525,600 Minutes

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Not to be cheesy and start off 2007 with a Broadway song or anything, but…

Five-hundred-twenty-five-thousand-six-hundred minutes

Five-hundred-twenty-five-thousand moments so dear

Five-hundred-twenty-five-thousand-six-hundred minutes

How do we measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets,

In midnights and cups of coffee

In inches, in miles,

In laughter, in strife

In five-hundred-twenty-five-thousand-six-hundred minutes

How do you measure a year in the life?

Well, it would be nice to measure my life in seasons of love. But frankly, I think that would leave a lot of details out.

2006, honestly, was not the best year of my life. Certainly there were good things. I’m currently in my first apartment, which is fantastic, and I have terrific roommates and an all-around awesome living situation—but of course, I only have it because college, like all good things, came to an end. The year ended with my professional life in a good place, but not before it caused me a hell of a lot of stress. And while I made new friends, I also grew apart from some old friends. I guess things balance themselves out, but I ended up feeling like the year had a lot more downs than ups.

I’ve never really put a lot of importance on New Year’s. I always tended to think of September as more of a time for change, since it was the beginning of the school year. That was when I resolved to make my changes.

But now that I’m out of school and am beginning a new year, I feel strangely energized. I’m really in a mood like I can accomplish things now. I’m not psychic or anything…but I really do feel like a year from now, I’ll be in a much better, happier place.

As for the last night of 2006, I spent that first at The Cheesecake Factory with some friends (including my friend Bridget, whom I hadn’t seen since graduation) and then at my friends’ apartment.

They say what you’re doing at midnight on New Year’s Eve indicates what you’ll be doing for the rest of the year.

If that’s true, I’ll spend 2007 playing Crazy Eights and kissing a shot glass.

But you know what? It was a really cute shot glass—purple on the bottom and shaped like a mini-martini glass.

So I think that’s reason enough to hope.

Christmas On the Radio

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So…there are a lot of Christmas carols. Yeah, I know that’s kind of an obvious statement, but really, I was just thinking about it and I realized that if I tried to make a list of every Christmas carol I know, I don’t think I could do it. Even if I listed the 125 songs on my Christmas playlist, I know I’d still forget some.

But there are, of course, two categories of carols. There are the traditional carols, whether they be the religious ones (“Joy to the World,” “O Holy Night,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “Away In A Manger,” “What Child Is This,” “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” etc.) or ones about Santa/family/Christmas prettiness (“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Sleigh Ride,” “The Christmas Song,” etc.).

But then there are the radio carols. The ones that a popular artist records to get some guaranteed airplay for a month. They may only marginally have to do with Christmas, and may not even completely make sense, but you still listen. Sometimes, you even grow to love them as much as the traditional carols.

Of course, there are some truly atrocious radio carols. “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” “The Twelve Pains of Christmas” (seriously, I want to strangle the guy hanging up the lights by the time the song’s over). I can’t stand “Santa Baby” no matter who sings it. And I went through a boy-band phase like every other girl of my generation, but for the love of God, NSync actually has a song that includes the lyrics, “I never knew the meaning of Christmas until I looked into your eyes.”

But there are some awesome radio carols, too. The ones that get stuck in your head. The ones you turn up when they come onto your car radio. The ones you dance around the room singing with your friends. You know what I mean.

Now, I don’t normally do top 10 lists. I’m not David Letterman, or even Greg Behrendt. But I do, as I’ve mentioned, have a 125-song Christmas playlist, so I figure that qualifies me as much as anybody to make this list. Here they are, in no particular order.

Mariah Carey, “All I Want For Christmas Is You”

This is the ultimate radio Christmas song. It’s one of those love-song-with-a-lot-of-Christmas-words-in-it tunes, and it’s perfect for blasting at full volume or singing at the top of your lungs.

Vince Vance & the Valiants, “All I Want For Christmas Is You”

Same title, same sentiment, totally different song. The first one is by the Queen of the ’90s and the Tabloids and goes, “I don’t want a lot for Christmas/There is just one thing I need/I don’t care about the presents/Underneath the Christmas tree.” This one is by some band no one’s ever heard of and goes, “Take back the holly and mistletoe/Silver bells on strings/If I wrote a letter to Santa Claus/I would ask for just one thing.”

John Lennon, “Happy X-Mas (War Is Over)”

Although the state of the world today makes it easy to focus on the “war” part, this song makes me happy. Actually, it makes me want to sway back and forth, maybe because I remember doing just that freshman year of college as I sang it with Christina and our friend Carr. If you really listen to it, the lyrics aren’t that great, but for some reason the first line draws you in.

Band Aid, “Do They Know It’s Christmas”

A whole bunch of famous people raising money for famine relief. Also a very nice song, except for one line that’s bugged me ever since I first heard it: “Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.” …WTF? That is maybe the most poorly-worded line in a Christmas song ever. They want you to thank God that people are suffering because you’re not one of them? Doesn’t that line kind of defeat their whole point?

The Carpenters, “Merry Christmas, Darling”

I have a soft spot for this one. It’s deliciously cheesy and sappy, which makes it that much more fun to sing. It turns “Christmas” into a verb (“I’m Christmasing with you”) and includes the line “The logs on the fire fill me with desire.” Awesome.

Boney M, “Mary’s Boy Child”

More religious than the average radio carol, but just as catchy and fun. It’s by a West Indian group, and you can’t hear it without getting it stuck in your head.

Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman/We Three Kings”

Bouncy and fun, and distinctively Barenaked Ladies. They actually have another version of this without McLachlan that doesn’t get radio play, and on that version they muse about the creepiness about the myrrh verse of “We Three Kings” before they sing it. (Seriously, have you ever listened to the words of that verse?)

