Grannies Gone Wild #108

Joe has watched "Grannies Gone Wild" 98 times so far this summer. Watch the episode HERE. You can also read every single Grannies Gone Wild entry in the archives HERE.

"...I'm going to school!"

I think that in order to care about a TV show, you need to care about its characters. That's the base requirement. I'm not saying that you have to like the characters, or even if they live to see another episode or die at 80 of a heart attack. You just need to have a vested interest in their story. You need to be involved, emotionally.

Empathy isn't necessarily a requirement, but it's helpful. It has taken me all summer to find empathy for Reba's youngest, most tertiary character, Jake Hart, but I have finally found it. For I too am going to school.

And I don't want to go to school either, if I'm being honest. I'm not faking a high temperature and I don't have a high stakes film project due and there aren't any seven-year-old bullies in my graduate program, so I can't say that there is a direct correlation. But I know that feeling deep down in the pit of my stomach, that feeling that I'd just rather not go, that I'd rather not be bothered with seemingly useless tasks and busywork. I feel the heat of expectation; I feel the fear of failure. It's a tight little knot in my chest and it's not going to go away until May. I get it, Jake. I really do.

If only just for today, I feel a certain kinship with young Jake. That's weird, because he's kind of been the butt of a lot of jokes this summer (thermometers, pajamas, obnoxious YouTube influencers). But in this moment, I feel a connection, however tenuous it may be.

And that got me thinking about one of the reasons I'm even doing this project. (Another reason, I guess I should say, since on the surface it does seem like it's just an excuse to make dumb sneeze and gnome jokes, and at points it really was that.)

Watching a single piece of art repeatedly ad nauseam was an attempt to understand it fully, every piece of it, every molecule. But in order to understand "Grannies Gone Wild," you need to understand the people involved. No matter that they are fictional, since they feel real to me. To understand a character like Jake means to understand his motivations. You need to understand what makes him tick. You need to fully understand why he does what he does.

This is necessary beyond filling out written paragraphs on the blog. It's a necessary human experience, full stop. Having empathy means understanding that some dumb pajama'd kid's experiences could be reflective of your own. It's not even the specifics of not wanting to go to school and having to go to school anyway. I'm talking about the general human condition. I'm talking about fear. I'm talking about guilt. I'm talking about shame. These are relatable human emotions, relatable because we've all felt them.

I'm arguing that, if you studied "Grannies Gone Wild" on a molecular level, then you'd find that the very DNA of this seemingly dumb and vacuous episode of a network television sitcom is ACTUALLY comprised fully of real, true, core human emotion.

This is why we do it. This is why we subject ourselves to the pain and aging of yet another rewatch. We do it to feel what is necessary to be felt in order to be human.

I have never co-parented with an ex-spouse, but I do know the complex emotions attached to the delicate dance of fighting for someone's attention. I have never quit dental school to become a volunteer makeup artist, but I know well what it means to prioritize self-care and personal happiness over the expectations of others, and the cost of that decision. I have never been dragged out of a courtroom during a capital trial for gnome theft, but I know intimately the feeling of caring so much and so deeply about something that it starts to feel like the loneliest experience one can possibly have.

There is more to this than stupid punchlines and insipid cliffhangers and deadly flashforwards and guffawing at the naivete of a healthy child. Much, much more. "Grannies Gone Wild" isn't a sitcom episode. It is nothing less than the sum of all human existence.

Grannies Gone Wild #107

Joe has watched "Grannies Gone Wild" 97 times so far this summer. Watch the episode HERE. You can also read every single Grannies Gone Wild entry in the archives HERE.

 

All the sand is almost at the bottom of the hourglass. Our time here is short. I think today might be the last day that we introduce any new information to the canon regarding some of our figurants / extras / main characters in their own story / whatever you wanna call 'em. Sure, we already kind of summed everything up, but there were obvious gaps here. I can think of at least eight folks in the courtroom scene that we've never said anything about (though it's really hard to see the people on the far side of those seats in the back!). It feels strange to leave some of our friends hanging like that. Let's talk about them as much as we can on this busy weekday morning, and then we can spend the rest of our final week just basking in the Grannies Gone Wild glow.

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Amy

You're not going to believe this, so I don't even know if I should say it. Like, it feels like one coincidence too many for this already packed courtroom. But here ya go: Amy's surname is Bullard. She is the defendant Pat Bullard's WIFE. Like, the dude we've been talking about the entire summer, the dude who was convicted on this very day, November 11, 2005, the dude who was sentenced to death by a jury of his peers. His WIFE had JURY DUTY that day. Unbelievable. Texas, you're crazy sometimes. You should know that she was there for jury duty because she was randomly chosen by the Houston court system. This sounds insane, but it's true, I swear to god. Like, think about what would've happened if she was chosen for her husband's capital trial. In any other state in the country, and in any of other country in the world that preaches some semblance of democracy and justice, this would be a severe conflict of interest. Pat would've been let off! Hung jury! His wife wasn't going to convict him! C'mon, get real. Jesus fucking christ. But, like, consider how bizarre it is that Texas has no law against this. If—hypothetically, of course—a man was on trial for beating a poor schlub senseless with a chair, and he was arrested and charged with attempted murder, did you know that his wife—even a second wife—could be part of that jury? Housewives in Texas are known to attempt this very thing, because it turns them on, even though it somewhat undermines the judicial process. But it's Texas, who gives a fuck? Amy couldn't believe it, but there was a non-zero-percent chance that she could've had a hand in whether her husband lived or died. Imagine the crushing disappointment when her number wasn't called. That's even more insane, isn't it? That she was called to jury duty, but then her number wasn't called for the gnome trial. Insane, I tell you! So not only is her husband's life in the hands of eleven humans and one salami-obsessed garden gnome, but now she has to sit here and watch as he is sent off to death row, and then she has to sit in the jury for a completely different trial, this one involving tax fraud or some petty nonsense like that. Well, not petty, per se, but it definitely feels infinitesimally insignificant compared to the capital punishment of her husband, ya know? She's sitting there in the jury box with Howard and Barbara and Cathleen and Logan and her mind is completely elsewhere. She's sitting there like Eric had just hours ago—eyes wide, motionless, speechless, catatonic. Months later, she'd receive a letter in the mail composed from cut-out magazine clippings of letters detailing Judge Stephen Tobolowsky's address along with a request to send some anthrax his way. Amy has no idea whether she's going to take this... this... "Scarlett" and her "Gnome Liberation League" seriously, but she knows she's hurt, and she knows that she's ready to take some pretty desperate action, here in the state of Texas.

