Following a TV Show Via Promos for Next Week’s Episode

I have never seen an episode of the original ABC Family drama Switched at Birth—not even one minute of it—but because I watch reruns of Gilmore Girls on the channel almost every day, I see melodramatic commercials for the program all the time. And I have just got to say, “What the fuck is going on there?”

When the season began, it looked like Constance Marie was marrying someone she didn’t love—to get him a green card perhaps? Weeks later, I noticed that one of the girls, the one who is deaf (I don’t know her name), has developed a crush on a much older man who may or may not be her boss. Am I even close? All of this prompted me to wonder, What is this show even about? But the best part has emerged over the last couple of weeks: it appears as if the other teenage protagonist (you know, Luke’s daughter from Gilmore Girls) has made a less-than-savory friend who has routinely gotten her into potentially dangerous scenarios. Looks like next week’s episode is going to be tense!

I am not pointing out all of this because I want to make fun of the show. In fact, one of these days I will start from the beginning by streaming it on Netflix; I think its premise at least is compelling. For two babies were, uh, switched at birth, and when they meet their birth parents and become a part of each other’s lives many years later, race, class, and ability are cast in sharp relief. I’m only writing about Switched at Birth (what a horrible title, can I just tell you?) because I feel as though I sort of do watch it. Sure, I don’t know any of the characters’ names, and I really have no clue as to what happens in each and every episode, but by paying 50% attention to the ads touting what’s coming up next week, I have soaked up major plot points. I can put an over-arching narrative together week-to-week, at least for this season. That is more than I can say for the similarly heavily promoted Pretty Little Liars. That one, I totally disregard. It looks like another program on the basic cable channel with a similar title (I can’t remember what it is), and all of the actresses on Liars appear so physically alike that I can’t tell them apart. Worse, I have no desire to attempt to distinguish them.

Anyway, Switched at Birth seems pretty crazy to this “viewer from a distance.” (What can we call someone who doesn’t watch a show but has a loose understanding of its plot, and is it possible to have an impression of a show viewed this way wherein the program doesn’t come across as strange?) If the newly canceled Secret Life of the American Teenager is ABC Family’s answer to Seventh Heaven (which I am only vaguely familiar with because a roommate in college watched it), then Switched at Birth might be their Beverly Hills 90210 from the look of things. That one, too, began as a prime-time soap for young audiences, who were eager to see what teenagers were really like, and then it unraveled as it came up with more and more ridiculous plot points. So, I just have to know: Which girl is Brenda Walsh, making the other one, her friend-from-her-own-mother, Kelly Taylor? Or am I totally wrong, and they’re either Donna Martin or Andrea Zuckerman?

Brainstorming in the Shower

While in the shower this evening, I tried to brainstorm topics for today’s post. Although everything I conjured up interests me in some way, I determined that none of them are really worthy of their own report. That’s just an excuse for my laziness, probably. I don’t have the energy to thoroughly engage any of the following subjects right now. After all, I have to get up at 5.30 tomorrow morning, and I have the first Presidential Debate to watch in a few minutes.

1.) I thought about writing on the documentary Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, which premiered on PBS’s Independent Lens on Monday and Tuesday of this week. I DVR’d the second half because I was unable to see it as it aired last night. Since I have yet to watch these last two hours, I hesitate to comment on it. Suffice it to say that I found Half the Sky deeply moving even if I sometimes questioned the filmmakers’ editorial choices. You can watch the full episodes, 1 and 2, online through October 8 & 9, respectively.

2.) It also occurred to me to write something about how I’m afraid that the very talented Lena Dunham, writer-director-star of the controversial HBO series Girls (c’mon, you know what I’m talking about), is becoming the “voice” of my generation, an idea she satirizes on her show. First, there are reports that she is shopping around a memoir/advice book to the tune of $1 million. Is it a tie-in with her character Hannah Horvath’s aspiration to be a memoirist/very important essay writer/arbiter of taste (meaning: an instance of life imitating art imitating life)? I’m being cynical, I know, especially since I generally agree with her sentiment that, “There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman.” But does this justification for the book mean she’s transforming into a female James Franco? Is she spreading herself too thin? Then I read today that she spoke at Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women Summit on Tuesday. Vulture determined that the main takeaway from her talk was her regret that women viewers of color lamented the lack of racial diversity on the show, a problem she has sought to rectify in the program’s sophomore season. But say what?! Why is she speaking at this event? Who else spoke at the convention? And who exactly were the people in her audience?

