Fat Actress

Sometimes my friends and I have totally normal conversations. How are you? What's new? Did you see they closed Tower Records? Did you hear about the homeless guy who shoves flutes up his nose and plays them while also playing the buckets near Union Square?

You know, the usual.

But sometimes our conversations veer off to so many different tangents that all of a sudden we're talking about how great Mayim Bialik is and I have no clue how we got there.

That's what happened recently while I was talking to Barrett. Now, Mayim happens to be around my age, so I actually DID watch Blossom when it was on, but Barrett is four years older than me, and I'm almost positive she didn't. She may not even have seen Beaches. And I'd bet if she did, she didn't cry when Barbara Hershey was dying. Oops, spoiler on a movie from the 80's!

Anyway, so Barrett and I were talking about Mayim, and she asked if I'd seen the Kirstie Alley series Fat Actress. I hadn't. Barrett told me Mayim plays Kirstie Alley's neighbor in the show and she hates her. This intrigued me, because I knew that had to mean funny, and I'd recently seen Mayim on TLC's What Not to Wear and had just found out Mayim could be funny. Like, truly funny.

However. I was never really a Kirstie Alley fan. When I thought back to Cheers, she always seemed to be hyper and uptight and whiny. When I thought of Look Who's Talking she seemed uptight and hyper. Harried. I didn't really think I'd enjoy Fat Actress.

Peoples, sometimes you should really just trust your friends. I didn't particularly enjoy the first episode of Fat Actress. I found Kirstie Alley to be whiny and annoying. But I was watching through Netflix, so I soldiered on to the second episode. And it all clicked for me. Turns out Kirstie Alley (who both stars in and co-wrote the show) is really funny. There were a lot of guest stars and I totally got into the show.

Just like My So-Called Life, I am very sad Fat Actress was only on air for one season. [insert cool lean against row of lockers while staring up at the ceiling as if thinking deep thoughts all while wearing a one-piece gas station jumpsuit, a la Jordan Catalano who is the only character or person able to pull that look off]

All this to say, you too, should go watch the Fat Actress series. Then we can discuss it. Then we can keep talking, and five minutes later we'll probably be laughing so hard we're about to pee in our pants while talking about unicorns or spatulas or something equally obscure. Because that's how we roll.

What's Next?

Last week someone suggested I see August Rush, so that's what I did last night. The person who thought I'd like it was spot on. It was sappy and unrealistic but involved music and passion and although I would have preferred more Julliard stuff, it was a perfect movie to watch late on a Sunday night.

I will say however, it would have been nice if the director had done a better job of aging the main characters. Perhaps some Felicity hair for the pre-baby scenes to make the distinction that a decade had gone by, maybe?

My method with Netflix is to never check what's next in the queue. That way it will always be a fun surprise when the movie comes in the mail. Sounds lame, but it totally works.

I Ain't Got Shit To Say

I'm so tired of "having issues" that you must be tired of reading about them. Unfortunately, you can't really run away from yourself, so I'm stuck having my issues until I can get rid of them, which is proving harder than getting off the Val Pak mailing list.

There are lots of other people with shit to say, but since it's bad enough this is a pansy post by passing you off to read other writing, I'll just give you one link, THIS ONE. It's some of the funniest shit I've read lately. Of course, that may be because I've been reading a lot of Thomas Perry books, and he's not known for his humorous writing.

I've also been watching a lot of movies, courtesy of Netflix, but neither Billy Elliot nor Trainspotting are particularly funny either. No, I'm pretty sure that one link above is funny because it's funny, not because I've been surrounded by non-funny things.

Please Somehow Rescue Me From Entrances

Why is it that if I'm in my bedroom when my roommate comes home with friends/cousins/ random homeless chrackheads she met on the street, I feel stuck in my room until they leave again?

There are people who believe in making an entrance, in always arriving late. Walking into a crowded room, stopping to strike a pose, etc. They love the attention. I'm not one of those people. To me, arriving late is just rude. Less rude when it's a party rather than just one person who's waiting for you, but still.