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Tamika

Okay, this was a difficult find, because when I tried to ask Tamika, she declined to tell me about herself, and kind of gave me a dirty look in the process. It's cool. I'm actually kind of surprised more jurors (and senior center residents) didn't have this reaction when I attempted to delve into their personal lives. I wouldn't tell any strangers my own personal shit. Imagine some asshole uses a time machine and goes back to 2005 and approaches you in a T-shirt that reads "Turkey Bowl Pike Hike 2017" and says he's the "omniscient narrator of a blog project," whatever the fuck that means. You'd tell me to fuck off, right? Well, that's pretty much what Tamika did, just not in so many words. Anyway, I was able to track down her place of employment, and I was able to interview some of her coworkers. She's a supervisor at the Harris County Child Abuse Division of the Department of Family and Protective Services. Basically, she's supervising DFPS investigators, who go out into the Houston metropolitan area and follow up on reports of child abuse and neglect. The most common type of child abuse in Houston is physical abuse with a thermometer, I'm told, though I'm just reporting what was said to me when I interviewed other DFPS workers, it's not like I have any personal experience with any of this. Okay, so, Tamika supervises a unit consisting of five workers. She advises her team and has some final say on some of the decisions made in the investigative process. By all accounts, Tamika is a pretty swell person, and it was noted by multiple people that her icy exterior is mainly a façade. She might even seem like an asshole at certain times to her favorite workers, but everyone in the know knows that she's just a grumpy person. She really does care about the youth in this fucked up city. She even spends Thursday afternoons at the local Anti-Gnome Theft division, directly engaging with youth who have shown a propensity to start stealing garden gnomes at a young age. It's for this reason that she was so relieved to not get chosen for the jury during her jury duty on November 11, 2005. It would've hit too close to home for her. (And let's be real, she was probably purposefully not chosen to be on the jury for this very reason, though this is Texas, and conflicts of interests seem to barely exist at all, so it wouldn't have been out of the question for her to end up in the jury box next to Vanessa and Dr. R., ya know?) Here's the funny thing—years later, she'd end up supervising Cheyenne when she eventually became a social worker and took a job at DFPS (with the hope of eventually transitioning to a unit that more directly addressed substance abuse in the community). Cheyenne, of course, could see right through the icy frown of her supervisor Tamika. She knows exactly what it's like to live with and to interact with someone who comes off like an asshole, but also has a soft, kind center. Eventually, Tamika would even grow into somewhat of a mentor for Cheyenne, believe it or not. They helped a lot of kids out there. So I'm glad I was finally able to get the dirt on Tamika, as difficult as it was for me. As a sidenote: I am happy to report that Van didn't really know anything about Tamika, or anything about Cheyenne's new job at all, really. Cheyenne continued to keep him out of the loop. Good, that whiny motherfucker doesn't deserve any of the love that Cheyenne was obviously so willing to give.

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Akira

She's the Vice President of the Screen Actors Guild! She's on the board for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, for christ's sake! And when she comes to jury duty on her day off, she's gonna be blocked by other jurors for most of the day? C'mon, you gotta be fucking kidding me!!! Akira deserves better than this!!!!

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Bernael

I mentioned in Grannies Gone Wild #101 that we didn't know anything about the third lawyer (the first two being Ginger and Eddie). That was true at the time. That's no longer true now. I know Bernael. I am terrified of Bernael. I told you that I was a homeless man who lived outside of the courthouse, right? You may have seen that tidbit toward the end of 22 Stories About Grannies. I am the person writing this currently. My name is Joe. I live in a cardboard box. I ask for change. I write blog posts in my spare time on what was in 2005 a brand new blogging platform. And I am familiar with the lawyers and staff at the courthouse. I see them coming and going, always carrying a coffee and a stack of papers or some such. Some are friendly and offer a nickel here and there (a nickel being worth a lot more in 2005 than it will be in 2022). Some completely ignore me. But the point being is that I recognize most of them. I had never seen Bernael until November 11, 2005. He approached me. He told me... god, it still gives me the creeps, the way he looked at me... but he told me that his name was Bernael, and that he was an actor in a TV show called Reba. He knew! He was self-aware! How did he know? How did he know?! This is how it's supposed to work: there are characters in this episode of TV; those characters were written by a man named Pat Bullard and fleshed out by his (still alive, not executed) friend Chris Atwood; I am a blogger who has written about Pat (and later Chris) writing those characters. There are three levels. Except now he is Bernael, indicating that he is beholden to no blog construct. He, in fact, stated to me that he had written my story. He showed me ANOTHER LEVEL. He claimed that I was a fictional construct, written by him. I said, "Wait, aren't you a lawyer or something? Aren't you sitting at the table with the rest of the lawyers in the Barbara Jean courtroom scenes?" and he just laughed and said "You silly mortal, you know nothing, you can't possibly comprehend how many levels there are to this thing." Maybe I don't. Is Bernael right? Are we all just figments of his imagination? Are we just his playthings, trapped in the matrix, our bodies resting in goo and harvested for our energy that Bernael then uses to fuel his Grannies Gone Wild imagination? Does god exist? Was he too created by Bernael? Where the fuck did Van buy that sweater vest?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

George

Kinda forgot about George. I dunno. He's a lawyer. Literally the only interesting thing I can tell you about him is that he's currently wearing a cock ring.

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Benjy

I can barely see this guy. I feel like the farther the characters are from the "main action" (Barbara Jean's outbursts), the less important it is to give them backstories. I literally would never have even noticed this guy unless I was trying to talk about every single character in the entire scene at some point this summer. Which I am currently doing. So. What to say. Hmm. "Benjy" is short for "Benjamin," but you probably knew that. Back in the day, his grandfather tried to get him into coin collecting. It didn't stick. But he does have a pretty clear memory of going to a coin shop with his grandfather back in the day to purchase a 1914 "wheat penny," it was like 30 cents, but Benjy was young, he didn't know that its value would only appreciate in time, and before his grandfather's body was even cold (after he dropped dead at age 80 of a heart attack), Benjy had spent the wheat penny on a lollipop at the corner store. This was 1975. The cashier took an interest in the penny. He figured it might be worth something. The cashier showed his wife. The wife advised that he keep it in the family safe. It stayed there for about twenty years. It wasn't anywhere close to the most valuable thing in that safe. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of artifacts and jewelry and gold bars and shit like that. A pair of burglars, knowing about the safe through unscrupulous means, decided one night to shunt the alarm system wiring, break into the home of the cashier, and steal the safe. Weeks later, they finally broke open the safe. The jewels were evenly divided between thief #1, thief #2, and their safe-breaker guy. The wheat penny went to thief #2, whose name was Ziggy. The dude barely even noticed the year on the coin. On the drive home he's like "hmm, wonder why that moron kept a penny in that safe?" and he threw it as hard as he could into the Bagley Memorial Fountain in Cadillac Square Park. This was Detroit, Michigan, 1996. A teen by the name of Van Montgomery was visiting the park with his grandmother, Virginia. The trip had been paid for by one of her more affluent johns. Van was left to his own devices as his grandmother made the rounds. He happened to spot a shiny penny in the fountain. He was saving up to buy a car. He wanted a nice shiny one to impress the JV cheerleader at school, Cheyenne. It was only a penny, but you know what they say, a penny saved is a penny you can put toward a shiny new car that looks nothing like one a moron slut school counselor would drive. He stuck his hand into the fountain, and took the penny. It felt heavy in his hand. Years later, a man named Benjy would be thinking about his grandfather, long dead, as he daydreamed in court while the wheat penny's original owner's stepmother-in-law was dragged out in front of him. But wait, what of the penny? Van actually forgot about it. It ended up on the bedroom carpet. Jake found it, and got an idea... what if...? A day later, he went downstairs in his pajamas and said, "Mom, I can't go to school, I'm sick, I swallowed a highly valuable penny," and a day after that Reba is sifting through Jake's stool and is like "Oh honey... wowwwww, a 1914 wheat penny, that is high." And so on and so on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jackson

