Back then, I was a bit too young to appreciate–or even be aware of–Morrissey and Marr’s special brand of whimsy and gloom, and was still listening to Top 40 radio. I’m sure the biggest musical event of the year for me was the release of True Blue. And let’s be honest, America as a whole never really “got” the Smiths. The Queen Is Dead went to #2 on the U.K. albums chart, but stalled at #70 on the Billboard 200. When I joined the newly-burgeoning Alternative Nation and became a regular viewer of 120 Minutes (and its late, lamented sibling, Postmodern MTV), I still had issues with Moz and his pitch-black sense of humor: I remember seeing the video for “Girlfriend in a Coma” (from Strangeways Here We Come, the band’s final album) and not enjoying it at all. It wasn’t until after college, when I had spent several years marinating in the music of the Cure, Depeche Mode, and the Pixies, gotten serious about David Bowie, and fallen in love with the Brits of the Moment, Oasis and Pulp, when I finally “heard” the Smiths for the first time: it was as if “How Soon Is Now?” was a brand new song. Shortly thereafter, I went to Europe (on the “backpack and youth hostel” plan), and found myself walking the streets of Manchester with Meat Is Murder playing on my walkman. And I understood why Ian Curtis had killed himself.

So there you have it. Like plenty of other neurotic folks born in the 1970s, I listen to the Smiths and laugh and sometimes cry. I also sing along. In fact, I so enjoy singing along with Morrissey’s angelic yet sinister tenor that I organized a public event that would allow me to share that enjoyment with other people. To sweeten the deal, I recruited a team of filmmakers to make videos for each of The Queen Is Dead’s ten tracks. The result was an evening of amazing, insane, touching, ridiculous visuals and sounds that restored my faith in humanity, if only briefly. So while I cannot tell you anything about the Smiths that you haven’t heard before, I can perhaps show you something that they inspired and I engineered. There truly is a light that never goes out.

Thanks, Johnny, Andy, Mike…and thank you, Moz. Despite the crazy stuff you say about Asians, we’re grateful.

As alert readers will have noticed, I really like food, especially the artery-clogging variety. Sure, I enjoy a lovely arugula salad from time to time, and I don’t feel deprived when I pick up a treat from Tasti D-Lite (screw Pinkberry!) or Jamba Juice rather than Ben & Jerry’s. But Mama always comes back to the comfort cuisine.

I tend to be a creature of habit as well as a bit of a cynic, which means that I’m usually a few years behind the curve when it comes to the Next Big Food Thing. (I’m also frequently caught wearing styles that were hot a decade ago.) So when I first saw all the yuppie scum waiting in line in Madison Square Park at lunchtime, I thought, “What kind of morons stand around waiting for thirty minutes for a burger?” Seriously, just because it’s run by restaurateur Danny Meyer, who probably spent a little more coin on logo design than did the owners at your average greasy spoon, doesn’t mean that the Shake Shack is the second coming of ground red meat.

Here’s the thing, though: it is. What would Jesus do? He would eat lunch at Shake Shack.

Luckily, I still haven’t had to wait around in the park with the rabble in order to partake in this quasi-religious experience, because the Shack now has indoor locations around Manhattan: in the Theater District, in Battery Park City, on the Upper East Side, and (my preferred site) on the Upper West, right near the American Museum of Natural History. In a parallel universe, I live in this neighborhood, and every Friday, after picking up my gifted and talented child from his or her excellent public grade school, I treat him/her to an afternoon among the dinosaur bones and crazy-ass gemstones, and then to a yummy, juicy, greasy dinner. In my real life, I happen to work in the area a few times a week, which gives me an excuse to indulge in the Shack’s sinfully scrumptious burgers (including a mind-blowing veggie option), fries, hot dogs, compotes and custards.

I feel almost guilty lavishing my praise (and my money) on this high-end fast food chain. Am I sure the grub is actually better than at your average burger joint, or am I just being seduced by the creator’s pedigree (Meyer currently runs five pricey restaurants in NYC—one within a jazz club—in addition to managing the cafés at the Whitney Museum and MoMA)? This weekend, I challenged myself to resolve this question when I conveniently found myself near a Five Guys location. Once again, I’m way late on this East Coast cultural obsession; this chain began spreading to areas outside of its native D.C. eight years ago, and hell, POTUS did photo-ops there twice in 2009. But from what I tasted at the restaurant in downtown Brooklyn, I haven’t been missing much. The portions are massive, and the fries are pretty tasty, but the burger’s the thing—or ought to be—and I found it bland and too well-done. America, once again you disappoint me.

Shake Shack’s patties are smaller than those at Five Guys, but thicker, and cooked medium, so that you can actually taste, you know, the meat (a special, secret blend on which the company holds a trademark). In the interests of full disclosure, I will confess that I haven’t actually sampled the, uh, shakes…but if they’re as good as the frozen custard I inhaled earlier this week—Boston Cream Pie was the flavor of the day—I think they would satisfy any milkshake connoisseur. So is it just a coincidence that, given the choice of a blue-collar, just-the-basics burger chain like Five Guys, or a budget gourmet one like Shake Shack, my taste buds go for the latter? I’m afraid not. Once again I prove myself a hopeless Manhattanite, trying to have it both ways: wanting a relatively quick, simple meal but hoping to be transported to Food Heaven in the process. This doesn’t mean I’ll never deign to eat at Wendy’s, Mickey D’s, or (when in L.A.) In-N-Out ever again…but when I do, the aura of Shake Shack will be hovering over me, reminding me why people are so devoted to it: like NYC, it takes pride in doing a lot of fun stuff really well. Of course, that doesn’t mean its awesomeness remains confined to New York…foodies from Connecticut to Florida to Kuwait (yeah, that Kuwait) can now also enjoy the fare that makes twentysomethings in pencil skirts cheat on their diets!

Speaking of which…this column is going to be dormant again for a while. I have to go to the gym.

