When She Was Still Spordelia

In the third season of Buffy, Sarah Michelle Gellar has this one scene in which she recalls her life before her character’s vampire-staking days: “Before I was the Slayer I was… well, I don’t want to say shallow but… Let’s say a certain person who shall remain nameless — we'll just call her Spordelia — looked like a classical philosopher next to me.” That’s a description to keep in mind when you watch the 1989 pilot for Girl Talk, which basically plays like a slumber party filmed before a studio audience, sponsored by Tiger Beat, fueled by Fun Dip and held in D.J. Tanner’s bedroom. Girl Talk co-stars Soleil Moon Fry and a girl named inexplicably named Russell.

It’s bizarre to watch baby-voiced SMG prattle on and on about cute boys, especially given the pop culture pedestal we now place Buffy on, and I can’t help but be reminded of a similarly bizarre clip of a 1991-era Jenny Lewis talk about hanging out with her friends in Westwood and then participate in a montage where she tries on a series of increasingly funny hats. (Yes, you should hit that link and watch it.)

Here, maybe you should watch Girl Talk now:

A short viewing guide:

0:03 — The theme song only lasts ninety-some seconds, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it plays nine hours. It also runs through your head with the violence of a ricocheting bullet. Sample lyrics: “School! That’s cool! / It’s the place to be! / All your friends are there / And the talk is free!”

1:31 — The announcer makes the mistake of introducing SMG as Sarah Gellar. I assume he was never heard from again.

1:43 — Please note that poor Russell (left) is dressed like a preteen version of Dorothy Zbornak.

4:30 — In case you didn’t realize that Soleil Moon Frye was THE. SHIT. at the time this episode was filmed, no worries: Russell and Sarah get to introduce her as the extra special, much more famous host of the show.

4:42 — The wisdom of Punky Brewster: “I think my favorite part of school is talking to my friends… especially the boys.” Hooray for education!

6:24 — Again, school is great because that’s where you get to talk to your friends about clothes, music and boys.

7:23 — So one of the things written into the show is that the girls all have crushes on a guy named Neil Tardio, who in real life is a director and the first husband of Tea Leoni. I hope his mention in this episode is how Neal and Tea fell in love. I would also like to think that her legal name was Tea Tardio for a period. Also also? The mention of that oh-so-sexy name Tardio prompts Russell to make this face:

7:34 — Then this happens:

But then you find out that the heartthrob they have visit the show for the first episode isn’t Kirk Cameron or Corey Haim or Chad Allen or any of the others you’d have reason to feel weird about today. No, it’s one you probably don’t have feelings about: Brian Robbins from Head of the Class. He causes much girl-screaming, I’ll give him that. Also, upon his entrance to the stage, SMG stage-faints and remains unconscious for the remainder of the interview.

10:12 — Robbins on shooting two episodes of Head of the Class in Russia: “The people were really interesting, kind of a little depressing. I think they should forget about things like glasnost and perestroika and all that and just paint the place. I mean, a nice shade of blue or something like that.”

13:50 — I have no idea who Safire is, but I’d like to think it’s the woman who wrote Precious, during her peppier teen years.

15:35 — The show also features comedy skits, like this one where Russell and Sarah play lab partners. Sarah is studious and quiet, while Russell blathers on stupidly. In the end, Russell is praised for being wonderful, while Sarah is condemned for attempting science. Hooray for education! The weirdest bit of dialogue: the bizarre brag of “Remember the guy who played the father on The Brady Bunch? Well, his real-life daughter used to go here!” Though for the record, Robert Reed did actually have a daughter. How stoked she must have been to have been included in Girl Talk.

17:20 — After having promised a performance by New Kids on the Block the whole episode, you find out that it’s only Jordan and Jonathan, appearing via a pre-taped interview. Here is how the Girl Talk hosts do “looking interested” when the gay one talks:

21:07 — Jonathan Knight’s advice to kids today about peer pressure: “I would say just be yourself. When people offer you drugs, if you don’t want them, just say no. And the final outcome will be that they’ll just pay more respect to you because you’re being yourself. They’ll respect you for that.”

21:40 — And finally this:

All in all, it’s still better than watching proto-Kathryn Merteuil on Swans Crossing.

