The Series Section

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“If Regina George is Cokie Mason, then Gretchen Weiners is Grace Blume. Think about it.”

If you understood that sentence, get yourself to What Claudia Wore, stat.

Recently, I’ve noticed an increasing number of blogs dedicated to the 90s phenomenon I like to call “the series section.” There still are, and always will be, book series for middle grade readers and young adults— Harry Potter, Twilight, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants have been a few this decade—but the days of the mega-series, when you recognized books by their numbers along with their titles, when ghostwriters helped ensure that one book a month came out, when the Barnes & Noble in Nashua had rows and rows containing every book in the Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley Twins in a section labeled “Young Adults Series,” seem to be behind us. Sadly, most of those books, which I’d spend whatever money I had on, spend hours browsing in said Nashua Barnes & Noble, and beg for in groups of ten whenever it was Christmas or my birthday, are no longer in print.

So thank God for blogs like What Claudia Wore, The Dairi Burger, The Unicorner, and Sleepover Friends Forever, which exist to remind us what a loss this is to the world of children’s literature. I remember these books the same way I remember Titanic—as fun as it is to frequent the blogs that snark on them, wondering how many times the BSC could possibly be in eighth grade, what Claudia would have been like if she’d grown up in the age of spell check, and why everyone always just put up with Kristy’s bitching about them getting to the meetings at 5:30 on the dot, these were the books that helped ensure that I loved reading throughout my preteens. Kids today had Harry Potter, which was only seven books long and, of course, is over now, but I could always look forward to a new Baby-Sitters Club or Sweet Valley Twins book. They made for cheap but much-appreciated birthday gifts in fourth and fifth grade. I’d bond with my friends over them (“Ooh, have you read this one yet?”). And, as I’ve mentioned before, books were often how I dealt with my own feelings—if I had a fight with my friends, got embarrassed in gym class, or was being made fun of at school, I’d seek out a book about a kid going through something similar, and book series always dealt with a wide range of topics.

But enough of this serious talk. You know you loved those books, too. Reminisce with me, will you?

The Baby-Sitters Club
Kristy was the one who had the “great idea” to start the club. She was short, coached softball, had a rich stepfather and a stepsister who got her own book series (Baby-Sitters Little Sister, which was what introduced me to the BSC), bossed everyone around, and bitched everyone out if they got to the meetings even a minute late. For some reason, no one ever told her to shut up.

Claudia was Japanese-American and an artist and had eating habits almost as bad as her spelling. She had a genius older sister and parents who were on her case about her junk food, her penchant for Nancy Drew, and her bad grades—but they did let her have her own phone line, which was why the meetings were at her house. Entire paragraphs in the second chapter of every book were dedicated to her outfits. Now, so are entire blogs.

Mary Anne cried a lot. Like, a lot. She was really shy, her mother was dead, and her father eventually married Dawn’s mother. She had a cute boyfriend named Logan who had a Southern accent and became an associate club member. Everyone was very upset when she got a haircut.

Stacey was a New York stereotype whose books were like a PSA for type 1 diabetes.

Dawn was a California stereotype who couldn’t make up her mind about which coast she wanted to live on.

Mallory was eleven, completely awkward, a writer, a horse-lover, and the oldest of eight kids. So of course, minus the eight kids part, she was the one I related to the most easily.

Jessi was black! Which they felt the need to mention every chapter! And she was also a ballerina. Who was black!

Abby didn’t show up until about book 90, so a lot of people forget about her. If you need a refresher, she was funny, athletic, and Jewish and had a twin sister, a dead father, and asthma. She also occasionally talked back to Kristy. It only took 90 books for someone to do it.

Together, they baby-sat a lot of cute kids, like the adorable Jamie Newton, Stacey’s “almost-sister” Charlotte Johansson, bratty Jenny Prezzioso, and “walking disaster” Jackie Rodowsky. They wrote about their jobs in the club notebook. They met every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 5:30 to 6:00. And they were the best.friends.ever.

God, I loved The Baby-Sitters Club. I read just about every book in the series not once but several times. After awhile, they didn’t even fit on my bookshelves. When I was nine, my entire room was decorated with posters and memorabilia I got from the Baby-Sitters Club fan club. My friends and I dreamed of the day we’d start our own baby-sitters club (of course, it never happened). When the movie came out in 1995, I wore my Baby-Sitters Club T-shirt and hat to the theater on the first day it came out. Actually, my cousins’ aunt, who works for Scholastic, was the executive producer of the movie, and when she got me Ann M. Martin’s autograph when I was ten, it was pretty much the best day of my life at the time.

Yeah, I think you get the picture. I was a huuuuuuuge fan.

Sweet Valley Twins
Sweet Valley High came first, and there was also Sweet Valley Kids, which had the same characters in second grade. But Sweet Valley Twins (later retitled Sweet Valley Twins and Friends, since it wasn’t just about the Wakefields) was the series I read the most. It was centered around the titular twins, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, who were identically blonde and pretty but, of course, polar opposites personality-wise. Elizabeth was the school newspaper editor, had perfect grades, and was obnoxiously self-righteous. Jessica was popularity-obsessed, a member of the Unicorn Club (which was basically a group of popular girls sitting around congratulating themselves on how awesome they were), and obnoxiously self-centered. They were twelve-year-old sixth graders in Sweet Valley, California, which must have one hell of a public transportation system, since these middle schoolers were somehow able to get around by themselves incredibly easily. Speaking of which:

Sleepover Friends
Man, I loved sleepovers as a kid. My mom, who thought they made me tired and cranky, was not such a fan. But what sleepover-loving pre-teen wouldn’t love reading a whole book series about friends who sleep over at each other’s houses every Friday night?