Jose Feliciano, “Feliz Navidad”

I’ve liked this since hearing it on Sesame Street when I was little. I wanna wish you a merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart, and I wanna sing this song at the top of my lungs whenever I hear it.

Trans Siberian Orchestra, “Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)”

This is an awesome instrumental version of “Carol of the Bells” that’s very hard to describe unless you actually hear it.

“Christmas Is All Around”

I recently re-watched Love Actually (which, by the way, is much better upon second viewing), and this song is hilarious. It’s the song “Love Is All Around” with “Christmas” substituted for “love.” (Sample lyrics: “So if you really love Christmas/Come on and let it snow.”) It’s a radio Christmas song making fun of radio Christmas songs, so you’re not meant to take it seriously…but there’s something kind of endearing about it just the same.

Katie Recommends: The O.C.

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Actually, not “recommends” so much as “begs and pleads with you to watch.”

Yes—bear with me, readers, whoever you are. Maybe you’re my friends, or my relatives, or a random stranger who stumbled across my facebook profile. Maybe you’re someone who checked out SSTS after seeing an excerpt from it in the Globe. Maybe you found me through blogger, or by googling something.

But whoever you are, I am going to try to convince you to start watching The O.C., which is struggling in the ratings this season.

What’s that you say? You stopped watching The O.C. a long time ago when it started to suck? You got sick of Marissa’s whiney drama? You hated annoying new characters like Johnny? You got bored with the whole Sandy-taking-over-the-Newport-Group thing? You didn’t like the focus shifting away from Ryan? You got sick of Seth being self-centered and constantly screwing things up with Summer? And you miss Season 1, when it was more of a dramedy?

Well, you’re in luck, my friend. Everything that drove you away from the show? Gone. Now, granted, I am a latecomer to The O.C., only having begun to watch it last year under the influence of my roommates (one of whom had the DVDs for the first two seasons, which helped me catch up), but the last six episodes have taken it from, “Oh, yeah, it’s on tonight, right?” to the highlight of my TV-viewing week.

Here’s what’s going right with the show this season:

1. Marissa’s dead.

Now, besides the obvious benefits of this development (i.e. no more Marissa being whiney and self-destructive and drinking too much and flirting with other guys while dating Ryan), her death has lead to some fantastic episodes. We’ve gotten to see everyone who was close to Marissa grieving in different ways. The first three episodes had Ryan dealing (badly) with Marissa’s death, first by cage fighting and shutting himself out from the Cohens, then by conspiring with Julie to find and kill Volchok (Marissa’s ex who caused her death by running her and Ryan off the road). Ultimately, his decision not to kill Volchok once he finds him

1 a.) brings him closer to his family, which is a reason to watch in itself. One thing that was sorely missing last season was anything substantial involving Ryan’s relationship with Sandy and Kirsten. This season, we’re seeing them talking more—he runs on the beach while Sandy’s surfing, and Kirsten and Sandy both offered him advice about Taylor. And since Ryan has deferred college for a year, he’ll be in Newport all season.

1 b.) As I mentioned in a previous entry, Melinda Clarke rocked the first three episodes. One of The O.C.’s greatest strengths is its refusal, despite being a prime-time soap, to make characters too one-dimensional, and when you look over the list of things that Julie’s done in the past (sleeping with her daughter’s ex-boyfriend, trying to get Ryan arrested, sending Ryan to kill Volchok), it’s amazing that you can still sympathize with her.

1. c.) Summer’s reaction to Marissa’s death isn’t what I would have expected, but it makes sense. She’s the only one of the kids to go to college (although she was just suspended from Brown for freeing bunnies from the science lab), and she takes the change in scenery as a chance to convince herself that she’s moved on. She does this by becoming an activist for environmental and animal rights—a complete 180 from her days as the ditzy, clothes-obsessed California girl who was Marissa’s best friend. Her ultimate acceptance of Marissa’s death is a small but poignant moment—in a voicemail she leaves Seth, she breaks down and says simply, “I miss my friend.”

2. It’s staying close to the main cast.

They’ve introduced a few new characters (Summer’s activist friend Che, Luke’s twin brothers who have become friends with Kaitlin), but they haven’t taken over the show the way characters like Lindsay and Johnny have in the past.

3. Sandy’s a PD again

Seriously, how long ago did we stop caring about the Newport Group?

4. Taylor Townsend

Obviously, I hope this show isn’t cancelled, or I wouldn’t be writing this entry, but if it is, I hope something fantastic comes Autumn Reeser’s way, because she is amazing. She somehow makes Taylor over-the-top and completely relatable at the same time. Even better: she’s funny. She’s lightening up a show that had become too dramatic after being a great dramedy in its first season. And her flirtation with Ryan sounds like a terrible idea on paper, but as it’s played out on the show, it’s become an awesome case of “opposites attract.” Last week’s episode was hysterical—Ryan, after kissing Taylor, starts having ‘80s-music-video fantasies about her that leave him unable to concentrate. High school relationship awkwardness ensues—ironically enough in the first season the kids are out of high school—and they end up having a makeout session in a closet. Plus, she gets Ryan to stop brooding and smile (and Ben McKenzie has a gorgeous smile). Ryan’s relationship with Marissa was full of drama, but Taylor’s loquaciousness and quirkiness play well off Ryan’s quiet, serious nature and bring out a lighter side of him we haven’t seen much of.

