Marissa Flaxbart

Kids' commercials are way weirder than regular commercials.

Unlike on normal TV, where commercials for cars and beer are (thank God this is over) political campaigns are essentially waiting-room muzak keeping you from your appointment with entertainment, kids' television programming pales in comparison to the often eye-opening and bizarre commercials. I don't watch a lot of Nickelodeon these days, but if I decide to watch a few minutes of SpongeBob, even his wacky antics can't amuse me like a commercial for toy hamsters on wheels wearing ninja costumes, or the fact that kids still want a doll whose diapers they can change. (You probably shouldn't click on that link. It's pretty creepy.)

Then there are the jingles. How does the song advertising Mermaid Barbie go again? Oh, that's right: "Barbie in a mermaid ta-a-a-ail!" (It's actually "Barbie in a Mermaid Tale," but I saw a doll wearing a mermaid's tail, so I feel strongly that it works both ways.) Sweet and to the point. And after only a couple of viewings, even I can sing along with the Pillow Pets jingle: "It's a pillow. It's a pet. It's a Pillow PET!" 

Granted, the poor parents of young children that have to see these commercials several times a day are probably dying for a nice, bone-dry Infiniti commercial with some classical music in the background, or a Michelob ad that maintains that rollerbladers only drink ultra-lite beer. But for now, I'm sticking with the kids when it's time for a word from our sponsors.

Watch at your own risk:

 

 

 

 

Attention writers of "Mike and Molly": there is no Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Chicago. Try harder next time.

Charlie's Brilliant.

This is possibly the craziest shit I've ever seen. Thank you, Vince Noir.

(Sorry about the Flash, iPhone folks).

All I know about oil spills, I learned from Zack Morris.

What's worse than ignoring the lessons of the past? 

Ignoring the lessons of Saturday morning television. Especially when the lesson was taught by the less-than-deep students of Bayside High. Among those lessons: Drugs are bad, lying is bad, cheating is bad...and drilling for crude oil is dangerous.

I've been at a loss as to what I could possible do to help out in the wake of the current Gulf disaster. As always in times of crisis, I turned to my encyclopedic knowledge of ridiculous sitcoms. This is what I came up with. Enjoy, and please share.

Oil Spill: Saved by the Bell vs. Reality from Marissa Flaxbart on Vimeo.

Anybody with enough smarts to follow Saved by the Bell should understand why drilling is not an undertaking to enter into lightly, why strict regulations are necessary (no filibusters, jerkwads!) and why oil dependency is for tools. It was true in 1991, and for God's sake, it's true now.  

Pretty things

ook! A new Daily Drop Cap! I couldn't resist using this one since it has my blog colors in it. Of course, having a drop cap doesn't make much sense unless I extend this paragraph so that the letters and words pile up to the left of the letter. What would be really great would be if the paragraph got so long that the words started to wrap to the underside of the pretty letter. But that might depend on the size at which you're viewing this text. Let's move on then, shall we?

In this post, I'd like to add to the above pretty thing by showing pictures of a few other pretty things that sum up my past few weeks:

Thanks to Mary, I am now officially obsessed with The Mighty Boosh. I'm not super proud of this fact, but Mary is. Today, I posted a review of Get Him to the Greek on Cineplexus. In honor of these two facts, let's enjoy a picture of Russell Brand and Noel Fielding in a tender embrace.

 If that's not pretty, I don't know what is.

Pretty boy! Maybe that's what Slater's calling Zack in this still from Saved by the Bell, which I used in my Sweet Valley Diaries post about how often the guys on Sweet Valley covers look like Tom Cruise. Sounds interesting, right? You'll have to read it to figure out how this image fits in.

OMG guess what this is???? It's a still from my showchoir documentary, which, yes, still exists, and is in fact closer than ever to being finished. Aiming for the fall. Isn't it lovely?

Let's close up with some more traditionally pretty things...

 Finally, here are some pictures from my trip to New Mexico. I was actually born there, and my parents are both from there, so it's not an unusual place for me to visit. That said, this was kind of an unusual trip, as it was in the Spring, just for fun, and involved a trip to my cousin's boyfriend's goat ranch in the high desert. It was truly lovely.

Glee Envy

I finally watched this week's big Madonna episode of Glee, and I think it shed some light on why I often put off watching the show for a few days, letting it simmer on my DVR. Fact is, this show is torture for me – not because I don't like it, but because I love it so freaking much. I love the characters, I love the drama, but mostly I love the singing and dancing. And it hurts so good to have to sit there on the sofa, still, just watching it.

It's a lot like the pain I often experience watching a play. If I'm really loving it, I want to be up on stage performing it myself. If it's terrible, I can't help but think how I might have tackled those lines. It's a problem.

This week's Glee brought to light yet another mental sickness on my part: I want to be Rachel. Not only does she get to star in nearly every number, but now she's got two amazing guys after her. And yes, I count both the dumb-but-precious Finn and the musical-obsessed Jesse as amazing. I do it because the show told me to, and I'm helpless in the face of its demands.

American Idol: Yeah, I watch it.

That time of year has arrived. The chaff has been cast off, and only sort-of-okay singers are left. It's time to start watching American Idol.

