Criminal Minds at Paley Center - Introduction

First, Monday night was awesome.

Secondly, I drove, like, all over SoCal that day - including going out for drinks all the way out at Shoreline Village in Long Beach after the seminar. Which means I'm still recovering. Which means this recap is much later than I'd meant for it to be. Which means my memory may be fading already. Which means that in order to avoid misquoting people: *this* means they said something sort of similar to what is between the asterix while "this" means that they said exactly what is between the quotes.

Now - onto the recap!

Before they brought the cast and crew onstage, they showed us tonight's episode, which was very good. It was lots of fun to watch in a theatre full of fans. It also went by really quickly. Even though I watch everything on TiVo now, so I'm used to no commericals, I tend to pause a lot to get up for snacks or even to rewind scenes because they were just that awesome so the ending kinda snuck up on me. (The quickness of it, not the general way it ended.)

But I digress. The ep was good. (Reid tells a joke. To a class full of students. I shit you not. And it goes over about as well as you expect it to. And this week's shoutout goes to Numb3rs. And interestingly enough, it is more of a shoutout than a pointing and laughing kind of thing. There was a little bit of mockery, but much less than CSI got.) The ep was really good, actually. No surprise there.

Even better, though, was when it was over and they brought everyone out!

Kristen came first, then AJ, Ed, and Deborah. Which made sense because then no one had to walk past anyone else to get to their chairs. But then they mixed it all up and out came Matthew (who practically bounded down the stairs) then Shemar, Paget, Thomas, and Joe - except that they all sat in the reverse order. (It may be that Kristen, AJ, Ed and Deborah are the smart ones of the group and Matthew and the rest simply messed everything up by sitting in the first seat instead of the last. Or it may be that the Paley Center wasn't really thinking logistically. dunno.)

The point of this excess of information being that everyone in the front row had to awkwardly squeeze past increasingly more people to get to their seat - which lead to Thomas doing a fake dive past Matthew, Shemar, and Paget towards his chair.

Thomas Gibson? Is an absolute freakin' clown.

(and I mean the funny kind, not the scary serial killer kind.)

Sadly, I shall have to leave you hanging for now.

More to come, I promise!

Edited to correct Deborah Spera's name and to include Paget - how did I forget Paget!!!!!!??????

These Are Not the Droids You're Looking For

I made the profound mistake of listening to KROQ's Love Lines as I was out picking up dinner tonight, just to see if it was as bad as I remember.

Dear god, it's worse. Much, much worse.

Right before I turned it off, Dr. Drew was answering the question "I'm 27 weeks pregnant. Is it ok if I use a vibrator?"

(Do these people not have access to Web MD? It's a lot faster and doesn't moralize quite so much.)

The host of course decided that what he was going to jump on was the fact that she was 17. (Which they only knew because they always require that callers state their age. Which not only makes sense from a medical standpoint, it better facilitates slut-shaming as well!)

Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that the first thing out of his mouth after "You're 17. You're pregnant" was "You have a vibrator." A teenager with a vibrator. (lucky bitch, most of us have to make do with all sorts of weird household objects) This is a bad thing? Why, exactly?

But that, dear readers, is not the best part.

Neither is the fact that the question directly before that was from another teen girl who asked "I'm almost 18. I heard that most girls get orgasms at age 18. Is that true?" You might think the best part was Dr. Drew's answer to that question, which was essentially "yes, most women orgasm for the first time in their early 20's."

(because - WTF? That's your answer doctor? Simply to state that most women have their first orgasm in their early 20's? With no other commentary or explanation? As if this all happens for the same reasons that most girls get their period at around age 12 and most kids get their first visit from the tooth fairy in second grade?)

No, the best part was that the same guy that was slut-shaming the pregnant 17 year old for having a vibrator of all things was also the one making fun of the fact that the other teen girl was treating orgasms as if they were simply something that women got at a certain age (like the ability to vote). Because, you know, it's not like the latter idiocy is at all responsible for the stats Dr. Drew was spouting earlier. Don't worry though, dear readers, Stryker knew better than to make fun of the good doctor for pepetuating the idea that physiology alone is to blame foir most women not having their first orgasm until nearly a decade after they hit puberty.

(Cuz, you know. That's the most logical conclusion ever.)


In other, completely unrelated news, the only reason boys peep into windows is because we have antiquated clothing taboos. Plus they are curious. Or something like that.


Girls don't do the same cuz we just aren't as curious. Plus there's not really much that's interesting about the male body. Or something like that.





Move along. There's nothing to see here. These aren't the droids you are looking for.

Things I Would Not Recommend Doing:

* sneaking into mgg's house and dyeing all of his socks the same color

* setting your comments to "moderate before publishing" and then completely forgetting that you have done so, and wondering why no one is commenting anymore

* getting a hold of the first season of Supernatural and deciding that the best time to start watching it is at midnight, in the dark, alone

* saying bloody mary three times in front of a mirror

now guess which of these I've done lately

Comment Policy - Or Lack Thereof

I've never felt it necessary to have any kind of comment policy. Mostly because hardly anyone reads this and even fewer people bother to comment.