5. Kaitlin

Honestly, I didn’t really like her last season. I didn’t quite get why they’d brought her back in with a different actress—back in the first season, she had a pony who got alopecia, and the next season she was shipped off to boarding school with one throwaway line. But this season they’ve developed her character more, and she’s actually proved very entertaining. Marissa was a self-absorbed drama queen who never seemed to think she did anything wrong, but Kaitlin is more like Julie—an unapologetic bitch with a heart. She ended last season wanting to “rule Harbor,” but the most recent episode has her bored and smoking pot behind the bleachers as the bitchy popular girl hands out invitations to her party. Kaitlin responds by throwing her own rager to spite the bitch. In another recent episode, she and Julie are both flirting with the same guy. I read some article the other day where the reviewer called Kaitlin “Jailbaitlin,” which pretty much sums her up.

6. Seth and Summer

Hallelujah. So far this season, the writers have been able to keep them interesting without breaking them up. Seth has stopped being so self-absorbed and lying to Summer all the time. Instead, he’s very sweetly offering to give Summer her space while she adjusts to her new life (“If you don’t hear from me for awhile, it’s not because I don’t love you, it’s because I do”) and putting off RISD until Summer’s suspension is over so that they can both go to Providence together. They worked through their rough patch at the beginning, where Seth would leave Summer rambling voicemails that she seldom answered, and they’re now as cute together as ever.

The O.C. this season is in an awful time slot—up against Grey’s Anatomy and CSI. While I have nothing against Grey’s Anatomy, I’m pissed that it’s taking viewers away from The O.C. when the show has finally become just as entertaining as it was in its first season, if not more so.

But you know what? Grey’s is a rerun on Thursday, so your job, my dear readers, is to:

a.) watch the show (which looks awesome, by the way—it’s an It’s A Wonderful Life-type thing that shows what would have happened if Ryan never came to Newport) and

b.) sign this petition.

See you Thursday at 9, on Fox.

Elizabeth Berg Is Awesome. And I’m A Fangirl Dork.

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Wednesday night was an event I’d been looking forward to since I first heard about it: Elizabeth Berg reading at the Brookline Booksmith. I think I’ve already mentioned in this blog that she is my favorite author. I’ve read and loved almost all her books. She just has this way of nailing truths about life that I’ve felt but could never express. And her characters are usually American women in ordinary suburban settings, which is refreshing to me—I feel like too many authors feel like they have to set their novel somewhere exotic or make their main characters totally out-of-the-ordinary. But it’s always very easy to identify with Elizabeth Berg’s characters.

Her latest book is different— The Handmaid and the Carpenter is about Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus. At first I was very surprised, because all of her other books take place in relatively ordinary settings, and none of them are explicitly religious. But then I read this passage toward the end of the book: “For miracles are everywhere around us. Sometimes they are small and common: The curl of a child’s ear. The ripening of grapes on the vine. The stretching of a rainbow over the valley in which we live. Sometimes they are larger: That we have inside ourselves the ability to feel the music we hear. That our people survive!”

And suddenly, I got it. This is the attitude that’s present in all of her work. She expresses it explicitly in a short story called “Today’s Special”:

“Nothing big ever replaces the sight of the winter boots all lined up, or the sound of the click of the front doors locked up against the darkness each night. Consider cooling pies. The impossibly small size of your own child’s shoe…Isn’t it those small things that add the necessary shape and meaning to our lives? And don’t we miss seeing them if we look too hard for big things?”

So basically, if we can believe that little, everyday things like those are miracles, it’s not so hard to believe in the biggest miracle of all.

So, anyway, Elizabeth Berg read from The Handmaid and the Carpenter, and then she signed autographs. She also brought some baked goods—her daughter, who lives in Newton, just started a baking business, one that I’ll probably utilize at some point, because the cookies and brownies I tried were awesome.

But when I got her autograph, she was so nice. She signed three of my books, including my favorite, Joy School. (A book where the main character is also named Katie—an added bonus of an already fantastic book.) And because I am a huge dork, I gave her a letter I’ve written.

One of the things I mentioned in the letter was that one particular chapter of Joy School is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I’ve ever read. It’s just two pages, but even if you haven’t read what comes before, you can tell so much about this character and her life. Because it’s beautiful and because it has to do with Christmas, I’ll share it with you here:

“It is such an odd thing to have a Christmas with only two people. It might be worse than being alone. My father and I opened our few presents, then sat awhile by the tree, each thinking that’s what the other one wanted to do, I guess. My father gave me twenty dollars to buy him something and I just got him a wallet and a duck call. He never will use that duck call. It was one of those things, I was feeling desperate and the guy selling the duck calls honked it and I thought, Isn’t that cute! Maybe my father will think that’s funny! and I bought it. But he just said all serious, Well, thank you, Katie and then he laid it carefully back in the box. I got knee socks, pajamas, a book of poems by Americans and a stuffed animal, a cat wearing a dress. She’s cute, but really I am too old, she’ll have to live in my closet. The best gift was Intimate perfume and dusting powder. So I guess Ginger helped a bit with shopping. I kept wishing someone else was there so I could have another face to look at, a triangle of possibility instead of a deadly straight line.

“After a bit we went out for Chinese food, and my father left a big Christmas tip and the waiter nodded and nodded and said, ‘Happy Christmas, Happy Christmas,’ about three hundred times. We went for a little walk afterward and my father’s hands were deep in his pockets and his head was hanging low. I didn’t even try. I just walked beside him and kept looking at the stars, trying to think which one was the Star of Bethlehem, which I think is one of the prettiest phrases I’ve ever heard, Star of Bethlehem. I thought, what if I were a Wise Man, what would the message be now? Maybe just God saying, Well, they are wrong about me. I did once make a terrible mistake. If you think I’ll ever send my Son again, forget it.