So Five Minutes Ago

Being a person who writes about pop culture and tries his damnedest to elevate it beyond the level of “OMG, can you believe [unremarkable thing] happened?”, I had to be proud of this past weekend. Basically, for a brief, 140-characters-or-less moment, I got to engage in dialogue with a guy who represents what I think I should want my career could be. Earlier this month, cool guy writing person Rich Juzwiak of fourfour fame tweeted about the linguistic legacies of Clueless, noting one ism in particular as having crept into everydayspeak.

I starred it. I thought about it. And eventually I had the time to look into whether that was true. It’s not. Although linguists aren’t sure exactly when five minutes ago starting coming out of the mouths of the snide and snobby as a put-down for anything that once rocked but now sucks, they claim It’s not actually Clueless that popularized the phrase. It’s the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie that did it, and William Safire himself said so. (He was neither the first or last wordy nerd to point out Buffy’s effect on linguistics, it should be noted.) And while that’s a feather in Joss Whedon’s “I directed Avengers” headdress, it also proves that you don’t have to be Shakespeare to be a driving force in language. Current-day pop culture invents and popularizes language too. Hell, the OED entry for much — in the sense of “Way to trip. Walk much?” — cites Heathers, Buffy (the TV series this time) and a Gilda Radner-era Saturday Night Live sketch.

I tweeted a response to Juzwiak — almost a month later, fully in the spirit of five minutes ago, I should point out — and he responded:

Acknowledging my point while also tactfully pointing out the garbagey nature of the ovie I’m giving credit to. See, this is why people read him.

All that said, I figured that five minutes ago made as good a launchpad as any for a certain strange and wonderful word:

nudiustertian (noo-dee-uhs-TUR-shun) — adjective: of or relating to the day before yesterday.

Yep, so much build-up for useless vocabulary. I’m just happy this word exists, for the same reasons that I like bissextile and perendiate, and no, it’s not because they sound like sex words. If five minutes ago is what the popular girl says to dump on someone else’s style (and, in fact, that’s just how Hilary Swank’s character uses it in the Buffy movie), then nudiustertian is what the awkward, bookish girl tries to use in a similar circumstance, only to have the popular kids take her book and hit her with it. It comes from the Latin phrase nudius tertius, which in turn is a contraction of nunc dies tertius est — literally, “today is the third day.”

I guess it would be a little on-the-nose to point out that any dictionary that actially bothers to include the word nudiustertian notes it as being obsolete. I’d like to think that it was rendered so five minutes ago by so five minutes ago.

Previous words of the week after the jump.

• aasvogel, acné excoriée des jeunes filles, adulterine, ageusia, ambeer, anosmia
• barn, barrack, beeturia, bissextile, bloofer, breastsummer, brinicle
• catholicon, cecaelia, cephalophore, cherpumple, chilver, chyron, cockernonnie, collywobbles, coprolalia, couvade, cranberry morpheme, crwth, culaccino, cummingtonite
• darkle, deasil, decussate, deuteragonist, dingbat, dingle
• eidolon, epeolatry, epopt, espalier, etui, exoterica
• fabiform, Feghoot, fissilingual, Föhnkrankheit, folderol, formication, freekeh, froward
• gallinipper, gnaborretni, grandgore, grue, guilloche, gyaru
• hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, hobson-jobson, hogo, honorificabilitudinitatibus, hoyden, hyetal
• ignivomous, iracund, isabelline, itaiitai, izod, izzard
• jabroni, jamais vu, jehu, jumentous
• kaffir, kakopygian, kayfabe, knipperdollin
• lagniappe, leman, lemniscate, limnovore, linsey-woolsey, longicorn
• malacia, malison, maroon, merryandrew, milt, mongo, mooncalf, morepork, muzjiks
• narrenfreiheit, nef, nihilartikel, nobiliary particle, nosism
• obelus, ochanee, ogonek, ombré, ooglification, orchidectomy, ordured, orf, osculate
• pace, padiddle, paraprosdokian, pareidolia, pavonated, perendiate, perigee, perverb, petrichor, pettifogger, pettitoes, phlegmagogue, phpht, pismire, pixilated, pogonip, pong, pruniferous, puggle, pulveratricious, purse
• quacksalver, quagga, qualtagh, quidnunc, quiff
• ronion, roynish, rubirosa, rumpsprung, runcible
• salmagundi, scrutator, seneschal, sharrow, shebang, sinople, slampadato, slubberdegullion, stan, stevedore, suovetaurilia, suzerainty
• tappen, tatterdemalion, teratogenesis, tergiversate, tetromino, thagomizer, thon, tiffin, tittery-whoppet, tmesis, toby, tutoyer, tyro
• ucalegon, ultramontane, umiaq, umquhile
• veneficial, verdigris, vespertilionine, vinegeroon
• weeaboo, widdiful, williwaw, witzelsucht, wooper looper
• xenodocheionology, xyster
• yazoo, ypsiliform, yoink
• zanjero, zenzizenzizenzic, zinnober, zugzwang

