is this a review? 30 rock ends, the office winds down, i weep

a young Liz Lemon 

In a further dissection of my obsession with plotlines and constant various forms of entertainment, I have just got to say holy shit, what a bummer about last night’s NBC primetime line up of the final episode of 30 Rock and 2 new episodes of the Finale season of The Office.   I HATE when stories I like come to an end.  It makes me so nervous to get to the end of things, sometimes, that it’s like a physical thing; I got a nervous stomach ache shortly before these 2 ending shows that I’ve loved for years came on last night, and I wanted to ask my husband if we could not watch them, but I was brave (how crazy to use that word in reference to watching sitcoms!) and watched them anyway, and thanks to that, today I’m fixating on the passage of time all day and how it’s impossible to time-travel, how I’m getting inexorably older every second, etc. – I was all excited to do my blog this morning and I wanted to send interview requests to David Johansen, Patti Smith, Tavi Gevinson, and a famous writer I knew when I was a teenager, Francesca Lia Block.  Then I thought, “if I’m going to interview Tavi Gevinson, I should catch up on her blog first before sending her a request” so I looked through her 2 blogs Rookie and Style Rookie, and it was spirit-dampening and a wake up call that I’m not a teenager -- her blog is so vivid, and successful!  - she already has an interview with Francesca Lia Block on her blog.  Tavi, who is 16, feels things so passionately, the way I did when I was a teenager, and I feel some similarities between her current life and my teen years.  This young woman is pretty seriously famous for what she does, which is to creatively explore her own youth, through fashion, her blogs, installation art and other media – she’s been on Jimmy Kimmel to promote a book of her blog entries, and I learned about her from reading a NY Times profile, just to cite a couple examples of her fame (which must be an overwhelming phenomenon for such a young person!).  I was nowhere near as famous of course when I was her age, but I was in a band that got a modicum of attention, like enough to have fans that came from other counties to see us play and to receive a fan letter here or there, and my long-running zine got me a bit of notice, too.  Also, Tavi seems to be friends with a lot of grown ups who are also her patrons and helpers, and that was my situation as well.  My grown ups admired my creative output, the way I admire Tavi’s, but they’d also wistfully say things about how I should watch out or I might peek creatively in my teens, and that my creative energy was going to burn out a bit because teens are just crazy emotional creative psychos and even if they think these qualities are gonna last forever, they don’t.  anyway, the thrust of this little detour is that I’m old as shit and wish that i could freeze time or time travel like Billy Pilgrim does in Slaughterhouse 5.  And what got me focusing on all of this today is having to see the characters in 30 Rock and The Office go through changes last night.  I love to watch movies and shows and read novels because I love to escape from reality, but I feel a real let down when they end.  When Pee Wee’s Playhouse was on tv when I was a kid, it’d make me so overexcited sometimes I’d jump on the furniture while watching it.  But oh when Pee Wee says bye to the audience at the end of each episode, and the pretty closing credits soundtrack starts and you see him riding his bike across many beloved monuments, it made me so sad that the show was over for another weekend that I would sometimes cry or change the channel before the end.  And Harry Potter:  Deathly Hallows 2 … that shit was DEVASTATING.  I saw it in a really expensive theater that lets you reserve your seats in advance online because I wanted to make sure I had a good seat, and I was moodily pregnant at the time, so I weeped like you wouldn’t believe, but even if I hadn’t been pregnant, it still would have been almost too emotional to see those little magical kids all grown up and some of them being killed by bad guys and then to see their years-long adventure come to an end.  I wanted Harry Potter movies to be made literally forever.  

And with 30 Rock, it’s almost hard to believe that the characters I was invested in are dead now.  I can’t write about it as well as Matt Zoller Seitz does in his write up "The 30 Rock Finale Dared Us Not to Cry, and Knew We'd Fail," which I actively sought out this morning because I wanted to read something that’d help me digest the fact of the show ending!  

