more tv, etc

Following up on yesterday's post re: summer tv . . . I actually didn't really watch the VH1 shows last night. Simon Doonan is hilarious, and of course I love Wil Wheaton, and I've been a Michael Ian Black fan since high school (when The State was on), but I jsut don't really care what any of them have to say about Clay Aiken or the Paris Hilton sex tape. Instead I ended up watching this ridiculous movie on Lifetime starring Fred Savage as the abusive boyfriend of Candace Cameron. It was clearly an early 90s movie based on the terrible hair and clothes (I believe Michelle Phillips was playing Candace's mom--in one scene, she's wearing a poofy white shirt with a denim vest, a shiny black flowered skirt, and black cowboy boots. And Candace wore mom jeans throughout). Anyway, it got pretty intense since (spoiler alert!) Fred kills her. Sally Jessy Raphael played the judge at his trial and gives an awesome and heavy handed speech about how no one helped poor Candace even though they all knew she was being beaten up, and domestic violence is wrong, and everyone who ignores it sucks. I especially thought the character of Candace's best friend sucked, since the night of the murder she got annoyed at Candace for talking about her breakup with Fred and actually said, "This is a party, [Candace]! If you're going to talk about [Fred], then leave!" Dude, for one thing, it was a bowling alley, and for another, the scene takes place a week after their breakup. If a girl can't whine to her friends about her scary ex a week after their breakup, they are not really very good friends. Anyway, it was a slightly hilarious yet sad period piece of a movie.

Speaking of period pieces, I also watched the 2001 Love in a Cold Climate recently (starring the mean stepsister from Ever After and the dude who played young Voldemort in the second HP movie). It was a very compressed version of the two Nancy Mitford novels--clearly entire plot points were missing, like we see the narrator with a baby and she never even mentioned she was pregnant--so it made me want to reread the book and remember all the stuff that was left out. Plus, two nvoels in one--perfect for the flight to ALA! Unfortunately, it seems that I got rid of the book during the great book culling of '07. I can't think why I did that--I think the Mitford sisters are totally fascinating and that novel is really autobiographical--but it's definitely no longer in my possession. Just goes to show why you should never get rid of books! You never know when you might desperately need to reread some crazy novel about young girls and their politics and their romances in the 1930s and 40s.