Tragic Sandwich

Category: Entertainment

  • What Doesn’t Kill You

    Ginger of Ramble, Ramble has more writing prompts this week. I couldn’t choose, and they seem to go together, so here you are:

    Prompt 1: What are your sick day must haves? Do you want certain foods, shows, clothes, drinks? What makes you feel better when you feel crummy?

    Couch, pillows, TV, fleece blankets, PJs, Wicket. Basically, all the soft things.

    I don't know about you, but I feel better just looking at her.
    I don’t know about you, but I feel better just looking at her.

    Prompt 2: What’s the sickest you’ve ever been?

    Nearly every story about the sickest I’ve ever been includes vomit. Lots of vomit. So I think we should skip those stories, and I think you will agree.

    The obvious exceptions are the time I had pneumonia (at an out-of-town conference! that required plane travel!) and the time I had swine flu. Ah, swine flu. Good times.

    One Friday in late February 2009,* I had a D&C for my second miscarriage, which (like miscarriages 1, 3, and 4) did not happen without some help. On Sunday, I was supposed to get together with a couple of friends to watch the Oscars. Because of my surgery, they kindly came to my house and brought all the food.

    We snarked the Red Carpet so viciously that at one point Mr. Sandwich had to come inside to see what we were shrieking about (one of the hosts had done something so unfortunate to her face that she was trying not to appear on camera, but since she was the host, she kind of had to). The ceremony began. The snarking continued.

    After a couple of hours, I started to feel under the weather. I thought, “What I really want to do is go lie down, but if I do that, my friends will feel that they have to leave. And I’m totally fine with them staying, I just need to lie down.”

    But since I didn’t want them to go, I stayed put in the recliner.

    After another hour, I thought, “What is this? I’m so sore and achy. Wait. Is this the flu? It’s been a while, but I think this is what the flu feels like.”

    By the time the show was over and everybody went home, I felt as if the inside of my skin was being sanded. This is not a good feeling.

    The next day I had a follow-up appointment with my OB-GYN; from his office, we went to our primary care doctor. As the morning progressed, Mr. Sandwich started to feel achy.

    The primary care physician prescribed antivirals for both of us, and we headed off to the drug store.

    Which could only fill one prescription of antivirals.

    Back home, we swathed the couch in microfleece throws (because the perfectly fine upholstery was too rough for feverish skin) and settled in.

    Oh, and while this was going on? I was borderline hemorraghing from the D&C. (You do not want to know.)

    Both the flu and the bleeding went on for most of the week. We spent much of it on the couch, looking sadly at each other and saying, “I’m really sorry I can’t take care of you, but I feel so sick.” And the other one would say, “Please don’t worry about it, because I feel that sick, too.”

    We also learned that, even with the blinds closed, the afternoon sun cast so much glare on our TV screen that we couldn’t really see it. And since TV was the only form of distraction we could manage (books are so heavy), we kind of needed to see it.

    Mr. Sandwich draped the windows in more microfleece throws. Fortunately, we have a lot of them.

    And those antivirals? We felt no different at all for taking them. They didn’t seem to help in the slightest. The fever, aches, chills, and clamminess persisted in spite of the drugs. (We still got the second prescription, and we each took all of them that we were supposed to. In case you were wondering.)

    But on the other hand, we didn’t die. So there’s that. Because people do die of swine flu.

    And after we were well, we replaced the window coverings with wooden blinds.

    So I guess you could say that we were so sick, we redecorated.

    See those blinds behind Wicket? Those blinds.
    See those blinds behind Wicket? Those blinds.

    *Sources say that the first reported U.S. cases were in late March. But given the severity of our symptoms and the speed of their onset, we are pretty sure that we ran into it at the hospital, before doctors knew about the outbreak.

  • The Trouble With Teen Stars

    I’m starting to think that the Disney Princesses aren’t the real problem.

    Untitled

    Photo of magazines by dno1967b, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

    People Lindsay Lohan

    Photo of Lindsay Lohan by ghostofgoldwater, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

    Amanda Bynes Calls President Obama And Michelle Obama Ugly Reveals Racism

    Photo of Amanda Bynes by Zennie Abraham, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

    And I’m starting to think that the problem isn’t entirely with the teen stars, either. Why, exactly, do we want to watch these girls destroy themselves? Why is there so much ravenous glee when they implode? Why do we want to see them to be so very, very damaged?