Enter the Sleepover Friends. They were ten-and eleven-year-old fifth graders in Riverhurst, USA, a suburb of “The City,” which was never identified further than that. Lauren, who narrated most of the books (eventually, the other three girls started narrating some of them), was athletic and loved food. Kate was the Kristy Thomas of the group—short, bossy, and would bitch you out if you talked during a movie. Patti, formerly of The City, was the smart, shy one. Stephanie, also formerly of The City, only dressed in red, black, and white because she thought it was cool and probably went on to have an eating disorder, since she was concerned about getting fat even at age ten. They’d get together on Fridays, make food, play Truth or Dare, listen to the radio, make fun of their classmates. And like Sweet Valley, Riverhurst was apparently very easy to get around, because these girls, who weren’t even in middle school yet, seemed to have no trouble going anywhere by themselves without any adults.

The Gymnasts
I used to want to be a gymnast, but not enough to take gymnastics classes. Only enough to do round-offs and one-handed cartwheels on the field at recess and to use the edge of my sandbox like a balance beam. So of course I loved this series, which was about a group of girls on a gymnastics team called the Pinecones at Evergreen Gymnastics Academy (geddit?). It was mainly focused on Lauren, Cindi, Jodi, and Darlene. Lauren was smart but not great at gymnastics, although in the end she turned out to be a good vaulter. Cindi was Lauren’s best friend and was good at the bars. Darlene was the captain, and her dad was a football player nicknamed Big Beef. Jodi was blonde and had a bit of a temper and had a mom who’d recently remarried. The four of them usually took turns narrating the books, except for one that was narrated by Ti An, the youngest member of their team, and two that were narrated by Heidi, an elite gymnast and recovering anorexic they sometimes hung out with. Heidi won an Olympic gold medal in Barcelona in the completely unrealistic series finale. The Pinecones had a really cool coach named Patrick, whom Lauren had a crush on. And let’s not forget about the enemies: Becky, the requisite bitchy girl who was a level higher than the Pinecones; Ashley, the bratty younger Pinecone who never got her own book; and the team’s big rivals, the Atomic Amazons. I remember Lauren always used to preface every statement she made with, “It’s a proven fact.” One of them was, “It’s a proven fact that pigs don’t sweat,” in response to someone using the phrase, “Sweating like a pig.”

Fear Street
R. L. Stine had the Goosebumps series for younger kids, but this was the series I read. Entertainment has never really scared me, and neither did these books, but it’s kind of amazing that these were marketed to pre-teens. There’s no sex in any of them, but there are tons of graphic, bloody murders. All of them took place in Shadyside, USA, which sounds like an ordinary suburb with a ridiculously high crime rate. It’s amazing anyone wanted to live there. Occasionally, there would be small cameos by characters mentioned in another book, but for the most part, every book was about someone different. A lot of them were surprisingly well-plotted—the killer usually turned out to be the least likely person, like the main character’s best friend, or the prom queen candidate who faked her own death and then began killing all the other prom queen candidates because she thought they were trying to steal her boyfriend (seriously). Mostly, they were just murder mysteries, but some were about something supernatural, like cheerleaders getting possessed by an evil spirit, a “ghost from the future” who comes back to try to prevent his own death, or some weird “mind transfer tape” of chanting by some primitive tribe that allowed this guy to possess his girlfriend’s body and make her kill people. I remember there was also a series of books that tried to explain the beginnings of Fear Street, starting in Puritan times when an innocent girl was burned at the stake for witchcraft in a frightening display of historical inaccuracy.

Lurlene McDaniel
This wasn’t a series so much as an author franchise. Lurlene McDaniel wrote a ton of books about teenagers dying of cancer, and when I was about twelve, I couldn’t get enough of these romanticized depictions of illness. They were all so formulaic—if there was a teenage couple, one of them would not survive. If the teenager with cancer survived the book, she probably would die in the sequel, or at least someone close to her would. Lather, rinse, repeat. I’d read these for the same reason I watch The Notebook, but I think also because they helped put middle school problems in perspective.

I remember plenty of other series, complete with the numbers, that I didn’t read too many of. For the little girls dreaming of becoming professional dancers, there was Ballet School for the younger crowd and Satin Slippers for older kids. There was also another series about gymnasts called American Gold Gymnasts, and I think those gymnasts were kids who actually had a shot at the Olympics. And then there was Girl Talk, which was about…a bunch of girls talking? Four girls in a middle school, I think.

There still are, and continue to be, some fabulous children’s and young adult books out there. But it looks like the series section is gone for good. Thanks for the memories.

The Series Section

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“If Regina George is Cokie Mason, then Gretchen Weiners is Grace Blume. Think about it.”

If you understood that sentence, get yourself to What Claudia Wore, stat.

