My So-Called Life
Recently a somewhat estranged friend e-mailed me to tell me she was downloading "My So-Called Life" episodes from abc.com, and that there was no one else with whom she'd rather share the discovery of this online trove of teen angst.
What do you say to that?
I'll tell you what you say. You say WHY did I not know you could download those episodes from abc.com!?! And then you CTRL+T post-haste over to abc.com and you transport yourself back to your freshman year of high school when you hung out with Angela Chase and Jordan Catalano like they were three locker doors down from you.
The great travesty of these downloads is that ABC only releases two at a time. Naturally, this was not enough to sate me whose husband had once attempted to purchase the complete series by e-bay, but then got scammed, and learning that the whole gift horse had been unintentionally aborted was like getting my visa application rejected. Or something perfectly melodramatic like that.
So of course I had to turn to Netflix once again, where I'd been reviewing my queue since '52 just to see if the 'Flix had finally stacked its inventory with MS-CL. Well put extensions in my hair and call me Paris Hilton. They totally had it in stock!
Today I re-watched the pilot episode. People, it was totally, like, deep. Like, Angela? Has these, like, intense monologues like, but they're like NOT monologues, because, she's, like, talking to someone else but just, like, babbling on and on...
There really is a beautiful parallel between Angela and Anne Frank in the pilot episode, and I realize now - as I was not keen enough to do as a wee fresher back then - that this, this proram, is her diary, of sorts, that her soul is in hiding and what she wants most of all is to be locked in a secret annex with the boy that she likes. It's probably what I wanted when I was a freshman, too.
Half a lifetime later, and what I want most of all is to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time. Next to the boy that I like. Secret annex notwithstanding.