He also has a degree in history

You know what's gratifying? Following an actor, admiring his work, and then seeing an awesome article like this one, about Will Gartshore's day job--he's currently in Copenhagen on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund. I have a feeling, though, that he'll miss tomorrow's matinee. I believe all of the airports are closed for Snopocalypse '09.

Daily Show prototype

In reading the Daily Show With Jon Stewart thread at Television Without Pity, I found a YouTube clip of Jon doing stand-up in 1996.



The thing that's amazing about this video--other than the fact that it's still funny, 13 years later--is how much this is like the current Daily Show. I know it shouldn't really be that surprising; after all, Jon Stewart is obviously a very smart guy who's had these opinions for quite some time. But it's just so odd to see the young Jon giving what could almost be a current monologue; I mean, I guess I just think of him as the guy on MTV, not as someone thinking about politics. Maybe in my mind he just didn't become political until starting at TDS in 2000. Which is silly, I know. I mean, obviously there was a reason they chose him to be the host.

No, tax-free shopping does NOT make up for it

Today's Frank & Ernest really amused me. Though I think they should've added--and I'm sure others on the East Coast will agree with me--something about having to pay the stupid tolls and getting stuck in the toll traffic. Delaware. So expensive!

Big city/small town dichotomy (plus some Austen!)

I love cheesy television movies. The only thing better is holiday-themed cheesy tv movies, so I totally thought I was in luck with The Twelve Men of Christmas, which aired on La-La-Lifetime. I mean, it has Kristin Chenoweth searching for guys to pose in a calendar! What could be better?

Well, I should've actually read the description of the movie, because then I would've found out that the movie is set in Montana. And Kristin plays a woman from New York who winds up there, a situation to which I can somewhat relate, having moved from Connecticut to Montana when I was 16. And as soon as the movie started and she arrives in Kalispell and the mayor is all, "Call me Mayor Bob!" and she's all, "Everyone here is so nice!" I knew what would happen. She'd wind up falling in love not only with the telegraphed love interest, but also with the town. No, she'd realize. New York City is too out of touch.

Scenes toward the end proved me right. The expensive real estate! Restaurants that are so hip that they don't answer the phone! Aggressive pedestrians! Who would want to live like that when they could live in Kalispell, where you have to drive hours to get to the nearest Gap? (And point. You wouldn't have to drive all the way to Billings [which is closer to 8 hours away, not 10] to get to a Gap. Spokane is maybe 4 hours away. Not great, by any means, but not quite that bad.)

And it's not that I'm saying that life in a small, Montana town is necessarily bad. It isn't. I'm just sick of movie after movie showing someone who's happy with their life in the big city until something forces them to go to a small town and then they realize What They Were Missing. Because you know what? It doesn't always happen that way. I spent 2 years in a town in Montana, happy with certain aspects (lack of humidity, good theater program at my high school, no speed limit), but frustrated with the isolation and the closed-mindedness of a number of the people.

What's that I said? Closed-mindedness? How can that be? These people are nice and welcoming of outsiders! Well, except when the attitude you get from a number of people is, "Oh, you're from the East? You must think we're idiots." And you get this attitude as a reaction to absolutely nothing. (True story. I go with my mom to set up my school schedule. The guidance counselor tells us with no provocation, "I know you're from Connecticut and think you can't get a good education here, but you can.") A lot of people in Montana don't like Easterners. They don't like Californians. There's a reason the Unabomber wound up there, people.

And yes, I have my Montana prejudices, in good part from having to move there after my sophomore year of high school. I look back now in some fondness (again, great theater program where I met a LOT of cool people), but would I rather have stayed in Connecticut? Hells yeah. And where am I now? In a suburb of DC. I got out of Montana as soon as I could and went to a college within an hour of two major cities--though in a small town. I appreciate both worlds.

I was distracted from my annoyance in the middle part of the movie, when I realized that this was some sort of Pride & Prejudice remake/homage/update/something. Kristin's character? EJ. Her assistant/coworker? Jan. Her love interest? Will. It'd didn't dawn on me until Will confesses his feelings while admitting that he's repulsed by the idea. Then it all fell into place. Particularly when they were like, "It's crazy how proud I seemed!" and "I can't believe I was so prejudiced against you!" and I remembered Will telling Jan's love interest to back off from her (for no apparent reason). I have no idea why they went this direction. It kind of worked, though it was a bit heavy at times. Though honestly, it's a cheesy, holiday-themed tv movie. Why am I surprised?

Happy Thanksgiving!