Would rank Led Zeppelin albums in the following order: 8. Led Zeppelin II; 7. Physical Graffiti; 6. Led Zeppelin III; 5. Led Zeppelin IV; 4. Houses of the Holy; 3. Led Zeppelin; 2. In Through the Out Door; 1. Presence. Jackson is a goddam crazy person. Can you imagine if this deranged sicko was tasked with the decision to allow a man to live or watch him die? A man who's favorite Zep album is goddamn Presence?!

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Persephone Jenkins

Okay, this is actually kind of funny. Persephone Jenkins ("Percy" to her friends, but we aren't her friends) is a teacher at the local elementary school. In fact, she is a teacher at River Oaks Elementary School. In fact, she is Jake's teacher at R.O.E.S. In fact, she is Jake's documentary filmmaking teacher at R.O.E.S. Ya know, the teacher that assigned the big documentary project that is due on November 11, 2005? The project that Jake is so desperately avoiding? The one that spurs him to fake a 120° fever? The one that he attempts to finish at the last minute by punching the despicable seven-year-old school bully in the face, an attempt that backfires and ends with Jake hanging by his tighty-whities on a hook in the boys' bathroom? Yes! That teacher! She isn't even in school today! She got called to jury duty! Had Jake shut the fuck up about faked thermometers and violent procrastination ideas worth a C+ at best, and had just gone to class, he would've found that classroom minus one Ms. Jenkins, who was currently entangled in what would later be described by many law experts as one of the most important capital trials in Texas history! Good lord. Can we call that irony? Let's call it irony. The best part about Percy is that you can tell that she's viewing this whole ordeal through the lens of the documentarian. She has that little flash of a smirk across her face as the insanity unfolds around her. She knows that this is all going to make a pretty fantastic limited series on basic cable some day. And in fact, if we flashforward to 2024, and scroll through the credits for Ryan Murphy's Gnome Thief: American Crime Story, you'll see Persephone Jenkins as a "Creative Consultant" (not to mention a never-better Amy Ryan in the role of Percy).

~~~~~~~~~~~~

As far as I can tell, this completes our exploration of the supporting characters in "Grannies Gone Wild." I refuse to call them "extras," since, as you can see, their stories are valid and are an integral part of the fabric of this episode, nay, this world that we've built here. "Figurants," sure, since they tend to silently haunt the edges of this television episode, but we are here to give voices to the figurants. They deserve to be heard.

As a sort of summary / cheat sheet, I want to end here with a few pictures. These are some of the more helpful frames in the episode, and I'm going to do my best to label them with the names of our supporting characters, and the Grannies Gone Wild installment in which the bulk of their story was shared. (We'll stick with the courtroom today, though if we have time this week, maybe we can do River Oaks Senior Center as well.)

If you have any questions, please feel free to drop them in the comments. Or, better yet, try to answer the question yourself. We are the world builders here. Ownership of the story here is in the public domain. Take agency. Build the story. Give voice to the figurants. Leave "Grannies Gone Wild" in a better shape than you found it.

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(click to enlarge)

Grannies Gone Wild #106

Joe has watched "Grannies Gone Wild" 96 times so far this summer. Watch the episode HERE. You can also read every single Grannies Gone Wild entry in the archives HERE.

We have the script. There are two plans that I need to carry out regarding that script before the summer is over.

The second is hopefully gonna come together this Friday (so it'll be posted on Saturday). If you are participating on Friday and you have never seen Reba S5E08 "Grannies Gone Wild" then DO NOT watch it now. And don't read the script or listen to the rest of this blog post! More about this second plan at the end of the week.

The first plan is that I am personally going to perform a radio play version of the entire script by myself. I will not be doing the stage directions or the laugh track. Instead, I will be paying close attention to the inflection and pronunciation of each line from each respective character, and trying to mimic it from memory as best I can. I've seen the episode 96 times now. I can hear every line in my head. This is my attempt at recreating what I hear inside this fucked up, mushy, Reba-addled brain.

Enjoy.

Album of the Week: Little Earthquakes

Happy Back to School Week to all those who celebrate / mourn the occasion. Let's find out what we're going to be blasting on that long, cold drive back to the classroom.

You can always explore the archives or check up on the goals if you want. Otherwise, you know what to do—listen, write, enjoy. R.I.P. summer.

WEEK 187 — August 28-September 3, 2022

What we're listening to this week (Pam's pick):

ALBUM: Little Earthquakes

ARTIST: Tori Amos

RELEASED: January 6, 1992

LOCATION: Silver Spring, MD (This was actually an interesting dilemma for this week's "LOCATION" blurb. Usually I just do the birthplace of the artist, but apparently Tori Amos was born in North Carolina while her parents were on vacation from their Washington D.C. home. I chose Silver Spring because Wikipedia indicates that this is where she lived at age thirteen, when she first started recording music. This is an imperfect system, people.)

WHAT GENRE IS THIS: Singer-songwriter, piano rock, art pop

WHY PAM PICKED IT: "This seemed like one of those 'essential female listening' albums that I hadn't listened to yet."

TRACKLIST:

1. Crucify
2. Girl
3. Silent All These Years
4. Precious Things
5. Winter
6. Happy Phantom
7. China
8. Leather
9. Mother
10. Tear in Your Hand
11. Me and a Gun
12. Little Earthquakes
    

LENGTH: 57:11

WHERE TO LISTEN FOR FREE: YouTube

READING SOME SHIT: Here's an LA Times feature from all the way back in 1992.

PREVIOUSLY ON RECORD CLUB: Rolling Stone released a new version of their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in September 2020 (here's an easy-to-read version to skim through). It was a big deal, at least according to certain blogs. Say what you will about RS or about dumb lists like this, but I like going through them and exploring what certain people or entities consider the "canon of classics." Gives you a good sense of how quote unquote "important" certain albums are in the grand scheme of things.

Anyway, on that list, Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes landed at #233. I thought it would be cool to go through the list and see what other Record Club albums were on that list, and where they fell. Here ya go, from lowest to highest:

Harry Styles' Fine Line at #491; Diana Ross' diana at #394; My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade at #361; Shania Twain's Come On Over at #300; Destiny's Child's The Writing's on the Wall at #291; Robyn's Body Talk at #196 (even though we only did Pt. 1); T. Rex's Electric Warrior at #188; Funkadelic's Maggot Brain #136; Missy Elliott's Supa Dupa Fly at #93; Fleetwood Mac's Rumours at #7; McGruff the Crime Dog's Smart Kids at #1.

Happy listening, fam! Have a great week!

The Record Club Final Word: Sunny on Dirty Computer

If you pick an album for Record Club, you will get an "exit survey" on Friday morning, after the reviews have been published. This isn't to add more to your workload; I instead just want to provide space for the album picker to have the final say, if they feel like they need some sort of closure on the week. It's totally and completely optional. But I also love reading what my friends write, so I personally enjoy whenever the album picker does this. Gives us more time to digest the week we had, ya know?

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1. Was there anyone who convinced you to consider a different opinion regarding the album itself?

I get the sense everyone was, to some degree, more familiar with the album than I was. As such, points brought up as apparent or obvious were still novel to me (i.e. referencing Prince) and I'll probably relisten to it with all this in mind.

2. Was there anyone who you felt did a good/bad job at presenting their own views, regardless of whether you agreed with said views?

Everyone did great and wrote up nicely in their own styles.

3. Were the reviews varied, or did this album elicit same-y opinions? What about that album made that true? Or do you think that this answer is reviewer-dependent and not album-dependent?

They're same-y in that no one took a big negative stance, but I recognize that might be a tough position to write from this week. But we did have a range from "never heard before," "heard the singles," "heard the album," so writing about things from a few years later with that perspective is interesting.

I've definitely been in Pam and Galia's shoes before of listening to an album you love a few singles off of, so I'm glad the rest of the album rang as good too, while also getting the feeling of "yeah and but a couple of these tracks are the ones I'm going to carry forward."

Big shoutout to Rachel S. for the Parable of the Sower reference, which is SO spot on. Can't wait for Monae's Parable of the Talents album

