Every so often, my husband’s vocabulary greatly (and suddenly) improves. He begins using the kind of unnecessarily long words that he normally mocks me for employing. This inevitably means he has either been reading or watching Sherlock Holmes. Let me clarify, he has either been reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories or watching the brilliant Granada version of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett. The Granada TV presentation of Sherlock Holmes is beautifully true to the original text, unlike many other versions which are… what’s a fancy turn of phrase I can use here?… dumb as shit. I adore the BBC’s Sherlock. Benedict Cumberbatch is amazing and has the best name since Sherlock Holmes, himself, but have you seen A Study in Pink? In my mind, someone told the writer, “You borrowed this scene from The Princess Bride. Don’t you think people will notice?” The writer then responded, “Inconceivable!” A Study in False Advertising As I imagine is true of many of my peers, my first introduction to Sherlock Holmes was Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective. This film featured the mouse who lived beneath 221B Baker Street. The mouse detective is named Basil so it is pretty clear they are using Rathbone’s series of Sherlock Holmes movies as their source as opposed to the actual stories. Naturally, the mouse wears a deer stalker, the Watson character is a bumbling idiot and Moriarty is the bad guy. From my early youth, I was given the standard movie tropes instead of some genuine Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock is up there with Frankenstein’s monster in being misrepresented to the masses. The next incarnation of Sherlock Holmes to cross my path came in the form of Without a Clue in which Michael Caine plays a dim-witted actor hired by Watson...

You can only see so many ads featuring a young waitress singing about how she needs a college degree before you say, “Yes, maybe an on-line degree is for me. I have a lot in common with that singing and dancing 20-year-old waitress. I’d like to get a degree while wearing my pajamas.” Taking my cues from Brenda Walsh Bad news, you can’t actually complete your mental health counseling master’s degree in your pajamas. You still have to do internships and colloquia, etc. but you can do a lot of it without getting out of bed. Having a toddler, I can’t take full advantage of this fact – I have to get out of bed every single day; that’s the responsibility that comes with having a child. However, I can frequently stay in pajamas and not brush my hair so that is a definite plus. In order to pay for these on-line courses, I have been forced to take a job outside of the house. This is good because, at least twice a week, my daughter sees me looking human and leaving the home to the mystical world of ‘work’. My first course was in Theories of Development where I learned that girls respect their mothers more if they work outside the home. Sure, my toddler respects me now because of my abilities to do things like reach high shelves, work the DVD player and find her toys (by looking around for them – a concept she does not yet grasp) but eventually – I’m going to need more tricks in my repertoire. I spent two years as a stay at home mom and my laptop was my dearest friend; all my friends lived inside of it. Taking on-line courses was an obvious choice...

The Man This week I’m going to talk about the viral YouTube video, “Joey Quits”. If you aren’t one of the 2,763,107 who’ve viewed the video, I’ll give you an overview (then you can check it out below). The video starts with a close up of Joey (I never noticed it before, but he does look a little like James Franco) explaining that he’s spent three and a half years working at a hotel where he and his fellow employees are treated like sh*t and he’s quitting with the help of his band mates. The group in the video is fraction of the What Cheer? Brigade, a nineteen piece punk marching band from Providence, RI. When Joey’s boss arrives on the scene, he immediately tells them all to leave. Joey hands over his two week notice which his boss refuses to take so Joey lets it drop to the floor and throws his hands in the air as he leaves. His band mates stay where they are and break into a rousing rendition of “Bubamara”. After the cymbal player (to learn more about how hot she is, read any of the comments on YouTube!) changes the incident board to 0 days without incident or time lost, the band marches out of the building yelling, “Joey quits, Joey quits!” The Myth First of all, I was not at all surprised “Joey Quits” went viral. Why wouldn’t it? Joey acts out the ultimate Johnny Paycheck “take this job and shove it” fantasy. Anyone who watches his resignation float to the ground and thinks “Bad move, buddy, you’ll never get a reference now”, that person needs to clap their hands and believe in fairies! No one should be that jaded. It’s a beautiful moment. Right now, people...