Hellmouth Much?

In certain ways, in most ways, I had a sheltered childhood during which I learned about the world mostly through popular culture. If I didn’t see a given movie or read a given book, I wouldn’t know something, unless the thing in question somehow related to sheep, apricots, New Zealand or one of the few other things I learned about through actual experience.

So when I first heard the phrase “X much?” I didn’t know what the hell I was being asked. You know what I’m talking about — “Excited much?” to someone who is clearly overenthusiastic, “Hair gel much?” asked to someone with statement hair, “Have bark much?” asked to a tree. Eventually I figured it out. Asking “X much?” is an ironic way to point out either that a person is, does or has too much X or, in some cases, doesn’t do X enough, as with “Walk much?” being asked to someone who just tripped. (I realize I sound like an academically minded 90s-era drug-dealer with all this talk of having and doing X. Just go with it.) Late last year, I saw a Language Log post that detailed the origin of the phrase. As far as anyone can tell right now, the first documented use of “X much?” seems to a 1978 Saturday Night Live “Nerds” sketch in which Todd (Bill Murray) asks Lisa Loopner (Gilda Radner) “Underdeveloped much?” to imply that she’s flat-chested.

That notwithstanding, the OED cites other pop culture references in its entry for this use of much, all of them equally close to my heart (thought none of them being things I’d be exposed to until at least mid-high school. According to the OED, the phrase first appears in 1988’s Heathers — “God, Veronica, drool much?” and later as “Jealous much?” — but was popularized by the 1992 Buffy movie — “Excuse much! Not rude or anything.” The post also notes that it’s used in the TV show’s 1997 pilot, “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” in a line spoken by Cordelia — “Morbid much! I didn’t ask!” — in response to Buffy wondering if a recently deceased person had vampire marks on his body.

I know Buffy played with language a lot, but it makes me particularly happy that it, SNL and Heathers have a place in the OED. I’ll eagerly await the next edition to see if chatter in the cafe, fuck me gently with a chainsaw or schwing eventually get their due.

Pop culture and words, previously:

• the word for the blocks in Tetris
• my Top Chef vocabulary round-up
• four kinds of dollies
• what we mean when we talk about Beetlejuice
• when acme is no longer the highest point

Suddenly Sister

While looking up the Wikipedia page for Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” I saw a link to a page for The Kransky Sisters, an Australian comedy-cover band trio. KrisDina and I saw the Kranskys’ show at the Sydney Opera House, and were much better off in life for having done so.

A signed CD of the girls' first show. (we saw the second show, heard it on the wireless, but i much prefer the title of the first show, we don't have husbands.)

However, when I arrived back in California and tried to research them, I found they lacked any mention on the Wikipedia. Things change, and the Wikipedia grows, Blob-like, absorbing more and more pop culture until the point at which it explodes in a gooey confetti shower of useless facts (and opinions). But how startled was I to find that the youngest and arguably best Kransky — the portly, mute, tuba-playing Arva Krasnky — had since dropped out of the group. (Although I think the girls liked Arva best, I actually preferred the loopy Eve, who, as I mentioned in an earlier post, looks remarkably like Stephnie “No, That’s Not a Typo” Weir and who deigned to speak to me after the show and was insistent on enunciating her last name, which, as I also wrote in the earlier post, I found strange since I had clearly just bought tickets to and attended her show, in which her last name is billed. Memories.) From the Kranskysite:

Due to the mysterious disappearance of tuba playing, Arva Kransky, who was last seen exchanging sheet music with a member of the Hornbell Military Marching Band, the Kransky Sisters have enlisted the assistance of their rarely visited, reclusive sister, Dawn Kransky, who has taken leave of her job as trolley librarian at the Esk Hospital to be with her Sisters.

