Best of the 00s: The Game Plan

Like everyone and their brother, I can't quite resist the allure of the coming new year as an impetus for writing a whole bunch of lists. Specifically, detailing my pop-culture favorites of the past decade. Anything aired or released between January 1, 2000 and December 31 of this year is fair game. It'll probably end up being television-skewed, due to that being my personal favorite medium. With all that being said, let's see how much random crap from the past ten years I can drag up out of the ether, shall we?

Mood Music XXII

There's something undeniably charming about mainstream pop artists who still like to do something different with the music video as a medium. I love the group choreography accompanying the chorus. If I was 13, I'd totally be trying to learn it, almost certainly looking like an idiot in the process. (How lucky am I that YouTube didn't exist when I was 13? It would have been non-stop ridiculousness.)

Mood Music XXI

I was watching Wattstax the other day for a paper I'm working on about concert films, and I was struck by how beautiful this rendition of "Lift Ev'ry Voice" is.

I also love the crowd shot with the baby.

And While We're on the Topic of Glee...

Listening to the just-released soundtrack ("Alone" is so good!) only reinforces a feeling that I know is at odds with what the people behind Glee would have us believe. Namely, I think Kevin McHale (Artie) has a much better singing voice than Cory Monteith (Finn). Head-to-head:

I don't have a problem, per se, with the way the show's narrative is set up, but it does make the "Rachel and Finn Show" element in solo assignments just that much more tiresome.

Wish List: Five Popular Actors I'd Like to See on Glee

The buzz that has surged in the past few months around Glee prompted me to look back at executive producer/co-creator/writer Ryan Murphy's previous high school effort from a decade ago, Popular. Popular shares a lot with Glee, both thematically, in its focus on the social hierarchies that govern high school life, and tonally, in its aversion to total realism. It's easy to see the remnants of Popular's a-little-too-weird-for-the-WB vibe (one episode features both an extended riff on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Erik Estrada appearing as himself) in Glee, which is never quite as wholesome as it seems like it's supposed to be. Accordingly, it would be great to see Murphy acknowledge Glee's antecedent by bringing in some Popular actors as teachers, or McKinley alums, or something. Here are my top five:

1. Leslie Grossman

Of all the Popular cast members, Grossman has shown the most facility with the kind of manic energy that has distinguished Glee in its few months on the air. Popular's Mary Cherry was a uniquely crazy character the likes of which one rarely sees, and Grossman never gave her less than 100% commitment.

If they hadn't already given Terri a totally insane sister, I'd nominate Grossman for the job.

2. Tammy Lynn Michaels

Michaels is perhaps the one actor whose Popular character could make it to Glee completely intact.

It would be amazing to see Nicole Julian bringing the Glamazons into competition against Sue's Cheerios on Glee.

3. Leslie Bibb

Admittedly, it's more Bibb's post-Popular work that makes me want to see her on Glee, particularly her role as bitch-on-wheels social climber Katrina Ghent in the little-seen but seriously good (seriously, if you've got half a day to devote to it, all the episodes are on Hulu) Kings.

Bibb is great at playing uptight characters without making them heartless or rigid, a quality that fits in well with Glee's rubric of softened-edge villains.

4. Wentworth Miller

Miller wasn't on Popular for very many episodes, but he made a mark with relatively little screen time. His turn as Adam Rothschild-Ryan, insane cheerleader underminer, skirts the funny/grating line of deliberate camp in its sheer over-the-top-ness.

Your mileage may vary as to what side of that line his performance ultimately lands on, but it is refreshingly different from the persona he's established over the past few years on Prison Break. It would be delightful to see Miller do it again on Glee.

5. Christopher Gorham

Okay, this is mostly because he's cute. Look at his face!

Also, the egregious narrative misuse of Henry was a major factor in my decision to stop watching Ugly Betty. A glance at Gorham's IMDb page shows the kinds of 20-ish episode runs in short-lived shows that get an actor branded a showkiller, and it would be nice to see him do some time on a show as well-received as Glee.

Dear Matthew Weiner,

You cannot leave all these plot threads dangling after next week. I will go mad (see what I did there?) if I have to wait until next summer to know whether we've seen the last of Sal or Joan. The strangled cry of frustration I let out after the preview for next week, which wasn't even the usual collection of cryptic sound bites but rather highlights from the season, will pale in comparison to the howl of rage brewing if we don't get some sort of indicator of whether this whole endeavor is ultimately character-driven or Sterling Cooper-driven. Have mercy.

P.S. Dear Janie Bryant, I am deeply in love with Trudy's blue dress for the wedding. Please try to make this a 2009 mass-market reality.

I'm Not Crazy...

Oh, how I wish I could go to New York and see this live:

We should all be so sanguine about our personal foibles.

Quoted VIII

"No one loves to talk about horror films more than somebody with a Ph.D. in cultural studies at a university. Every horror movie seems to be about penalizing people for values. There’s a certain iconography of the vampire, a certain iconography of the werewolf, the zombie. That seems to be the core audience for slasher films—metalheads and collegiate professors."

- Chuck Klosterman, A.V. Club interview

I knew it had been a long time since I last wrote here, but I was kind of shocked to see it had been over a month. I thought intermittently about writing some different posts, but they sort of faded into the ether as I got dragged into an exhausting fall schedule. My resolution for November is more writing (both academically and here) and I've got some Best of the Decade lists in the works.

