Girls: New york

Sometimes I feel like this series is not pure reality but life as seen through a Hannah/Lena lens.Can we consider the author for a moment? Lena being raised in NYC and having the support of two artistic parents, the trip to the Midwest seems a little... off. And insincere.

Take Heather, who is such a caricature of the type A popular girl. She's super pretty and dresses super cute. But, she's way too naive to ever make it in the big city like Hannah. She couldn't even keep track of her friend on vacay, letting her get kidnapped like the girls all the other bloggers cited. And then there's Erik, who's a nice guy. But he's not from New York so he simply cannot like weird sex.

All of these characters - Hannah's/Lena's characters - are stuck in a John Hughes movie. They work at coffee shops and have dances in the gymnasium. In my hometown, everyone is busy working desk jobs, taking out mortgages, and having babies, and THEN posting Facebook pics of all that. I've taken to posting pics of me drinking Bloody Marys, in a bikini, on a Sunday, with the caption: "LOOK AT MY TINY WAIST AND PERKY BOOBS, I'VE NEVER HAD CHILDREN." Maybe I don't do that. But it was a thought I had while drunken Facebooking last Sunday (that's right, drunk on a Sunday) and I thought it was pretty genius.

These Lansing-ers are just typical of stories we tell ourselves while looking in the mirror. My life is rough, but at least I'm interesting because I live in New York. Unlike all these Midwestern folksy folk. That's why I think this series is like a memoir, written by someone who has probably barely lived anywhere else but New York. I've accidentally gone on dates with those guys.

One thing this episode gets right is the realization that home is not where you grew up but where you are now. Hannah gets this as she is talking to Adam, first saying she is "home," but then realizing Lansing is no longer home. I'm depressingly resigning myself to the fact that New York is now my "home." I'd rather it not be. New York is like Adam. It really doesn't give a shit about you, treats your heart like monkey meat, won't answer the door if you leave momentarily... but you can hang around trying to make it work. Oh and you must be willing to take it in the butt. They call that doing it unpaid-intern-style.

The ladies at Slate loved this last convo between Adam and Hannah. They say he is showing sweetness in his own selfish ADD way. Ladies, this is why men treat us badly. Because we make excuses for it.If Hannah feels neglected (which she often mentions throughout the episode) she shouldn't cut Adam any slack. Not that she should expect him to change, but she shouldn't expect herself to change for him. Just like fucking New York.

God I want to keep chickens, and tomatoes, and bees.

Mad Men 05/08: Creatives vs artists

Ohimygod, did anyone notice this happened on the Monday following this episode? "Creative Week" is happening in New York right now, and in one of the panels a creative remarked: "I think creative people are interesting... I think creative departments are shit," prompting an ad exec to walk off the panel. Other quotes from the Gawker story include "one adult frat-boy" character saying "It comes down to understanding people... Steve and I were just rapping about this last night..." and another "creative" saying: "We think Brooklyn is a creative hub." Vomit in my mouth, stay out of my borough. (Sitting at my desk now, I just heard an interviewing art director quote a slogan at Creative Week: "all advertising is art, all art is advertising." Fuck you, not true.)

But this is oddly appropriate timing for this week/this episode considering we see Megan leave the creative industry for the artistic one. And we see the backlash.

1.) Oh Peggy. I understand her rage. She has worked so hard to get where she is. She sees herself as having paved the way for Megan, and Megan ungratefully rejects it. And Stan is right when he says a job in advertising sucks when you start to think about it, especially when you put in extra hours to sell w**** Heinz baked beans. Maybe Megan's move is making Peggy question how successful she's really been and what she actually wants from life. 

2.) And Don. Don realizes he is not as awesome as he once thought he once was. Megan's youth reminds him he is old. Her talent makes him feel inadequate. Her higher culture pursuits make him feel like a philistine. He doesn't appreciate the Beatles as much as he does jingles. But does he care? He was proud belittling Midge's beat friend, bragging about his fortune. I think this is a question MM is answering this season.