Me being the strange obsessive I am, I can’t help but note the strangeness of the fact that Eve and big sister Mourne replaced their now-missing sister with a fourth, never-before-mentioned sister, Dawn Kransky. To me and the rest of the planet’s population who find themselves in the awkward position of having to explain to people why Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a good show, the fact that the blinked-into-existence sister is named “Dawn” is especially notable since the show’s fifth season introduced Buffy’s little sister, Dawn, who previously didn’t exist. (It was eventually explained. The short answer: magic.) And this Dawn was played by Michelle Trachtenberg, which meant that Harriet the Spy got to meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Anyway, I thought it was relevant. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again, dammit.

Holy Smoke

The Indy ran a film feature I wrote on a relatively unknown horror film that was filmed at a seminary here in Santa Barbara in the early 80s. Below is my take on it, in which I manage to discuss its wonderful lameness and investigate how any coherent Catholic organization would permit a horror film to be filmed on their grounds in the first place.

As with my last re-printing of an Indy article, the full names of the people involved have been altered here, just because these people really don't need to be Googling themselves and finding this blog.

Really.

The Strange History of St. Anthony’s and the Diabolical Movie Evilspeak

Something about the marriage of Catholic iconography — with its stained glass, martyr statues, and arcane Latin inscriptions — to the ultimate Big Bad has long appealed to filmmakers and filmgoers alike. That sentence alone should bring to mind some vivid memories of pop culture devilry from the likes of Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, or the infamous crucifix scene from The Exorcist, but the connection goes back at least to movies like 1934’s The Black Cat, which pits Bela Lugosi against Boris Karloff amid satanic-themed mayhem.

It stands to reason, then, that a city as rich in Catholic history as Santa Barbara would have popped up in some point in the horror genre, albeit in a way even film diehards may have forgotten. In 1982, the Coronet Film Corporation released Evilspeak, a dark, schlocky chiller starring Clint Howard — Ron’s brother, perhaps best remembered for his childhood role on the TV series Gentle Ben — as Stanley Coopersmith, a social misfit at the prestigious West Andover Military Academy.

The subject of endless teasing by classmates and faculty, Stanley eventually stumbles onto a diary kept by Father Esteban, a former Spanish missionary priest who became a devotee of Satan. Stanley scans the book into his computer and ends up willfully summoning the power of the devil to wreak fiery and pointy havoc on his foes, à la the finale of Carrie.

Despite its inclusion on Britain’s “Video Nasty” list of inappropriate viewing material in 1984 and its current availability on DVD, Evilspeak seems all but forgotten. It may, however, be of special interest to Santa Barbara residents by virtue of it being filmed almost entirely at St. Anthony’s Seminary. Crews swept in one summer while St. Anthony’s Seminary was out of session and quickly shot a film so shockingly anti-Christian that Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, purportedly loved it and regarded it as an accurate depiction of his faith. Evilspeak hit theaters shortly after, but to little acclaim. Yet it raises an interesting question: How exactly does a film that would seem to glorify all things non-Christian ever get permission to film in an institution of the Lord?

According to St. Anthony’s staffers, the film got the go-ahead after higher-ups approved a preliminary shooting script described as decidedly PG. Though Fr. Mel JXXXXXXX oversaw goings-on at St. Anthony’s for years, his sabbatical in 1980 left Fr. Alberic SXXXX in charge. “We didn’t really understand the nature of the film until after it came out,” SXXXX said of Evilspeak. “It had lots of promise and the script looked okay, and several of us read that. But they kept adding on.”

The content added in after that first script approval, one must conclude, would have probably included the graphic death sequences. The foremost of these is a particularly distasteful scene in which one of the film’s few female characters strips and steps into the shower, where she is messily devoured by pigs. That, coupled with the blood sacrifice of the world’s cutest puppy and the ending sequence — in which a levitating Stanley impales, decapitates, and burns his tormentors in the school chapel, ultimately sending a large cross altarpiece toppling to the ground — make for good reason why Evilspeak did not make the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ top 10 films of 1982.

