Notes on Pop Culture: Whitney, Adele, Valentine's, Show Dogs & 'Awake' Peek

Whitney, Whitney, Whitney

This is starting to feel too freakishly familiar, introducing my kids to the soundtrack of my youth by binging on a musician's music and good, old fashioned music videos soon after the musician dies an untimely death.

As I tried to explain to my three kids, via music videos on YouTube, who Whitney Houston was and how I fondly remember her 1980s tunes from my high school years, it felt very deja vu-ish. I'd done the same thing after Michael Jackson died, showing the kids the "Thriller" and "Billie Jean" videos while downloading a bunch of his songs that I hadn't listened to in quite some time.

This weekend, it was the ebullient "I Wanna Dance with Somebody," the soothing "Exhale" and the breath-taking "I Will Always Love You" (which, despite the fact that it was grossly overplayed in the 90s, rarely failed to move me). It was watching The Bodyguard on TV. It was adding some Whitney tunes to my music library. It was also another reminder of what an incredible waste of a wealth of talent this tragedy represents both in her substance abuse, which torpedoed her career, and in her death at age 48.

Adele - Rolling In The Deep - Grammy's 2012 by IdolxMuzic

Adele Sweep

Speaking of a wealth of talent . . . my daughter and I are big fans of Adele, her music, her screw-you attitude toward morons who want to talk about her weight, her fearlessness in wringing her heart dry for her art. We were eminently pleased to see her not only clean up at the Grammy Awards, but belt out "Rolling in the Deep" so powerfully after her recovery from throat surgery.

Now Adele, there's a celeb who's worthy of my daughter's admiration.

The Vow Didn't Wow Me

Over the weekend, some of my gal pals and I decided to indulge ourselves. We loaded up on Twizzlers, popcorn and vats of soda before sitting down to enjoy the confection that is The Vow, starring Rachel McAdams, whom I find thoroughly charming. We wanted to spend some time together watching a romantic weepy that didn't tax the brain too much. We even brought tissues in case we started bawling, like I did both times I saw The Time Traveler's Wife, which also starred McAdams.

Alas, no tissues were required during our screening (which stinks if you've geared yourself up to be emotionally moved -- manipulated, really -- by a film or TV show). Sadly, I found The Vow only mildly interesting, despite the fact that it's loosely based on a true story, and found myself pining for it to grab me by the shirt, shake me and make me care about it.

Still craving some romantic fare by Valentine's evening, after a nice dinner and exchanging gifts with my husband, I was scanning the TV channels trying to find something, anything, resembling either a romantic comedy or a straight-out romance because, well, it was Valentine's Day after all. Finding nothing -- seriously, nothing! -- in the way of that kind of flick playing on television, I instead settled on, of all things, the Westminster Dog Show, which greatly amused me as I sat with my rescue dog Max and told him those pooches had nothin' on him.

Awake Preview Has My Attention

NBC has released the first seven minutes of its new drama Awake, slated to premiere on March 1. Just based on its premise and these few minutes, this show may -- I reiterate, MAY -- be the calamine lotion for the itch left behind by the absence of Lost: The show features police detective Michael Britten who got into a serious car accident with his wife and teenage son. On those points, there is no confusion. There was an accident. The three were in the car.

But here's the catch: Britten is "living" two, parallel lives, one in which his wife died in the crash and one in which his son died. In both lives, he's seeing a therapist and is still a cop who's solving crimes. Both of the lives feel real to him and he can't tell which one is his real life and which one is a dream.

If done intelligently, this show could prove fascinating. If done in a ham-fisted way -- or offers the ultimate answer, "They're all dead" (a la Lost) -- I'll be mighty ticked.

A Week of Pop Culture: Riveted by 'Hunger Games,' Revisiting 'Six Feet Under' and Romantic Comedies

Books

Hunger Games: Just got back from a week’s beach vacation with the family and, pop culture-wise, I spent most of my time, when not on the beach, gobbling up the first two books in the Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series (Hunger Games, Catching Fire). I would’ve continued on to read the finale, Mockingjay, only I didn’t bring that book with me. So once I finished Catching Fire, I moved on to Jennifer Weiner’s Then Came You about a surrogate pregnancy, which I read for a column I’m planning to write. (I’ll link to the column here later once it’s written.)