I love 30 Rock but I LOVE The Office.  I still get chills when I think about the moment when Pam and Jim first kiss.  I feel like people judge this show’s writing unfairly harshly and that it’s because the show is so consistently funny that people take it for granted.  I don’t understand people’s disloyalty and critical eye when it comes to something they like, and I always hear people say that The Office should have ended already, but people also say that the Stones are too old to keep touring, and why do people want to hate on longevity?  Even though the Stones haven’t written good music since the early 80’s, I can’t imagine a funner thing to do in one’s sixties than being a physically fit rock star who travels the world getting laid and adored and being creative and rich.  And with The Office, why should they have stopped already?  The writers have developed Andy from a joke to the new Jim, wistful-romantic-wise (when he wanted but couldn’t have Erin), to a hilarious asshole, while Dwight has gone from the antagonist to a lovable naif who has grown childishly attached to his former nemesis Jim, and the co-workers as a group started out as mutually indifferent acquaintances at first (for the most part), like my real life, but after so many seasons, the characters are all written to have a near-familial relationship to each other, to the point where actually doing work isn’t a part of the day anymore, and I wish my job was like that!  But also, it’s just a really sweet show, with an obviously smart and liberal voice, and an absurdist edge, and I love it.  But (SPOILER ALERT) last night’s two new episodes go further in wrapping up the characters’ stories by taking Jim and Pam (the show’s former romantic centerpiece), and separating them from each other more and more, as Jim leaves her part time to work at his dream job in Philly, and he’s revealed to be sort of obnoxious (he used to be the hero), and we find out that one of the documentary crew members in the faux documentary framework of the show has fallen in love with Pam over the 7 years he’s been following her around.  I’m totally uneasy at the prospect of the plot becoming this postmodern, because postmodernism is too trendy (as is disregarding postmodernism in favor of sincerity they way I’m doing right now), plus I want a happy ending for everyone, since that doesn’t happen in real life, where things aren’t ever resolved but instead go through happy and sad mutations that end only when a person dies.

Can someone promise me a show or film franchise that lasts literally forever? 

Yesteryou Chapter 24

24.

This was when the two girls were killing time together in the hotel room, waiting until it was time to go find Beth at the coffeehouse.  Richard, George and Molly had come back to the hotel room after an hour of unsuccessfully losing themselves in sight-seeing, and had found a note from Tess about Tim's theory that Beth/Vivienne might be at the coffeehouse that night, and that Molly would come back in a couple hours, hopefully with Beth in tow. 

Soon the two girls were walking down the block to the Black Cat Coffeehouse, and Molly was thinking to herself, "Something big is about to happen."  But Vivienne was only herself, a 36-year-old, dark-haired, too thin woman, a person who always meant well in her heart of hearts but who sometimes acted coldly, disbelieving her own rotten actions all the while she performed them.  When Molly saw Vivienne, who was just a stranger after all, she said, "Excuse me, " and already starting to cry, ran out of the coffeehouse onto the street, where she was able to catch a cab back to the room she shared with the two only safe people in the world.

            Meanwhile back at the coffeehouse, Vivienne demanded of Tess in a hiss, "Did you really get this girl excited that she was going to find her mom?  How could you think that?  You knew all the basics about me, Tim must've told you some things about me, that I don't have a child, that my name isn't Beth.  Why did you get her excited?"

"It wasn't just to get attention or to be in the middle of some interesting situation, if that's what you think.  She said her mom was a little bit off-kilter right now because she’d just run someone over with her car -- I thought a panicked woman like that could lie about her identity.  Molly is from L.A. like you are.  You look so much like her, and I didn’t really do the math but it seemed you could be the right age, and Jesus, I don't really know you, just because my ex-boyfriend likes showing your around town.  You could be anyone, how would I know?"

            "Wait, wait.  Some of what you're saying to me right now is striking me very weird, because I just met a homeless woman who lives under the bridge, last week; I took some photos of her, and when we were talking, I was sort of spooked the whole time because she looks so much like me, and you're right, I do look like that girl Molly.  This homeless woman seemed really haunted, like she's seen or done some really heavy thing.  But what is really so weird is that she said she was from L.A., and that she'd just hitchhiked here, like for the fuck of it.  Do you think -- I mean do you think that this homeless woman could be her mom?  She said her name is Rosie, but you're right, someone who has just been through something really scary and run away because of it would probably want to change her name and just start over."

            "Jesus, that sounds like it really could be her.  I'm gonna go walk to the bridge and see if she's there right now."

            What Tess had said about the savor of being involved in interesting situations, though she'd brought it up to deny its validity, was well put, and Vivienne could not help but linger near this young woman whom she disliked, so unwilling was she to give up her role in this drama.

            "I want to come too.  I'd like to talk to Rosie more; I'm thinking of doing a continuous series of photos of her."

            "Suit yourself."

Yesteryou Chapter 23

23.

While waiting for nighttime, Tess and Molly sat in the hotel room smoking pot and bonding over the fact that they dreamed similar dreams.  Richard and George were downstairs, drinking in the hotel's bar.

