Gleek

My name is Dr. Plog and I am a Gleek.

There, I said it.

I tried to resist it, I really did. For starters, I am already over-committed, televisually, especially since I am trying to reduce my overall couch potato-mashedness in a new year's false promise to a new-me. Also: I am instinctively programmed to resist trends du jour on the very basis of their seemingly sudden mass-desirability. I call it the Dan Brown effect - though now my Da Vinci Code aversion (it's so freaky to suddenly see everyone across the world toting the same badly-written book) has now found new life in The Girl with the Dragon Earringmania. Ipods can pod off; I haven't even graduated to tampons, letalone Ipads.

But I'm hooked on this silly show!

Cheeky covers? Check. Subversion of seemingly same-same stereotypes? Check (That shameless display of artificial affected alliteration? Check, check, check!). Maybe I'm just impressed that a single show that is, on the surface, as samesamey as your subpar nineohtwooneohmelroseplaceremake staple, would have not just one token Jew but, like, four - rendering them somewhat less token - and one breaking the mould, majorly. Noah Puckerman, I'm talking to you! Mr P said I'd have had a field day with you if I was still writing my thesis.

Ok, it's not as groundbreaking as some would have you believe. A recent facebook status of a local wit (whose critical eye I trust implicitly) declared she was "whelmed"* - neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed. I love that category. And I totally get that response.

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*Slightly off-topic but there are so many words that have no counterpart. Mr P sometimes shakes his British head at me and labels me "incorrigible", to which I reply, "No, I'm actually quite corrigible". Also are you always "appropos of nothing" or can you be appropos of something? I know you can be but I think nothing is more common, usagewise Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side?

Answers welcome in comment section below. Join in! Don't be shy!

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But I think, even in shitty times, a lot of our escapism is occupied by/ mired in the ugly. I gave up 24 on those grounds. And the Ruth Rendell habit I inherited from Mama Plog. And reading the paper from cover to cover. But Glee makes me happy - filled with joy, utterly content, gleeful, if you will (and I know you will).

Nothing deep there. But try living with hepatitis. That's hard!**


**I LOVE Jane Lynch. And though I never got into Nip/Tuck (creepy-as-fuck more like!), I adored Ryan Murphy's early career masterpiece Popular (which appropos of nothing (see!) I used to watch with my dad over a bunch of weekday afternoons in the early 00s. Good times.)

Emmy And Me

If you are an idiot box addict like myself, or just not immune from the barrage of light "infotainment" that has - without apparent opposition - replaced actual news of late, you may know that the Emmy Awards took place in Los Angeles last weekend.

Why is this award show different from all other award shows? Well, it is the only one that has personal resonance for me.

It is the only one I have ever attended.

See, I have always loved TV. I know that makes me way-less than cool. After all the idiot box is just that, requiring little imagination, agency, activism. It breeds that most dreaded of all root vegetables: the couch potato. But - thank you Dr. Freud! - I have just learnt that there is an actual psychological basis to my dependency. My mum told me only recently that from the age of three, I would wake up early in the mornings and instead of waking my parents, I'd switch on the tube, nestle in the couch and indulge. Games I played, stories I wrote as a child (and, yes, there is evidence): both integrated themes and characters from (in no particular order) Welcome Back Kotter, Gilligan's Island, The Love Boat, Diff'rent Strokes and Love Thy Neighbour, amongst others (don't worry,the last of the list left an impression about sex rather than race but that's another post altogether ...). I know every word to every theme song. I know the names of guest stars on particular episodes of shows which spun off from spin-offs. I am, in short, a receptacle of a lot of shit. But it is my shit: shit that makes me happy, shit that is far less problematic than a lot of my other shit.

Picture it: August 2003, Melbourne. A young girl, a tad depressed, had JUST discovered the internet (yes I was a latecomer, yes, it was deliberate at the time, no, I am not proud now). Up late one night, she googled "Emmy Nominees" to see who had been thusly honoured when an option popped up on the award show's website:

Would I like to be a seat-filler? (Definition #2 at the link)

Would I Fuck?! Me, with no plan to travel to the US (as every Australian knows, the land called Overseas is a massive undertaking, requiring months of forethought and planning, unlike the hop-skip-jump triathalon from the UK). I eagerly rang the number, began the registration process (loooooooove American customer service! It is I who is always right!) until I revealed I wasn't a US citizen.

"I'm sorry, ma'am."

