Demo: 18-34

It never strikes me that I'm firmly lodged in a specific demographic as much as it does when I'm watching a car commercial. Yes, I know, most commercials are geared toward the coveted 18-34 age group (which I'll be in for another four years, thankyouverymuch), and we love us some Betty White getting tackled in a backyard football game, or an indie female singer crooning about how much she loves life. (Double points if she's backed up by a ukulele!)

But now, I've got this other thing going, which is lending things a whole 'nother shade. I'm going to be a parent. And dammit if we don't all want to be the coolest parents in the world, not those old fuddy-duddy parents we've seen in other generations.

Or, so the car companies believe of us.

Almost every car commercial I've seen in the last year or so has an absolutely adorable child, either telling its parent how to use their car or rolling their eyes at how lame their (or other kid's) parent's car is. Tag line: "Just because you're a parent doesn't mean you have to be lame." We're clueless, Toyota tells us, but we don't have to be the geeks we were made fun of for being in high school! Or, we don't have to worry about becoming geeks, just because we've procreated!
 
It all started, of course, with this commercial, which I admittedly thought was cute.


Yes! I thought. Parents are people, too! But after several viewings, it all seems so...desperate. We like to shop! We wear hoodies! We play loud rock guitar while our children bang on the drums! We know the lingo and we're not afraid to be our horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing selves! We're not lame, and our children will love us! It is a far cry from other, older car ads, but I can't help but feel pandered to.

Ah, well. I'm just looking for a stroller that can fold up quickly enough to get on the bus.

The Many Loves of Donald Draper

Mad Men is such a great show, and I'm looking forward to blogging about it every week. I don't want to do a recap, though--that seems to be too par for the course, and besides, I couldn't possibly do it better than TLo. So, instead, I'm just going to post my random musings about things that I've been fixated on.

Tonight: hair color.

Something has been striking me as odd about the women this season. It's not that Betty is a bad mom (we knew that already.) It's not that Peggy is way more headstrong and assertive than we've seen her in the past (a lot can happen in a few months and a change of venue). I finally put my finger on it yesterday: there are more blondes this season than we've ever seen before.

Don was married to Betty--the epitome of the blonde early-sixties housewife--for years. And besides her, we never saw him with a single blonde. Not one...except Anna Draper (more about her later). As far as I can recall, all of the women he's related with except Joan (more about her later) have been brunettes. And that's completely changing this year. After the jump is my breakdown of the women in Don Draper's life, categorized by hair color. Just see if you notice the same pattern I did...I put way too much thought into it. :)

When Are We?

As you and the rest of the pop-culture-aware universe know, the fourth season of Mad Men started last Sunday. We found ourselves at Thanksgiving dinner, 1964, as Betty and the children ate with Henry's family and Don...got slapped in the face by a hooker. Because he asked her to. November 1964 means that we've missed the Beatles on Ed Sullivan (which we would have thought would be a big deal, since SCDP deals heavily in TV ads at this point), the release of the Rolling Stones' first album, and the opening of the New York World's Fair.

So, what are going to be the big pop culture/historical moments this season? Here are my guesses:

• Some mention of Lenny Bruce's obscenity trial
• Malcolm X's assassination
• Some mention of the TV broadcast of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella
•  Bloody Sunday/the march on Selma
•  Dylan goes electric/releases Highway 61 Revisited (definitely something about the changing music scene)
• Cigarette advertising banned on British TV
• Maybe a mention of the creation of the Pillsbury Doughboy, like the parsing of the iconic VW ad a couple of seasons ago
• The Northeast blackout of 1965 could have very interesting plot implications

And, of course, Joan's husband gets drafted and either (a) killed in Vietnam, or (b) flees to Canada. Either way, we get our swinging single Joanie back! (And I'm rooting for the former. He's not a good person.)

Of course, some of these aren't the most important things that happened in 1965 (some of them are), but I think they're the events that are most likely to have some bearing on the world of SCDP. I'll be happily watching to find out if I'm right.

Mod, Man

At this time of summer, and blogging from the couch, a young (ha!) girl's thoughts turn to the wonders of television. With Lost over forever, and our "Must See" shows on hiatus until Fall (which, by the way, why are some channels still adhering to the old "season" lineup, while others have year-round new programming?), Jake and I have been working our way through TV shows on DVD. We don't get HBO, and so to date, we've gone all the way through Curb Your Enthusiasm, and we're moving at a rapid pace through The Sopranos. We've also just started with season 1 of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.


While I've been really enjoying all of the above, what really gets me is the '60s. It took us a while to get through the 17 episodes of The Prisoner, but wow, what a ride! The series--and yes, I'm talking about the original 1967 Partick McGoohan series, not last year's Jim Caviezel retread--is about a secret agent who resigns from his job and wakes up on a mysterious island, stripped of his identity, and called only "Number 6." His adversary is an ever-rotating line of "Number 2"s, who try to find out why he resigned from his government job. And all Number 6 wants to do is escape.

A lot of shows owe something to The Prisoner; it goes without saying that Lost took quite a few idea and motifs from the show set on a mysterious island with far-out sci-fi mythology. My personal favorite is the Simpsons episode "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes," where Homer is taken to a mysterious island after he makes up a rumor that turns out to be true. The episode was funny the first 20 times I saw it, but now it makes so much more sense. Right down to the Patrick McGoohan cameo! (The Simpsons also used The Orb to do in Hans Moleman in another episode, when Marge was trying to escape from the Movementarians.) And the storytelling structure reminds me a lot of the structure in Neon Genesis Evangelion: the reluctant hero tries with all his might to escape his "destiny," through test after test from unlikely science and technology, until finally the narrative becomes bizarre and existential, leading the audience to question every theory they might have had.

