‘Veronica Mars’: High School Really is Hell

I’m late, of course, to the party. Just as I watched “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” two decades after the show was made, more or less, I’m 15 year behind the time with another show about a compact woman child who packs a punch—in this case, summer 2022 was the summer my wife and I binge watched the three TV seasons of “Veronica Mars.”

And then got the movie and watched it, too.

Movie image from IMDB.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees some parallels between Veronica and Buffy. Both are attractive blondes who are often under-estimated by their adversaries. Both are quick-tongued—flash back to Buffy: Professor Walsh: “We though you were a myth.” Buffy: “Well, you were myth-taken.”

And both shows begin in high school, which is a bit of hell in both universes.

Wikimedia Common image of Kristen Bell in 2007 on set of TV show "Veronica Mars."

Did I like “Veronica Mars?” Heck yes, for many of the reasons I liked Buffy. Both Sarah Michelle Geller and Kristen Bell have the chops to be leading characters, and both are fun to watch. Both shows feature ensemble casts—indeed, there is a bit of crossover between them, with several actors from Buffy having roles in Veronica.

And I enjoyed both takes on American education. They weren’t either entirely real or realistic, and oddly enough, I found Buffy’s universe in some ways more relatable. It was just a random town, and if Sunnydale still existed in the same universe as LA, it wasn’t like Neptune, a village partly populated by media elite.

Season 3 TV cast of "Veronica Mars." The season ends abruptly mid-story, so it was nice to have a movie to wrap things up a bit. But kid, seriously, you can do better than Logan.

Buffy was a cleaner character, more ethical, in many ways. Veronica was never above bending the rules nor breaking the law to achieve revenge, for example. Buffy could get mean to save the universe, but not so often to offer payback.

That, to me, was the main weakness of Veronica Mars. Too often, it was a revenge fantasy, which left me a bit cold. Fortunately, that wasn’t the main arc of the show, and it was fun to see a feisty female with the smarts to figure it out. When Veronica said, “I know what happened,” she usually did.

Other parallels:

• Both Buffy Summers and Veronica Mars aren’t lucky in love. Buffy’s serious relationships include two vampires, an ex-soldier who loses his way and various high school boys who either betray her or turn out to be seriously unsuitable, for some reason. Veronica Mars has a very screwed up love life—to me, one of the main weaknesses of the show is that I never warmed up to her longest and most serious relationship, that weird rascal Logan. She would be better off without him.

• Law enforcement is best not trusted in either universe. The Sunnydale police, at least for a  season, are controlled by a demonic mayor. Keith, Veronica’s dad, gets to be sheriff now and then, but when he’s not, the local deputies are often a disreputable bunch.

• High School, and college, are populated by awful people doing awful things. In Veronica Mars, Hearst College and Neptune High School are both terrible places. Even worse that Sunnydale High School or UC-Sunnydale.

• Nerds make the best friends. Whether it’s Willow or Mac, it pays to have a gal pal who knows her way around computers (or witchcraft, in Willow’s case—the equivalent for Mac might be a talent for shady business deals).

Anyway, tonight we watched the 2014 movie “Veronica Mars.” It was fun to see to see the cast run through their paces again, and it did have the attractive flavor of the TV show, warts and all. But seriously, did she have to end up with Logan? Meh.

The Witch in the White House

Added to post on Jan. 31: Enjoyed this interview with the new press secretary. It's with an old friend, so it's a very favorable environment, but that intelligent, competent Willow vibe is not reduced by this:

It’s been 10 days since Joe Biden was inaugurated president of the United States.

We need a Washington press corps that will hold him accountable. And we need a president whose administration speaks straight and clearly, answering reasonable questions. Being president means you’re a lightning rod for criticism—and as has been said, if you can’t stand that heat, get out of the kitchen.

Still, one of the many odd aspects of the recent odd administration of Donald Trump was the way in which press briefings at the White House began, and then how they ground to a halt. Apparently, neither Trump nor his minions saw answering questions as a part of what government should do. Overall, the White House held few press briefings, with one Trump press secretary giving exactly zero during her tenure.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki during her first press briefing on Jan. 20, 2021. She has giving a briefing every business day since--a sharp contrast to the previous administration. All images on this post from Wikimedia Commons, both of these are screen shots from White House video.

I just watched the official White House You Tube video of Jen Psaki’s first press briefing, held the evening of Jan. 20. And then I watched samples of the two initial Trump press briefings—the odd crowd size rant at an unscheduled Saturday session on Jan. 21, 2017, and the first official press briefing on Jan. 23. They were both by then White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

Sean Spicer at a press berating session.