Recently, I’ve noticed an increasing number of blogs dedicated to the 90s phenomenon I like to call “the series section.” There still are, and always will be, book series for middle grade readers and young adults— Harry Potter, Twilight, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants have been a few this decade—but the days of the mega-series, when you recognized books by their numbers along with their titles, when ghostwriters helped ensure that one book a month came out, when the Barnes & Noble in Nashua had rows and rows containing every book in the Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley Twins in a section labeled “Young Adults Series,” seem to be behind us. Sadly, most of those books, which I’d spend whatever money I had on, spend hours browsing in said Nashua Barnes & Noble, and beg for in groups of ten whenever it was Christmas or my birthday, are no longer in print.

So thank God for blogs like What Claudia Wore, The Dairi Burger, The Unicorner, and Sleepover Friends Forever, which exist to remind us what a loss this is to the world of children’s literature. I remember these books the same way I remember Titanic—as fun as it is to frequent the blogs that snark on them, wondering how many times the BSC could possibly be in eighth grade, what Claudia would have been like if she’d grown up in the age of spell check, and why everyone always just put up with Kristy’s bitching about them getting to the meetings at 5:30 on the dot, these were the books that helped ensure that I loved reading throughout my preteens. Kids today had Harry Potter, which was only seven books long and, of course, is over now, but I could always look forward to a new Baby-Sitters Club or Sweet Valley Twins book. They made for cheap but much-appreciated birthday gifts in fourth and fifth grade. I’d bond with my friends over them (“Ooh, have you read this one yet?”). And, as I’ve mentioned before, books were often how I dealt with my own feelings—if I had a fight with my friends, got embarrassed in gym class, or was being made fun of at school, I’d seek out a book about a kid going through something similar, and book series always dealt with a wide range of topics.

But enough of this serious talk. You know you loved those books, too. Reminisce with me, will you?

The Baby-Sitters Club
Kristy was the one who had the “great idea” to start the club. She was short, coached softball, had a rich stepfather and a stepsister who got her own book series (Baby-Sitters Little Sister, which was what introduced me to the BSC), bossed everyone around, and bitched everyone out if they got to the meetings even a minute late. For some reason, no one ever told her to shut up.

Claudia was Japanese-American and an artist and had eating habits almost as bad as her spelling. She had a genius older sister and parents who were on her case about her junk food, her penchant for Nancy Drew, and her bad grades—but they did let her have her own phone line, which was why the meetings were at her house. Entire paragraphs in the second chapter of every book were dedicated to her outfits. Now, so are entire blogs.

Mary Anne cried a lot. Like, a lot. She was really shy, her mother was dead, and her father eventually married Dawn’s mother. She had a cute boyfriend named Logan who had a Southern accent and became an associate club member. Everyone was very upset when she got a haircut.

Stacey was a New York stereotype whose books were like a PSA for type 1 diabetes.

Dawn was a California stereotype who couldn’t make up her mind about which coast she wanted to live on.

Mallory was eleven, completely awkward, a writer, a horse-lover, and the oldest of eight kids. So of course, minus the eight kids part, she was the one I related to the most easily.

Jessi was black! Which they felt the need to mention every chapter! And she was also a ballerina. Who was black!

Abby didn’t show up until about book 90, so a lot of people forget about her. If you need a refresher, she was funny, athletic, and Jewish and had a twin sister, a dead father, and asthma. She also occasionally talked back to Kristy. It only took 90 books for someone to do it.

Together, they baby-sat a lot of cute kids, like the adorable Jamie Newton, Stacey’s “almost-sister” Charlotte Johansson, bratty Jenny Prezzioso, and “walking disaster” Jackie Rodowsky. They wrote about their jobs in the club notebook. They met every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 5:30 to 6:00. And they were the best.friends.ever.

God, I loved The Baby-Sitters Club. I read just about every book in the series not once but several times. After awhile, they didn’t even fit on my bookshelves. When I was nine, my entire room was decorated with posters and memorabilia I got from the Baby-Sitters Club fan club. My friends and I dreamed of the day we’d start our own baby-sitters club (of course, it never happened). When the movie came out in 1995, I wore my Baby-Sitters Club T-shirt and hat to the theater on the first day it came out. Actually, my cousins’ aunt, who works for Scholastic, was the executive producer of the movie, and when she got me Ann M. Martin’s autograph when I was ten, it was pretty much the best day of my life at the time.

Yeah, I think you get the picture. I was a huuuuuuuge fan.

Sweet Valley Twins
Sweet Valley High came first, and there was also Sweet Valley Kids, which had the same characters in second grade. But Sweet Valley Twins (later retitled Sweet Valley Twins and Friends, since it wasn’t just about the Wakefields) was the series I read the most. It was centered around the titular twins, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, who were identically blonde and pretty but, of course, polar opposites personality-wise. Elizabeth was the school newspaper editor, had perfect grades, and was obnoxiously self-righteous. Jessica was popularity-obsessed, a member of the Unicorn Club (which was basically a group of popular girls sitting around congratulating themselves on how awesome they were), and obnoxiously self-centered. They were twelve-year-old sixth graders in Sweet Valley, California, which must have one hell of a public transportation system, since these middle schoolers were somehow able to get around by themselves incredibly easily. Speaking of which:

Sleepover Friends
Man, I loved sleepovers as a kid. My mom, who thought they made me tired and cranky, was not such a fan. But what sleepover-loving pre-teen wouldn’t love reading a whole book series about friends who sleep over at each other’s houses every Friday night?

