Anything for Ratings, I Guess

Like many, I have my little addictions -- chocolate, coffee, cocaine (kidding on that last one!). Some, I am willing to admit to; some embarrass me just a tad. Falling into that latter category are two that I'm about to share (although I think many who've known me for awhile know this). I have an addiction to celebrity gossip and Lifetime. Now, when I say Lifetime, I don't mean the cheesy made-for-Lifetime movies that inevitably star Tracey Gold or some other Q-level former ingenue. Generally, I steer as far away from those movies as I can -- although I did one day find myself completely sucked into a Lifetime movie where Mary Louise Parker had autistic twin sons, one of whom was a pre-High School Musical Zac Efron. I mean, that's just a golden opportunity you can't pass up! And there was that one about the city girl who "inherited" the Amish kids. That one was good, too. N0, my Lifetime habit steers more towards their showings of Frasier, Will & Grace, Desperate Housewives, and the non-stop hours of Reba. Yes, Reba. I accidentally have found myself watching and liking (a lot) Drop Dead Diva despite the fact that I mercilessly mocked its commercials all summer prior to its debut. I am chomping at the bit for the return of Project Runway. (My need for a little Runway action is even more desperate considering I am one of only three people in America who actually watched The Fashion Show, or as we called it at our house, The Tim Gunn Reject Project.) I've even been known to get unwittingly sucked into Wife Swap. (It never ceases to amaze me just how many punk rock and fundamentalist Christian families there are out there willing to engage in a little swapping -- and they all have houses full of kids. Makes you feel so good about our country, no?)

Last night, as I curled up to watch Frasier with my cat Tela (I swear she loves it -- when 11:00 rolls around, she comes and finds me and meows as if demanding me to go to bed so we can watch it!), I noticed a commercial for yet another made-for-Lifetime movie, one from the Nora Roberts collection. The number of strikes this movie had against it are numerous -- it's a Lifetime movie, it's based on a Nora Roberts book (I swear -- even TOUCHING her books makes my skin burn!), and it's full of the sort of Q-list talent that makes me shudder -- LeAnn Rimes? Eddie Cibrian? Talk about awards bait! What got me about the commercial, though, was that Lifetime is choosing to market this movie as starring "the couple everyone is talking about."

See, here's the story . . . . (and where my addiction to celebrity gossip comes into play) . . . . .

LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian met while filming this Nora Roberts gem -- Northern Lights. (Great title, Nora) Allegedly, they began an affair despite the fact that they were both married. (Yeah, I know it happens.) Allegedly, LeAnn became so infatuated with Eddie that she was accused to STALKING him after the film wrapped and they returned to their respective spouses. Now, both couples have separated and are headed for divorce. So Lifetime is selling this movie as the movie that "started it all" -- but really, it's the movie that ended it all. Two marriages ended as a result of this film and while the marriages may have been doomed had LeAnn and Eddie never met, the fact of the matter remains that this film accelerated the process -- and maybe even potentially damaged at least LeAnn's career since she is now portrayed as a psycho stalking freak. Rather than downplaying the surrounding scandal, Lifetime is choosing to not only play it up but romanticize it as if LeAnn and Eddie were the second coming of Brangelina. To me, that's pretty shady ... and incredibly tacky.

You Know, Maybe Whitney Houston Was On To Something ....

What I'm about to write just may shock you. I have a bit of a rep as not being overly fond of children, a reputation which really isn't so much merited. To be honest with you, I like kids. A lot of my "kid hating" is honestly done for humor more than anything. I mean, hating kids is just funny.

But the truth of the matter is that I like kids. No, it's more than that. I admire kids. And a couple incidents from the past couple weeks have reinforced that admiration and respect I have for our younger friends.