The contrast between the Sean Crazy Show and the Psaki Fact Briefing was clear. Sean didn’t get along well with reporters—but then again, Sean was telling outright and obvious lies. Remember the bizarre, fact-denying narrative of crowd size during those odd first days of the Trump presidency? It was a foreshadowing of many strange days to come, of President Trump urging Americans to ingest bleach or altering a weather map with a Sharpie.

Sean Spicer, what a guy! And he was followed by three female press secretaries, none known for their factual truth telling.

Future governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

There was Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who famously claimed that she had heard from “countless” members of the FBI about how grateful they were when President Trump fired FBI director James Comey. (Maybe zero counts as countless?) And Sarah is now on her way to becoming governor of Arkansas, heaven help us.

Stephanie Grisham

Next in line was Stephanie Grisham, who served for about a year and gave exactly zero press briefings. I think we should demand a refund of her government salary—White House press secretaries are named by the president, but as government employees, they work for us, and a press secretary who spends about a year never speaking publicly with the press in the briefing room is not fulfilling her job.

Kayleigh McEnany--I shall smile and I shall lie and then I shall fade away.

Then there was Kayleigh McEnany. What to say about her? In the middle of a pandemic, she defended the U.S. leaving the WHO because of it’s “clear bias towards China.” McEnany is no ninny—she’s an educated woman, but she seemed to think sniping at the press was her role.

Now, we have Jen Psaki, a veteran of the Obama administration, speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room. She gives a briefing every business day, which seems like a good thing for press secretary to do. She speaks calmly and factually—in listening to her first briefing, held on Jan. 20, I didn’t detect any point where she clearly lied or deliberately mislead the press.

And she didn’t get lost in irrelevancies. There were no wild claims about crowd size, nor berating the press for imagined slights.

What a breath of fresh air. I don’t want the press to go all euphoric—their job is to hold the powers-that-be accountable, and it’s inevitable nice old Joe will have to make hard and controversial decisions that Psaki will have to defend. Reporters need to ask her hard questions, but based on her first 10 days on the job, I think she’ll handle them calmly and competently without resorting to carpet bombing attacks on the media.

She’s off to a good start. Forgive me for this, but to me, she looks and sounds like Willow from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" who grew up and moved to Washington after attending UCS (University of California—Sunnydale). She has more confidence now, but still has the same kind of nerdy, intelligent demeanor.

And after the craziness of the past four years, it’s kind of a comfort to have a calm, smart, powerful and competent witch as White House press secretary.

Alyson Lee Hannigan (left) who played Willow on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," an mage from her Buffy days, and Jen Psaki (right) from when she was a wee lass working in the Obama Administration. Clearly the same person. Witches can be tricky.

 

What I Don’t Hear About the Pandemic

The enemy. CDC image from Wikimedia Commons.

“We have to learn to live with this.” So said Gov. Kim Reynolds, R-Iowa, on April 27 when she announced that 77 Iowa counties would start seeing their businesses open.

A columnist for The Gazette, Lyz Lenz, compared her to Lord Farquaad from the movie Shrek in a column about how the governor’s actions show that Iowans apparently aren’t all in this together. The attitude of too many seems to be that meatpacking workers are expendable. Reynolds is a Hamburger Helper Republican, in the camp of President Let Them Eat Meat Trump, whose only use of his presidential powers to intervene in the industrial production part of the economy in an emergency is to make it harder for states or local governments to shut down meat plants for worker safety.

VP Mike Pence visits the Mayo Clinic without a mask. Iowa opens up most of its counties before the pandemic starts to slow down. President Trump continues to wage war, primarily on the media, via tweet storms that do nothing to unite the country and solve the pandemic.

And I’m getting tired.

You know what? My governor, whom I mostly disagree with on everything, does have a point. We do have to learn to live with the COVID-19 virus, and we have to learn to economically function, somehow. A vaccine may or may not be coming in a year or so. But we don’t know for sure when or even if it will arrive, and any vaccine won’t be here soon enough to set our lives aright in the meantime.

So, we have to live with this virus. We have to function. Yet, that should not mean that we sacrifice lives for the economy or for the production of animal protein.

What do I want? I want the media and our leaders to focus on what the sane solution is. Because I think there is one.

And it’s New Zealand. That little tiny country that is less than double the size of Iowa has pretty much crushed the pandemic—without breakthrough medical treatments and without a vaccine.