Enter the Sleepover Friends. They were ten-and eleven-year-old fifth graders in Riverhurst, USA, a suburb of “The City,” which was never identified further than that. Lauren, who narrated most of the books (eventually, the other three girls started narrating some of them), was athletic and loved food. Kate was the Kristy Thomas of the group—short, bossy, and would bitch you out if you talked during a movie. Patti, formerly of The City, was the smart, shy one. Stephanie, also formerly of The City, only dressed in red, black, and white because she thought it was cool and probably went on to have an eating disorder, since she was concerned about getting fat even at age ten. They’d get together on Fridays, make food, play Truth or Dare, listen to the radio, make fun of their classmates. And like Sweet Valley, Riverhurst was apparently very easy to get around, because these girls, who weren’t even in middle school yet, seemed to have no trouble going anywhere by themselves without any adults.

The Gymnasts
I used to want to be a gymnast, but not enough to take gymnastics classes. Only enough to do round-offs and one-handed cartwheels on the field at recess and to use the edge of my sandbox like a balance beam. So of course I loved this series, which was about a group of girls on a gymnastics team called the Pinecones at Evergreen Gymnastics Academy (geddit?). It was mainly focused on Lauren, Cindi, Jodi, and Darlene. Lauren was smart but not great at gymnastics, although in the end she turned out to be a good vaulter. Cindi was Lauren’s best friend and was good at the bars. Darlene was the captain, and her dad was a football player nicknamed Big Beef. Jodi was blonde and had a bit of a temper and had a mom who’d recently remarried. The four of them usually took turns narrating the books, except for one that was narrated by Ti An, the youngest member of their team, and two that were narrated by Heidi, an elite gymnast and recovering anorexic they sometimes hung out with. Heidi won an Olympic gold medal in Barcelona in the completely unrealistic series finale. The Pinecones had a really cool coach named Patrick, whom Lauren had a crush on. And let’s not forget about the enemies: Becky, the requisite bitchy girl who was a level higher than the Pinecones; Ashley, the bratty younger Pinecone who never got her own book; and the team’s big rivals, the Atomic Amazons. I remember Lauren always used to preface every statement she made with, “It’s a proven fact.” One of them was, “It’s a proven fact that pigs don’t sweat,” in response to someone using the phrase, “Sweating like a pig.”

Fear Street
R. L. Stine had the Goosebumps series for younger kids, but this was the series I read. Entertainment has never really scared me, and neither did these books, but it’s kind of amazing that these were marketed to pre-teens. There’s no sex in any of them, but there are tons of graphic, bloody murders. All of them took place in Shadyside, USA, which sounds like an ordinary suburb with a ridiculously high crime rate. It’s amazing anyone wanted to live there. Occasionally, there would be small cameos by characters mentioned in another book, but for the most part, every book was about someone different. A lot of them were surprisingly well-plotted—the killer usually turned out to be the least likely person, like the main character’s best friend, or the prom queen candidate who faked her own death and then began killing all the other prom queen candidates because she thought they were trying to steal her boyfriend (seriously). Mostly, they were just murder mysteries, but some were about something supernatural, like cheerleaders getting possessed by an evil spirit, a “ghost from the future” who comes back to try to prevent his own death, or some weird “mind transfer tape” of chanting by some primitive tribe that allowed this guy to possess his girlfriend’s body and make her kill people. I remember there was also a series of books that tried to explain the beginnings of Fear Street, starting in Puritan times when an innocent girl was burned at the stake for witchcraft in a frightening display of historical inaccuracy.

Lurlene McDaniel
This wasn’t a series so much as an author franchise. Lurlene McDaniel wrote a ton of books about teenagers dying of cancer, and when I was about twelve, I couldn’t get enough of these romanticized depictions of illness. They were all so formulaic—if there was a teenage couple, one of them would not survive. If the teenager with cancer survived the book, she probably would die in the sequel, or at least someone close to her would. Lather, rinse, repeat. I’d read these for the same reason I watch The Notebook, but I think also because they helped put middle school problems in perspective.

I remember plenty of other series, complete with the numbers, that I didn’t read too many of. For the little girls dreaming of becoming professional dancers, there was Ballet School for the younger crowd and Satin Slippers for older kids. There was also another series about gymnasts called American Gold Gymnasts, and I think those gymnasts were kids who actually had a shot at the Olympics. And then there was Girl Talk, which was about…a bunch of girls talking? Four girls in a middle school, I think.

There still are, and continue to be, some fabulous children’s and young adult books out there. But it looks like the series section is gone for good. Thanks for the memories.

Random Thought of the Day

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My mom was offering me some things she had that she didn’t need. One of them was one of those little egg-holder things that come with the refrigerator.

I was thinking…why in the world would anyone need that thing? Is the box that the eggs came in somehow insufficient? I mean, it takes up the same amount of space and tells you when the eggs expire. Why would you ever need an egg-holder tray?

It’s almost as unnecessary as the word aglet.

Call Me Elaine

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I write a lot here about TV shows I like. Now, I’m going to write about one that everyone seems to like except me.

Remember that episode of Seinfeld when Elaine found herself dumped and fired, all because she didn’t like The English Patient?

Well, I haven’t been dumped or fired, but the reactions I’ve gotten to my declarations of hate for this show have been priceless. I’ve gotten all the cliché signs of shock: loud gasps, jaw drops, disbelieving stares, and “Really?” There are probably more coming when people read my next sentence.

I hate Arrested Development.

And I do mean hate. Not “couldn’t get into it,” not “okay but not my thing.” I strongly dislike the show.

