Notes on Pop Culture: Periodical Beach Reading, The Newsroom & Political Animals

I spent the past week on a Cape Cod family vacation where I swam, biked (rode a bike for the first time in many, many years), enjoyed sunsets, fresh seafood and got thoroughly and embarrassingly crushed on a farm-themed mini-golf course. (My 10-year-old handily kicked my behind.)

But when we weren't scanning the seas for seals, the favorite snack of sharks  -- we were a few miles away from that Cape beach where a shark chased a kayaker -- I was gorging on the heaps of reading material I brought along (an academic book and Lord of the Rings, both for a research project I'm working on, along with a bunch of periodicals). Here's what kept me entertained:

New Yorker: For a Boston area resident, I was rather sickeningly Gotham-centric this past week. I got substantial sunscreen and sand all over the July 9/16 issue of The New Yorker and enjoyed the long review of Douglas Brinkley's new Walter Cronkite biography by Louis Menand which included a fascinating debate over whether a Cronkite comment, coupled with the anchor's pessimistic view about American success in Vietnam, prompted LBJ not to run for a second term.
An article that sparked a beach-side conversation was by James Surowiecki about businesses that aren't hiring new employees because, the article asserts, employers are being too picky despite ample options:
"When companies complain that they can't find people with the right 'skills,' they often just mean that they can't find people with the right experience . . . Thanks in part to the sheer number of applications, screening of applicants is automated, with computers evaluating resumes according to pre-set criteria. Fail to meet one of those standards, and your application gets tossed, even if a good H.R. director might have spotted your potential."
How depressing.
Speaking of depressing . . . I was also riveted by "The Hunger Diaries," excerpts from American writer Mavis Gallant's journals written in 1952 when Gallant was literally starving for her art while living in Spain.

New York Magazine: The July 9 cover story, "Does Money Make You Mean?" ignited another lively debate with its provocative accompanying art. Citing various work by researchers who are delving into whether money causes people to be less humane and whether people who seek money share those same traits or whether the entire "less humane" question is bogus baloney, writer Lisa Miller worded her central query this way: "How does living in an environment defined by individual achievement -- measured by money, privilege and status -- alter a person's mental machinery to the point where he beings to see the people around him only as aids or obstacles to his own ambitions?"
New York Times: In between the pages of the Old Gray Lady, I greatly related to a Sunday Styles section meditation, "Friends of a Certain Age," about the challenge of making and keeping friends as we get older:
"In your 30s and 40s, plenty of new people enter your life, through work, children's play dates and, of course, Facebook. But actual close friends -- the kind you make in college, the kind you call in a crisis -- those are in shorter supply.
As people approach midlife, the days of youthful exploration, when life felt like one big blind date, are fading. Schedules compress, priorities change and people often become pickier in what they want in their friends."
In the same section, I found a scary story by Lee Siegel who accidentally sent Linked In friend invitations to all 974 contacts in his address book including deceased people, "lawyers, landscapers, accountants, literary agents, babysitters, window-installers, art dealers, ex-girlfriends, the ex-boyfriend of an ex-girlfriend . . . obstetricians, dentists, ophthalmologists, gastroenterologists, urologists, psychologists, pediatricians, billing offices for all of the preceding . . . my ex-wife [and] two litigious former landlords."

The Newsroom: As for TV, I saw the latest two episodes of Aaron Sorkin's new HBO drama The Newsroom which, I've decided, has officially hooked me with its cutting dissection of contemporary cable TV news. Yes, it can be preachy, annoyingly preachy and smugly sanctimonious as well. The second episode irritated me with its relentless focus on two of the female staffers falling to pieces over their love lives. But by the fourth episode -- "I'll Try to Fix You," which I reviewed here -- that got me.

Political Animals: I also caught the first installment of USA's mini-series (the network is calling it a "limited series event") Political Animals where Sigourney Weaver plays Elaine Barrish, otherwise known as Hillary Clinton had Clinton dumped Bill right after she lost her 2008 presidential bid. It also features a tough reporter, who wrote nasty pieces about Barrish's ex, shadowing Secretary of State Barrish around for a week for a story. The show felt crisp, the relationship between the reporter and Barrish is promising and the political manipulations entertaining (better than the boring, real life presidential race we've got goin' on right now). Looking forward to seeing more of this "limited" event.

Image credits: Amazon and New York Magazine.

Season 4 'Mad Men' Cast Photo: What Do You Read Into It?

The folks over there at the New York Times are crowing about the fact that they've received a season four promo package for my favorite show on television, Mad Men. Included among the goodies is the season four cast photo above.

Writer Dave Itzkoff noted that, while he wouldn't divulge any spoilers, the 10-year-old actress who plays Sally Draper, Kiernan Shipka, has been promoted to a series regular. That's a great development, as far as I'm concerned, because I thought she kicked some serious butt last season. I'm also hoping she'll provide a realistic depiction of what it's like to be a child of divorce, particularly in that era.

Other than Peggy's new 'do and Kenny Cosgrove's appearance in this photo (note, no Paul Kinsey who, like Cosgrove, wasn't invited to work at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce), what potential plot developments do you draw from this cast photo?

Image credit: AMC via the New York Times.

Is It Time to Get Rid of Gender-Specific Acting Awards Categories? Not Yet.

Before the Academy Awards aired, the New York Times ran an op/ed where the writer asked whether it's about time for awards ceremonies like the Oscars and the Golden Globes to do away with the actor/actress categories and simply bestow awards for acting excellence. Kim Elsesser from UCLA’s Center for Study of Women wrote:

". . . separate is not equal. While it is certainly acceptable for sports competitions like the Olympics to have separate events for male and female athletes, the biological differences do not affect acting performances. The divided Oscar categories merely insult women, because they suggest that women would not be victorious if the categories were combined. In addition, this segregation helps perpetuate the stereotype that the differences between men and women are so great that the two sexes cannot be evaluated as equals in their professions."