“Now it is ten o’clock and we are both pretending to sleep. But I can feel his awakeness and probably he can feel mine. I have my radio turned on real low and someone is singing ‘I’ll be home for Christmas’ like their heart is breaking wide open. Outside, snow falls, so perfect.”

If you can see the same magic in that passage that I see, you are my new best friend.

Have U Ever Been Chased by a Giant Letter U?

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The Christmas season is upon us, which means…the Christmas movie season is upon us!

I love Christmas movies. The one upside of the little independent video store up the street from my parents’ house closing last year was that I got to buy It’s A Wonderful Life, which is the best movie ever made, on video. I also have The Muppet Christmas Carol (awesome) and Home Alone (why don’t they show this on TV on Thanksgiving anymore?). Then of course, there’s A Charlie Brown Christmas and the many versions of A Christmas Carol, and of course, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with those little Claymation figures. I have scarcely missed it every year since I was six (I think one year I had sports awards night at my high school), and this year won’t be an exception.

Speaking of when I was six, last night my roommate Christina and I had a little movie night, and along with A Series of Unfortunate Events (excellent non-Christmas movie she hadn’t seen) and The Polar Express (Christmas movie neither of us had seen), we saw Muppet Family Christmas, which I don’t think I’d seen since I was in first grade. I remembered a lot of it– although I could have sworn there was one part where they sang, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” but there isn’t. But it’s funny, the things you don’t notice when you’re little. Like at one point, Ernie and Bert are talking to the only human in the movie, and they’re talking about how “yes” begins with “y” and “true” begins with “t.” Then they say, “Where we come from, this is small talk.” Awesome.

Then I started thinking about Sesame Street when I was little, and I remembered this segment that creeped me out where a letter U carried a guy away. I decided to see if I was remembering right, and then I found it on YouTube. Turns out the guy was Smokey Robinson, which I didn’t know when I was little. And then I decided to watch it.

Holy God, it’s even creepier than I remember. The letter U is, like, molesting him. Watch for yourself:

There are all kinds of Sesame Street clips on YouTube, actually. Luckily, most of them aren’t quite that creepy.

So Can I Call Myself a Freelancer Now?

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So I recently became a contributor for the site Not For Tourists. Basically, every week I write two little blurbs about local places I like for the “On Our Radar” section for Boston, and today my first one is on their site. It’s about The Breakfast Club, this diner in Allston with a Brat Pack theme. I’m also doing a longer piece that’s due in January. That one will be about twenty-something bars, which I’ve written about before.

They’re actually paying me for this. This is awesome. The only other times I’ve really been published were when the Globe put some excerpts from this blog in Sidekick and one time in college when I had an article on sub-free housing published in this magazine that no one reads except some dentist in my hometown, which I only know because someone called my mom and told her she read my article in the dentist’s office.

Now back to work on getting some other stuff published.

Ode to a House

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I miss my house. And yes, Mom and Dad (who I know are reading this), I miss you, too, but that’s not the point of this entry. The point is, I miss my house. And I miss it in a way that few other people can say they can.

Until September 1, 2006, I had never moved. I had only lived in college dorms and in the house my parents had lived in since they got married. So this fall marked the first time in my life I had a different permanent address.

Now, I can’t say enough how much I love my apartment. Great location (near both BC and the B line), lots of space, my own room, even a sunroom and a little porch. And it came with a lot of furniture. The only issue I have with my new place is that the water pressure’s too low for me to take a bath.

But still, I miss my house. You get to know a place when you live there for 22 years. You appreciate its location, even though you’re still mad at your parents for telling you, when you were a kid, that the street is too busy for you to ride your bike (it isn’t). It’s five minutes from your elementary, middle, and high school. Down the street from a convenience store, post office, pizza place, dry cleaner, hairdresser, gas station, and, until recently, video store. Ten minutes from a mall (and the state of New Hampshire, where there’s no sales tax). Two minutes by foot from a waterfall and a set of railroad tracks, across which run freight trains whose noise in the night you no longer notice. Across the street from neighbors who have ponies and chickens, and who used to have goats and a donkey. Close enough to a shooting range for you to joke that your house is one of the few places where you’re equally likely to hear gunshots and a rooster crowing. (When you were little, you didn’t know what the gunshots were and used to imagine that a blackboard had fallen off a truck somewhere nearby.)

And then there’s the house itself. It’s a white house with gray shutters and a gray front porch, and a white lamp post in the middle of its small front lawn. Built sometime in the late 1800s, originally as a blacksmith shop. The houses around it were a tavern, a community barn, a post office. You used to imagine that there were ghosts in it, even wrote stories for school about your house being haunted, although you’ve never seen anything remotely supernatural. The front of the house looks old, but your parents had an addition put on right before your sister was born, which resulted in a long, skinny house. There’s a gray bench on the porch, and a door that is either screen or glass paned, depending on the season. The screen/glass door and the actual door open on opposite sides, which you never thought about until your friend Jenna pointed it out.

There’s a gigantic pine tree on one side of the house. On the other, by the driveway, is a cherry blossom tree. For about three days in April, it blooms into these beautiful pink flowers. After that they all fall off the tree and it looks kind of like pink-tinted snow.

There’s a patio out back, with a basketball hoop from when your sister played basketball. There’s lawn furniture on the patio, underneath the branches of this tree that you think is called a catalpa tree. You used to lie on the lounge chair and read all the time. There’s a toolshed, and a tiny hill, which was great for sledding when you were little. You also used to have a sandbox and a swingset. And behind the house there’s a swamp, and woods that go on for awhile.