So, at first I was angry at Megan for taking the easy route. But now I don't think I'm angry as much as I am jealous. I often write about Millenials and their love for this show. Something I've been noticing among my peers (at least the artist, non-creative types in Brooklyn) is that we call bullshit on white collar jobs. Most people are like the Adams from Girls, we all secretly want to be carpenters. We ride bikes; we grow tomatoes. Success in business is not our primary goal (like in is Don's). We want contentment, happiness, things that come from achieving something tangible. Right now my life is Megan's. I'm a 26-year-old receptionist at an advertising company, working full days and fitting in my artistic pursuits on the side. If I weren't supporting myself, I might would make the same decision.

**No offense to any advertisers. I love my job. Just don't confuse music with jingles.

Some more observations:

Loved that a man eye-fucked Don. Is this the first time this has happened? Does he even notice?

Also! Can I point out that we haven't seen/heard from Betty this season after that godawful episode "Tea Leaves?" Why did we waste an episode on her?

Oh, and this blog is quickly becoming my favorite review of MM over Slate's.

Girls: We are all either Beatrice or Lola

Why is niceness a problem? Does one have to be a bitch to be respected? Goddam, this episode hits too close to home, and it's these times I realize I still am Hannah. I am a nice girl.

Niceness vs bitchiness = Beatrice vs Lola.

Marnie: BITCH
Don't get mad at your friend because your boyfriend who you are also a bitch to stole her diary and made it public. Don't. Also, don't string along someone who you aren't really interested in.

Ray: 98% BITCH 2% NICE
Yeah the whole "tie her up and fuck her" is seriously rapey and not in the consenting let's play rape fantasy way, but in the raping lesbians/feminists will set them straight way. The irony is that it's really what Marnie wants, to be "fucked" by a real man. Still, it's a major douchey thing for Ray to believe and to verbalize in those specific words. He could have rephrased it...

He gets two NICE points because 1.) he didn't want to let Charlie read the diary after he saw what was in it. 2.) I don't want to penalize someone for reading a diary. Let's face it, we've all done something like this. I stole a guy's iPhone to check how many booty call texts he'd sent that night. I checked my ex's banking account to see if his dinners out felt more like "for one" or "for two." We all do this, and there's no reason to label human nature as BITCH.

Adam: BITCH
And as Marnie says, most likely a psychopath. I know guys like this. They treat you like shit, so that they have to exert minimal amount of effort to seem romantic. Rly? Reaching out and touching her arm? She melts!

Also, I believe the dick pic was for another dude. Not in the gay way, but in the Imma make you look at my penis way. Those things are uuuuug-lyyyy, and penis showing is a time honored tradition among boys. My ex used to give me the goat every morning.

Matt: 50% NICE 50% BITCH 
I remember SATC had an episode about a guy who loved to eat pussy. And now this guy Matt says he loves to eat pussy. Why is this a novel thing? What guy doesn't love eating pussy? Except for the chauvinists I grew up with in Texas and that douchey college boyfriend, it's hard to tear guys away from my smiling marshmallow. (I did have one actually ask if was okay to go down as if I would say no. Yeah, dude, now get back to work!) And for this reason, Matt is 50% NICE. At least 50% decent. He gets BITCH points for not helping Shoshanna earn her non-virginity. Sure, some girls wait for the right one. Others just want to get that shiite out of the way. Kick virginity to the curb.

Charlie: DON'T CARE
Too much of a caricature of a nice guy. Don't care.

Shoshanna: NEITHER. 
She's just really stupid. She also feels incredibly like a character out of those late 90s shows - Dawson's Creek, Buffy, etc.

Okay, so this is the first time I will comment on casting decision, but in the same night I also have to watch her as the confident lesbo feminist Joyce from Mad Men. And I still think of her as the obsessive girl from that DID show. Maybe that's why the Shoshanna persona seems so phoney.

Hannah: NICE
Yeah, so Hannah is way too selfless to survive in a Brooklyn relationship. Sounds silly, right? There should be a degree of selflessness in a healthy relationship. But in my experience in Brooklyn boy dating, you have to be a selfish cunt. Otherwise they just don't respect you.