But this is the second time in as many months that a newbie (in the case of #2, a drive-by, most likely) has left a comment that discusses a woman's looks in a way that is absolutely irrelevant to the point of either my post, their comment, or both.

So, oh wise and benevolent ones that are gracious enough to grant me the honor of your fine words, to you I say:

It's not just that you insult how a woman looks, or that your manner of doing so make you look like a petty high school bully, it's that you say it as if it has any bearing on the worth of her actions or words.

It's not just that you are crude in your appreciation of a woman's looks, nor just that you try to preempt criticism of such behavior (on a feminist blog, no less) by being "cute." It's not even that you think I give a shit, it's that you have the audacity to come to my blog and make it clear that you don't give a shit about anything that I have said at the same time.

I'm hardly above caring how people look. I have the tag "pretty boys" for a reason.

But there are plenty of places where you can discuss to your hearts content whether or not a woman turns you on. Most of the places I have to spend my time in are places where you can discuss to your hearts content who turns you on.

Just in case the "feminism" in the subtitle didn't make it clear - this blog isn't one of those places.

If you want to comment here on how a woman looks, it had better be relevant to the actual post in question*. Otherwise, expect deletion without prior warning.

*gushing about grand dames like Tyne Daly - even if it's include looks - are considered on topic. Comments that subsist of nothing more than "All I know is that Kellie Martin is hot. Hubba-hubba." do not. Especially when the only sentence in the post about Kellie Martin herself is on her acting abilities.

Prediction: This Christmas, Hollywood Will Discover Teen Girls

It's not unusual for the big holiday blockbusters to become blockbusters because they appeal to the 14-21 crowd. Or, rather, one half of the 14-21 crowd. Everyone knows, after all, that Hollywood is often desperate to capture the attention of teen boys because everyone knows that they are the ones who go to the movies all the time, and will go again and again to the over-hyped movies.

So, watch out for lots of freaked out critics this coming Christmas, when the two biggest blockbusters are going to be made that way by the other half of the 14-21 crowd. Because not only will Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince will be coming out late November, but Twilight is set to come a mere three weeks later.

What isTwilight you ask? Twilight, for those of you that have been living under a rock, is a YA series about vampires and full of teen angst. It's also going to be the blockbuster that no one expected.



When it was announced a while ago that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was going to be broken up into two movies, who didn't cynically think "Oh, so you'll break up DH, but you still kept OotP all in one movie. wtf?" Yeah, I'm sure we're all believing that this is all about staying true to the source material and not at all about WB getting worried that their HP cas cow is almost over.



And WB should be especially worried about HP, because while they may have other blockbusters in the works, they don't really have any that are made to appeal to the demographic that made the HP movies such huge successes. The HP books may have been initially made famous by adorable 9 year old boys sporting fake glasses and lightening scars, but it's the teen girls that have been most consistent about showing up in their Hogwarts gear for the midnight screenings of the HP movies as well as the latest Midnight Magic Parties.

Both the books and the movies appeal to a wide variety of people, and neither would have done as well as they had if they hadn't. But that doesn't change the fact that the core audience for the HP movies is the very one that Hollywood has consistently pretended doesn't exist. The one that they make half-hearted attempts to lure into the the theatre every so often, and then pronounce not worth bothering for when their often lame attempts flop.



Which brings us to Twilight. The movie that MTV ignored until their rights expired, despite the fact that it's also based on the books one that the teen girls (and a good number of adult women) I know cannot stop talking about. Yes, my cousin and her friends are all still looking forward to HBP, but it's the casting announcements for Twilight and the speculation about Breaking Dawn - the upcoming fourth book - that dominates the conversation whenever the subject of books and movies come up.



Anyone who had bothered to check Amazon.com's top ten last summer wouldn't have been surprised to find various versions of the Harry Potter books dominating the list. What went largely unnoticed, however, was that all three of the books from Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series were consistently on the top ten throughout the summer as well. (Unnoticed enough that my store ran out of our 200+ copies on the first day.) If you need any further proof of the insane popularity of the books and the huge anticipation for this movie, just go to the MTV movies blog post that's prefaced by the announcement that the number of comments on their first post for Twilight left all other comment threads in the dust.

For years (decades?) Hollywood has said that teen girls don't go to movies - or if they do, they go to whatever their boyfriends want to see. HP has already shown that not to be true, but it's not widely acknowledged for fear of scaring off the HP fans who aren't teen girls. (cuz girls have cooties, yannow)

Juno has helped, but adults like to pretend that their teen girls are completely unaware of sex, so it's popularity among that group has been largely ignored. As has the fact that pre-teen crushes on Harry and Ron have grown more adult in past few years.





Plus, god forbid they mention "teen girls" and "Oscar worthy" in the same sentence.

But all this pretending that the adults are doing isn't going to last when Twilight hits the screen.



(shirtless vampires, oh my!)

ps - also expect a more than decent box office performance by YA novel inspired and October release Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, starring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, thus solidifying the trend.



pps - expect Kirsten Stewart to blow everybody's socks off as Twilight's Bella as well.



ppps - Will someone please make sure that she, Ellen Page, and Emma Watson all continue to have roles worthy of their talents? thxbai

Girlie Books

heh.

