Jan Brady's Hideous Deformity

Jan Brady brought the angst and self-hate like no other moppet on TV. She was the Jacques in the sunny SoCal world of the Bradys, the reminder of the real world of teenage dismay and inward rot in the midst of all the hair-flipping hijinks. We, as sitcom viewers, did not enjoy the likes of this kind of adolescent character assassination again until that fun-free dullard Vanessa Huxtable. Thanks, Brady writers!

In the classic George Glass episode, Jan loses the affection of yet another human male to her lovely and charming sister Marcia, which naturally causes Jan to analyze herself to try to answer the existential question, "Why am I, Jan Brady, so replusive?" She thinks she finds her answer in the mirror, where she finally notices the hideous deformities on her face. Freckles.

Until I saw this episode as a kid, I had no idea that freckles were supposed to be gross. It had never occurred to me that I might want to try to rub them out with lemon (as Jan tries to, because Jan is no scientist), or at least duck my head in shame and load up on the foundation. But I knew, as everyone knew, that Jan's freckles were not the problem; Jan's black hole of a personality was the problem. Even fictional George Glass probably dumped her sooner or later.

Then one day in middle school, my lab partner suddenly said, "It'd be really cute if your freckles were just on your cheeks instead of all over your face."

Oh my lord, it's true! People think freckles are ugly! Fortunately, though, I thought my lab partner was pretty damned silly, so I decided to keep my face just as it was.

Since then I have learned that black & white photography really brings out the freckle goodness in a face. Had Jan seen herself like this, she would've immediately drowned herself in the toilet.

The middle photo is b&w with a blue filter -- look, just be glad I didn't give you the old High Contrast Blue Filter, because you might've been moved to call the infectious disease department. The right photo is with the red filter -- freckles gone! Alien perfection achieved! Jan, come over here -- I've found a solution... and send over Clark Tyson!

Jan, Jan, Jan. The other Brady kids had positive identifying characteristics; look where Jan fits in:

1. Marcia - perfect
2. Greg - self-confident
3. Peter - happy-go-lucky
4. Jan - self-hating
5. Cindy - plucky
6. Bobby - Bobby

Geez, Jan, way to deliver the schadenfreude. If there was nothing in a given episode to further erode Jan's self-esteem, it was a wasted thirty minutes.

But thank goodness for her and for the lovely Eve Plumb. Jan brought the real human doubt and the insecurity that balanced the show's cheeriness. Jan made regular kids feel better about not being Bradys. Jan made the ordinary superior.

But, seriously -- what was the shit on her face?

Tower Push! Fovie Promo

Miss Menaire tried to blackmail the wrong group of women. Bye, Miss M!

Kidnapped Wife! Fovie Promo

Even kidnappers like to be tidy. Out, out, damn lipstick!

"Deadwood" (2004-2006)

I heard the charmingly no-nonsense David Milch interviewed on The Treatment; at Elvis's prodding, he did talk a bit about his father's rough-and-tumble and not entirely legal background, but he never did explain what gave him the balls to pitch a show about the Wild West in which the chief scumbags talk like Shakespearian seconds and the entire cast revolves around a 60-year-old English actor who isn't exactly known for his good looks.

Sounds great, Milch. We'll clear a place in the schedule for it right now!

My friend Killian insisted that "Deadwood" was a great show long before I got around to watching it. She forced me to watch part of an episode with her once, and of course it happened to be the most fellatio-heavy show in the entire history of the series. Good one, Killian. No thanks.

But fortunately I gave it another go and rented the DVDs, and I cannot believe how attached I've become to the rogues and murderers and Indian heads in boxes and corpse-eating pigs and delicate ladies stranded in the sea of filth that is the town of Deadwood. That 60-year-old Englishman turned out to be my most deepest love on the show, a character who as vile and noble and sexy and repulsive, lovable and cruel as... let's say Regan and Goneril as played by Lear. A bossman's gotta do what a bossman's gotta do.