I think the line about not wanting a boyfriend, just someone who you can spend time with and sleep with, is really honest. It's this fear we Millenials have of commitment. We watched most of our parents (and some of our friends) get married and divorced, why would we try to force ourselves into something bound to fail? The irony is that the non-relationship of Hannah + Adam is set for failure precisely because it is a non-relationship.

I know why Hannah's staying. It's because she can't trust that there's something better out there. Not that I blame her, fuck I've been there. For Seitan's sake, I wish Jessa would unionize the Brooklyn girls, refusing to date until we get real relationships and not cock pictures meant for someone else (don't be bitter, don't be bitter....) I just want to be nice to you, why can't I be nice to you?

---
So, that's it. We are all either Beatrice or Lola.  Oh, and all guys + nannies want to bone Jessa. Did you pick up on that this episode? It wasn't super obvious; you really had to read between the lines.

Is it sad that when I saw they were at the Bushwick Inn my first thought was "that'll be a long train ride home?" It looks like it's off the J. I don't think the J connects to the G. Maybe they biked, I dunno.

Mad Men: a lackluster post

Fucking great film noir closing line. Super campy and I love it. Fuck it this was a great episode and I loved it.

Okay, I'm trying to convince my friend that television is art because it is a contemporary read of the culture, regardless of the genre. Star Trek and race relations in the 60s. Battlestar Galactica (the modern one) and the War on Terror. Sex and the City and nth wave feminist revolution. Mad Men and our modern existential crisis.

Mad Men is for Gen X and the Millenials. We were told we could be anything we wanted to be, and we are having some kind of writer's block, but in life.  In all honesty, we can't be anything we want to be. It's just not possible and we are slowly realizing that fact. (Fight Club touched on this but was woefully misinterpreted.) So who can we become? How do we make the most out of life? All the characters start with such potential: Don as a genius without a past or anything holding him back, Peggy as a pioneering career woman, Megan as one who has it all - a career, a family, beauty. But their flawed personalities cause them to stumble and fall time after time.

It has long been noted that the men in this series are confronting growing old. The women speak to a younger generation, who are growing up without dogmatic precedent.

Here are some notes on observations on this weeks episode

1.) So the first thing that struck me in this episode is that Megan answers the phone with a simple "Hello." Up until now it's been "Draper Residence" or "Francis Residence." Never just "hello." Megan is set up as a thoroughly modern woman without all the formality of the 1950s homelife, and this salutation speaks to that fact. She is untouched by the stereotypes of the times, and she is trying to navigate uncharted territories - the girl who really can have it all. But poor Megan, she is slowly realizing that you can't be sexy wife on the weekend and a respectable coworker on Monday morning at work.

There are a lot of phones this episode. Emile calling his lover. Sally calling Glen. The last one is interesting because Sally identifies herself as his father. In this episode she is trying to be an adult - from knowing to do the right thing when Pauline falls, to dressing like an adult, to trying the food. He foray into adulthood is quickly aborted when she walks in on Emile and Roger.

2.) Oh Peggy, Peggy, Peggy. So adult yet so naive. I can't help but feel the living together is such a big mistake. How much does she really like Abe in the first place? Who invites their boyfriend to eat lunch in the office with coworkers? She has a better banter with the coworkers than the kid she's boning. Not to mention the whole weird hand job incident last week. And did any one else feel she was kinda embarrassed of his behavior at Megan's party?

But she settles with him. And she settles with living together over marriage. She says it's what she wants, but watching that conversation it seems like she is expecting/fantasizing that it's something more than it is. "how would we do that..." and "i do." It's as though she is prodding him in the direction of a proposal that never happens. But then she pretends that it's all she ever wanted, to Joan and to her mother.


Two women and one girl, trying to figure out how to be adults. Not that they are particularly immature (certainly that have their shiite together more that the men), but they are going without a rulebook. Trying to evolve to adulthood in modern times where the rites of passage are not defined the way they are for the modern man. Getting married seems to push you back into girlhood. Having a career is unheard of. Of course Millenials can identify with this feeling as our economy and social spheres are drastically different than those of our parents.

