I missed a few days writing, but with good reason: not only did class start Friday, but I had two articles due for my freelance magazine gig. I have been writing and thinking about writing plenty; I do not have anything to prove. (I did draft one angry essay, but it was mean-spirited and petty–so I reworked it and have scheduled it to publish tomorrow!) Still, the ideas and stories were swirling; I just needed a quiet moment to collect my thoughts into the five-paragraph format.

On Friday, after meeting my class, writing encouraging comments about their introductory assignments, submitting my articles, and turning down an emergency request to write another (well, not so much turning down as politely setting firm boundaries), I dozed off in the living room armchair from 5:15 to 5:40 p.m. BECAUSE I AM YOUR DAD. I finally regained the will to live and started reading wonderful, inspiring articles on my phone and enthusiastically celebrating them in my reading journal (a holdover from my own student days). I then watched the public television report on homelessness in Austin while eating a salad. This was my Friday night.

As we moved into Virgo Season last week, Madame Clairvoyant had this to say: “Virgo is focused on health and care and living a good life inside this human form.” Her advice paired nicely with Jia Tolentino’s essay about chopped salads in the the Guardian (also in her new book of essays, Trick Mirror, though I have not procured a copy), which I have been pushing on damn near every female in my life. All of that paired nicely with the final episode of a beloved, bingeable Netflix show to form a clean-living philosophy that carried me through the last week and into that armchair to kick off my mild-not-wild Friday night at home with a kickass early-evening nap.

The seventh season of Orange is the New Black was released back on July 26, the start of Leo Season, not Virgo. However, since this was a show that himself and I shared (he hooked me by asking about one of the books in the prison library), we only got organized enough to finish the show together in the week before last. I actually watched the last two episodes without him (Something came up! He insisted!), which worked out well because I cried like a baby. In addition, without spoiling too much, Piper has a line about clean living, voiced over a shot of her hand-washing dishes and placing them in a counter-top rack to dry. The visual of such a simple ritual stuck with me.

On Saturday, after a date night that included a trip to the planetarium and some frozen yogurt, we were home by 9:30 p.m. I dozed off on the couch, phone-scrolling while the start of college football season continued on the TV. I swear I heard one of the color commentators, after a player eked out a touchdown from underneath a dog pile, declare: “That’s clean living right there.”

The first essay I assign to English Comp students is descriptive, which is supposed to be the most accessible rhetorical mode, though the restraints can be frustrating. Description is usually best when blended with something else, the way a bottle of inexpensive merlot can be used to cook an exotic dish. I tell students to fall back on the five senses when writing description, and last night, I explored the sense of smell.

My first foray into scented TV occurred in 1994 with the aromavision episode of Living Single. Evidently, May 8 marked the “interactive entertainment” event on Fox, featuring a 3D Married With Children and much more subdued, sustainable fan interaction from Martin Lawrence and George Carlin. I vividly recall one Living Single character (either Sinclair or Max) dumping half a bottle of maple syrup on her breakfast (either waffles or pancakes).

I could get lost in a web dive of archived articles and 90s nostalgia collectibles, but what they cannot tell me is if I am actually remembering the smell of the cards, or if I even had them in the first place. There is a very real chance I simply watched show, saw the scratch-and-sniff prompt on the screen, and conjured the scent of maple syrup. I felt a similar sensation last week, when I realized I had waited too long to order my Office smell-a-vision card, and yesterday morning, when I got a reminder email (strange, because I had never gotten an email from Cozi TV before, but I just live with the assumption that social media algorithms have infiltrated my entire life). I mentioned to my boyfriend, who has lost patience with my Office viewing habit, how bummed I was to miss it.

A few hours later, he found some of my mail in his truck: “I’m sorry; this has probably been in here for a week.” I was too overjoyed to be annoyed, because he had made it just in time. I opened the envelope from Cozi TV, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112, and read the warning slipped in with the card: “This thing stinks…pungent…oppressive odor…smell ya later!” The card did indeed emit odors without provocation. As 9 p.m. approached, I made popcorn and hoped the smell would not interfere.

The smell-a-vision episode, entitled “The Dinner Party,” is a cringe-worthy social gathering set in Michael’s condo. The first sniff, Serenity by Jan’s Bonfire candle, was essentially liquid smoke. It filled the air and all nostrils, dominating the rest of the evening, in fiction and real life. Andy’s floral bouquet was barely detectable, and the red wine blended with Bonfire to produce a peaty whiskey finish on the nose. Host Melora Hardin told us the scratch-n-sniff company did not manufacture an Osso Buco flavor, so their work-around mixed beef with onions. The cheeseburger smelled similar, but with pickles, babe. Scents of Bonfire and Osso Buco fought it out until I put the card into a Ziploc bag—it is a collectible, after all.

