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Pretty used to being with Gwyneth

Regrets that her mother did not smoke

Frank in all directions

Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais

Simply cannot go back to them

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Entries in joan holloway (2)

Wednesday
Sep232009

In Which I Know You're Drunk, Come Sit Next To Me

I Felt The Floor Open Up Under Me

by ELEANOR MORROW

Although we will cry for Don Draper and even weep when Don Draper hurts our feelings, it is better when Don Draper makes us laugh. "This is good champagne," Peggy says to Don at the graceless British invasion that brought perishables and emergency room visits. "I don't think so," he tells her with all the gravitas of someone who is simultaneously at the Emmys.


It was better when we didn't think Jon Hamm was acting, when we didn't know he was being ordered around by his intractable pseudo-lesbian wife between seasons. But we do know he's acting, he mugs for the camera at every opportunity. Don is at his pretend best when he's muttering questionable analogies he stole from his British CFO's near trip to Bombay. I hope the snake charmer bought that truculent secretary a better glass of champagne for preventing his journey to his firm's overseas sector.

"He was a pure account man," murmured Maxwell Sheffield, Fran Drescher's boss on The Nanny about the dashing Brit who nearly bossed Don around. Unsurprisingly, it was one of Mad Men's female writers who staged the funniest episode since Sterling read poetry to his younger-than-thou girlfriend over strawberries and prenuptial agreements.

Roger Sterling now spends more time complaining than Joan, and he has a lot less to complain about. Imagine if he came home in the dark and told his significant other he'd lost his prestige and fortune — Sterling would have also lost the price of a plane ticket.

"We took their money, now we have to do what they say," agrees Bertram Cooper reasonably. It turns out they'll say anything to make Don Draper into their personal city mouse. Don's quiet romance with Conrad Hilton aside, his chief virtue for the company seems to be accepting whatever admirers the British send his way. It's a positive trait he shares with Price, whose bosses crow, "One of your major strengths is
that you always do what you're told!"

This valuable business asset strolls home to an unsuspecting family. The only way he knows it's actually his place he's found at the end of a long day is by the particular toy strewn about the yard. The best scene this week was Betty's maudlin sit-down with her daughter: "You're very important to me, too," Betty informs her first-born after handing her a ghoulish present from Eugene the baby.

Someone better keep an eye on Gene before Sally tosses him into a trash compactor just to find something to do. "Only boring people get bored," quips Betty, who has nothing better to do all day than smoke and yell at people for not liking the name of her baby.

When I meet drunk lonely old men at parties, they always want to give me their business, but not like they do Don Draper. Please have someone competent inscribe, "I don't think anyone wants to think about a mouse in a hotel" on my gravestone.

Sally's sleepless journey into the undead haunts of Grandpa Gene and lifeless barbies was most taxing. The set for her room looks like the inside of a woodshed, and the demands she makes on Don are roughly equivalent to a restructuring of personnel. Once the little sucker stops staring and starts asking you for money is when the kid is no longer cute. Exhibit One is resting on your shoulder, Don.


Even among all this show's childbearing and corporate restructuring ("You were the only one in the room who got a promotion"), Weiner still found time to shit on Joan Holloway. Quitting your favorite job for your beloved is a common slip — it rarely adds up on any ledger.

Joan can't bring herself to really confront Greg, or she'd utter those fateful words — "I strongly wish I had known you weren't a surgeon before I let you r me on the floor of my boss's office." All she had to do was follow that up with a MLIA and she'd know the pain most are suffering in '09 depression. The only thing to do with a drunk failure is undress him.

Indeed, all a person requires from the world is that someone be there to turn out the light for them and leave the door to their room closed an appropriate distance. Sleeping in utter darkness is for gollums and other failures at the day-to-day intercourse that mars the world, that broadcasts the subtle signs of our discontent. It is more important to appear to be happy than to actually be happy.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here. You can find her most recent Mad Men essays here and here.

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"Not Made for Love (Astronomer remix)" — Metronomy (mp3)

"Not Made for Love (Leo Zero remix)" — Metronomy (mp3)

"Not Made for Love (Alalal remix)" — Metronomy (mp3)

Thursday
Aug272009

In Which Mad Men Whispers To Us Over and Over Again

Keep Some Of Your Tools In The Toolbox

by MOLLY LAMBERT

Peggy Olson got laid you guys! And nothing terrible happened. It's the lesson every Catholic girl must learn, preferably not after dropping the love child of the less sexy Head Of Accounts, the married one, the neurotic one, the one who has won no awards for his evocative New England set short stories.

Ann-Margaret in 1963 is like Megan Fox right now. Telling a "normal" girl that's what is sexy is retarded, even if it's true. Lots of things are sexy. Most of them are less glaringly "sexy" than Ann-Margaret or Megan Fox. Peggy didn't score because she channelled Ann Margaret. It's because she's gonna slam dunk the Patio account.  

Sometimes a girl just has to venture outside her Brooklyn apartment, go to a bar, and make small talk with someone not necessarily as smart as she is but certainly passably attractive enough to go home with. Sometimes a girl just needs to have sex.

In the first two episodes of this season Mad Men has done the fanservice of giving sex scenes to the two characters most desperately in need of them, Peggy and Sal. After the nonstop Bon Temps Bang Bus that is True Blood, it's nice to come down to a level where sex is not as easy as wandering down to your local Maenad orgy bacchanalia.

Meanwhile adulthood is a total drag, as Don decides that Betty insist on taking in her dementia suffering father. Knowing Don, he will be out there high fiving crotches with stewardesses like the premiere's Slutty Betty in no time. Real depressed Betty's life will probably continue to get worse, given another reason to be confined to the house. But hey, after you take the kids to Tarrytown they can get a Cookiepuss at Carvel!

"I can see by what you carry that you come from Tarrytown"

Don is going to sell the new Penn Station based on the idea that it belongs to the future, and setting up the corporate fantasy bonanza of the 1964 New York World's Fair. The new Penn Station will be ugly and everyone will hate it until enough time has passed that the people have forgotten the old one. Such is progress. 

Who knows what the future holds? Who among us wants to believe that our decisions influence our lives? Where the fuck is Joan Holloway? What's going on with her douchebag doctor husband? You know Joan would be asking this shit right off the bat, because she is a good gossip. Unrape my heart. 

And no, Ann-Margret can't sing. Or she couldn't sing well enough for "Bye Bye Birdie." But who cares? She's adorable. It's gonna sell truckloads of Patio diet soda.

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She tumbls here. She twitters here.


"Moon Over Miami" — Sarah Vaughan (mp3)

"Crazy He Calls Me" — Sarah Vaughan (mp3)

"Stormy Weather" — Sarah Vaughan (mp3)

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