"I always dream about peeing, and dramas occurring in bathroom lines at school and stuff like that.  I mean it!"

The two girls were rolling with laughter side to side on their backs, Molly lying on the bed, and Tess on the floor, passing a strong joint back and forth between them.

"That's' too funny!," Molly howled, "because I do too.  I have like the world's smallest bladder so I always have to pee when I'm asleep, and so yeah, just like you were saying, I dream that, like, I share a big house with all these other girls and all of us literally fight, like fist fight, over who gets to use the only toilet, and then the toilet overflows of course, and that's l the dramatic climax of the whole dream!"

"No fucking way!  Me too!  It's like we're twins or something!" screeched Tess.

"But what I dream about most," Molly felt suddenly sad, "Is that my vision is bad, my breathing is bad, my nose is too plugged up to breathe through my nostrils and it doesn't get better when I  blow my nose, and them my legs don't even work, they are too weak to walk on, you know?  I dream that I'm completely, totally powerless."

"Aw, Molly," Tess said, "You poor girl.  You'll be alright."

Yesteryou Chapter 22

22.

Tess called her ex-boyfriend Tim,  who'd brought Vivienne/Beth with him to the party the night before, and he explained that Vivienne would be busy all day.

"Busy doing what?"

"I don't know, Tess.  She's a photographer, I guess she works on that." 

"Well, I mean, how long have you known her?  Have you been to her studio?"

"I just met her, actually.  I think she works out of her apartment.  Why?" 

Tess explained about meeting Molly, and Molly thinking that her missing mom was in Philadelphia. 

"God, you know what?  There's something really strange about Vivienne, like very secretive.  And she doesn't know anyone here, she just moved here.  I met her from talking to her at the coffee shop I go to, she started going there every night like a month ago, and she told me she likes to go there because it's one of the only places she knows how to find yet it the city."

"Which coffeehouse is it?  Does she still go there a lot?"

"Yeah, almost every night.  It's the one on Fairmount and 4th.  Hey, if you and this girl are going tonight to see if Vivienne is this girl's mom, can I come with you?"

"Of course not, Tim.  Jesus, this is someone's life!"

***

George, Richard and Molly found a neighborhood George had read an interesting article about in the New York Times, called Northern Liberties, and they walked listlessly up and down its streets all afternoon, each one commenting on the difference between this city and Los Angeles.  In particular, they were unused to seeing long-abandoned, brick-built industrial buildings next door to nice houses, and the cemetery full of gravestones engraved only with Irish last names. 

"I’m sorry, you two, I feel too anxious about Beth to absorb any of this," George said. Richard and Molly agreed.  They walked around for awhile longer, but no one noticed the new buildings and trees and streets which surrounded them.

***

"What did you like about me when we first met?," he asked her on their wedding night, and she answered, "Um, you're handsome, and nice," and both of these were true, but she was also embarrassed for him, because she didn't really like anything, anything in the whole world sometimes, and she wasn't sure why she'd agreed to marry-- maybe just to see what it was like. 

"I liked everything about you.  I saw you looking around for that stray cat in the dirt, with your long black skirt dragging around in it and everything and I wanted to marry you immediately," he said.

"Shit, that's so touching," she replied, and she meant it.

She gave up trying to be equally responsible in their relationship almost right away, and when she agreed to get pregnant, he mistakenly took it as a sign that she was beginning to settle into her life with him, but this wasn't what she had in mind at all.  She imagined how gratefully full she would feel to be responsible for a miracle, and that is what she planned for Molly to be.  Molly would be a miracle, and would be all hers, or so she thought.

are these reviews?

I have been incredibly depressed.  To put as blasé a spin on it as I can, since that seems the most apt tone for a blog no one reads, I’ll just say I’m going through a 1/3 life crisis (and/or I am between effective anti-depressants).   Accordingly, I have been treating myself with kid gloves, which primarily entails letting myself go balls-out in indulging my constant need for entertainment, even though this indulgence is inconvenient for a fulltime worker, attentive mother, and sometimes mean but always well-meaning wife like me.  Yet, I’ve somehow managed to squeeze in many, many plotlines these days.  

When I get a spare moment at work, since I take my lunch at my desk, I have been reading the novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, which I downloaded from the free ebooks (for classics) website Project Gutenberg.  This is really a great book.  I usually gravitate towards contemporary fiction, but since I discovered the Project Gutenberg site, I have gotten myself to read several classics, and it’s been comforting to step outside of time.  David Copperfield has a worthily famous opening; the first chapter is called “I Am Born” and starts: 

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

How great to start at the BEGINNING like that. 