Even though I was thrilled to see Kathryn Bigelow become the first woman to win a best director Oscar (in over 80 years) for her work on the excellent The Hurt Locker, you need to consider the context: Only a paltry 16 percent of the top 250 films from last year were directed, written or produced by women and of the 4,400 “speaking roles in 2009’s top 100 films, only about 30 percent were for women,” Reuters reported. Despite the fact that in the last year U.S. women bought 55 percent of all movie tickets, according to Women & Hollywood's Melissa Silverstein, women still are not yet equal to the men in Hollywood by nearly every measure you can think of.

My Mommy Tracked pop culture column this week asserts that we're a long way away from achieving gender equity when it comes to respecting women's work in the arts. "When women start taking home half the awards in the big gender neutral categories" that's when I'll be all in favor of ditching the actor/actress categories, I concluded.

What say you? Do you think that, if we got rid of gender-specific acting categories, women would best the men or get even half of the nominations?

Image credit: Paul Buck/EPA via The Guardian.

Notes on Politics: In Snow & Sleet, Mass. Senate Race is Scalding Hot

With the exception of a few years of living in the Washington, D.C. area in the 1990s, I've lived in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the rest of the time. In all that time, I cannot recall a general election for the U.S. Senate or Congress being this close. It's Massachusetts for God's sake, one of the bluest states in the union. Sure, there was a lot of national attention paid to GOP Gov. Bill Weld's 1996 attempt to unseat U.S. Senator John Kerry (Kerry prevailed with 52 percent), as there was when Republican Mitt Romney took on Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1994 (Kennedy won 58 percent of the vote). But those races weren't nearly as close as is this current contest between Democrat Martha Coakley, the state's attorney general, and Republican Scott Brown, a state senator.

Amid all manner of nasty political ads which air once every five seconds on radio and TV (I adore politics and even I'm sick of them, never want to hear the word "lockstep" again) and the tongue-clucking about Coakley's assertion that Brown supporter Curt Schilling is a Yankees fan (in Red Sox Nation of all places!), this once sleepy campaign where the Democrat (any Democrat, didn't matter who) was considered a shoe-in, so much so that Coakley didn't really campaign much last month, is now too close to call. And it's serving as a proxy for all things Obama and is considered to hold the key to the health care vote. If Coakley, once the presumptive favorite, doesn't prevail, pundits everywhere are saying this is bad news for the president who visited Boston yesterday to try to help boost the campaign.

I still can't believe it. Take a gander at the political reporters from all the big media outlets on TV who have to do live stand-ups outside in this New England January chill, in front of cars coated in salt and sand. They seem surprised and almost giddy, to have something this volatile to report. I was astounded to see the front page of the New York Times today feature a woman who'd been holding a Brown sign in Marlborough, MA who I drove by twice on Saturday while driving my youngest kid to hockey.

Here are the covers of the two biggest papers in Massachusetts, indicating that the stakes are indeed high for tomorrow's vote from the Boston Herald (where I used to work and for whom I used to blog) and the Boston Globe.

Helping in Haiti

The images -- both still and moving -- coming out of the absolutely devastated island of Haiti break your heart. Battered bodies are on the sidewalks and streets covered with dingy sheets or scraps of cardboard, if anything at all. Wounded people have little to no access to medical care because hospitals have either been destroyed by the massive earthquake or are overflowing with patients and have precious few medical supplies. An unknown number of people are trapped in the rubble for whom we can only pray will survive -- that's if they're still alive -- until help comes. If it comes. If people can get there in time in a land where there's no electricity, no clean water, where gasoline is scarce and simply getting around is being described as close to impossible.

While we sit in our homes with the luxury of engaging in discussions about the fate of late night comedians and whether a guy working for a U.S. Senate candidate shoved a reporter to the ground, it's important that we do what we can to help the victims of this natural disaster, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is saying caused "Biblical" damage.

The White House has a blog post directing you to ways you can help and the New York Times has a page of organizations which can help get aid to where it's needed, including the American Red Cross and Americares. Beware of folks trying to scam you and take advantage of your generosity. Make sure the organization you select is legit.

Image credit: Lisandro Suero/Getty Images via Huffington Post.

Conan-Leno Late Night Skirmish Bringing Out Best of Comedy

Man, has Conan O’Brien been razor-sharp since the release of his well-received statement to “People of Earth.” He’s a guy with nothing to lose . . . which is amplifying his risk-taking humor. And that’s a good thing.

His monologue on the Tonight Show yesterday – with its direct hit to Jay Leno and the bit about the Winter Olympics -- was positively Jon Stewartesque, just the right combination of smart, mean and amusing (because he’s right). Maybe all networks should threaten their comedians with demotions. It might make ‘em funnier. Take a look at excerpts from the monologue below, via MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Meanwhile, over on ABC, late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel eviscerated Leno by doing an entire show while dressed as Leno. His satire of Leno’s Headlines shtick was such perfection that I almost felt badly for Leno. Almost. But not really.



Be sure to check out the New York Times piece imbroglio; it’s well worth the read. Best quote came from a columnist from Advertising Age who said people are siding with Conan “because he’s suddenly become an unlikely (Harvard-educated, multimillionaire) Everyman: the freckled face of American job insecurity, a well-meaning hard worker who spent years paying his dues but has now been declared redundant by the halfwit overlords driving his company into the ground.”

Team Conan.

Jay AND Conan in the 11:30 Hour? What a Mess!

Them there internets are all abuzz over reports which suggest that Jay Leno will legitimately become the Brett Favre of late night TV if he agrees to reclaim his original 11:30 p.m. slot which he famously abandoned amid a week of farewell shows, a slot that NBC -- with great pomp and circumstance -- passed on to Conan O'Brien.

Why?

Leno's 10 p.m. show has not been pulling in the kind of ratings NBC had hoped it would. I only watched the first few episodes and never turned in again. (Though I did tune in when Kanye West gave his first public statement about his Taylor Swiftus-interruptus.) I found the show awkward and, frankly, unfunny. (Plus his set looked cheap.) I much preferred to watch Conan at 11:30, especially since I've jumped off the Letterman ship.