1. A friend of mine just posted on Facebook to let us all know he and his family had just returned from a vacation. They went camping -- no television, cell phone service, wifi, nothing for days on end. At one point, Steve was apparently bemoaning this fact when his eight-year-old daughter said, "Dad, look at this river. We don't NEED TV with that." How many of us lose sight of the simple beauty of what's around us? Once when driving through the mountains of Colorado, I became so obsessed with taking pictures of the beauty that I honestly forgot to actually stop and admire the beauty. How many times have we found ourselves surrounded by beauty or excitement or just life itself and all we can think about is texting or wondering what TIVO is holding for us? Little Abbie wasn't worried about missing an episode of "iCarly"; she was too busy grooving on the beautiful nature around her. A lesson we all could take.

2. The cast of The Music Man was filled with small kids, many of whom were making their stage debut. One such kid was a little boy named Will. Will spent every moment in sheer awe of what was going on around him. The stage manager said that Will could often be found backstage just watching with this smile on his face -- even if it was just a scene change. During rehearsals, when actors were moving furniture to get ready for the next scene, little Will would skip (SKIP) onto stage and kind of flit around -- seeming to realize he really couldn't be of much help but wanting to be part of the process, even if it was just walking alongside a bench being moved. His joy at being part of the process was just infectious. He served as a reminder of why we should be doing this -- it's freakin' fun to do theatre. We get wrapped up in who gets what part or how much time we get to spend onstage that we forget to just relax and have fun. Will never once forgot that, except for maybe when he cut his hand backstage and was too hysterical to go onstage.

3. Another friend of mine brought his young daughters to see The Music Man this weekend. One fell asleep (she's 3; cut her some slack). The other seemed delighted by what went on. While her parents dealt with her sleeping sister after the show, I offered to take Amber backstage to see the set upclose. Even for a kid raised on theatre (her parents are both theatre folk), Amber was dazzled by the opportunity to walk onstage and sit at Marian's piano or walk into the library (where her attention was quickly stolen by Marian's sparkly purse). The lesson? Don't lose your childlike wonder at anything and everything -- even if it's just a pretty purse.

4. One of my jobs as production manager was to organize strike. I had a cast of 60, many of whom were small children. Somehow, the idea of putting a drill into the hands of an 8 year old just seemed not good. Many of the kids were given the simple task of hanging up their costumes and then leaving with their parents. I had several kids, though, whose parents were in the show and couldn't just leave because I needed their parents to help strike. I came up with the idea of taking a group of these kids and putting them in charge of script check-in. (Musical scripts have to be returned after being erased of any and all marks.) I gave each of my chosen crew a pink eraser and a box and told them they needed to go through the scripts, erase marks, and check off the turned in scripts. These kids (the oldest was maybe 11 or 12) took this job so seriously. The five of them sat in the house solemnly erasing away. The one I appointed "crew chief" would track down cast members who had not turned scripts in yet. I couldn't have asked for a better, more dilligent crew. What these five kids (and a big shout out to Amanda, Jensen, Marie, Eleanor, and Walker) showed me was that no job is too small, and that every job deserves 100%, even if it's something so simple as erasing pencil marks from a script.

If we could all just make a concerted effort to adopt that sort of childlike wonder and diligence, think how much happier we could all be . . . . .

... And the Livin' is Easy

Summer is more than half over for me, and I realize I've spent very little time writing here. Part of it is the continued writer's bloc and part of it is just being busy.

The past several weeks have been spent serving as production manager for the local community theatre production of The Music Man. I've written many times in the past in defense of community theatre and how it offers a venue for people to maintain creative pursuits while still having "normal" lives. Working on a show the scale of The Music Man was a perfect example as parents took the stage with their kids in a cast filled with teachers, ministers, doctors, college students, children, and more. For those of you unfamiliar with the role of a production manager, it, well, sucks. My job consisted mostly of emails and phone calls. During rehearsals, I sat and was basically useless in terms of having any sort of creative input. It was, to be honest, creatively castrating -- so much so that I made a vow to never be PM again. I walked away from the theatre this weekend feeling as if I'd made little to no contribution to the show, feeling very disconnected from the whole process. It was not a good feeling, although it did make me excited to get back to work in a few weeks and start work on our fall production. My creative impulses are bursting from lack of use!