Prophets, Mormons, and AIDS…why does that sound so familiar? Oh, that’s right: wild as it may seem, another Broadway show explored similar territory almost two decades ago. Granted, it wasn’t a musical, and it was set not in Africa, but in New York City. But if The Book of Mormon is even half as moving, groundbreaking, and enduring as playwright Tony Kushner’s masterwork, Angels in America, its makers can be more than satisfied with themselves. Set in the 1980s and first produced in 1990, Angels is a theatrical epic on a scale rarely seen on stage anymore. It is presented in two parts, each over three hours long; despite this, it achieved a kind of popular success that eludes most non-musical plays, even those that make it to the Great White Way. The first half, Millennium Approaches, won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; both parts (the second is called Perestroika) won the Tony Award for Best Play. In 2003, an HBO film adaptation starring Al Pacino and Meryl Streep won 11 Emmys.

Most amazing of all, the play became canonical—literally—almost immediately: in his 1994 book The Western Canon, literary critic Harold Bloom included it as the very last item on his list of great works. Not bad, Tony. Now, twenty years after its premiere, Angels is back in the city where its story unfolds, enjoying a well-received Off-Broadway revival whose run has been extended several times. (When it started back in October, the cast included Zachary Quinto from Heroes and the Star Trek movie. Yes, really. He’s now gone, but the current cast features Michael Urie from Ugly Betty, who is remarkable. Yes, really.) I saw both parts of the original Broadway production; sitting in the audience at the current staging, I surveyed the crowd and realized there were people around me who were likely in kindergarten back when I was having my mind blown in the balcony of the Walter Kerr.

Ironically, many of our most profound works of drama, despite their thematic complexities, can be described quite simply. For example, Hamlet is, at its core, about a grieving son seeking to avenge his father’s murder, and Death of a Salesman depicts the final days of a working-class man who realizes he’s wasted his life. But Angels in America is a whole ‘nother ball of wax. Here’s the short version: a Mormon lawyer living in Brooklyn finds he is no longer able to repress his homosexuality, leaves his Valium-addicted wife, and begins an affair with an underachieving Jewish intellectual who has himself recently walked out on his lover, who has AIDS. The abandoned lover, alone and suffering, begins to receive visitations from an angel with eight vaginas. Several more characters swirl around these two central couples, including the infamous McCarthyite Roy Cohn, Communist martyr Ethel Rosenberg, a 100-year-old Bolshevik, a leather daddy who lives with his parents, and an imaginary travel agent called “Mr. Lies.” Go ahead, laugh; it’s allowed. Theater isn’t supposed to be schoolwork or medicine. It’s the humor that makes the play not merely insightful and important, but also, you know, entertaining.

Still, if I said that Angels deals with death, anger, love, fear, shame, power, and God, I wouldn’t blame you if you said you had a headache coming on. Sure, it’s about all that stuff, for starters, but it’s also about gay culture (yes, The Wizard of Oz is referenced several times), fucked-up families, the politics of the Reagan administration and New York in the ‘80s. It grafts its high-minded questions onto the most relatable of situations: children reject their parents, relationships fail, and the old and the sick must face the end. It effortlessly moves back and forth between scenes of dramatic realism and those of unfettered fantasy: Eskimos and polar bears roam Antarctica, dummies in a historical diorama come to life, and angels listen to the news from Earth on the radio. The events of the plot were, when it was first performed, in the recent past, though the millennium of the title was still in the future. Now the ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s are all behind us, but Kushner has managed to pull off what all playwrights dream of: creating a work that is both urgent in its own time and relevant when that time has passed. HIV treatment has progressed by leaps and bounds since 1986 (when the real Roy Cohn died of AIDS), but with battles over marriage, adoption, and military service still raging, Angels’ thesis—that the future of America is inextricably linked to the lives of queer people—still resonates. The angel and her colleagues (heavenly beings, it turns out, are a lot like bureaucrats) lament the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster; recent events in Japan make Kushner’s vision seem not merely ambitious, but damn near psychic.

As a crazy young theater teacher, I had my students—mostly teenage girls—perform scenes from Angels, willfully ignoring any reservations about the subject matter that they, their parents, and my fellow staff may have had. (Amazingly, I did not get fired, and one of those young actresses was really damn good.) Now, older and possibly wiser, I was both thrilled and frightened by the idea of seeing Angels performed again. I admire many aspects of the miniseries version, but to its credit, Kushner’s play is most effective on stage, where an angel crashing through the ceiling and a dying man climbing a ladder to Heaven are not just special effects, but magic—”play” in the fullest sense. The current production differs from the Broadway version for myriad reasons: the intimacy of the theater, the technology used in the design, and, of course, the passage of time. How do I feel now? Well, my mind is reeling, my heart is broken, and my spirit is revived. Jon Stewart recently said that The Book of Mormon was so good it made him angry. I’m angry because plays like Angels just don’t come around enough, because it stirs up righteous fury at the world’s unfairness, and because I didn’t write it.

Springfield, provincial as it may have been, somehow had room for more than one household of millionaires. Providing a counterpoint to the cold, calculating Spauldings was the Lewis family, a hot-headed bunch who came up north from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they had made their fortune in the oil business. Of course, you can’t talk about the Lewises without talking about the Shaynes. Hawk Shayne and his wife Sarah worked as servants in the Lewis household, and the children of both families grew up together, leading to jealousies and entanglements of Biblical proportions:

Robin: Poor Reva Shayne and wealthy Josh Lewis had been in love their entire lives, but unfortunately, both of them had impulse control problems. That’s what led Reva to marry Josh’s brother, Billy, when Josh went off to college and left her behind. It’s what led Josh to run away to Venezuela to work on the family oil rigs when he learned Reva had become pregnant by his father (you read that right), H.B. And it’s what caused him to marry Sonni Carrera, a woman even crazier than Reva, after a whirlwind romance. Josh almost got out of that situation when Sonni slipped off a cliff during their honeymoon, but “somehow” she survived and showed up in Springfield just when it seemed Reva and Josh were getting it together. Sonni (played by the future Ensign Ro, Michelle Forbes) seemed like a smart, sane lady—in fact, she was a well-respected psychiatrist—but then she started plotting against Josh’s life and sleeping with his best friend. Her co-conspirator seemed to think her name wasn’t Sonni, but Solita. Turns out there had been two Carrera girls, identical twins, and one had committed suicide as a teenager. But which one? The good girl, Sonni, or the rebel, Solita? And did Sonni/Solita herself even know who the hell she was? The answer was finally revealed in the fury of a Venezuelan rainstorm, but not until after Sonni/Solita lost a baby, Reva had a heart attack, and several murders were attempted.

