Ten Ways to Get Rid of Your Vanessa Effing Abrams

Everyone encounters at least one Vanessa Fucking Abrams in her life. These are awful, annoying people who are enthralled by their own hipster-ish lifestyle, act as though anyone who chooses a different lifestyle is crazy/stupid, fuck up the lives of most of the people around them, and manage to offend you merely by existing.

So, I've decided to make your life easier by giving you ten ways to solve the VFA problem*:

1. Shove her into the path of an oncoming F train. ("When you're a Humphrey, you're always on the F train.")

2. Asphyxiation via her own stupid American Apparel "hooded scarf".

3. Get the Chuck Bass in your life to seduce her and give her an especially virulent (and fatal) form of syphilis.

4. Pull a Kevin Spacey in Se7en and chain her to a table while force-feeding her Annie's organic frozen turkey dinners until her stomach explodes.

5. Horrific "accident" involving the espresso machine at the coffee bar she (of course) works at.

6. Run her Vespa down on the Manhattan Bridge.

7. Forced marathon viewings of The City. Inevitably, she will claw her eyes out from boredom.

8. Call up the Blair Waldorf in your life and sit back and watch the carnage, pineapple mojito in hand.

9. Lure her to an impromptu "Save this building!" protest that takes place in a building about to be demolished.

10. Arrange for her to meet Michael Moore, then tip him over so that he crushes her.

Boom. You are welcome.

*These are not things you should actually do to anyone in real life. I am not advocating murder, because, as previously mentioned, I am not a serial killer.

On Beastiality

(How's that for an SEO title?)

Beauty and the Beast came out when I was about four years old. I don't remember seeing the movie for the first time, but my parents tell me I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

I do remember begging my parents--in that entitled, naggy way four-year-olds have--to buy in on VHS. (Side note: Remember VHS? Good times. Then again, you can't have commentary or extras on VHS, so really, I'm glad we've moved on to DVDs.) Though I didn't watch the tape to the point of destruction, it's fair to say my mom (and dad) soon came to hate "Be Our Guest," and looked forward to the start of the school year. They did, however, indulge me and buy me a really awesome Belle costume for Halloween. I looked pretty adorable:



My attraction to Beauty stemmed primarily from my love for its heroine--a love that only grew as my childhood years passed. Belle wasn't like previous Disney princesses. She loved her kooky inventor father and, most of all, books.

(Also, I totally loved the Beast. To the point where I preferred him in his Beast-ly form and lovingly treasured the plastic model of him I got at Pizza Hut. Even at that early age, I was weird. Though I think it was mostly that I didn't like Human Beast's long hair. And his fur looked soft.)

But here we have a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg situation. Did I become a bibliophile because my natural inclination toward reading was reinforced by a positive role model, or did I just pick her to model my life after?

If the latter is the case, I'd like to take this opportunity to give the entire Disney operation the finger, because I've suffered quite a bit of disillusionment and heartbreak because of them and, more specifically, this movie. Don't get me wrong: It is my second-favorite 2-D movie (Lion King represent). Hell, it got nominated for Best Picture that year. But Belle's ostracization from her peers was romantic, even a little glamorous. She didn't seem to suffer all that much from being smarter than most of the people in her town. Yeah, some old hens sang about how odd she was, but she seemed to get along pretty well in life. And--spoiler alert!--she's rewarded with an awesome life in a huge castle with a dream library and a pretty cool (if a little hirsute) dude for a husband.

Granted, this sort of thing happens in every other Disney "princess" movie. With Beauty and the Beast, though, it feels like more of a betrayal, because I'm Just Like Her. So, if we follow Five-Year-Old-Girl Logic, all those things she gets should also be mine, right?

But in the real world, the Beast is never a Prince in disguise; he's only a Beast, and no amount of wishing or loving will change that. Castles are pretty expensive, not to mention damp and drafty even in the summer. And if you read Lord of the Rings every year and love Battlestar Galactica and read books about superstring theory, people will only ever see you as a Nerd.

On the Emmy Noms

THEY'RE HERE! THEY'RE HERE! Oh boy oh boy ohboyohboy!

Oh. Boy.

Look, I'm not one of those people who constantly rails against the mob nature of our society. I do think it's silly that some of the real quality shows on TV go largely unwatched, but I have a basic sense of how the world works, and that's fine.

But the Academy has seriously lost its brain. Again. SOME MORE. These people are supposed to love TV just as much as I do...Or at least know as much about it, if not more. And they go and nominate Tony Shaloub again for Best Actor in a Comedy?! Guys. You made the right call kicking The Piv the fuck out of the nominations--and I'm grateful for that because, seriously?--but there are so many others out there that are deserving. Shit, I would rather see Josh Radnor in there, and he's not even the best part of How I Met Your Mother.

(It is nice to see HIMYM get some love, though. Best Comedy! NPH as Best Supporting in a Comedy! I like to attribute this love to the fact that I started watching the show a month ago. Also, Dr. Horrible is nominated for an Emmy. Awesome.)