Now that the show is over, the rest of my summer will be divided between yard work (it never ends!), housework (I might actually unpack the last of the boxes from my move a year ago), squeezing in one more Phish show (at Chicago's Toyota Park -- a new venue!), and getting ready to go back to work. I have lesson plans to tweak, a play to ready, and a speech season for which to prepare. Speech season prep takes on some interesting dimensions as my sis was just hired last week to be the speech coach at another area school -- as if my sis and I aren't competitive enough!! (Should make for some interesting blog posts down the line, no?)

So I'm going to settle down with a cool beverage, watch The Wackness, and try to come up with some ideas for more posts this summer. Peace out!

Patriotism is . . .fried chicken?

Because of inclement weather yesterday, the local "Big Bang Boom" fireworks display was postponed to this evening. They really couldn't have asked for a better night -- clear skies, comfortable temperatures. Rather than fight the crowd out at the lake, we always opt to watch the display from a friend's house. We miss some of the ground stuff, but we have a perfect view of the big show.

In addition to an amazing display of fireworks, a local radio station adds a soundtrack that mixes pop, rock, country, and your typical patriotic fare. In addition to a bizarre "oral report" on The Wizard of Oz (which I suspect was just an excuse for them to play "Defying Gravity"), the soundtrack also included a couple country songs I'd never heard before. One was called "Chicken Fried" and it was your typical "regular Joe" crap about liking fried chicken, cold beer, and finding jeans that fit your fat ass -- oh, and, you know, America and the troops. I mean, thanks to the troops, we get to eat fried chicken as often as we'd like.

This song got me to thinking -- are we the only country in the world that creates hits out of this sort of jingoistic propaganda? I mean, are there songs in England celebrating scones and thanking their troops for ensuring they can put chocolate chips OR blueberries in their scones? Do the French have odes to the croissant? And doesn't it make you wonder what people from other countries think about songs like this that seemingly celebrate the lowest common denominator as if it's something special? I mean, the implication of this song is that REAL Americans like their chicken fried -- totally ignoring the fact that this is the least healthy way to enjoy your chicken. Me? I like my chicken baked. I guess I might as well pack up for Canada right now.

Here's the thing -- I am patriotic. I love this country. I never fail to tear up when I hear "The Star Spangled Banner" -- it's powerful imagery and when I think about the story behind the song, it kind of gets to me every single time. I don't necessarily wear my patriotism on my sleeve, and I recognize there are times when my government has made mistakes or when people in this country make choices that I think may not be the strongest. I don't need to sing about it and shove other people's faces in my patriotism, nor do I think that the way I prefer my chicken is any sort of indication of my patriotism or apparent lack thereof.

Just a little something to chew on as we enter into our nation's 234th year.

Silence is Golden ... Seriously.

After a morning of riding my exercise bike and doing some intense yardwork, my sis and I opted to take advantage of Bargain Tuesday* at the local multiplex and finally go see The Hangover. Everyone we know who has seen the movie has raved about it, and we both hated the idea of missing out on a great movie while it was still in town.

(* Bargain Tuesday at our local multiplex involves matinee pricing all day and free popcorn. Yeah, FREE popcorn.)

After running a couple quick errands, we arrived at the theatre with plenty of time to collect our free popcorn, drop $7.50 on drinks (yes, pretty much negating the free popcorn) and find perfect seats -- dead center. (Yeah, I'm one of those.) Minutes before the lights went down, a group of older ladies (I would guess they were in their 50's or 60's) came walking in, entered our row, and proceeded to sit just one seat away from me. I should mention at this point that there were probably fewer than 10 people in the theatre. It was 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon -- not a prime moviegoing time. There were probably 150 empty seats in the theater, and yet these women just had to sit right beside me. I shrugged it off as kind of odd and settled in to watch the previews, which is one of my favorite parts of going to see a movie. ( Extract looks great, and I can't wait for Bruno!) This group of women next to me continued to chat through the previews, which annoys me, but I tend to let it slide since I realize not everyone holds previews in the state of reverence that I do. Certainly, the conversation would not continue when the movie started, right?

