I’m going to talk about The OC, so if you don’t care (or don’t want to be spoiled, Australians et al.), skip to the line break.
I really had a lot of hope for the show after they killed off Marissa. I sort of hated Marissa and now realize that her soulless character just was incongruent amidst the rest of the carefully crafted personalities on the show. I think the fault lies with Mischa Barton, honestly. She could have done more with it, but she just doesn’t have the acting chops to pull it off. It’s really difficult to believe that Marissa contains 50% of dynamic Julie Cooper Nickel’s DNA. It’s not the writers, because Kirsten is entirely believable as a mother and a woman and a (insert descriptor here) and Sandy Cohen is probably one of my favorite characters ever on a fluffy television drama. Adam Brody can turn even the lack of dialogue into a comedic moment and we need not even mention the acting chops of Rachel Bilson. I suspect that this is one instance where the actor was so good that the writers changed the direction of the character completely (as evidenced by the fact that she was only considered a guest star until the second season). And I bought the transition because Summer Roberts? I love, nay ADORE Summer Roberts.
(Bit of trivia: I was almost named Summer. Thank god for an unfortunate alliteration with my last name.)
I feel bad that the show is ending, though. It could have gone somewhere. It could have been something more than a vehicle for discovering great indie music. But once it resolved its outsider storyline and driving tension, it didn’t introduce enough ever present conflict of anything else to carry it through. Ryan was accepted in Newport and we didn’t have anything but tired soap opera storylines left and it didn’t matter how many inexplicable lesbian Marissa plots you threw at it. And when they offed Marissa, they buried the one remainder of a motivation for Ryan and with it, the possibility of a fifth season. It’s a shame, really. It had potential.
But perhaps the curse was there from the start. While we could relate to Ryan’s feeling of being an outsider, we could never really relate to the paper doll that was Marissa. And in order to feel something for a love story, don’t you have to relate to one of the characters and sort of fall in love with the other one? Isn’t that why all of those Meg Ryan movies are quintessential chick flicks? Perhaps the reason why My Best Friend’s Wedding doesn’t resonate with the chick flick zeitgeist is because Julie Roberts and her terrifying yawp played what was, in essence, a fucking bitch? Who wants to root for that? And likewise, who could see themselves as Marissa? Not me.
And that’s what makes me sad about the ending of The OC, as we’re going to be robbed of a new storyline. The Ryan/Taylor thing seems awkwardly written in, but actually, it’s a brilliant pairing, She’s had a rough childhood and is another outsider, but she’s grown up in the lap of luxury while following all rules to the letter, the yin to Ryan’s yang. And unfortunately, this story is one that can’t develop slowly for the simple fact of a ticking clock. We gave three entire seasons to molding the Ryan/Marissa and Seth/Summer arcs and now we get eight episodes with Ryan and Taylor. It’s annoying, is what.
I think I’m just irritated because I realized that I finally do identify with someone on the show, finally after four seasons. And that person is Taylor Townsend. I am Taylor. Annoying, existing primarily in my brain, socially awkward half of the time, all organizy and obsessive, and accidentally dork out on subjects that interest me, only in my case, it’s not obscure French poetry, but rather something else, something like feminist dystopian literature or, you know, OPI nail polish. I am not proud to admit this, but I have spent at least a few hours engaged in stalking boys during my lifetime. Ok, a few hundred.
So yeah. That’s me. Not willowy shallow Marissa Cooper. Not adorable feisty Summer Roberts. Not even the crazy eyebrow-wielding Sandy Cohen. I am fucking Taylor Townsend. That is all you need to know about me. That is it.
Also, I totally would have made out with the Dean without even blinking. Eric Mabius is HOT!
It’s crazy-making cold here right now. You know how I complained about the lack of winter about a month ago, how I was walking around on January 6th in just a short-sleeved t-shirt, whining about how we were robbed of our New York experience?
I keep my car in the attached garage, where it never really gets below 40, and as such, the temperature gauge that sits somewhere inside the Chrysler’s magical window usually takes a mile or two after leaving the garage before it can drift down to the real temperature. And this morning, when I started the car, it said that the temperature inside the garage was 21. During the course of driving a mere seven blocks, it drifted down to zero. Even though the car was running, the heat wasn’t coming on fast enough and it was getting colder inside the car. I couldn’t bear to watch it at that point, as I knew that I had a long walk from the parking lot to the building, and last week, when it was negative five, the wind blowing on my forehead actually gave me an ice cream headache. One should not have to endure an ice cream headache without actually getting some damned ice cream in one’s gullet. This should be the law.