Leader of the free world.
New Zealand government image from Wikimedia Commons.

Because the Achilles Heel of COVID-19 is that, even if evidence seems to point to an origin in bat viruses, and even if the virus can jump species to cats and dogs, its primary reservoir now is human beings. If we track it, isolate it, keep it from jumping from human-to-human, what then? In a fortnight, it mostly dies out. We can New Zealand it into oblivion if we’re competent and strategic and do the right things, which are mostly not the right-wing things.

I realize there is some need to understand the history of this pandemic. We need to know if it came from a wet market or poor handling of viruses in a Chinese lab. Dark, irrational conspiracy theories about bio-weapons catch hold partly because the Chinese government is not allowing enough science on the origin of COVID-19.

Still, while I think we need the answer, it’s not our most pressing need. Because the Hamburger Helper wing of the GOP is using the origin mystery to justify xenophobia and to change the subject from how badly and chaotically our government responded and is still responding.

There’s no reason that the United States needs to be the hot spot of a respiratory virus from eastern Asia, except government incompetence. And true, while I mostly blame the tangerine tribble at the top, he’s not the full problem, either. The CDC’s test debacle of 2020 doesn’t make government bureaucracy look intelligent and efficient.

But even if Trump is not the entire problem, he sure knows how to pour gasoline on a fire.

And that’s not what I want. I don’t want states having to sneak around and bargain for supplies and hide them from the feds because who knows when the feds will swoop in and confiscate states’ stuff. I don’t want idiots poisoning themselves because they are dumb enough to listen to a discredited, impeached president who doesn’t know anything but is sure willing to share it. I don’t want that president spending his time being bitter, bumbling and muttering dark theories from the corners of his sick mind.

I want New Zealand.

I know, we’re not a small island nation. We can’t obliterate the pandemic as easily as that tiny nation has already almost done. And even in New Zealand, it’s likely COVID-19 will be back, because even the kiwis can’t completely isolate themselves from the rest of the planet.

But we can get our testing act together. We can start quickly building contact tracing infrastructure. We can mandate, rather than lamely suggest, practices to protect food workers, healthcare workers and old people in nursing homes.

If we had the will, and the leadership, we could crush this thing.

COVID-19 can’t live without our help. Right now, idiots among us are protesting stay-at-home orders due to fear, frustration and fakery (some of the protests appear to be right-wing AstroTurf).

And I want more media stories that ignore the dumpster fire political show and focus on how we “live with it.” How we learn to treat this virus, this quiet foe, as the foe that it is.

Mr. President, if you think you’re a wartime leader, start acting like it. If you want a model, her name is Jacinda Arden.

Or maybe another female role model is in order: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. During quarantine, I’ve been re-watching episode of that show—and in most episodes, some surprise demon always appears, the Buffy gang has to scramble and get information and some secret is unlocked that lets Buffy save the day.

I do all my image shopping at Wikimedia Commons, safely, at a social distance.

Sarah Michelle Gellar
at the Dubai International Film Festival 2004.
User "Saudi" on Wikimedia Commons.

She doesn’t just trust her gut. She doesn’t drink Lysol. And if she were running the show, I think we’d all be in better shape. If Jacinda, with her cozy sweatshirts and comforting Facebook talks is not your style, maybe Buffy, with her zingers, is more what you have in mind.

But while Buffy might have been impetuous at times, she learned in each show the importance of listening and teamwork.

And besides knowing that Americans can beat this pandemic before a vaccine arrives to permanently knock it down (we hope), another thing I want is for us to recognize that this is a global, human struggle. When I say “we” can beat the pandemic, I want the “we” to include more that white Americans. All you homo sapiens can carry this virus, but all of you can help beat it, too.

Sure, find out what mistakes the Chinese government made. But don’t blame Chinese people. Just because our orange-skinned president is a buffoon, it’s not true that all Americans are as cray as that. And no one citizen of a country is responsible for all the real or imagined mistakes of that country’s governments—so if you abuse or mistreat any Asian looking person due to your own fears, shame on you.

We need to do better. We need to be better. We need to live with this virus, but not by tossing up our hands and opening stuff up with no plan. We need the intelligence of Willow and the faith of Xander and the maturity of Giles.We do not need the greed and raw incompetence of Donald, nor the corruption of Kim.

We need to understand our enemy and outsmart it.

Sadly, I don’t see enough signs that we’re doing that. And don’t let President (or Governor) Hamburger Helper off the hook for making a hash of things since this crisis began.