You have, like many homes, a living room and a dining room, both of which you never use unless there’s company. There’s the kitchen, the family room (the one with the TV and piano and comfortable chairs—the room you actually use), and the porch, which has furniture but which you more often than not use as a mudroom. There’s a pantry off the kitchen, which you and your sister and cousins, for some reason, used to think was a great hiding place. The basement isn’t finished (which you always hated growing up). You need a ladder to get to the attic, which holds your Christmas ornaments and some random fur coat (?) and has nails sticking out of the ceiling. Towards the back of the second floor are your parents’ bedroom and bathroom. Near the top of the stairs is the bathroom you and your sister use. Opposite the staircase is your sister’s room, and at the front of the house is your room.

And yes—I don’t think there’s anything original I can say about that. Everyone remembers their bedroom most of all. It’s the place where you read your favorite books at night, cried into your pillow, and sat on your floor with your friends in sixth grade listening to Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill. It’s where you had a shelf where you put the porcelain angels your grandmother gave you on your birthday every year. Where you wrote your favorite lyrics on the edges of your bulletin board with white-out pen. Where you made a list of things your seventh-grade teachers said over and over and posted it on your bedroom wall. Where you hung a large glow-in-the-dark star you had everyone sign after you got at the Museum of Science when you were there for your friend’s birthday party. Where you opened up your armoire on the day of your dance recital when you were nine and, because you were wearing lipstick for one of the few times in your life thus far, kissed the inside of the door to see the lipstick mark. Where you would go into your closet and turn on your light when you wanted to finish your book and it was past your bedtime. Where you stored every notebook you’d ever owned, with every short story and poem you’d ever started and some you’d finished since you were six, under your bed. The place that, despite your incredible love for your new apartment and your bedroom therein, you still find yourself missing.

Or maybe that’s just me.

What’s Wrong with Studio 60

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Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

In my last entry, I talked about a new TV show I love. In this one, I’m going to talk about a new TV show that’s starting to frustrate me. (And my next entry will have absolutely nothing to do with TV, because this is not Katie’s TV Blog.)

For a show with such low ratings, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip has gotten an extraordinary amount of media attention. With all the big names attached to it, it’s no wonder. Aaron Sorkin is back! Matthew Perry is back! Plus Bradley Whitford, Amanda Peet, D.L. Hughley, Sarah Paulson, and plenty of others.

I had high hopes after the first episode, which started off with a bang (the executive producer of the show-within-a-show gets canned after ranting on live TV about how much better the show used to be) and felt like a miniature movie. But since then, the show has not come close to fulfilling its potential. And that, I think, is the frustrating thing, and part of the reason it’s gotten so much press. It should be much better than it is, and because we want it to be good, people are invested in it even when it’s not living up to our expectations.

I know Aaron Sorkin isn’t reading this, because he has openly showed contempt for Internet fans. On a West Wing episode called “The U.S. Poet Laureate,” a character mocked an Internet fan board, not-so-coincidentally after Sorkin had embarrassed himself by posting on and complaining about Television Without Pity. And on the second episode of Studio 60, characters bemoaned the growing influence of bloggers on public opinion about TV. Simon says that a popular blogger “is writing…in her pajamas. She’s got a freezer full of Jenny Craig and she’s surrounded by her five cats,” and Tom says that the New York Times will pick up her quote and publish it as the “fan reaction.”

So Aaron Sorkin will not be reading this blog (which, in case you were wondering, is written by a cat-less, Jenny Craig-less, struggling, single twenty-something who may or may not be in her pajamas), and while Katie Johnston Chase at the Boston Globe has been nice enough to feature “Struggling Single Twenty-Something” in the “Sidekick” section a couple of times, I don’t think my opinions alone can be called the fan reaction. But I know there are others who share my opinions (namely, some of my friends at The Publishing Company), so after thinking about it for awhile, I’ve come up with a list of reasons why the show isn’t as good as it could be.

1. It takes itself too seriously.

Aaron Sorkin’s self-righteousness is the show’s main problem, actually. If it’s a show about running the country, you are allowed to get serious and talk about how Big and Important all these Issues are. If it’s a show about a fricking comedy show…you aren’t. Aaron Sorkin needs to get off his high horse and start showing some respect for the viewers his show so desperately needs. Wes’s outburst at the start of the pilot should have been the end of the ranting about the quality of TV these days. Instead, nearly every episode has complaints about TV in some form or another. I get that Jordan is supposed to be kind of a wish-fulfillment network president who turns down sensationalistic reality shows in favor of serious and intelligent dramas, but that doesn’t change the fact that IT’S JUST TV! TV is not going to change the world, no matter how many times Sorkin tells us it will.

2. The sketches aren’t funny

They’re just not. Cheeses of Nazareth? Thank God we didn’t actually get to see that one, because hearing about it was more than enough. Actually, we don’t see much of any of the sketches, so…how hard is it to make a tiny piece of a sketch funny? The characters will talk about how funny a sketch is. They’ll say it over and over until they hope we believe it. But we don’t. The sketches aren’t funny. I can appreciate the Gilbert and Sullivan song at the end of the second episode, but that’s honestly about it. And while I can see why they never showed the “Crazy Christians” sketch about which they spent two episodes talking—after all that, there was no way they could create anything that would live up to it—they need to show us that they’re capable of writing a sketch that funny. And that they’re capable of coming up with a better name for a sketch than “Crazy Christians.”

