Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Our Inner Fangirls

We've been watching a ton of TV lately - trying lots of new shows (Glee, Modern Family, The Vampire Diaries, the already canceled The Beautiful Life, Cougar Town, and more) and also getting progressively more obsessed with True Blood, of course. We've written about True Blood more than any other show lately, and we admit that we're addicted - besides writing blog posts, we've watched episodes over and over, ordered the DVDs, investigated the True Blood beverage, created our own vampire stores, read lots of interviews with the cast, looked for season 3 spoilers, checked out the books, and endlessly discussed our theories about what has happened and what's going to happen with all of the characters.

It's funny though...when we read some of the most hardcore fan sites, we realize that we're totally just amateurs. Sure, we have our True Blood diversion program, but we haven't hosted any viewing parties (yet), we don't have our True Blood Halloween costumes ready, we haven't created any character alter egos on twitter, and we don't convert and download youtube videos by the dozens to make fan videos promoting our favorite characters and couples. Clearly we need to step up our fame.

I've always been kinda fascinated by the fan video thing. There are tons and tons of them on youtube, and they're especially popular with teenage girls who want to express their devotion to Pacey and Joey, Chuck and Blair, Dylan and Brenda, Troy and Gabriella, Edward and Bella, or some other amazing supercouple. Sure, you can make fun of them for their fanaticism, but it's also kinda amazing how much some of these young women know about how to search for and download youtube videos, how to cut up and edit clips together, the best programs to use to put their little movies together, and of course which power ballads to set their masterpieces to. I do hope that many of these young women end up putting their tech skills to even better use in the future.

Okay, that's it. Forget finishing this post...I've got to go and download youtube videos all night so that I can get to work on my Eric & Lafayette: True Love Always fan video.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Good Authority Officing

We always love talking about our future plans for our empire. Lately we've been talking a lot about an official Good Authority office - where it would be, how we would decorate, what kind of snacks we'd have. You know, all of the important stuff. We're not as worried about the less critical stuff, like office equipment, phone and internet connections and various other telecommunications products and services, and oh yeah, how to pay for it. Those minor details will work themselves out.

So we were talking about how much fun it would be to have a receptionist to answer our many many important phone calls. And then we thought, why stop there? We should totally have our own call centers to provide support to our many fans and customers. (Instead of a receptionist, we could have a director of call center operations.) They can be scattered across the country and eventually the world, once we achieve global fame. It's a very practical and reasonable idea, we think. There are a lot of people out there who need to have their Good Authority-related needs met at all times.

But then we realized that we just have a romanticized view of the whole call center thing thanks to our recent viewing of the fabulous movie The Other End of the Line, in which the dude from John Tucker Must Die plays a guy who falls in love with the Indian-but-pretending-to-be-American woman who works at the credit card call center and helps him with his fraudulent charge issues. (Happens all the time.) Of course, she falls for him too, so she comes to America to find him and wacky multicultural hijinks ensue.

So, we were forced to face the fact that having our own call centers won't bring us happiness or true love, and further, the reason we'll never need them is because all of our strategic planning meetings devolve into 'hey, let's watch this horrible cheesy movie with that John Tucker guy!' Maybe we should just start with a personal assistant to help keep us organized...and to make the popcorn.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Our Musical Career

So we've been watching Glee, and watching the awesome performances on that show got us thinking about our own very excellent musical entertainment skills, which we put to use most recently for Chiquita and The Lord when they visited over the summer. So we're thinking of starting our own group. Why stop at a media empire, right? We're Renaissance women, we can multi-task. As Kathy Griffin has taught us, why stop at an Emmy when you can try to win a Grammy too?

There are only a few small problems. None of us really play any instruments - we don't know piano chords from...um, tambourine chords? Is there even such a thing as piano chords? Or is that more of a guitar thing? Maybe we can just get away with fake-playing, like they did on The Partridge Family. Or we can try to bring the triangle back as an edgy trendy instrument that everyone wants to play. Can you tell that I went to a tiny elementary school where we didn't learn to play instruments? (Or whether piano chords actually exist.) We may need to take some remedial music lessons or find some sort of supergroup boot camp to go to before we start recording an album or performing in Penn Station.

Okay, maybe we'll just stick to singing, show choir style. At least that we know we're totally awesome at. And dancing, of course. So if anyone wants to join our group, let us know soon, cause we're totally going to make it in New York City like in our favorite movie of all time, Fast Forward. Then comes the reality show, and then the memoir, and then onward to the empire! There's absolutely no way that this plan can possibly go wrong...right?



Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Fall TV Preview

So our beloved True Blood (HBO) ended its 2nd season - as you already know - and we're not quite sure what to do with ourselves. We checked out the first episode of Vampire Diaries (the CW) and while it was sort of like "True Blood Lite", we're not sure if it will end up being an acceptable substitute.

Jezebel has gotten herself hooked on Mad Men (the 3rd season came back to AMC a few weeks ago) and I'm totally psyched for the next season of Heroes (the 4th season returns to NBC on September 21). Even though it's been progressively getting dumber, I'm still obsessed with it and I have no shame in that. And you know we're both going to watch the newest season of Bones (Fox, September 17) after we accidentally got ourselves addicted to it in our hotel room while we were in Chicago for Blogher09.

But we weren't really sure what else was in store for us this Fall.... so we checked out the New York magazine "Fall Preview" issue to see what else we could possibly set our trusty DVRs to record.