I'm not a fan of the Attention. I just want to putter around, doing my thing. Four magazines are in the living room. A movie is on the coffee table waiting to be watched. Hopefully they'll leave for dinner soon.

Jesus! Jesus Camp

Yeah that's right - I watched Jesus Camp today. And may we all just join hands, bow our heads, and say together, "HOLY SHIT!" Amen. Because that is some fucked up shit.

Highlights:

We should not worry about silly things like global warming and pollution, since Jesus is coming back soon and we won't be here by the time it's a problem, so we should continue driving SUV's.

Harry Potter is not okay to enjoy, because warlocks are the devil.

Rachael is a holy roller 8 year old, who very awkwardly tries to proselytize to perfect strangers sitting on park benches. When they won't take her bait (yes, they're sure they'll go to heaven when they die) she tells her friend she thinks they were Muslim.

Rachael also told us that God is not at all churches. According to her, he only comes to the fun ones, where everyone's jumping around singing, but he skips the ones where people speak in monotone. Hey Rachael? As a three year-old I babysat for in Florida told me, "God is everywhere; even in your underwear."

I went to hebrew school for over six years, and to temple on a weekly basis for over a dozen years. I never cried from the services. What kind of service makes KIDS cry? How can that be right?

Even the wacko religious radio DJ thought the head of Jesus Camp (Becki) was wacko. That tells you how wacko her program is.

My roommate who is Indian and I sat with our jaws on the floor as we watched this movie, and wondered why Levi, the boy the movie focused on, didn't hear Jesus telling him to get rid of his mullet, since Jesus talks to him all the time.

Home-schooling is fine in and of itself. But when you homeschool to keep your kids from finding out there are other people who believe different things, how does that teach your kids to accept all kinds of people?

It blows my mind that these people think I need to be saved. Okay, I need to be saved from my compulsion to buy vases and pajamas, but not saved religiously. The idea that some eight year old kid thinks she "knows" better than I do just blows my mind.

In one scene, the preachers are showing the kids 7 week-old plastic fetuses, encouraging them to see the fetuses as human beings, lives "worth" saving. In what fucking world is it appropriate to teach this stuff to KIDS in a public setting? There were kids under the age of six there!

One of the girls (Tori) was ten, and told the camera that when she dances, she dances to christian heavy metal, and is careful to not flaunt the flesh and looks down on Brit-Brit. First of all, the camera panned the entire bedroom, and I just want to say that if I were a parent, I would not let a camera crew in my ten year old daughter's bedroom with the door CLOSED. I'm sure nothing inappropriate happened, but still. Second, why is Tori even thinking of her "flesh" at all? I danced all the time when I was ten, and I assure you, it was completely age appropriate, and I was not flaunting my flesh (even if I was dancing to Madonna and the Bangles).

People, I gotta say, it blows my mind that there are whole slews of people out there who think this way. And I'm not even talking about the kids - what about the parents raising them, and sending them off to Jesus Camp? It scares me, in a way that makes me think about how brain-washing is a form of abuse. Because that's what goes on there.

Did my parents try to raise me to believe certain things? Yes. When you drive through the Bronx you lock the car doors. But they also raised me to question things, and didn't mind if I disagreed with them, or took my time coming around to their points of view when it came to religion.

Jesus Christ. In Florida I worked with a group of really fun girls who were very into their church. They taught bible study and stuff. But they were cool with hearing the jewish side of things, and open to hearing other ideas, and with me in general, and tried to be "Good Christians" in general. You know the types - who'll do someone a favor because "it's the Christian thing to do"? Those are the Christians I like - the ones just going around, trying to be a good person. And if they have to believe in concepts I don't, in order to be good people, then so be it.

But these Jesus Camp people. Religion is their whole life, and I don't think they'd rest until they recruited me. I hope they follow up with these kids in ten years, because I'd be really interested in finding out if they're still believing the hype.