3. Vast oversimplification of the culture wars

Why does every episode need a religion rant? Or a red state vs. blue state rant? This show is supposed to be about entertainment, but Sorkin seems like he just wants to get in all the political jabs he missed out on after the cocaine and mushrooms forced him away from The West Wing. And while he thinks he’s trying to make it complex, he’s…not. The episode with Tom’s parents, for instance, was a triumph of clichés. His parents are these sourpuss, out-of-touch Midwesterners who have never heard of Abbott and Costello (seriously) and, to Tom’s annoyance, have no appreciation for his line of work. In one of the most unintentionally funny moments in TV history, after Tom, in frustration, tells his parents that they’re “standing in the middle of the Paris Opera House of American television,” his father explodes, “Your little brother is STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AFGHANISTAN!” Which apparently is the antithesis of working for a popular, liberal-leaning comedy show. It’s the most broad, simplistic way of showing ideological differences, and it just doesn’t work.

Same goes for Harriet Hayes. She would be an interesting, complex character who happens to be Christian if they didn’t feel the need to mention her religion every single episode. Consequently, she’s becoming nothing more than the Christian Comedian, when I think the original point of her character was to be more than that.

Speaking of which…

4. Matt and Harriet

First of all, like I said, Harriet’s religion comes up every single episode. I know their relationship is based on Sorkin’s relationship with Kristin Chenoweth, and I can’t imagine that Chenoweth is pleased with how this has played out onscreen. It’s like Sorkin wanted a chance to win all the arguments he had with her, so he constantly has Matt trying to one-up her.

But my other issue with their relationship is that too much has happened with them too fast. At the beginning of the show, they had just broken up and had learned that they were working together. The logical course of events would be for them to fight without flirting for awhile, then settle into neutrality, then start dating other people, then gradually start to be attracted to each other again. And this should last at least a season. Instead, we go directly to the bickering, then the dating other people, then the almost-kiss, then the ultra-cheesy line, “Are you crazy about me or just crazy?” All within eight episodes. Way to guarantee that no one is interested in them anymore.

5. Amanda Peet/Jordan McDeere

I love Amanda Peet. I think she’s a great comedic actress (awesome in The Whole Nine Yards) and would be great on a TV show. That said, I think she was completely miscast as Jordan McDeere. I get that Jordan is supposed to be insecure in her new job, especially with the pressure coming down on her from all sides, but Peet has yet to convince me that there’s a reason why Jordan was hired in the first place. Yeah, her jokes fall flat, she thinks she has no friends…that’s fine. I can accept those as character quirks. But she needs to carry herself with more confidence. Even in the big “Nations vs. Search and Destroy” decision she didn’t come off as authoritative so much as stubborn. I know that her being young and a woman is part of the point, but she just is not convincing as a network president.

Also, a couple of other things about her that I find unrealistic. First, Jordan spends way too much time at Studio 60. It’s not the only show on NBS, I presume, so doesn’t she have more important things to do than trying to make new friends at the wrap party? Second, I do not get what the big deal is about her ex-husband coming out with a book about her. She’s a network president, not the President of the United States. Or a rock star. Or even one of the stars of Studio 60. The general public does not give a crap about network presidents and their personal lives, unless they killed someone or something. The president of NBC is Jeff Zucker, and he went to Harvard. That is literally the only thing I know about him (and I only know that because of an internship I once had). And I have no idea who the presidents of ABC and CBS are. Now, granted, being young and a woman, Jordan may get more media attention than the average network president in the Studio 60 world, but I still can’t imagine the general public giving a second thought to Jordan’s ex-husband’s assertions that she hates kids.

6. Everyone gets along too well

The cast members, I mean. There’s plenty of fighting going on with the writing staff, and between Matt and Harriet, and between Jordan and Jack, and in plenty of other places. But the cast members of Studio 60 seem to be just peachy with each other. Dylan was offered the news seat, and…he didn’t want it? Simon, Harriet, and Tom are referred to as “The Big 3”…and no one else vies for that title? Yeah, there was the conflict between Jeannie and Harriet early on after Matt spent time with Jeannie, but that blew over pretty fast. I don’t want it to turn into bicker-fest, but a little tension among the cast members might be nice.

7. Repetition

Good lord. For a show that purports to respect our intelligence, these characters sure do repeat themselves a lot. Like in the last two episodes—how many times did Simon say the joint was his? And why did Harriet have to repeat her entire quote on homosexuality so many times? We got it the first time.

And also—enough with the long-winded speeches. When Jack went into his big defense of Jordan in the last episode, Steven Weber’s delivery was excellent and the speech was funny and well-written…but it didn’t have the impact it should have had. Why? Because we’re in speech and lecture overkill. And that’s what’s really unfortunate. All the preachiness is killing some of the more genuine moments.

So, why am I still watching? Why do I still cling to the belief that this show can be saved? Well, because there are still several things that do work in this show, and if Aaron Sorkin could just take a step back and view this show objectively, he’d see these and take advantage of them:

1. Matthew Perry

No matter what happens with this show, Matthew Perry is going to come away a winner. He’s successfully broken out of the Friends mold. In the past, most of his roles were just incarnations of Chandler Bing—while I loved The Whole Nine Yards (which coincidentally, Amanda Peet was also in), the movie could have been called Chandler Meets the Mob in Montreal. His performances here have been solid, despite his not always having the best material to work with. I’m glad, because I always thought he had potential as a dramatic actor, and he’s really proven himself here. In the second episode, when he yells at Harriet for making him look stupid in front of the writers, telling her that if she does that again he’ll bench her and make her the highest-paid extra in Hollywood, I just thought, Wow. Chandler Bing has left the building.

2. Nathan Corddry

I had never heard of him before the show started, and with all the big-name stars on Studio 60, it was awhile before I paid his character much attention. But now that they’ve given Tom some interesting storylines…I have to say, I am really loving him. He’s cute, he’s funny, he’s interesting, and Nathan Corddry plays him really well. He is maybe the one character on this show who’s never obnoxious or annoying, and that’s an accomplishment in itself.

