I'll leave the theater feeling inspired. Premieres August 7.

Then I saw the trailer for The Time Traveler's Wife starring Rachel McAdams. I adored this book (and MUST re-read it again before seeing the film) and am really curious how it'll compare to the movie. Total date movie. I've already warned The Spouse that he'll owe me a movie night and I'll be sure to bring plenty of tissues. Premieres August 14.

Then there was this trailer that I spotted on the internet for an upcoming Ricky Gervais comedy -- partly filmed here in Massachusetts -- that used to be called, This Side of the Truth, but has apparently been re-named The Invention of Lying, which takes place in a world where everyone has to tell the truth, but Gervais' character is the only one who has discovered that he can lie and get what he wants. Gervais appears to be tamping down expectations for this movie -- also stars Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey and Rob Lowe -- writing in his blog:

"Dear critics (everyone), when judging the film, please remember that it is a high concept, PG-13 romantic comedy. It's not [Schindler's] List or The Godfather. If you compare it to serious works of genius it will not fair that well."

I think the Gervais film could be a nice bookend to the Time Traveler's film, however it doesn't come out until late September, but, on the plus side for The Spouse, it doesn't appear as though I'll have to bring a box of tissues with me to see it.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Tommy Gavin, Jason Bourne, Harry Potter, Michael Jackson, Sarah Palin & Red Sox

2009-07-01T19:56:00.017-04:00

When I haven't been catching up on the latest news stories about Michael Jackson, the unfaithful South Carolina governor who doesn't know when to shut up, U.S. troops leaving Iraq and about Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell being put on the DL (!), I've been coping with sick kids and have been sick myself . . . but that hasn't stopped me from consuming pop culture and watching Sox games. Here's what I've been up to pop culture-wise this week:

TV:

-- Sox, Sox and more Sox. Mercifully, I didn't watch the entire game when the Sox blew a massive lead -- and "imploded" according to Jonathan Papelbon -- against the Orioles. Silly gal that I was, I thought they were going to win because they were up by so much, so I tuned in to other things, like Rescue Me.

-- I said this last week and I'll say it again this week: Rescue Me has been great this season and has drawn viewers into dark, twisty, unpredictable places. This season warrants a full blog post on its own, particularly given the blow torch scene. Damn!

-- Nurse Jackie: Jackie Peyton's kid is creating drawings sans colors, with no sun in the sky? Sounds like the recent weather around New England. Kidding aside, this dark show has me hook, line and obligatory sinker.

Movies:

-- Adored the Bourne Ultimatum which The Spouse and I saw on DVD. It sparked a heated discussion about who would take who in a fight: Jason Bourne or Jack Bauer. (I say Bourne. Bauer would be too busy yelling, "Dammit!" and trying to get patched in to Chloe on the phone.) While Ultimatum's handheld camerawork made me feel a bit nauseous at times (or it could've been the flu from which I was recovering), I was otherwise highly entertained.

-- What didn't I find so entertaining this week? Planning on watching the cerebral Frost/Nixon film by Ron Howard, only to find that I'd instead ordered from Netflix the ACTUAL Frost-Nixon interviews from the 1970s. At 10 p.m. on a Saturday, I could've stayed up to watch Ron Howard's hyped up dramatic version of the interviews, but I feared the real ones would've put me to sleep. It lies, still unwatched, next to the DVD player.

-- In preparation for a column in which I compare my kids' fascination with all things Harry Potter to my generation's fascination with all things Star Wars, I OD'ed on Potter films, specifically The Chamber of Secrets, The Prisoner of Azkaban and The Order of the Phoenix. I still tear up at the end of Phoenix.

-- In preparation for a different column for a different publication, I'm planning on going to the theater to see the Sam Mendes film starring The Office's John Krasinski called Away We Go. It's been a tad challenging to find it playing at a theater near me, seeing as though it doesn't have a massive, nationwide distribution. I can't decide whether to keep my expectations low or not, given that I really did NOT like the last Mendes film, Revolutionary Road.

Books:

-- I'm continuing to re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as we're now at T-minus two+ weeks and counting before the film version is released.

Magazines/Newspapers:

-- I've not yet read the Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin -- "It Came From Wasilla" -- but from what I've read on the internet, it sounds like it may well be a polarizing piece about a woman who's controversial herself. It's on my "must read" list.