The series premiere of the "new" Melrose Place apparently aired on the CW on September 8th and we both just completely missed it. And we're really okay with that. Sure we occasionally watched the old version and we even watched some of the new 90210 and the CW is a guilty pleasure (I know Jezebel is going to watch the new season of Gossip Girl on September 14)... but we just couldn't bring ourselves to care about Melrose Place again. Maybe we'll check out an episode or two before the series gets cancelled, um, we mean before the first season comes to an end. Maybe.

We are definitely going to set the DVRs for The Beautiful Life (the CW, September 16) because we're just dying to see if former Disney stars Corbin Bleu and Sara Paxton can pull off the so-called "glamorous world of New York's fashion elite". Plus we have to support any show that gives us another naked picture scandal (just kidding) but we're not exactly overly optimistic.

Bored to Death (HBO, September 20) looks... interesting but we're not sure about HBO right now. They've been a little hit-and-miss lately. True Blood has been pretty damn great, but some of their other shows have sucked hard (for example Hung is some serious crap and Entourage has been slowly going downhill).

Check out the full Fall Preview from New York mag and let us know which shows you recommend or are getting excited about.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Wonder Woman

We're not exactly avid comic book readers... but we are fans of strong, powerful women.

In the early 1940s the DC comic line was dominated by male superheroes. In 1941 William Moulton Marston, upon the suggestion of his wife Elizabeth, created Wonder Woman as a "distinctly feminist role model". In The American Scholar (1943) Marston wrote:

"Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman." [via Wikipedia]
So here's a guest blog from our friend ceirdwenfc on the recent postcard campaign to get Wonder Woman the props she deserves:


Well, it's finally happened. For the last twenty-one years, my husband has been trying to get me interested in comic books. He even gave me an autographed Sandman(by Neil Gaiman) as a gift when we were first dating. I know – what a romantic. When I was a kid, I read Star Trek comics, Green Arrow, , you know, the usual, but as geeky as I was, I just wasn't very interested in reading them anymore.Archie
Until yesterday.

I was driving and he was reading his comic books. In passing, my husband mentioned that both
Superman and Batman comic books were coming up on their 700th issues and that it was a big deal. I don't really pay that much attention to the comic talk. "This is a big deal", he assured me. I nodded and tried not to get hit by a truck in the left lane. Then he mentioned that Wonder Woman was coming up on Issue #45.45? I thought that was impossible. Wonder Woman has been around since the 1940s. Hasn't she? I always thought that the big three were all about the same age. How is it possible that she is that much "younger" than Batman? Maybe Wonder Woman is vain and lies because she doesn't want people to know her real age? (In actuality, she is 65, having been created in 1941; only five years younger than Batman and seven years younger than Superman.)

What happened in the Wonder Woman series of comic books is that they've restarted her stories, and therefore restarted her numbers. It was noticed by some fans that if you added all the issues of her series that her #45 really equals #600, therefore putting her on a more equal footing with the men.



DC Executive Editor, Dan Didio, stated in his recent column DC Nation that he thought the renumbering was more conducive to getting new readers. (He may have meant younger readers, and that would also be fine.) The first thing I thought, personally, was that it was sexist. No one would reduce Superman's numbers. I simply don't think it would happen. Superman and Batman get a party, but not Wonder Woman.
He said if he receives 600 postcards from fans, they'll renumber #45 to #600 and Wonder Woman gets her due. That's great. She deserves it. But the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. It really bothered me.

Now, my husband thinks that I'm being too hard on Dan Didio and pointed out that Mr. Didio didn't begin the renumbering. This is something that's been going on in many other comic books for years (
Green Lantern, , Aquaman, Doom Patrol and at least four more that he mentioned by name.) My husband is right. I am blaming one man. It's not his fault.

Renumbering, restructuring, restarting series was happening long before he came along. I just think that if this were Green Lantern or even
, it would have been a no-brainer to acknowledge #600. It certainly makes sense to renumber when the story ends and a new one begins. It's why we declare "life begins at 40" or 50 when we get divorced or lose a job or our kids go away to college.

This is the society we live in.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it honestly reminds me of many women (myself included).
I have a Master's degree in education and was a teacher for over ten years. Now, I've spent just about that amount of time staying home with my kids. My youngest is three and won't go to school for two more years, which means I will remain out of the workforce at least until then.
I'm out of touch with new techniques for teaching, so consequently, a younger person just out of college - with the advantage of having just gotten the new educational information - will get hired before me. Even if I wanted to keep up with workshops and auditing classes, the amount of money I would have to spend would be astronomical, as well as the fact that we need to make the mortgage and car repairs. I've put in my forty quarters, but I won't get near enough money from social security to pay for groceries let alone a living wage.

I don't know when the idea of renumbering Wonder Woman's issues became about me, but it really bothered me. And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to make a point. There is no just compensation for a woman to start over. We are not given credit for all that has gone before. We shouldn't need a postcard referendum to get Wonder Woman her 600th anniversary party. Superman and Batman didn't have to ask for it. Someone remembered.

I do realize that the postcard thing established a buzz about the character that may not have been there, and it makes sense on a publicity level, but it seems as though the women need to ask for this instead of simply expecting it to happen. I still think that we should try to send in more than 600 postcards. What about 6,000?
SuperboyFlash


So if you're so inclined, send your postcard to:

Dan Didio
c/o DC Comics, Inc.
1700 Broadway
New York, NY 10019


"Wonder Woman" image courtesy of NY Sun. "Wonder Woman #1" image courtesy of CoverBrowser.com. "Wonder Women" image courtesy of Amazon Princess. "Wonder Woman 1941-2008" image courtesy of RayCaspio.com. "Wonder Woman vs. Wonder Woman" image courtesy of Apropos of Something. "600" image courtesy of DC Nation. The Wonder Woman Chronicles Vol. 1 will be released on March 9, 2010.