    Voting on your favorite mug shot? Tell me that’s not ugly. Of the website. Of the people who vote. Of all of us who clicked on the link. Of me for even providing the link.

    This isn’t right. It seems like once we’re done with one, we’re ready for the next. We crave new meat. So I hope it’s not too late for Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus. But I’m not sure that’s in the cards.

  • Top 10 TV Shows

    Ginger from Ramble Ramble is continuing her writing prompts. Since I can talk about TV a lot (it’s actually part of what brought Mr. Sandwich and me together), let me share my top 10 TV shows.

    Television

    My Top 10 Shows

    1) Homicide
    2) Deadwood
    3) Mad Men
    4) Game of Thrones
    5) Southland

    Right about now, you’re thinking, “Wow, you really like your shows dark, don’t you?”

    6) Firefly
    7) Adam-12
    8) Star Trek (The Original Series)

    See? They’re not all super-dark.

    9) Parks and Recreation
    10) Friends

    Some of them aren’t dark at all!

    Bonus! Donny & Marie

    My Top 10 Shows I Loved, But Ultimately Gave Up On

    1) Law & Order (Prime)–Sam Waterson joined the cast, and Chris Noth left, and it became Sneaky Lawyer Tricks, and I was out.
    2) Cheers–Maybe when Shelley Long left? I don’t remember.
    3) The Cosby Show–Cousin Oliver Syndrome.
    4) ER–Once upon a time, it was a good show, and then it wasn’t.
    5) How I Met Your Mother–TMI, Ted. TMI. Wrap it up.
    6) Frasier–There are a lot of ways to handle the pregnancy of a cast member. I’m not sure why they decided “Fat Jokes” was the way to go.
    7) Happy Days–the shark-jumping didn’t lose me; I think it was probably Ron Howard’s departure. Chachi didn’t help.
    8) Little House on the Prairie–I left long before they blew up the town.
    9) Aqua Teen Hunger Force–It just got so gross.
    10) Babylon 5–So it turned out that the battle of good and evil was just a dispute over personnel management philosophies, and the Earth politics were boring. It’s too bad, because in the first few seasons the show did a phenomenal job of setting up its universe.

    Still Haven’t Had Enough of My Thoughts About TV?

    TV Shows That Were Gone Too Soon

      You may notice some overlap with my Top 10, above.

    Children’s Television Madness

      Sometimes I just don’t get what they’re going for.

    Photo by videocrab, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

  • Happy Birthday, MTV. You Murderer.

    Forty-two Thirty-two (I really should check my math more carefully) years ago today, MTV was born.

    I first encountered it in 1983, when we moved to Texas. We didn’t have cable in Maryland, where we’d lived previously, and as it turned out, we didn’t have it in Texas, either.

    The cable company thought we did. They insisted that there was a main cable in our neighborhood. They never wondered why no one was subscribing.

    Possibly because there was no main cable in our neighborhood. It took a surprising amount of lobbying to get them to lay one. So the lesson we can learn from this is that cable has always sucked.

    The result was that I did not know what MTV was–and therefore I was very confused for a large portion of my friend’s birthday party. We ate lunch and cake, listened to Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy Guy album about three times (do comedians still do albums? I can’t imagine why they would). And then, as I told my mother:

    I don’t know what we were watching. There were songs, and sometimes there was a concert, and sometimes there was a little movie. I have no idea what it was, but we watched it for hours.

    I kept hearing about MTV, and finally, after spending several minutes listening to friends talk about it, I wound my courage to the sticking point and asked a question that I knew would mark me as clueless: “What’s MTV?”

    One of the guys said, aghast, “What’s MTV? Are you serious?”

    I said, guessing (and hoping) that this would help, “We don’t have cable.”

    It did help. Clearly you couldn’t hold not having cable against a fellow 13-year-old. He described it for me, and I said, “Oh, I’ve seen that!”