-- I read a thought-provoking column in the New York Times over the weekend which mused about whether Michael Jackson is truly the last, worldwide mega-star who spans the generations. His music, the article suggests, was popular in the pre-internet days/pre-iTunes/pre-fractured pop culture world, when everyone watched MTV when it still played music videos. I tried to think of another cultural figure who is vastly popular with a wide swath of people, whose accomplishments affect people of varying backgrounds and nationalities, and who would cause people to spontaneously gather to celebrate and the only name that popped into my mind was Oprah. Do you think Times writer David Segal is right when he speculates that there will be no more mega-, multi-generational celebrities like Jackson?

Image credit: Vanity Fair/Risko.

Three New 'Mad Men' Promos

2009-06-29T13:24:00.010-04:00

AMC has put together three new Mad Men promos for season three (starts in August). The promos don't contain any new scenes, but instead are culled from the first two seasons.

The dramatic promo:

The romantic:

The comedic:

The third season begins Sunday, August 16 at 10 p.m. I need a new Don Draper fix.

'Army Wives' Monday: Incoming

2009-06-29T11:45:00.016-04:00

*Warning -- Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Army Wives.*

Denise got the boot. The Holdens officially moved back to Fort Marshall. Joan decided to go to Iraq while Roland got a full-time job.

Denise Got the Boot

I don't know why this particular storyline bugs me so much. Maybe it's because I feel badly for a character who mustered up the courage to try to follow her own path after dedicating most of her adult life -- since she was 19 -- to her family. The last two decades were about them. And with her husband serving overseas and her grown son also in the Army, Denise decided to make the rest of her life about figuring out things for herself. Sure, she made plenty of mistakes along the way, mistakes she now regrets, particularly the brief fling with a former patient (which got her fired from her nursing job) when she and her husband were separated. Denise was changing and her husband Frank didn't like that she was no longer the same woman he married when she was a teenager.

Frank -- who you might recall kissed a female colleague during his Iraq deployment -- has been humiliated by the fact that everyone found out about Denise's fling. And that seems to be all that matters to him: His pride. When he walked through the front door of his Fort Marshall home after being sent stateside to repair the wreckage that is his marriage, Frank said, "All I need to know, is it true?"

"It was a mistake," Denise said evenly, slowly. "And it's over and I regret it more than you can know. But, yes."

"In that case, I don't see any reason for you to stay here," he said brusquely, businesslike, as he told her he'd be calling his lawyers in the morning, presumably to start divorce proceedings. The woman who dedicated her adult life to her husband and son was kicked out of the house.

On top of that, Claudia Joy was insufferably sanctimonious when she ran into Denise in the PX parking lot. When Denise admitted that her feelings were hurt when Claudia Joy shut the door in her face the day Denise was fired, Claudia Joy shot back, "Denise, you are not the victim here . . . You brought this on yourself. You can't blame everyone around you for not knowing how to react. I've been trying to make some sense of what you did, but for the life of me, I can't."

"Well, I guess that makes two of us," Denise replied.

Make that three of us. The way all of Denise's so-called Army wives "friends," with the exception of Roland, have abandoned her in a moment of personal crisis still befuddles me. I can understand Frank feeling humiliated and taking it out on Denise (though I hope he comes to his senses), but for Claudia Joy to be so holier than thou? That, I don't get, particularly when Denise has admitted she made a mistake and wants to, for lack of a better word, atone.

The Holdens Officially Moved Back

The return of Brigadier Gen. Michael Holden back to Fort Marshall seemed awfully contrived. It didn't seem to make any sense that, after less than a month, Michael was booted from NATO and reassigned to SAME Army base and could keep the SAME house, even though another family had been preparing to move in. Clearly the whole "the-Holdens-are-moving-to-Brussels" was simply a season finale stunt that didn't quite work out in the long run.

Meanwhile, as Emmalin walked around like a ticking time bomb -- which her father is conveniently ignoring, wishfully thinking that her bad attitude and acts of rebellion (like attempting to elope at age 16, coloring her hair pink) will go away if he simply takes a firm paternal mien -- Claudia Joy is back in her crisp attire and spending all of her time unpacking. I, frankly, liked Claudia Joy a whole lot better when she was home without Michael, coping and advocating for Emmalin. I'm waiting for Claudia Joy to step up and deal with Emmalin, in other ways than simply serving tofurkey for dinner.

Joan to Go to Iraq

This was the most potentially dramatic story, I thought, of this fourth episode of the season. Roland had been feeling underused professionally while working part-time at night at the Army hospital in order to take care of his daughter during the day when Joan went to work on the base. He was talked into taking a full-time job, which has daycare, in order to partner up with a psychologist who's working with folks who've been traumatized after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and who aren't necessarily getting the care they need through the Army. Roland is clearly setting himself up for a clash with Army officials when he eventually advocates for a patient to get treatment which the Army denies. I think it could provide a great jumping off point for a larger discussion on soldiers' post-deployment health and mental/emotional care.