Is Leno going to go along with the unceremonious shoving of the ever-patient Conan out of the 11:30 slot, forcing the younger comic back to midnight? That's what the New York Times' Media Decoder is reporting:

"Pressed by affiliates and shrinking ratings, NBC has a plan in the works to radically alter its late-night television lineup, restoring Jay Leno to his old spot at 11:35 each weeknight, while pushing the man who replaced him, Conan O'Brien, to a starting time of 12:05 a.m.

NBC executives held extensive discussions with Mr. Leno and Mr. O'Brien on Thursday about the future of the network's late-night lineups.

And while NBC official said no final decision on the plan had been made, two senior NBC executives who had talked to the top management about the moves said that under the plan being discussed, Mr. Leno would definitely shift back to 11:35 but in a half-hour format, while Mr. O'Brien would slide back his start time by a half hour and then produce an hourlong show."

This entire Leno show debacle -- where five hours of primetime that used to be filled with costlier scripted dramas and comedies were sacrificed in exchange for a less expensive talk show format that NBC suits hoped would yield ratings for less money -- is a huge embarrassment for NBC, particularly after all the money and time they spent promoting the new lineup and all the press Leno got for his 10 o'clock chat show.

My questions: Why would Conan agree to such a demotion? Why would Leno take a giant step back? What does this mean for Jimmy Fallon, if anything? On the plus side, will this mean we'll be seeing more scripted TV?

Image credit: NBC via the New York Times.

'Lost' Supper? What Does These Promo Photos Mean?

Stumbled across a new Lost promotional image on Pop Candy this morning with the cast of Lost posed to resemble Jesus and his disciples in Da Vinci's famous painting, The Last Supper.

While I was trying to absorb the imagery (ruins of a Dharma building, gun under the table, a skull . . . maybe? Is that supposed to be a cross over Jack Shephard's left shoulder?), I saw the twin promo photo, where the castmates are all looking at the dead-not-dead "Locke," with a few of the people sitting in different places (Claire, Sun, Jin and Miles).

The New York Times' TV blogger Dave Itzkoff points out that in both images Sayid is standing where Judas stood (I would've thought Ben Linus would've been put in this position) and that Locke is smiling in the image when everyone's looking at him but not in the one where everyone's looking straight ahead.

What does this Locke-as-Jesus photo mean with the Losties sitting behind a table fashioned out of an airplane wing?

Image credit: ABC via Pop Candy and via the New York Times.

Feeling Stressed Out by the Prospect of Thanksgiving Dinner? Play Dysfunctional Family Bingo

If you're a person who's concerned about what odd/uncomfortable/upsetting/infuriating thing might occur during your Thanksgiving celebration with your family, then you might want to consider taking a peek at my 2009 Dysfunctional Family Bingo card which I've posted on my other blog. It's a Bingo card whose squares are filled with weird/irritating events that could plausibly occur during your family's celebration of gratitude. It's not a Bingo game that you actually want to win, though, unless you're into that sort of self-torture thing.

It's meant to be a humorous albeit snarky way to remember that nobody actually has perfect Bree Van de Kamp Hodge/Martha Stewart holiday dinners with family.

The New York Times obliquely referenced Dysfunctional Family Bingo -- a concept created by a Massachusetts psychologist in 2000 -- in its Science section today in an article entitled, "Food, Kin and Tension at Thanksgiving." Some of the anecdotes mentioned in the story could've made for good entries for my Dysfunctional Family Bingo card, including this one:

"[The director of a university-based eating disorders program] told the story of a patient whose mother scolded her for not eating her homemade cookies. 'You don't like my cookies?' she asked. As a result, the daughter relented and took a cookie. But when she then reached for a second, her mother scolded her again. 'Do you really think you need another one?' she asked her."

Gov't Task Force: Mammography for Fortysomethings Saves Lives, Just Not Enough to Justify the Cost$$ & Stress

It’s about money, these new recommendations unveiled yesterday by a federal task force which tell women between the ages of 40-49 that, unless they know that they have the breast cancer gene or have had extensive chest radiation, there’s no need for them to get mammograms.

You see, even though there’s data which says that women’s lives ARE SAVED by preventative screenings, such regular screenings of fortysomething women (particularly those with dense breast tissue) cause those women angst because they’re oftentimes told to come back for more screenings or require a biopsy when, most of the time, those women don’t have breast cancer. The angst caused by mammograms and those biopsies which don’t turn up cancer aren’t worth the risk of screening fortysomething women for cancer, the government task force says. That, and the fact that it’s all about the money.

The New York Times summarized the US Preventative Services Task Force's (USPSTF) new mammography guidelines (which, it's not hard to envision, being adopted by health insurance companies) saying:

“Over all, the [USPSTF] report says, the modest benefit of mammograms – reducing the breast cancer death rate by 15 percent – must be weighed against the harms. And those harms loom larger for women in their 40s, who are 60 percent more likely to experience them than women 50 and older but are less likely to have breast cancer, skewing the risk-benefit equation. The task force concluded that one cancer death is prevented for every 1,904 women age 40 to 49 who are screened for 10 years, compared with one death for every 1,339 women age 50 to 74, and one death for every 377 women age 60 to 60.”
 
Aw, what’s the big deal if you ONLY reduce the death rate of fortysomething women by 15 percent with regular mammograms? Why make all those other fortysomething women so very nervous with biopsies when they likely don’t have cancer. It’s too much bother. That, and it’s all about money. And if you’re a woman who's 75 or older, you don’t need the screening ‘cause the task force thinks you’re too old and you’re likely to die from something else so they don’t want to waste money screening you anymore.

Twice, during my own experience getting mammograms (two members of my family have had breast cancer), I experienced some angst when I had to come back for another mammogram or get an ultrasound to check out a suspicious area, but I was wildly relieved when I got the all clear. I’d rather live with the anxiety experienced while awaiting test results and for a negative biopsy to learn that I DON’T have breast cancer than roll the dice that I’ll never get it, at least when I’m in my 40s, because a government panel doesn’t think it’s likely that I have it.

