I didn’t post last week because I didn’t finish any books and then about halfway through the week I was like, “Okay, but that has literally never stopped you before???” And I seriously don’t know what I was thinking but it was so ridiculous that I had to tell you all.
I mean, it’s certainly not like other stuff didn’t happen. So here’s a list because honestly my brain is kind of mush.
1. I finally got DDR–yes, Dance Dance Revolution–for my Xbox, so have been playing it almost every day. The thing about DDR is that the songs are the most important and the Xbox has the worst options for songs, I swear. They only have one DDR game with a good tracklist. All of the other ones have weird Japanese songs with NO BEAT. My daughter was watching me play, and I kept missing the arrows and she asked me “Does the pad not work?” and I was like, “No, these dumb songs have no beat.” The proof is that I did just fine on both “Dancing Machine” and “Conga.” So anyway, I need a PlayStation to get a version of the game with a better tracklist.
I look absolutely nothing like this while playing, btw.
I did, of course, buy the version with the good tracklist and have been crushing those songs, thank you very much. But only on basic because that’s just who I am.
2. My daughter went back to campus for spring semester. She’s doing well.
The four phases of my love for Clueless, one of the greatest movies of all time:
Phase I, 1995: The summer Clueless came out, I was visiting my godsisters in Georgia. Every single day, MTV showed some new promo clip or cute little moment with the cast (in character). I specifically remember there was an ad spot wherein Cher and Dionne talked about how they heard sucking on lemons helped burned calories and then did so before eating their salads. I laughed so hard. I was desperate to see the movie. However, my godsisters had just moved to the middle of nowhere and their mom had just started a new job, so we didn’t get a chance to go. And then I went home at the end of the summer and didn’t get a chance to go.
I eventually rented it and watched it on VHS later that year. I liked it. It was fine. I moved on.
Phase II, freshman year of college: One of my friends had the movie on VHS. My school, though close to a major city, was actually quite far from it if you didn’t have transportation, which none of us did. We watched a lot of movies that year. A lot. But we constantly rewatched Clueless. We started speaking in Clueless quotes. We started noticing background details about the movie. We pointed them out. We were probably annoying. (This guy my friend dated said after they stopped dating that we were annoying.) Ask me if I cared? It was glorious.
Phase III, graduate school:Remember how I said that I watched a lot of TV in grad school? I also rewatched a bunch of movies because I found that I wrote papers best when I used movies I knew very, very well as background noise. You know, movies I could pretty much recite line for line as I was watching.
Clueless was one of those movies. But it kind of went beyond that. I actually was so obsessed with it that I screencapped the entire movie. For fun. I spoke almost exclusively in Clueless quotes (there’s a Clueless quote for every occasion). I created a mood theme on LiveJournal. For those of you who don’t know, that takes an extremely long time. Not only did I have to find a picture for every mood, but I also then had to crop them and upload them and etc., etc., etc.
You know, now that I think about it, I was a little nuts in grad school. But I digress.
Phase IV, now: I own Clueless on DVD of course (and VHS, too, naturally), but I may or may not have watched it a time or two or several on Netflix. Most importantly, though, I have introduced my daughter to Clueless, and she enjoys it. Does she love it the way I do? No. Did she consider blowing her road test to get her driver’s license to imitate Cher? Maybe.
Shout out to my daughter for the driving test bit since I wasn’t sure which clip to pick for this. How do you choose your favorite scene from your favorite movie when you love every. single. scene? I mean, they are pretty much all perfection. Even this clip is infinitely quotable — and that’s even before the actual driving test.
So, yes, Clueless is amazing, and if you haven’t watched it already, you definitely should. And if we ever have a conversation, you’ll get about a quarter of the pop culture references I make.
For the A to Z challenge, I’ll be blogging about fannish pursuits (aka things I’m a fan of or have strong feelings about). Tune in tomorrow to see what I picked for D!
As If!: The Oral History of Clueless…by Jen Chaney — Yes. Still. Some more. I am almost finished, though! Here, have a GIF to distract you from the fact that I’ve been reading this since the summer. Also, I just finished the section on remembering Brittany Murphy, and it had me in my feelings.
RIP, Brittany. 😦
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender — I started this on audio but switched to the Kindle version. The author narrates it herself and is decent, but she’s clearly not an actress. I also felt like listening to some podcasts on my commute since I’ve listened to three books in a row. So the audiobook is fine, just not what I was in the mood for.
Also, and more importantly, I checked out The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy from the library! I have never read it before. So exciting! Ah, nostalgia. I used to watch the movie every year, so reading the book should be fun. I’m going to read it Saturday, just because. (Because it’s Halloween, obviously.)
The Englishist 