Happy belated 420 and RIP Prince. Read these these classic blogs

Cheers, all, and happy belated 420. I had a lovely holiday yesterday, although I did spend most of the day working.

In honor of the day, please read (or revisit) this two-part recap of the season one classic, "Dope."

Also, news has broken in the last couple of hours that legendary singer, songwriter, guitarist, and general genius Prince has died. That sucks. He, like David Bowie, challenged traditional notions of gender and was a visible example of gender nonconformity as I was growing up (even if I didn't understand it all at the time). 

Must be one hell of a party going on wherever musical legends go when they die. I hope the Reaper hasn't noticed that it's Iggy Pop's 69th birthday (and for God's sake, Willie, take cover).

Recap Episode 1-1: "Rough Housing"

Ladies, gentlemen, and anyone else, meet the very first episode of The Facts of Life: Rough Housing, in which princess Blair accuses jock Cindy of being a lesbian (but without using the 'l' word, of course), and Cindy manages it not by being out and proud, but by finally becoming attracted to her first boy.

We begin with our establishing shot in the girls' dorm house thingy. All the girls are there busy with something or other, and we soon learn they are setting up for the Harvest Fair. Lest we forget that this show is a spin-off of "Diff'rent Strokes," Mr. Drummond and Willis come in to pick up Kimberly and make some dumb jokes about crime in the city. 

Enter Cindy in a football jersey, hair tucked into her New York Yankees baseball hat, carrying a pig, which I guess is involved in the harvest fair somehow. There's some dialogue between Cindy and Willis in which Willis comments that Cindy looks like a boy, just in case we missed what they were going for.

Blair is standing at the bottom of the stairs buffing her nails, and thus our conflict gets its initial set-up.

Don't let Blair tell you she's never touched a pig. 

Inspiring a generation of lesbians? More on Jo's sexual orientation via speculation about Nancy McKeon's.

For some reasons that are not relevant but I'm happy to share if anyone is interested, I showed up at work this morning with my Facts of Life Seasons 1 and 2 DVDs in my backpack. I believe that this shows how very awesome I am, so I showed them to a coworker of similar age, who I thought might be entertained that I was carrying them around. She was, and we had a bit of a chat about the show.  Some other coworkers overheard and, also thinking that the show is awesome, joined in. It quickly became apparent that if you have a vague memory of the show, I can help fill in details, and if you have a question about the show, I can answer it. One high-ranking official in our office said, "Hey, did Nancy McKeon ever come out?"


As I acknowledged in a previous post, the speculation regarding Jo's sexuality is nothing new, and I suppose it's not surprising for someone to extend that speculation to the actress portraying Jo. Nevertheless, I was quite taken aback by the question. It certainly implies that it's a fact known to the asker that Nancy McKeon is gay, and that's problematic unto itself. We're not talking about a comment from a member of the potentially ignorant masses here. We're talking high-level management of a famously liberal organization, one deeply involved in the Why Marriage Matters marriage-equality campaign.


I wondered, then, whether he knew something I didn't. While I am the most knowledgeable person about the Facts of Life and its actors that I know, the possibility certainly exists that there's something I missed. So I took to Google.