Poshdeluxe

i hope everyone had a superfun and candytastic halloween last night, esp. after all of the commenting on yesterday’s post.

henri and i got to observe some trick or treating action at owen and jodi’s house, but unfortunately i did NOT BRING MY CAMERA. BECAUSE I AM AN IDIOT.

so this post is really not gonna be about halloween, which is a shame.

but i do want to say that i saw a little toddler, ruby, in a big puffy bumble bee costume that pretty much made my night. not only did she look adorable (and puffy), but she proved, once again, that the Bumble Bee really is the #1 costume hit of the season. and out of all of the “sexy” bees i’ve seen over the last few days, ruby rocked her costume with the most class and style. especially considering that she just learned to walk.

also, owen did give out a few shots to the adult trick-or-treating chaperones, the highlight being a generous pour of rum for a pirate dad. it’s times like that when i realize that being an adult is actually pretty great, even though i can’t get a ton of free candy from strangers anymore.

anyway!

today i want to call yr attention to an important development in american culture: the re-release of “my so-called life” on DVD.

i’ll allow a few of you to roll yr eyes or shake yr head over the deteriorating career (and morals) of claire danes or the fact that jared leto may well be the most annoying person on the planet.

finished? ok.

when this show aired in 1994, i was in high school. and i know it’s cliché (and i’m not sorry for it), but when angela chase came on to the screen, i knew i had found my best friend on television. angela was a goody goody who never took chances, just like me. she yearned for the burnout druggie and felt her heart flip whenever he passed her in the halls and especially, heaven help us, when his flannel shirt brushed against her arm for a split second. i too pined for the skater boy with a locker next to mine, who probably had already lost half of his brain cells but radiated such Charisma that even his dirty, chunky hair beckoned with the Allure of the Unknown.

unlike me, angela decided to change. she dyed her hair. she made friends with the weirdos and outsiders. she actually (gasp) TALKED to her crush (in all four years of high school, that’s something i never did). she basically did the things i wondered about but was afraid to do. and the whole time, she was still scared. the whole time, she never actually knew what she was doing. and that’s why i loved her.

the ny times features a wonderful write-up of the show in honor of the new dvd release, and reading it brought me back to those days of dreary math homework and cafeteria table gossip:

***

“My So-Called Life” took us deeply inside the head of a decidedly middle-class girl whose grievances with the world were confined to an aching crush, the wish that her mother wouldn’t insist on well-balanced meals and her belief that social studies ought to be less boring. While the agonies of adolescence were felt catastrophically, they weren’t weighted with enormous consequence. At no point were we instructed to think that the lapses of youth would define the people we might become.

***

this show wasn’t glamorous NYC living or fast cars or pregnant teens or california tans. it was about the seemingly small moments in high school that, upon passing into yr consciousness, become giant nebulous weights, questions that haunt you like seductive ghosts, dilemmas that seem insurmountable and yet are contained within this one small high school world. angela had a regular life, and so did i.

the NY times writer goes on:

***

Television gives us teenage lust exercised or teenage lust repressed but rarely does it evoke the way young people translate their carnal urges into something they understand as a deeper abiding affection. “My So-Called Life” is essentially a study of a young mind processing desire into something less terrifying and more easily justified — substantiating it with false hopes — and in that regard it is more than a good TV show, it is a good TV show that attains the dimension and complexity of literature. The great postwar novels of adolescence deal with innocence lost; “My So-Called Life” deals with innocence sustained, but it offers a no-less-illuminating view of what it is to be young because of it.

***

and like one of my favorite well-worn books, i can’t wait to open up the dvd case, settle into my comfy loveseat and enter angela’s world once again, a world that i once shared with her. maybe, now that i’m older, i’ll shake my head over some of her decisions, her dramatic outbursts. maybe her angst will seem silly.

but i have the feeling that, instead, i’ll remember what it felt like, to wonder about everything and worry that you’ll never figure it out.

because that’s the way i still feel, over ten years later.

in an interview with EW, wilson cruz, who played rickie, talks about working on the show and the way it influenced his own adolescence. at the end of the interview, the writer asks him about the final episode. as i read along, i felt all of my old emotions come back– the excitement, the fear, the flat out bewilderment– that i experienced during my time in angela’s world.

***

One thing that still bugs me and many fans is that we never fully got closure from that last episode.
No?

At the very end, when Angela takes off with Jordan, even though Brian secretly wrote that love note to her.
Oh, Nisha, you got closure.

But Brian wrote that letter! Not Jordan!
And Angela knows it. In that last moment when we see her looking out the window of Jordan Catalano’s car, she’s not looking at Jordan, she’s looking at Brian.

And she still drove off with Jordan.
Mm-hmm. But that’s the best part.

***

yeah, it certainly is.

LINKS

speaking of shows with which i feel an extraordinary, life-changing, ridiculously nerdy bond, joss whedon has a new show!!! with faith!!!!

on that note… ok, i love “the office,” but this is the worst idea ever.

if you’re still jonesing for some halloween action, check out the top 10 most humiliating dog costumes of all time.

knitta, please!

i can’t WAIT to read this book, after i finish the autobio of slash, obvs.