Funny that Kiefer gets a nod only for 24: Redemption, but I would have been more than happy to see him out of Best Lead in a drama if that meant EDWARD JAMES OLMOS would make it in. But no. ZERO Battlestar Galactica love, which is absolutely unacceptable at this point in time. Not to shit all over Simon Baker, because he is hotter than a young sun, but...Over Olmos? Really, voters? Same with Mary McDonnell. This was perhaps the best season yet for her character, and...nothing.

Continuing with the appalling Drama nonsense...No Connie Britton or Kyle Chandler? Get rid of Mariska Hargitay (sorry, Mariska; nothing personal, I assure you) to make room for Britton, and Simon Baker or Hugh Laurie for Chandler. THE HAIR DESERVES ITS DUE. (Laurie is amazing, don't get me wrong, but we get it, already.) And to leave the show out as well? Take Dexter out; the third season still didn't live up to the greatness of the first, and Friday Night Lights had a fantastic season. Furthermore, get House the fuck out of there and put BSG in.

The writing and guest-acting noms are a little screwy as well. Four episodes of Mad Men seems like a little overkill, no? And three of the guest comedy noms are for 30 Rock.

...


Guys, is 30 Rock the Will & Grace of the Emmys, now? Oh, God. RUN, TINA. RUUUUUUUUUUN!

Welcome to Geektown

Joss Whedon, Ron Moore, Seth Green...Be still, my nerdy heart.

The Good, The Bad, and The Interesting

So, after immersing myself in a world of hilarity and pathos, I decided my next adventure in the land of "TV Shows I Should Have Started Watching A Long Time Ago" would be...Heroes.



No, I didn't suddenly take leave of my senses. I had heard all the reasons to not watch. I mean, I was working at EW when the story ran that explained everything that was wrong with the show. And everyone I talked to said, "Nonono, that way lies badness. There is no happy ending there." But, being one of those people who has to figure these things out for herself, I decided to take the plunge anyway and catch it on Netflix's instant whatever. Also, I would be lying if I said half my reason for watching the show wasn't just to see Zachary Quinto in action. (What? He was really great in Star Trek, okay? It's not just because he's incredibly attractive.) I did promise myself I'd stop after the first season.

(For those who care, my promises apparently mean nothing, as I promptly rushed through the rest of the series as fast as the episodes could load. Definitely a mistake.)

After I got over my initial, brutal disappointment that Quinto wasn't in the first seven effing episodes of the first season, I immediately knew why I hadn't started watching the show before: It was absurdly addictive. And it somehow didn't feel like a complete retread of X-Men. I'm not altogether sure how the showrunners accomplished that, but, y'know, props. Anyone who can get me to zip through an entire season in a 36-hour period deserves that much, at least.

I did have a few problems with the first season (and many, many more with the subsequent ones), but they mostly followed from the show simply having too many storylines going; and worse, the characters in those storylines were boring, and had really poorly defined powers. (Seriously, can anyone tell me what the fuck Niki's power was, other than...being a multiple personality? Super strength with that one personality? Whaaaaat. Ever. Also, Greg Grunberg, I love you, but you need to smack some bitches over there for making you really irrelevant most of the time. Get Jaybrams to write you into another pilot or something.)

On the whole, though, I was enthralled for all 23 episodes. While some of the credit goes to the pretty riveting Bennett family saga and my inexplicable love for first-season Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar, you are also delightful to look at), I have to lay the rest at the feet of my new favorite TV serial killer: Sylar. (Sorry, Dex.)

Sylar is literally the only reason I'll continue watching this shell of a good show next season. Well, the hope of Sylar. God knows what the fuck is going on, with that third season finale. Again, I love Adrian Pasdar, but not at the expense of Quinto.

The funny thing is that Sylar shouldn't be an interesting character at this point -- but he is. He's had several chances at redemption and fucked all of them up -- purposefully, for the most part. He's pretty much just pure evil, and pure evil gets old rather quickly. But the way Quinto plays it is just... delicious. The spark in those alternately soulful/less eyes when he's stalking his prey is magnetic; I could watch him glare at people all day. (Seriously. I thought David Boreanaz had the Evil Glare down as Angelus, but Quinto just brings it to a whole 'nother level. Maybe it's the amazing eyebrows?) And you can still see the tiny part of him that made that noose after his first kill, and how deep he buries it. You can see the part of that spark that's built on ambition and the need to be special.

Clearly, I'm not a serial killer. I don't really have that capacity in me. But on a fundamental level, I understand Sylar because I've felt that way every day of my life. I know I'm not alone, too; everyone wants to be special. But people like the fictional Gabriel Gray and I, we have this crushing need to be superlative. Not just special: the special-est. His struggle to balance that hunger with the reality that there comes a point when you really just can't be any better...That's one of the oldest human struggles. Remember Cain and Abel? Abel didn't die because of some serpent's curse. He died because God named him superior to his brother. That ate Cain up inside--how could God want fruit and vegetables instead of fresh lamb?--until finally a lightbulb went off over his head and fratricide was born.