"B-b-but" I spluttered, "I'm Australian. We're allies. We just followed you into a war!!!", which was only a teensy bit shameless seeing as I'd protested in tears against the fucking mess the day of the invasion.

"You can buy a ticket, ma'am".

What? The? ... Really?

So US$200 later I had a ticket to the ceremony. All I needed was a ticket to LA.

(CUE: lots of mishegas, but)

Reader, I Got There!

And clichedly, it was one of the

Bestest. Days. Of. My. Life.

Maybe if only just because it represented the realisation of the seemingly impossible. Like the first time I went to New York and my friend Nan wrote in an inscription in my notebook that she'd lose faith in humanity if I didn't meet Woody Allen. I have the photo and autograph and as far as I know she still has faith. I'll get back to you on that one.

Top Emmy Moments included: my subterfuge on the red carpet. They ferry in the plebs as quickly as possible, only I kept hiding amongst groups of press, wearing my disgustingly hot, heavy wrap to obscure the fact I had no press badge! I scribbled "notes" in a pad, basically a list of every person who passed by. The only ones who spring to mind now are the cast of CSI and Everybody Loves Raymond and Dakota Fanning. Odd dinner party potential. I only chatted to one celeb, though. He was LOVELY: David Hyde Pierce (Frasier's Niles). I was surprised he was gay. No-one else ever is.

Also, the Ego had landed and was gloriously fed! Some very glamorous girls overheard me talking, sussed the accent, and asked if I was wearing Colette Dinnigan! (I was not. Not even in the same stratosphere of price range.) Then I met the two girls seated next to me, who were both so unimpressed by the whole thing, having only found out that morning they'd be attending: they were the nannies of Lorne Michaels' kids (he's the creator/ producer of Saturday Night Live). They told me I looked liked Kristin Davis (Charlotte from Sex and the City)!!!!!!! I have never forgotten that. For the record: I don't. Not one iota. But since the last celeb I was compared to was Roseanne (ok, it was a little shit of a kid and I was in one of my heavier stages), I kind of really absolutely, thoroughly love that memory. Flattery will get you everywhere.

In short, superficiality aside (or is it maybe at the centre?), that Emmy week kicked off a new phase of Anythingissototallypossible that led to six months as a resident of West Hollywood which in turn brought me, here, to London. But that is so another story.

I now have to wait another entire year for that red carpet to unfurl.

Addiction. It's a bitch.

Sit, Ubu, Sit!

I so want this as my "walking down the aisle" song (if we have half as strong a relationship as Elyse and Steven we will be blessed) but Mr P has put a blanket veto on all TV theme tunes, which sadly includes Angry Anderson's Suddenly because of its association with you-know-what.*

*Charlene EDNA? Who knew?

[M]advertising

I love David Mitchell (his columns in The Observer are laugh-out-loud funny) and Robert Webb, but I love even more when men get on board with recognising inequality as the mishegas it is. The fact is that feminism liberates us all. It is so perverse that we have come to be represented as "man haters" when it is so bleeding obvious that men who are with women who subscribe fully to outmoded restrictive gender roles (which invariably inhibit the development of a fully-realised self) are actually the ones living less than love-filled lives.

And I know we're better in bed. Please. I found my clitoris way before it was fashionable ...

Revisionist Hair Stories

Sarah Haskins = Smart

Hair Commercials = Dumb

............................

Would Sarah Haskins front a show like Jon Stewart's if she had a peenie?

Discuss.

Angel Ascending

She was always secretly my favourite, despite the fact that my innate feminist instincts instructed me to always say that Kate Jackson, bookish brunette, precursor to Mirandadyke trope, was the Angel for me.

RIP Farrah. Your name* is Persian (Iranian) for "beauty". How accurate (yours brought you fame) and timely (genuine beauty of humanity currently under attack in Iran). Thankfully you are released from the pain of cancer and the indignity afforded you by modern menaces ("the tabloids", "TMfuckingZ"-grade reportage, a sick, sad, avoid-reality public), especially the series of you suffering that was officially "In Production".

People are sick fucking bastards.

*One of my hypothetical daughter's names was Farrah but I knew I'd have to partner it with a name like "Sage", meaning wisdom, as a middle name. Beauty is SOOOOOOOOOOoverrated in this world while intellect/insight/sensitivity/ordinariness/reality as opposed to "reality" are given the old STFU.

It is so past my bedtime.
Time to board the express to Bedfordshire before backpedalling to Black ...

