When I was in grad school, I went through phases of being addicted to various forms trash TV. The best/worst obsession was Degrassi: The Next Generation (I knew about Drake before eh-vah-ree-one… Jimmy should have ended up with Ashley). I could go down that rabbit hole, but not today. If I ever have another lifetime to kill, I’m doing a Degrassi rewatch podcast.
Speaking of Lifetime, another best/worst obsession was Lifetime Original Movies. How many did I watch? Enough to have a top five… so at least five. That’s another rabbit hole for another time, but I was flipping around the guide the other day and could not resist Devil On Campus.
There are just so many things. So many things. Let’s use the format of an old John Mulaney SNL bit.
A Lifetime Original about exploited an exploited woman/women (which, per usual, reeaaaaly stretches the definition of “original”)? I love it!
A bald paunchy, Billy Zane with a New York (or unplaceable?) accent and mommy issues? I love it!
This laudatory write-up I read to determine if it was worth my time? I love it!
If I have to judge Devil On Campus against the sliding scale of other Lifetime Originals, it’s good - you could even say great. When judged against other Lifetime Original Movies. Which is to say, I completely enjoyed this movie on a completely ironic level. I’m willing to accept that finding humor in a story about the exploitation of women in a sex cult makes me a bad person, but you try keeping a straight face at the line, “Claudia, I think you should have sex with Dan.”
Oh, it’s better when Billy says it.
THE CBS SUNDAY MORNING POWER RANKINGS
June 9, 2024
I haven’t watched the “We Are the World” doc (I don’t have Netflix), but I hear it is a hoot. Tracy’s returns to the ground Kalefeh Sanneh recently trod, an interview with Lionel Richie, to capitalize on its popularity.
While I have not watched the doc, I do have We Are the World on vinyl. The song itself is cheesy and entertaining and hard to take unironically detached from the 80s. Witness, “Kidney Now”:
Having listened to the album, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band’s “Trapped” stands out as a legit album highlight. All irony aside, I love it. Do I need to dive into Bruce Springsteen?
With the recent commemoration of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, stalwart military contributor David Martin, gives the story behind the story of the famous photo of Gen. Eisenhower visiting with paratroopers pre-invasion.
Hot historical take: Has Tom Brokaw led us to god up “The Greatest Generation” a bit much? Possibly. But if true, I get it. I will always be in awe of what they did. Also a D-Day commemoration is probably not the forum to debate the finer points. Very few of this generation remain with us - something the show has revisited several times recently.
If there were a Metacritic rating for Julia Louis-Dreyfus, it would be in the nineties indicating “universal acclaim”. I share the following sentiment with Newman:
If social media existed in the time of Seinfeld, this gif would have broken the internet.
I’ll watch Julia Louis-Dreyfus in about anything, but Tuesday may take some emotional preparation.
Also, driving me crazy the whole time: there is an actress of the same name as the correspondent. Natalie Morales played Tom Haverford’s sometimes love interest on Parks and Rec. I kept thinking that it was a similar but slightly different name or a slightly different spelling or something. Nope. Same name. Don’t do that to me universe. It’s not nice to make someone who’s undergone multiple brain surgeries start to question reality.
Becoming a proper appreciator of art is an aspirational goal for whatever the next phase of life is. So in about 20 years, look for me at museums, galleries, and studios near you. Until then, I’ve got Sunday Morning art segments.
My opinion of Washington D.C. is that is the most interesting place to visit. I always enjoy my time there when I go and wish I could spend more time. For my next visit, I’d like to spend a good chunk of time at various Smithsonian museums and galleries. I can probably make a full trip out of it.
While the rustle of a mountain stream featured much more prominently in the ambiance that is this week’s nature segment, there was occasional birdsong. And this little guy made an appearance.
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There were also some deer, which reminds me that this happened outside my window last fall.
I can name something like 15-20 famous astronauts. On a good day, one of those is William Anders thanks to Sunday Morning and this:
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Another astronaut I can name is Roberta Bondar thanks to Letterkenny.
I think you can use your familiarity with the oeuvre of Griffin Dunne to determine if you are Gen X or a millennial. As much as I try to cling to X-enial status, the criterion I just established puts me directly in the millennial category.
Main segment takeaway: Namedropping is fun.
"I would find myself telling stories," said actor-producer-director Griffin Dunne. "And these stories were kind of incredible. And I had people riveted."
And lot of the stories involved people that other people had heard of. "Yes," he admitted. "But I didn't want it to be, like, a name-dropping sort of thing!"
And there were a lot of names to drop.
My favorite namedrop from the segment was the Carrie Fisher story.
As a kid, Poltergeist was one of my favorite movies. It was the first scary movie that was ok for me to watch. I was unaware of the tragic story of his sister who was in that movie.
Quiz Show is one of my all-time favorite movies. I assume he was great as “Geritol Account Executive”.
Was Geritol the Nugenix of the 50’s?
Most of Sarah Langs’s Twitter feed consists of declarations that “Baseball is the best.”
Jan Pauley is the best.
I am lucky enough to know what it’s like to graduate (with a PhD no less!) without student debt. It’s reeeeeeeeeaaaaally nice. I’m all for trying to make this happen (or at least minimize it) for others.
You know, for a while I worried that I might have come off as a little creepy for previously comparing Puerto Rico’s Lilia Luciano to Daniel Craig. But then I saw the headshot on her Wikipedia Page:
Also, does she have a podcast? She has the perfect voice for it. The committee ranked her too low.
Mo promotes his new book Roctogenarians about people who flourish late in life. A roctogenarian profile is also known as a pre-Mobituary.
A song for world conflict. Israel and Palestine in this case. But things haven’t been going so great in Ukraine while you haven’t been paying attention.
Wrap Up
The best restaurant in the world is in Spain apparently.
This after I just gave Spanish food a lukewarm review.
Also, if you are a person who is looking to buy me a present, I need this.