It could also be that seeing Sylar get the shit kicked out of him is always good for a laugh. Seriously. It's somehow very cathartic and funny whenever someone stabs him in the face, because he screams in an immensely satisfying way and then glares and starts with the bloodletting. (Incidentally, I love that Sylar wears Converse a lot of the time. Like, he may be a serial killer, but damnit if he doesn't love his Chucks. Is he secretly a hipster? I know he was supposed to have grown up in Queens, but maybe his murderous rampages come from having spent too much time in Williamsburg? He did kill that guy in the Ramones shirt...)

So! In conclusion! Fixing Heroes is pretty easy: Less characters and repetition, more Quinto and Sylar. Boom. You are welcome.

How I Met Battlestar Galactica

There's no denying the fact that the last...six months or so of my life have been somewhat less than awesome. In fact, the I've spent vast majority of that time either in a state of complete mania and panic or catatonia. I always knew adult life posed its own unique challenges, but this has all seemed a bit excessive. I fucking get it, Universe.

So, with the collapse of my entire life plan (boyfriend, career, housing, financial whatever), and without any sort of employment in which to immerse myself, I naturally returned to my first, best method of coping: TV.

I love Friday Night Lights more than most people, and it really is very relatable, but for some reason it was more of a Band-Aid than actual healing tissue. (I'm talking about biological tissue here, not Kleenex.) Apparently my worldview was so thrown off-kilter I needed two radically different four-season-long shows to get it back on track. It took Battlestar Galactica to put my problems into context, but it was How I Met Your Mother that taught me how to solve them.

I started out with my beloved Battlestar Galactica. [SPOILER ALERT for the next paragraph, if you haven't watched the show all the way through.] The concept of having your home eradicated, your species' entire future in doubt, spoke to my melodramatic streak, and I adopted that feeling. I wallowed in it. And the episode after they discover "Earth" is nothing more than an irradiated cinder, that their reason for living was all just a lie (4x11, "Sometimes a Great Notion")...Well, a character's death was never more poignant for me than when Anastasia Dualla--a character I didn't even like, mind you--pulled out her gun after one last happy moment and put a bullet in her brain. She worked until they wouldn't let her; she loved until her heart gave out. She fought until she couldn't. And that was the feeling I was struggling with: Once your life is blown all to hell, and everything you've ever believed has been proven a lie, how do you go on? How do you find another reason? Are there any other reasons?

Again, I wallowed in these questions for a while. It was only natural. (Gossip Girl's funeral episode also contributed to this period of deconstruction. What happens when you're measured and found wanting, but you never get another chance to be measured? What happens when you're just not enough?)

I didn't intend to leave my existential crisis anytime soon, but thankfully the TV gods intervened and sent me the first three seasons of How I Met Your Mother on DVD. (Well, they sent my roommate the first three seasons. It amounts to the same thing.)

Of course, I blew through those three seasons (and SurftheChannel'd the fourth) in no time and loved every hilarious, sweet, realistic second. Granted, these characters are a good six to ten years older than me, but they're wrestling with the exact same issues as I am.

Logically, I knew the odds of staying together with the first person you ever dated, or keeping the first job you ever have, are astronomically small, but for some reason I always had this horrific sense of shame that accompanied thoughts of that not happening. HIMYM finally got it through my thick head that it is okay for you to be unlucky on the first try. That it does happen with some (Lily and Marshall), but that even those who seem really well-suited for each other don't make it (Ted and Robin). Oh, and [SPOILER ALERT if you haven't gotten through season three] that sometimes what you really wanted was in front of you all along (Barney and Robin, which, by the way, I am such a fucking fangirl 'shipper for them it is ridiculous: "But with you, the trouble doesn't seem so...troubling." God bless you, NPH).

The fourth season continued drilling those ideas into my head, but one of my favorite moments in the entire show came in the finale:

Ted: This is a disaster. How am I going to come back from this?
Lily: Okay, I'm just going to ask this. Do you really want to come back from this?
Ted: What's that supposed to mean?
Lily: Architecture is killing you, Ted. And it's killing us to watch it killing you. You're like that goat with the washcloth. You want it so bad, and every time the world tries to take it away from you, you keep grabbing it. But, you know what? It's just a washcloth. Why do you even want it?
Ted: Because I have to be an architect! That's the plan.
Lily: Screw the plan! [...] Look, you can't design your life like a building. It doesn't work that way; you just have to live it and it'll design itself.
Ted: So I should just do nothing?
Lily: No. Listen to what the world is telling you to do...And take the leap.

What my leap is remains to be seen, but at least I'm not holding on to that washcloth anymore.

The Bro Code

Just hop on over here and take a listen to the as-narrated-by-NPH-as-Barney-Stinson Bro Code.

Also, I should never listen to commentary tracks on TV shows, because they just make me unfathomably jealous of everyone who works on them. I want to hang out with them.

...I guess maybe it's not too late to get into showbiz? I'm still only 21, after all.