It's one of the most mod things I've ever seen, from the costumes to the set and dialogue to the lava lamp-like projections defaulted in front of Number 2 when he's not watching Number 6.

Of course, for the early 1960s, you can't beat my real Obsession of the Moment, Mad Men. Yes, it's everyone's obsession right now, but we finally made our way through seasons 1-3, and I'm so excited for season 4 to start on Sunday, and see what's going on at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

I won't recap for you; if you're going to watch it, you probably already know what's going on. My favorite place for analysis is Tom and Lorenzo (formerly Project RunGay). They recap every episode with great humor and insight, but my favorite feature on the site is their Mad Style analysis. They take a character and break down the choices made by the costume designer. It's unquestionable that the costumes on the show are spectacular, and I've never been happier to have the kind of figure in vogue during the late'50s/early '60s, and my grandmothers' hats and gloves. Joan Holloway is my idol.

I told a friend of mine the other day that I've loved watching the series on DVD, and I don't know what I'll do when I have to wait a whole week in between episodes. He answered, "You do exactly what you did for Lost: go on the internet, read what people have to say, and have half-hour discussions at work."

Done.

Busiest Week EVER (Or: Why I Love VH1)

Ladies and gentlemen, I have just completed a busy, busy week wherein I worked on all four(-ish) of my jobs. That is:

1. A regular work week. Natch. (This week's work included writing contracts, being trained in techniques of inclusion, watching a student production, buckling down and writing more than two scenes in my latest play, and oh so much more.)
2. Mary Kay party! Good food, good wine, good company, good skin care and makeup!
3. Research on Reconstruction-era social history and popular music to decorate the lobby for a play I'm dramaturgin' (KUUMBA Players' Sing and Never Tire, which opens 3/05).
4. Two plays for Helen Hayes: Folger Theatre's Orestes last Friday, and Keegan Theatre's Gdirl from Gdansk last night.

Needless to say, I'm pretty sleepy, and had resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to be able to see my husband for more than five minutes in the week.

However! When we did hang out, we watched the hell out of some VH1. And this was my saving grace.

Remember when VH1 was fuddy-duddy music for old people? A place to go when you weren't hip enough for MTV, and wanted to groove to some Michael McDonald? No longer! Now, it's full of both the crappiest and the most wonderful reality television on the airwaves. (Digital waves? Whatever.)

Now might be the time to tell you that my mother-in-law and I joke about creating a website called "Smart Women who Like Dumb Media." I look at TV as an escape, and sometimes, the dumber, the better. I do have discriminating tastes when it comes to reality shows, believe it or not. I will quickly change the channel if I see that For the Love of Ray J or Rock of Love Bus are on. I will watch Celebrity Rehab, Tough Love, or Tool Academy if they're on when I'm in bed and winding down before going to sleep. But I don't go out of my way. No, there are only two VH1 shows on our DVR, and they hold a special place in my heart.

RuPaul's Drag Race is the best show you're not watching. It airs in first run on LOGO on Monday evenings, and then re-airs on VH1 on Tuesdays. An America's Next Top Model for drag queens, it takes the best of the competition reality show formulas and turns them on their ears. The Dolls have had to eat unfamiliar foods, create costumes out of household decorations, and strut the runway.

This week's competition was game show themed, with the Dolls guessing the prices of drag queen necessities (The Queen is Right), filling-in-the-blanks to match celebrity answers (The Snatch Game), and opening metal briefcases to see if they were in or out (Heel or No Heel). Ru's trademark is as a supermodel impersonator--I'd argue that she does Tyra better than Tyra--and this week, the Dolls had to show off their best celebrity impressions, too. I was thrilled that my two favorites blew their competition out of the water:

Pandora Boxx as Carol Channing
and hometown girl (Great Falls, VA) Tatianna as Britney Spears.


Fan-flippin'-tastic.

I won't say a whole lot about my other VH1 destination, Celebrity Fit Club, since one of my favorite bloggers (Rich from fourfour) recapped so eloquently in his VH1 blog. I would, however, feel remiss if I didn't address the most wonderful five minutes of my TV-viewing week.

This week's boot camp challenge had the two teams trying to escape from a fake-POW camp, while chained together at the ankle. Once they got through two obstacles, they cut off their shackles, cut through a chain link fence, and then run to scale a platform while MUZZLED GERMAN SHEPHERDS CHASED AFTER THEM. Genius. If one of the team members got attacked, they added two minutes to their time.

The red team got through with hardly any problem, except for Jay McCarroll (of Project Runway) getting faux-mauled by a dog. No one got hurt, no one got upset, they moved on. Pretty much the same thing happened to the blue team, with K-Fed (yes, K-Fed) getting fake-attacked. But then, this happened:


Tanisha from Bad Girls' Club LOST IT. She screamed "I couldn't save Kevin!" while sobbing at the top of her lungs.

And then! Sebastian Bach--whom I have decided I want to have lunch with sometime--had the most astute talking head I have ever seen. He looked right at the camera and said, "It's a TV show."

Touche, sir. Touche.
* Drag Race pictures lovingly appropriated from Project Rungay. Go there. Read their stuff. Celebrity Fit Club pictures taken from VH1.com.