    So it turned out that I just didn’t know MTV’s name, and was no longer an outcast. And I finally knew what on earth had been going on at that birthday party.

    (Years later, my grad-school roommate injured her foot and did nothing but watch MTV. It completely turned me off the whole video phenomenon, and to this day I don’t use YouTube nearly as much as I should, considering that I work in marketing. Speaking of YouTube, embedding doesn’t seem to be working. So here’s a nostalgic and topical link for you. Enjoy.)

  • Sand Pail List – What I Want To Do This Summer

    SandPailList

    Happy First Day of Summer, all!

    Last year I created my first Sand Pail List, and I think I can call it a rousing 50% success.

    This year’s list has some similar items, but with a few changes:

    Go to the park
    I’m pretty confident we’ll do this; we have a (mostly) weekly playdate with Bestie and her parents, and I’ve gotten into the habit of taking Baguette to the playground on our own as well. She loves the sand and the playscapes, but she also loves “running on the grass!”

    Go to the beach
    We want to go at least four times. That number is arbitrary, so maybe more. We all love the beach. To motivate us, I bought Mr. Sandwich this beach blanket made of nylon parachute silk.

    Go to the pool
    The public pool near our home re-opened last year, and we took Baguette several times toward the end of the summer. This year, we started going on Father’s Day, which fell on their opening weekend.

    Work on my photography skills
    Mr. Sandwich bought me a book that I really liked. He bought it for me probably a year and a half ago. I still need to put it into practice. Between an active subject (Baguette) and a sleepy subject (Wicket), I should be able to try a variety of approaches.

    Go to a summer concert
    I’m not sure Baguette is ready for this, and Sunday nights are not the easiest–but with a little planning, maybe we can get to one of the concerts at a park a few miles away.

    Get (a little bit) organized
    I want to clear off part of the living room bookcase for Baguette’s toys–which requires cleaning out part of the other bookcases and getting rid of a bunch of books. I don’t think it will be fun or easy, but it really should be satisfying.

    So what’s on your Sand Pail List?

    If you want to use the Sand Pail icon, feel free! You can find it on Flickr.

  • TV Shows That Were Gone Too Soon

    This week’s Monday Listicle is “10 shows that got canceled too soon.”

    I don’t know. I’m picky about my TV. This is not to say I haven’t watched my share of crap (“Zorro and Son” comes to mind). But I find that most of the time, shows drag on far longer than they should. I like it when a showrunner has a story to tell, and tells it. Which is why I stopped watching shows by J.J. Abrams.

    However, there are some shows that didn’t get a chance to show what they could do–or were just beginning to build an audience, and got canceled anyhow.

    1) Homicide: Life on the Street You look at that page, and you think, “There were 7 seasons. What’s the problem?” Well, they weren’t all full seasons, for starters. And I think that their first cast was the strongest. But even when some of the newer characters annoyed me (how they developed some of the original ones did, too), this show was one of the smartest things on TV. Which is probably what killed them, because they were canceled as punishment for not beating “Nash Bridges” in the ratings.

    2) Firefly. Mr. Sandwich introduced me to this show when we were dating, and I still think it’s wonderful. I never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so this was my real introduction to Joss Whedon.

    3) Dollhouse. Speaking of Joss Whedon . . . Actually, I found this show very problematic. It focused on the wrong character (Sierra and Victor were much more interesting than Echo). It depicted a very disturbing approach to sexuality. But it was just starting to turn into a really interesting show with a dynamic plot arc and it got canceled. They were able to show us where they were going, but it had to be very rushed.

    4) Deadwood. At least the first three found ways to give us a little more–Homicide with a TV movie, Firefly with a big-screen movie, and Dollhouse with a handful of epilogue episodes. But Deadwood wasn’t done with its story when HBO canceled it. We were promised two follow-up movies, and seven years later, WHERE ARE MY TWO MOVIES???

    5) Boomtown. This examined the same events from different points of view and featured complex and compelling characters. So, naturally, NBC decided that the second season should do none of that, and then aired the final episodes in unpromoted clusters so that you couldn’t find them. Stupid NBC.

    6) Southland. Again with the NBC. The first season was so good, and then they dropped it. Fortunately TNT picked it up, and the excellence continued, but it won’t be coming back next year.