For all the talk about how required fiction in schools is very girl centric, the truth is that while most well-read women have read a decent number of the classic "boy stories" there are very few well-read men who have read Little Women, Anne of Green Gables or the like. (The one exception being Little House on the Prairie which actually is sometimes read in school, owing in equal parts to the TV show and Laura Ingalls Wilder herself being a teacher, imo.)

And this is why I love Buffy. Because it's written by someone who has actually read Little Women - or at least is aware enough of the story to know the special place that Christian Bale as Laurie occupies in our ....hearts.

On a similar note, the closing quote from the latest episode of Criminal Minds was from the creator of our dear Anne Shirley*.

For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won....

Yeah. There's a reason why I love Criminal Minds.

Well, several, actually. :)




(CM screencaps from Oracle of Quantico)

Speaking of TV shows that make me like TV...I finally saw last weeks episode of Numb3rs - "Power" - and wow. If only rape could be dealt with even half that well on even half the crime shows on air.



*I admit it. It took me a few times to realize that "Lucille" = "Lucy" :)

Apparently, You Can Never Be Young Enough

feministing and copyranter have both weighed in on the creepiness factor in this ad.

What I find interesting though, is that this ad is from Tiger Beat. A magazine that (assuming it had the same purpose and demographics in 1972 as it does now) is for

1) teen and pre-teen girls

2) who are "obsessed" with boys.

The model in the ad is not standing in for a grown woman - as a commenter at feministing argues - she is standing in for a teen girl only several years older than herself. I rather suspect the shampoo maker used a sexualized pictures of a very young girl to sell it's product not just because our culture infantilizes women, but also because it half-neuters teen girls - they are sexualized, but god forbid they are sexual or have desires of their own.

So, how does one use sex to sell something to teen girls if one cannot be seen as encouraging sexual behavior in teen girls? Especially, god forbid, by acknowledging that they like to look at men and boys. Even in a magazine that is generally bought for the pull-out posters of the pretty boy of the day. (And, whatever one may think of the idea, using sex to sell products to the readers of Tiger Beat is a perfectly logical route to take.)

Well, one fetishizes "innocence" - ie, virginity.

And ends up with something even creepier than what one was trying to avoid in the first place. And yet somehow more acceptable to society. Which is a whole 'nother level of creepy altogether.

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Number 1 Reason Why the Playboy/WW Thing Annoys the Crap Out Me

(on the rare occasions that I think it's worth thinking about at all)

....are we to expect a naked, body-painted Batman on Playgirl in the months leading up to this Summer’s Dark Knight?

Pink Raygun

God, I hope so… I would totally buy that.

Liz - in the comments at The Beat.

As if.

and I seriously cannot read the rest of the comments because not two down from Liz's is another "sex is power!" comment. if sex is power then why is Playgirl such absolute crap?


AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Books for Boys - and Girls

I'm dropping in from my blogging vacation to say that this conversation made me think what was said when someone asked "are there enough books for boys?" at one of the YA panels at last spring's LA Times Festival of books. The panel was made up of M.T. Anderson, Coe Booth, John Green, and Nancy Werlin, in case anyone cares.

1) Everyone agreed that this was (mostly) bullshit.

2) John Green partly dissented. But his argument was not that there aren't enough books for boys, but more that most of the books with teen boy protagonists tend to be, well overly stereotypical. They are almost always heavy on the action and adventure and light on the emotional chaos of being a teen boy. In other words, there are too many Eragons and not enough An Abundance of Katherines. Although, needless to say, that's not quite how he put it.

3) Everyone agreed that the best way to get your book challenged and/or sent back with lots of red marks from the publisher/editor was to include a female protagonist that has sexual desires/experiences (like, gee, most teen girls) and isn't punished for having them (sadly, not quite as universal).

And on that note, in case anyone cares what I've been doing during my unplanned vacation from blogging: I've been out of state for Thanksgiving, interviewing for full time library jobs, and thinking really wicked thoughts about this fictional man and this real one. Not, um, all at the same time.

(more pretty pictures here - you have to look for mgg yourself to see them - I'm too tired tonight to get around the site's security)

PS - because I know everyone cares - my niece can read and write now. (sort of)

XI

I just got home from being at work (or on my way to and from work) since 9:15 this morning


........only to discover that tonight's Criminal Minds season premiere has been erased from the PVR.



Now I have to wait another week before I get my first Matthew Gray Gubler fix in months.

I want to smash something - only it would wake everyone else up.

One Last Thing....

...about the meeting for YA librarians.

The conference room we were in had all these celebrity "Read' posters up on the walls. (For some reason Sean Connery holding a book about Scotland sticks in my mind.) One of the posters that was almost directly across from me was of Orlando Bloom.

It was really quite distracting.

I rather suspect that we have all of our meetings in that same room.

So - I'm wondering if it would be better to sit on the same side of the room as I did this last time, that way I know I'll have something to entertain me if the meeting gets boring, or if I should make sure my back is to the poster so that I don't miss anything important.