YouTube: From Buffy to Tessa

I am thinking about YouTube, which has been around for a bit more than decade.

I wrote my latest Corridor Business Journal column about a local news show, “Ethical Perspectives on the News.” It’s a show recorded by and aired on KCRG-Channel 9 in Cedar Rapids, but because the show was recently moved to 5:30 a.m. on Sundays, I find it easier to catch the show on YouTube.

The show, sponsored by the Inter Religious Council of Linn County, is posted after its first airing. As I write this, today’s show is already on line.

Anyway, I was a bit proud of my March CBJ column simply because it represented two cool realities: 1) It was a last-minute rush job before I flew out to San Francisco for spring break, and as such, I am glad it came together, and 2) I managed to work in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” I’ve seen a lot of YouTube highlights from Buffy lately, tied to the show’s 20th anniversary. There are some good highlights reels out there, but one genre is the fan video where Buffy scenes are used to illustrate some popular song. Like this one.

Crop of screen shot from video linked above--final seconds of final Buffy episode. As she thinks about the end of her life as a slayer, Butty is about to break into a series-ending grin.

It got me thinking of online video as a new medium. Of course, like “Ethical Perspectives,” YouTube can represent simply posting material from some other medium.

Then again, there is original content. I follow a number of channels on YouTube—some associated with programs I like but don’t have time to watch. I see highlights of Steven Colbert’s CBS program, for example.

I also follow the Vlog Brothers, one of whom is also active on the channel SciShow, which I also follow.

Besides those, I’ve been listening to a fair number of frothy pop songs from a young lady named Tessa Violet, who first came to YouTube fame by lip synching other people’s songs and vlogging about her life, and now has moved on to writing and performing her own songs in YouTube music videos.

YouTube thumbnail for Tessa Violet's "Sorry I'm not Sorry" video. I also used "Baby I'm Not Over You" on my bike blog.

I am particularly fond of “Sorry I’m not Sorry,” a song about a woman who refuses to stay in a bad relationship. I kind of like that message, and it’s a catchy song.

So I’m on a bit of a personal mission to make Tessa Violet a star beyond YouTube. We'll see if this blog post gets the ball rolling. That’s a joke, of course. Unlike Tessa’s fan base—she has 1 million YouTube followers—my blog audience is small

Still, I am interested in what the online video medium means.

In particular, who in Iowa or the Cedar Rapids area is creating interesting, original videos that are shared via YouTube or some other online video service?

Readers, do you have any suggestions?

Saying Goodbye to Scout

From New York Times, publisher's image of covers of Harper Lee's two novels.

If Truman Capote was the model for Dill, that would make Harper Lee Jean Louise Finch.

Well, goodbye, Scout. You lived life on your own terms. In an era of self-aggrandizing celebrity, it’s nice to recall a successful writer who preferred a more graceful, private life. From the obituaries I’ve read, you were not Boo Radley—you were never holed up, away from the world, you were not a recluse—but you preferred not to deal endlessly with reporters.

From New York Times:
Donald Uhbrock/The LIFE Images Collection,
via Getty Images, Lee and her dad, 1961.

I was a reporter, once, and I’m glad I was never assigned to do a story about you. But then again, you did media interviews in the wake of publishing “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and some time in the 1960s decided it was enough.

As a journalist, I almost feel guilty saying it. But, good for you.

Your second book did not touch me as your first one did. And I know some school kids forced to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” in class don’t enjoy it much. But for me, it was one of the defining books of my childhood.

It was a book I read that I did not have to read. And as a boy, I was quickly smitten by Scout.

There is something about a strong, fearless, honest female voice.

Last night, not knowing that sad news would come today from Alabama, I watched “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” for the first time—not the movie, but the first few episodes of the late 1990s TV show.

Man, it’s odd to look back at 1996. The “net” was something cool and new that a computer hacker used, but not a librarian. Factually, I think that’s false—I was using the net in a university library in 1989—but it’s still an interesting cultural artifact of its time.

Most of all, I was surprised at how much I liked Buffy. There’s a wry sense of humor there, a cute snide commentary on what life in a high school or a California town is “like” even if no town is actually a Hell Mouth.

While Buffy isn’t exactly Scout, and the librarian isn’t exactly Atticus Finch, I do see some parallels.

Most of all, tough girls rule.

We’ll miss you, Harper Lee, even if we’ll also always have you. Maybe only one of your books will be of enduring fame, but then again, what a book. Life was slower then. Yet, when we want to, we can always get back to Maycomb.