Kelly: Postpartum depression is no joke (see “Ed, Maureen and Claire” in Part 1). And when you are over-the-top Reva Shayne Lewis, it’s really no joke. After giving birth to her second child with Josh (whom she affectionately called “Bud”), Reva began acting very strangely—she went on incredible shopping sprees, went on trips abroad without telling anyone and leaving her children unattended.  She was diagnosed with a whopper of a case of postpartum depression and given meds, which she refused to take. Eventually, her condition brought about the return of her “slut of Springfield” days, and almost got her into some serious hot water when Roger Thorpe tried to blackmail her with some illicit photographs. To try and help his wife recover from her depression, Josh decided that a family vacation in the Florida Keys would be perfect.  However, the fun times quickly came to an end when Reva’s condition worsened and she started having paranoid delusions that someone was following her. With her eldest son’s innocent girlfriend as her passenger, she attempted to outrun the people supposedly tailing her—and drove right off an unfinished bridge. That scene became one of the most memorable in GL history and, had it happened today, I’m pretty sure some enterprising GL fan would’ve created an “I’m comin’, Bud” Tumblr.

Robin: Reva has jumped off a bridge, almost been pushed off a bridge, and driven off a bridge…I wonder, did this become some kind of in-joke among the writing staff? “It’s sweeps…get Reva near some water!”

Somehow, the intelligent and hard-working Marler brothers, lawyer Ross and doctor Justin, got themselves mixed up but good with all of these mega-clans the moment they arrived in Springfield. They were pretty smart, but even they couldn’t avoid getting caught up in the endless drama:

Robin: Okay, let’s see who can follow this: Dr. Justin Marler cheated on his wife, Jackie, and she left town. Years later, she returned and became involved with rich asshole Alan Spaulding, much to her ex’s chagrin. Alan’s son, Phillip, was having heart problems, and Jackie referred him to Justin. Justin couldn’t understand where Phillip’s heart defect came from, as neither of his parents’ families had such a history. He was also smitten with Phillip’s mother, Elizabeth, who out of gratitude to Justin for saving her son eventually married him. Jackie married Alan, making the wife swap official. But she had a good reason, which she finally confessed to Justin after being injured in a terrible holiday decorating accident: she had done it to be close to Phillip, who was not really the Spauldings’ son, but hers and Justin’s! She had been pregnant when they broke up, and had given Phillip up for adoption. Elizabeth, meanwhile, didn’t even know Phillip wasn’t her biological son; her real baby had died at birth, but Alan had had Phillip brought to her and she was none the wiser. Jackie’s confession brought her and Justin together again; sadly, she later died in a plane crash, and unlike many soap characters, she stayed dead.

Kelly: So, you blame your mother for the break-up of your marriage and you want to find a way to get back at her. What do you do? If you’re Blake Thorpe, daughter of nefarious Roger, you seduce mom Holly’s fiancé, Ross, during a citywide blackout, that’s what. Of course, it becomes less of a scheme if you actually fall in love with and eventually marry the man, but getting to that point is half the fun, isn’t it?

And we can’t forget the Coopers. If it weren’t for Buzz, Frank, and Harley, GL would probably have gone off the air long before it did. In the show’s final two decades, the working-class screwups from the wrong side of town gradually transformed into pillars of the community…though not without tons of parenting mistakes and bad relationship choices:

Kelly: For years, Harley and Frank Cooper thought their father, Frank Achilles “Buzz” Cooper, had died in Vietnam. Their mother, Nadine—who had at one point left Frank and Harley to fend for themselves, but eventually returned to Springfield—knew otherwise, but kept the truth from her children. While on vacation in Washington, D.C. with boyfriend A.C. Mallet, Harley decided she wanted to visit the Vietnam War Memorial to see her father’s name. Confused after she was unable to find the name on the wall, Harley and Mallet began to investigate what actually happened to Buzz, despite Nadine’s insistence that he was dead. Eventually, Mallet discovered that Buzz was actually alive and living in Springfield, masquerading as Nadine’s cousin, Rex Mancini. Before he could tell Harley the truth, though, she independently came to the same conclusion and confronted “Rex” during brother Frank’s wedding. Buzz’s return turned Frank’s and Harley’s lives upside down and at first, neither of them wanted anything to do with him. But they both came around, especially after Buzz threw a surprise wedding for Harley and Mallet as an attempt to make amends for all the pain he’d caused. Eventually, Buzz Cooper, portrayed by the brilliant Justin Deas, would go on to become one of Springfield’s most beloved residents.

Robin: The Coopers were great. But why were they Greek? Because they owned a diner?

Good lord, this could go on forever…we’ve barely scratched the surface. There’s nothing in here about newsman Fletcher Reade or scheming heiress India von Halkein, and we’ve only briefly alluded to Vanessa Chamberlain, Beth Raines and the worst (that is, the best) villain in Springfield history, Roger Thorpe. (We’re happy to ignore more recent developments, like the Santos crime family and a sudden influx of royals from the fake kingdom of San Cristobal—lame!) But everything must eventually come to an end, as the cancellation of Guiding Light in 2009 demonstrates. Of course, thanks to the Internet, a beloved TV show need never really die…but even without the miracle of YouTube, these moments, episodes, and stories would keep burning bright in the hearts and minds of mildly insane people like us. So viva Reva, and rock on Rick Bauer. We’ll leave the lighthouse on for you.

Roger Thorpe, a.k.a. Adam Malek, a.k.a. Professor Schneider. Alexandra Spaulding, a.k.a. Baroness von Halkein. Reva Shayne Lewis Lewis Spaulding Lewis Winslow Cooper Lewis Lewis O’Neill. These colorful characters, among countless others, contributed to the success of the longest running drama in the history of television, Guiding Light.