    7) Freaks and Geeks. You know, I’m getting mad at NBC all over again.

    8) Pushing Daisies. I have never seen anything like this show. It was like tasting colors. It was like hearing the scent of a thousand fruits and spices.

    9) Arrested Development. I haven’t caught the Netflix season yet, but this show had more life in it. And it also had Jason Bateman in it.

    10) Terriers. Mr. Sandwich was more into this show than I was, but it had some interesting characters and was different. I think the name confused people, and I’d say their loss, but Donal Logue was terrific and I think it’s my loss, too.

    Bonus Round: Mr. Sandwich has some entries.

    Brimstone. “I’m a bit of a soft touch for cop shows and scifi/fantasy.” It was moving from an episodic format to longer-range stories, and he guesses that the whole thing just wasn’t speaking to enough people–but it spoke to him.

    Farscape. “If Star Trek is a ‘wagon train to the stars’, then Farscape is a really fast getaway car in space, but the bank robbers all rob different banks and no one can agree where the safe house is. It was canceled precipitously, and although there was a pair of follow-up TV movies, they felt rushed and inelegant.”

  • Children’s Television Madness

    Watching TV

    My mother always encouraged my brother and me to watch Sesame Street, because (she told us later), it was the only children’s television program she could stand.

    My mother was right.

    Baguette’s favorite shows are Pajanimals–the first show we started watching, back when the episodes were single songs and ran for 3-5 minutes, and by the way we all still love that lullaby–and Sesame Street. While they’ve introduced new characters since my earlier viewing days, it still feels like the same neighborhood.

    So with those two shows, we’re in decent shape (although Mr. Sandwich and I have been known to snark Pajanimals under our breath from time to time). But then there’s the rest of children’s television–or, at least, the rest of the programming on Sprout TV.

    Thomas the Tank Engine
    Based on what I’ve seen, this show is all about knowing your place. When you try to do more than your nature and status permit, disaster ensues. Mr. Sandwich says “It’s British.” I say, more like Ancient Rome. And Thomas’s Gordon could learn a lot from Sesame Street’s Gordon–notably, how not to be a jackass.

    Driver Dan’s Story Train
    The lion drives a train and picks up other illustrations of stuffed animals in sequence. But where’s the story?

    Caillou
    There’s really nothing I can say about Caillou that hasn’t been said before. What a little whiner.

    Poppy Cat
    It took me a while, but eventually I realized that this is a show in which a little girl writes stories about her cat, and then reads them to the cat. The cat and her friends have ridiculous accents. And Egbert is always a tool.

    Super Why
    Mr. Sandwich objects to this show much more than I do. I think it’s the idea that the characters “changed the story,” as their closing theme song says. I figure it promotes reading, but it does go on way, way too long.

    Barney and Friends
    Baguette knows who Barney is, but as far as I can tell, she doesn’t much care. Suits me fine.

    The Berenstain Bears
    Ditto. She and I both seem to find this show equally uninteresting.

    Wibbly Pig
    I really don’t understand what’s happening in this show. I think some child owns a pig, and the pig owns a stuffed animal that is also a pig, and some combination of them imagine things. Or something like that. It does have the MOST ANNOYING SONGS I’ve ever heard. Every episode. But it’s generally a calm show, so we let Baguette watch it before bed.

    What are you watching?

    Photo by Visa Kopu, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

  • My Week, as Told by Twitter

    EggSnob

    Geoguessr

    BangladeshFactory

    Moustaches

    Vacuum

    BaguetteTwitter

    StarTrek

    BruisedToe

    For the record, Mr. Sandwich saved us all from the babbling, screaming monster.

  • These Are a Few of My Favorite Characters

    This week’s Monday Listicles is 10 Favorite Characters in TV and Movies. Where to start? Actually, that’s easy.

    1) Mike Logan. From the original Law & Order. And not that Mike Logan reboot from Criminal Intent, either. I really miss the first five years of the original show.

    2) Frank Pembleton. From Homicide: Life on the Street. Smartest. Detective. Ever. I do not care about your Sherlock Holmes, in whom I do not believe. I believe Frank Pembleton could exist, and we’d be better off if he did.