The New York Times explained what the task force members saw as the downside of regular mammograms for women in the fortysomething age group:

“While many women do not think a screening test can be harmful, medical experts say the risks are real. A test can trigger unnecessary further test, like biopsies, that can create extreme anxiety. And mammograms can find cancers that grow so slowly that they never would be noticed in a woman’s lifetime, resulting in unnecessary treatment.”

I guess a fortysomething woman can avoid the horrid and "real" side effect of "extreme anxiety" from having to go back for a second mammogram or having a biopsy if she’s already dead because she was unlucky enough to develop breast cancer when she was in her 40s. She’d certainly save lots of money for the bottom line. (I think I’d have more anxiety if I were being audited by the IRS than I've had while sitting in the mammogram waiting room.)

Many doctors and breast cancer specialists quoted by news outlets today are livid.

Dr. Daniel B. Kopans from Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center told the Boston Globe that the task force’s recommendations “will condemn women ages 40-49 to unnecessary deaths from breast cancer.”

Dr. D. David Dershaw, a mammography specialist at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, likewise, put it bluntly to the Globe saying:

“How many cars do you have to put seat belts in to save a life? How many colons do you have to screen in order to save a life? How many people do you have to immunize for the flu in order to save a life? These numbers are totally within the acceptable range of what we routinely do as part of a civilized society.”

The American Cancer Society says on its web site that, after examining the same data used by the federal task force, that their organization continues to recommend regular mammography for women starting at age 40 because “lifesaving benefits of screening outweigh any potential harms.”

It continued:

“With its new recommendations, the USPSTF is essentially telling women that mammography at age 40 to 49 saves lives; just not enough of them. The task force says screening women in their 40s would reduce their risk of death from breast cancer by 15 percent, just as it does for women in their 50s. But because women in their 40s are at lower risk of the disease than women 50 and above, the USPSTF says the actual number of lives saved is not enough to recommend widespread screening.”

Most poignant have been the personal stories of women -- those with no family history of breast cancer -- who were diagnosed with breast cancer in their 40s who say they wouldn’t be here but for mammograms.

The Times quoted a now 54-year-old Manhattan woman who found out she had breast cancer when she was 48 after getting an annual mammogram: “You’re going to start losing of a lot women. I have two friends in their 40s who were just diagnosed with breast cancer. One of them just turned 41. If they had waited until she was 50 to do a routine mammogram, they wouldn’t have to bother on her part – she’d be dead.”

Bottom line: It’s about money. It should be about lives.

A prediction: These recommendations, issued by a panel established by the federal government to create standards for medical care, will help to kill, or seriously wound, the attempts to federalize the health care system, especially when that panel says that saving a fortysomething from breast cancer through routine screening is only considered a “modest” benefit and that her life isn’t worth the cost.

You See What Happens When I Give Someone the Benefit of the Doubt?

Clearly the Heene family has a screw (or several) loose. But when I last posted here on Friday, I wasn't 100 percent convinced that the parents had intentionally perpetrated a hoax on the American public, blatantly toying with our emotions in order to secure a reality show contract to become another Jon and Kate, as if they're not enough of a cautionary tale.

Perhaps the kids messed up, I thought, and the 10-year-old mistakenly thought he saw his brother on board that homemade helium balloon while 6-year-old Falcon Heene hid in fear because his dad had yelled at him. I thought it was possible. I wasn't ready to put the cuffs on 'em right away, though the whole thing looked mighty odd.

If there was one thing of which I WAS convinced, however, it was that Richard and Mayumi Heene were certainly guilty of bad parenting, as demonstrated by the Friday morning news interviews they continued to do while their youngest son -- aka faux "balloon boy" -- was literally puking. What kind of a parent keeps going while the kid is sick? The Wife Swap debacles, where the parents encouraged wretched behavior, as well as the rap video with the boys saying manner of awful garbage were solid evidence that the Heenes were poster children for bad parenting.

Then over the weekend, the local sheriff confirmed what many, including myself suspected even though, prior to this, we had no solid proof on which to pin their guilt:

"They put on a very good show for us, and we bought it," the sheriff said Sunday morning, according to the New York Times following a search of the family's home and computers, as well as new interviews with each Heene individually. And as a result, the Wife Swap lunatics may be charged with three felony counts including conspiracy to commit a crime, contributing to the deliquency of a minor and an attempt to influence a public servant, as well as the misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report, according to the New York Times. Children's protective services has also gotten involved in the case.

I further read this morning that Richard and Mayumi met in ACTING class and that they'd been shopping around a reality TV show and had thus far failed. Listening to the 9-1-1 tape, the Heenes seemed to be experiencing parental anguish, which makes me even more angry that I spent even a minute of my life feeling sorry for the heart ache I thought they experienced. But, according to police, it was all bogus. Planned in advance.

Apparently Falcon Heene was the only one telling the truth when he said on CNN that the reason he hid (where, it's still not clear) was because, as he said to his father, "You guys said that we did this for the show."

I think Saturday Night Live put this whole, God-awful mess into the right context:

Cake Wrecks: A Must-See Comedic Blog

While reading this morning's New York Times, I decided to look at the Dining section which is always an ironic thing for me to do since my three children have transformed the word "dining" into an ironic one, at least in our home. Their idea of "dining" consists of one of two things: Stuffing as much food into their mouths as quickly as they can and leaving the kitchen table in five minutes or less, OR making disgusted looking faces and telling me that my pathetic culinary offerings have sapped their collective will to live.

Nonetheless, I forged ahead and perused the Dining section. And I'm glad I did, otherwise I wouldn't have come across this article about a delightful web site called Cake Wrecks, which runs reader-submitted photos of professional cakes and confections which, shall we say, are amazingly horrific. There are misspellings galore. (I never knew the words "birthday" and "Daddy" had so many spelling variations.) Decorating directions are written onto the cakes in frosting instead of implemented, such as "Congratulation, As small As Possible" or a cake that says, "Nothing" when the instruction was to put no wording on the cake.