Sometimes, when I am asked my favorite movie and not feeling self-conscious enough to prove anything to anyone, I will answer with Romancing the Stone. After probably eighty viewings, I still get a kick out of how the playful plotting takes great pleasure in toying with the protagonist, a “mousy” romance novelist. The movie is constructed as a postmodern approach to rom-com, which is a genre ripe for reinvention. A few years ago, They Came Together tried the satirical approach, and it could have been a much funnier movie. Book Club celebrated more mature women and is set for a sequel, but I can’t forgive how the alleged “book club” only met twice and simply used 50 Shades of Grey as the clunky, out-of-date-even-as-a-joke impetus for sexcapades. A new spate of rom-coms, however, might revive the genre for me.

There was a day a few months ago when I watched two Netflix rom-coms in a row. I don’t know what was wrong with me either, but it was a turning point. The first was Always Be My Maybe, an allusion to a Mariah Carey song women my age remember from our formative years. The second was Someone Great. I can’t remember what drew me to that one, but it certainly wasn’t the forgettable, had-to-google-it-just-now title. Both rom-coms, however, were refreshingly not white. I recognized the plot structure, the tropes, and the unrealistic careers/apartments/sex lives, but I also got to see new-to-me cultural backgrounds, bodega singalongs to Selenas, and Asian-American Keanu playing Asian-American Keanu (with a bonus of Darius from Atlanta). It kept me entertained enough to care what happened with each character’s relationships.

Allie Wong in ABMM was the more genre-breaking of the two, as her celebrity chef character struggled to maintain a romance with a less successful partner. The San Francisco setting was a refreshing change of pace, even slightly reminiscent of a beloved rom-com oddball, The Sweetest Thing with Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate, and Selma Blair (plus some decent dudes).

Still, it was Someone Great‘s “Hot Child in the City” fantasy of a career girl in New York that hooked me yet again. I had never seen Jane the Virgin, but Gina Rodriguez simply lit up the screen. Her supporting cast included DeWanda Wise as the LGBT character and Brittany Snow as the basic white girl, though in this one she is relegated to comic relief: they make fun of her shoulders-back posture and delight when she gets stoned enough to binge on carbs. The getting-ready-to-go-out scene (again, a callback to The Sweetest Thing‘s mocking makeover montage) is a microcosm of the whole viewing.

My literary friends like to refer to “palate-cleansing chick lit” as a way to take a quick break from a certain type of self-serious literature. Likewise, we all have our tried and true rom-com guilty pleasures. In recent years, mine have been limited to reruns of Sex and the City and anything involving a scuba-diving McConaughey. Now, maybe I can enjoy the genre again. 

We got an Amazon Fire Stick, which, OMG, changes the entire unemployment landscape. Shows that were previously unavailable to me, like my beloved Canadian soap opera Being Erica, are now a click away. So I immediately binged Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

Episode One:

The ear tag. I was just thinking yesterday how I never got one of the cartilage piercings (some girls just looked better in them), and here we have an ear tag with a serial number on it.

Margaret Atwood’s cameo at the Red Center–laughed out loud.

Something from the book, and history–they lock up the Bible so servants can’t read it. The Bible.

The salvaging was done completely wrong, though. That’s not Offred. In the book, that’s one of Ofglen’s shining moments. [Editorial note: within the context of the entire season’s arc, it makes more sense. But we’ve left the book material by this point.]

Ofglen was married to a woman!

Episode Two

June was an assistant book editor! And a preacher’s daughter?!? Maybe? “My father’s parish” can mean he belonged there or he led there.

“Would you like a cookie?” “Aw, isn’t she well-behaved?”

Three Little Birds…and Tears for Fears. Excellent music choices this episode. One of the instructors at my yoga studio has three little birds tattooed on her shoulder.

Episode Three

Barr & Monroe publishing? “You can’t work here anymore; it’s the law now.” That layoff scene had me shook.

So my publishing department was just shut down at work. Eleven people: ten women and one man. The man was immediately offered another job on campus. None of the women even received help from HR to locate another position. They kept one clerk for a few months to help shut the place down and gave her the work of three people to do.

I had to rewind because I though Alexis Bledel’s hair was Rory-Gilmore-short in the first scene and we were looking at two different prison sentences, but it was tucked into her shirt.

Episode Four and Five

Started applying for jobs.

