Down For You Is Up

what wonderful world this would be

Published Sunday, February 25, 2007 by Dressed for Success.

This is the End.

As Jim Morrison would say.

Everything in life comes to an end. So this blog does as well. It served its purpose. Reading it over again, thematically, this blog was about the refusal to grow up.

But I can't do that anymore. I feel, most days, like I'm running against a really strong wind. Like I'm trying to stay 17 when everything is pushing me to be 25. And that battle, it's not worth it and it's not healthy.

On a final pop culture note, I think it's appropriate this comes at the same time as the end of the OC.

That last montage, where everybody moves on, gets married, grows up, has a life. That's where I'm headed now and I can't deny that much longer. So as it fades to black forever, my favorite TV show of all time, this blog should as well. There's not much point. I'm rehashing the same things over and over again.

Another blog may pop up again. But it'll never be like this one.

Published Friday, February 23, 2007 by Dressed for Success.

the OC ended tonight.

a seminal show with moments of perfect teenage resonance mixed with maddening soap-opera drama. of comedic brilliance and over-the-top ridiculousness and the difficulty of fidning a balance, it could have been so good, and yet was in some ways.

i still remember my fondest OC moment. ep. 19, season 1, airing on feb. 16, 2004.

despite it being so long ago, i remember it was one of the few exemplifications of a certain ethos i had at that time. at no other moment in my life, did i feel so perfectly sure that everything was going to work out just fine. the wonderwall moment validated that . that maybe, just maybe it would all be like the movies. *shrug* and that's how it was.

except that didn't last.

except it never lasts and so the OC faded away with a whimper tonight.

whatever it means to other people, i know for me, in some ways, it signals the end of a period of my life, as it ends moments before the spring of my junior year.

oh ryan, seth, summer...they all had to grow up. and apparently, and unfortunately, so do I.

now it's like i don't have pop culture crutch anymore.

god i miss it already.

Published Sunday, February 04, 2007 by Dressed for Success.

i love cat power

i love the old cat power

i love the new cat power

i love the lost cat power

and the new found one too.

the one that would cry and fall apart during live concerts.

and the one that does karate kicks during the greatest.

the one that drank so much she couldn't see straight.

and the new face of chanel.

she is so so so great, the greatest, i can't put it in words.

they say you can't write about what you love. well it's true. because the last few lines are completely cheesy and incoherent.

but the amazing thing about great art is that it compels you to try. to try to capture that little tick in your soul when the music stops and she sings "for the later parade".

Published Monday, January 22, 2007 by Dressed for Success.

kurt cobain died when i was 8

so perhaps he didn't mean as much to me as other people. listening to his music now makes me think that if i was 15 in 1992, he would have been my entire life.

there's just so much...disgust there. disgust at the world, himself, hypcorisy, whatever. all he saw was an ugly world of lies, and his music expressed what it was like to know the world was such an ugly place.

and it wasn't about overcoming, or ignoring, this ugliness. about putting a pretty package on top and pretend everything is okay, when in fact, society, people, everything invariably is a rotting disease-filled soon-to-be carcass.

he was consumed by this ugliness. and when we are teenagers (or early 20s), there is no other age when ugliness strikes us the most. most of us lived a childhood that was, on the whole, pretty sheltered. but once you become a teenager, once you start seeing the world for real, you can't help but feel like: wow, this is it? this is what life is? oh my god.

and some people move on from it and accept that how it is. but some people feel it too much. and they just...can't...let...go. they keep looking at the ugliness until it consumes them.

my favorite line by cobain was "i miss the comfort in being sad" in the song "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle"

how much pain do you think it takes to write something like that. when sadness is the better option.

his last album "in utero" is so much about giving up. and i can't listen to it anymore.

Published Friday, January 19, 2007 by Dressed for Success.

there are many ways to solve love triangles on tv.

but unless you have deep seeded emotional issues for which you need to seek intensive psychological counseling...

there is NO EXCUSE for the whole "i choose me" bullshit.

and as awesome as you are...i'm looking at you taylor townsend.

as well as you seth cohen season 1.

as well as pam, sort of, end of season 2 of the office.

this is all katie holmes' fault.