3.) I might have mentioned that I noticed three generations of an acting family, all from the distaff side, appeared last night on two Fox TV comedies. First, Melanie Griffith guest-starred on Raising Hope, a cute sitcom with a wacky premise, as the mother of one of the main characters. Griffith’s own mother, Tippi The Birds Hedren, made a surprise cameo, too, playing her real-life daughter’s mother. And though I didn’t watch it, Ben and Kate, which aired immediately after Raising Hope, features Griffith’s daughter, Dakota Johnson, as the titular Kate. (You can see why this observation isn’t interesting enough to warrant its own post.)

I thought of other things while I was in the shower, but I have predictably forgotten them. Oh, if only I could use a pen and paper to jot my ideas down while standing under a faucet gushing gallons of water.

Must-DVR Thursdays: My Primetime Obstacle Course

Thursday is routinely the busiest night on TV for me. Like many people, though, I activate a DVR in order to record everything that I want to see, because I hardly ever want to watch something as it airs in real time. I mean, if you could, wouldn’t you also DVR a program so as to avoid commercials? Unfortunately, I sometimes must pay attention to a show I am recording. My cable service only allows me to “tape” two programs simultaneously, and in order for it to work, I have to keep one of the channels on. In any case, let me get right to the intense juggling act I have to perfect tonight:

8 pm : Last Resort on ABC

This kind of show—militaristic, patriotic, reminiscent of Crimson Tide—isn’t generally my kind of bag. But its pilot has received great reviews, so I figured I should see what all the fuss is about. Like many, I have no idea how the premise will sustain a season, let alone a series of seasons. (The crew of a nuclear submarine refuses to carry out orders to fire on Pakistan, thereby becoming the target of their own government.)

9 pm : Grey’s Anatomy on ABC

Please don’t judge me too harshly. I am the first to tell you that this show is god-awful. They also stretched my patience at the end of last season (its eighth!) when they killed off probably the only character I liked. Go figure.

9.31 pm : Parks and Recreation on NBC

One of my favorite shows, though last week’s season five premiere left a lot to be desired. It goes without saying that when 9.30 rolls around, I will switch over to NBC to watch. I do want to have a good time tonight.

10 pm : Louie on FX

It’s the last episode of the third season, so, rather mercifully, this hour won’t be so crowded next week. At the risk of sounding like an absolute bore, I have to admit that I didn’t much care for these thirteen episodes. Not only was Louie not as funny as it has been in the past, his “I’m such a great father because I try so damn hard, but why doesn’t anyone care?!” routine has gotten really old. You don’t deserve any special praise for that, or to get laid because of it, because you’re just doing your job, Louie.

10.01 pm : Elementary on CBS

For more on why I am going to try out this show, see over here. There’s no guarantee it will pose a problem next week.

And to make matters worse, I also want to watch NBC’s newsmagazine Rock Center with Brian Williams at 10 pm, but I won’t be able to. I’ll put Louie on for the first half hour because by 10.26 pm, my sister, who lives in LA, will have finished Jeopardy!, and we will talk on the telephone.

Maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill. After all, if I miss something, I can always stream it from the network’s website starting tomorrow. That’s just what I am going to do with Rock Center. I like being able to fast-forward through the commercial breaks on the narrative shows I watch. Plus, it’s much more comfortable to stare at a TV screen while lying in bed then it is to sit at my desk, say, and stream anything on my laptop.

Identity Crisis: Dream Job Edition

So far, I’ve had quite the whirlwind day. I spent a good chunk of my late morning/early afternoon researching MA programs in teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages, but that was only once I reviewed the websites for two alternative teacher-training programs that also culminate in state or municipal licensure. I made some promising but also some disappointing revelations. Let’s start with the latter.