 

 

I just went through and published the drafts I had saved in this blog over the past three years. This last one is a bunch of quotes from the movie The Country Girl, the source of this [sic] blog’s name. It was Grace Kelly’s ugly movie, and everyone knows going ugly will get you the Oscar. I feel like this period of my life has been my own ugly movie–it may not look great on the outside, but I’m going to come out of it a winner and go on to become fucking royalty.

– She wasn’t always like that.

– I know.
They start out as Juliets and wind up as Lady Macbeths.

– When I first met her, she was as fine a person as you’ve ever seen.
She had background and breeding.
She had a nobility about her that made me feel proud to be with her.
I was a good deal older than she was, but it didn’t seem to matter.
She wasn’t a flighty kid.
She had a poise and dignity that was ageless.

Those first few years, I never knew a better life.
A wife who was everything I’d been looking for.
A son who was smart, healthy.
Then our son died.
I came home from the theatre one night a couple of months later.
This kid, I don’t think she ever had a real drink in her life before.
There she is, stretched out across the bed, dead drunk,
her wrists cut and bleeding.
She was jealous that I had my work, something to live for.
She felt she had nothing.

Inside of a year, she was a hopeless drunkard.
In an effort to give her some purpose in life,
I made her feel that I needed her in my work.
I let her pick the songs I should record, the shows I ought to do.
She started taking over everything. She became very possessive.
She wanted to make the decisions, had to be with me all the time.
Whenever I was away, she acted as if I’d run off with another woman.
She had fits of depression.
One time she set fire to a hotel suite.

That’s when I hit the bottle.

I attended Jessa Crispin’s reading at BookPeople on May 11. I’ve always been a fan of Crispin and had just finished Why I am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto that day.

The audience, mostly female and younger than I had expected, listened as Crispin read aloud some critiques of the book and responded. She then took questions, one of which essentially asked what entertainment do you find acceptable? (One of the more quotable quotes from the book calls modern feminism “a decade-long conversation about which television show is a good television show and which television show is a bad television show.” Which is hilarious.)

It came out that Jessa Crispin does not consider Buffy the Vampire Slayer feminist, mainly due to the savior complex that plagues every superhero movie. She then joked that she could feel the audience turning against her and quickly changed the subject.

Since I just finished watching Buffy in its entirety for the first time, I was part of the wave of support for the feminist reading, which I admit did not sit well with me until the Beer Bad episode. [Spoilers follow.]

I. Beer Bad

Everyone hates Beer Bad; I thought it was hilarious. Not gonna lie, what screamed “feminist” about this episode for me was the cave slayer clubbing a dude over the head. Up until this point (and this is Season Four) I hadn’t really gotten the feminist vibe from the show. Yes, Buffy was a female hero and kicked ass and did it all 20 years ago, but her movie counterpart had done the same thing five years earlier. (I was a huge fan of movie Buffy. I dressed as her for Halloween when I was 10 years old. I drew my girl power from Kristy Swanson.) I really enjoyed Sarah Michelle Gellar’s acting in this one, though. She always got to do a lot of physical stuff as Buffy, yes, but the body movement here was different and showcased her range.

Buffy’s first college relationship was a bad one. A shitty, stupid situation in which we have all unfortunately found ourselves at one time or another, made worse by the fact that she just couldn’t get over him. Parker’s douchebag behavior does give Riley an excuse to punch him, which is awesome. (I also like Riley. A lot. I cried when he helicoptered away from Buffy and I hate that people hate on him. He’s the Aiden–you haters realize that, right?)

But before Riley clocks Parker in Episode 4:7, Buffy gets a shot at him in Episode 4:5 and I don’t know why, it just worked for me. Must have appealed to my troglodyte instincts. Plus, there’s a craft beer theme (in 1999, no less). Foamy!

II. Power

Here’s the thing: wherever you are in your feminist journey, keep going. Some of us are further along than others. Case in point: I’m 34 and I just figured this out. Buffy was 20 years old when she learned that she was the one with the real power.

Power. I have it. They don’t.

This bothers them. It’s why they attack you and try to make you feel inadequate–because they are afraid you may realize that they need you more than you need them. And the day you figure that out, you’ll be free. It’s not the same as Buffy undergoing the council’s impossible review, but when you quit participating in the systems that oppress you, you’ll see how badly they needed to you to comply.

Bonus: “That’s Riley-speak.”

III. Every Girl

I cried so, so hard at this. And I hated all of the potential slayers. I hated them in the house, I really hated them when they kicked Buffy out of the house, and I was glad when the cockney one died. Still, when every potential slayer in the world got tapped at the same time, I cried like a baby, especially with the little girl at bat.

This is what destroys the savior complex of the show–the idea that it was all leading toward a dispersal of that power, that every one of us could be strong.