I can’t remember if I’ve posted about Bachelorette before, and I’m too lazy to check. Plus if I enter my name plus anything into Google then I might see something mean someone wrote, so I like to self-blinker. Like an old horse.

ANYWAY.

The point is, Bachelorette is one of my favorite movies ever. I’ve watched it over and over again (which is saying a lot these days, because I have a list of new things I want to watch as long as my johnson), and every time I get something new out of it and laugh my ass off. It’s just brilliant.

Some people vehemently dislike it. My sister and I had a ‘are you SERIOUS?’ ‘are YOU serious?’ discussion about it when I told her it was my favorite movie. The stuff she doesn’t like – some of the mean girl stuff at the start, the wedding speech by Adam Scott about banging Lizzy Caplan, instead about you know, the couple actually getting married – I kind of understand. But I STILL love it for a million reasons: the blowjob speech, the Isla Fisher character (best lines: ‘but I’m giving you what you want…’ and ‘you guys had an abortion without me?’), the way Kiki Dunst saves the day at the end, the dialogue, the relationships…. I love it. I would watch it right this second if I could. (NB Right this second I am actually lying on the playmat typing this while Ned thinks about crawling and drools.)

Next, For A Good Time Call… This movie is a classic romantic comedy, beat for beat, but it’s about platonic friendship between girls. By now, you KNOW how much that would ice my cake. I’m all about the womyn. (That was an ironic womyn.) (Probably.) Anyway. It’s very very funny.

I like television.

This isn’t a huge surprise. Firstly, I’m alive. And secondly, I’m a writer with a baby and a toddler. I mean, the days of being out partying till the AM are, if not over, then at least on ‘pause’ for a while. And thirdly, television has never been better. (I am sure someone says that every year, starting the year after television was invented, but never mind.)

Inevitably, I have a lot of favorite shows. You can read more about them here and here and here. And these are my favorite shows right now.

 The Americans.

Love this show. Love him. Love her. Love the writing. Love the fashion. Love the fighting. Love the whole thing.

Incidentally, this show is the first that I’m aware of to show a 69 between the lead characters. Yes! Seriously! A 69! I know! Makes Don Draper’s little fingerbang back in season two look fairly benign, right?

I think I understand why the writers chose a 69. The scene involves their teenage daughter walking in on them having make-up sex. And yes, in 1982, it would be shocking for a teenage girl to see her parents having plain old sex, in fact, it would be shocking for a teenage girl in 2014, and actually, I walked in on my roommate having sex when I was 23 and I’m still scarred… BUT, it’s not shocking for a 2014 audience. We’re too jaded. We’d be like, oh, sex, well, good for them. And a plain old blowjob would be too predictable for the audience too, really, and imply a power dynamic that isn’t true to the characters (she is the tough cold one; he is the warmer one: he gives, she takes). The 69 was both a shocking and impressive choice for absolutely everyone. Well done, writers.

Moone Boy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6bzxkl_8eQ

Truly original and hilarious sitcom about a boy with an imaginary friend. It’s set in Ireland in 1989/1990. It’s so funny. Just so funny.

Trophy Wife.

Such a bad title. (Can we stop having titles with WIFE in? Like seriously. The Paris Wife, The Good Wife, American Wife, A Reliable Wife, The Wife, on and on and on, and yet is there anything called The Husband? Is there fuck.)

But. Way funnier than you think it is. Watch the Halloween one just to see the teenage boy dress up as Ellen DeGeneres.

VEEP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj0dI7XBQ_A

If you only watch one, watch Season Three, Episode Two. Hilarious. Smart. Sharp. And includes the line “Maybe I should just say, get the government out of my fucking snatch.”

Which, let’s face it, is a tshirt.

True Detective 

I almost don’t know whether I should recommend you watch this this show or not.

Is this one of the best shows I have ever seen? Yes.

Was it scary enough to give me palpitations, insomnia and a perma-nausea not felt since pregnancy? Yes.

Do I have mild PTSD just from watching it? Again, yes.

And yet… it was amazing. Exhilarating. I went back night after night for more, even though it made me feel sick all day thinking about it. Maybe I was addicted to the rush of the sheer horror of it. I am now SO SCARED of Louisiana. Seriously. So. Scared.

Matthew McConaughey kills it. And it has a six-minute tracking shot that will blow your mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_HuFuKiq8U

Not usually my bag but this is pretty damn great.

Well THIS is amazing.

I slip an OK GO reference into every book I write. I know. It’s totally lame and annoying. What can I say? I like that damn band. (Actually, note to self: is it in LOVE & CHAOS? I should check. Well, obviously I’m not going to check. I can’t read my own book, it’s horrific, like watching a video of yourself walking naked: all I see are flaws. If anyone out there can tell me if there is an OK GO reference in it, please do. Or just ignore me and go about your day. That’s fine too. I need to find somewhere to hide it in the third book in the Brooklyn Girls series, which is called THE WILD ONE. Yah. Good title huh? Okay I need to end this parentheses already. No you hang up first. No you! YOU! Okay. Going now. Seriously. For serious.)

Love.

I don’t understand it but I really, really like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX0Ced3G5eg

Working with a baby isn’t that hard for anyone who has worked in advertising.

I mean, I spent years surrounded by screaming infants.

And a baby only ever wants to feed, burp or sleep. It’s not exactly hard to manage. It’s far easier to manage than the average creative in advertising, who wants to bitch about a client / play Rihanna on the pan flute they just bought on a trip to Romania / bitch about an account manager / throw a whiffle ball the entire length of the creative studio over and over again / bitch about a job they’ve been given 29 rounds of amends on / organize a cake and dance-off for someone’s birthday and crack open the beer and then gossip loudly about who picked up at the pub last night and then draw a penis and write the account director’s name on it and then put on John Denver’s Greatest Hits very, very loudly.

Advertising was damn fun, now that I think about it.

But in advertising, I never had a work break that looked like this.

Maybe I would have stayed a copywriter if I had.

I just read the most delicious book. SISTER MOTHER HUSBAND DOG (ETC) by Delia Ephron. She has a lovely chapter on – well, actually, they’re all lovely chapters.

Here’s one paragraph that I thought you guys might like:

“If New York is for you, nothing else will do. The beauty, the excitement, the friction. The thrill of mastery – not simply navigating the subway system, for instance, but knowing exactly where to get on a train so that, when you reach your destination and get off, you are exactly opposite the exit. I can’t tell you how good that makes me feel, that I know something that no one else knows except another New Yorker. Mostly, however, loving New York is personal: the validation of identity. New Yorkers are born all over the country and then they come to the city and it strikes them: “Oh, this is who I am.”