From me and President Bartlet

Jersey night

I saw Jersey Boys last night and I really quite enjoyed it. It was acted well, sung great, and had an interesting concept (the story [or part of the story] of the Four Seasons as told from each perspective). The theater was packed by an enthusiastic crowd, and I had a really fun time. I highly recommend it.

Having said that, I'm not sure whether it's the time of show that'll linger with me. I didn't find much of the story emotionally resonant. The story had it all--humor, the Mob, romance, divorce, the works. There was one moment that was sad--SPOILER, I guess--Frankie Valli’s daughter dies, but since so little time was spent on Frankie’s marriage, much less his children, I couldn’t get too upset by it. He seemed sad, and that made me sad, but that’s about it. I found the relationship among the members of the group interesting, and wound up liking all of them…but that's about it.

Not helping was my complete inability to figure out when things were happening. I don't think we were once given a date for when the action was taking place. It moves through decades, but you couldn't tell how much time was passing from one scene to the next. For example, in the beginning, we see Frankie and he's referred to as a kid; I think they say he's 16, but I could be making that up. And then in the next scene, he's married. Wha? At one point, they mention the Beatles, but that's really the only reference to timeframe--and since the Beatles were around from 1964 to 1970, that didn't particularly help. It was a relief to hit Wikipedia this morning and get a timeline. Mind you, that also made me realize why they weren't too specific in the play; they fudged around with the dates a bit, not surprisingly.

I do feel the need to go out and buy a Four Seasons album now. It's interesting that they did largely overlap with the Beatles--the Four Seasons peaked from 1962 to 1970--but it's so weird to think of these two totally different sounds both being so popular at the same time. One of the characters mentions that their audiences were different; I'll have to ask my parents whether they liked the Four Seasons, because I know they weren't huge Beatles fans in the 1960s. (Sigh. Oh, Mom and Dad.)

I did really enjoy the choreography. I loved, loved, loved watching them move as they sang. It was just so fun! I mean, watch this (skip to about 2:05 for the moving):

Neat, right? I'm a sucker for even basic choreography. Here's the London cast:

And now I'm intrigued to see it in London, just to hear the British Jersey accents. Similar to how I want to see Hairspray over there, for similar reasons. (Also, to just see Hairspray. I'm totally in love with that show.) Anyway, I particularly like the little double foot stamp they do during "Walk Like a Man."

(Hmm, it looks like YouTube has quite a few of the London cast. Awesome!)

So now I have "Walk Like a Man" in my head, which is cool. Also cool? That it's Jersey. They took their name from a bowling alley in Union County, which is my county, yo. I should warn any parents not to bring their small children. There's some lewdness and quite a bit of swearing…

...though I'm quite sure I don't know what that sign means.

Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside

My two favorite new shows this season are Glee and Community. I'm kind of in love with both of them. (And am kind of in love with Matthew Morrison and Joel McHale, respectively, but that's not really pertinent to this discussion.) You can't really compare them--Glee is an hourlong drama/comedy/musical; Community is a sitcom. Both take place in a school setting (high school and community college, respectively), but that's about it.

I keep seeing Glee being referred to as happy and feel-good and that sort of thing, which I find interesting, because it's really not. I mean, sure, it has the cast performing musical numbers, but it's not like they're all "Single Ladies" and "Sweet Caroline" (though, sometimes they are!). Sometimes, just like in musical theater, it's people expressing heartache and pain and confusion through song. The characters are dealing with fertility issues and being outcasts and unrequited love and sexuality and acceptance--and not always in funny ways that involve getting Slushees thrown at them. (Though sometimes there are airborn Slushees.) It's a show that on the outside is fun and happy...but is a LOT darker on the inside. Like any show about high school, if you dig just a little, you see the conflict. This is a show full of characters who really are not happy people.

Then you have Community. It stars Joel McHale, so anyone familiar with The Soup automatically views it as having a level of snark and cynicism. It's about a disgraced lawyer and doesn't really go into much depth (why exactly is he at a community college?) and there's a lot of banter and put-downs and that sort of thing. And it's a LOT more of a feel-good show than Glee. It's full of characters who care about each other and go out of their way to help the others out. Sure, they have problems too, but when I look into these people's futures, I see a lot less pain that what I see if I think about how the lives of the Glee folks may go.

Though I have to admit that very little cheers me up as much as watching Matt Morrison do "Bust a Move" or "Gold Digger."