3. Matt and Danny’s relationship

I don’t know why they’re hitting us over the head with Matt and Harriet when the relationship between Matt and Danny is so much more interesting. Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford have great friendship chemistry, but the show is more interested in Matt/Harriet and Danny/Jordan (like we don’t see where that’s going) moments. Also, I really want them to get into what’s behind Danny’s drug use. We’ve gotten into Harriet’s backstory already, and Tom’s and Simon’s, but we don’t know too much about what makes Matt and Danny the way they are.

4. Some smaller comic moments

While the sketches aren’t funny, there have been some great comedic moments in the scripts. I like the doomsday clock that drives Matt crazy. I liked the national anthem story about Matt and Harriet (“They were standing already!”). I liked Simon and Tom going to bat for Suzanne after she leaked information to the reporter but just making things worse. I liked the whole plagiarism debacle in the fourth episode, and I liked Harriet’s bear story (“When asked for comment, the bear said, ‘RAAAAHR!’”). Less preachiness, more moments like these, please.

5. The guest stars

This could be a win-win situation. It gives celebrities a chance for exposure (Sting plays the lute! Who knew?) and it lends itself to some nice moments in the script. I liked how they used Felicity Huffman in the pilot—very realistic, very natural. But they completely wasted Lauren Graham. Yeah, I know she has her day job on Gilmore Girls, but she has great chemistry with Matthew Perry, and in the two episodes she was in, she did nothing. That’s just criminal, and I think Sorkin needs to start taking advantage of the built-in opportunity he’s given himself.

Now for some good news about TV.

Desperate Housewives

This show has finally gotten back on track. The problems with last season’s mystery were that a.) there wasn’t that much to it, b.) it had to do with a family we weren’t really emotionally invested in, and the only housewife it really involved was Bree, and c.) it was too easy to figure out (it was the other brother, duh!).

This season, I honestly have no clue where the mystery is going. Is Orson framing Mike? Or has Mike been a bad guy all along, and Orson’s a good guy? If not, why are the writers making Orson more sympathetic? What the hell is up with Orson’s mother? And is Art’s “invalid sister” the same woman Orson was visiting in the mental hospital?

Also, the supermarket hostage episode was fantastic. And not just because they finally got rid of the incredibly annoying Nora. Another problem with the show last season was that the writers had no idea what to do with Lynette. At first, she was the harried stay-at-home mom, but when that got old, they had to send her back to work. Then that got old. But now Lynette is going to have a fifth kid, and I hope they’re going to show the emotional impact the shootings had on her. Unwittingly, she did play a role in Nora’s death, and on some level I think she did want it to happen. I hope they deal with her guilt over that, and I wonder if she’s heading for a breakdown like she did in the baseball-field scene in the first season. I kind of hope so. Felicity Huffman is such a good actress, and she needs good storylines like that.

The O.C.

I hated Marissa, so I wasn’t too sorry when she died. (Although honestly, I still don’t see why it was necessary to kill her off. They could have just had her go to college somewhere.) But I was also curious to see how it would play out. It could either be great for the show or really horrible, but after watching three episodes, I’m happy to say that it’s the former.

First, it’s given Melinda Clarke a chance to shine. No matter how awful Julie acts, you can never hate her, and that’s to Clarke’s credit. She just has this presence that fills up the screen, and now, with Julie mourning her daughter, it’s more powerful than ever.

Summer’s way of grieving isn’t what I would have predicted, but it makes complete sense. Marissa was the friend with whom she was self-absorbed and sheltered, so now that she’s in college, Summer’s going to the opposite extreme, pushing all thoughts of Marissa out of her mind by becoming an activist for causes she doesn’t really understand or care about. Her little breakdown in the most recent episode, when she said, “I miss my friend,” wasn’t overdone, and it ended up being very poignant.

I love Seth, but he’s sometimes written as very self-centered and verbose, and they’ve toned that down so far this season. He’s been a great friend and brother to Ryan so far, and that’s a side of him we need to see more of.

So far, the show has also stayed close to the main cast. One big mistake on the writers’ parts last season was focusing too much on secondary characters like Johnny. Then when Johnny died, no one even cared. But the storylines thus far have all been about the main cast, and while they’ve introduced a few new characters (Che, the Ward twins), they haven’t gotten overwhelming screen time.

And while the friendship and romance on this show is always interesting, the heart of The O.C. is Ryan’s relationship with the Cohens. I’m always most interested in how they function as a family, and so far we’ve seen more of that. Kirsten’s had some nice moments in the first few episodes, particularly in her scenes with Taylor (who is awesome, and who is now a cast member). Last season, there weren’t as many moments where we saw Sandy and Kirsten really being parents, and this season they’ve shown more of that.

The O.C. will always be a cheesy soap opera, but even guilty pleasures can be intelligently written, and this season, The O.C. is taking steps toward being as smart as it was in its first season.

Katie Recommends: Six Degrees

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Apparently, my two roommates and I are the only three people in the world watching this show. How is that possible? Not only is it on right after Grey’s Anatomy (we’re also the only three people in the world who don’t watch GA), but it’s genuinely good. My roommate Chris doesn’t watch anything, and even he likes Six Degrees. How many shows are there where you a.) honestly don’t know where the storyline is heading and b.) actually like all the main characters?

Both are true for me with Six Degrees. The six main characters are Carlos (Jay Hernandez), a cute and romantic public defender; Mae (Erika Christensen), a young runaway who works as a nanny and has a mysterious box; Damien (Dorian Missick), a chauffeur and ex-con trying to turn his life around with limited success; Whitney (Bridget Moynahan), a type-A advertising executive who recently dumped her cheating fiancé; Steven (Campbell Scott), an alcoholic photographer trying to mend fences with his ex-wife and twelve-year-old son; and Laura (Hope Davis), a widowed mother whose husband was a journalist killed in Iraq. None of them are perfect (otherwise, there’d be no show), but they’re all written sympathetically, and the actors, for the most part, do good work.