Then there was his wife Joan, who passed up the chance to remain on base with her family and work with Michael, in order to assume a battlefield commander post in Iraq. While turning down Michael's offer, Joan said: "As a wife and mother, I really appreciate the chance to stay with my family, but as a leader of a brigade, I feel obligated to lead my soldiers in Iraq and to get them home safely to their families. Sir, I am requesting the privilege to deploy."

I wonder how many parents -- dads or moms -- would make the same choice? Will Roland be as understanding as the Army wives are about their husbands' call to duty, like Trevor Leblanc's openly stated desire to return to Iraq? Or will this story play out differently because she's a mother instead of a father?

What say you, Army Wives fans? What'd you think of this episode?

Image credit: Lifetime.

'13 Going on 30' 'Thriller' Scene

2009-06-26T14:08:00.006-04:00

In my blog post about Michael Jackson's death, I invoked my inner teenager who grew up on Jackson music . . . which got me to thinking about Jackson's music and the Jennifer Garner movie, 13 Going on 30. (It was like Tom Hanks' Big, only with a girl.)

Garner played a 13-year-old girl named Jenna Rink, circa the mid-1980s, who was at an awkward time in her childhood and imagined that when she turned 30, she'd have it all together. Then, through the magic of movies, her teenaged mindset was transported to her 30-year-old self in 2004 and she found out that she'd become a cut-throat, heartless editor at a fashion magazine who made poor choices in her life.

The scene below portrayed a party thrown by Jenna's magazine which was completely bombing. Techno music had been playing and the whole soiree was so self-consciously "cool" that it was practically Arctic . . . that is, until Jenna, with her 13-year-old perspective, asked the DJ to play "Thriller." And it eventually warmed up the crowd and brought folks together, listening to the music of their formative years. (I must confess, however, that I never learned the "Thriller" dance myself, though the song was played at my wedding reception which occurred on Halloween night lo so many years ago.)

Mixed Feelings About Michael

2009-06-26T10:59:00.016-04:00

When I think about the death of Michael Jackson, I do so with mixed feelings.

There's the 13-year-old girl in me who fondly recalls dancing (or what I loosely called "dancing") at junior high dances to Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall" and "Thriller" albums. Listening to tunes from those albums now, as an adult, brings me back to a time in my life when I was an innocent, gawky girl who whiled away many hours listening to pop albums and 45s on her very own record player in her room while wearing Bonnie Bell lip gloss and reading Tiger Beat.

Then, that 13-year-old girl faces off with the 40-year-old cynical adult me who can't shake from Jackson's story the chapters on child molestation, the stories about him sleeping in a bed with little boys and the scene of him dangling his baby over a hotel balcony in Germany. When he was on trial in 2005 after being charged with molestation, I clearly remember having to vaguely explain to my then-6-year-old twins what the folks on the radio were talking about, and that the singer Michael Jackson had been accused but found not guilty of doing "bad things."

The two versions of Michael Jackson clashed in my head yesterday when I learned that he had died. I showed my kids videos on YouTube of the songs that provided the soundtrack for my formative years ("Thriller," "Billie Jean," "Beat It" and "Jam" . . . because my kids like hoops, not because it was a classic Jackson song) and said, "THIS is why people are talking about him." Then, later, I had a frank conversation with them saying that in his later years, Jackson was accused of doing bad things to kids. He's both of those guys in many people's minds, particularly if they belong to the so-called Generation X: The brilliant musician and dancer to whom they grew up listening and who had an enormous impact on American music and popular culture, AND a man who was repeatedly accused of sexually preying on children.

In this moment, I'm remembering the Jackson of my youth and posting one of my favorite Jackson songs, "Billie Jean," below.

Michael Jackson MTV Music

Introducing: Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week

2009-06-24T14:07:00.008-04:00

I've always been interested in the weekly feature on Whitney Matheson's blog Pop Candy called "This Week in Pop," in which she tells her readers what things, pop culture-wise, she's reading/watching/listening to, etc. It tends to generate some discussion amongst her readers about their pop culture consumption.

So I've decided to do my own version of a weekly list here on this blog. I'm, cleverly enough, calling it, "Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week." (I know. Title stinks. However if I come up with something with a little more pizazz, you'll be the first to know.) My list will include stuff I'm watching/reading for both business and pleasure.

TV:

-- Watched the latest two episodes On Demand of Edie Falco's Nurse Jackie on Showtime. Her storyline, particularly when it comes to her oldest, anxious daughter, is becoming insidiously nuanced. Three episodes in, I'm hooked.