When the lighthouse that was its symbol went dark, GL had seen nearly 16,000 episodes come and go—and that’s not counting its fifteen years on radio prior to its transfer to TV. Sadly, younger, sexier “soap operas” like The Young and the Restless (which has been #1 in daytime every week for the last twenty-two years) and the proliferation of shock-a-licious talk shows ultimately proved too much for the old girl, and she was put out to pasture in September 2009. But before it collapsed under its own weight, having succumbed to the kind of “jumping the shark” plot developments that lost them longtime viewers (clones, anyone?), it was appointment viewing for a young Robin Monica Alexander and an even younger Kelly Stitzel, who were introduced to the secrets of fictional “Springfield” by their respective grandmas. When Jeff Giles interviewed One Life to Live actress Kassie DePaiva for Popdose last month, both of us were thrown headlong into nostalgia—you see, before Ms. DePaiva was OLTL‘s Blair, she was GL‘s Chelsea Reardon, who was lucky enough to have affairs with a fine selection of Springfield’s hottest hunks. (Oh, Johnny Bauer…)

The Guiding Light was created in 1937 by actress Irna Phillips, whose goal was to spread Christian inspiration through good, clean soap. Phillips built a career providing entertainment to homemakers; she would go on to create and produce several more serial dramas, including As the World Turns, Another World, and Days of Our Lives (the last is the only one still in production). The Guiding Light began as a fifteen-minute program, was lengthened to a half-hour in the 1960s, and expanded again to an hour in 1977; for four years in the ’50s, it was being broadcast on both radio and TV concurrently. In 1975 the “The” of the title was dropped. More than a few of its hundreds of cast members went on to less sudsy careers, including James Earl Jones, Christopher Walken, Allison Janney, Hayden Panettiere, and…Kevin Bacon (proving that he really is the center of the show business universe).

Before TV, GL revolved around the Reverend John Rutledge, who as his community’s pastor found himself privy to everyone’s dirty little secrets, including a few in his own home. By the time the show moved to the boob tube, the Bauer family was the central focus. Despite their middle-class status and solid German-American values, those Bauers managed to attract a lot of A-level conflict:

Kelly: One of the first storylines I remember as a young GL viewer is that of the friendship between teenagers Rick Bauer, Phillip Spaulding, Beth Raines and Mindy Lewis—a.k.a. the Four Musketeers—during the early ’80s. The core friendship of that group was that of Phillip and Rick, who, despite their different upbringings—Phillip was raised by the rich and morally questionable Spaulding family and Rick belonged to the salt-of-the-Earth Bauers—were practically inseparable after meeting in high school. Their friendship would endure a lot during their teens and twenties, including quite a bit of romance-swapping (they would each date the other two Musketeers, Beth and Mindy), but it was truly tested—and for a short period, ended—when Rick discovered that his wife, Meredith, had slept with Phillip and become pregnant with his child. Worse even, Rick found out that Phillip was the baby’s father after its death, since he’d chosen to save Meredith’s life over the child’s when complications arose during the delivery. Even though I was a pre-teen when this storyline aired, I remember being in awe of the brilliant performances given by Grant Aleksander (Phillip), Michael O’Leary (Rick) and Nicolette Goulet (Meredith)—O’Leary’s especially. I hated that the friendship between two of my favorite characters—a friendship that was a main reason why I had become interested in the show as a little girl—might end for good. They took what could’ve been a standard, trashy soap storyline and elevated it to something heartbreaking and more meaningful. Of course, Phillip and Rick eventually reconciled and went on to be involved in many more shenanigans that would test their BFF-dom.

Robin: Speaking of unintended pregnancies…I remember being amazed that Dr. Ed Bauer (Rick’s dad), so ordinary-looking, soft-spoken and professionally respected, was such a chick magnet. By the time I began watching GL, he was already three-times divorced and now married to the much younger Maureen Reardon. Poor Ed was so unlucky that he even cheated on his wife without meaning to: believing that Mo had been killed in an explosion in war-torn Lebanon (which looked suspiciously like a TV studio), Dr. Ed engaged in some grief-stricken nookie with his colleague, Claire, only to find out the next day that his wife was still alive. Unfortunately, that battle-zone quickie had gotten Claire pregnant, a fact that was particularly painful for Maureen, who had suffered a miscarriage and found herself unable to conceive again. Luckily for (almost) everyone involved, Claire went nuts after giving birth (just one of many postpartum depression-fueled storylines GL would employ), so Ed and Mo were able to adopt little Michelle and raise her as their own. They were happy, until Ed “accidentally” cheated again (with a family friend who jumped him in the shower); Mo found out, flipped, jumped into her car and drove straight into a fatal wreck. The actress who played Maureen won a Daytime Emmy a few months after her character had been dispatched; in her acceptance speech, she described encounters with fans who called her “Maureen! Maureen!,” to which she responded, “I’m dead! I’m dead!”

The luckless Maureen hailed from the Reardon family, a clan so large that whenever the writers needed to introduce a new character who could instantly evoke an emotional response from the fans, they simply brought a new Reardon to town. The matriarch, Bea, ran a boardinghouse with an adjoining restaurant, conveniently providing a location for the town’s unending series of flirtations, confrontations, and reconciliations to take place. Not that the Reardons lacked for any of their own drama:

Kelly: Nola Reardon was one of the quirkiest, most eccentric characters Guiding Light viewers had probably ever encountered when she burst onto the scene in 1980. Nola used old movies as escape from her boring life working with her mother at the family-owned boardinghouse, often turning events in her life into film-related fantasies. She also passed the time stirring up trouble with a variety of local men, eventually tricking one into getting her pregnant so she could pretend the baby was fathered by another man she was trying to trap. But it wasn’t until she began working for the mysterious archaeologist Quint McCord (who would eventually be revealed to be Quint Chamberlain, son of local blueblood Henry Chamberlain and sister of diva Vanessa) that Nola would find the true man of her elaborate dreams and begin to change her ways. With a romance modeled after the Hitchcock film Rebecca, Quint and Nola captured viewers’ imaginations, and when they married in 1983, it was one of the most spectacular weddings in GL history. Besides the Four Musketeers, Quint and Nola’s romance is the storyline I remember most vividly from the early ’80s. As a wee lass, I may not have understood the shenanigans Nola was always up to with the men she was trying to bed, but I was enthralled with all of her movie daydreams. And when she and Quint took off in that hot air balloon at their wedding, I was completely captivated. I still say that their wedding was the best soap wedding of the ’80s. Suck it, Luke and Laura.