Examples of this, courtesy of the Cake Wrecks web site, include: The first photo above where the customer had requested a 3-D ocean cake, the second cake which contained directions regarding the top of the cake and the fruit garnish and the one below where the request was simply to have the word, "Welcome" on the cake.

If you're having a cruddy day, take the time to look through the blog's many pages and I guarantee you'll laugh out loud at least once. Me, I had to grab a box of tissues I was laughing so hard.

Image credits: Cake Wrecks.

'thirtysomething' DVD Release Garnering Lots O'Attention

Everybody's got thirtysomething fever. I tell ya . . .

The thirtysomething gang of seven reunited on the set of Good Morning America to talk about the impact of their insightful, moving drama on pop culture as the first season of the show has now been released on DVD this week.

NPR's Talk of the Nation featured five members of the cast in a lengthy interview. It's a really great chat which I recommend.



A writer likened the Melissa Steadman character to a pre-cursor to Carrie Bradshaw. Hmm. . .

The Los Angeles Times mused on the Baby Boomer juggernaut.

The Washington Post, in reviewing the DVD set, said the show "still works remarkably well as a piece of relatable, well-acted and adult television, a program that -- contrary to popular opinion -- was more than just a whinefest."

The New York Times had a long Q&A with thirtysomething crew members, saying the show "perfectly captured the intimate details of the baby boomer lifestyle in ways no network series had previously, and sparked intense debate about its merits."

Entertainment Weekly gave the DVD set an A.

The Associated Press interviewed several of the stars (see below):

'Mad Men' Reviews, 'Morning Joe' Cast as 'Mad Men,' Plus Hamm's Early Acting Gigs

Mad Men season three premiere reviews are starting to roll in -- for those lucky folks who got advanced media screeners -- and the reviews appear to be really good, as good as I expected they'd be. Which only means my expectations for Sunday night's episode are now, oh, I don't know . . . sky high?

From the New York Times, Alessandra Stanley: "Even more than in the first two years, this new season, which begins on Sunday on AMC, stresses the less amusing side of that innocence, leading viewers to look back, aghast at, and enthralled by, a world so familiar and so primitive. Characters on Mad Men struggle in shame and secrecy with the very things that today are openly, incessantly boasted and blogged about: humble roots, broken homes, homosexuality, unwed motherhood, caring for senile parents."

Boston Globe, Matthew Gilbert: "Sunday's hour is, like many episodes of Mad Men, quiet on the surface. There are pauses in conversation, and almost no soundtrack music fills the silences and emotional vacancies. And yet the subject matter of this show shouts at you the more you think about it, the more the characters don't say what you know they are feeling. In even the smallest details -- watch how a stick pin travels through the episode -- Mad Men remains TV at its most artful. Like Don Draper, it's beautiful, stealthy, trouble, and, above all, addictive."

Entertainment Weekly, Ken Tucker (who gave the episode an A-): "The third-season premiere of Mad Men is chock-full of revelations about familiar characters and fresh details about newly introduced ones, as well as the sort of specifics and symbolism that creator Matthew Weiner layers into every episode like a top Top Chef. As with so much about Mad Men, some of it is overheated but never half-baked, and the opening hour rises like a nearly flawless souffle of sex and salesmanship." (I'm in love with that phrase, "flawless souffle of sex and salesmanship." Wish I'd come up with it.)

Los Angeles Times, Robert Lloyd: "That nothing much seems to be happening -- and happening slowly at that, to the frustration of some viewers -- means that small moments play large; it's television as Japanese tea ceremony. Characters are built gradually through action, not declaration, and that action might stray far from what is eventually revealed as the main point. There are those who find this all precious beyond belief -- with an average of only 1.8 million viewers an episode last season, this is a series that would not survive at all on broadcast television -- but I find it quite beautiful more often than not."

Meanwhile, people are having a bit of fun with all of this Mad Men mania leading up to the season three premiere, in particular, the folks at Mediaite who took the crew from MSNBC's Morning Joe and assigned them roles on Mad Men, casting the show's namesake, Joe Scarborough as Don Draper, Mika Brzezinski as Joan Holloway and Willie Geist as the slimy Pete Campbell. Of Scarborough, writers Rachel Sklar and Glynnis MacNicol observed:

"Scarborough, a former Congressman, is certainly no stranger to selling, nor does he lack for Draper-esque confidence. We've noticed he's traded in his zipper sweatshirts for dark suits of late, but that's not all it is -- of any character on Morning Joe, he's the one we can most easily see sitting in a darkened bar with a glass of something amber at his side. Besides, couldn't his book [The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise] on the GOP just as easily have been called Meditations on an Emergency?"

Over on BuzzFeed, they must've taken a little visit to IMDB to look up Jon Hamm's acting roles and listed his top six acting gigs, including the time he was Lorelai Gilmore's most boring date ever on the Gilmore Girls and when he was a firefighter on Providence before the days of Denis Leary as an alcoholic firefighter with a death wish.

Image credit: Frank Ockenfels/AMC.

Livin' the 'Mad Men' Life

From retailers to food and fashion web sites, many people are seeking to capitalize on the retro/cool vibe exuded by the 1960s suave drama Mad Men. Whether it's clothing, housewares or classic drinks, all things Mad Men are considered in.

Want to have that cocktail culture in your own home? Many food-related web sites have created slates of classic cocktail recipes designed for Mad Men-themed soirees, which means Old Fashioneds, Tom Collins and vodka gimlets to name a few. AMC even has its own helpful page of Mad Men-esque drinks, capitalizing on the renaissance for classic cocktails. (Today's New York Times, showcased the tremendous effort the show's crew puts into making sure that the cocktails shown on the program are appropriate for the period.)

Then there's the "Mad Men look," the one that has fashion designers watching Mad Men episodes repeatedly to examine the clothing and styles. While Banana Republic has teamed up with AMC, other web sites offer mere mortals advice on how to dress like Don Draper and style your hair like him. For the ladies, tips abound on how to doll yourself up like Betty Draper or the seductive Joan Holloway (complete with links to similarly styled duds, or as close as they could come to that without buying vintage, and make-up suggestions).