JMK’s meditation on what it means to be cool is well placed. What does it mean to be cool? Monae is obviously cool, so cool that even the clinically uncool as me can recognize it and wonder "what is cool?" So that's cool.

And, of course, I had basically the same Malware-filled Gateway tower that my good friend Nate mentions. If you were willing to wait fifteen minutes for it to boot up, you could play Diablo I and Fallout and listen to Foo Fighters for free.

4. Did the variety of reviews justify the album choice? Would you choose a different album (yes/no) based on the reviews received?

Great album, great reviews, no regrets.

5. What can Record Club do differently to make your RC experience (especially as a weekly captain) a worthwhile one?

I am a single issue voter: Taco Bell.

6. Any other takeaways you have from this experience?

This was a pretty different album than my last (Ted Leo), but at the same time both were crowd pleasers. Part of me wants to pick something more cutting, but I also like having five people have a nice time during the week, so who knows.

Grannies Gone Wild #105

Joe has watched "Grannies Gone Wild" 95 times so far this summer. Watch the episode HERE. You can also read every single Grannies Gone Wild entry in the archives HERE.

Watching "Grannies Gone Wild" on my way to a funeral.

Well, not really. I'm driving, and that wouldn't be safe. The funeral is two and a half hours away, enough time for at least seven viewings of "Grannies Gone Wild," if I made a very pregnant Pam drive and I sat in the backseat and comforted myself by slipping into a world where we laugh at death instead of mourn it.

I think that's what I want to write about today, briefly, before I don the Ernesto garb and head out into the early morning—that idea of comforting yourself with a simple episode of television. This, instead of more thoughts about death, which was already toeing the line of good taste the first time around. And it's not like I didn't have time to prepare for my grandpa's death. He was diagnosed and given a year to live almost two years ago (see the last bullet point). This wasn't a heart attack in the foyer. This was slow and gradual and blindsided no one. Still hurts to a certain extent, but it hurts outside of the context of Reba. I don't need to use this space to process it.

One thing that popped up over and over in the Your Favorite Movie interviews was the idea of watching something because you are familiar with a piece of art, and that familiarity gives comfort. You're having a bad day and you put on your favorite movie and suddenly that day isn't so bad anymore. 

I've been thinking about that, and I've also been thinking about Melissa Peterman expressing the simple joy she felt while rewatching "Grannies Gone Wild" this past week. There were a thousand moments in that seven-minute video that stopped me in my tracks, but let's not discount this very important one. This episode of Reba made someone happy this summer. It brought them some comfort through an acknowledgment of its existence. I don't think anyone, including Peterman, is calling this episode their "favorite," but to her (and to others, I assume), it functions in the same way. You put it on, you feel better.

This really shines a light on how jaded I feel at this point in the process. Well, jaded specifically about the act of watching "Grannies Gone Wild" (writing about it continues to bring me a strange and simple joy, especially at this late stage in the game, with the finish line in view). I fucking hate this episode. I fucking hate it. These are the worst 20 minutes and 44 seconds of my day.

I suppose one could make the argument of "well at least you're finally feeling something" or whatever. That seems like an argument I would tend to make. "Art" equating to the act of experiencing an intense emotion, some bullshit like that. But that seems particularly macabre in this context; what, am I trying to say that the worst part of August 16, 2022, was watching "Grannies Gone Wild," as opposed to finding out that my grandpa died? I won't say whether that's true or false, but I am saying that even considering it publicly on a blog in a hypothetical sense is still kinda gross.

But I think that, at the very least, we can strike one potential answer off the list when considering the question "wait why are you watching the same episode of Reba over and over for an entire summer?" The answer is not "Because it makes me feel comforted." You can't manufacture that shit, it seems. Though, I don't know, flashforward to my own 2060, when I'm shitting myself and eating a poisoned bran muffin, maybe by chance I'll hear the guitar twangs and the "Alright Mrs. H are you ready for—" in the background at the over-65 community rec room and it'll bring me back to the summer of 2022, and maybe that will comfort me. But I am finding no comfort now, and I definitely will not find it before Labor Day, at least not in these 20 minutes and 44 seconds.

I don't even know if I support the notion of "comfort television." The idea that people can just put on a sitcom and let it run in the background while you're trying to wind down from a rough day seems like a pretty dumb way to consume entertainment. I won't pretend I haven't done it in the past, but that doesn't mean I can't still hate it. At this point in my life, I'd much rather actively engage with the thing that is on my screen. I mean, OBVIOUSLY. I'm saying this after writing approximately 100,000 words about a single episode of television. 

And yet I'm pretty clearly agitated too. I guess looking at the big picture here, I'm seeing that this is a pretty fucked up way to try to find comfort. Yes, I'm finding comfort in writing about Reba. I feel good right now, as I write these words, even a few hours before we lower an urn into the ground. But this comes after the self-prescribed torture of watching "Grannies Gone Wild" yet again. That did not feel good. It felt bad. It felt completely discomforting. I have ruined this episode of television for myself. I have turned it toxic. Not good, folks.

Clearly I'm just writing whatever comes into my head right now (maybe I really did need this space to process my feelings). So I'm sorry you're not getting a tight three-minute read about Van Jr.'s kidnapping or something shit like that today. You get a confused and tired 30-something who has watched the same episode of television every day for what seems at this point like his entire goddamn life, without fail, without skipping a single fucking day, not even the day of his grandpa's funeral, which seems inconsiderate, now that I'm typing it out, right? It's like, give it a rest, dude. Go flagellate yourself in private instead of publicly on the blog, ya know?

I'm just searching for truth here. That's all. I think it's connected to that general and normal feeling of guilt that one feels when a loved one passes away, guilt over still being here while your loved one is gone forever, guilt at spending the time you yourself have on this earth doing dumb shit like watching TV. Maybe that search for comfort is a pushback against those feelings of guilt that hang over us like a fucking guillotine. Maybe then concocting a scenario in which you are unable to find any comfort for an entire summer due to some hairbrained blogging scheme is some weird harmful self-loathing way of living with the guilt. Maybe I just don't need to feel guilty anymore. Or maybe I'm more guilty than anyone.

Whatever the case may be, I'm still watching "Grannies Gone Wild" this morning, before a funeral. And I have no fucking clue how that's supposed to make me feel.

Grannies Gone Wild #104

Sunny has watched "Grannies Gone Wild" 42 times so far this summer. Watch the episode HERE. You can also read every single Grannies Gone Wild entry in the archives HERE.

36.      

0602: I have Jury Duty today. Normally this is just a regular annoyance/occurrence, but in a post-GGW world, this can only really be about Reba and the BJ subplot. I am re-watching the episode in the morning before driving out to the courthouse. BJ is 1289 (previously 1536). I am juror 209. If I understand this episode correctly, despite what JST says, I might get out of jury duty for being annoying. I have loaded GGW onto my phone in case I have time to watch it again during the day.

0840: The façade is immediately crumbling. We're not in a courtroom, we're in an American Legion gymnasium, seated six feet apart from one another. Definitely some of the characters I recognize: we've got Joan, Eric, Ernesto, Abigail, Carl, AA. A knock-off Bailiff Bron. No garden gnome though, hmm. And no judge. There are about 50 people here, even though the call number was up to 250. How come the Reba court only had some ~20 people? And their numbers were in the thousands?

0915: We've been shown a brief orientation video, which is fine. I assume all this was off-screen on Reba. However the orientation video then segued seamlessly into the feature length film The Sandlot, which we are all now watching (assuming you're not looking at your phone, like 90% of the people in here are). This all must have been cut from the episode.

1100: Movie's done. No sign of anyone official still.

1105: Another movie... National Treasure this time... boy, Nic Cage is a classic.

1205: Break for lunch! We're given $15 for the day (BJ did it simply for the love of Order)