Robin: I was super into Annabelle, Tony Reardon’s sweet but strange wife. First, her childhood flashbacks solved the decades-long mystery of her mother’s death, which—oh SNAP!—turned out also to be the mystery of Tony’s father’s disappearance. The denouement, in which her evil dad totally lost it and began confusing his daughter for his dead wife (and trying to kill her, too), was easily the creepiest thing I had ever seen on TV up to that point. Later, when she and Tony moved into their first home, a seemingly innocuous cottage, Annabelle started having psychic visions that revealed scandalous secrets about (what else?) murder, interracial adultery, and millionaire Brandon Spaulding, who—even though he had died on screen five years earlier—was revealed to be alive and well in Barbados…for one episode. Then he died again.

Ah, yes, the Spaulding family. On the other end of the spectrum from the Bauers and Reardons, they were a high-strung group of eccentrics who became very rich running a manufacturing business…that is, a shipping business…well, whatever, they were very rich. They all have Mommy/Daddy issues (see above storyline about the amazing undead paterfamilias, Brandon) and are world champions of intrigue and backstabbing:

Kelly: From the moment rich brat Alan-Michael Spaulding’s motorcycle collided with the car carrying a pregnant 17-year-old girl to the hospital on her way to give birth, I was completely sucked into what would become one of my favorite storylines. Ironically, the girl was actually named after a motorcycle—Harley Davidson Cooper. At first, Alan-Michael hated low-class Harley, but eventually the pair became friends. With a desire to not only antagonize his family, to whom he’d never felt like he really belonged, but also to make some quick cash, Alan-Michael talked Harley into marrying him in order to gain access to his trust fund.  Horrified that A-M wanted to marry someone they believed to be nothing but trash, A-M’s aunt Alexandra and brother Phillip devised a plan to break the pair up. Phillip attempted to seduce Harley, but when he failed, he grew to like and respect her and decided to give her lessons on how to be a proper Spaulding. A-M and Harley married and, though they didn’t get their hands on A-M’s trust fund, they did end up falling in love for real. However, their happiness didn’t last, as the father of the baby Harley had given up for adoption re-entered the picture and threw a monkey wrench into their newly wedded bliss. A-M and Harley eventually divorced and moved on with their lives. Several years later, the friendship between Phillip and Harley would be rekindled—and would eventually turn to romance and marriage, making Harley a Spaulding once again. The Phillip/Harley pairing would become one of the show’s most popular in the late ’90s, though it too would be doomed to fail because of Phillip’s lingering love for his old flame, Beth.

Robin: Lujack. Lujack, Lujack, Lujack. Alexandra Spaulding’s long-lost street-punk son, Brandon Luvonaczek, was only on GL for two years, but he frickin’ took over the show during his tenure. The surly young tough spent his time driving his guilt-ridden mother insane, luring the virtuous Beth away from his bitter cousin Phillip, and, as the frontman of a rock band, performing a piss-poor version of “Out in the Street” by Bruce Springsteen over and over. Why on earth they blew him up in 1985 I will never understand. Of course, when Vincent Irizarry, who played Lujack, wanted to return to the show, they had to create a storyline that explained why a guy who looked just like Lujack was suddenly hanging around. They came up with the “secret twin” excuse, wherein a woman is somehow unaware that she has given birth to two children instead of just one (please see sisters Lily and Rose on As the World Turns for a second example of this absurd storyline). Sadly, the reanimated Lujack was nowhere near as entertaining as the original.

In our next installment of Random Play: Guiding Light—will more characters cheat on their spouses? (Yes.) Will actors who look/sound not even remotely Hispanic be cast as Latin Americans? (Yes.) Will people lose their memories, disguise their identities, and plunge off of bridges? (Hell yes.) Join us next time as we remember the charming Buzz Cooper, the scheming Blake Thorpe, and the diva to end all divas, Reva Shayne.

“Fuck that shit! Fuck that shit! Fuck that shit, say ‘Fuck that shit!’”

Okay, maybe Susan B. would have been slightly taken aback at the bluntness of those lyrics, but undoubtedly she and the rest of her activist sisters and brothers are directly responsible for their existence. Without the exertions of true believers like them, black lesbian Christian hip-hop would still be an unattainable dream.

Yo Majesty (sometimes written “Yo! Majesty”) rocked the mic in various configurations for over a decade, but recorded just two CDs: an EP and a full-length album called Futuristically Speaking…Never Be Afraid. As you might imagine, that mouthful of a title reflects the fact that these women have plenty to say. The album kicks off with “Fucked Up,” a musical portrait of the most sado-masochistic relationship of all time. Vocalist Jwl. B threatens both property damage and physical violence against her lover while offering to take her share of abuse as well: “Hit me, I want some attention!” By the time she screams, “You’ll be missing on a milk carton!” you’ll be thoroughly disturbed…and, if you’re anything like me, laughing uncontrollably. (Yeah, I went there.)

There’s more social commentary and foul-mouthed satire in tracks like “Don’t Let Go,” a sapphic ode to a go-go girl (“Every time you turn around a n***a callin’ you a ho”), “Buy Love,” a lament for a generation lost to crack, and “Leather Jacket,” in which the ladies put a “jheri curl”-wearing lothario in his place (“Broke-ass n***a tryin’ to take my cash/Broke-ass n***a tryin’ to beat my ass”). However, Yo Majesty’s bread-and-butter is the combination of their ridiculous lyrical skills and crunk-meets-electroclash sound. Even when rhyming about the usual hip-hop topics—clubbing, drinking, women’s butts—Jwl. B and her homegirl Shunda K stake out musical territory all their own. One critic complained that the lyrical content is too typical of the genre…as if the fact that the MCs are women is irrelevant. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but “Ooh, girl, you smell so good…I’d tear that ass up” strikes me as somewhat different when the speaker is also a girl. Call me crazy. (If you need more info on this topic, Susie Bright can help you.)

