March 14th, 2008, 5 Comments »
Apologies for the light blogging this week, but it’s the first week back, you know? My calendar is positively blue with appointments, etc. It’s been great, but a shock to the system after a year of precious little socializing.
The other thing that’s weird is that, over the past year, I had maybe three time-specific commitments a week. We’ve been very busy, but most days I could choose what I wanted to do when. Alas, no more.
Anyhow, being busy and lame, I’m going to cheat and highlight an old blog post that lives on in comments. It’s a short little thing called “Worst Baby Names Ever”, but it’s accrued 30,000 visitors and 130 comments since I wrote it three years ago. People seem to love coming by to complain about their own name, or mock other people’s.
The most recent comment made me laugh:
Ok I’m dating a man named Richard Panek. (Dick Panek) And if we get married my name will be Kayla Mae Panek.
Given my last name, I shouldn’t throw stones. But that’s a classic.
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February 6th, 2008, 15 Comments »
Last night we were watching episode nine from season two of Veronica Mars. It was pretty lame (with the exception of a scene featuring Buffy alumni Charisma Carpenter and Alyson Hannigan), and featured an old television convention. Here’s an excerpt from the TV.com episode recap:
Neptune High School, classroom – Ms. Hauser’s sex education class is in session. Veronica and Duncan are in attendance. It’s welcome to parenthood as the students are asked to couple up and look after a baby doll which has sensors to detect how it is cared for.
This is a TV classic. In sex ed (or ‘health’ or ‘family planning’) class, students are forced to take care of an egg or baby doll for a week. The intent, of course, is to impress upon them how much work it is to take care of a baby, and thus compel to remain baby-free.
Hijinks always ensue, and there’s usually a moral lesson about who’s really the responsible kid, or a disclosure of someone actually being pregnant, and so forth.
I never did this in high school, despite it apparently being quite fashionable at the time. Did you?
Name That Plot Device
I started assembling a list of all the shows that have used this convention:
- Veronica Mars
- Beverly Hills 90210 - Julie says she remembers this, but I couldn’t find it. Does anybody recall egg-related fun on this show?
- Degrassi Junior High - In the first opener of season two, the kids have to take care of eggs. If I recall correctly, Spike gives her egg to
Snake Shane, the father of her baby. I think Snake screws up and breaks the egg.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer - In “Bad Eggs”, the Scooby Gang is given eggs to take care of. In a Whedonesque twist, there are nasty things inside the eggs which take over the minds of the eggs’ owners. Xander boils his egg for safe-keeping. In unrelated news, a couple of cowboy vampires come into town.
Can you name other examples of the egg-equals-parental-responsibility gimmick?
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