It's a nice day to start again.

A friend of mine has apparently decided to get himself all ministered up from the Universal Life Church. You know, from the back of Rolling Stone fame. How a variety of television weddings wind up being performed by main characters (Chris in the Morning, Joey marrying Chandler and Monica, etc.). That church.

Here's the conversation Tiff and I had after she informed me of this.
me: So, what you're saying is, if I ever get married, Richard can perform the ceremony? SWEET!
Tiff: yes, he will be able to...and you could probably pay him in booze...
me: done and done. And, while I'm never a fan of the Richard facial hair, I think it would be hilarious to be married by an old-timily made up Richard, n'est-ce pas?
Tiff: it would, yes...especially if he talked old-timey, too...
me: hee. Like an old-timey sports announcer, or auctioneer.
Tiff: or a newsreel reader...
me: heh. What an awesome wedding I'm going to have.

Anybody got a flashlight I can hold under my chin?

In the Year 2000: My So-Called Life Edition
(also includes some Jessy-looking-back-ness and a bit of Krakow-bitching)

OK, this show always seemed to flirt with being a suburb of Pittsburgh, so I may make some Southwestern PA-specific references. My geographic proof: Brian's got a 3 Rivers Arts Festival poster, there's a shot (I think when they go see Buffalo Springfield) of a PATransit bus stop sign (if I was really good, I could tell you what busses--buses?--were on it and figure out where the show took place from that), and the Chases have the Carnegie Museum Romare Beardon poster on the wall. I know, because my parents have the same poster. But are we really to believe the Chase parents would attend a museum show of a working class African-American artist? I'm not buying it...
On with the show!
Angela: Still dyes her hair red. Has her master's in teaching (congrats, Lara!!). Teaches remedial high school English classes. Every one expects her to burn out, but she's still going. Last month, she had a very that-scene-in-Fargo-where-Marge-looks-up-her-old-"friend" dinner with Brian Krakow. Except he didn't cry or lie about dead wives. Or lie when he cries.
Brian Krakow has a wife, who he would totally leave for Angela, if she just said the word. He's a professor in the History and Philosophy of Science Department at Pitt. They've adopted a couple kids, who walk all over him. One of them is a student of Angela's, which is how he says he found her, but really he's been Googling her regularly since graduation.
[A Brian Krakow aside: do boys really think that the answer to attaining the seemingly unattainable girl is to spend as much time following her around, being an assface? 'Cause it really isn't. If you can't be nice to a girl you like who doesn't like you, or has no clue you like her, perhaps you should avoid her, or simply tell her the truth, instead of pissing her off. Just a thought.]
Rayanne = rehab. Then she moves in with Rickie, until he kicks her and her deadbeat boyfriend out. She discovers a talent for fancy restaurant waitressing, spent some time at the Lamont, and now works at Angela's dad's restaurant. The deadbeat boyfriend is no longer a boyfriend, but still on her couch.
Jordan Catalano got caught stealing a car with his older brother. Luckily, his lawyer took pity on him and took him to live with his family in Upper St Clair, where he met a girl named Anna, who taught him to read using comic books and a plastic horse. And I would now what he had been up to very recently, except our stupid president had to interrupt to force his idiotic and extremely selfish plans for Social Security on the country.
Rickie: This is hard! Rickie has a string of older, richer, kinda pushy boyfriends until he finally wises up and leaves the Pegasus alone. This is also when he decides to move off of the Mexican War Streets, and onto the Southside, despite a somewhat sordid history with a clerk at that Carnegie Library branch. One night, he goes to Zythos for 1/2 priced martinis and a blind date (set up by his foster dads, who are still doing the same things they were in the show), which goes tremendously well. Rickie works for Highmark, and is always nice to the temp. Most days, he eats lunch with a girl who likes to pretend 60s-era Pete Townsend is going to marry her.
Angela's former best friend whose name I can't remember: see Kristy. Except with whats-his-face, who she was having sex with. You remember that whole thing, right? Aside from Angela's mom, she's the main person looking for signs of burnt-out-Angela.
Angela's dad left Angela's mom, and for a much better lady. He's patched his relationship with Angela, but Danielle is another story. He finally got that damn restaurant off the ground.
Angela's mom got over Angela's dad surprising quickly, by moving on to an even more ready-to-be-whipped jerk. Angela can't stand him, but Danielle likes all the extra attention and presents. Angela's mom also is even more work-crazed and horrible. For awhile, she tried to lie to new friends and business contacts about the number of marriages she's had. She's also had every photo from Angela's teen years retouched, to "correct" the hair color.
Tino is still doing the exact same thing. Like McConoughy in Dazed and Confused, he gets older but they stay the same age.
Danielle works for the stupid printing business. She always talks about finding a new job, because her mom is always over her shoulder, never trusts her with any responsibility, etc etc, but still needs her mommy. Here's hoping she actually grows a pair sometime soon. Angela just wishes she'd stop calling all the time.