I live just outside Washington, DC, and so I read about TESOL programs housed at universities nearby: Johns Hopkins (because the teachers in whose classrooms I volunteer continually mention it as a possibility), The George Washington University, and American University. I know I haven’t exhausted the list of professional schools in the area. (I had applied to an intensive MA program in TESOL based at my alma mater, the University of Maryland, and was brutally rebuffed months ago. Still stinging, I’m not sure I want to reapply.) But the experience of reading about these three schools provided enough frustration and disappointment for the day.

More specifically—and this comes as no real surprise to the self-aware procrastinator in me—the deadlines for application are fast approaching. We’re talking next week. Well, there goes that. But what is even more annoying is that each of them requires the submission of GRE scores. I took it five years ago (I can’t believe it’s been that long) and didn’t do as well as I should have done. I have resisted retaking the test because I suffer from acute test anxiety. Best to avoid it as much as possible. But for my UMD application last fall, I took the Praxis I, which is the first in a series of standardized tests for aspiring teachers. I aced it (technically, this isn’t true; I just far exceeded the passing scores on the reading, writing, and mathematics sections). I’m surprised that these other MA teaching programs don’t request Praxis I scores.

Which brings me to the good news: the alternative teacher training programs in Baltimore and DC require successful applicants to take and pass the Praxis I and II before starting the program, and they never once mention the GRE. I like these routes to certification better, anyway. They’re more accelerated, as I would be teaching in the public school district, earning a salary, while taking courses a couple nights a week. They’re also a lot less expensive. The only caveat is that ESOL (or ESL, as it is sometimes known) is not a subject that I can specialize in. In the Baltimore program, I can choose to teach English for grades 7 through 12, which would also be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I have to write off the DC program because I don’t want to (or can’t) teach any of the available subjects: early childhood education, elementary, math, science, and secondary special education. ESL, if and when it is available, is only an option for applicants who are accepted into another specialization (I think it’s Spanish, and I’m nowhere near proficient enough to qualify).

The Baltimore program’s not accepting applications right now, but hopefully it will soon. I intend to apply. I also looked up Teach for America; I had flirted with the idea of applying to them right out of college, but I was too chicken. I was intimidated by their desire for candidates with strong leadership skills. I was a leader in high school: a member of several honor societies, a writer-director-performer in one-act plays, and even the youngest editor of the school newspaper in my sophomore year (OK, it was the entertainment section, but still). At the end of my senior year of college, I labored under the misapprehension that I didn’t involve myself with many extracurriculars. I did, though; I see that now. So I may as well apply. It’s not like I have anything on my plate right now. And it’s not like either one of these programs—the Baltimore one or the Teach for America one—want letters of recommendation, which may be too difficult to secure this late into the autumn term.

I wanted to put most of my furious Internet research behind me. I also wanted to stretch my legs, so, grabbing hold of the opportunity afforded me by my dad’s absence (he’s in shul all day for Yom Kippur), I walked around the inside of my house for two hours, reading from The Marriage Plot. I’m now halfway through, and it dawned on me today just how brilliant the book is. On the surface of things, I can relate (all too well, I might add) to the protagonist Madeleine Hanna. As the book opens, she is graduating from Brown University, class of 1982. An English major, she has no road map for the future, especially now that she and her boyfriend broke up weeks before. I can’t relate to that part, but feeling lost and useless is something I have been through before. If you count my present circumstances, this constitutes the third time I have been in a rut. The first was when I graduated from college in 2008 without a golden ticket to grad school (and by that, I mean an acceptance letter). The second set in even before I graduated from a prestigious MA program in film history and theory last year.