Sadly, after Futuristically Speaking dropped in 2008, Yo Majesty’s recording career hit a snag: let’s just say the fury Jwl. B expresses on “Fucked Up” seems to have spilled over into her personal life, resulting in incarceration, group conflict, and a break with their label. Shunda K has spent the last few years self-releasing singles, touring with the similarly outrageous Peaches, and reuniting with Shon B, her original musical partner and collaborator on “Club Action,” the track that gave us the “Fuck that shit!” refrain. Her solo CD, The Most Wanted, was released earlier this year; its lead-off track is called “I Am Yo! Majesty.” I certainly hope that the same creative and political spark that animates Futuristically Speaking continues to live on. Sojourner Truth would want it that way.

For those of you who like your Women’s History a little more traditional, fear not…Random Play will be back later this week to bring you a two-part meditation on the longest running soap opera of all time, Guiding Light. Kelly Stitzel joins Robin Monica as a guest contributor!

Like the “It Gets Better” videos and children’s book My Princess Boy, this project just naturally makes anyone who cares about equality and the human spirit feel awesome. As its founder acknowledges, it runs the risk of “furthering stereotypes” about queer people; specifically, that gay males are always “effeminate” and gay females are always “butch.” But he feels it’s worth it in order to counter the argument that gayness can be denied, suppressed or changed. If we see images of kids acting “different”—manifesting behavior outside of their “normal” gender role long before they can possibly have been influenced by some alleged gay agenda—maybe we will finally come to accept gender and sexual fluidity as part of the natural order. In my case, he’s preaching to the choir, since I not only merely accept queer people and culture, I honor and adore them. I don’t identify as gay (I’m not trying hard enough, I suppose), but I honestly feel as if my life would be sadder and less rich without gay people, places and things in it. And I don’t mean simply because I really like disco and feminism.

When you look at the pictures at Born This Way, you will see a lot of familiar gay themes: males in dresses, wigs, and makeup; females with short, shaggy hair in overalls; boys holding Barbie dolls and girls getting ready to play softball. They are accompanied by remarkably insightful, usually touching, and frequently hilarious stories of feeling different, or sad, or happy, or fabulous. Some express wonder that their parents didn’t catch on until they came out as teens or adults, while others admit that Mom and/or Dad clearly knew before they themselves did. Both the tales that could be accused of playing right into homophobes’ hands (the lesbian who recalls “trying to get the other little girls…to go behind the shed with me and play house.  I was always the daddy”) and those that might stop them in their tracks (the gay man who “like[s] to build things…while lip synching to Lady Gaga”) fairly burst off the screen with the force of truth.

The subjects of the pics posted so far (the blog just launched on January 9) represent an amazing range of ages, from folks born in the 1940s to those who are still in their teens, and include people of every ethnicity, from around the U.S. and the world. The “markers” of their difference can be as subtle as a tilt of the head or a cautious smile (or lack thereof) or as obvious as jazz hands or a feather boa. There are certain specific generational commonalities, some predictable, some less so (who knew that so many lads were lusting after Grizzly Adams in the late ’70s?), but across the board, the pictures and their attached stories communicate purity and innocence; the children we see may or may not yet be aware of sexuality per se, but their individuality and their passions shine through. From the tween girl rocking her Sporty Spice Halloween costume to the little fellow doing the ironing in a tutu, the message is clear: even a child knows the difference between natural and unnatural. The former is what happens when parents, siblings, teachers and neighbors allow kids to do and be whatever gives them joy; the latter is what we get when politics, religion, and plain old meanness conspire to take that joy away.

Okay, so why should those of us not “in the life” care about any of this? Is it weird, or unseemly, or even (heaven forfend!) politically incorrect for a heterosexual woman to feel such a profound attachment to the culture of gay pride? At risk of being pigeonholed as just another sad and desperate “hag,” I declare my eternal solidarity with my queer sisters and brothers (and most of the time, they’re nice enough to accept it with an indulgent smile). This week, we celebrate the legacy of Dr. King, who famously looked forward to a time when children would “not be judged by the color of their skin.” Despite the fact that King’s daughter, also a minister, has actively worked to undermine the gay rights movement, I feel that he himself would additionally ask us not to judge people by the limpness of their wrists, or the butchness of their hairstyles, or their fondness for showtunes, or the pronoun by which they refer to their life partners. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and whenever someone tries to tell you that one kind of prejudice is “different” from another kind, well, watch out: he may have a bridge to sell you.  As someone who has been “different” in all sorts of ways—some visible, some less so—since birth, I celebrate Born This Way in honor of Dr. King…and Harvey Milk…and Virginia Woolf…and Geoff.

I know it would be more traditional to get my Christmas buzz on with eggnog or a good old-fashioned Dickensian punch, but vodka is my go-to liquor, and has been since I began drinking. I got on the alcohol train quite late, having abstained throughout high school and college. In my teens, I never needed liquid courage to get out on the dance floor (or remove my shirt at a party), and having tasted beer and champagne as a kid, I saw no reason to force myself to drink something that nasty for the purpose of getting up the nerve to do things I already did. But then came adulthood, and romantic drama, and graduate school, and plain old spunk and stubbornness wasn’t enough anymore. I had helped to plan a party with a fellow grad student, and had taken great care to craft mixtapes that I thought would get people rump-shakin’ with abandon. Alas, my expectations were too high: let’s just say MFA candidates in film aren’t the folks most likely to get down. I took my classmates’ failure to boogie personally, and decided then and there that it was time for a new coping mechanism. I marched into the kitchen and demanded that the class alcoholic (not coincidentally, he was also the class virgin) fix me up a drink that would be palatable to an experienced imbiber like myself. He came up with a simple but functional vodka and Sprite. A door opened in my psyche that night that I had never suspected was there. Not everything behind that door has been nice, but I wouldn’t close it again for the world.