Published Monday, January 08, 2007 by Dressed for Success.

don't call it a comeback

rarely does a show unjump the shark. but somehow someway the OC did. it was getting very dandy warhols with the show. a long time ago we used to be friends.

but today, i declare the OC to be re-sharked.

and i declare the taylor townsend for marissa cooper switch the biggest upgrade since drew brees for aaron brooks.

and i declare taylor townsend the new willow rosenberg. can do no wrong, awesome beyond awesome, brings out the best in everyone.

there's a comic ridiculousness on this show these days, something that they didn't even have during the brilliant first season. the show has embraced its light side. with marissa out of the way, the show doesn't feel the need to tell tragic, heavyhanded stories anymore.

so its slutty aliens and hercules dads and sleep therapist seductions.

and the one who started it all is taylor townsend, dragging this poor excuse of a show back from the dead.

i can't even talk rationally about this yet.

Published Friday, January 05, 2007 by Dressed for Success.

buffy. season 3. ep. 18 earshot.

this isn't one of the best buffy episodes. it's middling by season 3's impeccable standards. certainly not in comparison to the four eps that come aftewards (the one where willow gets kidnapped, the prom, and the two part season finale)

but it typifies why buffy was the perfect teen tv show.

the plot, in a nutshell, is that buffy gets the power to read minds, temporarily, after killing a demon.

she learns a very important lesson. that everyone, no matter what they seem like, feels alone, scared, and insecure.

and yes there are demons and superpowers, but it's all pretext, all working to make explicitly clear what all teenagers implicitly learn at some point.

that all that shit your adolescence entailed, all that dread of growing up and pent up anger and frustration, that happens to every-fucking-body else.

and so buffy, like all of us at a similar age, grows up just a little bit, like we all did, or should.

because before that point, you're in ignorant bliss of some sort. you have a self-delusion, a belief that your pain is somehow special, that no one hurts quite like you do because you suffer so. but the dirty little secret about life is that everyone else suffers in their own, soul-sucking yet soul-affirming way.

and that's why i think college kids are so idealistic. about jobs. about life. about the world. about change. about love. about joy. about humanity.

because the college era (approx 17-24) is the only time when you have true empathy for humanity. because after that, in the real life, you grow up even more, you learn to shut you everybody's pain because you need to function, you need to be responsible, and you can't do that with the realization of the world's hurt on your mind.

this episode brought out the possibilties surrounding this issue and that was what was great about buffy as a tv show. it's a simple little story about mind reading. cliched even. mind reading is not all its cracked up to be. a variant of be careful what you wish for.

but it was about something else entirely too. about the quintessential experience of being a teenager. this happened every week (at least for seasons 2 and 3) for 42 minutes. it was about as perfect and as layered as anything could ever get.

Published Saturday, December 30, 2006 by Dressed for Success.

howard hampton once wrote about those moments when the music and the visual arts (movies, tv) make some sort of seductive, perfect union. those moments when the song perfectly (lyrically, rythmically, in mood, in atmosphere, in emotion) captures the movie...and the two genres meld into one.

and i think he might appreciate this example:

third season. episode 20. buffy the vampire slayer. the prom.

angel/buffy. xander/anya. oz/willow. even wesley/cordelia.

but mostly...angel buffy.

it's the fact that it's not the timeless original, or the tragedy-drenched gram parsons cover.

it's a shiny, twee sundays cover. the disposable, teen band to cover the timeless story of love and loss. the disposable, teen tv show that perfectly mirrors the timless stories of love and loss and growing up and self discovery.

the epheremeral lyrics about dreams and lives after death and slipping away and not letting go. how else to describe the three years of buffy and angel.

the song is all about hopelessness. it's about never being let go about the heart break. wild horses couldn't drag me away from the pain. and that's buffy and angel. not being right for each other on a demonic, epic level.

in a show that perfectly combined horror and high school, the end of the world and the end of youth, maturity and saving the world...and in relationship that exemplified all of that...the only way to do it justice is to use a song that combined love and heartbreak, redemption and loss, timelessness and the world coming to an end.

so here's to you joss whedon. this brief, shining moment...on a show that got it right a lot...you got it the most right on this one.

