It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Xmas...In LA...

7:09 PM

Seriously, this is th kind of weather I've come to associate with DECEMBER in Los Angeles. But maybe a smidge warmer. It's like 50 degrees outside! Can someone tell Ma' Nature that it's JUNE now and that this is Seattle and not, um, Siberia? Please? I'm sitting here shivering in pants, a long-sleeved shirt, my pull-over FLEECE sweater, and yeah, my SCARF. That is just so wrong.

JUNE!

We're talking 2 weeks until SOLSTICE!

Aaaauuuummm....

Okay, let me instead distract myself by telling you about my Pippi Longstocking moment. Or maybe it's my Sex & 'The City', My 'The City' moment...(This post is quotation mark heavy, I hope I don't end up here.)

So as I was making coffee yesterday morning, I kept thinking about Pippi Longstocking and how she would never "fly" in today's world.

Yes, I realize I'm 34 years old and have no business thinking of Pippi Longstocking cuz that's kid's stuff...(maybe, more on that later) but I think it's the same as Andy busting out xmas carols whenever he whistles, or hums for that matter -- though he is rather emphatic about his hatred toward that particular holiday season, he just can't help himself! I don't think it's a case of "the lady doth protest too much," but possibly the amount of inundation of the songs and melodies in childhood in much the way that the aforementioned red-headed freak appeared in my constant weekend viewing of KTLA Channel 5 during my youth in LA!

Family Film Festival with Tom Hatten, anyone? Yep, a product of television as babysitter. I may have said this before (I'm super good at repeating myself), but it was probably one of the only ways I was able to experience "traditional" "American" "culture". (Just picture me doing the quotes with my fingers as I pronounced those words...) I am famous for being at the periphery of most popular cultural phenomena...

Take the movie everyone is talking about at work--okay, the OTHER movie people are talking about at work...in the world of "Who Are YOU in Sex and the City?" I don't even make the east coast cut. Seriously, when that show was actually on teevee and all the cool kids were talking about it, I was living on a sailboat the North Harbor in Santa Cruz, CA. The City? My "the city" was San Francisco. (PS, thank you creators of The Tick for that one.)

When my friends and I said we were going to "The City," everyone knew what you meant, 60 miles up the coast, SF baybee. And sex? In the City? So not to be too stereotypical, just plain honest, the only people I knew still having sex who were not college students were either married or living alternative lifestyles...so does it really surprise you that I was the one who said something like,"So the show is about Lesbian women?" (Oh L Word, were you even a gleam in your creator's eye back then, I wonder?)

Right. I was also a popular one at parties for the simple disbelief and awe I inspired that I'd made it this far without dying of super-uncoolness.

Wow what a tangent. Back to Pippi Longstocking.

I honestly thought syndication meant you lived forever. Is that because I grew up in LA watching the original Star Trek, Dukes of Hazzard, Popeye, El Chavo del Ocho, Gilligan's Island, and who knows how many shows that were out of the public eye for eons before I was even born?

How shocking is it then that no one under the age of say, 30 knows of those wonderful grainy Pippi Longstocking movies (tv show if you were in Sweden--or are lucky enough to know enough of the language to follow the serial shot in the late 60s)! They don't get my fascination... everyone wanted to be Pippi, boys as well as girls...

But now-a-daze...can you see her trying to compete with the likes of "Dora the Explorer?"

They made Pippi into some kind of cartoon a while ago...I guess cuz, you know, that would be WAY more acceptable than the live-action version. In the more frightening of conservative America, can you just imagine the freak-out parents would have about a 9-year-old girl dressed in what amounts to a long t-shirt, thigh-high stockings and a garter belt? Wow, that just sound wrong, doesn't it?

Much less the "lessons" being taught by this little girl who lives all alone! In her own house! With a horse! And a monkey! CPS would be all over her! Well, if they could outsmart her. Folks, those Pippi books and movies taught me one very basic fact: treat me like I'm a stupid kid and I will make you rue the day. Personally? I'd love to raise more kids with that mentality. Yet another reason society heaves a big sigh of relief that I'm not planning on having children.

What has all this to do with the price of tea in China?

Reminiscing, google-searching, and reading up on Pippi, Tomi, and Anika was much more fun than thinking about the weather.

And on another tangent:

June 14th!

But I won't bother to hope the sun is shining. It's not worth the disappointment...

9:29PM