WRONG!

These old bats proceeded to chat throughout the movie -- explaining jokes, making observations, and more. And I sat there cursing my parents for raising me to respect my elders because I just couldn't bring myself to ask them to be quiet. I thought about getting up and moving to other seats, but I didn't want to disturb other audience members nor did I want to lose my "perfect" seats.

It's not so much that they ruined my moviegoing experience. That would be a little diva-riffic to claim that. I still really enjoyed the movie tremendously (if you haven't seen it, do!). It was really more of an annoyance and a continuing sign that we have lost our sense of basic etiquette when it comes to going to movies. We're more willing to chat with our friends, answer phone calls, and more when we go to movies, forgetting that such actions just may disturb our fellow audience members. I don't care that you've been to Vegas before, and I liked the funny line better the first time when Zach Galifinakis said it. If you want to visit during a movie, just wait until it comes out on video and let the rest of us enjoy the movie in silence.

Thank you.

And seriously, what were 60-year-old women doing at The Hangover??

Most Excellent

This weekend was my (gulp) 20th high school reunion. I will admit I went into this weekend with a certain amount of trepidation. While I look back on my high school career with a certain amount of fondness (and probably more fondness than a lot of people tend to -- those adolescent years are killers), I also had, until recently, done a really lousy job of keeping in touch with anyone with whom I went to high school. Thanks to the wonder of Facebook, I've found quite a few people from high school and reconnected, but would that newly rebuilt friendship hold up in the "real world"? (And this made me also wonder -- if Facebook and its kin had existed in the late 80's and early 90's, would I have been a better friend post-high school? It will be so much easier for my students to maintain those high school relationships in our digital era when all it takes is a text or a quick comment on Facebook rather than writing a letter.) So while there was some excitement to see people, there was also a certain level of anxiety.

In a "perfect" world, I would have walked into the reunion Friday significantly thinner, perfectly dressed and coiffed, and on the arm of some delightful man with a wallet stuffed full of pictures of the perfect children at home with a babysitter, but in the real world I walked in as me -- weight to lose, hair not on its best behavior, and solo -- and there was this realization that I was perfectly okay with that. One of the friends with whom I spent a fair chunk of the festivities and I talked about how we've changed, and that was one of them -- that we have discovered in our advanced years that we are more confident and accepting of who we are. I have a job that I love, a home that I've worked hard to build, and have become a person that I really like. Who could ask for anything more?

Friday's festivities included a more casual get-together at a local bar. I arrived fairly early and pinned on my nametag which included our names (duh!) and our senior picture. I took a gander at that idealistic kid in that picture with the big glasses, the short hair with the swoop of bang over one eye, and the funky scarf dressing up the black turtleneck (yes, even then I was a black turtleneck sorta girl) and then grimaced at the name on the tag. You all know me as "Mel." For about 20 years, I have been "Mel", but for the first 18 years of my life, I was a . . . . sigh . . . "Missy." I fought long and hard to shed that name, and suddenly, there it was in black and white. SIGH! I decided to grit my teeth as people called me by the "Name to Which I Refused to Answer", but breathed a sigh of relief at the people who corrected themselves and remembered those last couple years of high school when I began the process of trying to shake the "Missy." The reunion was even more special with the arrival of the person who first dubbed me "Mel" during sophomore year and inadvertently sent me on the road to "Mel-ness." (He sat in front of me in English and intercepted a note intended for my best friend Caity, a note in which I asked her if she wanted to go see Lethal Weapon that weekend because Mel Gibson was so hot. He started calling me "Mel" as an homage to my Mel Gibson crush, and it stuck for 20+ years.)

