Picket Fence Post

Item #1: Forgetful Mamas

It’s not even the insanely busy spring yet — the time when we’re overloaded with school projects, school events, national holidays, Little League & spring soccer games/practices — and I’ve still been forgetting stuff like sending my kid to school with lunch money, birthday parties, etc. So, when I was trying to get the Picket Fence Post family’s schedule into some semblance of order last week, I felt a bit better about my slacker-ness when I witnessed moms on TV shows being overwhelmed and forgetful too.

I dedicated my Mommy Tracked column this week to this topic, saying that:, “. . . [T]he depiction of two fictional moms on TV this past week screwing up in big ways when it came to their family’s schedules made me realize that, if moms feeling overwhelmed by the weird administrative complexity of contemporary child-rearing is now a punch line on TV shows, I can’t be the only one who’s feeling burned out.”

At least I haven’t forgotten my kids’ birthdays. Yet.

Do you find yourself forgetting stuff, repeatedly, despite your best efforts to get organized?

Item #2: Dysfunctional TV Families

I’ve been going on and on about how much I adore the ABC comedy Modern Family and how much hope I have for NBC’s brand, spankin’ new dramedy Parenthood. Well, the Boston Globe’s Don Aucoin mentioned those two shows when he wrote about a trend in family-centric TV shows as of late: A lack of parental authority.

In his piece, “Dysfunction Junction: Who’s the boss? TV parents these days are often as adolescent as their children,” he asserted that today’s TV parents aren’t as stable and authoritative as TV parents of years past, like on The Cosby Show. He quoted a woman who writes about media and parenting issues as saying: “Bill Cosby was hysterically funny, and yet when push came to shove on The Cosby Show, there was no question that he and his wife were the authority figures, no question that ‘We’re the parents here, we’re here to take care of you, we’re not your friends.’ We lost something there and it’s time to get it back. A better sense of parents not so much as dominant authorities but as parents.”

While I agree that we’ve lost an overall sense of authority over today’s kids, I think the TV shows are simply reflecting today’s reality.  (Ever try to lightly reprimand/correct the behavior of  a kid who’s not yours? Be prepared for pediatric snark and smirks.) If you’re going to complain that TV parents are acting too much like kids, we need to start with the actual parents they’re depicting.

Item #3: Boston Baby & Family Expo

Mark your calendars New Englanders: Next Saturday — that’s March 20 — I’ll be appearing at the Baby & Family Expo at the Bayside Expo Center to tell parents that, while they’ll see lots of products and get lots of parenting advice at the Expo, the most important thing they need to keep in mind is this: If you don’t keep your sense of humor about this child-rearing adventure, you’ll go nuts.

At 10:30 a.m., I’m slated to give a talk/book reading called, “How to Keep Your Sense of Humor (Believe us, you’ll need it!)” where I’ll give expectant and current parents a humorous pep talk and read some of the more embarrassing columns from my parenting/humor book Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum. People who attend the talk will not only get a signed copy of the book, but they’ll get the added bonus of meeting “The Girl,” (otherwise known as my daughter) who’ll be helping me out at the Expo.

In addition, my Parents & Kids Magazine editor Heather Kempskie and her twin sister Lisa Hanson, authors of The Siblings Busy Book, will be giving pointers at 1:30 p.m. about activities you can do when you have children of different ages.

If you’re heading to the Expo on Sunday, March 21, you’ll get a chance to meet my buddies, the podcasting divas that are the Manic Mommies,  Erin and Kristin who’ll be taping their show at 1 p.m.

Here’s the link for more info. Hope to see you there.

Image credit: Baby & Family Expo.

Item #1: Big Sunday for Big Love

Whenever I start to fret about how insane and overcaffeinated my life seems at times – I never have enough time to get my work done from my home office (hence the caffeine) amid the demands of the three young narcissists I’m raising (for whom I serve as an unpaid administrative assistant/chauffeur/cook/cleaner/home health aide), my husband with his broken wrist (which’ll likely require surgical repair in the next week or so), and our wildly teething nutty puppy who can now leap onto all of the furniture with ease — I like to flip on the TV and observe the hell that fictional TV families (or non-fictional in the case of the Gosselins) endure on a daily basis and realize that these folks — fictional or not — have stress levels way higher than mine.