-- I set the DVR to record TNT's second episode of HawthoRNe (with Jada Pinkett Smith and former Alias hottie Michael Vartan) but it didn't record the show for some reason. Maybe it's the 2,000 episodes of Sonny with a Chance, Jonas episodes and repeats of the Clone Wars cartoons that are clogging up the DVR queue. I'm going to have to watch the new episode online to see how the tone compares to the pilot.

-- Rescue Me. Man, this show is getting as dark and sticky as molasses . . . that's when it's not being interrupted by odd musical numbers starring Sean Garrity in top hat and tails. More on Rescue Me and Tommy Gavin's return to the bottle in a separate blog entry.

-- Da Sox. As in, the Boston Red Sox. You might as well consider this an omnipresent entry on the list. The Sox. On NESN.

Books:

-- I'm working on a column about Hollywood moms so I'm in the middle of reading Tori Spelling's Mommywood. (Seriously, it's for a column . . . to which I'll link in this space later.) I'll also be re-reading a book I read a few years ago, Motherhood and Hollywood by Patricia Heaton for comparison's sake.

-- Although I've got the Mad Man-inspired book of poetry, Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara on my nightstand waiting to be parsed, I went to the movies this weekend with the kiddos (see next item) and saw the trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I read the book last summer and am a bit fuzzy on the details as I zipped through it fairly quickly, so in preparation for the big movie release on July 15, I'm re-reading it.

Magazines:

-- Just read a piece about Jada Pinkett Smith in Redbook about how she and husband Will keep their sex lives spicy. (Key: A change of venue.)

-- Am waiting for a good time to thoroughly read the "Living by the Numbers" package of stories in Wired.

-- Perused Entertainment Weekly's "must list" for summer pop fare. Meryl Streep's new movie about Julia Child looks promising.

Movies:

-- Went to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian over the weekend with The Spouse, the kids and my parents. It was just okay, though the kids laughed, some belly laughs. We'd visited the Air & Space Museum in DC a few summers ago so they remembered some of the exhibits and monuments which were shown in the film. Afterward, they actually asked questions about General Custer and Teddy Roosevelt. If anything, at least the movie sparked a discussion about American history, albeit a minor discussion.

-- The Netflix DVDs sitting by the TV: The Bourne Ultimatum and Frost/Nixon.

-- The Spouse and I caught the last third of Little Miss Sunshine on cable TV over the weekend. I've forgotten how good that movie is. The ending was truly a surprise the first time I saw it.

What are you watching/reading/listening to this week?

Image credit: Scholastic.

Salon's Satirical Spoof of the 'Jon & Kate' Debacle

2009-06-24T12:12:00.004-04:00

Saw this video on the Salon web site by Scott Bateman and laughed, in spite of myself. (Contrary to popular opinion, I feel badly for everyone in the Gosselin family about what's happened to the Gosselin marriage.)

However, this is great satire, particularly the line about the sextuplets possessing nuclear weapons.

Kate: 'The Show Must Go On' . . . Despite Divorcing Jon

2009-06-22T22:03:00.009-04:00

There was a stark black screen with plain white lettering which said the following:

"On Monday, June 22, 2009, legal proceedings were initiated in Pennsylvania to dissolve the ten-year marriage of Jon and Kate Gosselin."

We knew it was coming. We knew they'd be calling it quits, but Jon and Kate kept it under wraps until the night the episode, "Houses & Big Changes" aired. They didn't even file their divorce papers until very late on the day on which the episode was slated to air in order to preserve the surprise and boost the ratings. But nonetheless, there was something deeply sad about watching the one-hour "special" episode of Jon & Kate Plus Eight where Jon and Kate confirmed that they were splitting up.

Here are a few observations:

-- It seems as though Jon is psyched to move on to a new phase of his life, noting that he's only 32 years old. Why else would he say, "I'm excited and hurt." Excited? Excited to have to live elsewhere and swap custody of eight kids? He said he was proud of himself for standing on his "own two feet" and not letting Kate "rule the roost" any longer.

-- Kate, by contrast, seemed deeply devastated. "Jon has a lot of anger toward me and I'd love to discuss it with him but he won't discuss it with me," she said, adding that she'd recently sobbed harder than she'd ever sobbed. Denying that this reality program and their careers associated with the show played any role in the disintegration of her marriage, Kate said that their "goals are different now."

-- "We've always done the show for the kids to be able to provide for them . . . The show must go on," Kate declared. Viewers will now get to see what it's like to be a single parent caring for eight kids. If we thought it seemed tough caring for eight kids when there were TWO parents at home, imagine how much more difficult it'll be for Jon on his own or Kate on her own, even with a babysitter. "I know there are many families out there going through this," Kate said.