Ah, Netflix, how well you know me

I haven't been on Netflix a ton lately and just noticed that they changed the categories of their suggestions from generic ("Comedy") to more specific. So what are my top five categories? Let's see...

1. Witty Comedies (recommending Easy Virtue and The Apartment)
2. Goofy TV Shows (Flight of the Conchords, SpongeBob Goes Prehistoric)
3. Critically Acclaimed Feel-Good Movies (Almost Famous, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)
4. Romantic Movies Featuring a Strong Female Lead (P.S. I Love You, Elizabeth: The Golden Age)
5. Violent Independent Movies (Requiem for a Dream, Pulp Fiction)

I particularly like the contrast between the last two categories.

The older "Dancing in the Dark"

I watched The Band Wagon tonight, starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. Holy crow. The plot was, not surprisingly, not the most logical thing--but better than the show within the movie, which purported to be about a writer who writes both children's books (or something) and gory murder mysteries, but included a bunch of totally random songs (e.g., that triplets song, "Louisiana Hayride")--but it had Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse dancing, so I can't complain too much. I want to do this:



(And also, you know, have Cyd Charisse's body. They're about equally attainable.)

Oh, and kudos to the movie for acknowledging the age gap between the leads! Woo!

And now I can tell them apart!

I just watched a bunch of episodes of JONAS, the Jonas Brothers' Disney TV show. (I was going to watch the episodes of Gossip Girl I had on my DVR, but it turns out I either erased the second or it never recorded, and I was too lazy to get up to see what happened that episode. Anyway. I'm not sure that story helped your opinion of (a) my taste in television or (b) my lifestyle in general.) Anyway, I found myself analyzing the show and comparing the brothers to the Monkees, which is a bit tricky, because there are only three Jonas Brothers and four Monkees. Then I was like, "I should watch a bunch of episodes of The Partridge Family and find other sitcoms about 'famous' musicians and compare!" What can I say? It's Friday night. My brain is fried. But my laziness prevailed. Yet I'm going to share my impressions of the show with you anyway. Sorry!

I wasn't terribly impressed with their music. It was OK, I guess. I kept getting the songs mixed up, to the point that I was convinced that the first two episodes I watched kept using the same song over and over--like, it was the title song, and the songs in the episode. I will say, though, that compared with the Monkees, they have way fewer songs in their show. I mean, some of the episodes didn't have any. That may be because the Jonas Brothers were already a hit before the show started; they don't need to promote their music on their show. Plus, it seems that bands today put out music a lot less than they did in the 1960s. So I don't know. I can't imagine going to see these boys in concert, but they weren't, you know, bad.

They are, however, charming, and act fairly well. I've decided that Kevin, whom I think is the oldest (...yes, Wikipedia confirms this), is the Peter Tork of the group. Frequent jokes are made at his expense, though he is, of course, good-hearted and sweet. Nick, the youngest, appears to be the Michael Nesmith--he has the understated humor and from what I can tell, is the brains of the group. Joe is the Davy Jones; he's the heartthrob and seems to be the lead and has the romantic storylines.

Which makes no sense to me. Nick is way cuter, and is the smart one and the one who writes the songs (...in the show at least) and is the one who actually got them started. Plus, again, cutest. And by that, I mean he has, by far, the best hair. Joe really just needs to get his out of his face.

I will give the show credit for its writing. The plots are actually somewhat interesting, if not incredibly unconventional, but there are a lot of little jokes in the show that I liked. (For example, someone mentioned manatees, and Kevin started to sing about manatees. Also, to show that Joe wasn't a jerk, Nike said he'd show that Joe was "panda-loving.") (These were possibly funnier on the show than as written here.) So, credit for that.

Also, credit for the fact that the show isn't on the Disney Channel all the time. I think it comes on maybe once a week; at least, that's what a cursory look at my DVR listings showed me. I happened to catch a marathon. (Which I DVR'd. Don't judge me!) I get the feeling that even though Disney helped propel them, they've managed to retain some control--and good for them.

What I would like to compare with other shows is the handling of the group's fans. In the Monkees, it wasn't an issue, because they were portrayed as being a struggling band--they didn't have fans. But what did the Partridge Family do? In JONAS, there are screaming fans all over the place...when it suits them. They're not horrible about it, but it does jar a person to watch an episode about how the boys are all crushing on the pizza delivery girl, and so going to the door all the time without any noticeable screaming, then to see an episode in which in they can't take out the trash because the screaming girls will take them down.

But that sounds all efforty. And I really don't need to devote any more time or energy into comparing teenybopper rock band sitcoms.