I think I’ve given it a fair chance. I’ve seen the first three episodes (so I’m familiar with the characters, the premise of the show, etc.), the second season premiere, the second season episode “Meat the Veals,” and possibly another episode at some point that I can’t recall.

But I do not enjoy the show. I don’t find it funny, for one thing. I understand the jokes, but they don’t make me laugh. Occasionally, there’s a good line or plot twist (I will give you that “There’s always money in the banana stand!” was pretty funny), but they’re few and far between.

More importantly, I don’t like the characters—any of them. If they were characters in a movie, they might be tolerable, but I find them all too annoying to want to follow their progress across three seasons. There’s an element of believability with them that’s missing, I think—not one character on the show seems anything like a real person, and nothing that happens seems anything like real life. I think the best comedy is rooted in truth, which is what differentiates this show from shows like The Office. Characters like Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute can do outrageous and, yes, annoying things, but there are things about them, and all the other characters, that you can recognize in people you know, and characteristics that make them relatable and likeable. And everyone knows someone like Jim or Pam or any of the other characters on The Office. But do you know anyone like Buster or Tobias? I don’t. Can you identify with any of the characters on Arrested Development? I can’t.

Other reasons for not liking it: George Michael having a crush on his cousin Maeby grossed me out. Too much of the humor is slapstick. And I think most people have an actor who irritates them for some inexplicable reason, and for me, that actor is Jason Bateman. I don’t know why—something about him just bugs me.

What bugs me even more, though, is the attitude Arrested Development fans have toward anyone who disagrees with them. Recently, I Googled, with quotation marks, “don’t like Arrested Development,” and it only turned up four page of hits. Most of them were things like, “The only people that don’t like Arrested Development are the people too stupid to understand it,” and “Funny how the people that don’t like Arrested Development type like 12 year-olds, and the people that do have the English language down pretty well.”

Funny how those people, who apparently think I’m stupid, don’t know that they should have said, “The only people who don’t like Arrested Development…”

From talking to people who like the show, both on and offline, that attitude seems to be the rule rather than the exception. You don’t like Arrested Development; therefore, you’re too stupid to “get it.”

But what I really don’t get is where this attitude comes from. Is it just because the show was canceled so early? Is it really that hard for people to understand that someone might not like it? Believe it or not, I know what it’s like to love a show that no one’s watching. A few years ago, I liked the extremely low-rated Six Degrees, and lately, I’ve become a bit of an evangelist for Damages, which has Emmys and a lot of critical acclaim, but not great ratings. But I realize, even as I encourage others to watch them, that neither of those shows will appeal to everyone. I’ve never needed to make myself feel superior to the people who didn’t watch a show I liked and led to it being canceled. But apparently, most Arrested Development fans do. It’s a show that intelligent, educated people are “supposed” to like, the way that you’re “supposed” to like indie music and foreign films. And the really funny thing about that idea is that, from what I’ve seen of it, the show relies pretty heavily on dumb slapstick gags that a five-year-old could understand.

Like any kind of cultural snobbery, this attitude pisses me off. It’s the same reason Aaron Sorkin’s attitude about Studio 60 provoked such a strong reaction in me, and the same reason I’m so bothered by music snobs.

But there have to be other people out there who hate Arrested Development as much as I do. After all, there weren’t enough people watching it to keep it on the air longer than three seasons. If any of them stumble across my blog, I beg of you—come out of hiding! I’m here to tell you that it is okay not to like this show, which is probably a new thing for you to hear. Despite what fans of the show may make you think, you are not stupid and neither am I!

And maybe, once you find me, we can figure out what the equivalent of Elaine’s, “Quit telling your stupid story about the stupid desert and just die already!” would be for Arrested Development.

They’re Not Quite Gods, But…

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My neighborhood is full of churches and dentist’s offices. There’s one church that has a marquee board that’s usually pretty interesting. One recent item on it read, “God wants spiritual fruits, not religious nuts.” It also usually has the minister’s name up there.

This week, I noticed a new message on the marquee board:

The name of the minister is conspicuously absent. Makes me wonder if the sermon will be given by the ghosts of recently deceased celebrities.

Or maybe (although this wouldn’t explain Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon), there’s some truth to that joke about how God is Michael Jackson.

Katie Recommends: Damages and Veronica Mars

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This is the first time I’ve done a double recommendation. These are two shows that not enough people have seen, and if you’ve watched one and liked it, I think you might like the other. While their settings are nothing alike—Damages takes place in a New York law firm, Veronica Mars takes place in a California high school—they have several things in common. They both feature season-long storylines. They’re both full of twists and surprises. And they both have powerful women as central characters. So, without further ado…

Damages
I started watching this after hearing a couple of people sing its praises. The first thing to know about Damages is that the less you know about it before you see it, the better. I’m glad I didn’t know too much about it beforehand, so I’m only telling you enough to (hopefully) entice you to watch. Prepare for some very vague paragraphs where I allude to events I won’t explain.

So here’s what you should know: Glenn Close plays Patty Hewes, a high-stake litigator in New York. While she’s brilliant at her job, we learn early on that she’s willing to do unethical or illegal things to win her cases. She’s ruthless and sometimes evil (and no one does evil like Glenn Close), but oddly charismatic. As despicable as some of her actions are, she’s a great character, and Close absolutely deserved the Emmy she got last year.