~~~~~~~~~~~

37.

1255: I watched the Reba again at lunchtime to make sure I wasn't mis-remembering. No, the TV experience was definitely different from the real-world experience. Lunch was a Rotiboy and Viet Coffee from "The Bun Shop" in Towson, MD. 5/5 pukes

1305: Some action! The judge emerges... she looks more like Reba than JST. She explains she will be asking all the potential jurors questions, and you are to "silently stand" if any of the questions pertain to you. If additional information is required, she'll call us to the back (I suppose that's where you explain your nickname is White Thunder etc.).

1347: The judge has retired to behind a curtain and is calling numbers for interviews. The numbers start at 1. I can't imagine getting to 1536.

1348: National Treasure is put back on.

1430: Well National Treasure is over now. They're still calling numbers for interviews... they're at 170... I can't even imagine getting to my 209...

1435: Oh God another movie... This time Failure to Launch with McConaughey, good lord.

1447: The judge is back! She begins calling numbers for jurors to stand in the front. It finally feels like Reba! 2, 4, 1536, er, I mean, 6. 10, 12, 14, 20, 25, 29, 30, 52, 60. The lawyers take one look at 10, 30, 52 and tell 'em to scram. Absolutely no reason given. 62, 85, 100 fill in. 110, 114 alternates. And that's the day! Everyone thanks a lot, go home.

I didn’t even get to sidebar. What a waste of a day.

