Oh, Roswell! / Insomniac Interludes

First of all, it's not my fault that I slept in this morning and couldn't make any of my appointments until after noon. I had to take a break. I needed to watch something light, something that wasn't about rape, and also, just to be picky, had to contain no central murder.

I was a nanny when Roswell reruns were all over the SciFi channel, and it played in that one pristine hour where the toddler and the infant had naptime crossover. You always remember your first time (watching Roswell), the leather-scented upholstery of the wealthy house where you, starving and broke, graze organic food and feel feelings entirely too sexy for someone getting paid to take care of children. That pilot is absurdly erotic. Oh Roswell, oh, organic string cheese, oh, the squalor.

What can I say? Roswell hit me right in that saccharine soft spot last night. I careened through almost the first ten episodes, preparing for bed roughly at the time that I could hear my housemate upstairs, leaving for her Real Job.

The show is just steeped in teen sexuality, both real and symbolic. It's all bowls of strawberries, throbbing teenage lust, the erotic energy of resisting attraction, and there is Shiri Appleby's fresh, gorgeous face, clean and round as Eve's own right breast, there is even the urgency of that horrid Sara McLaughlin song: Kind of like its soundtrack, Roswell makes me want to cringe, but it is a cringe that has a shrill golden vein of exuberance.

I seriously almost ruined my entire next day because I had to watch teenagers try really hard not to fuck each other all night.

I've only seen the first season, enough to know that the Sheriff Isn't So Bad, and I did mistakenly catch the series finale last year: I vaguely remember Katherine Heigel's character was marrying like a 40-year-old teenager and there was something about a motorcycle coming onstage during high school graduation? And why was Max giving the speech? Liz would have TOTALLY been the valedictorian. Side note: While this show isn't super progressive, it does have a nice stereotype reversal in which the main character, Appleby's Liz is a GIRL who likes SCIENCE. I'm not saying they get a cookie, but maybe they get a plastic-wrapped, organic string cheese.

As you can see, there is lots to clear up here. The show began in 1999, circling the drain by 2003 (definitely one for the deeply tragic list of pop-culture that was overshadowed or otherwise killed by 9/11). Also, peeling back for the moment the sexy teenage lust, we find just a turd nugget of  highly inappropriate, painfully embarrassing cultural appropriation. Watching Roswell depict Native Americans is excruciating for me, and I'm white, which means, if I really wanted to, I could pretend not to notice how we stereotype people so that we can genocide them. So. They either don't specify or maybe even just make up the "Tribal Nation That Has Answers" (because, of course they do). It is about as humiliating as thinking about my first attempts to (resist) learning about white priviledge in college. Really, both things are. just. horrifying.

Despite sed turd, I will probably watch the show through the end, a three-season commitment (pre-writer's strike, which means the whole 22ish episode seasons). I think for me, the best part, the sexy pages with the creases in them, when it comes to Roswell, are really the first three minutes of the pilot (or the first 24 seconds of this promo). Shiri Appelby gets shot in a diner, and hunky Max (Jason Behr) races to her aid, tearing open the top of her dress to reveal a deeply Freudian bleed: it's like she took one look at Max and got shot with a puberty gun. But it's also like she's having her first period/sexual awakening out of her abdomen, in her guts, right below her sexy little bra. Max is able to heal Liz by cradling her head, hovering over her and making absurd little effort faces; they are practically in the missionary position, and let's face it, this metaphor isn't thinly veiled, it's translucent: this IS sex. Max runs out of the diner so that no one finds out that he's a magical unicorn alien, and Shiri Appleby holds her dress together at the neck, watching him retreat, with a stunned, hungry look that pretty much stays on her face for the rest of the season.

So now I will ignore social media, and I will watch more Tobasco-loving aliens, and the awkwardly excessive eye makeup of a freshly-launched Katherine Heigel, and the less successful launch of Tom Hanks' kid, who may or may not have hit puberty by now, but retains a gangly earnestness that will likely haunt him until he goes all Denzel in Training Day, or bulks up for a role until his neck is as thick as his head.

Go on Roswell, shoot me with your puberty gun.