Rose Byrne plays her young associate, Ellen Parsons, who, in the first season, is fresh out of law school. As the show progresses, Ellen and Patty’s working relationship becomes increasingly complicated. If you’re having problems with your boss, watch this show—I think it might make you feel better.

Ted Danson plays Arthur Frobisher, the antagonist of the first season. He’s the CEO of a company reminiscent of Enron and is involved in a class-action suit by his former employees. The case plays out over the course of the first season, as Patty and her employees try to prove that he participated in insider trading and deprived his employees of their life savings.

The whole first season is like a 13-hour movie, and the narrative is non-linear. We begin with a flash-forward to six months after the story begins, and as the season continues, we get glimpses of what’s coming as the show jumps back and forth in time. And what’s coming? Well…let’s just say there’s murder, attempted murder, betrayal, and characters who aren’t what they seem to be.

Also, if you like surprises, you’ll be in for quite a few of them with this show. Towards the end of the first season especially, there’s one shock after another, and the best part is that none of them feel cheap. They’re all surprises that have been cleverly set up and make complete sense.

The first season is on DVD, and you should rent it as soon as possible. As for the second season…well, to give you fair warning, while it’s worth a watch, it’s nowhere near as good as the first season. There’s another season-long case, but the plot is unfocused and, sadly, the shock value is gone. But I’d still recommend it. It’s not on DVD yet, but I downloaded it from Amazon.

In the first season, the writing is nearly flawless, and the acting is fantastic all around. Aside from the people I mentioned, the cast also includes Zeljko Ivanek (who won an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor) and Tate Donovan, and Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, and Timothy Olyphant join the cast in the second season.

One other thing I appreciate about this show is how it features a powerful woman as its central character. While she’s not exactly someone you want to emulate, Patty is a commanding, high-profile woman who’s clearly in charge of anyone she fixes her narrowed eyes on—and no one ever questions it. Her being a woman in control is never the point; it’s just accepted.

Veronica Mars
I feel kind of stupid recommending a show that’s been off the air for two years, especially since I didn’t watch it while it was still on and was therefore part of the problem that led to it being canceled. But this is absolutely worth watching on DVD.

Veronica (Kristen Bell) is a high school student in Neptune, California who helps her father Keith (Enrico Colantoni) run a detective agency. (Yes, her last name is Mars, she lives in Neptune, and she drives a Saturn. But that’s thankfully as far as they go with the cutesy “planet” jokes.) Every week, there’s a mystery to be solved—anything from cheating spouses to kidnapping to high tech rumor-spreading.

But like Damages, there are season-long plotlines that are addressed every episode as well. In the first season, Veronica is trying to solve the murder of her best friend, Lilly Kane (Amanda Seyfried). Prior to the start of the show, Keith was the county sheriff, and when Lilly died, he accused Lilly’s rich father of the murder. The outraged community ousted Keith in a recall election, Veronica’s alcoholic mother left town, and Veronica, who had once been popular, was shunned by her old friends. She stuck by her father and uses the resources she has available at the detective agency to investigate Lilly’s murder. Also in Season One, Veronica is trying to determine who roofied and raped her at a party and why Lilly’s brother Duncan, her ex-boyfriend, suddenly dumped her not long before Lilly’s death.

In the second season, the season-long mystery involves a bus crash that kills several of Veronica’s classmates and may or may not have been an accident. While the first season as a whole is better, the second season has an absolutely shocking ending that I didn’t see coming for a second.

The third season takes place at a fictional local college, and rather than one season-long mystery, there are two smaller mysteries, one involving a series of rapes and one involving a murder.

For those who weren’t part of the problem, this was something of a cult show—which is a weird term to use about a show that doesn’t involve anything supernatural, but one quick Google will show you how passionate the fans are. But somehow, it never managed to find a wide audience. I blame it on the show being hidden on UPN while the network still existed, because I think this show would appeal to fans of a lot of other shows. If you like high school shows like The O.C., you’ll like it for the romance and teenage gossip that are never the point of the show but are always lurking in the background. If you like any of the dozens of crime dramas on TV right now, you’ll like it for the mystery. If you like shows like Buffy and Alias that feature a woman kicking ass, you’ll like it for the smart, tough, prickly title character. If you liked Kristen Bell on Heroes, you’ll love her here. If you liked Enrico Colantoni on Just Shoot Me or Flashpoint, you’ll love him as Keith, a very well-written character—you can see how Veronica picked up aspects of his personality. If you like attractive women, you’ll love it for the gorgeous Ms. Bell. If you like attractive men, you’ll love it for the gorgeous Jason Dohring, who plays rich boy Logan Echolls. And if you like Damages, you’ll like it for all the reasons I’ve already mentioned.

One warning—Veronica Mars has the worst series finale I have ever seen. It ends on a cliffhanger, but even if it didn’t, it would still not be a very good episode. So feel free to skip that ending, but all three seasons are on DVD, so you can rent those as soon as possible. And rumor has it that a movie is in the works, so give yourself a crash course now before it comes out.

Garfunkel and Oates

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Contrary to popular belief, my posts do normally have something of a point. This one does not, except to say, “These girls are hilarious.”