And so this is why I champion television. Everyone is watching the same thing, and everyone has different takes on it. We gossip about it, we blog about out. But really we are talking about ourselves. Just like interpreting dreams. What happens in the dream isn't as important as our interpretation of it.

BTW: great analysis of the fashion in this episode: http://www.tomandlorenzo.com/2012/05/mad-style-at-the-codfish-ball.html

Girls: John Wilkes Booth Jonathan

Ok, so my writings are never going to be full reviews of the show. I'm just going to pick one or two particular things each week and talk about them as if I'm morally offended by the depiction of my generation.  Mwua ha ha!

So this week it will be Marnie  and Marnie + Booth Jonathan.

1.) First off, who the fuck cries over HPV? As Gawker so perfectly points out, over 50% of human adults have it. And who the fuck cries when their friend calls them with news like that? Even if your friend calls with crabs, chlamydia, or a baby, you still don't fucking cry. You just don't. It's totally dick and might make them feel worse. Unless it's bed bugs. That is worth crying over/defriending on Facebook, and it is never appropriate to joke about (ahem, my sister).

2.) Why the fuck don't the rest of the ladies go to Marnie's art show party.  Honestly, this is the most fun part about living in New York: Free booze and knowing that you will never be dressed the craziest of all the people in a visible radius. It's like a frat party for adults. And jeezus that is a sparsely attended opening; even UES openings do better.

3.) Marnie + Booth: WTF Booth, really? Okay, I can't comment on sleeping with or even considering my fellow artists. But for those of you who find them appealing, I'll concede that the swagger of the artist has its appeal. God knows that's why people dig me!

Anyways, How is "give less of a fuck" not a "go away?" How did they jump from that awkwardness at the gallery to dancing off to the High Line and how did they not have enough sexual tension adrenaline to climb the High Line and fuck among the tiny fairies that I once hallucinated there? (On a minor note, that gallery looks more LES than Chelsea).

AND THEN! the worst thing ever was said: “I want you to know, the first time I fuck you, I might scare you a little, because I’m a man, and I know how to do things.” My successful artist/architecture mid-20s fashionable roommate and I both agree that shiite like that would make us instantly lose our cloner (clit boner). That's like announcing to the world that you fuck like you have a big dick (and don't.) Even those that have a big dick shouldn't fuck this way.

On a related note, why would Booth Jonathan want to seduce Marnie in the first place? She's a attractive girl, but she isn't a gallery owner or anyone important. She can't advance his career, and he seems like the type of guy who bed hops solely for that purpose. Ok, so maybe he wants a quickie fling, but then why doesn't he do her right there? Or at the hourly motel around west 14th? Or among the fairies that live on the High Line?

OMG Vulture, you read my mind

So, I go to Vulture last night and what do I find? An article titled "When did you realize tv could be art?"

Hollaback girl! I was stoked just reading the title. This is what I set out to accomplish - convincing the world that some tv shows are better than most of the shiite I see in the Chelsea. And they (tv shows) reach a larger audience, have a bigger impact, respond to and critique culture better than the Chelsea shiite. I was even more excited to read the article, Seitz claiming that the "refusal to tell [him] who to root for" is what made him realize Hill Street Blues is art, not tv. I've never seen HSB, but I have seen The Wire, and I had the same reaction for precisely the same reason.

Have you ever read Diderot on aesthetics? He was critiquing art during the Rococo movement and he hated how meaninglessly ornate it was. He compared it to a bad play which uses plot twists for shock value but are ultimately vapid.  Good art, like good theater, should be more about the the slow and purposeful cultivation of an idea. Diderot really liked painters like Greuze, where even the smallest details supported the immersion of the subject in a particular moment: the mother listening to the Bible is so absorbed she neglects her unraveling sleeve, the pot on the stove, her unruly child. (Ok, these paintings are mad cheesy, and Greuze was never a good artist. But can't you see where Diderot's going with this? Good narrative art cannot rely on spectacle)

I think I must have been devouring all five seasons of The Wire at the same time I was watching Seasons 4 and 5 of Lost, and the contrast is the two shows is telling. It was around Season 4 when I really started getting frustrated with Lost, not solely because they didn't resolve any "mysteries" but also because they sacrificed character development for sensationalist but meaningless plot twists and turns. (Like when Kate was on a boat headed home and then she turns back for Sawyer or Jack, I don't remember which one - see I can't even keep the characters straight).