Want your house to look like the Drapers'? Your office to resemble Sterling Cooper? Over on the House Beautiful web site, the editors have found a number of things which you can put into your home to make you feel as though you stepped onto the AMC's Mad Men lot, except Jon Hamm won't be walking through the door anytime soon. In one article, the editors suggest everything from a headboard styled very much like the Drapers' (see photo above), a club chair and an electric typewriter that looks like it belongs in Sterling Cooper's offices, to a starburst mirror that seems like it'd fit in at Pete Campbell's apartment, along with basic, rounded cocktail glasses. HB also has articles and photos about how to decorate in 60s style and an online poll on which style room Betty Draper should choose for her suburban home. (My pick would be the kitchen.)

Image credit: House Beautiful.

'Mad Men' Madness: The 60s, The Women & Don Draper

*Warning: MINOR season three spoiler ahead.*

It's Mad Men week here at Suburban Mom, leading up to the season three premiere on Sunday night. Set your DVRs for 10 p.m., August 16 (9 Central), even though I know that true fans will go old school and watch it live.

My new pop culture column this week is all about the award-winning AMC drama. It examines the show's first two seasons and concludes that while Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is clearly the star -- the central figure from which everything and everyone else is an offshoot -- the collection of Mad Men women represent "the moon, providing the show its gravitational pull."

Meanwhile, the New York Times had a piece about Mad Men which finally provided an answer to one key question about season three: What year will it be? The answer, according to the Times, is 1963, the year of the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, the Bull Connor-led attacks on peaceful civil rights protesters, Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," and, THE event, the John F. Kennedy assassination.

I'm hoping that in the third season, the women's stories continue evolving the way they have, messily, realistically and, in some cases, providing an aspirational empowering message. (I speak, of course, of Peggy Olson, advancing quickly in the masculine world of advertising). Plus I can't wait to see Don interact with a baby. Does Don Draper do diapers?

What are you most looking forward to in a new season?

Image credit: Frank Ockenfels/AMC.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Weeds, Jon & Kate, Mrs. Washington, New York Times Mag on Julia Child

This past week has been sheer madness at my house. We celebrated my youngest son's birthday and then took a seven-plus round-trip car ride to New York to adopt a 3-month-old puppy who has yet to sleep through the night yet in his crate without howling all night long . . . kind of like my youngest son did. Until he was three.

Here's what I've been able to fit into my pop culture consumption in the past week+, that is when I'm not taking the puppy outside in an attempt to housetrain him and keep the six-pound ball of fluff from being dinner to larger animals in the neighborhood.

TV/DVDs:

-- In order to prepare for writing a column about Showtime's Weeds, I ODed on it, watching several seasons via Netflix and On Demand. After watching the evolution of Mary-Louise Parker's character Nancy Botwin, while I remain entertained and intrigued by the current season of the mom-pot dealer comedy, I liked Nancy's character a whole lot more in first season, before she got seriously dragged down into the muck and immorality of the drug trade.

-- Jon & Kate Plus 8 returned with two new episodes this week, only with a lot less of Jon and more of Kate-as-a-single mom. As I sympathize with Kate more each day as I read more about the heel that is her soon-to-be-ex-"Hey I'm still young!" spouse, Kate sure doesn't make it easy with her queen-like, dismissive attitude displayed in the show's first new installment since they announced that they were filing for divorce. In one scene where Jon and Kate were consulting with kitchen designers about renovating their kitchen (a room which I think looked awesome and didn't need massive changes, but what do I know?) she was wretched when she gestured toward a vase of flowers and dismissively told Jon, "Can you get rid of those? They're really distracting and ugly." Then, in a strategic feat of editing, the show's producers soon went to a cut where Kate -- who now sits in a white chair, not a love seat, for her one-on-one interview, Jon does his separately from a leather chair -- said, "I'm not as ridiculous as I used to be."

I also really did not like how the show's editors mocked Kate's attempts to camp outside in her backyard with the kids in two tents by getting her children to make fun of their mother and say she didn't know what she was doing in putting up the tent. It was disturbing to watch to say the least.

-- In a moment of weakness, I DVRed and watched the Hallmark Channel's original film, Mrs. Washington Goes to Smith, about a woman who quit college during her junior year in order to get married, worked to put her husband through dental school, raised their children to adulthood and was unceremoniously dumped by her husband for another, younger woman. In a life-altering decision, the character, Alice Washington, decided to go back to school and live in the dorms in order to complete her final year of college. She hoped to then become a high school English teacher.

Why would I watch a completely predictable but satisfying TV film -- akin to gorging on a salty bag of chips -- which had at least one totally fantasyland situation (there's no way a fifysomething woman would make the Smith College hoop team, at least that fiftysomething)? I watched it becuase it starred Cybill Shepherd, whom I've always liked -- especially for her sitcom Cybill -- and was surprised to find that her love interest/college English professor, was played by Jeffrey Nordling, who was in Once and Again and, more recently, 24. Sure, it was a chickflick in its purest form, but it was one with an upbeat, positive message, "This is the next big step in the rest of my life," Shepherd's character, Alice Washington said. The Hallmark Channel is re-airing the film numerous times.

-- I'm up-to-date on Entourage and have found myself getting increasingly irritated with the man-boy that is Vince.


-- In preparation for a Mad Men-themed column, I'm immersing myself in the Mad Men Season 2 on DVD, especially the special features.

Magazines/News:

-- This past weekend's New York Times Magazine was so chock full of articles that I haven't even finished reading it all yet. Among the pieces was a solid one on the dearth of female superheroes for little girls to embrace and a thought-provoking one about the contradiction between the fact that while the Food Network seems to be doing well and people are much more sophisticated about food in general, we're making fewer and fewer meals on our own, instead preferring to outsource meal prep to the grocery stores and restaurants. Julia Child's revolutionary 1960s PBS cooking show was featured prominently in the piece, given that the film Julie & Julia comes out this week. (I'm hoping to see that movie soon and write a column on.)

