Sunday, April 08, 2007

Laugh Out Loud TV

A few notes about what made me laugh out loud this week on my comfy couch:

- This week's Liz Lemon gets the guy and Kenny does his best Sydney Bristow imitation episode of "30 Rock." Nobody I know watches this show, even though I talk it up all the time. C'mon people! Watch this show. Watch it now! It's funny. (Oh, if you really haven't watched the show before, check out this one first. It's my favorite so far this season. Mostly because it features LL Cool J. And I think we can all agree that it doesn't get any better than that.)

- The Daily Show: Yeah, everybody loves John Oliver. Me too. But my favorite correspondent these days is Larry Wilmore. The guy cracks me up. And putting them together in this Wilmore and Oliver Investigates segment is the best idea they've come up with in a long time. (I have to admit I felt a little badly for the councilman at the end. Even though his heart's in the right place, his idea to make certain words illegal definitely isn't the solution.) I'm going to try and embed it here.

- The Daily Show: Same ep as above. John Hodgman explains executive privilege. The thing that I found most interesting about this clip is at the end when the audience laughs, but I didn't feel like they actually got the Nixon reference in the John Stewart/Hodgman "conversation."

Thursday, April 05, 2007

It's Hahhrd Out There for a Teenaged Girl

I'm a little behind on my NYTimes reading, but this article from (2!) sundays ago that I just got around to reading today freaked me out. In my early 20s, I had many dreams about what I would do with my life, who I'd marry and the number of kids I'd have (six!). I had some big dreams (most of them involving me being big, I guess)... but one of my more common daydreams back then was to marry my boyfriend and settle down in his hometown of Newton, MA. *sigh* Ah Newton!

Newton was this magical suburb outside Boston where everyone was smahhhhrt, well-educated and super, super liberal. I LOVED IT. Back then I was living in Boston and guys my age used to talk about Newton Moms. Newton Moms were a special breed. First of all, they were all hot. They had these cute hairdos and cute outfits, and they all did yoga (or whatever people did back then to stay fit — jogging and Jane Fonda's aerobics, I guess?), and they were smart.. just basically awesome. And I wanted to be one.

Life played out... The guy I was dating turned out not to want to get married, or have even one kid (forget six)... and I moved away from Boston, blah, blah, blah... Life has been great and *is* great, even without (or especially without) the six kids, or the hubby, or the Newton address, but imagine my surprise when I came upon this NYTimes article about what life is like for teenaged girls in 2007 living in Newton, MA. I mean, if I had realized that dream, one of these girls could have been my daughter. It kinda blew my mind reading it.

But even if you've never heard of a Newton Mom, or had a dream to live in a (no longer) middle-class suburb of Boston, this article is fascinating. These girls are amazing. Actually, these kids — boys and girls — are amazing. Here's a snippet:
One of Esther’s close friends is Dan Catomeris (17), a school theater star. “One of the most attractive things about Esther is how smart she is,” said Dan, whose mother is a professor at Harvard Business School. “There’s always been this intellectual tension between us. I see why she likes Kierkegaard — he’s existential, but still Christian. She really likes Descartes. I was not so into Descartes. I really like Hume, Nietzsche, the existentialist authors. The musician we’re most collectively into is Bob Dylan.”
Dude, I don't know about you, but I don't think any of the boys I went to high school with knew what "intellectual tension" was, much less used it to describe a relationship they had with a girl.

I don't know. Even though this article seemed to be pushing the idea in the headline that these girls are rattled, stressed out freaks who want to be Barbies in a mortarboard someday (perhaps the latest salvo of the NYTimes' recent attack on feminism? See here and here.), I found their stories really inspiring. I mean, don't get me wrong, some of my favorite memories from childhood involve lying in my backyard staring at clouds, and it seems distressful that these girls don't take the time to zone out more often, but overall these girls seem centered and together to me — and destined for great lives — whether they get into Stanford, or not.

P.S. I can't believe I left this out... but now that I'm all growed-up, of course, I'd rather live in Somerville (mp3) now (as soon as I find my Irish Riviera-bred man who wants to go there, too). #1 song on my iPod these days. I just love it. Enjoy.