A prime example of TV families with more on their plate than me comes in the form of the three wives of HBO’s Big Love.  Not only do they share one husband — I cannot even imagine — but they have to worry all the time that they’ll get arrested for practicing polygamy and that the creepy folks and relatives from the nearby polygamist compound (which looks like real life ones I’ve seen on the news) will draw them into all manner of mayhem. Plus they have a good number of little kids and babies running around, in addition to two teenagers, one who wants to get married to a guy in his late 20s. At least one wife is trying to get her career off the ground and another is going back to school.

The fourth season of the polygamist drama premieres Sunday night and promises to be as controversial as ever. My bustling suburban home with three kids, one husband, one wife and one dog seems downright tame and manageable by comparison.

Item #2: High Hopes for Parenthood

Remember that old film Parenthood, the one from 1989 which starred Steve Martin along with a great ensemble cast? It dramatized how parenthood is complicated and messy and heart-rending no matter how old your kids are. Well NBC is hoping that, despite the fact that the film is decades old, that there’s still magic in its formula. NBC is taking the film’s premise and turning it into a TV show, kind of like they did with the phenomenal Friday Night Lights, which was a non-fiction book, then a movie, then a fictional TV drama.  (If shows like the Bionic Woman and Knight Rider can be resurrected, why not a 21-year-old movie?) 

Parenthood, the TV show, will feature Gilmore Girls’ Lauren Graham, Six Feet Under’s Peter Krause and Coach’s Craig T. Nelson. I’ve seen a handful of promos and I’m hopeful that this show will work, though the bar for family comedies has been set mighty high by the fabulous freshman ABC comedy Modern Family which literally makes me laugh out loud each week.

How will Parenthood, the TV show stack up? Check out the trailer for the 1989 film:

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Mad Men Returns

Have I mentioned that Mad Men’s third season premieres on Sunday night on AMC? I think I may have, once or twice.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a tad bit obsessed with the award-winning drama set in the 1960s which follows the (mostly) men who work for a Manhattan ad agency and their families. I’ve been counting down the days until new episodes air, so much so that I think The Spouse is jealous of my crush on Don Draper (Jon Hamm). He jokes that Mad Men is all I’ve been talking about lately. Of course he’s wrong. Kind of.

Speaking of Don Draper . . . when we last saw the character at the end of the sophomore season,  his wife/at-home mother of his children, Betty (January Jones) had just allowed him to move back into their suburban home. Betty had made Don spend several weeks in a hotel after he humiliated her by cheating on her AGAIN, this time with an older business associate whose husband was Don’s client. However after learning she was pregnant with her third child, Betty reluctantly decided to proceed with the pregnancy (after flirting with the idea of obtaining an illegal abortion, it was 1962) and let Don back home. The question remains about whether she’s forgiven him or whether he’s going to stop his rampant cheating.

My Pop Culture column this week at Mommy Track’d is all about not just Betty, but all the women of Mad Men.

Oh, Miley

Miley, Miley, Miley. I don’t know what to make of the recent evolution of this 16-year-old Disney star, the face of the Hannah Montana franchise, of which my 10-year-old daughter is so fond.

 What I’ve been seeing as of late has not been promising.

Take, for example, her performance at this week’s Teen Choice Awards – and the ensuing debate over whether she was actually pole dancing while dressed in sexy, butt-revealing attire backed up by dancers in bras and short-shorts – which made me deeply sad. Sure, a tween/teen star needs to evolve into a more mature image, take on older material in order to continue growing as an artist, but this road that Miley appears to be traversing . . . nothing good seems like it’s gonna come from this. Lest we forget, Britney Spears was once a squeaky clean Mouseketeer. And when Spears, I mean Cyrus, invoked Britney during her Choice Awards performance, I shuddered.

John Hughes, Creator of 1980s Teen Flicks

You might’ve heard that the director/writer of some of Generation X’s best loved teen films — Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful and Pretty in Pink– passed away last week. Since then, there’s been all manner of tribute and appreciations for Hughes, including a great one in the Boston Globe by Wesley Morris.