The brilliance of The Marriage Plot is that, through ostensibly telling an Austenian love story in which so much hinges on two people getting together for both romantic and practical reasons, Jeffrey Eugenides seeks to bring back the titular trope and make it relevant, but the effect is more post- than modern. To achieve this, he relates this story through the intellectual identity crisis of Madeleine Hanna, who, a devotee of Austen, Gaskell, Wharton, and James, discovers postmodernism and deconstructionism in her final year at the Ivy League school. It throws her life into a tailspin. I just passed a point in the book when she goes to an academic conference on Victorian literature and realizes that the field—thanks to feminist and queer theories, among others—is now wide open to interpretation. Realizing she can unashamedly dedicate her career to the books and authors she loves more than anything, she declares that she wants to be a “Victorianist!” This is the part I can and yet cannot fully relate to. I also want to find my tribe, both cultural and intellectual. I just don’t know what to call myself. If I knew, maybe I’d be earning a PhD right now. As if that would solve all my problems.

I was thinking about this as I robotically transgressed boundaries between rooms and looped around the sparsely laid out furniture, turning pages as I went. I asked myself, “What do I want to be?” In the past, this was simpler. I wrote short stories as a child, and I somewhat naturally (read: naively) assumed I would be an English professor at the university level. But I didn’t major in English (those degrees are a dime a dozen, I came to learn); instead, my undergraduate degree is in American Studies, which is great because it’s essentially another word for “Cultural Studies,” allowing you to tackle with a critical and analytical eye pretty much any subject as it relates to culture and identity. I loved the program (it was flexible but rigorous), but knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t advise someone to get a degree in it unless she knew exactly what she wanted to get out of it, if she knew exactly how it would prepare her for the career she really wants.

Last Monday, I attended a dinner party. I enjoyed talking to the one person there whom I had never met before. I told her a bit about my problems in finding a job. And she asked me something no one else has really dared to ask me: “If you could have your dream job, what would it be?” I didn’t know how to respond truthfully. It didn’t come to me. With all this talk of the recession, the high unemployment rate for people my age, etc. etc., I haven’t had the luxury to even think about my dream job. I just need to get a job. Even if it’s bagging groceries, which I have done and swear I will never do again. Eventually, I told the woman, “I guess I would want to write.” She extrapolated this nugget of information to mean something I wasn’t sure I meant. She suggested I look into organizations I could see myself working for, approach them about the opportunity to write for free, on a trial basis and with the expressed notion that should they like my work, they should then hire me. She warned me it would be rough (writing doesn’t pay well), but I might get somewhere. I might find satisfaction.

But do I want to write? What do I even mean by that? I read The New York Times everyday. I wish I could write like many of the staff reporters and critics do. I can find a winning angle to any story, I tell myself, and I have things equally important to say, too. But I know I will never write for The New York Times. Sometimes I think maybe I should have gone into journalism or majored in English. My chances of writing for the paper—or any other, for that matter—would be that much better if I had done either or both of these things.

I have at least two ideas for novels, but I haven’t written a single word for either one. I’ve been holding onto them for well over a year now, but I never got to work on them because I thought I would feel guilty for pursuing a pipe dream at the expense of looking for a “real” job. Since my job search has been so lackluster, I bet that if I devoted even half the time I spent thinking about my would-be novels to actually writing one, I’d have finished by now. Is it too late to start again for the first time?

I also regret that I quit studying Spanish, French, and German in college. Actually, I regret not choosing one and focusing all my energy into becoming fluent in it, which is still one of the most important things I want to accomplish. I imagine a world in which I toughed out Spanish, eventually overcoming the “intermediate plateau” by living abroad, in a situation that forced me to use the language everyday. Sometimes I think that I should have majored or minored in Spanish so that I could work as a translator in the very least.

I have an advanced degree in cinema studies, which most people interpret to mean that I am a filmmaker. No, I tell them, I don’t make anything; I can only analyze and write about movies. I didn’t get the degree to become a film critic, since print criticism is an endangered species and the confluence of film bloggers means virtually no one who writes online is paid. Honestly, I have always joked that I wish someone would just pay me to watch movies. I would be fine if I didn’t have to review them, either. Weeks ago, I learned that such a position does exist, but I have yet to pursue it.