The girls who call themselves Garfunkel and Oates are two actresses named Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci (IMDB tells me that Riki, the one who kind of looks like Michelle Williams, played Juliet, Logan’s friend on Gilmore Girls who said her “metabolism didn’t allow her to eat”). First, I found this video, which makes fun of annoying pregnant women. Thank God none of my friends are having kids yet, but everything they say about smug pregnant women is SO TRUE.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJRzBpFjJS8]
Then there’s this one, a medley of bad songs, which I loved even though I like quite a few of the songs they mock:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJRzBpFjJS8]
All their other songs are just as funny. They’re kind of like a female cross between Barenaked Ladies and Da Vinci’s Notebook.

Along With Death and Taxes…

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…we can always depend on drama when it comes to commencement speakers at Catholic colleges.

To warn you, this is going to be a rant. It bothered me three years ago and it bothers me now.

My sister Caroline is graduating from BC in a few weeks. I don’t know who her graduation speaker will be yet, only that it won’t be President Obama, who was her freshman convocation speaker (this was in the fall of 2005, when he hadn’t yet announced whether he’d run for president—way to go, BC!). Instead, Obama will be speaking at Notre Dame, a school that any BC football fan is not too fond of.

So, that was an unfortunate choice on his part, but not as unfortunate as the reaction that’s coming from some people at ND. People are calling it a scandal—a scandal!—that Obama was asked to speak and to receive an honorary degree. Mary Ann Glendon is even turning down the award she was going to receive because of it. Why? Because Obama supports abortion rights, to which the Catholic Church is staunchly opposed.

I’m not at all surprised by this. I suspect the culture wars are present on every college campus, but there’s an extra layer added to the arguments when you’re at a Catholic school. At BC, people would always try to validate their opinions by claiming that the Catholic Church was on their side. On the left, people would bring out that argument to try to convince the administration to disinvite Raytheon from the career fair or to ban military recruiters at school. On the right, people would cry Catholic in their arguments against The Vagina Monologues on campus and the gay-straight alliance.

And it’s all such bullshit. If you’re going to invite a politician to speak at a graduation at a Catholic college, I can guarantee you that there’s not one politician whose positions align completely with that of the Catholic Church. The Church is opposed to abortion and stem-cell research, sure, but it’s also opposed to the death penalty and the war in Iraq. Find me one politician who’s against all those things.

“But Katie,” some of you are probably thinking, “you only feel this way because you’re a Democrat and an Obama supporter. Would you object to a Republican speaking at a graduation?”

Funny you should ask, because I wouldn’t, and I didn’t. Three years ago at BC, my commencement speaker was Condoleezza Rice. While I personally don’t like her and don’t agree with her politics, I was excited when I heard she’d be our speaker. I thought it was an honor to have the Secretary of State give our commencement address, and regardless of my views on Rice’s politics, I do think she’s articulate and a good public speaker. And when she did speak, her speech was well-written, well-delivered, and completely devoid of politics.

BC is not a particularly liberal school, but I was astounded at the reaction from a good portion of my graduating class. Protests were held, petitions circulated, armbands that read “Not in My Name” were worn, and backs were turned when Rice received her honorary degree. People tossed around phrases like “not representative of Jesuit ideals” and “against Catholic values.” Outside the school, 200 protesters shouted and held up signs saying things like, “BC Supports Lies and Torture.” There was even a plane flying overhead with a banner that read, “Your war brings dishonor.”

I’m uncomfortable with displays like that for a simpler reason than opposition to this position or that position. People certainly have the right to protest, freedom of speech, yea First Amendment, blah blah blah fishcakes. But common decency tells me that there’s a time and a place for protesting and making statements, and honestly, I just think that protesting anything at a graduation is incredibly rude. This is the thing that a lot of people lose sight of: there would not be a commencement address if there were not a large group of people receiving bachelor’s and advanced degrees. No one is there specifically to hear the speech or see someone receive an honorary degree. They’re there to honor the people who have completed years of studies and earned degrees. I always took it for granted that I’d get at least a bachelor’s degree, and nearly everyone I know has completed college, but according to this recent study, only 29% of US adults can say that, and only about 9% have graduate or professional degrees. Even if it might not seem that way if it’s something you’ve always expected, graduating from college or grad school is a major accomplishment. The commencement speaker might receive an honorary degree, but the people a commencement ceremony really honors are the ones with their names on the diplomas. It seems a shame to let politics and religion get in the way of that.

So to the class of 2009 at Notre Dame: congratulations on graduating, and on snagging Obama as your speaker. Regardless of your political views, I hope you enjoy the speech, since I think even his most zealous opponents would admit that he’s a great public speaker. I should warn you, though, that my graduation started hours later than it was scheduled due to the very tight security we all had to go through, so I don’t envy you that. Also, your football team still sucks.

And to whoever is choosing the speaker for Caroline’s graduation, I really hope you pick an interesting person whose presence is not a matter of national security.

Some Things Gold Can Stay

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Bea Arthur passed away this weekend, and the reaction to it has been kind of amazing. She was eighty-six, old enough to be a grandmother to people my age. The Golden Girls went off the air when I was seven and still watching PBS. And yet my Facebook newsfeed is flooded with status updates and posted links in her memory—all by people close to my age.

I only started watching The Golden Girls reruns recently, but I loved it immediately. Twenty years ago, I suspect people loved it for the witty dialogue, likeable characters, and great acting. People still do, but it’s kind of taken on a deeper meaning years later. For one thing, it was surprisingly ahead of its time. Watching it now, I notice the lack of cell phones and the Internet (on one I just saw, a character was going to call the airline to change her flight, and I was just thinking, “Oh, yeah…I guess that’s what people did before you could book flights online.”), but I also notice how little has changed since the 80s. They did a fair number of Very Special Episodes, but the issues don’t come off as annoyingly preachy as they do on a lot of other shows—partly because they don’t end with a sappy parent-child scene, but also because they’re things we’re still talking about today: homelessness, illegal immigration, gay marriage.