Well? Thoughts?

Cameron Crowe went on to create many of my unrealistic romantic expectations.

KRISTY!: The other day, Tiff revealed that she always thought Kristy was a lesbian. Don't worry, I made the obligatory tasteless softball joke.
I always thought of Kristy as the one who would definitely stick around Stoneybrook and become a total soccer mom. She's the kind of lady who watches Desperate Housewives and doesn't realize that the show is making fun of people like her. As I mentioned in the MaryAnne post, Kristy has several kids, either 3 or 5 (I can't decide). She went to UMass Stoneybrook (wait, was Stoneybrook in Mass or Connecticut? Anyway, she went to the mediocre state school in Stoneybrook). Kristy was that girl on your dorm floor who lived on campus but totally went home every weekend. Kristy never declared a major, because she left in the middle of her sophmore year. Her biology TA had set her up with his roommate, thinking, "Pushy competitive girl + my no-personality, waiting to be whipped roommate = true love, which = he moves out!" This plan worked, and Kristy and--let's call him Lou, shall we?--were married seven months later. 9 months after that, the poorly disciplined children started coming.
Because Kristy is still so competitive but none of the other BSCers have kids yet, she likes to remind them, using her famous blunt honesty, of how "full" her life is, and is that person in all the other girls' lives who is constantly asking when they'll have one of these (gestures to child who has just wormed his sticky way into Stacey's white Paper Denim and Cloth lap).
Of course, Stacey's usually too busy macking on Kristy's older brother to care. She cried all the way through Sweet Home Alabama because it reminded her of what could have been.

And now with this done, I can go back to the normal boring shit I blather on about. Unless I become curious about any other cheesy series' characters' futures, that is. Any requests?

What ever happened to Damone, aside from the Will and Grace cameo?

Mary Anne: When Mary Anne saw High Fidelity, she realized that she was Penny Hardwick, except she had sex in college and has become quite the music snob. With Logan (the college sex, I mean), who was at a different school, having “monogamous” long distance relationships with girls in universities all over the US and one in Canada. Mary Anne majored in psychiatry at someplace like IU or UK (huge school in city made bigger and more hip simply because of the huge school, that kind of thing). She liked the idea of getting away from Kristy, but would never admit to it.
Mary Anne has some crap job for a free newsweekly, like in the classified department or something. Sometimes she gets to write up the weekend listings, and once she got to interview Mike Watt. She thinks her editors just liked the juxtaposition. The powers that be were impressed with the interview, and now get her to write all sorts of things they can't sucker anyone else into doing, which sometimes are the exact pieces Mary Anne wants to write. Only sometimes, though: even she couldn't put a happy face on the "Let's See What Makes These Local Racists Tick" cover story.
Her boyfriend runs a video store, the kind where Teenage Catgirls In Heat is next to that Stan Brakhage documentary that came out a few years ago. He keeps trying to buy it off the ailing and apathetic owner, to very little avail.

Sean Penn's surfer buddy becomes a doctor in a Chicago hospital with an unusually busy emergency room

Can you tell I'm running low on the Ridgemont high memories?

Dawn: C’mon, we all know Dawn only needs 3 letters: L.U.G.
Now she lives at home with her dad and attempts to get a vegetarian catering company off the ground with her shiftless boyfriend and his long, luxurious hippy hair. Rumor has it they've got the food for Trey Anastasio's next birthday party all wrapped up.

the biology teacher with the hot wife starts drinking coffee again

I'm not feeling as accurate about Jessi as the others. Any thoughts or alternative futures for our token African-American babysitter?

Jessi: Jessi winds up in a ballet company in one of those small Midwestern cities with a fabulous ballet company that no one’s quite sure why it’s there. And she is fabulous. The company begins touring, based on her reputation. She and the choreographer have a torrid love affair that leaves her sobbing on Mallory’s couch for a week. Then, on a trip to see that child star she babysat, Jessi sits in on a dance class at the deaf school his brother now teaches at. (That was the deaf kid, right? And it was Kristy who bonded with the autistic boy, right?) All of a sudden, Jessi moves to LA, takes over the dance program for the deaf kids, and then they go on a fabulous world tour (Who knows the Indomitable Spirit theme song?—Tasteless!). During that tour, she falls in love with a parent/chaperone. The students will fondly remember their drunken times while Jessi and her new man weren’t paying them any attention.