Birth Control Tips with The Terminator (1984)

Hey, it's a great day to ignore March 3rd's protest of state-sanctioned rape! It's a bad year to have a uterus in most of the United states, but that is for one reason, and one reason alone. No, I know what you're thinking, Dear Reader, and the issue is not federal cuts to women's health providers like Planned Parenthood. It's not backward, hypocritical compromises in the government regarding health insurance coverage. Nor is it the recent congressional sausage party panel of "experts on women's health," none of whom have ever had vaginas. And it sure ain't the Republican campaign of misinformation, slut-shaming, and general promotion of sexual and gender-related ignorance at every opportunity.

The real problem here is that most women are forgetting is that Arnold Schwarzenegger is our most under-utilized form of birth control.

Let's go back in time, shall we?

It's 1984. You are a person of the female persuasion, single, perhaps working for shitty tips as a waitress in an off-brand Red Robin. I have good news for you! You do not have to worry about safe sex because a cybernetic organism in the form of an Austrian bodybuilder will appear naked in an alley, swathed in blue electricity, ready to address all of your birth control needs! In fact, you might say he's there to perform a pre-first-term abortion. Who needs the morning after pill? Arnold Schwarzenegger is the morning BEFORE pill.

Now I know what you're thinking: "But Jellybean, I've seen this movie. By the end of the movie, Sarah Connor is so pregnant that it looks like she has a watermelon under her dress! In fact, she has her kid BECAUSE the Governator went back in time to perform his innovative new form of birth control! The relationship between the Terminator and Sarah Connor's preganacy is practically CAUSAL!"

Well, Dear Reader, Sarah Connor may have had a kid, but the two Sarah Connors that the Governator visited before he got to her--THEY certainly won't be having any children. He was more than happy to sterilize them out of existence.

Which leads us to Birth Control with the Governator Tip #1: Try to have a common name, a land line, and make sure your listing is one of the first ones in the phone book. Trust me, your health concerns related to your lady-parts will be a distant dream.

Why use an IUD when a hail of bullets will do just fine? 

Birth Control with the Governator Tip #2: Choose your stalker wisely. The first half-hour of The Terminator is essentially a competition between two men trying to find, identify, and follow Sarah Connor. One of these, Kyle Reese, will become the love of Sarah Connor's life. And nothing enhances that tingly feeling of love-at-first-sight quite like these words: "Come with me if you want to live." Best. Pick-up line. Ever.

At the end of The Terminator, Sarah Connor is happy to explain of her dead tryst-mate that, "In the few hours we had together, we loved a lifetime's worth." Why was this relationship so fulfilling to Ms. Connor? The answer is communication. After she obeys her new boyfriend and gets in his stolen car, he seduces her with tender dialog: "Do exactly what I say. Exactly," he says, obviously paraphrasing Shakespeare's Sonnet #110, "Don't move unless I say. Don't make a sound unless I say."

Now ladies, don't be fooled by professions of love such as these.  Even when he follows them up by shouting, "Do you understand? Do you understand?" at you as if you are a deaf dog who just shit on the floor. If you fall for such proclamations of love, it will be all your fault when computers become sentient, initiating a future where human skulls will crack under the wheels of tanks and no one can wear colors other than gray and army green. I don't care how wet you get for, "Come with me if you want to live," ladies, keep that aspirin between your knees. Sarah Connor obviously chose the wrong stalker. If she had simply presented herself to Bachelor from the Future #2, her pesky Women's Health Issues would have been taken care of. Completely.

Now again, Dear Reader, you may have some questions. "But Jellybean, surely Sarah Connor's situation was unique; how can I apply to get my own Governator-style Health Care?" Well, just remember what Kyle Reese says: "They are living human tissue. They look human. Sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot." Don't you worry, Reader, because according to the timeline in The Terminator, there are cybernetic "birth control solutions" everywhere by now. And if you are currently pregnant, cheer up! According to the US Department of Justice, "pregnant women are more likely to be the victims of homicide than to die from any other cause." So if you are experiencing an unwanted pregnancy, the odds are really in your favor.

Birth Control with the Governator Tip #3: If you are biologically female, DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TREAT THE BULLET WOUNDS OF A MALE. Regardless of your or his sexual orientation, this will inevitably lead to remarks about his neat scars, which, as we all know, is the #1 cause of unprotected sex. Which is why lady doctors and nurses are always so damn pregnant!

It's time that we insist our legislators keep first aid kits behind the counter, given how they inevitably lead to pregnancy. Band-Aids are dangerous. Cotton gauze? Might as well be selling rufies!

In fact, given this current birth control crisis, perhaps women should refrain from providing any sort of medical help to males, period.