The lengthy Michael Pollan food article was a fascinating read. Here's a sample:

"It’s no accident that Julia Child appeared on public television — or educational television, as it used to be called. On a commercial network, a program that actually inspired viewers to get off the couch and spend an hour cooking a meal would be a commercial disaster, for it would mean they were turning off the television to do something else. The ads on the Food Network, at least in prime time, strongly suggest its viewers do no such thing: the food-related ads hardly ever hawk kitchen appliances or ingredients (unless you count A.1. steak sauce) but rather push the usual supermarket cart of edible foodlike substances, including Manwich sloppy joe in a can, Special K protein shakes and Ore-Ida frozen French fries, along with fast-casual eateries like Olive Garden and Red Lobster. "

-- Last week's issue of New York Magazine arrived at my house just yesterday -- thank you snail mail -- and I got the chance to enjoy Emily Nussbaum's ode to the chameleon-like Madonna who's now entering another phase of her life and of her public persona. While Nussbaum's favorite phase was the "Ideal Brunette Madonna . . . saving Black Jesus in that incredible slip," (mine was the "Express Yourself" Madonna), she wrote:

"Maybe it’s because I’m getting older along with her, but watching Madonna strut past 50—hips grinding in high heels, posing legs spread—brings out anxious, contradictory emotions. It’s become taboo to criticize stars for plastic surgery—both because it is their choice and because they have no choice—but each time I glimpse that grinning mask, I wonder why it’s impossible for Madonna, with all her power, her will to shock, to ever stop 'giving good face'? I try to persuade myself to admire her most New York qualities (ambition, workaholism); I tell myself she’s a dancer, and this is what dancers do. But I feel exhausted just witnessing the effort it must take to maintain this vision of eternal youth. This didactically selfless Madonna is less inspiring than the selfish one in so many ways."

The latest New York arrived today and I can't wait to dive into the Mad Men pieces, including an interview with Christina Hendricks, a defense of Pete "The Snake" Campbell and an abridged guide to the first two seasons. Not that I'm obsessed with Mad Men or anything.

What are your pop culture fixes of the week?

Image credit: Alexx Henry/Hallmark Channel via the New York Times.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Palin's Meta-Working Mom Tale & Women on the Supreme Court

Palin's Meta-Working Mom Tale

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's shocking resignation continues to generate comment, analysis and interest. An image of Palin signing a toddler's dress takes up a third+ of the top half of the front page of the New York Times, 10 days after her ambiguous July 4 Eve press conference. The Times story paints a woman who's feeling so besieged and stressed out that her hair has thinned and her friends worry that she's become underweight.

I joined the fray of analysts and deconstructed Palin's resignation in my Pop Culture column this week by saying that what you think about her and her decision to quit mid-way through her term, depends largely upon your political perspective and your life's experiences. For me, I view her story through a working mom prism.

Women on the Supreme Court

The only female jurist currently sitting on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsberg gave a fascinating interview to the New York Times Sunday Magazine in which she talked at length about her experience on the Court and how being female has affected her experience. Among the questions she fielded was about how having only one or two women on the Supreme Court affects deliberation.

When asked why it matters to have women on the Court, Ginsberg invoked the Sotomayor confirmation hearings saying, "It matters for women to be there at the conference table to be doing everything that the court does. I hope that these hearings for Sonia [Sotomayor] will be as civil as mine were and [Justice] Steve Breyer's were. Ours were unusual in that respect."

The exchange below I found particularly intriguing:

New York Times: Did you think that all the attention to the criticism of Sotomayor as being "bullying" or not as smart is sex-inflected? Does that have to do with the rarity of a woman in her position, and the particular challenges?

Ginsberg: I can't say that it was just that she was a woman. There are some people in Congress who would criticize severely anyone President Obama nominated. They'll seize on any handle. One is that she's a woman, another is that she made the remark about Latina women. [In 2001 Sotomayor said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."] And I thought it was ridiculous for them to make a big deal out of that. Think of how many times you've said something that you didn't get out quite right, and you would edit your statement if you could. I'm sure she meant no more than what I mean when I say: Yes, women bring a different life experience to the table. All our differences make the conference better. That I'm a woman, that's part of it, that I'm Jewish, that's part of it, that I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and I went to summer camp in the Adirondacks, all these things are part of me.

Once Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor was questioning counsel at oral argument. I thought she was done, so I asked a question, and Sandra said: Just a minute, I'm not finished. So I apologized to her and she said: It's okay, Ruth. The guys do it to each other all the time, they step on each other's questions. And then there appeared an item in USA Today, and the headline was something like "Rude Ruth Interrupts Sandra."

Ginsberg is likely to be joined soon by Sotomayor, who's going through the Senate confirmation process where she'll be asked to defend/explain some of her more controversial statements, particularly the Latina woman quip. One thing's for sure, the Court needs women. I cannot imagine what men would say or feel if the highest court in the land didn't have anyone representing the male half of the citizenry.

Image credit: Ruven Afanador/NYT.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: All Media Smackdown Edition, NYT/Daily Show, Stewart/Scarborough, Letterman/Palin

NYT Gets Slammed on Daily Show

Did the New York Times staffers who agreed to participate in a recent Daily Show segment about the future of the dying newspaper industry realize that the Daily Show is all about SATIRE? Did they not expect wacky questions? Sharp hey-dude-you're-so-toast darts to be thrown their way?