Perhaps most offensive to Christian sensibilities is the notion of the protagonist — whom Howard plays as the kind of undeservedly wronged loner ubiquitous to most high schools, real or fictional — turning to Satanism. Unlike the title character in Carrie, Stanley seems to have no remorse for wiping out his classmates, teachers, and even the chaplain. The film’s final shot depicts his face, turned demonic with Tron-caliber special effects.

Both SXXXX and JXXXXXXX said they were happy few people saw the film, in Santa Barbara or otherwise. SXXXX said he never bothered to actually watch it, though he does remember hearing that it bombed. JXXXXXXX, on the other hand, did. “I went incognito down to a theater in Ventura to see it,” he admitted. He was not impressed, calling the whole incident “embarrassing.” And that would seem to mark the end of Santa Barbara’s association with Evilspeak. (The credits, however, thank a special appearance by the Dos Pueblos High School marching band, so likely some current area residents have memories of the film.)


Though Evilspeak probably doesn’t appear on too many people’s favorite films lists, its quick run through theaters didn’t render it completely inconsequential in terms of pop culture legacy. A 1997 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured a strikingly similar plot, with an evil tome being scanned into a computer and unleashing demonic forces upon the tech-savvy.

One of the unlucky classmates who suffers Stanley’s wrath — specifically by having his still-beating heart plucked from his chest — is a young Don Stark, who is perhaps best known today for his regular role on That ’70s Show. And Clint Howard somehow managed to parlay starring in movies like Evilspeak into a career. His list of subsequent credits in the schlock horror genre include Night Shift, Leprechaun 2, Carnosaur, and Ice Cream Man, the last of which features Howard in the a title role of a mental patient who processes unpleasant children into frosty treats. Finally, Eric Weston — Evilspeak’s director, who could not be reached for comment — is currently filming the feature Hyenas, which tells the story of human-hyena hybrids who eat people.

In the end, the film offers a strange bit of Santa Barbara history about how a movie of such satanic gore could ever be permitted to film on a location owned by those who might object to such content. And for those curious to rent the film themselves, know this: The only version available on DVD is the uncensored director’s cut, which means more unholy splatter than you would have seen in the theaters anyway.

The 411: Evilspeak can be rented on Netflix.com.

The Kendall Effect

If there’s one thing I love more than self-referencing TV shows, it’s self-referencing TV shows that references other self-referencing TV shows.

Case in point: the Kendall effect. Before Sarah Michelle Gellar became the girl who spends her time running from or after various supernatural terrors, she had a two-year stint on All My Children as Kendall Hart, the scheming long-lost daughter of the Susan Lucci character. I never saw her in action, but Gellar apparently won a Daytime Emmy for her performance. Years later, Gellar was on Buffy, where she frequently butted heads with Cordelia Chase, the snobby cheerleader character played by Charisma Carpenter. Cordelia was often aided in her efforts to make Buffy feel bad by her cohort, Harmony, who was played by Mercedes McNab. Despite her vapidness, Harmony is actually the longest-lived character in the Buffy universe. She appears in both the original unaired half-hour pilot for the show and the series finale of Angel, the spin-off in which she appeared as a regular during the last season. Midway through her run, however, Buffy’s gang goes searching for Harmony, using their senior yearbook as an identifying photo. There, viewers saw for the first time that Harmony’s last name was, in fact, Kendall. Knowing Joss Whedon’s pop culture savvy, I have to believe the reference is intentional, especially given that Gellar’s soap opera work is what landed her the title role to begin with.

That brings us up to the present, with me watching too much Veronica Mars. In the most recent season, Veronica clashed with a new character, played by Charisma Carpenter. The scheming step-mother of two of Veronica’s classmates, the character’s name was Kendall Casablancas — which, by the way, would be a great soap opera name. Seeing as how series creator Rob Thomas — no, not that one — has a propensity for referencing the other great TV shows of our day — there’s an episode featuring George Michael and Maebe from Arrested Development, for example, and another one featuring the cursed numbers from Lost and another in which Joss Whedon himself actually appears — I have to again believe that the presence of this name is no accident. In fact, this name seems to have traced through three TV shows and each time attached to attractive, minorly villainous women.

And things like that make watching TV fun.