Judge Reinholdt's the manager of a 7-11. I miss the pirate suit.

Stacey: Who knew I had so much pent up animosity towards Stacey? Here’s what I came up with, almost totally off the top of my head. Stacey goes to some random UMass and winds up back in NYC, one of those girls with a crap job but Marc Jacobs shoes. She’s very brittle, and if she hadn’t already had the diabetes as a food control thing, she might have wound up with an eating disorder. She gets pissed that Claudia doesn’t give her free shit, but also has been known to make bitchy remarks about her designs and choice to not live in New York. At the last BSC reunion, Mary Anne realized that, if she had to hear Stacey’s “…and then Jerome Casablancas just threw up on me!” story one more time, she was going to reach out a foot and trip one of Kristy’s poorly behaved children. But that’s a whole ‘nother club member.

Next: Jessi
Before: Oh, just click on the Fast Times-referencing links.

They still haven't gone all the way.

Mallory: Mallory’s a children’s librarian. She wears a lot of long denim overall dresses. Her first picture book is about to come out, and she’s thinking about chatting up the single dad who was reading Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs to his kid the other day. She lives by herself and enjoys "forgetting" to call back her siblings, particularly Vanessa, who still speaks primarily in rhyme and is pursuing her MFA at Iowa. 2 of the triplets are well-adjusted, 2.5 kids in the suburbs and all that, and the 3rd is a total fuck-up. He and Mallory get along better than anyone else in the family. Mallory also has a large group of friends.

How am I doing here, people? Accurate so far? Stacey's next, and, I gotta tell you, it's kinda bleak.
And if you're not a BSC fan, sorry. But you know, chances are, if you read this, you know someone who was a BSC fan. Why not impress the pants off her with some random preteenfic knowledge?

Previously on "I'm a Loser Theatre": Claudia and Janine

Phoebe Cates had an affair with her professor.

I came up with all of this yesterday while I was in the shower, getting dressed, and putting my makeup on. See what my mind comes up with to entertain itself during pledge drives?
I realized on my drive home last night that Claudia's sister's name is actually Janine. Oops.

Claudia: Claudia goes somewhere like Colombia College in Chicago (small, not NYC, that sort of thing). She starts with art, but then learns to sew and goes into fashion. She has her own boutique and has been featured in Lucky. A little while ago, she found a picture of the BSC and couldn’t stop laughing at how she was dressed. She blew the photo up to poster size to decorate her store. She was surprised that none of the other club members thought the picture was very funny.

Next up: Mallory.
Last time: Janine.

He spent all the reward money hiring Van Halen to play at his birthday party.

I was thinking this morning about book characters, and what they would be like as adults. Don’t ask me why, I think it was a combination of the current issue of VOYA, which has an article about fanfic, Francesca Lia Block’s new Weetzie Bat book, where Weetzie is in her 40s and questioning her marriage (I can’t wait to read this!), and Blake Nelson’s Rock Star, Superstar, which popped into my head for some reason and has its main characters playing shows with Thriftstore Apocalypse (band in his earlier novel, Girl, which was a HUGE influence on me). So here’s some of what I came up with. Feel free to argue, come up with your own, and/or tell me how brilliantly spot-on I am. I'm going to do a character a day, so I don't get overwhelmed with my own geekery.

The Babysitter’s Club
These are still being written, I think, but the characters are still the same age. Obviously, this game isn’t as fun with someone like Adrian Mole.

Janice: Janice has her PhD in some very science-y thing and is doing Important Research somewhere like Wisconsin-Madison. Stem cells or brain trauma or something. She and Claudia hadn’t talked for awhile, but then an acquaintance mentioned how science people tend to think they’ve got the best, hardest kind of smart and how irritating that can be for the rest of us. Janice called Claudia that night to apologize, and they’ve been a lot closer. She’s the only person Claudia dresses for free. She’s engaged to the guy who used to be her lab’s receptionist temp, who is one of those “creative types”, but not in the Corky kind of way.
Which leads one to wonder, why have I thought so much about Janice when she was a minor and annoying character?

Next time: Claudia.