As I type this, the sun has been up for awhile and it is currently negative 11 degrees F. For those of you who have a hard time comprehending this, it means that it is 22 degrees colder than 11 degrees F. Which is already not very many degrees. It is fewer degrees than is probably in your freezer, and yet, there it is. What I’m saying is that what we have here is a degree deficit.
Also, there is a wicked wind blowing, which gives us a bastard of a wind chill. Southerners, here’s a wind chill lesson for you: you know how when you’re about to take a bit of something and it’s too hot, so you blow on it to cool it off faster? That’s wind chill. Currently, with the wind chill in effect, it feels like it is negative 35 F. Which honestly, just feels like something you’d read in a Jack London story. I mean, my brain logically understands that there are degrees of cold and that it has been this cold before and it will likely be this cold again and that negative 35 isn’t by all means the coldest it could possibly be, but holy mother of God, fuck fuck fuck it is cold. Not only did I employ my politically incorrect floofy ear muffs for the walk in from the parking lot, but I also used the jaunty hood on my coat for the first time ever, and then held it down so that I could not see anything but the 18 inches of pavement I was about to walk over. I have to take that red hooded school girl coat to the cleaners, because I spilled a soy chai down the side of it, but screw that. The idea of going without Big Red in this bullshit is just unbearable. I’m just going to pretend that it’s an Issey Miyake original.
When the wind isn’t blowing, however, it’s sort of incredible. There is no slush, no slipping, no sliding. The snow makes screech scritch sounds when you walk. Everything is freeze-dried and the pavement is all bone white. We are living on a terrain of blank canvas, right now. The air is alien. We are all just puppets skittering stiffly offstage, white clouds blooming from our mouths. As fucking fucker cold as it is, you still have to sit back and just be amazed by it all.
I ended up sticking with the science fiction class and dropping the post-colonial women writers class, mostly because the post-colonialism wasn’t the American colonies, but rather the colonization of India. The science fiction class had the Atwood going for it, plus it was on a good day and got out an hour earlier than the other class, so I stuck with that. And now I have to read 15,000 pages in the next fifteen weeks. I am not making that up. It’s sort of insane. I’m actually wearing my reading glasses during the day and while reading because my eyes get so tired. Already, I was behind after the first class, as I finished the fiction but couldn’t get completely through the pages upon pages of dense theory and criticism. Luckily, the rest of the class was equally without comment on the readings, so I think I wasn’t the only one. Every weekend until May (except one) is going to be spent with my ass on the couch and my nose in a book. I’m actually looking forward to spring break because I might have a chance to get ahead and take some of the pressure off. I guess this is what I get for putting off the lit requirements in order to take a fun writing workshop.
So far, though, the class is fascinating. I have had almost zero exposure to science fiction and I’m enjoying what I’ve read so far. Even though already in the second week, we have robots. Excuse me, androids. The discussion in class, however, is fascinating, and I’m taking notes for the first time in years. Normally, I’m an absorber, but in this class, there is so much going on that is so new to me that I can only sit there and scribble scribble scribble. The professor is entertaining and absolutely brilliant and when he mentioned that he had “screened” both of the Jackass movies over the weekend, he assured that my track record of having a bit of a crush on my male professors will remain intact. I’m just shy of gushing “He’s ever so dreamy!” I mean, he did his doctoral dissertation on cannibalism. Like, um, HOT?!
Today begins the first official day of my new Big Hairy Project at work. You see, I did so well at the last one that they wanted me to do another one, which has now morphed into working with new people on the skinny part of the org chart yet still does not provide me with a corporate jet or anything cool like that. During the planning meeting, here is a multiple choice of potential sound bytes:
A)&AAk-I want 100 percent penetration on this. Deep.
B)&AAk-Anal is good. I like anal. I want anal.
C)&AAk-She is definitely hard core. Use her however you want.
D) Suck it, slut.
Answer: all but one, of course. Two different people said A and C, although one was directed at and the other was referring to me. And then when B came out of my mouth, I almost burst out laughing and spent the rest of the meeting blushing furiously.
This is why I’ve been cherry picked for my leadership potential. Right there.
So that’s my spring in a nutshell. Big death project from hell and a stack of sci-fi to read. I have no free will. My time is not my own. I’m not studying dystopias, I’m living in one.
In other news, a note to the 3taconners: I’m sure that it will warm up by then, guys. I mean, the weather always cooperates and stages the perfect winter weekend for us, so it wouldn’t dare to go against tradition.
(knock on wood)