-- Other assorted questions: Are the cameras going to follow Jon and Kate into divorce court? Are they going to follow them on dates? How will they handle the kids' reactions to seeing Jon move out?

What'd you think?

Image credit: TLC.

'Army Wives' Monday: Moving Out

2009-06-22T11:15:00.008-04:00

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Army Wives.*

Roland actually DOES still work as a psychiatrist. Denise pined. Claudia Joy seemed to have lost her on-post cache. And Pamela ran into a former listener whose life she'd changed for the better.
See Roland Work

Last week Roland was distinctly unhappy and disillusioned, feeling as though he was wasting his professional life and expertise ("I wrote books, damn it! I had a career!") by being an at-home dad married to someone in the Army who could be deployed at any moment.

This week Roland was a hero during one of his shifts at the hospital. Roland stuck his neck out for a patient who needed someone at the hospital to take that extra step and advocate on his behalf. After helping a patient who'd experienced brain trauma following time in combat, Roland was so pleased by his professional achievement that he was actually humming as he was making dinner for his wife. It was refreshing to see him striking his own kind of work-life balance. Of course it didn't hurt to have Denise around to babysit for free.

See Denise Pine

Speaking of Denise -- who's still socially ostracized and has no friends other than Roland who are reaching out to her in the wake of the incident where Frank went missing while on a dangerous mission -- she had a dream that she called Frank, apologized to him for the fling and said, "It's over. I don't know what I was thinking," as she professed her love to him and how much she wanted them to make their marriage work. He agreed. Then Denise woke up. And reality wasn't quite what she expected it to be.

Frank was informed that he was being sent back to Fort Marshall to run war game exercises on the base and to expressly repair his fractured family life. Humiliated that his commanding officer knew about Denise getting fired from the Army hospital for having an affair with a former patient, Frank called Denise only to inform her he was coming home but specifically said he didn't want her to pick him up. I think Frank would've been willing to patch things up before everyone knew about Denise's love affair, but now that everyone DOES know, I think the likelihood or their reunion has greatly diminished. I think Denise had best start looking for another place to live. Maybe there's an available unit in Claudia Joy's new building.

See Claudia Joy Try to Exert (Non)Influence

The big surprise of the episode was seeing Michael back home with Claudia Joy -- previews indicated he was back to stay, but what job he'll take is an open question as the post commander spot is already taken. However the more interesting storyline to watch unfold is Claudia Joy's. Here's a woman who devoted her adult life to following her husband's career, helping bolster it through volunteer work, and taking care of her children. When her husband was in Brussels and she was in the States on the post, she discovered she lost some of the cache of her husband's title.

While weathering a stream of sarcastic jabs from her angry teenaged daughter, Claudia Joy realized that she was no longer the post commander's wife anymore when she attempted to help Pamela move up a few notches on the wait list for a three-bedroom house at Fort Marshall. She was met with blank stares when she invoked her and her husband's name, and her husband's rank, and told that the contact she had in the office had just retired. Claudia Joy's influence on the base: Greatly diminished to non-existent.

See Pamela Inspire

Pamela hasn't been given a whole lot to do during the first two episodes of Army Wives other than be a judgmental meanie who blew off her "friend" Denise. But in this recent installment Pamela learned that, although she'd been on Fort Marshall's wait list to get a three-bedroom house, she'd actually fallen down the list in the past year because higher ranking officers' families had moved onto the post. She was getting nothing but lip from the gal behind the counter and Claudia Joy proved useless. It was a housing office employee, who was a former listener of Pamela's on-base radio show, who wound up saving Pamela's day. The listener -- who was having immense difficulties in her marriage when she learned she was pregnant -- told Pamela that Pamela's encouraging on-air words for Army spouses to tough it out and find their inner strength eased her and made her feel supported through a challenging time.

How this affects Pamela -- whether she feels the calling to return to radio to help other spouses cope, seeing that she was unceremoniously axed from her radio show at the end of last season -- is unclear. I'd like to see more of the butt-kicking version of Pamela. The one we're seeing right now seems muted, only letting her passion seep out in the form of judging her former friend.

What did you think about episode three?

Image credit: Lifetime.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Obama as Superhero (& Suave Fly Killer)

2009-06-22T11:04:00.004-04:00

Okay, so it doesn't involve killing a fly with a single, vicious, ruthless slap, but the new JibJab satire which spoofs President Obama taking on everything that's wrong with the world with his superhero powers is sharp. And pretty cool. Like the superhero Obama, with an Obama campaign logo on his chest where the super "S" should be.