I would rate Reba's portrayal of jury duty as LOOSELY accurate to real life.

~~~~~~~

38. Today I am just going to do a normal ass watching of this show and note things I haven't noticed before. This late in the summer I expect to only find the most boring things. I also can't remember the entire massive canon at this point, so hopefully I'm not repeating anything:

• They have nice copper pots and pans hanging. Reba must care about the kitchen. Except Van is cooking his eggs in a stainless-steel skillet—the bonehead was probably asked not to use the copper anymore, scratching them up or something
• Cheyenne never takes out the Kippy peanut butter jar for her lunch, it's already on the counter, how convenient for her. But then after making her open-faced sandwich, she just sticks the knife in the jar, leaves the lid open, and leaves. Cheyenne you know we get ants in Houston right?
• The characters refer to each other a lot by name, even in the middle of conversation. I find that just slightly odd. Everyone says "Barbara Jean" fully too, every time.
• I guess technically Reba IS a grandma that could sign up for ceramics class. Except Van implicitly bringing up their kidnapped child here is pretty gauche.
• What's up with ECW's weird gait at 11:15?
• I love that JST has a massive thermos on his desk. Must be a hard job.
• I appreciate the little pat-pat that Reba gives Cheyenne after their conversation towards the end of the episode. It’s important to know how to leave any convo.
• One wonders what happened in the intervening 60 years from the nursing home scene to the stinger, how else did Brock and Van dig at each other? Brock embarrasses Van in front of Cheyenne's new friends, Van cuts Brock's brake lines; Brock dis-invites Van to his famous annual Fourth of July BBQ, Van does an "upper decker" in the toilet. I'm sure there were many more in all the Reba we won't be watching.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

39.  Hey there true believers, welcome back to the Sugar Shack. Today, we're going to talk about an all time classic: the Reese's Peanut Butter cup.

Now, I'm not going to go into the details of the RPBC because you already know it. Reese's has dominated candy sales for years, domestically, internationally, holiday, non-holiday, convenience store, big box, whatever. If it’s not #1 it's in the top five. We get it.

No, instead I want to talk about product line extensions. CPG companies like Hershey's and Mars are addicted to profits, so even with a winningest product like the RPBC, you still need to release new products to juice top line sales a bit. What's an easy idea? Fuck around with the size.

Here are several of the Reese's products with approx. PB ratios:

• Reese's Thin 19% PB
• Reese's Mini 28% PB
• Reese's Miniature (wrapped) 40% PB
• Reese's Classic 42% PB
• Reese's Snack Size 44% PB
• Reese's King Size 55% PB
• Reese's Big Cup 63% PB

And that's just the "main-line." We're not even including holiday favorites such as egg, pumpkin, heart. Or novelty cups such as the "Thank You" line (even larger than Big Cup) or the World's Largest (as named). Or novelty-novelty lines such as the Reese Peanut Butter Lovers, which is 100% PB. And sucks—the shell tastes like PB flavored white chocolate. At least they haven't gone the other way with a chocolate lover's. What would that be, a 3 Musketeers?

A lot of these products come and go because frankly they can't all find footing in the market. Is there a "perfect" ratio of PB/chocolate for optimal eating? Is everyone different or are there logical formulations that are generally crowd pleasers? I for one believe Mr. Reese nailed it right at the start, and everything else has been a lesser version. But most of them aren't bad. 

For SSS’s money, here you go:

Reese's Original: 5/5 pukes, gold standard to which the sugar shack holds all else

Reese's Miniature: 4/5 pukes, neu-classic candy bowl staple

Reese's Big Cup: 3.5/5 pukes, similar charm to a double-stuf oreo: fun at times, but gets old

Reese's PB lovers: 1/5 pukes, do better Hershey Corp

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

40.-41. The "emotion picture" Dirty Computer is pretty good right? But what if instead of spending all that time and money, she just played her album against back-to-back playings of Reba S5E08? Would it be as good? Let’s find out!

n  Van is a "Dirty Computer." They say it twice when he threatens sodomy and now again when he's screaming and gasping and shit

n  Cheyenne wants a Crazy, Classic, Life! Why can't anyone understand that? Just let me live my life.

— Reba mugging at 3:39 fits nicely with the beat

— Outro to Van and Reba bickering, rap portion is our opening credits.

n  BJ is going to Take a Byte out of crime

— She's not the kind of girl to take home to your mama (or ex-wife)

— The sexy grannies are also taking a byte. This is women's lib.

n  Jane's Dream is Nat Faxon's dream, to have a nap or something

— Dickie's Dream cannot be re-printed here

n  "Screwed" plays right around when Van tells Cheyenne her senior center activities are stupid

— BJ is also "screwed" at court because as we know justice is blind but not deaf

— "Let's get screwed/I don't care" during this marital fight also scans

n  (Young) Cheyenne by the end of this episode is doing Django Jane

— Fuck off Van!

n  Alfred: Pynk, like the inside of your

— Cut to black

And so we start watch 2 with "Make Me Feel": (this is the Reba version of playing Nier: Automata)

n  Jakes runs out right at the lyric "make me feel"

— Cheyenne also makes the rest of the family feel... disappointment?

n  Cheyenne makes a PB on bread lunch to the jam of "I Got the Juice"

— Follow your dreams Cheyenne, you do got the juice!

— BJ also got the juice, in her own way

n  Switching your juror number with someone else to get foreman? I Like That

— Pretending to sign up granny for ceramics class? I Like That

— Grannies gone wild? I Like That

n  6min long "Dont Judge Me" is a bit of a rock in the plan here. But it is playing over the whole GGW part so that seems about right

— (Gonna skip the rest of the track when the scene changes)

n  BJ's Dream to be White Thunder

n  So Afraid to be kicked off the jury. So Afraid to have made the completely wrong career choice.

— So Afraid my wife will leave me cause I'm a huge loser (or is it giving too much credit to vanny boy?)

n  Marital strife, watching the elderly drop dead, revenge past the grave. This show features Americans doing American things!! This is an American show! Reba!!

That was extremely stupid, but I didn’t hate it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

42. I had thought about writing up the screenplay for one of the watches, but got lazy. The fact that JMK did it shows he's firing on all cylinders as we close out the summer. Today I watched the episode following along with it, and I can say the document contains both verisimilitude in dialogue and appropriate character in stage direction.

That which of course is coming off the heels of #101, the postpostmodern write-up of the episode in full, no figurant left behind, which canonizes all who are in the project into the project.

Which, of course, comes off the heels of the incredible #100. Wherein if this video too is entered into the GGW Canon, then now Melissa Peterman the actor is also part of the story, playing the character BJ, doing improv and the like. Is she play acting her marriage with Brock, like The Americans or something? But Brock is Brock and not Christopher Rich. Really starting to spiral here. Can't believe the summer is almost over.

Grannies Gone Wild #103

Joe has watched "Grannies Gone Wild" 94 times so far this summer. Melissa Peterman has watched "Grannies Gone Wild" one time so far this summer (that we know of). Watch the episode HERE. You can also read every single Grannies Gone Wild entry in the archives HERE.

I thought it would be funnier if I just dropped the Barbara Jean Cameo video without much explanation, so that's what I did. Though I do think, a few days after that bombshell of a Grannies Gone Wild entry, that we should kind of talk about it. Process it a little bit. This changes things, both considering the Wig Rule and eschewing it.

