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How old do you think this kid is???

I love the way he nods his head. And when he pauses and looks like he’s going to pick his nose, but he’s just scratching his face.

I feel like the stereotype of adults reading kids’ books is that they are somehow debasing themselves, but let’s face it: I will never, at any age, be as cool as this kid.

Oh, and yes, that is a ukulele he’s playing. I’d like to hook him up with Stephin Merritt, but it’s possible the world would explode.

h/t Complications Ensue

So I finally, today, finished my last paper of this semester (!!!), which, by my peculiar procrastinatory habits, also means that I’m onto season two of my ONCE AND AGAIN dvds.

I just finished the episode “I Can’t Stand Up (For Falling Down),” written by Daniel & Sue Paige, who are not my favorite of the O&A writers, and some parts of this episode reminded me of why — like, because the episode’s framed around Eli’s struggles with the SAT, the episode starts with Eli, in one of the show’s trademark “artistic” black & white internal monologues, reciting SAT questions. For like five minutes. I am not joking.

But there was one scene that I admired for how it set up really obvious cliches, and then deflated them, all without making a huge deal of it. The setup is that Karen’s dorky boyfriend Leo has gotten her son Eli’s band a “possible gig.” (Said band, by the way, features a young and odd Adam Brody of THE O.C. fame.) The high school band is already such a cliche in and of itself*, and adding the first gig — it’s like, we may as well be watching the high school girl excitedly informing her parents of her first date and her dad settling in to interrogate the dude, is how high up we are on the list of things that happen on every tv show ever but in real life? Not so much by my count, but anyway — but the awesome thing is, the Adam Brody character in particular totally just mocks the shit out of Leo. There is no squealing over the gig, not even any Deep Pronouncements About the Art, just a mild sendup of how trite this all is. Nice.

Then, of course, we’re by extension into the territory of this scene’s other big cliche — Leo’s the guy who can’t quite accept he’s an adult and wants to be the one the high school kids think is cool — except when the Adam Brody character calls him on this by snarkily telling him he can’t actually be in the band, Leo basically tells him to go fuck himself. It’s very well delivered. And all this happens in the span of about two minutes, setting up and knocking down two easy chestnuts, so I’m all, “IIIIIIII’ve seen this befo– oh, nice! Oh, I know what they’re d– oh, heh!”

Well played, Paiges. Well played. Now, though, about those SAT questions. Please don’t do that again.

* By the way, the time I’ve seen the high school band/”soulful” musician device put to best use despite the cliches — and yes, it pains me to not have this be MY SO-CALLED LIFE’s “On the Wagon” episode, which is a total classic — is in pretty much every episode of FREAKS AND GEEKS. Jason Segal’s alacritous** embracing of every humiliation imaginable is put to the best possible use. So painful. So awesome.

** In reaction to the episode, I am now making up my own SAT words.

So I’m working on my last paper of the semester, which means after a hiatus I’m back to watching ONCE AND AGAIN. …As in, I settled in yesterday after a long day of reading journal articles and practicing calculus* to watch one episode… and six episodes later, sun rising, birds chirping, said, Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

This compressed quarter-season of viewing began with the particularly MY SO-CALLED LIFE-echoing “Outside Hearts,” written by one Alexa Junge. My first thought? To wonder if Alexa Young, author of FRENEMIES (which I haven’t read), could possibly be a pen name for Alexa Junge. Because I could totally believe that someone who wrote this episode wound up as a young adult novelist.

Today’s Googling and IMDBing seems to make this unlikely (though not impossible), but now I’m wondering: anyone know of TV writers who also write YA? I’ve already read, and enjoyed, RATS SAW GOD by Rob Thomas (the creator of VERONICA MARS, whose first season I deeply, desperately love**, and the new 90210, which I’ve yet to see). It seems like these should be overlapping skill sets. Is the money so good in TV that once people are in it, there’s no point to writing novels? (Thomas, I believe, wrote novels before breaking into TV.) Anyone got recommendations?

* Yes, the weirdest way in which my summer plans altered this week is that I signed up for two math classes. This impulsive decision resulted from a professor, after reading another paper I wrote, pointing out that “I’m really pretty certain that this is true!” is less than convincing as a rationale for complicated claims about what happens when many things change at the same time. (He politely declined to note that my authority is particularly unpersuasive on such matters.) We’re going to see if this is as big a disaster as it clearly has the potential to be.

** Bonus: my viewing marathon ended with “Sneaky Feelings,” where a very young Jason Dohring (a.k.a. VERONICA MARS’s Logan Echolls) makes an appearance. Logan is the quintessential example of a character I know I shouldn’t love — because he’s a terrible person — but I do, I do. How do they do that?