Published Thursday, December 21, 2006 by Dressed for Success.

i've watched two and half years of veronica mars and nearly all of buffy, which i am re-watching now.

there are so many similarities between the two shows. kickass girlpower heroes, loving scooby gang sidekicks, goofy yet wise paternal figure, evil but redeemable tortured boyfriends, monsters of the week and uber-villains of the year.

but there's one major difference and it comes through in both the main characters and the shows themselves.

namely, veronica came out fully formed in kickass mode. she had a mission from the very beginning and she's always shown herself to be accepting of her capabilities. whereas buffy had to take a while to grow into her role, and for most of the awesome years, there was always the divide between her abilities and her perception of her abilities.

while both are snarky and sassy and snitty, veronica is always more self-assured, and buffy always more vulnerable.

therefore, buffy the show worked best when buffy rose to the occasion, accepting her role with a confidence that she doesn't always show. i'm thinking of "innocence" and the "the becoming". veronica mars meanwhile, works best when veronica is vulnerable, when she's knocked off a bit and questions herself. she makes it in the end, but the fact that she doubts makes for compelling television. just watch the penultimate episode of season 1, when she tries to figure out who raped her.

and each show works on the same level.

veronica mars the show is always solid. every episode is tight, well-written, and feels like it goes somewhere. red herrings are there for a reason, everything is designed to scheme and misdirect. like veronica herself, the show is so confident and so assured. it is always strong noir story telling. that's why it is like the big sleep. as a fascinating detective story, as a modern day teen noir in every sense of the positives of that description, it is perfect. as a symbol for teen life, it falters. it doesn't resonate as powerfully because it rarely devolves into a teenage wasteland of shambles only to rise again. which is not to say the show doesn't rock. it does six ways from sunday. but it isn't buffy 2.0.

buffy the vampire slayer the series had its share of really clunky episodes. even the awesome years (seasons 2 and 3), there were egregiously pointless episodes and tangents and silliness. but that unevenness is what made the heights so spectacular. when the show really rose to the occasion, such as "innocence", it captured the alienation, loneliness, confusion, and yet also, affirmation, of teenage life. like buffy herself, and like teenagers, there were messes of episodes, and messes of subplots. but when buffy, and the show, really hit, it hit like nothing before or ever since. very few shows have ever expressed so perfectly what it means to be a teenager, when the problems of three little people do amount to hill of beans in this crazy world, because it really does mean the end of universe.

Published by Dressed for Success.

at home i blog more. mainly because i have mucho time to think.

anyway babel sucks.

babel got a whopping 7 nods at the golden globes. i am flabbergsted, a little astounded, with a smidgeon of flummoxed.

babel stinks because it's lifeless. because it's a pretty package with a pretty message that makes us comfortable with our pretty little lives. because even though terrible terrible things happen, it makes us sleep at night, because in the end, we realize, all the world's problems could be solved if we just GASP communicated a little better. i am enlightened.

it's ostensisbly challenging, supposed to shake our very foundations, make us realize the depth of the miscommunication and the fact that the world's getting so so far apart even with technology. yet it serves, mainly, to make us feel better. because gosh darnit, if only we could speak the same language, if we could just understand...well everything will be just peachy.

this kind of simple moralizing masks the fact that the world's problems are right fucking complicated. hey i'm all for more understanding. but a movie about the fact that we need to understand each other doesn't say anything at all. it might as well say the sky is blue. compare this with syriana. syriana shows the world sucks too. but that world is all the more real because really, what is your solution to that problem? what can save the world of syriana? you don't know and i don't either and that's the point.

but it's not the message of babel that's my problem. my problem is that every moment is supposed to be so poignant. poignant looks, poignant words, poignant imagery, poignant, poignant, poignant. good for poignant. this isn't a story. this is a bunch of talking heads talking nice little messages about our misunderstood little world. these are people. these are soapboxes. i know i sound like manny farber, but that guy really was onto to something...

so like crash, this movie is going to win best picture because it shows us the most sanitized version of the world's problems. when the little kid dies, it isn't raw, visceral, or powerful as the death of the child should. it looks like the confirmation of a message, a point, a thesis.

movies are supposed to make you stop breathing. the only time it happened during the movie was during the dance club scene when the music cuts out to show us the world of the deaf girl. that's the only time the movie clicked. because it wasn't about anything. and so in turn, it was about life. unlike the rest of the movie, which was about something, and thus about nothing.

i hope i'm not the only one feeling this way. i hope that somewhere out there is someone who will confirm that this movie, in fact, has no heart, only a gaping maw. the movie tries to show that if we all understood, if we all spoke with a more common and understandable voice, we'd all be saved. but it is the common message, the common voice of the movie telling us that the world needs more understanding that is the problem. i'd rather have this movie actually be the tower of babel. a thousand messages all at once, voices talking every which way. it'd feel more alive.

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