Let's talk real first, and then consider the fictional canon. I usually commit to pretending that "Grannies Gone Wild" and its ensuing canon is real in this blog project, but this is important enough to examine from all angles.

First: how fucking cool is Melissa Peterman? She just seems like the nicest goddamn person on the planet. I should clarify here that Cameo exists to make money for celebrities who want a side hustle (with Cameo getting a small cut, of course), but I should also clarify that Peterman explicitly states in her Cameo profile video that the money that she earns all goes toward a theater company that she is on the board for. So not necessarily "charity," but definitely a worthy cause, and definitely better than just lining some shitty celebrity's pockets.

One of the weirdest and most surreal moments of the video was when she said the phrase "Puke on Your Birthday." It was maybe the most surreal moment I've ever experienced in my decade-plus as a blogger. Consciously or subconsciously, we put this sort of mental boundary between ourselves and celebrities. It's extremely difficult to imagine that the people we see on our screens are "real," even though they are. I've seen Melissa Peterman with my own eyes every day for the past 90-something days in a row, and yet seeing her break the fourth wall and address this blog directly was almost too much to handle.

I also feel like our project may have had a bit of an effect, cosmically speaking, on the world of Reba and its players. If we take her at her word, then Melissa Peterman and Stephen Tobolowsky are currently working on something together. What are the chances that the two best parts of "Grannies Gone Wild" end up working together this summer, of all summers, seventeen years after they last worked together? The same summer I'm begging the universe to put these two together again (e.g. #6)? It's too much of a coincidence. I think we made this happen. Seriously.

To my previous point... it's fucking crazy that there is a greater than 0% chance that Melissa Peterman and Stephen Tobolowsky are right this second discussing the existence of a blog called Puke on Your Birthday. (Sidenote: I went through Cameo to see which cast members of "Grannies Gone Wild" were on there. The only other ones who had profiles were Tobolowsky and JoAnna Garcia Swisher, and both were "currently unavailable for hire." Had the Honorable Judge been there, I would've had him say "Bailiff Ron!" again, you better fucking believe it.)

And it's fucking unbelievable that Peterman was legitimately able to add to our understanding of "Grannies Gone Wild" (again, ignoring the Wig Rule for now) at all, a combined 100+ viewings into it. I can't speak for Sunny or anyone else who has ever seen this episode, but I personally would have NEVER noticed that Melissa Peterman was pregnant while filming, had she not pointed it out. And now, it's all I can see. Her pregnancy bump is mostly hidden through creative camera angles (when she and Brock are chatting) and sitting behind set pieces (while waiting for her number; while sitting in the jury box). But there are times, especially when getting dragged out by Ron and Bron, that it is so incredibly clear that she is pregnant that I feel like a complete fucking moron for never noticing.

It's funny, every time I see a picture of Melissa Peterman, like online or even in the opening credits of this episode, I always think "Wow, she looks good, I wonder if she lost some weight." Even when me and Pam sat down to watch the Cameo for the first time, our first thought was both, "Wow, she's looking great these days!" I would never have considered for a second that this is because Peterman had some pregnancy weight in the one episode I watch every day. I'm an idiot.

I also really liked that we got an explanation as to why Barbara Jean didn't interact with most of the other characters in the episode, and why the entire B-plot was basically her and Tobolowsky doing Abbott and Costello. She was pregnant! The showrunners filmed Barbara Jean vignettes to be used later! Absolutely fucking wild. In terms of our overall understanding of this episode and its bizarre structure, this was the missing piece of the puzzle.

When I requested the Cameo, I didn't know what to expect. My submission—which is limited to 250 characters, by the way, which was a bit of challenge in itself, and required some creative abbreviating—just requested that Melissa Peterman don the Barbara Jean character and finish the monologue that was cut off originally. I did NOT expect Peterman to grace us with some insider info about "Grannies Gone Wild" before she did it. That was awesome.

But then she went ahead and did her best improv with the monologue too, and I'm so thankful that she did. We probably have to work a little bit to connect the info dump to "Grannies Gone Wild," but that's what I'm here for, isn't it?

We now know that Barbara Jean has a sister, so now she's a character in our extended universe. We know that she received some comically inane injury from playing volleyball, and that's why she switched to theater (and eventually starred as Tevye). We don't know why she was called "White Thunder," but we know that her interest in meteorology retroactively justified the nickname (and which consequentially marks this as a missed opportunity that we only see Barbara Jean inside a building the entire episode).

And we know that Barbara Jean was self-conscious about her height and weight as a child. I think in light of this, we can understand why Barbara Jean might try to hide her pregnancy from everyone in the courtroom. Yes, I think we can add this to the canon—it's not just Melissa Peterman who is pregnant while taping an episode of Reba, but it is also Barbara Jean Hart who is pregnant during the events of this episode of Reba.

Not only is she a little embarrassed about her pregnancy weight (which is preposterous, I should say, should I choose to break the fourth wall again—pregnant women honestly grow more and more beautiful the more pregnant they become, so I'm just reporting here on what Barbara Jean is thinking, not any sort of judgment as to whether she should be thinking those things), but she's also probably a little nervous about what her husband's ex is going to think about a new kid in the extended family. 

That's probably why she's waiting in the car, right? She's been hiding from Reba for months now! Reba and the rest of her crew don't even know she's pregnant! Imagine telling your stepchild Cheyenne that you're pregnant after her own child has been kidnapped! Imagine the weird and unpleasant Miss U.S.A. noises Van would make when he finds out! Imagine Jake trying to take the fetus's temperature! No, no, it's better that the rest of the Harts don't know that Barbara Jean is pregnant.

I think there's probably more information and pathos to mine from the Cameo reveal, but it's a tight weekend, and I'm gonna cut it here, with a promise that I'll expound on more of this sometime in the next nine(!) days. I just wanted to make two things clear this morning. One, that Melissa Peterman is the fucking best, and I'll never forget this. Two, that everything she said is part of our Grannies Gone Wild world now, and that's important to remember as we near the finish line.

A Year of Blind Spots: August and Everything After

The thing that Counting Crows' early-'90s classic August and Everything After confirmed for me (besides the kismet of number generators randomly choosing an album called August and Everything After to be listened to at the end of August) is that I am an instruments man more so than a lyrics man.

Not that I can't appreciate a good lyrics, but the thing that is really going to sweep me away on a good album is the instrumentation and arrangement (including vocals, but separate from what those vocals are saying, I guess). AaEA is a lyrics-forward album, and I think that's probably why I consider it a good record and not a great record.

I hope it can go without saying this is my problem, not Adam Duritz's problem. If I chose to dig through his lyrics and really let 'em sink in, then I am confident I'd find a heck of a lot to like. Something like "Omaha," which is an average song, also features such poetry as: "Start threading the needle / Brush past the shuttle that slides through the cold room / Start turning the wool across the wire / Roll the new life over." That's some poignant shit. But my point here is that, because there's nothing about "Omaha" that excites me on the surface, then I'm going to be the type of person who doesn't really notice the lyrics because of that. Again, my fault. I'm just saying how it is.