I was surprised by how much I was riveted by the Hunger Games, despite its sick and twisted premise: As retribution for rebelling against an evil, brutal, dictatorial centralized government, the demoralized residents who live in one of 12 “districts” in the “ruins of North America” now called Panem, are forced to give up a boy and a girl between the ages of 12-18 to participate in a fight-to-the-death games which are viciously manipulated by the dictators for the excitement of those watching as it unfolds on television.

Its political undercurrent – of a repressive government using the very symbol of the promise of the future, children, and forcing them to kill one another or be killed – along with the stark contrast of the opulence and fatted calfness of those living in the Capitol while those in the districts starve and are forced to live like prisoners inside their districts by electrified fences where their lives are controlled by the Capitol, was creepy and compelling at the same time.

As I eagerly move onto the third book – which my happy-ending obsessed daughter said she didn’t really like, while my darker elder son liked it – I’m intrigued by the political upheaval and the resistance in the world of Panem, given the real life protests popping up all over the Middle East and now in Europe. Not that I envision a fight-to-the-death reality show along the lines of Survivor or a twisted version of Lost any time soon, but still . . .

TV

Six Feet Under: In preparation for CliqueClack TV’s upcoming Six Feet Under week – to which I’ll be contributing two pieces – I’ve been revisiting the Fishers and their pitch black dramatic series that compelled viewers think about their lives, about the meaning of them and those people with whom they share it.

While watching these episodes, I remember anew why I was so drawn to it in the first place. It was thoughtful, edgy, risk-taking and challenged viewers’ sense of right and wrong. Plus Lauren Ambrose’s Claire Fisher and Peter Krause’s Nate Fisher were two of the best, full-fledged, well rounded and screwed up characters on TV.

Magazines

Entertainment Weekly: Once I got home and poured through the stack of mail that piled up during our week away, I found two copies of Entertainment Weekly waiting for me, including a large article on The Help and a cool piece on the keys to making a truly resonant, honest romantic comedy that doesn’t insult the viewers’ intelligence, holding recent release Crazy Stupid Love as the new When Harry Met Sally.

Some of the reasons why EW writers Sara Vilkomerson and Anthony Breznican said most rom-coms turn out to be snoozers: 1. “Chemistry can’t be faked.” 2. “Men don’t want to star in romantic comedies – or go see them.” And 3. “Hollywood romances often struggle overseas, so studios can be skittish about investing in them.”

Image credits: Amazon.com, HBO, Entertainment Weekly.

Study: Romantic Movies Harm Your Love Life

All of those who think that your love life will and should play out like a 1990s Meg Ryan flick raise your hands. If you've got a hand aloft, I've got a really great investment for you, a simply fabbbbulous opportunity where you just hand over your extra cash to a nice man named Bernie Madoff . . .

But seriously folks . . . there's a new study from an Edinburgh university -- Heriot Watt University -- which asserts that romantic comedies offer unrealistic portrayals of intimate relationships and that fans of the genre misapply those views to their own relationships, according to the BBC.

One of the authors of the study told the BBC:

"Marriage counselors often see couples who believe that sex should always be perfect, and if someone is meant to be with you then they will know what you want without you needing to communicate it . . . We now have some emerging evidence that suggests popular media play a role in perpetuating these ideas in people's minds . . . The problem is that while most of us know that the idea of a perfect relationship is unrealistic, some of us are still more influenced by media portrayals than we realize."

The movies reviewed for the study -- for the full list, click here -- included: You've Got Mail, My Best Friend's Wedding, America's Sweethearts, While You Were Sleeping, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days and Two Weeks Notice.

So, as a public service to my readers, I'll take it upon myself to hereby declare that your romantic life will not be perpetually filled with happy endings (take that in whatever way you wish), romantic gestures, destiny-filled moments and kooky side-kick gal pals who are at your beck and call to over-analyze everything your loved one said and did. You are NOT Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts (circa the 1990s, that's important to note), nor are you Sandra Bullock, Kate Hudson or Hugh Grant, titans of romantic comedies over the past decade.

When I told The Spouse about the study, he likened it to the fanciful delusions men might develop after visiting strip clubs or leafing through a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue (where the women are airbrushed within an inch of their lives). The women at whom the men are leering, he suggested, provide men with irrational expectations as to what a woman should look like and, by the argument advanced in the study, could damage the men's love life. Touche Spouse!

Image credit: DVD town.