This show is a miracle of casting and of stellar writing and plotting. And don't miss the gorgeous opening credits and theme song; the love and care that made this show extends to all corners of the production.

"Deadwood", huh? Sure, Milch. Sounds great. We've also got a pilot ready for a Custer-meets-Chekov show in which Custer tries to sell his house to Indians. And we've got a great Watergate-meets-Jane Austen show in which G. Gordon Liddy is played by Hugh Grant, and Nixon can't choose between his love of hotel theft and his devotion to his shit list.

(Bonus post convergence: 20 years after his turn in this dopey and appalling "Red Dawn", Powers Boothe shows his real stuff by swaggering around Deadwood as Cy Tolliver, who is, let's say, the Regan and Goneril as played by Gollum.)

I just watched "Red Dawn" (1984) for the first time

This movie was a touching story about brotherly devotion. Also, it was a celebration of the natural beauty of the American Southwest. Finally, it was a paean to the sheer pleasure of watching teenagers massacre people.

Well done, John Milius. According to the news from the last ten years, it's like your dream has come true!

Ed Begley Jr. Spans Time

If you watch Battlestar Galactica Classic on Hulu right this minute, you will see Ed Begley Jr. flying a raptor or some such, and then you will see him thirty years later during the commercial breaks, starring in a DirecTv commercial.

That's a pretty neat FTL jump of your own there, Ed!

I am mortified by Dancing With the Stars

I was flipping channels a few days ago and landed on Dancing With the Stars.

Why? Why this show be like this? I no speak good after see show.

I understand the premise of this show to be that we want to watch professional dancers yell at non-professional celebrity dancers, who then dance in front of a trio of loud-talkers who give them points, and also take them points away as punishment for bad rumbas. I don't know who these judges are, but they are very animated people who seem to care deeply about dance. They are frightening.

I think watching celebrities fail at something difficult in an artistic field that is not their own is supposed to make me feel good, or vindicate my non-celebrity status, or maybe, to be more charitable and glass-slipper-half-full, make me identify with the participants, who it seems are just regl'r folk like me who take adult education classes. Except that their adult education class is televised, and they are forced to sit next to Marie Osmond. (I know that was a previous season, but I saw clips of her fainting and her hair and her big face and her chipmunk cheeked demon dolls on the news at the time and I won't forget it any time soon.)

Whatever this show is supposed to make me feel, it primarily makes me feel like hiding my face under a blanket. If I can still hear the show from under the blanket, it makes me want to press my face into the blanket until I suffocate and no longer have to hear the stress and the mugging and the pleading for votes and the clinging -- god, the clinging! -- in my dreams.

And the outfits.

I am so deeply mortified by the skits that the couples do before and after and, god knows, during their dances that I can't believe the producers manage to get people -- people who have accomplished some something in life! breathing people, with souls! -- to make those faces and paw each other and act like the least talented middle school drama troupe ever formed via a sign-up sheet in the cafeteria.

Why the mugging? I've sat and watched ballroom competitions on PBS, so I know from the tyranny of dance, and I'm familiar with the kabuki theatre of the lipstick and false eyelashes and the Vegas theatre of the showgirl outfits, but I swear I've never seen those people mug. They are all business off of the dance floor. Mugging would muss their makeup. Mugging would take muscle energy away from their lines.

Yet it is required on this show, even from perfectly dignified athletes who are game enough to give it a go with the mock-sexy faces and the exaggerated pouts, but god, I wish they wouldn't. Does being a celebrity willing to go on this show mean that you are not permitted to retain any dignity at all?

The outfits. Professional dance ladies, why butt cleavage? Why cutouts to expose hip bones? Why spangles and ribbons on bathing suits? Why the entire spinal column? The men cannot button their shirts because they must let their shaven, spray-tanned chests say Hello! to the world, I understand, but why no buttons at all, ladies?

I am mortified. No wonder I can't dance.