Some of the characters have already met. So far, Mae is Laura’s nanny, Carlos and Mae started dating after he got some charges dropped for her, Carlos and Damien have become friends, Laura and Whitney met and became friends at a nail salon, Steven has done work for Whitney’s firm, Steven once took pictures of Laura when he saw her crying, Damien once had an offer to make money illegally by tracking down Mae, and Damien drove Whitney to a Halloween party, after which she had a breakdown in his car. Did you follow all that? If not, trust me, it’s easier to keep track of on the show.

I don’t know if the rest of the characters will meet soon, or if they’ll just influence each other’s lives in some indirect way, but that’s kind of the point. Like I said, I don’t know where it’s going. On Thursday’s episode, Steven takes care of his son Max while his wife goes to visit her father for a week. During that week, Steven messes up again and again—Max gets suspended for showing classmates some suggestive pictures that Steven took, Steven breaks Max’s video game system while arguing with him, Steven introduces his girlfriend to Max after his ex-wife told him not to, and Max falls off his skateboard and breaks his arm. Throughout the episode, you just keep imagining that it’s leading to a big blow-up with his ex-wife, but instead, she ends up breaking down because it turns out her father is terminally ill. You’ve kind of forgotten about her father at that point, so it’s a surprise ending and leads to the news that Steven will have to take care of Max again.

On the same episode, Laura, who was recently hired as the assistant to the obnoxious assistant of an interior designer, finds out that she’s getting promoted, but the obnoxious assistant will either have to be fired or work for her. He ends up staying, but the biggest surprise is at the end, when the (female) interior designer kisses Laura—an ending I absolutely did not see coming.

Another thing I like about Six Degrees is that it doesn’t drag out storylines longer than necessary. I thought we’d never find out Mae’s backstory, but they told us almost everything about her in the fifth episode– she was in an abusive relationship with a guy whose family was involved in a multi-state drug trade, and ever since Mae’s brother Erik killed the guy in self defense, the two of them have been on the run. (We still don’t know what’s in Mae’s box, though!) Similarly, the plotline about Whitney’s cheating fiance, Roy, is the kind of thing that could have gone on forever, but instead they wrapped it up in the fourth episode- and in a very unexpected way. While the audience knew from the pilot episode that he was cheating on her, Whitney only suspected and tended to believe all the lies he told her. Then Roy became a victim of “The Puncher,” a guy who was assaulting men on the streets, seemingly randomly, and when it hit the papers that “The Puncher” was attacking all the men his wife had slept with, Whitney found out for sure, in the worst way possible, that Roy was cheating on her. (That episode, by the way, ended with a great little detail– vendors in Central Park selling “Free the Puncher” T-shirts. You know that’s exactly what would happen in real life.)

So please, watch this show! I’m really enjoying it and don’t want it to be cancelled.

Shut Up, Keith Lockhart

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This weekend we celebrated Halloween. My friends had a TV and movie-themed Halloween party. I was Tinkerbell. My friends, for the night, were Pocahontas, I Dream of Jeannie, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Audrey Hepburn in the little black dress, among other things.

But this year, we were something else for Halloween, too. For one day, we were college students again.

We went to the Mods (the senior townhouses that are BC’s big party dorms). We drank beer. We played beirut. We went to the football game. We sang “For Boston.” We had a party and we saw our friends who no longer live in Boston. And we wished with all our hearts that we could be back.

I was in the chorale in college, and every year during Parents’ Weekend, the Boston Pops did a concert to raise money for scholarships. The chorale got to sing with them, and my sophomore year, we were having our dress rehearsal with the Pops and Keith Lockhart. Among our songs was “Our Time” from the musical Merrily We Roll Along. Among the lyrics:

Something is stirring, shifting ground …
It’s just begun.
Edges are blurring all around,
And yesterday is done.
Feel the flow,
Hear what’s happening:
We’re what’s happening.
Don’t you know?
We’re the movers and we’re the shapers.
We’re the names in tomorrow’s papers.
Up to us, man, to show ’em …
It’s our time, breathe it in:
Worlds to change and worlds to win.
Our turn coming through,
Me and you, man,
Me and you!

Cheesy, yes, but catchy and great for graduations or anything involving students.

After we’d rehearsed it, Keith Lockhart said, “Is anyone familiar with the musical Merrily We Roll Along?” No one was, so he went on to explain what the song meant. The show, he said, ran backwards, and “Our Time” was at the end of the play. It starts when the main characters are two bitter old men who hate each other.

Well, thank you, Mr. Lockhart, for ruining this song for me.

I’m twenty-two, an age that sounds young even to me. I’m in my first real job. I have absolutely no idea what my future holds. I like to think that all kinds of things are still possible– I can hit the jackpot with my writing career, make a career switch, fall in love, get married, have kids, see the world, own my dream house, buy the gorgeous clothes I see in store windows instead of fantasizing about them, accomplish all the things I’ve always meant to do.

But there’s a nagging part of me that keeps thinking of this book I read recently called When They Were 22. It tells about how all these famous people—everyone from Oprah to Ernest Hemingway to Jane Goodall to Brad Pitt—had some major turning point in their lives when they were 22 that jump-started their careers.

So I kind of keep wondering, is that going to happen to me this year? Or will I always look back on college as the best years of my life? Is it really my time? Or will I end up like the characters in Merrily We Roll Along?