Is teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages my quote-unquote dream job? Probably not, but it’s the best I’ve got. As a lover of languages (particularly the nuances of my native tongue, English) and other cultures and as someone who has always enjoyed the idea of being a teacher (a lot of people have told me through the years I’d make a great one because I am passionate, knowledgeable, and want others to succeed), it seems to be the perfect outlet for me. Sure, volunteering in the ESOL classroom has so far been what I thought it would be and not. Mostly, not what I was expecting. But it’s been a wonderful learning experience. I do honestly hope that I continue to enjoy it, because maybe then I will finally identify my dream job and have enough experience under my belt to make a well-argued case for why I deserve it.

All In a Day’s Worry

I apologize. I don’t have time for a proper post. It has been a relatively hectic, perhaps even mildly productive day. Below, a list of my accomplishments:

1.) Amongst my daily New York Times perusal, I also managed to read a little bit from The Marriage Plot. Some may think it has a slow start, but I’m rather enjoying getting to know everyone in Madeleine Hanna’s life, especially her suitors.

2.) I am horrified to read the always irascible Nikki Finke’s admonishment to Hollywood on the subject of beautiful women being funny. I’m no fan of Modern Family‘s Julie Bowen, who won an Emmy last night for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and who is on the receiving end of Finke’s ire, nor am I beautiful, but isn’t saying beautiful women can’t be funny (because they can’t be humiliated) too… I dunno… harsh?

3.) I applied for a staff writer position at a specialized website/online magazine that I read almost daily. Which means I won’t ever hear back.

4.) I scarfed down four small flour tortillas too many. First I ate two beef tacos for lunch, using the leftover meat from last night’s dinner. I then complemented these “snacks” with two more plain tortillas. A sucker for sweets and breads, I ingested two more after I finished my dinner—a thick peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

5.) Since tomorrow is the first time I will have to walk a mile to ride the Metrobus for all of seven minutes to school (where I volunteer in two ESOL classrooms early on Tuesday and Thursday mornings), I did a practice run to the bus stop this afternoon. I wanted to find out the exact location of the stop as well as the estimated amount of time it will take me to walk there tomorrow morning (19 minutes).

6.) I lost what probably amounts to a sizable hairball while washing my hair in the shower just minutes ago. “Sizable” for a kitten. It’s been years since I had hair this long (it rests just above my shoulders), and I am always upset to find myself shedding.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to finish watching the second episode of Boardwalk Empire‘s third season. I started it last night, but HBO Go was giving me so much shit, I threw up my hands and walked away. I am also going to pluck my eyebrows. That part of my body is… bushy.

Around and Around I Go! I’ll Stop When I Reach 10,000

The cable’s gone out. I don’t know for how long, because I was doing my new, odd Saturday morning ritual instead of staring at the TV screen. I just finished walking I-don’t-know-how-many-times around the inside of the house, a pedometer attached to my hip. I stopped after I reached 10,000 steps, which is the recommended number you should take daily. Given my height, weight, and stride, they amount to about 4.5 miles. Usually never one to multitask, especially when exercise is involved, I also read from my book, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. Turns out I am probably one of those people who can read while walking on a treadmill. I have no idea if this is true because I have never been on a treadmill. All I know is, my superhuman abilities both amaze and confound my family members. Not that they’re ever present to witness me in action.

I choose to do this combination of physical and mental stimulation on Saturday mornings because it is quiet in the house: my dad’s at shul until the afternoon, and my brother’s either sleeping or has locked himself in his room. (My sister lives in LA.) No one is in my way as I pound my feet against the tiled and rugged floors, through the kitchen and into the dining room, where I swerve around the circular table and break into the spartan living room. From there, I walk into the foyer and toward the front door, turning the corner, and I’m back in the kitchen again. In case it’s not already apparent, our house has a pretty open layout, which is made even more open by the lack of furniture. I feel silly walking around the house over and over again, like a dog chasing its tail, but aren’t we supposed to look ridiculous when we’re exercising? Isn’t that how we know it’s working?

Good news: in the time it has taken me to write the last two paragraphs, the cable TV service has returned. I can now resume my continuous nostalgia trip to the early and mid-1990s by watching such classics as For Love or Money and How to Make an American Quilt (hopefully) uninterrupted.