Not to say that there are no songs that really pop off. Of course there are. More than seven million copies of August and Everything After have been sold since its 1993 release. Albums don't go seven-times platinum if they don't bring the hooks.

And I know I often complain about listening to albums for this column on which the singles stand out and overshadow the deep cuts, but I think we have on AaEA a case of a band choosing the exact right songs for single release. "Round Here," "A Murder of One" (god, I love songs that include the band's self-mythology), and especially "Rain King" are beautiful works of art. They can stand on their own without the lyrics, but the lyrics are a welcome cherry on top.

I purposefully left off the big one, the immortal one, the one and only "Mr. Jones." This was one of those weeks when I listened to a song just enough to convince myself that it is one of the best songs of all time. Jesus fucking christ, what a tune. I'll say one thing about it, and then y'all can skip right to the bottom and listen to it for the 600th time in your life, since it never gets old. But what I love about this song is the slow build. There's no push-and-pull, no getting quieter after the first chorus or anything like that. It's entirely a slow crescendo. We start with a soft guitar strumming and Duritz practically mumbling, and by the end the whole band is crashing into every note and Duritz is howling like a drunk man at karaoke, and that process happens so gradually that you might not even notice.

I noticed this week. I noticed a lot of good stuff on this album, an album that I'm told is one of the underrated classic of the 1990s. I think we can probably all more or less agree with that, whether you're a lyrics-first kind of person, or if you are like me, a "Mr. Jones"-first kind of person.

Dirty Computer, Sunny

Dirty Computer is a great title for this album, having a sort of autobiographical multi-act arc reflecting something like a female black American Metropolis (obviously Monáe has played up the comparison herself). "Dirty Computer" serves as an intro of sorts, with the rest of the album bookended by speeches detailing the American dream or lack thereof ("Crazy, Classic, Life" / "Americans"). The album paints a picture of recognition and rehabilitation with one's identity, tracking from the looked-down-upon to the look-er. I at first thought "Americans" was way, way too corny to like, but I've since softened. The tracks in the middle serve as a bridge, generally growing bigger while exploring different musical styles.

The music bridges with the themes as well, moving from a bit more electronic-y/neo-souly to more straight pop. Obvious puns like "Take a Byte," or the more-produced tracks "Crazy, Classic, Life" and "Screwed" dominate the top half. Towards the end you get more into R&B and then straight pop. "So Afraid" into "Americans" is a more textured "Party in the USA." Considering the album asks a fairly long runtime (48:42), the variety does a lot to keep things fresh, while the progression gives the album a feeling of momentum.

But that's all well and good. Is it fun? Yes. It's fun. It's great as an anthem type album, or great as summer pop.

Loose thoughts:

• "Pynk" is a great tune, in-spite/with-help of Grimes, who unfortunately always catches a bit of side-eye from me post Musk, but in an album about female androids I guess she's gotta be there. How do you pronounce that baby's name?
• Monáe supposedly worked on this album for a while, including through and after her performance in Hidden Figures, which is, of course, about black female "computers."

Dirty Computer, Galia

First off, I was psyched that this album was chosen for this week. I have known about this album since its release, but only listened to a select few songs from it like "I Like That," "Pynk" and "Make Me Feel." I listened to those songs a lot, especially "I Like That" which made me feel empowered and happy. Full transparency: In June 2018, I captioned an Instagram picture of myself with "A little crazy, little sexy, little cool / Little rough around the edges, but I keep it smooth / I'm always left of center and that's right where I belong / I'm the random minor note you hear in major songs / And I like that" 

Now that I got that off my chest I can continue to say that I appreciated having a reason to finally listen to the rest of the album. I really enjoyed the album because I felt as if it was a clear view into who Janelle is, at least at the time. Each song was candid and raw, and even if some songs didn't speak to me, I am sure that they spoke to many. The album was definitely an anthem of femininity, black feminism, and sexuality, and Janelle used many different types of music and singing to craft this anthem. The variety, and sometimes the unexpectedness of songs kept me engaged. For example, "Screwed" at first sounded like a boring Katy Perry-like pop song (no shade to Katy Perry) but then was all explicitly about f*cking. Personally, that was a fun surprise lol.   

My only concrete criticism is that I wasn't really into the continuing metaphor of a dirty computer. I'm sure there are very specific reasons why Janelle chose this, but I think for what Janelle was trying to describe, there could have been more fine-tuned comparisons. But maybe being fine-tuned was not Janelle's point! 

All in all, I admire Janelle's project. "I Like That" still reigns as a favorite song, but hopefully no lyrics will end up on my Instagram again!

Dirty Computer, Nate

You want to see a dirty computer? You should see the old Gateway computer my parents bought in 1997 that I eventually bricked by download pornography from Limewire. That computer was gross.

This here Dirty Computer? Man, look... no one has gotten more out of being compared to Prince than Janelle, and I'm not saying she doesn't have Prince-like attributes to her future-funk, but she sure as shit leans into the skid. If this is what passes as mass art, I am content to let it pass me.

I don't have a word count on this since I'm writing it directly into the email draft, so let me go ahead and say that I liked the compressed booming of "Crazy, Classic, Life," that I can do without Zoë Kravitz, and that Monáe has made this album going on three times and while it kicks ass live it does very little to insist itself. Hopefully this diversion brings us closer to tacos.

Dirty Computer, Pam

Wow!! I’ve actually listened to this album before Record Club!! When does that happen?! Janelle Monáe is freakishly multi-talented. And Dirty Computer is a solid pop album featuring two of my absolute favorite songs to have been released in the last ten years ("Pynk," "Make Me Feel"). 

I've always liked, not loved, Dirty Computer and have mostly preferred to listen to those two singles rather than listening to the album all the way through. Given the week to delve a little deeper into Dirty Computer and listen to it as a unit, I can say that the album itself feels like a celebration. The energy of Janelle Monáe is always hard to match, and Dirty Computer is no exception. I'm a fan of The ArchAndroid as well, but now I think I would argue that Dirty Computer is a bit more accessible. She's at the top of her game here, and she's clearly having a great time doing her thing.

There are some big names who are featured on Dirty Computer. But honestly most times I can't even separate the featured artist from what Monáe is doing herself. I think that demonstrates that these featured artists are purely there to enhance what Janelle Monáe has already put down and not even to act as support—she'd be fine without them.

Some songs have grown on me more this week ("Take a Byte," "I Like That"), but I still feel that none of them come close to striking gold like with "Pynk" and "Make Me Feel." "Americans" is a good way to round out an album that seems to be all about embracing the things that make us different and who we are. 

And now here is where I force you to watch a Drag Race Lip Sync to "Make Me Feel"...

"Annnnnnnd... Don't. Fuck. It. Up!"