Throughout my 20′s, vodka and I were consistently there for each other. Whether in a vodka tonic, a gimlet, a Cosmo, a Greyhound, or a Cape Codder, that odorless, colorless nectar of the gods has gotten me through all manner of edgy social, professional, and/or sexual situations. Of course, the thing about loving a potent potable is that it never gets jealous if you stray, so I’ve had (and continue to have) dalliances with rum, tequila, and Jack Daniels. Now that I’m a “mature” woman looking ahead to 40, vodka will have to share me with red wine and the occasional sparkling white on a fairly regular basis. But it doesn’t mind. It knows I will be back. Vodka is the wind beneath my wings, the hooch I turn to when I seek simplicity, familiarity, and dependability. Stoli is my brand of choice: I actually prefer it to certain more expensive brands, and among reasonably priced varieties, it’s the sole representative from Russia. Does it really matter where a vodka is made anymore in the age of globalization? I don’t know, but it gives me some pleasure to think about my ancestors in the shtetl knocking back the водка by the liter, never imagining that some female descendant of theirs would be doing the same thing in a dive bar on a distant continent.

Among the flavored varieties, Stoli Vanil is my fave–I’m a fool for vanilla in general, whether in baked goods, scented candles, or perfume from the Body Shop (it happens to be an aphrodisiac, so stock up on candles and flavored vodka, single dudes!). Wild Cherri avoids the problem common to many vodkas infused with fruit, namely, a vaguely medicinal taste (sure, one can get high on cough syrup, but once one is over 21, one generally chooses not to). I’m not giving up Vanil anytime soon, but I’d be happy to make mixed drinks with Wild Cherri for my friends. Perhaps I can throw a Presidents’ Day party and concoct a “Cherry Tree” martini in honor of George Washington? But that’s a ways off; let’s focus on one holiday at time…first Christmas, then New Year’s. I’ve still got two bottles of vodka in the freezer. Will they make it to February? That depends…you comin’ over?

First things first: I freely admit that I have not seen the current production, either in its original incarnation in Central Park’s Delacorte Theatre or in its new home at the Broadhurst on 44^th Street. I am perfectly willing to concede that Pacino’s portrayal of Shylock is “devastating” and that he and Lily Rabe, as Portia, give “the performances of the season.” Both roles are among the juiciest in Shakespeare’s canon, and the text contains some of the most quotable and profound dialogue he ever wrote, including “The quality of mercy is not strain’d” and “The villainy you teach me, I shall execute.” However, there’s one big problem: the play’s comedic, dramatic, and romantic payoffs all hinge on our acceptance of anti-semitism. Actors, directors, and audiences tie themselves in knots trying to deny or justify this. This is possibly a by-product of what George Bernard Shaw called “Bardolatry,” the belief that Shakespeare is not only a great dramatist, but the great dramatist—a regard for the Bard that goes beyond respect and admiration into reverence. Shaw’s skepticism may have been exacerbated by professional jealousy, but a little skepticism never hurt anyone, and if ever a play deserved to be regarded skeptically, Merchant would be it.

For those who have never read or seen it (or did but can’t remember what they read or saw), here’s the play in a nutshell: a rich merchant (Antonio) lends a friend (Bassanio) some money so he can afford to court a beautiful, intelligent heiress (Portia). The merchant doesn’t have enough cash on hand, so he has to borrow it from someone who does (Shylock). Considering that Shylock has been insulted and—get this—spat on by Antonio in the past, it’s big of him even to agree to deal with the guy, but it’s worth his while as a business transaction. As collateral for the deal, Shylock insists on a pound of Antonio’s flesh, “nearest the merchant’s heart.” WTF? Antonio thinks, but whatever, his ships are, literally, about to come in, with enough merchandise to pay back the loan. Whoops! The ships are wrecked at sea and now Shylock’s demanding payment. Antonio signed a contract; it seems he’s screwed, as he can’t part with that pound of flesh without, you know, dying. But here comes Portia (in disguise, of course—women aren’t allowed in a courtroom), making a brilliant legal argument that (SPOILER!) nullifies the contract and saves Antonio’s life. She also makes sure that Shylock loses all his property and is forced to convert to Christianity. Oh, yeah, that’s right—Shylock’s a Jew. Well, that explains everything! Being Christian already, those who now have the power to drive Shylock into destitution and even have him executed show mercy, sparing his life and leaving him a portion of his wealth. The rest will be split between Antonio, the man who (I’ll repeat) once spat on him, and Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, who has recently embraced Christianity herself upon eloping with a Gentile.

Now I’ll grant you that Shakespeare makes this plot a lot more complex than other playwrights of his time might have done. Just a few years earlier, Christopher Marlowe had written The Jew of Malta, in which the title character schemes against the island’s ruling family, poisons the residents of a convent (including his own daughter), and orchestrates the sack of Malta itself. Both plays acknowledge that Jews are the victims of cruel persecution, and that the goyim around them may be (to paraphrase Saint Paul) reaping what they have sown. Still, the villains’ evil deeds cannot be excused, no matter how badly they’ve been treated. Sure, I get it, but here’s the kicker: while everyone else in Venice gets to learn a lesson from these awful events and possibly be nicer in the future, Shylock is the only character who is forced to change his identity. Why? Because only as a Christian can he be expected to comprehend “the quality of mercy.” Apparently, Judaism doesn’t allow for personal growth. Shakespeare himself seems ambivalent about whether Shylock is a representative of his “people” or a character who just “happens” to be Jewish (as evidenced by the Act III monologue that includes “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?”). This ambivalence might be less offensive if the playwright had visited similar consequences upon any of the other major characters, but no—Bassanio gets Portia, and Antonio gets his ships back (seems they didn’t really sink—psych!). Shylock is left childless, living on charity, and stripped of his faith.