The "Little Jew"

I came across this footnote in a book I am reviewing:

"According to Ann Pellegrini, the slang for clitoris in Vienna in the 1890s was the "little Jew," and female masturbation was commonly referred to as "playing with the Jew." Pellegrini, Performance Anxieties, 29.

Apologies to Bob Balaban (above), a brilliant actor (Seinfeld) but he was the first person to spring to mind as physically embodying said little Jew (not that he looks like mine one bit!).

BB was followed swiftly into my brain by Ron Rifkin but that's probably only because Brothers and Sisters has been playing on a loop at Casa del Plog. Mr P lasts longer in those marathons than I do (TV tantra?) because the combination of Walker melodrama and my crying quickly wears me out. It's one of the shows we really love watching together, though (others include Damages, Life On Mars, The Daily Show, ... Jonathon Ross) as opposed to those we can't watch together (his: 24, Doctor Who, documentaries about gross physical/ deeply depressing things; and mine: Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Monk, Psych, et al).

I so love TV. I was reared by it and I continue to nuzzle on its sweet narrative-driven nectar. mmmmmmMMMMNNNNnnnnnnn TV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Time to play with my little Jew ...

(Kidding!)

Friday Night With ... Mr Sheen

I really like Martin Sheen (born Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez, but more on that later). Tonight he ROCKED (yes, I am almost middle-aged and oh-so-fricking SAD) on Jonathan Ross. (I like the J.Ro even if I am slightly suspect of his politics/ feminism ... although his wife seems pretty cool.) Anyway, back to Charlie & Emilio's Dad ... I love people who integrate their identities with their politics, ie, those whose philosophies are indivisible from their most authentic selves, their most fundamental principles. I don't just mean hard-core ideologues: not necessarily tent-dwelling, gender non-specific, vegan, freegan, anti-globalisation, pro-choicey, pacifistic, post-colonial, deconstructionist hermits. Just people whose politics (translation: caring about the world, community, society, how people think/ act/ are, what ideals are promoted over which ones that should be) are part of them, rather than a separate entity: a self-conscious, artificial "accessory" adopted for social reasons or in order to maintain "polite fictions". I know that I can be annoying with my Feminist, Anti-Racist, Anti-Heterosexist rhetoric. But you know what? In the scheme of things, I'd prefer to be mildly (even majorly) annoying if it means I were even marginally proactive, useful.

Just like Martin Sheen.

Faux-storian

So the other day I wrote about how I'm a bit of a lady-who-lunches in feminist clothing, a femifraud, if you will be so indulgent. And now I just realised I am also a Fauxstorian, that is, someone who writes "Historian" on forms (landing cards, etc) when she really makes most of her (minimum) wage in retail. Just because I have a degree in History doesn't make me a Historian -- it's not like just because I wank, I'm automatically a ...

Actually, yes. Yes, I am one. (A fact doubly confirmed by the fact that I write "Historian" when I'm not one.)

Why do we tell ourselves little lies? Does it matter? Is a bit of that Egyptian River what we need in order to survive this crazy world?

Could I be* any more Tryhard Carrie Bradshaw?



*Or indeed, Chandler Bing?

So What's With The Title, Ya Freak?

Why "Doctor"?

I was so goddamn SICK of being asked if I was a "Miss" or "Mrs." ... or even a "Ms."!!!!!!!!!!! IT'S 2009, PEOPLE!!!!! The title "Ms." came into being in order to REPLACE the Miss/Mrs binary, not to signify a third category of angry female because why the hell do over half the world's population have to identify their frigging marital status in their name? (Because we have vaginas?) So to avoid the whole mishegas, I got a Ph. D.

Why "Plog"?

Well, "Blog = Web + Log". As a Luddite all my thoughts originate with the Mighty Pen. Ergo, "Paper + Log = Plog". (And I'm normally so bad at maths!) Also "Plog" sounds like "Plod" which conjures up images of flat-footed, bumbling policemen (and although Law Enforcement is not my schtick, I am both flat-footed and bumbling).

And ever since its importation into my world as of this morning I canna stop singing "Doc-doc-doc-doctor Plog" to the tune of Gloria Estefan's "Dr. Beat" -- wow! I've even gone and got me a theme song goshdarnit! And as we all know ALL of the best theme songs had lyrics.

For example: Family Ties ("I bet we've been together ... for a million years!)
Different Strokes ("Well the world don't move to the beat of just one drum")
The Love Boat ("Love ... Exciting and New!")

What do you think? What are your favourite TV themes? Are lyrics important?