For further proof that I have been keeping myself heavily distracted, here is the list of DVD’s I have watched in the past week: 

Brave (2012)

Bored to Death Season 3 Disc 1 (2011)

Mad Men Season 5 Disc 4 (2012)

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 7 Discs 1 & 2 (2011)

Ted (2012)

Ted and Brave are completely disposable, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is hard to write about, because part of me doesn’t approve of this show.  Its sense of humor is very ugly and mean.  However, somehow the creators are able to convey the fact that they are not mean or spiritually ugly themselves, and though any snob could rightly call this show asinine, I think it’s so funny.  It has cute little absurdities in it, too, like my favorite character Charlie lie-bragging that he’s an expert in “bird law.”  People from my birthplace and current home of Los Angeles have asked me if people are really that bad in Philly, where I lived for 2 years, and I have to break it to them that nope … they are WORSE.  I have never let my bitch flag fly as much as in Philly, because I had so many unpleasant encounters there that I couldn’t even begin to spin to myself as an “oh well, I’ll never see this person again, best just to pick my battles and walk away from this one”-type pep talk.  One time in a Dick’s Sporting Goods (aptly named) I was treated so rudely that I made it to the cash register before creating a scene that started “This store is BULLSHIT!”  Oh boy did I exorcise a lot of swears in that fucking shit-hole of a city.  I am more direct since living there though, and I think that’s an asset.  There is a lot of hemming and hawing in California, and I try to cut to the chase more now.  Anyway, I watched both discs of season 7 in a row on a day when I was too depressed and with too strong of a migraine to go to work, and it sort of cured what ailed me, so I give it a good review. 

Bored to Death is a great show.  The concept of bromance is sort of played out, but when it’s examined in this show, it is still totally “aw…that’s so sweet”-inducing.  There is one scene where the 3 main characters, a young-ish unsuccessful-ish writer, his best friend and their older mentor/father figure, are all sharing a king size bed in matching pajamas, it’s a little slumber party, and it looks so nice, I bet there are a ton of men who wish they had a couple close friends like that that they could just truly be taken care of by and unravel with for a night – what a nice break that’d be from everyday life.  It also made me feel envious and wish I had a couple good friends I could be that comfortable around.  In general I think it’s harder for men to share their feelings and get close to other men, and I feel sorry for them for that, but I also think it’s just a bad side effect of being a grown up of either gender -- it gets hard to make friends.  It’s true that I’m able to be much more open about my feelings than most men I know, sort of without batting an eyelash, but that ability doesn’t necessarily lead to friendship.  Anyway, Bored to Death is a great show and you should all watch it.  It’s so funny and smart and its quirkiness isn’t obnoxious.

Now I come to one of the best things I have seen in a long time, and that is disc 4 of season 5 of Mad Men.  HOLY SHIT.  Matthew Weiner really outdid himself this time.  It’s funny because Disc 3 isn’t currently available from Netflix so we have skipped several episodes of this season, since we went straight from Disc 2 to Disc 4, but even with that hiccup, I was wholly engrossed in every episode, and I really can’t describe how well done these episodes are, and really haunting.  I wonder what Weiner’s influences are (not aesthetically ---- everyone knows the show has a great Danish Modern etc aesthetic, but that’s beside the point), but creatively.  Episode 12, “Commissions and Fees” has a plotline with Sally Draper that feels very Salinger-inspired.   

xoxo robin

craft corner: Birdman Purse

Birdman Purse $21 slightly negotiable + shipping

I don't know how practical this purse is, because of its length and narrowness, but I feel proud of myself for the little ruffle design and I like the diversity of color and the vibrancy.  this is the description of it from my etsy shop:

eye-catching, one of a kind. 12.5 inches horizontally, 8 inches vertically. multicolored shades of blue ruffle obscure the bright orange stripe at the top of the front of the purse. the purse's back is a color combination of pea green and white. the purse's dark blue strap hangs 12 inches from shoulder to purse body., this is one of my favorite pieces. lined with a cute yellow cotton fabric that has little black and white circle patterns on it.

Yesteryou Chapter 21

21.