It's the American Dream

Taking a class on the 1960s at the same time as the new season of Mad Men has resulted in a totally new viewership experience. The more we read and watch for class, the more curious I am to see which events Matt Weiner and his writing team deem worthy of direct or indirect inclusion in the show's narrative. Yesterday's show addressed, somewhat obliquely, the murder of Medgar Evers. The account of Evers' assassination in the civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize struck me as uniquely harrowing:

Evers' assassination stands starkly in opposition to Pete's elevator conversation with Hollis. I found the silences in that conversation most compelling, the moments when it seemed that Hollis had neither the time or the energy to explain to Pete how narrow his worldview really was, progressive though it may be compared to the rest of Sterling Cooper. "The idea is that everyone's going to have a house, a car, a television - the American Dream," Pete explains in his defense. The Eyes on the Prize clip shows what Pete fundamentally missed, what Hollis could not, or would not, express to him. The fight is about something deeper, more fundamental than that - Evers had the house and the car, those markers of success, and he was still gunned down in his driveway.

I'm torn about the show's use of Evers' death. The characters on Mad Men are so ensconced in their rarefied world, the general absence of any discussion of civil rights has come to seem authentic. However, when an event like this receives such sudden focus, it creates a sense of preceding actions being unimportant or even nonexistent. I love that Mad Men is introducing the civil rights movement into its conversation, and especially that tertiary black characters are becoming more vocal actors in Sterling Cooper and the Draper home. I just wish it felt more organic.

Baking: Blondies

So this year I'm an office assistant for my program, and I plan to use our building's kitchen as a baked goods repository. It allows me to try new recipes and techniques, bake to my heart's desire and not feel obligated to eat all of the finished products. Everybody wins!

I also thought I'd chronicle my adventures (and surely, over the course of the year, misadventures) in baking here. This week I chose blondies (a.k.a. butterscotch brownies) using the recipe from Mark Bittman's 10th anniversary How to Cook Everything.

A few years ago, in the weeks leading up to the day I would leave for school I suddenly had this mad craving for blondies. They're so buttery and delicious, I thought, and leaving for school I felt secure in making a pan because whatever I didn't eat could be distributed among my friends. So I made a pan in the evening, covered it in foil and left it to be cut in the morning. When I went to do that, however, I found that the blondies had been visited by the chocolate-loving mystery rodent my sister and I dubbed "The Gnawer". It was so terribly demoralizing, having built them up in my mind as satisfying my weeks-long craving only to peel back the foil and regard the little nibbles along the edges of the baking pan. So I decided to right that wrong and start out with blondies again this time around.

Mmm...butter.

Whisking the butter and brown sugar together - it's always sort of fun to use the whisk to crush sugar lumps.

Unintentional action shot! (Otherwise, my hand wouldn't be so prominent.) My camera goes to sleep when it's not being used, and I ended up trying to wake it up and mix in the egg at the same time. There's a reason the pros have their own camera operators.

This batter was an appealing gooey caramel sludge - I probably would've eaten it with a spoon if not for the raw egg.

Adding the flour and salt - I like to use coarse kosher salt because it gives a little extra kick. Admittedly, I'm a chocolate-covered pretzel fan, so your mileage may vary regarding the interplay of salt and sugar.

Lighter color, thicker batter once the flour is mixed in.

I added toffee pieces to give them something a little extra - if I make them again I'll probably add chocolate chips, or toffee pieces that have chocolate in them. The toffee is good, but a little too close to the flavor of the blondies just in and of themselves.

Getting ready for the oven!

I watched Grease 2, one of my favorite campy so-bad-it's-good movies, while baking, stashing the laptop on top of the microwave. The start of classes brought the movie's opening song ("Back to School Again") to mind. It's hard to tell here, but Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield have just launched into the uber-cheesy film-concluding "We'll Be Together."

Just out of the oven. I think they might have been a bit overcooked, but I'm not really sure whether the fudge/cake dichotomy still applies when you're talking about blondies.

And the finished product, ready for distribution!

Mood Music XX

The 40th-anniversary nostalgia around Woodstock compels me to post my favorite clip from the concert film:

I first saw this a few years ago (it may very well have been the 35th anniversary in 2004) when VH1 Classic observed the anniversary weekend by playing the film on an endless loop for a couple of days. (Incidentally, this is a film that is dramatically underserved by being edited for basic cable.) I was totally transfixed by Roger Daltrey's performance, and proceeded to fall madly in love with the Who.

Yikes

The When in Rome trailer is a prime example of the Goodwill Index being stretched to its limits:

Kristen Bell, Lee Pace, Will Arnett and Anjelica Huston? Good. Unbearably generic-looking rom-com tropes coupled with a January release that practically screams mediocrity? Not so good. Intellectually, I know that cult popularity never bought anyone a swimming pool, but there have to be better ways of making a paycheck than this, right?

Let's Twist Again

Only one more week until I'm reunited with my favorite bottomless well of ambition, shameless behavior and alcohol abuse:

Oh, Sterling Cooper. I've missed you.

Treasure Trove

Recently, Hulu seems to be reaping the benefits of some particularly lucrative deals expanding their offerings.

On the good end of the quality-TV spectrum, there's Spaced.

Spaced is a key factor in the creative output crush I totally have on Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The kind of British humor that never goes out of style.

At the...other end of the spectrum, there's October Road.

I watched this show from beginning to end, and hated myself every single minute of it. It featured actors I've liked in other things, whose characters spoke and behaved more like an alien's idea of what people are like than actual human beings. Add a frustratingly obtuse (as opposed to intriguingly mysterious) "who's the daddy?" plotline, and you have a show that never quite crossed over into "so bad it's good" territory. If you've got time to kill, and a jones to hear some of the most implausible dialogue to appear of television, it can be strangely transfixing. I can only hope that this means that ABC's Hulu deal will also result in the cancelled Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money being available in perpetuity.

Oh, Glee

Please don't break my heart like Pushing Daisies.