It doesn't appear as though those thoughts crossed their minds when they decided to partake in the piece. Judge for yourself by watching the segment below, a scathing portrait of out-of-touch editors, though Executive Editor Bill Keller's comment about how the Huffington Post can't and doesn't have bureaus in far-flung and dangerous locales because it doesn't have the money to do so was interesting, but only to a limited degree because you know what, the NYT shouldn't be bragging about having more money than anyone else right now, particularly when they're threatening to shutter the Boston Globe (which already eliminated a lot of its foreign bureaus because of costs) because of red ink. That last joke, about what's black and white and red all over: Killer. (Link to the video here):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
End Times
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Stewart and Scarborough Go Mano-a-Mano . . . Through Their TV Shows

I've been monitoring this (manufactured?) controversy between the Daily Show's Jon Stewart and Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough. (For the record, I'm a fan of both guys and their shows.) In a nutshell, Morning Joe recently decided to team up with Starbucks as a sponsor, seeing as though the anchors, Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are conspicuous consumers of Starbucks products during their news casts. This made them big, fat, irresistible targets for spoofing. Cue: Stewart. This resulted in the anchors going back and forth was various and sundry sniping.

Yesterday, in discussing Stewart, Scarborough called him an angry man and suggested he had a Napoleon complex. Stewart responded last night by calling Scarborough "watered down and stupid" and then did a skit which I'd venture to say was funnier in the writers' room than in its execution. Stewart brought out all manner of faux-branded coffee products -- like a box of "Taster's Choice" tissues -- had mascara running down his face while he pretended to cry, fled the stage, asking for his Napoleon hat and coat as he climbed on top of a small horse. When he was "talked back" into returning to the stage, he did so shouting, "Rage on! Rage on!" (Link to the video here.)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jon's Napoleonic Complex
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Did Letterman Go Too Far?

That's the question du jour regarding Letterman's jokes about Sarah Palin's recent appearance at a New York Yankees game, where she brought her 14-year-old daughter along with her. Letterman made jokes about a Palin daughter, including about A-Rod knocking up a Palin daughter during the game, and about keeping a Palin daughter away from disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Why do I keep saying, "a Palin daughter?" Because the 14-year-old daughter was the one in New York at the game with her mom but, apparently, Letterman thought it was the 18-year-old daughter who recently had a baby, the one who was on the cover of People Magazine with her infant. Last night, Letterman explicitly said that he wasn't talking about the 14-year-old. He said he was talking about the 18-year-old. But that's not exactly how it came across when he told the jokes.

Palin got ticked. Told him off indirectly by spouting off to journalists and issuing a statement, which resulted in Letterman issuing a caustic clarification last night which, I guess in a comedian's world, constitutes an apology of some sort. During Morning Joe this morning and later on The View, the question was raised by Brzezinski and by Elisabeth Hasselbeck as to whether Letterman would've gone after Palin's teenaged kids if she were a Democrat instead of a very conservative Republican. Barbara Walters added during The View's discussion that politicians' children should be off the table as far as lampooning goes, unlike panelist Joy Behar who said that because the Palins "traipsed" her pregnant daughter out in public, the family deserves what it gets. (See The View debate here.)



UPDATE: While listening to various folks discuss the Letterman/Palin situation this afternoon, I heard a local radio commentator make an interesting analogy: Invoking the suspension of MSNBC's David Shuster in 2008 after he suggested that twentysomething Chelsea Clinton was being "pimped out" by her mother as she went out on the campaign trail talking up Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy, the commentator asked why Shuster was suspended for making a comment about an adult and used the words "I apologize," while some folks are brushing off Letterman's comments about a 14-year-old daughter of a Republican vice presidential nominee.

Re-Watching/Re-Reading Movies, TV Shows, Books: Just My Style

It was with tremendous pleasure that I read a recent column in the New York Times extolling the virtues of re-reading books. Columnist Verlyn Klinkenborg, who said he's fond of re-reading some of his favorite books rather than instinctively moving on to new material, wrote:

"Part of the fun of re-reading is that you are no longer bothered by the business of finding out what happens. Re-reading Middlemarch, for instance, or even The Great Gatsby, I'm able to pay attention to what's really happening in the language itself -- a pleasure surely as great as discovering who marries whom, and who dies and who does not.

The real secret of re-reading is simply this: It is impossible. The characters remain the same, and the words never change, but the reader always does."

This was a wonderfully simple, yet insightful observation. We readers change all the time, influenced by our life's experiences. The books don't. I re-read The Scarlet Letter last year in preparation for a column and found Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic to be nothing at all like I remembered from my earlier readings of it while in high school and college. From my new perch -- as a married mother of three -- it almost seemed like it was a new book altogether. The story held more meaning for me than it did for me when I was 15, or 20. Ditto for Gatsby, which I recently read again. As with Letter, it seemed like a fresh literary experience because I have a more experienced point of view than when I first met F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby.

As for Klinkenborg's comment that when you're re-reading something you're no longer distracted by finding out key plot points, the same reasoning applies to re-watching movies or TV shows, particularly complex programs with layers of allusions like Lost, Alias and Mad Men.

Take the densely written drama Lost. When I watch a new episode for the first time, I focus almost exclusively on the plot, how the storylines fit into the meta-story of the show and whether they jive with past episodes and character backstories. Once the major twists and turns have been dispensed with, I can dive back into the episode during a later viewing and comb for hints, layers and connections while reveling in the subtleties I missed when I was busy obsessing about the storylines.

On this practice, I differ with The Spouse, who believes that once he's seen something he moves on. Been there. Done that.

Over the weekend, the movie American Beauty was on cable TV. I first saw it in the theater in 1999 with a friend. When it came to VHS (when everyone was still watching tapes), I got a copy and watched it with The Spouse who thought it was just "okay." In the years since, whenever I've suggested that we re-watch the movie, The Spouse has declined. However when we watched the last quarter of it this past weekend together, we noticed new things mostly due to our different perspectives, particularly because we're both in our 40s and the lead character, Lester Burnham is 42. (The experience didn't convince The Spouse to re-thinking his stance against re-watching TV shows and films.)

As far as the books I've read in the recent past which have thoroughly entertained me (such as The Time Traveler's Wife and the Harry Potter series I read last summer), I know that if I allow myself the luxury of re-reading them -- having already satiated my greediness to know what happens -- I will be able to, as Klinkenborg said, "pay attention to what's really happening in the language itself."

Are you a re-watcher/re-reader? If you're a fan of a complex show like Lost, how many times do you re-watch something? Is once enough?