Weirdly, I don’t think this show would be picked up if it were introduced today, even though people are living longer, healthier lives than ever and you’d think there’d be a large market for shows about AARP members. But TV today is more Gossip Girl than Golden Girls. Teenagers are the ones who are buying things made by the companies paying for the shows, and advertisers won’t pay a lot to market products to people who’ve already made up their minds about what they like.

I think one reason this show resonates with people my age is that the women on the show are actually in a position similar to a lot of us: single, dating, living with roommates. We see these grandmothers in their fifties and sixties (and, in Sophia’s case, eighties) dating and having relationships that don’t usually last, or having some argument with a family member, or getting into some crazy situation like being mistaken for prostitutes, then going home to their best friends and talking about it over cheesecake. And the thing is, it doesn’t look so bad. The Golden Girls never beat its audience over the head with the message that you don’t have to fade into obscurity and become boring and irrelevant once you have gray hair and your children have grown up, but it still got that point across. The girls all had interesting lives. They had jobs, took classes, did charity work, and dated—and we never questioned that men would still be attracted to them at their ages. Sure, we’d laugh at Blanche pretending to be younger than she was, or at the numerous jokes about how many men she’d slept with, but not at the fact that she was sleeping with men at all.

The other reason, I think, is that we enjoy watching shows about groups of female friends no matter how old they are. How many books, movies and TV shows are there about groups of four girls? Now and Then, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City and its knockoffs Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle…I could go on and on. The Golden Girls showed us that those types of friendships exist at any age. Come to think of it, if Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte from Sex and the City had married and had children young and then become single in middle age, they might have ended up something like Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose, respectively.

We’ll miss you, Bea. At least we have moments like this one to remember you by:

Waiting For My Real Life to Begin

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I’ve been in a weird mood lately.

For the most part, I’m very happy with my life right now. I love my job. I love my apartment. As much as I bitch about the T, I love not having a car most of the time. And while I can’t deny that I’d love to have a boyfriend, I enjoy the freedom that comes with being single.

But do I want my life to stay like this forever? Can I imagine myself in twenty years, living in an apartment in Somerville, still trying to get a date, childless, dependent on public transportation, working for the same low salary? Could you tell the answer to that question before you got halfway through the previous sentence?

I have moments when I wonder if I’m stuck here—if anything in my life is ever going to change. The funny thing is that I’ve never been good with change. When I was a kid, my mom would always be asking me if I wanted a new comforter or a new jacket or something, and my answer was always, “No, I like the one I have.” And I’ve always dreaded changes like starting college or graduating from college or friends moving away. I guess that’s a good thing—it must mean I’m fairly content with my life.

But now, I find myself fearing things staying the same. I’ve written enough about wanting a relationship, so I won’t go into it again. But one reason I haven’t discussed is that even though I have great roommates and a great apartment, I’d also like to live alone for a little while, and I don’t think that I could live alone if I wasn’t in a relationship. It relates back to this—I think I’d feel cut off from the world otherwise. So I guess I simultaneously crave aloneness and companionship. Man, am I that hard to please?

I’ve mentioned before how hard I find it to imagine owning a house. I’m still years and years away from that goal. But I’ve been finding myself thinking lately about where I want to live when I am ready to buy…which towns are fairly close to Boston? Have a commuter rail station in town? Have a good public school system for my nonexistent children? Recently, I bought the issue of Boston magazine about the best places to live, and then I wondered why. It’s not as if I’m about to get married and buy a house in the suburbs with my husband. But I still like to think about the possibilities for where I might live.

I’ve written extensively about my love-hate relationship with the T, but the truth is that I usually enjoy saving a lot of money by not paying for gas or parking or insurance or repairs if anything goes wrong. Still, there are a lot of times that I just wish I could get in the damn car and drive somewhere. Market Basket, the blissfully cheap local supermarket, is two miles away from me, which is close enough that I can walk…but far enough away that I can’t carry more than a couple of bags back with me. I wish I didn’t always have to ask my dad to come pick me up if I’m visiting my parents, and that I didn’t have to take the commuter rail to visit Christina.

If I eventually take a certain job, though, I’d get a company car, which would be awesome, but scary in its own way. The thing is, I love what I’m doing for work, and I know that I definitely want to stay in publishing, but there’s a large part of me that wants to move on to the next step, scary and unfamiliar as it may be. I’ve been trying to do as much as I can to prepare myself for it, and I’m lucky to have an incredibly supportive boss who’s been helping me a lot with career development. It would be a challenge for me if it does happen, but I also feel like if I prove that I can do it, I can do anything.

And then there’s my stalled writing career, which is no one’s fault but my own. I just need to glue my butt to the chair and get the writing done. I don’t even want to think about how much I could have accomplished if I spent as much time writing as I do sitting around watching reruns of 1990s sitcoms.

So…I don’t have any answers. All I know is that where I am isn’t bad, but where I could be looks even better. I’ll be twenty-five in July, and I think a lot of people feel this way as they near the quarter-century mark. At least I know what I want, I guess. Stay tuned.