Tag Archives: netflix

Everything I’ve learned, I learned from ‘Dawson’s Creek’

So, “Dawson’s Creek” is now available on Netflix.

To normal people, that statement probably seems pretty benign. But to anyone (re: girls) who grew up in the ’90′s, that statement means that life outside of our couch has now become non-existent. It means we now have 128 episodes, which roughly equals out to about 5,504 minutes, (oh yeah, I did the math) of ridiculous, overly articulate, teenage angst right at our fingertips. Which means working, sleeping, eating and even breathing if it wasn’t involuntary has now taken a backseat to catching up on the lives of all those wacky Capeside kids.

I’m not proud of this. I wish I was stronger. I wish I could disentangle the show from my nostalgia and make fun of it like the rest of the world.

And I really wish I still didn’t think a 16-year-old Pacey Witter was hot.

But I’m not. And I can’t. And he still is.

The good news, however, is that even if loving this melodramatic 90′s teen soap is lame, the fact can’t be denied that pretty much everything you need to know about life is hidden somewhere within those 128 episodes.

Which is why I’d like to present the following, which I like to call the Tao of Dawson:

Oldest friendships are the best friendships. They’re also the friendships that will royally eff up every future romantic relationship you ever have should they involve someone of the opposite sex.

Aspiring filmmakers are SUPER whiny.

Everything that happens at age 15 is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED AND/OR WILL EVER HAPPEN!!!

Sex is not something to be enjoyed. It is something to be over-analyzed, dissected, elevated to impossible heights and be a never-ending source of despair (both when you have it and when you don’t and even when you kind of have it but not really because something interrupted it).

Most mainstream ’90′s music was SUPER whiny.

Katie Holmes used to be much more humanoid.

Free-spirited blonde chicks do not fair well in life. They end up in rehab, in the looney bin or dead.

Getting drunk, especially when you’re underage, is bad but sometimes you have to do it in order to move the plot along.

It is apparently possible for a teenage boy and a teenage girl, both chockful of raging hormones, to sail around the world for three months alone and not have sex. Also, parents are totally cool with the fact their teenage son has a ladder outside his window that his female teenage best friend uses at all hours for sleepovers.

Everything that happens at age 17 is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED AND/OR WILL EVER HAPPEN!!!!!!!

Even overzealous religious and borderline racist grandmothers can change their stripes.

If your spouse cheats on you, then you divorce them, then decide to get back together, remarry and have another kid after almost two decades after your first kid, you will die a horrible death shortly thereafter.

Being gay in a small town SUCKS.

Being clinically pyscho can be fixed in just a few weeks.

Everything that happens at age 20 is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED AND/OR WILL EVER HAPPEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the end, always choose the guy who ends up with his own show on network TV and not the guy who ends up as an Internet meme.

About these ads

On the 14th & 15th of December, Christmas gave to me…

Two straights nights of watching the cheesy “Holiday Favorites” queue on Netflix while wrapping the aforementioned dog-fur covered gifts.

INCLUDING my all-time childhood favorite “The Christmas Toy.”

When I was five, this Jim Henson made-for-TV movie was the shiz. And it made me believe for way longer than I’m willing to admit that my toys came to life when I wasn’t looking. It also made me cry when the slightly creepy-looking clown toy (SPOILER ALERT!) goes lifeless after getting caught being all non-inanimate.

(And 25 years later, it still brought a small (I said SMALL!) tear to my eye…stupid slightly creepy-looking clown toy).

And then I moved onto the Christmas Classics, which are collections of old (and I mean wicked old…not like you’re-a-teenager-and-30-is-old) Christmas cartoons and shorts. INCLUDING some delightfully (and by “delightfully” I mean “horrifically”) racist ones such as this one:

And one where it proves that whole “they don’t make things like they used to” is complete bunk (pay close attention to how the plot is centered on the quality of the craftsmanship of the toys…Santa was one lazy mofo back in the 30′s). 

And some that just creeped me out (especially because I was sober):

Although I’m thinking tomorrow I may just make an eggnog drinking game (have I mentioned how much I love eggnog?) out of how many things I spot while re-watching these that would make today’s organic-only baby food, Einstein Baby-loving parents of today crap their pants.

Two guys, a girl and not a DVD to be found

The life of a writer is tough. I mean, after so many months, you run out of movies and TV series on Netflix to distract you from the fact that you should actually be spending your time writing.

Which means you now actually have to write.

And no self-respecting writer actually wants to write.

Hell, most of us just do it because it’s easier than data-entry or flipping burgers.

So, we writers are endlessly looking for other ways to distract ourselves from creating the next Mediocre American Novel. And thanks to the whole 90′s nostalgia wave sweeping the country currently and my “never say die” attitude when it comes to procrastination, I have found a new way.

Why the hell can’t you find ”Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place” on DVD? Or Netflix, for that matter? Or, well, pretty much anywhere?

For those of you that don’t remember the show (or are too young to remember…which, if you are, get the hell off my blog, you make me feel old), “Two Guys, A Girl and A Pizza Place” (which was later changed to “Two Guys and a Girl”…because the TV execs apparently finally realized a TV show title should not resemble a haiku…in length or form) was a show that ran from 1998 to 2001 on ABC. From what my old ass remembers about it, it was a good show, not great, but highly entertaining.

But more IMPORTANTLY, it is the show where not one, but TWO of my imaginary husbands got their start. The sitcom featured both Ryan Reynolds and Nathan Fillion as main characters.

Oh yeah...and that guy on the left that no one can ever remember the name of

I mean, I looked everywhere for this show. To no avail. Even Amazon, which has a page for the “complete DVD set,” has the disclaimer, “when becomes available.” Apparently, whichever company owns the rights to it now doesn’t think it would sell well.

Even the Internet pirates let me down. The only place I could find episodes, besides a few 15 minute, low quality videos on YouTube, was some scary eastern European-ish (or possibly Martian, judging by the language) website, which had the first season, but no dice on the other three (which I’m not linking here for fear the TV gods will go on the war path and take it down).

Now, granted, a lot of my frustration stems from the fact I am of the Internet generation, where we literally can have everything at our fingertips. Any information, any image, any video. So the fact that I can’t have something makes me want to throw a Generation Y-sized tantrum.

And so, I say we Gen Yers and Xers no longer stand for this. We want the crappy, laugh-track sitcoms from our youth and we want them NOW. So let’s flood the Internet with our demand for more Berg! And Sharon! And that guy on the left that no one can ever remember the name of!

It is our instant-gratification, self-entitled RIGHT!

Plus, I think we can all agree the world needs even more scenes of a shirtless Ryan Reynolds.

Nom...

P.S. Between obsessively trying to track down episodes, I did do SOME actual writing. So for you suckers hard-working people with actual jobs that want to waste even more time, you can check out my latest two posts for the Weekly Dig, where I bastardize the Bard’s work after seeing Shakespeare in the Park and get all gangster on a trolley. And, of course, my latest Advocate humor column, where I reveal my brilliant new plan to make new friends based solely on their pop culture preferences (you Next Gen Trekkers are in…Original Series? Hit the road, loser).