It's a bittersweet moment, as I both love AI and am unable to shake my embarrassment at that fact. Tonight, the top nine contestants will perform, and they probably won't be that great, and I will eat it up. Tomorrow or the next night, I'll overhear some middle-aged women or gay men discussing the best and worst performances, and I will be both proud and guilty to know what they're talking about. I'll suppress my urge to jump into the conversation only to make my dad listen to me talk about how my favorite contestant (not sure who it is yet...Andrew? Casey? Crystal? Lee?) beat the hell out of a Michael Jackson song.

Come to think of it, I can probably get my dad to watch with me. Last season, the amazing spectacle that was Adam Lambert (and Allison Iraheta's sexy rock voice) made the show impossible to ignore for both of us. And EW reports that, oddly enough, Lambert will be the "mentor" on next week's program. If he can teach these kids some of his moves, maybe things will get exciting enough that I'll feel comfortable wearing my Idol-fan badge in public.

But probably not.

Mad Men Barbies. It makes so much sense.

Like most sentient television watchers, I adore Mad Men on AMC. Unlike most of them, I think I might actually like the show even if the scripts and plots weren't so great, because I am obsessed with mid-20th century advertising. It's really an extension of my love of popular culture in general; I think it's fascinating to see what people in other decades saw everytime they opened a magazine or newspaper, and even more fascinating how bizarre the ads seem in retrospect.

You know what else looks weird in retrospect? 1960s Barbie faces. People have been up in arms about how Barbie dolls look forever, but they never looked as alien as they did back in the early days. Realism was never the point – the dolls were meant to be dramatic and beautiful and plastic. It reminds me of something…could it be… the characters on Mad Men?! That's why I think it's so perfect that Mattel and AMC have teamed up to create a collectors' line of Mad Men Barbies. (Read more about my strange love of Barbies here.)

 The Barbies are gorgeous, with perfectly tailored clothing and (stroke of genius) 60s-era Barbie styling. There are four characters represented in the collection: Don Draper; Betty Draper; Roger Sterling; and "bombshell office manager Joan Holloway." Personally, I think it's a little odd that Mattel describes Joan as a bombshell, but leaves the ridiculous Barbie proportions as is rather than, you know, amping her up a bit. I'm not shocked, but just as January Jones and Christina Hendricks aren't going to swap clothes anytime soon, I don't really think the dolls should be able to, either. But that might be the bitterness talking.

The first commenter on AMC.com's post about the dolls mentioned that he wished Peggy was a part of the set. At first I was in total agreement, but after mulling it over, I think that Peggy's too sweet and honest for this plastic crowd. I know, I know, she's got her secrets too, but she's not Draper-league. Let's leave this collection as it is, with only the snakiest characters represented. Fake pretty dolls representing the fake pretty characters that sell pretty for a living? I love it.

Post Script: That Peggy-missing commenter has his own set of self-made Mad Men Barbies he photographed for Haute Doll magazine. You can check it out for yourself here. Greatness.

Oscar talk on CPX

I've been posting up a storm today on the topic of Oscars 2010, over at my movie blog Cineplexus. I've got links to all the movies I've reviewed over the past year that are nominated for Oscars. If you want a list of nominees, check out Oscars.com. If you want a list of my thoughts on the nominated movies that I happen to have seen, there's nowhere to look but Cineplexus. :)

As a side note, I am especially bummed about one movie that missed the Oscar nom cut: 500 Days of Summer. At the very least, I feel it deserved a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Sigh. At least the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (responsible for Golden Globe noms) saw things my way. Sort of.

Full House Genetics

So, here's what I'm thinking, and not for the first time:

If Uncle Jesse is so super-Greek, and Danny Tanner has dark hair and brown eyes, why are all the Tanner girls so fair and blonde? Their mom (also, presumably super-Greek) is supposed to have been blonde with blue eyes?

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this one, and it's not that some Greeks are fair and blonde. I know this is true, but the Katsopolis family is not from that part of Greece. (Have you seen Jesse's parents? Not blonde.) And it's not that blue eyes and blonde hair are recessive traits, which of course they are; even if somehow both Danny and his wife passed on the recessive gene for, say, blondeness, the chances that all of their daughters would be fair and blonde with blue eyes is very low.

No, in this case, the answer lies in the great sitcom tradition of "Not Giving a Shit." Some sitcoms are more concerned with this internal continuity than others, and I don't think I'm shocking anyone by observing that Full House and its writers/producers didn't mind making the impossible possible from season to season or episode to episode. For example: Joey Gladstone, comedian, was never funny. A hip, cool rocker like Uncle Jesse should probably not be obsessed with corny oldies music. And the Beach Boys don't come to your house and sing songs with you, no matter how cute a family you are.

My theory is that no one ever planned to explore Jesse's cultural heritage. As you may know, in the first season he was "Jesse Cochran." It was only in the second season that it was changed to Katsopolis, seemingly at actor/star John Stamos' request. This doesn't explain why they hired Stamos, who was always Greek with very dark hair and skin, to be the uncle of three blonde girls…but some things don't need to be explained. Some things can be chalked up to a sparkly eye and a winning smile. Maybe that's the real lesson here.