The Wire never sacrificed characters for plot. Characters felt believable all the way to the end of the series. (Fuck that, just to the end of Season 4. Season 5 was kinda shiite and not just because I have a personal dislike of journalists). There were no good guys or bad guys like in typical cops shows, everyone was equally flawed and redeemable. (And the balance of good and bad wasn't cheesy and predictable like in that awful fucking kitsch shit movie "Crash.") They could believably change and grow as characters. Ellis Carver in seasons 3 and 4.  Pryzbylewski in season 1. They changed in reaction to the plot and events in their lives. In Lost, the character's personalities changed just because they needed to make something sensationalist happen and so they did random shiite that was supposed to make our jaws drop. Yeah, that wasn't my jaw hitting the floor, that was my faith in the writing.

But the Wire didn't fuck up like that. Give me the Wire over Jeff Koons any day.

Mad Men: My grievances with the dream sequences this season

Sometimes I think Mad Men just tries too hard to be artsy.

For example, those fucking dream sequences. (So I haven't seen The Sopranos, which apparently makes stellar use of dream sequences). But for the most part, those in MM are melodramatic and add nothing to the story. We already knew Betty was afraid of dying, I don't need to see that cheesy dream sequence with the table and the Sally and the mother-in-law to tell me that. (Why are they even trying to make me feel sorry for Betty at this point? More on that later).

Well, I liked Don's fever dream in which the rejects, fucks, and kills Andrea (fuck chuck or marry, anyone?), but they follow this horror immediately with the ever glowing heaven-sent Megan. All is well with the world! For Seitan's sake, where's the anxiety of seasons 1 and 2? Where's the falling existential man? This guy is slaying his demons and being rewarded with a beautiful French Canadian. Fuck that. Is it just me, or did anyone else fall in love with Don because he was was soo flawed and sauve? He's everything our protestant culture tells us is wrong but he is so successful. Even being connected with him is wrong and titillating. I loved that moment he strangles Andrea. I think I watched the episode twice and said both times said "I'd pay to be her." But, MM writers, I want to wonder if the whole encounter were real or not. Let me not know whether or not Don is over his hedonism. Jeezus, did you not understand why Inception was successful? Answers are boring.* When all is revealed, I am at peace. Good art never leaves the viewer at peace.

That being said, I did really enjoy MM's chronological fuckery in "Far and Away." Playing with hierarchy of information totally gets me off, and mad props to you MM team. I might bitch and moan a lot, but that's only because it's more fun to complain than praise.

More on "Far and Away"....

I still like Peggy's trajectory and how it is mirrored in Jane and Megan. Maybe art is one of the last industries where it is still possible to sleep your way to the top (for men and women). My personal experience: When I try to be masculine and narcissistic, I fail. My voice still goes higher and cracks when I get angry. FML, I can never be a Don (neither can Peggy). And then I think "maybe I should play up my feminity. Just sleep with the Boss to get ahead." There's Jane, who uses sex to get the lifestyle she wants - the glamour, the intellectual friends, time to pursue shit that's not secretarial work (I hear you girl!). But she's bored. And then there's Megan, who uses sex to get a job and a career, but her benefactor doesn't respect her aspirations. So many times I have tried to use sex appeal to get a sale or residency and only been approached with proposals of dates (not sales). It's fucking demoralizing. Poor Megan. She is quickly becoming my favorite - relying on Don for her career but he also gets in the way.

(I won't rant about the annoyance of being female in a male dominated world now. I do want to hint at the fact that most male artists are either cads or too scared of girls....)

Anyways, good work, writers of Mad Men, for "Far and Away." Your dream sequences are still kitsch though. But I guess your decisions are still SOL for this season.

*Yo, writers of Lost. Your answers are not boring. and you didn't give me enough.