As the evening progressed, there were a lot of squeals and hugs. Some people looked exactly the same; some looked, well, old. There were some extra pounds here and there, fewer strands of hair, but the same spirits and energies were still there. While just about everyone warmly greeted each other, we did tend to gravitate towards our old social circles, and I found myself at a table full of old "Stage Call" kids. (That was the name of our drama club) There were a lot of "remember when" stories as we reminisced about slumber parties, trips to the roller rink, and time spent cruising the "strip" (comprised of driving from the McDonalds on one side of town to the McDonalds on the other side of town). Because we are older and wiser and more open about things, we also had the chance to talk with a lot of honesty, telling each other how much we meant to each other back then and how glad we were to reconnect. It's always kind of odd to realize how much you've touched someone's life and vice versa.

Last night was the more "formal" reunion dinner. There was a dj spinning 80s classics (yup, lots of Michael Jackson) and a dance floor calling our names. It took us awhile to get out there, but all it took was "Thriller" and there we were -- a bunch of 37 and 38 year olds getting down like it had been 20 days rather than 20 years since high school. There's something refreshing about looking across the room to see a 38-year-old man doing his best Michael Jackson moves, right down to the crotch grab, before dropping to the floor and spinning on his back like an extra from Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. When the dj so kindly spun a little REM and The Clash, we were pogoing, heads and arms flailing, and I could feel the years just slipping off.

Sure, there were a couple people that did not come that I wished had -- in particular Caity (the aforementioned best friend from high school) and Betsy (who introduced me to some of the best music and rescued me from the pop doldrums by slipping me copies of REM, The Cure, The Smiths, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and more) -- but it was so nice spending time with people who knew me when and to realize that, despite the 20 years, some things remain the same -- we still know how to make each other laugh, we still are there to offer supportive shoulders, and we still mean a lot to each other. It's just that now, we're better able to express all of those things to each other without all that teen angst bullshit getting in the way.

Can't wait for our 30th!

You Are Not Alone

He had become a joke, a punchline, and yet . . . .

For people my age and older, Michael Jackson was always something more. He was that endearing little boy with the amazing voice promising us that he'd "be there." As a kid, I can remember watching the Jackson 5 show and idolizing Michael -- a kid not that much older than I who was on tv and singing and dancing. He was a hero.

By junior high, Michael had become a pioneer, a trailblazer. Kids nowadays may have no idea just how much ground Michael broke with Thriller, but those of us who were there in the early 80's probably still remember the first time we saw "Billie Jean" on MTV. It rocked our world, and if you go back and listen to it or "Beat It" or just about any other song from that album, it STILL rocks your world. You basically could NOT not like Michael Jackson back then.

As the 80s wore on, Michael became, well, odder. While Bad was still a pretty cool album, it was becoming more and more difficult to overlook some of Michael's eccentricities -- the house, the pets, the rumors. Did these eccentricities get in the way of his artistic genius, or did his artistic genius just get overshadowed? If we were to pick up one of his later albums, would we hear that same revolutionary genius that we heard on Thriller? I don't know. Like many kids of the 80s, I abandoned Michael probably in the early 90s when it stopped being cool to like him, as he became more of a punchline than a visionary. Like many, I cracked my jokes about him, rolled my eyes at reports of his crazy purchases, questionable marriages, and legal problems. And yet, every now and then, my mp3 player will stumble across one of those early songs like "Beat It" and I still stop and wonder at the gift that he shared with us. Now, that wonder will be mixed with sadness at the loss we've all suffered today as well as the knowledge that this will just become more punchline fodder. I can't help but think that the guy deserves more than that -- and so do the people to whom his music meant so much for so long.

Now, he can finally find some peace.