    3) Geoffrey Plantagenet. From The Lion in Winter. What a twisted failure of a plotter. And yet somehow John Castle makes him seem sympathetic and appealing. At least to me.

    4) James T. Kirk. The Shatner version, regardless of age. Shut up.

    5) Leia Organa. Smarter, snarker, a better shot than her brother or the love of her life.

    6) Marion Ravenwood. She can out-drink a Tibetan giant and go toe-to-toe with Indiana Jones.

    7) John Adams. From 1776. Although I am very fond of the real John Adams, too.

    8) Zoe Washburn, nee Alleyne. From Firefly. Zoe is the action heroine I’ve been waiting for my whole life. Thank you, Joss Whedon.

    9) Justin the rat. From The Secret of NIMH. I know, I know, it sounds weird, but this rat really is pretty dreamy.

    10) Hans Gruber. From Die Hard. I thought about Al Swearingen from Deadwood and Sam Gerard from The Fugitive and Liz Lemon from 30 Rock, but no. Hans Gruber it is. Plus, apparently he’s still alive on Twitter.

    Honorable Mention: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on SNL’s Weekend Update. Because I’m pretty sure those are characters, and only kind of the real Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

  • There Is No Serial Killer in the Back Yard

    When I was in college, I injured my knee and spent six months in a knee immobilizer. This meant that when I was flying, I met every person in the airport. And also on the plane. I was constantly telling the story of How I Injured My Knee.

    The result was that once I was off crutches, the last thing I wanted was to talk to people on planes. So I thought about how to avoid that.

    I have always read a lot, so that’s my usual method of passing the time while in flight. I decided that what I needed was to select my books very carefully. If I read a bestseller, someone would want to know if I liked it, and whether I was going to see the movie, and what did I think of the casting. If I read one of the books for my classes, I’d probably have the great good luck of finding out I was sitting next to the author right after I said I thought it was boring.

    It became clear that there was only one genre that would keep people from striking up conversations: true crime. Over the next couple of years, I read a lot of true crime. (By the way, that last one? Total BS, as is From Hell–both the graphic novel and the movie.)

    My plan worked. No one wanted to talk to the girl reading about Jack the Ripper. And it wasn’t just coincidence–on one flight, a mildly creepy older guy sat down next to me, started to speak, looked at the title of the book on my lap, and stopped mid-sentence. He then talked to the man across the aisle for the rest of the flight. I call that a win.

    Time passed. I stopped reading true crime because I got bored with it. But I did periodically watch movies about fictional killers. And Dennis Lehane’s Darkness, Take My Hand is a novel so scary and so well-written that I had to keep reminding myself that I didn’t actually believe in what he was describing.

    Then a few things happened: I had two miscarriages, and Mr. Sandwich and I read Zodiac and watched the movie based on it. Both the book and the movie are very good. The Zodiac Killer was a really scary guy.

    These things seem unrelated, but they weren’t. I developed mild depression after my second miscarriage, and suffered from insomnia. And since I was already distressed and exhausted, it didn’t take much for me to become unnerved by the Zodiac Killer.

    “But,” you say, “That was decades ago.”

    Of course, and that’s what the logical part of my mind told me (it also told me about how long the odds were). The other part, whatever you might call it, was scared. Not so scared that I wouldn’t go outside at night to hang up laundry–but scared enough to wonder, “What if?”

    My brother, who knows that I enjoy thrillers and history, gave me a copy of The Truth of All Things by Kieran Shields. It involves a number of my interests, including detectives, mystery, and the Salem Witchcraft Trials.

    But I’m choosing not to finish it. Because while I could get through the gruesome murder that takes place at the beginning of the book, later discoveries by the main characters made it clear that the killer was taking actions–and likely had a motivation–that I just couldn’t keep reading about.

    Don’t get me wrong. I was enjoying the book. But I know what gets in my head, and what I don’t need to add. I didn’t need to see the posters for “The Strangers.” Or for any of the “Saw” movies.

    There’s enough ugliness in the world. We can see that today in Boston. I don’t need to go looking for it.