An excerpt, referencing the world of Hughes’ films:

“There was no war, no sweeping social movement during this period. Just Ronald Reagan and sad old Grenada. No one talked about race or AIDS. The world revolved around detention, crushes and proms. Sometimes it was just ‘Pretty in Pink.’ But what redeemed these movies was their sideways cool. May all so-called misfits be as hot as Eric Stoltz and Mary Stuart Masterson. And on his uneven playing field, Hughes did come up with achingly human characters. They were always on the sidelines or reluctant to get in the game — even their own. [Molly] Ringwald’s Samantha in ‘Sixteen Candles.’ [Jon] Cryer’s Duckie in ‘Pretty in Pink.’ Masterson’s Watts in ‘Some Kind of Wonderful.’ And, best of all, Jeannie Bueller and Cameron Frye in ‘Ferris Bueller.’ Jennifer Grey was the seething Cassandra of that movie, desperately trying to expose the little brother as the brat [Matthew] Broderick so star-makingly was.”

Do you have a favorite 1980s/Hughes flick? Mine’s a tie between Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club.

Image credit: Chris Pizzello/AP via Star-Ledger.

I’ve gotta hand it to Bruce Handy, a writer and deputy editor at Vanity Fair. He created a sarcastic and sharply humorous phony school form for the New York Times that hits the inanity of the dynamics between parents and schools squarely on the mark. (Go here to see the fake form in full.)

The faux parental registration form for a school known as the “Elm Street School” starts off by saying:

“Greetings, parents. We’re sure you’re every bit as excited about the new school year as we are. (Sigh.) Please take the time to fill out the following registration form. Send it in on the first day of school with your fully inoculated, adequately medicated, lice-free son/daughter.”

Among the pieces of information requested on the form:

– The name of the student’s test-prep tutor.

– The name of the student’s playdate coach.

– Whether the child has dietary restrictions, allergies, biting problems, attention-seeking disorder, mange or early-onset despair.

My favorite part: After the line, “This year I will volunteer for,” there are the following volunteer opportunities from which to choose:

“a. Class parent.

b. The auction.

c. The spring fair.

d. All of the above.

e. None of the above? O.K., then excuse us while we go and work on those college recommendation letters, if you catch our drift.”

Second favorite part of Handy’s satirical form: Asking parents to promise not to “check my BlackBerry during the holiday concert and/or think unsupportive thoughts during the fifth grade string section’s performance of ‘Dreidel, Dreidel.’”

A few weeks ago, I posted a video from Lifetime’s web site, a comic short from its Mommy Madness series, featuring an at-home Las Vegas mom of two, Angela Hoover. I was so taken with the satire that I tracked Angela Hoover down and she fielded several of my questions about how she got started making these videos about the insanity of parenthood for a national network.

With a background in commercials and experience in stand-up, the Philadelphia-born Hoover has been a self-employed bookkeeper and was the host of Lifetime’s Mother’s Day Weekend Movie Marathon. Here’s an edited Q&A with Hoover:

Meredith O’Brien, Picket Fence Post: How did you get involved with Lifetime and how did the idea for these Mommy Madness video shorts come about?

Angela Hoover, Mommy Madness: My manager introduced me to producer Rosemond Cranner. We clicked right away. She then kept one of my demo tapes and vowed we would work together. I was very flattered but in L.A., things don’t always happen right away, so I sort of forgot about it, moved to Vegas and changed diapers. Well, two kids later, she came up with this idea of a real mom in the trenches with a comical twist. (Is there any other way?) We came up with some episode ideas, which she took to Lifetime and before I knew it, she was e-mailing me from her BlackBerry saying, “They want to do it!”

Apparently moving away from Hollywood and finger-painting with my children in Las Vegas brought me to my dreams faster than any type of action I could possibly take in tinsel town.

O’Brien: Who writes the scripts?

Hoover: It’s collaborative. Some I write. Some the producers write. Some we write together. And then, oftentimes, it’s improv.

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