One of the many things I love about living in New England is that Halloween starts at the end of September. It’s not just that the Halloween candy starts showing up in the stores, that happens everywhere, it’s that tons of haunted attractions open their doors a full month before Halloween so they are in full swing as the actual day approaches. New England has a rich history of being creepy. Most of our nation’s fun Halloween activities, such as carving pumpkins and trick or treating, have their roots in terrified people desperately trying to stave off death for one more winter. Fierce If you want to be just a little afraid for your safety, you need to head to Fall River, MA. First of all, you can rent the actual room where Lizzie Borden may or may not (the court found her not guilty) have given her (step) mother forty whacks. During the day, you can go on the tour and see where Lizzie may (or may not) have given her father similar treatment. Lizzie Borden’s home is a B&B, of course Fall River knows how to celebrate Halloween! The older and better known of Fall River’s two major haunted houses is the Factory of Terror. It’s promoted as three haunted attractions in one. What that really means is, it’s a long haunted house. You won’t be in and out in five minutes. You will have time to be truly scared and a little concerned that it will never end. Just by virtue of being in an empty factory in a once industrial part of town, the place is creepy. The special effects are quality and the actors are generally enthusiastic. It’s a popular attraction, for good reason, and the downside is long...

Being a stay at home mom (SAHM) is an absolute joy and a blessing, the only real downside is that your brain quickly turns to mush.  A typical conversation with my nearly two-year-old daughter goes a little something like this. Me: “Kitty.  This is a kitty.  Can you say kitty?” Toddler: “Titty?” Me: “That’s right!  Kitty.  This is a kitty!” Toddler: “Titty.” After about ten hours of this, my husband comes home and I tell him our daughter can say ‘kitty’, sort of.  Then he asks about my day like I hadn’t just told him all about my day when I said our daughter can kind of say ‘kitty’. There are lots of clubs and organizations for SAHMs but I have two problems.  One, I don’t have a car so it’s hard for me to get around with the baby.  Two, I’m a misanthrope with commitment issues and live in terror of being trapped with people I don’t like.  It’s bad enough to maintain awkward conversations at the park. Good thing Al Gore invented the internet!  I can communicate with other mothers from the safety of my own home.  We can share problems and triumphs and use long words without any of that messy face to face contact. FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Expanding my coterie of friends I have never met. Naturally, I thought forums for mothers in general and SAHMs in particular would be the answer to my need for virtual companionship.  I went to these forums eagerly and backed away just as quickly.  The thing about the internet is that everyone has a platform from which to make their opinions known and also to be nasty, judgmental and unkind with no real repercussion.  God help the woman who is considering using formula instead of...

Before having a baby, I was a voracious reader and something of a cinephile; now I watch reality TV.  I should start by mentioning I have never seen an episode of Survivor or The Bachelor.   The “reality” I want from my television is a bunch of people who don’t need to be on reality TV.  I like to see talented and successful people subjecting themselves to unnecessary humiliation. Fiercely Anticipating Top Chef I will watch any incarnation of this show that Bravo chooses to put on the air.  Top Chef: All Star,  Top Chef:  Masters,  Top Chef: After Dark…  I will watch them all as long as the Bravo network sticks to their stay-at-home mom (SAHM)-friendly programming. Why is the show so perfect for the SAHM? Because you, the viewer, don’t need to pay attention or retain any information from previous episodes. Since the show is about talented and experienced chefs trying to further their careers, there’s little extraneous drama.  These aren’t people looking for a spread in Playboy or  their own show, they want to be chefs and work hard to succeed.  There’s the occasional “Did Alex steal Ed’s pea puree?” or the attempted shaving of a man’s Flock of Seagulls haircut but most of the drama stems from people getting mildly irritated with one another in a high stress situation.  When there is a feud on the show, it stems from a  pattern of behavior, not a specific event. Further, it’s a cooking show.  It isn’t like American Idol where you can watch and judge the performance; you can only take the judges at their word.  You don’t need to remember how the “cheftestant” performed last week because you never really knew!  Anything you should know will be in the recap at...