There were many different ways to perceive Tess, because she was so moody.  For example, she’d been personable and silly as Johnny Carson the night before and now, waking up on the couch in the hotel room at the Sheraton, she felt painfully shy of these new people.  Still, she did want to get in touch with Vivienne/Beth for Molly, not only out of kindness but out of curiosity -- what if this interesting woman her ex-boyfriend Tim had introduced her to had invented her identity, perhaps on the spot, for the sake of Tess and the guests at the party?  But she also craved a smoke in solitude and a couple hours just to watch a DVD on her own television in her own bedroom.

Ah well, she would just have to try not to act too sullen towards these people, whom she'd already formed an attachment to.  This resolution proved immaterial once Molly awoke, because of how sullen Molly was herself.  She watched Molly knock on the bathroom door and heard a man who wasn't Richard answer, "Molly, is it you?  You can come in."  Then Tess overheard a snatch of their conversation.

"I know it's mom, George.  What will happen when I go with this girl Tess to the coffeeshop and find her today?  Maybe you should go, George, what do you think?  Mom really only trusts you.  I don’t – I don’t know what I am, but I know that I am not trust-inspiring."

If Yesteryou was the song that expressed George's laments at the inevitable tide of a life, Molly's song was one she'd first heard in a movie a few years ago; it was sung by a deep-voiced tragedy-monger of a woman, long-dead, and it expressed Molly's regret at the way she was letting life pass her by.  The singer in the song goes, "I went out walking, I don't do too much talking these days.  These days I seem to think about all the things that I forgot to do, and all the times I had the chance to."  In high school, she'd been the person whose creativity others commented on and admired, and this had filled her with a false hope of some sort of extra reserve of magic, an imperviousness to the mundane that other adults would lack, when she herself became an adult.  But creativity is a word used in school; the importance behind the word, the urgency of creating, doesn't translate well to adulthood.

Maybe Molly could be living with roommates her own age in one of the hipster parts of Los Angeles and maybe be in a band, designing furniture made with recycled materials.  But she didn't see the point, though she wished she could.  She was already twenty five, which felt old.  She saw the point in noticing beauty but not the point in recording it.  She lived with Richard and worked at an office she hated as much as people in sitcoms always hate their office jobs, but she didn't see the point of changing.  She enjoyed the company of Richard and George.  George saw so many movies, and read so many books, and from his high regard for all these stories (all these other peoples' stories) she learned what she considered a trick, of learning other lives.

craft corner

polka dots bracelet $7 + postage

more nineties riot grrrl nostalgia

This was a sheet of either flyers or stickers I made in high school, little advertisements for my zine Sweetheart and for girl power. 

and these:

were stickers that my old friend Rhani and I made one night when she slept over.  I used to think she was a poseur so even though we had all these classes together and liked all the same music and stuff, I was always sort of reserved with her.  Then, when my first band, Lime Rickey, played our first show, I was beaten the shit out of afterwards, and most every "friend" of mine who'd been there had bailed long ago, but my mom, my old friend Matt Harrison, and Rhani, were 3 heroes who actually jumped into the middle of things to try to protect my body, and dear Rhani actually managed to cover my head from kicks for a few seconds, before she was pulled off of me and beaten up a little bit too, and after that, well -- fuck, i knew she was amazing.  obviously there weren't going to be any more Lime Rickey shows, and i was seriously traumatized that night, but Rhani really wanted to start another band with me, and I consented mostly because I thought it'd amount to nothing, and the day we came up with this name Foxfire was the day we made these stickers, which show only 2 girls.  We never started actually writing any songs until our friend Andrea joined though, and I had connections with adults in the music scene who were into supporting a teenage girl band, some of them for the novelty of it, somefor the amazingness of it, so we were actually offered a lot of really good opportunities of venues and bills to play.  I was terrified to get back on stage though.  but nothing bad ever happened to me like the attack again.  instead, my foxfire years were sort of charmed.  we had such a supportive audience, got to play w/ such great bands, and it was really an important part of my life.  anyway, these stickers are just a little bit of Foxfire ephemera.

Yesteryou Chapter 21

21.

"Why do you love me so much?" Beth asked George once, and he was so irritated by the question that he was tempted to pretend he hadn’t heard.  The question had so little to do with what effect his love for her had on him; she was really just asking him to tell her about herself.  It was so selfish.  But oh, how could he not give in to this request.  It was the innocence at the base of her selfishness that was one of the most irresistible things about her.

"Oh Beth, he replied, "I don't know, you're just special," and then what he'd never actually said to her before, "I really do love you."

Now, he brought the bedside phone into the bathroom so as not to wake the three gently sighing sleepers in the hotel room, and he dialed Beth's home number, just in case.  No answer.