Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus at the VMAs. Actually, the whole Blurred Lines Is Great > Blurred Lines Is Rape Culture > Blurred Lines v. Marvin Gaye Family > Robin Thicke Was High and It's All Pharell Williams Fault Robin Thicke Is Even In This Position > Robin Thicke, Persona Non-Grata; Run, Paula, Run. *sigh* That would have been a fun blog.
Hatha-Hate and J. Law falling at the Oscars. Remember when we debated which It Girl we wanted on the pedestal and which one we wanted to shred with our nails instead of, you know, which presidential candidate will usher in the apocalypse quicker?
"Could I come near your beauty with my nails..." - Shakespeare
Game of Thrones and the Red Wedding. Actually, GoT, period. Rumination: When it's over, will I feel about it the way I feel about The Wire, Mad Men, and Penny Dreadful? Mournful, but grateful for the memories when TV made me I feel alive inside.
I totally would have liked to have taken on the Solange Knowles vs. Jay-Z in the elevator, but who am I kidding? I do not put my nose into the private affairs of the Queen Bey. Know your lines, people.
The death of Joan Rivers. If you never saw the doc JOAN RIVERS: A Piece of Work, I highly recommend it. The fact she then got shafted for the Oscar that year only proved the thesis of the piece. It really brings you behind the scenes and shows the reality of being in show business, as well as gives a great historical outline of comedy.
The death of Robin Williams. If you're from Gen-X, Robin Williams was comedy. He was everything. Also, as a person who has suicides in her family history, his ending was a tragedy that should have brought more light to an issue that still goes unaddressed.
The Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin split. While I won't question the Queen Bey and refuse -- REFUSE -- to give any commentary on a certain famed obsessed reality franchise that fronts as a family, I do take a certain level of glee in Paltrow Pain. Mostly because she acts like it doesn't matter to her, but you just know it does. What can I say? I'm an eighth German and that eighth is all schadenfreude.
The 2014 Winter Olympics. Now that we're waiting for the 2016 Rio Olympics to be a total Zika-infested disaster, let us recall the ways we waited for the Sochi Olympics to reveal Russia's inability to pull off their time in the spotlight. I'm going to share a memory from that glorious time which combined three of my favorite things: Ice skating, Downton Abbey, and Will Farrell.
Speaking of... Downton Abbey. I don't care that it devolved from a careful period, character piece into a soap opera in Jazz Era clothes. The heart wants what it wants! And obviously mine wanted a class-based Masterpiece with Dame Maggie Smith dropping bon mots into my television set. As Alice Roosevelt once said, "if you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." Downton Abbey turned my twenty-first century woes into a yearning for another time -- a time in which my ancestors explicitly left British rule because they wanted me to have a better future away aristocrats with a tenuous understanding of noblesse oblige. (Those houses, though. *Swoon*)
Frozen. Shut up. I love it.
When we found out that Stephen Collins was not the fatherly Rev. Eric Camden and had molested under aged girls, and that Bill Cosby was not Dr. Huxtable but was administering drugs, anyway. If the Ghostbusters reboot ruined your childhood, your priorities are seriously f*cked up....
The nude celebrity photo hack and the victim blaming that went with it. WTH, people? Invasion of privacy is invasion of privacy. It doesn't matter who you are. Whether it's the Target Hack, the Sony Hack, or any other hack that has allowed nefarious individuals to access your personal information for their use, pleasure, or/and enrichment, that crap is just wrong. Morally. Ethically. Legally. When you try to make it OK because, let's face it, you enjoyed the fruits of that sneaky individual's labor, you're basically signing away your own moral high ground when it happens to you and your wallet or flying privileges. Hypocrisy makes me nuts.
Sasheer Zamata on SNL and the attendant Black Women Aren't Funny dialogue that went with it. Leslie Jones might be the break out from that backlash, but this isn't over. My guess is that Zamata won't be back, and Jones might want out pretty soon. And we'll get to go through it all over again.
Gone Girl and Ben Affleck's penis. I have nothing more to say other than to remind you that a partial, two-second shot of Affleck's penis is Hollywood's idea of Sexual Objectification parity.
Amy Schumer. I remember when Inside Amy Schumer was launched, and I reduced her to a sell out because (A) the show was on Comedy Central and Comedy Central is notoriously male-skewed, and (B) the title of the show was purposefully sexually provocative. I mean, the guys get shows titled Key & Peele, The Daily Show, The Nightly Show, Adam Devine's House Party, The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail. And the women fronted shows get Inside Amy Schumer, Another Period, and Broad City. Even Full Frontal with Samantha Bee over on TBS got on-board with this kind of titling. With that said, all these ladies are crushing it and fighting the good fight. So, fight on, ladies. Go get yours.
Have you seen Master of None? No? On Netflix. Go see why Aziz Ansari got an Emmy nom for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy. Warning: It's comedy that will require you to pay attention and think. I had to put my phone down and actually watch it. Crazy, I know!
While you're on Netflix: JESSICA JONES. Yaaassss! I was uncertain about Krysten Ritter, but girl Got. It. Done. And, of course, David Tennant in his purple suits was just so - ugh - no words. Loved it.
Making of a Murderer, Serial podcast, and The Jinx. Listen, I'm a justice-minded, girl, very Law and Orderly, but true crime entertainment doesn't entertain me. After Lester Holt's crazy Dateline tenure, the ID network, and Snapped marathons, a non-fiction reality producer really has to bring it these days. So kudos to these documentarians for crafting really compelling narratives.
Channing Tatum. This guy is a super star. No joke. He has that ever elusive It Factor. I just wish Hollywood could make an original, compelling, honest-to-goodness film to showcase what this guy could do. Instead, we're stuck with franchises and corporate IP. Leo needs to move over, because we found our next movie star.
I'm going to end on STAR WARS: The Force Awakens. Honestly, I could (and maybe still will) write a whole blog on what it was like to be a little girl in the 70s and 80s, and how the original trilogy lives inside my tender heart. But I'm telling you right now, I wept - wept - when I saw Rey fly the Millennium Falcon and wield both a lightsaber and the Force. From this Gen-X girl who was forced to play with one Leia action figure (regardless that she owned three Princess Leias in different costumes) and who was usually regulated to the sidelines as the boys got to do everything while telling her she had to take a passive role in pretend play because "that's not what it was like in the movie!", thank you, JJ Abrams.