Shakespeare’s treatment of his Jewish baddie is clearly more nuanced than Marlowe’s, and falls short of the racial element that characterized the anti-semitism of the Third Reich. It’s anti-semitic all the same. One can argue that Shakespeare was only reflecting the values of his time; that’s true, but we need not endorse those values simply because Shakespeare didn’t know any better. One can propose that the play be performed in subversive fashion, emphasizing the hypocrisy of the Venetians and suggesting Shylock’s ultimate defiance. The problem is that Shakespeare has already done that. He knows that Antonio’s superior attitude and Bassanio’s irresponsibility are vices that need to be corrected. But they will have the luxury of doing so voluntarily, with the support of their rich, Christian friends and families. The play ends with a comic scene, prologue to a double wedding. To subvert the text far enough to undo this resolution, one would have to eschew dramatic convention altogether and venture into performance art.

Unlike Shaw, I am not a Shakespeare basher—far from it. I have taught his works in high school English classes, assigned scenes from his oeuvre to acting students, and directed productions of two of his plays. I still remember the excitement I felt when I saw my first live Shakespeare—Much Ado About Nothing, starring Derek Jacobi—and how my universe expanded when I read Romeo and Juliet for the first time. But not even a literary genius should get a free pass on prejudice. It’s perfectly possible to respect, esteem, and enjoy most of his works (in which racism and sexism are merely incidental, not central, to the conflict) while condemning Merchant. And I have a pretty impressive ally in this argument—no less a luminary than Harold Bloom, the author of such seminal works of criticism as The Anxiety of Influence and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. (He’s also the guy who gave me an A- on my paper on All’s Well that Ends Well. It was the highest grade he gave. Yeah, I’m good.) Bloom asserts that two-thirds of Shakespeare’s (thirty-eight) plays “are masterpieces,” which is really saying something. In short, no one’s a bigger fan. The students who take his “Histories and Comedies” seminar read Merchant, which he calls “grand” and “equivocal”; they also hear him—a man whose first language was Yiddish—proclaim the play “unperformable.” That’s not a call for censorship; it’s simply an acknowledgment that even the dude who might be the greatest writer of all time was a product of his own time.

If you’re still on the fence about Merchant, let me ask you this: how would you feel if instead of a fellow wearing a beard and a yarmulke, the play’s villain wore a conical straw hat and a pigtail? How would you react if the line read, “Hath not a Mexican eyes?” What if at the end he were forced to renounce Islam? Could you sit in a theater for three hours watching this man be vilified and, ultimately, humiliated? By all means, let’s study The Merchant of Venice in the context of Shakespeare’s comedies, or Elizabethan drama as a whole, or English-language poetry. Then let’s fire that text-messaging train conductor and put on a production of Coriolanus instead.

The official return date was announced as November 2—Election Day. How fitting: you can exercise your rights as a citizen, and then celebrate the miracle of democracy by eating the sandwich that, despite its failure to rally the same kind of support enjoyed by hamburgers and chicken patties, is periodically brought back into the public sphere thanks to the devotion of a small but passionate constituency. My day was set: go to work, go to the polls, go to town on a McRib value meal as a reward for holding up my end of the American bargain. But the Mickey D’s near my place of work decided to go rogue and start serving McRibs a week early. I am happy to report that it was every bit as awesome as I remembered it being. No letdown here. And hey, there’s no reason I can’t eat another one on Election Day as I originally planned. After all, I gotta get my jollies while I can: the sandwich is only being offered until mid-December. Pulling it right before Christmas? Bah, humbug!

No doubt some folks reading this are smacking their lips, while others are recoiling in horror. Even among those who haven’t sworn off fast food (i.e. those who haven’t seen Super Size Me), there are people who find the McRib unappealing or suspicious. Despite the pork industry marketing its product as “the other white meat,” large areas of the U.S. are heavily prejudiced against pig flesh. (Those areas do not include Georgia or Louisiana.) I first realized this when I went abroad in the mid-90s and found, to my amazement, that Europeans somehow eat even fattier foods than we do, yet aren’t as fat as us. Citizens of the EU eat more pork per capita than those of any other country, and many of their common daily lunch options—for example, the ham and butter baguette you can find on every other corner in Paris—are pork-based. In America’s urban centers, you meet annoying girls everywhere who will tell you, “I don’t eat meat … only chicken.” Well, those women would starve to death in Germany, where poultry is so far down on the totem pole that it’s not even available at every supermarket. What do they eat instead? Pork sausage, pork meatballs, pork roast, pork steaks, and let’s not forget the bacon. Is it any wonder, then, that the McRib is available at German McDonald’s restaurants as a regular menu item? (Gee, not very kosher friendly, are they … oh, yeah.)

Now, I know pigs are intelligent animals. I also know they taste amazing. Occasionally, when I’m about to drown my sorrows in some pork chops, I think of Babe and feel sad. But pork isn’t just something I enjoy; it’s practically in my DNA. My mother grew up in the South, where vegetables don’t taste right unless they’re flavored with pork. Crispy fried pork rinds were a normal snack at my grandma’s house, and my great-uncles, who grew up on a farm with hogs, still expect to have “trotters” (pig feet) on the table at Thanksgiving. When she was pregnant with me, my mom went to visit her parents and developed a forceful craving for Smithfield ham, a food so salty it might as well be called “Smithfield salt with some ham mixed in.” Her father went out and bought two hams, one to prepare for her immediately, the other to pack in dry ice to bring back to New York. When Mom went for her next doctor’s appointment, her obstetrician found that her blood pressure was alarmingly high and forbade her to eat any more of that demon ham. But by that point it was too late: I, too, am the kind of person who could sit next to a salty country ham, slicing bite-sized pieces off of it for an hour or so, and call that dinner. To put it mildly, I am not halal.

You might think that someone with such a deep respect for swine-based cuisine would be contemptuous of a mass-produced item like the McRib. But pork is a versatile meat, and it can stand being pounded, minced and molded to within an inch of its life. Indeed, the McRib contains all the best elements of pork—its flavor and succulence—and none of the bad ones: bones, gristle, trichinosis. Other chains, including Subway (so much for “Eat fresh”), make similar products, but McDonald’s is still the champ when it comes to food processing; they’re using all the same ingredients as everyone else, but it’s like they’re performing alchemy and all the rest are just doing parlor tricks.

So this fall, America, cast your votes, hit the stores, and eat a McRib. In honor of the pilgrims, it’s the least you can do. And I hear Germany’s gorgeous in January.